46 FIGHT ON, SHOUNEN!!!

April 27th, 20:12

///

The waning crescent moon fills the street with a dim light, helped by the few street lights still functioning. Hornet's tank sits alone in the open, parked at an angle with it's turret facing straight down the street and Alphonse standing on the front, his hands held behind his back.

Before long, a glowing orb appears in the night sky and starts to grow, like a star falling out of the sky.

As it gets closer, it's form becomes more and more distinct until it is a clearly humanoid figure floating twenty feet ahead of Alphonse like a pure white silhouette contrasted against the black sky.

"You should give up," Purity calls out to him, hoping to avoid any fighting, even if she knows such a hope is destined to be denied.

Alphonse simply tilts his head, his lack of answer returning the street to calm silence.

"You're going to lose, idiot," Purity claims, clearly frustrated but also resigned to the inevitable. "You're outnumbered and outgunned. Just give up and no one needs to get hurt."

For a moment, she thinks he's going to remain silent. But he does respond after a brief silence, and his voice travels straight through her, sounding like the clap of thunder but as soft as a whisper, the juxtaposition confusing her senses.

"Dogs that bark do not bite."

It takes her another moment to process his condescending answer, and though it is not visible behind the encompassing light of her power, her face twists into an expression of scorn.

"Fine then," she spits out before her glow rapidly begins to intensify, concentrating on her raised arms.

In the span of mere seconds, the peaceful night street lights up and fills with a faint hum-crackle of energy before a twin pair of double helix shaped beams shoot out of her hands.

The beams travel as fast as a bullet, each carrying enough power to level buildings, and yet, when the beams meet Alphonse's single raised hand, they both seem to swirl and get sucked into his palm until nothing remains of the blast.

Purity is left frozen, staring at what should be a crater in the street with a dropped jaw. Her eyes notice movement and turn to focus on Alphonse as his armoured form rolls his shoulders and notices that his eyes have started glowing an intense blue that shines like lightning, the occasional spark jumping out around his helmet's eyeholes.

"Wha-" Is as far as she gets before she feels and impact on her shoulder like she's just been hit by a truck the size of a finger.

Shock sets in before she can feel any pain, and she turns her head to the side to see that her left arm is just.. gone. She spots it falling to the ground beneath her, shoulder roughly blown off.

Almost in a daze, she turns to where she thinks the attack came from and finds herself staring down the barrel of a gun.

Adrenaline floods her system as the shock wears off and pain sets in and she immediately banks to the left, just in time to avoid I-Frame shooting her other arm off.

Panic sets in when she instinctively moves her remaining hand to cover the source of pain only to touch nothing as her entire shoulder is simply gone.

Her flight patterns become erratic as she does her best to employ evasive measures while retreating to re-join the others.

However, she doesn't make it far before she feels a rope clamp down on her ankle like a vice. She barely has enough time to note that the rope is red before her stomach is in her throat as she abruptly drops down, slamming into the concrete with a thud that leaves her mind rattled and dazed.

W-what? What is happening? She thinks to herself, her bleary eyes hardly noting the white and black growing in her field of view to be Leech. This isn't how this was supposed to go down.

A glint of silver catches her eye and everything else fazes away from her sight in favour of the crystal clear image of a clean, impossibly sharp sword hanging over her head.

A-am I.. Am I going to die? Her half delirious mind thinks, and for just one sweet moment, she sees her sweet little baby' face with perfect clarity in her minds eye.

The blade falls and a single tear leaves her eye. I'm sorry, Aster.

A sudden explosion leaves her ears ringing and snaps her out of her daze. With a return of clarity, Purity immediately shoots away and into the sky, pirouetting in the air as she does so.

Only when she feels she's gained enough height does she turn around to see what happened, just in time for another dozen explosions to go off all down the street like an artillery barrage.

"Purity!"

She spins at the yell, her power building up in her remaining hand, but she stops herself once she recognises Rune as the one who called out to her.

"Purity! What happened!?" Rune yells out to be heard over the near constant sound of explosions caused by the steadily depleting store of rebar by her side.

Her question reminds Purity of her lost arm and brings a fresh wave of pain over her that has tears welling up in her eyes.

"They s-shot me!" She yells her own answer, doing her best not to sniffle as she all but crashes onto Rune's platform. "M-my a-arm!"

She doesn't finish her sentence as she swallows a whimper, not hearing the two younger capes each softly mutter a curse when they notice.

"Fräulein!" Blitzel calls out, snapping his fingers in front of her face with one hand, while the other holds a ball of plasma in an open palm. "You must cauterize the wound or you will die quickly!"

