Catches Oni Lee off guard

— and into the embrace of the duplicate that had appeared behind me. Before I even realized what was happening, he had grabbed me under the armpits and linked his hands behind my head. Barely had his fingers intertwined against my hair than did yet another duplicate appear in front of me, hefting that knife and pulling his arm back to stab.

But I hadn’t been training as martial artist for nothing. The fighting style of the ancient Celts was one that focused on agility, speed, and flexibility, on hitting hard and fast and simply not being there for the return blow. It was, in many ways, far more acrobatic than anything I knew about Asian styles, and even then, I’d seen a few Jackie Chan movies with this kind of situation in it.

And, well, my base form had a minor Brute power. Automatically, things that normal people required tons of conditioning for to develop the muscle strength to pull off came much easier to me.

As the last duplicate came for me, I threw myself back and up with my legs, landing one foot in the advancing Lee’s chin as the one holding me lost his grip and fell over backwards. I felt only the slightest twinge of remorse as I came down on his chest, stomping with both feet. He was only a duplicate, after all, a fake, and his lifespan was measured in seconds anyway.

As the duplicate beneath my boots exploded into ash like a popped balloon, I was surprised to find that the one I kicked had stumbled backwards and was rubbing faintly at his chin. The real one, it had to be.

My heart leapt. That was the real one, not a duplicate, and he was distracted, if only for a moment. I need to press the advantage, put him out of the fight, now, while I could be sure that he was the real Oni Lee and not one of the clones. I just needed to —