An Unknown Factor

Phina and Human Hunter sprinted through the maze like warehouse. It fell apart as they ran. Human Hunter attached his speared chain onto a nearby crumbling wall, and used it to swing into Phina.

She jumped backwards, dodging his attack, and typed a code into her wrist, opening a hatch on the ground exactly where Human Hunter was going to land. He fell deep into the trap rigged room below.

"He...hehe.." Phina laughed a bit, panting heavily. She heard explosions, crashing, and screaming from below. "Either he was the weakest member, or I'm just that strong! Hehehe!"

The noise stopped, and after a moment of silence, Human Hunter crashed through the ceiling. Much to Phina's shock, he was unharmed. "Weak, and predictable." He said, stomping his way towards Phina who still couldn't believe her eyes. "All I needed to see was a single one of your traps activate. After that, I was able to guess the functioning of your others. I lied when I said these pathetic things could kill me. The truth is, we overestimated you.."

That statement turned Phina's shock into rage.

"Overestimated..? Really you stupid fuck!? Every single FUCKING one of you are going to be groveling under my boots pretty soon here, then you'll realize that the only overrated trash here is Proel!!" Phina tossed three traps towards Human Hunter. He sliced them all in half.. which unfortunately activated them. They each released a Staff Wielding Sapient.

Moments before Human Hunter would have exploded, and been killed, Silva showed up. She used her energized whips to completely decimate the Sapients into tiny little pieces.

"Staff wielding Sapients kill their target seconds after they become aware of their presence." Human Hunter thought to himself. "If Silva hadn't recovered in time.. I would be dead." His internal monologue was interrupted by Phina's hand. She grabbed him by the helmet, and dragged it across a grouping of walls, smashing them all. Silva attempted to stop her attack, but was too weak to continue moving. She had used her last waking bit of energy on the save she gave Human Hunter just a second ago.

Phina let go. This sent Human Hunter into the air. He regained his balance, and latched onto the ground with his chains. Pulling, he intentionally slammed through the floor, reappearing behind Phina with his blades for a sneak attack.

A giant trap appeared out of nowhere, preventing this attack, and crushed him against a wall. It was like a huge sideways pillar.

The impact blew Phina's hair back. This put a smile back on her face. "Yess.. there we go." She said in relief. "He's got to be dead now.. yes.. I really hope he is.."

Her hopefulness didn't last long. Human Hunter slowly began pushing the pillar off of himself.

"Hehe... NO!" Phina yelled, and used Human Hunter's current vulnerability to launch another blow. But.. she fell right into a trap of his own.

She entered the tiny opening between the opponent she hated so much, and the pillar trap.

A millisecond before Phina was able to further injure Human Hunter, he escaped the trap, slamming her into the small opening she had entered.

"Nngh.." Phina burst out of the wall, with only a small amount of damage done to her. "Flowe.. where is Flowe!? If I continue to fight this freak on my own, I may end up needing to release my full strength, accidentally destroying my cloning device in the process."

Human Hunter threw a punch at his full strength. His fist landed right into Phina's palm, who caught the blow. The entire warehouse shook and crumbled to the ground even more. As this occurred, Phina radioed Flowe using another code, this time on her leg. Once this had been done, she returned her attention to Human Hunter, and smacked him away with her hardened snake baton.

Flying across the landscape at inconceivable speeds, Alant and Lock battled against Flowe. Tigal was unfortunately forced to the sidelines for the moment. He wasn't fast enough to keep up with the current state of the fight.

Flowe glided backwards using a platform he had created with Overflowe. Alant used his pure speed to keep up with him and launch swings with his blade at an incredibly high rate. Lock on the other hand, used the speed increase his powered up state gave him to absorb nearby objects as he rocketed past them, and use them against Flowe.

"Hahah, I now see why Phina wanted you all as specimens to clone so badly! Strength of this scale and magnitude is unheard of outside of the Assassin Corps!" Surprisingly, Flowe was beginning to enjoy this battle.