He doesn't wait for confirmation before pressing the orb of superheated electrons against her torn flesh, and Purity screams.

She's been through a lot in her years, but she isn't sure if she's ever felt anything so incredibly painful as her flesh being seared shut. It's so bad that she whites out, she doesn't know for how long.

All she knows is that she is startled back into awareness by another explosion, finding herself laying on her back on Rune's floating platform.

The platform itself is zipping through the sky at impossible angles, the rapidly shifting g-forces almost distracting her from the dull yet sharp pain and disgusting smell coming from her left side, almost.

Meanwhile, back down on the street, the main vanguard force of the Empire has arrived with Hookwolf at the lead. Behind him is Night and Fog, and running on the rooftops either side is Cricket and Jäger.

Leech and I-Frame are nowhere to be seen and Kleus is busy deflecting explosive bars of rebar with whips of blood, while opposite him stands Alphonse and Ten, with Hornet behind them in her tank. Her tank who's cannon starts to light up with Hookwolf's approach.

Oh well, he's not bothered by that.

The distance between the two parties continues to fall as Hookwolf charges them down, his form that of a bus-sized metal wolf comprised of thousands of shifting pieces, each as sharp as the last.

By the time the distance is a mere fifteen feet, the canon finally fires, and at the same time, Fog flows ahead of Hookwolf, covering him from sight entirely.

Just in time for the canon to shoot into the smoke, a line of superheated air following the projectile that explodes in the next instant, sending smoke billowing all over the place.

Alphonse has just enough time to see a woman go flying away from them out of the smoke, looking perfectly healthy, before Hookwolf emerges unscathed, his giant metal jaw crashing down on them.

Both are quick to dodge the blow with a back step, leaving the street to crack under Hookwolf's face. However, he only mimics the shape of a wolf, he is not actually bound to it's limitations, which is why Alphonse is caught off-guard when the wolf head flows with the impact like water, shifting into a rising spiked pillar that slams into Alphonse full force.

A mighty bang of metal on metal echoes from the impact and then again when Alphonse's body crashes into Hornet's tank hard enough to lift it half off the street, nearly flipping it over entirely.

"Hah!" Hookwolf cheers, "Is that all ya got!"

Turning his gaze to Ten, the apparent leader, Hookwolf isn't impressed.

"Bad dog," Ten says, his tone as flat as his expression as he spins an empty syringe between his fingers and watches Hookwolf without fear.

"I heard you're s'posed to be strong?" Hookwolf states, ignoring the insult. "I don't see it."

Ten's lips stretch into a grin as Alphonse's previous words flash through his mind. "Dogs that bark, are also.. colourblind?" He finishes with a chuckle.

However he doesn't get to keep laughing as Hookwolf abruptly backhands Ten with a paw the size of his body and covered in hooks and blades that tear through his suit and into his skin before he is launched into a pile of rubble that was a building five minutes ago, before Rune and Grenadier set about destroying everything.

A sharp clink, like the sound of a metal chain-link snapping, brings Hookwolf's attention back to Alphonse. 

Looking at the suit of metal sitting leaned against Hornet's tank, Hookwolf notes a spiderweb crack on the chest piece that seems to be growing, with an electric blue light glowing as if attempting to free itself.

An orb of plasma distracts him as it crashes into the barrel of the tank, denting it, quickly followed by another and by the third, the entire barrel falls off, with only a ring of molten metal any proof of the previous connection.

His eyes follow the barrel as it falls to the ground, and it's for that reason that he manages to react in time, dropping to the ground right as a bolt of lighting explodes out from Alphonse's chest, shards of his armour blowing out like shrapnel.

A molten line is carved through the metal spine of Hookwolf's form, but it only takes a moment for him to recycle and replace the material fully.

Hopping back a step, Hookwolf observes his enemy. 

To any observer, it would look like Alphonse is gone, leaving only an empty shell of armour behind, the insides exposed by the giant hole in the chest.

His instincts tell him better however, so he continues to watch, and he is quickly proven right as a hand made out of lightning reaches up from the inside. The armour starts to glow under the 'fingers' as another hand reaches up, both of them looking like lightning shaped into bony digits.

Then, the hands pull free a head that barely has any recognisable features at all. Like the hands, the rest of the body is just a concentrated storm of lightning, with few consistent arcs that almost make a clear face to look at.

"The fuck?" Hookwolf mutters. He's surprised because according to Kaiser's information, Alphonse was just supposed to be some kind of Brute, or maybe a Tinker of some kind.

