Arcana STR+CHR 2

Then, I stood up, using my strength to pull Malkuth—who my suplex had buried from his head to his waist even after obliterating just about everything around us—from the ground like a weed, lifting him by an ankle before punching him in the gut with all the force I could muster, which was thankfully a fair bit. Malkuth’s body rocked forward, curled by the force of the blow, and his head came up to bang against my knee.

“—Dick,” Malkuth grunted, seemingly brought back to the present by the blow, though I noted he still seemed dazed. It was nice to know that some things affected him, even if only while he was in a reduced form. Alas, stuck in the body of a Grimm as he was, Malkuth possessed nothing for me to kick him in, so I couldn’t take advantage of the line he’d given me. With a touch of sadness for opportunities lost, I instead kicked him in the face, knocking him backwards and over my head, turning at my grip on his ankle. I couldn’t imagine that was comfortable, which was a pleasant though, and I added to it by grabbing him by the back of his head as he came around and then bringing him down hard on my rising knee in a sincere effort to fold him in half.

Malkuth grunted again and I got the feeling he was glaring at me.

“Okay, that’s enough,” He said, hand snapping up to grab me by the head, massive claws closing on me in a brutal vice. Just as quickly, his other hand rose, smashing into my nose hard enough break it and pretty much every other bone in my face, snapping my head back as a side effect. Taking advantage of that momentary opening, he delivered another series of blows to my face, chin, and throat, tearing at the savagely until I let him go and freed up my hands.

Malkuth flipped over in midair, landing neatly on his feet before me in a way that spoke of yet more physics fuckery. I saw energy gather in his arms as he crouched and braced myself. I matched the first punch with my own, feeling bones break from wrist to shoulder, and then punched him across the face hard enough to make his head duck. He lifted it again and buried a rising fist into my stomach and I leaned over as I felt it pulverize my organs. Against my will, I staggered back a step and he pressed his assault, half a dozen hits landing on my chest in barely more than an instant, shattering ribs each time.

In response, I stepped into his next assault, lifting my arms quickly as if to strike him—and lowering them just as fast, trapping his arms beneath them. In response, Malkuth flexed his claws, bladed fingers sinking into my back and thumbs into my front, as if he was planning to pull my ribcage open lengthwise.

Before he could, however, my twin stepped back into play. Seeing as he was fully recovered, I let my other self go to town on our trapped enemy and while he stayed largely within the same volume as me, he reached out with his arms and began to deliver lightning fast punches to Malkuth’s abdomen. Malkuth released another annoyed breath, but I held his fast, refusing to let him escape, and the air between us soon turned to plasma in the steady rhythm of my other self’s fists.

Malkuth released a sound that I might have considered a growl if it hadn’t been accompanied by his mask suddenly turning a deep blood-red. At once, my twin dropped low, crouching and slamming both of his fists into Malkuth’s ankles to help keep him grounded. Without letting go of Malkuth’s arms, I stepped on my other self’s back and used it as a spring pad of sorts, contorting briefly in midair to get my feet in position before shoving both of them right under Malkuth’s chin, forcing his head back.

A moment later, a narrow flash of red light flashed through the sky, tracing a line across empty air that seemed to glow for a long moment before exploding. The force rocked us all, nearly forcing us to the ground, but we endured and so did Malkuth.

That still left us in a rather awkward position, with my arms binding Malkuth’s, my feet pushing up his chin, and my other self holding his feet onto the ground. Malkuth seemed to realize this as well, because he immediately flexed his arms and leaned back slightly before altering his shoulders in a fashion I immediately recognized.

A moment later, my twin hauled Malkuth’s feet up off the ground, leaving him parallel to the Earth as he fired off his arms like he’d done to Keter beforehand. Instead of being launched away, I was fired straight up, and I let his projectile limbs carry me for a brief moment before releasing them, judging that I was high enough.

Then I let my twin take control as he Fluctuated into me and began his descent. I felt skills layer and time warp as he fueled our dive, even going so far as to add Atlas to the combination, and we fell towards Malkuth like a comet.

Predictably, he tried to dodge, having already seen such a tactic.

Obviously, we didn’t fucking let him, changing directions with Yellow Path without slowing down.

To Malkuth’s credit, he still managed to react in time, hand snapping up at the last possible instant to catch my other’s fist with a regrown arm—but what he didn’t expect was for me to continue on with the same momentum, leaving my other self’s space at full speed to clothesline him anyway. As I caught him around the throat, I tightened my arm around his neck, letting my body snap forward as I dragged him down and back, hauling him off his feet and to the ground.

The moment he was prone, my twin hand on top of him, power already gathering—and then his hands flashed out, little more than a blur to my eyes. When he stopped, however, the results were obvious—ten neat holes from ten different Longinus, expending most of my twins remaining energy. One through the head, one through where the portal should be, and one for each of his non-existent vital organs; it was a move we’d practiced some, but it was, unfortunately, designed for foes with more vulnerabilities. Malkuth screamed as the spears pierced through him, but didn’t fucking die, not that I’d been that hopeful.