Reaction time

The Games We Play

Reaction Time

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I pushed my hands into my Inventory, the Tiger rising around me once more as I drain a pair of Dust crystals to keep the Acceleration going and then another to give me back the strength I needed to continue. The Tiger lifted his hands from my own, fingers reached downwards away from my body—and gravity shifted in a sudden, massive wave right in the midst of the bombs. I swallowed another pair of Dust crystals as I pulled the bombs towards one another and then swept my hands down in parallel slashing motions. Two of the bombshells broke open, split by the Far Strikes, but they didn't explode despite the invasive touch of my Aura.

Zeroing in on the openings I'd made, I used my Clairvoyance to confirm my suspicions why. Beneath the outer shell made of carefully put together metal shards, there was a second shell—or rather, something that was more like a thick, bacterial mat. I couldn't be certain how he'd gotten so much of them, though I suspected the infected civilians down below had been harvested for the role; what mattered was what they meant. The bacterial mat did two things, the less obvious of which was that they'd provide another layer of insulation against Aura attacks, keeping the Dust within from being triggered as easily. Of course, my father was in control of both the bacterial Grimm and the Dust they surrounded, which meant he could activate them easily, so that was really just a way of making my life more difficult; already I could feel him reacting, seizing hold of the spheres and pulling them from the Gravity Well with the sheer strength of his Semblance.

The more obvious side effect was that the bombs, naturally, would hurl the infectious Grimm in every direction when they exploded, and I was pretty sure a Gravity Well that hadn't been able to stop Keppel from pushing forward wasn't going to be enough to stop them, even if I overcame my father's grasp. With enough practice, the power of the skill would grow, but here and now…

I wasn't eager to test it. Not with my mother in the line of fire which, really, was probably the entire point. Even if I made them all explode up here, if even a few of Conquest's bodies reached my mom…I couldn't take that chance.

Fine, I thought. Time for Plan B.

Grasping a yellow crystal from my Inventory, I slammed it to my chest and lightning raced from my pounding heart to my glowing soul. The Tiger growled as I returned the bombs to gravity's hold, but we slipped right past them, flashing down past the bombs completely. I fell a step faster than the tiger, plunging into the still falling water of the storm. At once, a ripple raced through the air as my power took hold and I exerted my will over the water and air. I couldn't control all of it, but I could control a lot of it, and thousands of liters reversed direction at once, falling back into the sky—and back towards the bombs.

The Tiger vanished the moment he touched the water, thousands of sparks careening through the rising tide. As the bombs touched the water, they halted at once, stopped and gathered together by the fists of the Tiger even as more water streamed up and over the spheres, surrounding them completely. In moments, my physical body stood upside-down under a massive bowl that held the bombs, keeping them tightly gripped within a hemisphere of water. Taking a deep breath even as I ceased to fight gravity and focused solely on keeping the shape together, I sank my fingers into the water and focused.

At once, large sections of the hemisphere froze, massive sections turning from water to ice in an instant. I put Deposition to work, hoping it would be enough to, if not freeze the contents into a mass too large for Conquest to control, kill the Grimm cells, or render the bombs themselves useless, then to at least restrict the explosions themselves.

Now there was just the matter of keeping this mass from crushing me and getting it away from my mother.

I pushed off with my feet, holding on with the fingers I'd put into the water before freezing it so that I seemed to be holding the sphere above me as I fell. With my mobility limited by the speed of the falling block regardless, I released my Acceleration briefly to conserve power, and cast my eyes quickly over the scene beneath me, trying to decide where to aim myself.

It really wasn't a very hard decision to make. After a moment, I decided and focused fully on my father, gripping the hemisphere tightly. Atop the sphere, Levant and Xihai's merged form rose from the otherwise smooth ice, her own fingers sinking into the material. I felt my MP draining, but the massive load above me seemed to lighten in a way that was hard to define as we were falling—nonetheless, I know my Elemental was bearing the weight for me, assisting me in moving it.

Which freed me to bring it to where it was most deserved.

Shifting my hold on it as the Tiger rose around me again and helped me guide it with another set of hands, I darted down through the sky and then slammed the frozen mass down upon my father's form, smashing him a hundred meters down in an instant. I didn't stop there, but closed the distance again and then slammed him into the ground below, smacking him at an angle to take him further from my mother. I saw Conquest smash into—through—one of the buildings at the edge of the desolated battlefield and followed after, feeling the side of the building tear away like paper as I tore into the household and brought the chunk of ice down on Conquest's head like I was planting a massive tombstone.