In truth, Alphonse is a Case 53. His power has transformed him into lightning, and he only wears that specially made suit of armour so that he can interact with people safely.

Abruptly, a piece of rebar blurs from the sky and spears through Alphonse's chest. Only, a piece of rebar does not come out the other side. Instead, the metal was turned to slag almost immediately as it pushed through him and splats on the ground behind him, rapidly cooling.

Alphonse doesn't even look like he noticed.

Sparks and crackles fill the air as the lightning man tilts his head up at Rune before turning back to Hookwolf.

"I won't let you hurt my friends," Alphonse whispers, the sound carrying like thunder but still somehow quiet.

"Heh," Hookwolf snorts, raising himself in preparation, "I'd like to see you-"

He doesn't get to finish his taunt before he barely managed to glimpse a glowing fist, arcing with errant lightning. Thunder cracks and he feels an incredible impact send him skidding down the street, his claws digging into the ground to slow him to a stop.

"You're fast, I'll give you that," Hookwolf says as he brings himself back to full height, unharmed, "But it will take more than-"

Once again, thunder cracks and time seems to slow, allowing him to see the lightning man above his head, rearing back a kick. But even if he can see it, he simply can't move fast enough to dodge.

His head crashes into the street, glowing red with heat before he recycles the metal once more and tries to catch Alphonse, snapping up with a cage-like jaw of metal.

Thunder cracks again and Alphonse is back where he started.

"Tsk. Annoying fucker aren't you?"

Turning back, Hookwolf glares at Alphonse before noticing Ten standing by his side once again, looking none worse for wear. The Red Heart leader is missing his jacket and shirt, but the fatal wound Hookwolf inflicted on him is nowhere to be seen.

Most notably, Ten's lips are stretched into a wide smile as if stuck there, his eyes not matching the expression at all.

"Man," Ten all but chirps, "I hate this combo."

Right as Hookwolf was about to continue the fight, he feels Fog envelop him and knows that Night will not be far behind.

"You're not as bright as before," Hookwolf abruptly states, looking pointedly at Alphonse, feeling his love for battle rearing it's head as a Path to Victory appears before him. "Wonder what happens if you run out of juice?"

Alphonse doesn't respond to his rhetorical and he feels, but doesn't see, Night settle in by his side, when he turns his gaze to Ten. "Any you. I wonder how many times you can cheat death?"

"Who knows?" Ten answers before letting out a long breath.

Thunder claps and Alphonse appears in front of Hookwolf again, kicking him into the ground before flashing into Night with another clap of thunder.

The moment both of them are distracted, Ten breathes. He breathes in, and in, and in until his chest starts to swell. The reason why becomes clear just a moment later when Fog starts getting sucked into Ten's mouth like he's being vacuumed.

In only moments, the cloud of smoke that is Fog's body is fully absorbed and Ten's upper body has swollen to an absurd degree, like some kind of cartoon strongman.

Hookwolf watches in morbid curiosity as Ten's inflated chest starts to spread throughout his entire body until it is evenly distributed and Ten stands twice as tall and twice as wide.

Thunder claps and Alphonse appears by Ten's side, and Ten simply points up at the sky, since he can't open his mouth without losing his enhancement.

Alphonse nods and then disappears in another clap of thunder. Then Ten turns his attention to the two of them, and Hookwolf grins.

Briefly, he spares a glance to his comrade, Night, who seems unbothered as she fiddles with her cloak, stuck in her human form without anything to hide her from sight.

No words are needed as they share a not and turn their attention back to the steadily approaching form of Ten.

///

20:17

///

Cricket leaps to the next building, paying minor attention to the main street as Hookwolf clashes into the armoured guy, Alf something, she doesn't care.

Her focus is on the sounds all around her, and more specifically, the sound coming from inside the next building.

When she reaches the ledge of the roof, instead of jumping to the next, she lets herself fall down without losing momentum. There is fortunately no glass or anything for her to smash through, so she simply falls into the building without trouble, rolling to bleed off momentum.

With her power echolocating for her, she knows that her prey is in the next room over and doesn't hesitate to head that way. Only, after taking her second step she abruptly drops into a slide just as a burst of bullets tear the wall and pass where her head just was.

Grinning at the close call, she leaps into the doorframe, twisting herself mid-air to land her boot on the side of the doorframe so that she can make the turn without losing much momentum.