"Assassin Corps..?" Lock questioned, as he continued launching and swinging rubble at Flowe. Consuming and releasing objects was not all his book was capable of. He could also maneuver the objects with pinpoint accuracy. Using them as a long term weapon or shield, increasing and decreasing their speeds at will, and so on. In this instance, he removed a humongous tree from his book that he had stored earlier, and repeatedly beat it against Flowe's seemingly invincible energy shield.

"Yes, the Assassin Corps!" Flowe seamlessly took down his shield, and pummeled his knee against the tree, splitting it in two. "It's an organization filled with some of the most skilled fighters this world has to offer. They keep tabs on current events, recruiting any potential candidates for the corps based on skills, beliefs, personality, and intelligence. They observe all other major factions as well.. that includes your odd little group Proel. I never payed too much attention when they would discuss it though. Quite frankly, I only joined because of the money, as well as my own boredom. I never imagined we would ever encounter an opponent who could hang with a single one of us. But now.. I may be interested." Flowe kicked his foot through a series of objects Lock had thrown, and knocked Lock towards the ground. Slamming into the floor below, Flowe's kick was so powerful that Lock's body burst onto the ground with a blue aura. It created a devastating explosion.

Though his attack was incredibly successful, Flowe failed to aknowledge Alant's presence. His description of the Assassin Corps had distracted him. "These Assassin Corps guys sound pretty tough. Scary tough, actually. But ya shouldn't have forgotten about me buddy! Because now.. you're complete toast!"

"Hm. I doubt it." Flowe calmly stated. Alant rocketed in Flowe's direction, blades out, breaking the sound barrier.

Alant yelled at the top of his lungs. His blades inched closer and closer to Flowe's neck with each passing millisecond. Then.. they made contact. Made contact with a shield Flowe had formed with Overflowe. The red energy sparked against Alant's bloodied swords. Alant himself was stunned. He stared at his failed attempt for a couple of seconds, before he was absolutely blasted into the earth below.

Both him and Lock... had failed.

Landing next to his defeated opponents, Flowe deactivated Overflowe. Thinking for a brief moment, he eventually spoke to them, pacing around their beaten and broken bodies.

"..When I stated that you both were exceedingly impressive opponents, it wasn't a lie. That truly is what I believe. As I said earlier, I didn't expect much when I originally joined the Assassin Corps. The biggest reason for my alliance with them was to appease my boredom. But I did in fact, have a second motive. That's right.. the Assassin Corps may not be well known by people such as yourselves, but to someone like me, someone who's spent their life trying to find the strongest, they're unrivaled legends. I wanted to see their strength first hand. And when I finally did, it certainly didn't disappoint."

Flowe crouched down, and sat next to Lock and Alant.

"Now that I've found challengers to their might however.. I'm thinking that with my assistance, they could be taken down. Proel could become something even more legendary."

Lock managed to slightly tilt his head up. "Why.. what would be the point of assisting us? Switching sides on a moments notice purely due to battle capabilities..? Having such a person among us would be far too great of a risk."

"T-That's right.. piss off man." Alant spit up a bit of blood between his sentence.

"It isn't simply because you're stronger." Flowe continued. "You see, while I didn't listen to much about your squad, I did get the basics. And I know that your goal is to eradicate all humans. Something that.. I've come to agree with as of late. My childhood was an unexplainable nightmare. And there are activities the Assassin Corps partake in that disgust me in more ways than one. I've never met a good human in my life. The Assassin Corps believe that the world should be run by the most intelligent and qualified people. People who they judge to be the best. Soon, they intend on taking over the planet once they have become powerful enough, and have eliminated most potential threats. I originally planned on being a part of that. There wasn't much I could do about it either way. Like I said though, it's a different story now. With you I have a way to stop them. So how about this.. let's eradicate the human race together. We'll kill Phina right here and now, then, after significant training of course, we'll head over to the current whereabouts of the Assassin Corps, taking them out as well. Or-.. maybe we can postpone the training until after a months rest. I almost forgot that you're both struggling to even move.. heh."

Alant and Lock continued to lay there, motionless. They pondered on what they had just been told, trying to decide whether or not they should accept the offer they had received from a man who had been their enemy just moments ago.

Flowe suddenly received a call. It was a distress signal... from Phina.

"Ah, what perfect timing. She seems to be in a bit of trouble. Let's go take Phina down, shall we?"