He caught it. Lifting a hand at the last moment, he grasped the edge of the hemisphere and pushed against it as I brought it down, stopping it centimeters from his face as ice broke beneath his fingers. Even with my Ice Elemental working against him, he pushed it back, forcing my feet to slide over the ruined floor as he calmly rose to his feet and continued to drive me back. When he stood level with me, his eyes met mine and something about them made me think he was smiling.

Then he gave the hemisphere a gentle shove and pushed its entire weight onto my shoulders. I staggered, the Ice Elemental atop it ceased her machinations to conserve my power as it began to dwindle and I allowed her to unravel back into Levant and Xihai after a moment, telling them both to move onto the next step. That did, however, leave me to support the weight entirely on my own.

So I did. I grit my teeth, planted my feet, and lifted it, balancing the massive and awkward chunk of ice on my neck and shoulders as I watched my father snort.

"Having some trouble there, son?" He mocked, crouching slightly to look into my eyes. "You need to work out more."

I took a pair of deep breaths, power returning with each passing moment. I didn't move yet, however, or go for any of my Dust crystals, but simply kept my breathing steady and all of my eyes open, scanning the area to make sure I hadn't made any mistakes. I checked the bombs above me again, making sure I knew exactly where they all were and knew at least the basics of each, and then looked at my mother in the distance.

"You know me," I said at last, providing an answer before the silence drew out too long. I knew this was just a brief pause before we continued, but I would take advantage of it as much as I was sure he was going to. "I prefer to work smarter, not harder."

If he'd had eyebrows, he probably would have quirked them at me.

"Oh?" He asked. "Then I hope you have something more to this lame-ass plan, son, or I'm gonna be disappointed."

Two seconds, three seconds, four seconds—

Now, I thought as the Tiger rose about me. I snarled and took a step forward, leaving the Tiger behind to turn in place and put his back to mine. One hand dipped into my Inventory for a Dusty snack, but the other lifted a finger to point at my mother, erecting a Sanctum to protect her, just in case. He snapped around an instant later, one arm rising to push against the hemisphere, the other grabbing me around the waist and pulling me back. As my fingers broke through the ice, light was already gathering between them and I took aim at a very specific bomb near my father, identified with my Clairvoyance and Observation.

But Conquest acted too, moving as soon as I did. A bomb near me went off and there was a sudden wave of…I'm not sure what, but it tore the water from everything it touched, leaving me feeling frighteningly dry. The wood of the house seemed to wither, what few plants had managed to survive died, and even Conquest staggered. Most notably, however, the frigid bowl simply vanished, freeing the captive spheres.

And then a bomb almost directly above me went off, exploding in a blast of almost pure force that smashed five meters into the ground and hurled away Conquest and the bombs. I bounced up, eyes searched for the bomb I needed—and found it instantly. It wasn't hard, since it was floating right in front of me and all, held near me by my father's power.

It wasn't hard to figure out what that meant, either, or that I wouldn't be fast enough to get away—but I tried. And as the bomb exploded and time around me began to slow, I heard my father's voice. He'd probably said the words, the moment the first bomb exploded, but it only now reached me, approaching through the slowing area expanding from the bomb even as I tried to struggle to freedom.

"Still worrying about your mother, son?" I heard him chide as the sphere fully solidified. "You should have gone straight for the kill."

The world outside the bubble began to flicker and shift as I was slowed. In moments, it was only my Clairvoyance that allowed me to see the world beyond my prison, but all that did was force me to watch as the bombs that were flung away quickly reversed direction and began to fly towards my mother, too slow to stop it.

My fingers curled into claws as I growled. No. Fuck that shit—I wasn't having it. I wasn't going to watch as my mother died; I didn't care what happened. Even if time itself was working against me, I wouldn't let that happen.