Immediately she finds herself staring down the barrel of a gun, but she is fast enough to barely twist out of the way of the first few shots, ignoring the flashes, while swinging one of her kamas up to knock the barrel away before her target can readjust his aim.

Her feet hit the ground in a slide and she brings her other kama before he should be able to recover his balance, but he manages to twist enough that her kama bites into his rifle.

The moment they connect, I-Frame lets her attack drag his gun away, knowing that it won't be much help in a close quarters fight anyway.

He doesn't waste any time flicking his left thumb through a ring hidden in his sleeves and dragging it forward, causing a knuckle duster to slide into his hand. In the same motion, he twists and throws a solid jab at Cricket's ribs.

However, instead of holding her stance, Cricket flows with her attack and rolls past his right side, avoiding the punch.

She's back on her feet and rushing him down almost as soon as he is done recovering his poise from the miss, and right before she reaches him he reaches into his coat and pulls out a custom made M1911.

The action of drawing a gun was slow enough for Cricket to reach him with her kama primed for hie throat, but, with a grin even wider than her own, I-Frame uses his power and simply takes a step back.

His power is incredibly precise, as he doesn't even get a full second of invulnerability. But he is very good with it, which is why Cricket's blade harmlessly phases through his throat.

He brings his pistol to bear in retaliation, but Cricket doesn't let herself freeze and flows into a spin, lashing out with a roundhouse kick that hits his arm the instant before he pulls the trigger, sending the bullet through her short blonde hair instead of her skull.

Completing the spin, Cricket rises up with a kama that is blocked by a large knife that she didn't see him draw into his offhand, discarding the knuckleduster.

Her second kama follows and is blocked by his gun before it can stab into his eye, and he pulls the trigger again, only to miss as Cricket pushes him to the side.

He tries to spin the lock to shoot her in the legs instead but she hooks his knife with her other kama and yanks him off balance and to her side, sticking her foot out to trip him to the ground.

As he falls, he fires off another three shots but Cricket throws his arm into an arc that has him shooting at the roof before he has to roll away to avoid Cricket stomping on his head.

She doesn't give him any room to breathe, not even bothering to attempt to disorient him with her power since it didn't work at the start so he's likely wearing ear mufflers.

He attempts to line his gun up again but it's kicked out of his hand, and he doesn't resist the momentum, using it to bring his hand to the ground quicker and then pushing with both hands to scoot himself back a foot of distance, just in time for Cricket's kama to slam down between his legs instead of in his chest.

Quickly snapping them close, he locks her wrist between his thighs and uses his now free hand to bat her other kama to the side, the armour of his cloak preventing him from receiving anything worse than a bruise.

With Cricket bend over him, he uses his core strength to lift himself off the ground, using his legs' grip on her arm as leverage to do a mid-air sit up and lunge for her throat with his knife.

She leans back enough to dodge the stab, so he transitions into a slash as he falls back to the ground, Cricket not able to hold him at such an awkward angle.

With one arm held down by his legs, Cricket is forced to pivot awkwardly to avoid having her throat cut open and ends up on her back on his other side.

Seeing that her arm is already bending in an uncomfortable angle, I-Frame twists and there's a sharp crack! As Cricket's arm dislocates at the shoulder.

Ignoring her pain, Cricket pushes her other hand on the ground and uses it as leverage to rise herself up enough to spin in a crouch so that her feet are back on the floor, then she reaches over and grabs one of I-Frame's legs and using both her arms, ignoring the pain, she twists with her whole body while rising and throws him across the room.

I-Frame hits the wall with a dull thud, and lands on the ground with one hand and both legs, quickly managing to push himself upright again just in time to see Cricket's boot rapidly approaching his face.

Grinning wildly at the fact that it's definitely too close to dodge, or even think about, he simply listens to his instincts and he backsteps.

With the wall right behind him, he barely moves two inches, but it is enough to activate his power, so Cricket's boot goes straight through his skull and impacts the wall.

Before his intangibility wears off, he tilts his head to the side and twists his neck painfully so that he can slam his face into her ankle before she can pull it away.

Flesh tears and blood spurts as Cricket pushes off the wall with a deep cut going straight through her foot from just behind the ankle and down to the heel, leaving the back of her foot dangling slightly behind.

Cricket winces but doesn't cry out in pain and she spares a moment to glance down at the wound, frowning at it before simply standing on the balls of her feet instead of thinking about it.

However, when she turns back to I-Frame, ready to jump back into the best fight of her life, she freezes.

It's clear what he did to her by the thin blade sticking out of his gas mask, but more importantly is the gun barrel pointed right at her.

