Weak point attack! Penny loses an arm!

She took a step forward and then began to run, but I didn’t move. I didn’t turn away, I didn’t back down, and I didn’t flinch.

I just sighed quietly, stepped forward, and whispered just high enough to be sure she would catch it.

“Right arm,” I said as I stepped just to the side of the blade, dodging along the outside of her arm. My left hand came up to grasp her wrist, my right her shoulder. With each hand, I used the Tiger’s Jaws, doubled with Double Strike, multiplied with Power Strike, Rip, and Crush, pulling it back behind her with all my might.

But really, that was just the final blow, the straw that broke the camel’s back. What happened next had been long in the coming. Penny and I had both been working towards something, trying to guide the battle in our favor—but the advantage had been mine, for I held the most powerful weapon of all.

Information. I knew, if roughly, what she was capable off, but there were many, many things she didn’t know about me. Her plan had been to wear me down, to improve her strategies and plans to fence me in and push me back, all leading up to a final blow—but my plan had literally been built with every blow, every exchange, whenever I touched her. It had been in gentle touches, seemingly pointless strikes to her defending arms, to her legs, a work in progress from the very beginning striking at weak point she hadn’t even known to defend.

So though I applied careful pressure and force, put my entire body into accomplishing on thing, and hammered, grasped, crushed, and tore with all my might, what happened next wasn’t a matter of my strength. No, that was a small part of it, in all honesty. In truth, it was a matter of careful build up, minute applications of Crocea Mors in a thousand instants of contact and flickering images, the buildup of many minor changes through her Aura as the minutes dragged on, all leading up to one moment, one final push, an instant of strain that even her soul couldn’t compensate for.

And with a crack and a pop and a groan, with a small rain of bits of metal, with a sudden force giving way—with all of that, I tore off Penny’s arm.