Four hands dipped into my Inventory, each grasping a Dust crystal that was quickly devoured and I instantly poured every ounce of that power into going faster. Time sped up with a rush of sensation that played across my skin, a moment of heat and cold, unusual solidity and emptiness. The air around me shifted as I rolled a step forward, even that simple motion bringing with it surprising friction as the air beyond my warped time moved far more slowly than that within it. Yet I didn't stop there, but dipped my hands back into my Inventory and devoured another set of crystals, speed rising higher and higher with each moment and causing greater and greater changes. The flow of heat, the light around me, everything—it seemed strained by the barrier of altered time I held around myself.

Then I crouched slightly, feeling at once fast and slow. Muscles pulled in my back, my thighs, fighting against the walls that the very air seemed to have become, seeming more solid than gas. If they were walls, though, they may as well have been paper, for they fell as I pushed against them and fought my way forward with all my power. I pushed against the ground as I Lunged forth and—

The ground beneath my feet shattered. The air I passed through ignited around me, catching fire as it touched my skin, but I left the flames behind me even as each step created them anew. I way have said something, snarled words or whatever else, but if so, I outpaced the sounds by far. I drew close to the edge of the sphere of stopped time as the space beyond it slowed to a more normal speed—and then I broke through in a moment of cataclysmic weirdness. For that instant, I was moving through time at a faster rate than the world around me, but I was also halfway through a bubble that was moving slower than the world around it. I felt that strain upon my body as blood quickened and slowed, as nerves went haywire, as my brain and then heart seemed split in two. I felt myself tearing apart, but more than that, I felt the world around me shredding.

Temporal distortion met temporal distortion and tried to tear me apart to resolve the issue, but I refused. When it couldn't do that, I felt the barrier around me cracking, the larger bubble bursting as if pierced by a needle, trying to equalize the impossibility instead—but I couldn't allow that, either. Four hands dipped into my Inventory once more, swallowed four crystals, then eight, then sixteen, drinking deeply from my dwindling horde to try to reinforce the barrier, to give me the Acceleration I needed to rip through a wall of distorted time.

Maybe it the Elemental Resistance or some aspect of my new Wisdom abilities. Maybe it was the way Acceleration worked, speeding up time in my immediate vicinity. Maybe it was just the thousands and thousands of MP I spent in that single second, poured down the cosmic drain with a quick prayer to try and break the rules. I don't know.

What I do know was that when my power clashed with Conquest's, I was the one who one. I paused for an indescribable moment as our altered time streams crossed, an instant where time may not have even had meaning, and then I continued through. The bubble popped but the barrier held and I kept going.

I was moving even faster now, faster than I'd ever though I could go. I left the broken remains of the house behind in a moment so fleeting it was hard to describe, watched the reaction to my passage in the eyes on my back, and gazed over the frozen world as I rushed towards my mother. Conquest stood perhaps halfway to my mother, hand upraised. Some type of power had rushed from his fingertips, clear as water until it splashed into iridescence as it splashed over the Sanctum I'd set around my mother. Already, I could see that barrier falling, dissolving outward from the blast like ice melting under a laser—and the bombs floated in the blasts wake, the first already passing through the opening. I could tell, as my senses began to scream in alarm, that it was about to explode. There would be a moment of reaction as Aura took hold, a twitch on Conquest's part, and then everything would be over.

But before that happened, I reached the edge of the dehydration bomb's effect and the Tiger moved. Still formed of glowing electricity and roiling thunder, I felt him leave me the moment my foot settled upon a puddle as if it were solid stone. The curling lightning bolt of his tail curled around my shin as he flickered away, unheeding of the fact that the water was already beginning to boil outwards, rippling as it prepared to explode outwards—but then, he'd left both it and I long behind. Streams of electricity cackled as they leapt from puddle to puddle, hastened by the same Acceleration that affected me. Those streams converged in a moment, rushing under the bombs and through the gap that Conquest had made to reach my mother's side.

The bomb went off in an blooming explosion of light and I kept going, lifting a foot from the first puddle and bringing it down on the next, making sure the stream of light that connected it to the tail around my shin remained all the while. I pushed on as the world around me caught flame and stay on course, my objective already decided.

The moment my fist connected with my father, I felt armor break beneath it, but all upon my own skin. I took another step as force exploded outward and my father, until now frozen like a statue, began to rise from the dirt. The next blow drove him back through the air, and the next, and the following two dozen, until I'd pushed him entirely across the field of battle and into another building. I changed tracks the next moment, footwork allowing me to change direction as my power ran its course and time slowed again.

