"Are you alright Mistress?" Konatsu asked, noticing the action. His eyes watched her cautiously. All his own wounds had already healed without a mark, but Ukyou was pock marked with little cuts, bruises and burns.
At some point she had learned, probably in a burst of ardenaline-based inspiration, to soften the impact of anything hitting her, so it was not as bad as it could have been, but she certainly was moving stiffly today.
"I think I need to brush up on my ranged techs until I get used to that spear," she muttered.
"What was that creature?" Konatsu wondered. "Was that truly an Ittan-Momen."
"I don't think so," Ukyou said. "Probably just somebody like us playing on some old myths for a little prestige."
"Ahh," Konatsu said. Then he paused for a long moment and turned to Ukyou. "Why didn't we do that?"
"Because it's old, tired, and done," Ukyou said. "Look at all the heros and villains we already got running around with Japanese names already! Our names our unique!"
"That is true, Mistress," Konatsu agreed.
"I'm going to need to start training a little harder," Ukyou muttered, remembering the last night.
****
"Oh dear!" Miss Amazing shouted as she ducked and rolled away from the lengthening arms. "How the h...How did she do that?"
"You miserable little mortal," Ittan-Momen said. "Can't you see...I am the creature of legend, as flexible and agile as cloth." She leaped forward, half-floating toward Miss Amazing, though speed with which she "floated" belied the appearance.
The distorted smile upon the...woman's?...face was wiped away as she felt herself pulled away from her target, fluttering away like a cloth in the wind. She growled and then pulled out the ground with arms shortening to add more power as the creature gripped at the ground and pulled itself against the telekinetic shove.
"Are you certain you wish to continue this?" Miss Amazing asked, still using her best Kasumi voice.
"You'll have to do better than that, little peasant-girl," Ittan-Momen said with a smirk. Then a trio of kunai's imbedded themselves in her malleable skin and she shrieked in anger and pain. "Cursed insects!"
In a flash both arms were out and reaching for the two heros. Snatching at their throats. Miss Amazing and Infinity both moved to dodge, but underestimated the thing's control and found themselves being pulled inward by the white creature's arms and choked along the way.
Infinity was not too worried about himself, he suspected that he could heal from this attack. Miss Amazing, however, had no such power and he made the herculean effort to turn his glance her way.
"Don't fear little one," the monster said, laughing. "She's coming along just fine." It was odd, however, that she seemed to be having trouble digging into the larger girl's throat. And why it felt as if something were pulling at her arms other than a hand.
Miss Amazing reached out, in her beginner's clumsy manner, for the bizarrely fashioned mind of the creature they were fighting as she tried to telekinetically and manually pry its arms away from her neck.
It wasn't like the demon she had brushed paths with while fighting the Tako. There was no sense of something that was naturally dark and evil, but it was fashioned outside of the normal manner of mind, to her experience so far.
That made connecting with its mind tricky. But then again, a lot of what Miss Amazing had been trying recently could be considered tricky.
Infinity saw things going black around him as Ittan-Momen turned all her attention to Miss Amazing. He heard the ragged cheers of the crowd as he was dropped, throat crushed.
Then came the earthquake and the cheering was replaced with screaming as Infinity briefly faded out of consciousness.
"K...Infinity!!" Miss Amazing called out.
"You can still talk?" Ittan-Momen asked as the riot dispersed in the face of the natural disaster. Her grip on the heroine had remained through out the shock. "And you're still holding that pointy stick."
Miss Amazing blinked as she guessed what was coming next and did something she had never thought to do against any person...aside from perhaps Ranma and Genma Saotome...she slashed out.
Ittan-Momen shrieak in shock as a deep cut was sliced through her arm. Her choking attack was released in the shock and the arm moving to disarm Miss Amazing instead retreated, along with the wounded arm.
Miss Amazing took a moment to catch her breath and stand up slowly after being dropped. The battle-site was soon filled with the sound of crazed laughter, and Ittan-Momen displayed her, for the moment, normal porportioned arm and indicated the large, but hardly dangerous cut along the arm.
"A mere nick, fool," she declared, laughing shrilly. "You barely harmed me at all."
And then she launched into another attack on Miss Amazing, only to be interrupted by the impact of Infinity's foot into her head.
"You're dead!" Ittan-Momen declared as she rolled up to her feet and examined her attacker.
"I got better," Infinity said. Miss Amazing smiled victoriously as the raising disbelief gave her something familiar that she could connect with on the other's mind.
There was something altering Ittan-Momen's mindset, something that probably had to do with where her powers came from, and Miss Amazing couldn't accurately read much of her thoughts. She could, however, do something requiring less finesse.
Again Ittan-Momen clutched at her head as the pain of the brief shock of mental force snapped into her head. She leaped back away from her opponents and glared evenly at the two of them.
"I would suggest surrendering peacfully," Miss Amazing said, twirling her naginata.
"I would suggest you save those people," Ittan-Momen said. It was only a little too late, as Miss Amazing caught a flash of the villains intentions. And then Ittan-Momen's arms were lashing out and ripping the supports from below a large balcony over looking the street. A balcony full of curious, and foolish, onlookers.
Miss Amazing cursed mentally as she was forced to turn her attention away from the villain and to the following balcony. The stone was falling safely on unoccupied space, but the three people inside were another story.
Infinity likewise leaped into action, literally, coming away with one of the two citizens as Miss Amazing caught the other two and lowered them down safely to the ground through her telekinetic powers. The effort of lifting the two people, far more than she had tried for a sustained period, nearly drained her and she dropped to a seated position as they landed, trying to catch her breath.
As the heros took care of the endangered bystanders, Ittan-Momen drifted away on the wind.
****
"Is training the reason why you asked about sparring with Ranma?" Konatsu asked.
"Well...maybe it's part of the reason," Ukyou smirked.
See other episodes by Thrythlind
(Posted Wed, 18 Dec 2002 16:58)
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