Without moving her head, she glances to the side, seeing that his pistol is still where she kicked it.

"I have two," I-Frame says, noticing her eye's movement and answering her question. "You lost."

She thinks about trying to dodge or rush him down, but she knows it won't work. She's fast, fast enough to even dodge bullets. But only low calibre ones and only with enough distance. Generally, when dodging bullets, it's more accurate to say you're just dodging the barrel. It's about prediction more than reaction speed.

But thanks to her power, she's 'seen' that his bullets travel unnaturally fast, probably thanks to some Tinker she thinks. The distance between them is too short for her to dodge, especially without any momentum or surprise to build off of, and it's too far for her to knock the gun before he can pull the trigger at least twice.

It's... Fuck.

She feels the tension leave her as her body relaxes, coming down from that heightened state of combat awareness once she accepts the simple truth.

She lost.

"Fuck," she sighs, not particularly upset. Just.. disappointed in herself.

But it's whatever. She always knew this would be how she would go out. At least it was a good fight. 

"Hey." She looks up at him, noticing the happy grin on his face, clear even through the mask. "That was fun. You're good."

Yeah. It was fun. She can accept that. 

This is a good death.

Her eyes close and she smiles.

She hears the gunshot. She doesn't hear the second.

///

20:18

///

Jäger notices Cricket disappear right before his nose catches the scent of his prey.

Smiling savagely to himself, he draws his hunting knife and briefly trails his tongue across the cold steel, his mind alight with the joy of the hunt, ecstatic at the thought of slaughter.

Without making a sound, he slips into the upper floor of what used to be a convenience store. His power enhanced sense of smell tells him that his prey is below, on the ground floor, so he creeps his way over to the stairs and makes his way down.

His power flows with every step, making floorboards that should creak completely silent as he steps over them, keeping his position relative to any light sources in mind so his shadow doesn't give him away.

It takes only a minute before he is on the ground floor, his prey in sight.

The room is mostly clear space, the isles that used to hold groceries thrown haphazardly against the far wall. Jäger ignores it all in favour of approaching his prey.

Yet, when he takes his first step on the same floor as his prey, he feels an unfamiliar tingle shoot through his spine. 

Something's wrong. The thought comes unbidden. He doesn't know why. But everything is going as it usually does, his prey doesn't even know he's there, so he ignores it.

It's not like it would matter overly much even if he did get caught. He is perfectly capable of handling himself in a straight fight. He just prefers the thrill of the hunt to the thrill of combat. 

It's more dignified, unlike those brutes Hookwolf and Cricket. Hell, when he first came to this country, Hookwolf and both his lackeys Stormtiger and Cricket challenged him to a fight, one on one each.

He couldn't do much about Hookwolf, but the other two? It wasn't even a challenge. They could barely scratch him and he nearly ripped Stormtiger's arm off. He has nothing to fear from some brat.

He takes another step.

Something's wrong.

He ignores the thought and sneaks even closer, raising his blade, ready to stab it right into his prey's neck. Hist first blow will sever the spinal cord, and while normally that would have been enough, with the advent of powers he's had to be more cautions, so the second blow will go through the temple, guaranteeing the kill.

Something's wrong.

He raises himself to his full height, two steps away from his prey and ready to strike, when the brat turns his head.

He doesn't twist his whole body, just his head. Just enough for a single eye to glare through his bangs right into Jäger's own.

For some reason, he freezes. He doesn't know why, but when he looks his prey- No, his opponent in the eye, he freezes.

A moment that felt like an eternity passes, and Jäger only forms one thought.

Something's wrong.

///

A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!

Since Leech is based on Yuta from JJK I figured fuck it, I can make a quick reference to my GOAT Toji

Let me know what you thought of the chapter, I feel kinda out of touch so idk if it's good fight scenes, constructive criticism is welcome if you have any thoughts for what could be improved :)

Also yeah, lots of fighting, the Empire is really confident even though they definitely shouldn't be lmao.

Honestly, I'm kinda mad, cuz I made my oc's too powerful again lol. I fully expected the Empire to be able to put up a better fight, but damn, they really are just out classed. 

Tho, saying that, the fight has just started. Kaiser hasn't even made an appearance yet and his power is a force multiplier, plus they have a kinda trump card, so who knows, maybe the Empire will be able to put up enough of a fight that I won't feel like I'd have to trigger the Natalie encounter early just to keep em from getting wiped out lol.

On the bright side, this wasn't as painful to write as the last big fight, also, I will be making more of my patented maps, so look forward to that next chapter :)