My skin felt melted and raw, as if my pace as burnt my own skin away. Every blow I'd dealt my father had seemed to shatter my own arms, every step breaking my legs. Every action had an equal and opposite reaction, and it seemed I'd reached the limits of what my body could withstand and gone right past it.

I was fine with that, because of what I saw. The Tiger held my mother in its arms, flickering in and out of existence as it stepped between the puddles. Each time, my mother seemed to glide forth and each time he caught her before she could even begin to fall, Levant in her arms. I was healing her, restoring his aura as well as her body, just as I'd gone to let her survive the sudden burst of acceleration, and I held her head in place to keep the whiplash for taking anything I couldn't give back and Levant protecting her as I'd commanded her to. Though she looked nauseous, she was okay, and even if my body felt broken and exhausted, that made it okay.

Then I turned my gaze back to the bombs. The first explosion was still in progress, wreaking havoc on the now empty space. After a moment, the explosion stopped expanding and began to contract, flowing into the shape of a man as it formed a new body for Suryasta where my mother had once stood. Lightning cackled around his feet, remnants of the Tiger's tread, and then rose from the ground into a second shape, Vulturnus coming to stand behind his brother. As one, they exploded, unravelling beside one another and then slide together into a new shape.

Armor glowed as if heated—a breastplate and gauntlets, shoulder guards and legs, as well as a gleaming helmet—but wherever it didn't cover, where there should have been flesh, they was only light and warped space, like above a stream in summer. Fitting then, for that was what he was—heat, combustion, an explosion given form. He stood in the bombs tracks as the Tiger and I came to a hall, and as one we opened fire from three different directions, light spewing forth from my hands, the Tiger's jaws, and from the Heat Elementals entire body.

Bombs began to explode, even the bacterial shells unable to withstand the onslaught. One glassed everything around it, another erasing everything within ten meters of it. There was crushing force, warped gravity, burning fire, crawling ice, vacuums, rising, cutting winds, a bomb that liquefied and another that decomposed. On and one it went, a testament to the destruction my father could cause if not held back, and I stared into it fearlessly as I destroyed each and every bomb. With Levant and the Tiger close enough to protect my mother, I did not fear the explosions, so I erased the machine's Conquest had made one by one, drawing upon Dust crystals to feed myself renewed strength.

When at last they were all gone, I lowered my hand. The Heat Elemental spread wings feathered by gleaming blades and hurried to my mother's side and then the Tiger laid her down, a pair of Dust crystals giving her back her strength, just in case. When I was as sure as I could be that she'd be safe, I turned around.

Conquest was struggling to stand, armor shattered beneath my strikes to show altered tissue and blackened flesh. The house I'd through him into had been demolished utterly, whether by the force of his body or by my wake and he was slowly pushing himself from the rubble. I approached calmly, Tiger returning to wreath my body in a mantle of light as I stepped forward. It flashed out suddenly, so quickly that it might have seemed like the gleam of a suddenly drawn sword rather than the body of a massive creature, and then returned to me just as quickly. Conquest went down, knocked of his feet by the blow as his armor continued to splinter, and slid back as it happened again as I continued my stride. With each step I took, the Tiger lashed out at him, splintering armor and knocking him around, beating him ruthlessly such that he couldn't even rise.

When at last I stood over him, the Tiger brought both its hands down onto his shoulder's knocking him to his hands and knees before me. Without a moment of hesitation, I kicked him hard in the face, braking the bottom of his already cracked mask as I knocked him back onto his knees alone and looked down at him.

The torn, bleeding lips of my father's mouth were curled into a smile as his red eyes gleamed.

"That's better," He said. "Not too old to learn something from your old man, eh?"

I didn't say a word to him as the Tiger grabbed him around to throat, lifting him before me. I drove my fingers into a crack in his armor and then deep into the flesh beneath, white Aura rising around me. It glowed from my flesh and from the wound as my power clashed with my father's, brutal and overwhelming. He gave out a scream as it rose through him, shining from his mouth, but the scream turned into a roar and then a growl.

"Still?" He snarled. "Even now, you think you can save him?"

I ignored the words as easily as the blood and spit that came from his mouth, Aura searching. There had to be something—he'd all but said my guess was right. With his body drawing upon matter to repair itself, there had to be a connection to the source, something I could find and grasp—but there was nothing. Nothing in his Aura, at least, but maybe that wasn't surprising—in all likelihood, the connection came from the Grimm side of the equation and Conquest's cells had no Aura. But how did I get to it then?

Perhaps I couldn't, at least not directly. But the cells afflicted his body to strike at his Aura, so there was another connection there—could I use that?

Only one way to find out.

My Aura rose even brighter around me, rising from my armored skin like white fire even as it burnt through Conquest's form. He gave out a cry as if tortured, but though it was in my father's voice, I didn't let up—I forced my Aura through his blood and veins, forced it into the cells of his body even as I brutally crushed down on my father's Aura. He was in there somewhere, I could feel it through the touch of his emotions on my mind—hope, fear, pride, hate, love, all calling out to me—and I'd tear the monstrosity Conquest had made of his body apart if that's what it took to find him.

So I reached into him, the touch of my soul burning as I searched, and paid no heed to his screams—until they changed, somehow, a resonance to them that made my body ring. For a moment I hoped…

But no.

"It seems there's only one way you'll learn!" Conquest roared, eyes wide as he stared down at my, and snarled in a voice that made my skin literally crawl. With strength that even now took me by surprise, he rose and shoved me back and I stumbled, as if my legs weren't working right. I caught myself quickly and tried to rose, but simply fell to my knees. My back arched and I pitched forward, hands shaking as if I was having a seizure, but it didn't hurt.

What the hell was he doing to me?

You have received the Status Effect 'Pandora Shell [Low].'

No, I thought as I began to understand.

"I'll leave enough of you to be able to sleep," Conquest said voice eerily quiet as he knelt down to look at me. "So let this haunt your nightmares, Jaune—being trapped and enclosed, unable to see or move or breath, but still alive, knowing all the while that those you love are dying. Dream of that and then wake to what's left."

"Jokes on you," I gasped. "There are others on the way. They'll destroy you. Maybe even me."

He snorted.

"No," He said. "They won't. Don't worry about that, son; I'll be sure to kill everyone that gets in the way."

"Ozpin will—" My voice abruptly gave out. My eyes began to close, one by one, as armor slid over them. I could feel my limbs changing in a distant sense, but couldn't feel anything like touch or pain. Already, the world around me seemed to fall away. But—

You have received the Status Effect 'Pandora Shell [Intermediate].'

"Hush," He said, almost gently. "Daddy will take care of everything."

You have received the Status Effect 'Pandora Shell [High].'

You have received the Status Effect 'Pandora Shell [Max].'

I tried to say something, tried to resist, but even as my Aura fought, I couldn't do anything. He had a hold on me that went down to the cells of my body and though he couldn't touch my mind, it didn't matter. My arms seemed to melt, followed by my legs, as I was reduced to a literal shell of my former self. I couldn't see anything or sense them with my human body, leaving me only with the senses of my elementals and even those seemed masked, at a distance. The shell that was growing around me was blocking their Aura, locking me entirely within as it cut me off completely from the world until I wasn't sure if my Elementals were even still there. Perhaps they weren't; perhaps they'd shut down as they were cut off from me. The Tiger had, vanishing like smoke as I was sealed away.

But even as it happened, all I could think was 'Is this how everyone that Conquest transformed felt? Was this how my father feels?'

I didn't take a breath, for I had no mouth. I didn't shut my eyes for I didn't have those either, nor any other way of moving. But even as I was trapped in the dark, I was aware of at least myself, and I stayed calm. Even this wasn't enough to shake my heart.

Even this wasn't enough to make me stop.

For it is in passing that we achieve immortality. Through this, we become a paragon of virtue and glory to rise above all. Infinite in distance and unbound by death, I release your soul—

I rose around the shell, the Tiger forming around me anew—no, that wasn't it. I was the Tiger, my body left behind in the white shell beneath me. I turned my head to see my father walking away and separated from my body entirely, clawed fingers curling. The world around me was different now that I'd discarded my physical body, combining Projection with the art of the White Tiger. But that didn't matter either, so long as it meant I could keep going.

You've thought of a new skill. Would you like to name it?

I looked at myself crouching, preparing to Lunge at my father. All things considered, I could think of only one name that fit.

"Bai Hu," I growled and leapt at my father's turned back.

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