The footfalls of all of Sweet-Face's men hurrying down the concrete playground drew our attention. The men lined up beyond the chain-link fence, guns in their hands. They all stayed away from the chain-link gate, and kept their guns low as a display that they weren't yet looking to involve themselves in the fight.

Before we could begin to question if Snap and Marbelle had decided to bring themselves closer to the fight too, both descended from the sky and landed on the patch of grass between the playground and the astroturf pitch.

Clang's ringing metallic laughter brought my attention back to the fight at hand.

"You're so cool!" Clang's voice rang as he held his red-hot burning hand to his armoured stomach.

The eight foot tall jelly-baby creature Sweet-Face had become made a baby-ish cooing noise, with a smile on its enormous chubby-cheeked face.

"Enjoying yourself?" we resonated.

Clang grinned and clenched his fists.

"This is what I've been waiting for," his voice rang, "An enemy that'll push me beyond my limits!"

Clang's enthusiasm was infectious. We couldn't stop ourselves from grinning too.

The giant jelly-baby's little-mouthed smirk as it continued to make cooing noises however made me uneasy.

In order to walk the jelly-baby did little hops from one of its comparatively tiny legs to the other, its blackberry gelatine wobbling and bouncing with every step.

The jelly-baby grabbed its fallen left arm with its big jelly-mittened right hand, and stuck it back into place at its shoulder-socket.

Clang's breathing was even more hampered.

"How much longer can you keep this up?" we resonated.

"I can't do the same attack again," Clang's voice rang, "But I won't need to."

It was then I noticed a change in Clang's body – he was no longer radiating heat.

Instead, a sudden coldness emanated from him. The steam which had covered him like an aura vanished.

A grinding metallic sound, like cogs in a machine getting stuck, filled the air.

Clang grunted, and we could see there was a rigidity to the way he moved his arms.

"No!" Clang's voice rang.

He gritted his teeth and, with what looked like a huge degree of effort on his part, he clenched his fists and let out a huge metallic yell.

Move!

The thought entered our mind in a fraction of a microsecond, and we heeded the warning and bounded away to safety.

Immediately after the ground by Clang's feet, for about a meter around him in every direction, was suddenly covered in a thick layer of ice.

An aura returned to Clang, but this time it wasn't an aura of steam, but a circling blizzard-like coldness with tiny icicle specks swirling around him.

Even Clang seemed to be surprised, but only for a moment.

He lifted his gaze to face the giant jelly-baby Sweet-Face, and grinned.

Clang stomped his right foot. As soon as his foot struck the ground, more ice blossomed over the ground in another thick layer.

He's pushing the cold out of his body, we thought, stating the obvious to ourselves.

But the real question was the limit of this new level to Clang's abilities.

He was freezing up before, we thought, because he was losing control of the power. He's still losing control, he's just pushed that loss of control outwards instead.

"Clang!" We resonated, "Power down. If you keep using your power like that it'll only get worse."

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"Not yet," Clang's voice rang, "I want to see what I can do!"

Throughout all this the giant jelly-baby Sweet-Face was idly watching, showing no sign of aggression, and hardly any intelligent thought either.

Clang let out another ringing battle-cry and broke into a sprint. The ice which had been around his feet broke away, and Clang was able to move as fast as he would in his base, pre-Tension state.

Every bounding step Clang took left an imprint of ice on the ground, until he finally reached the jelly-baby Sweet-Face.

Clang jumped and aimed his right foot straight for the giant buddha-shaped jelly-baby.

"Woo-oo!" the jelly-baby cooed playfully.

With surprising speed for its size, the jelly-baby sat itself down with a bouncy plomp! and then rolled out of the way of Clang's attack.

A sudden knee-high wall of ice erupted from the ground where Clang's foot landed.

We readied ourselves to move in and defend Clang from the jelly-baby Sweet-Face, but no attack came from the creature. Instead it rolled over itself again and then settled into another idle sitting position.

The jelly-baby clapped its mitten hands and giggled.

"Again!" the jelly-baby cooed in a clear child-like voice.

Clang yanked his leg out of the ice-wall block. His grin had vanished in place of a look of frustration.

"Ha-ah!" Clang's voice rang.

He put his palms together just like he had done when creating the giant metal sword, and then all at once a great gust of icy-cold wind erupted from his hands.

The jelly-baby Sweet-Face rolled away from the mini-cyclone, but not before a large portion of its shoulder was frozen solid.

When the jelly-baby settled upright again, the frozen chunk of blackberry-hued gelatine at its shoulder burst into tiny shards and fell away, leaving behind a noticeable missing chunk.

The jelly-baby's face fixed into a look of moody concentration, and for a moment Sweet-Face's internal organs glowed with a soft golden light. Then with a fresh plomp! the missing chunk at the jelly-baby's shoulder grew back.

"Okay!" Clang's voice rang out, "Let's see you grow back from this!"

Clang bounded backwards, landing so that he was standing side-by-side with the huge slab of metal he had created before. He reached out, and pushed the huge metallic slab over onto the ground.

Clang then crouched and brought his hand to one end of the huge slab of metal. Where his hand gripped, ice blossomed.

And, to our amazement, Clang lifted the huge metallic slab, making it into a sword, using just his right arm to support the immense weight.

The jelly-baby creature clapped excitedly, as if everything Clang was doing was for its entertainment.

More ice formed at Clang's feet, and along the huge sword slab like tendrils.

Clang went onto the attack again.

This time the giant jelly-baby Sweet-Face sprang up, and bounded away with surprising speed.

Clang gave chase and swung the huge metallic slab-sword at the jelly-baby.

The attack narrowly missed, but Clang simply used the momentum and spun around whilst still giving chase to the giant jelly-baby.

This time Clang's giant ice-covered sword cut deep into the jelly-baby's huge round belly, creating a mouth-like shape in the middle that reminded us of Pac-Man. And where the sword had cut, it also froze much of the stomach gelatine solid.

Clang still wasn't done. Cutting through the gelatine mass had done little to slow the momentous power behind the great frozen sword being swung.

Clang spun again, this time bringing the sword into a downward swing.

Splat!

Clang's sword cut the huge jelly-baby mass right down the middle.

The majority of the jelly-baby's gelatine mass was cut, and frozen solid by Clang's latest sword swing, but Sweet-Face's internal floating organs had shot out from the mass in a desperate effort to escape.

A much smaller, thinner, child-sized jelly-boy had replaced the giant jelly-baby.

It was our turn to go onto the attack. We weren't going to waste this opportunity by letting the much more vulnerable jelly-boy Sweet-Face escape.

We shot out three smaller resin-spears, which twirled through the air in a graceful motion, surrounding the jelly-boy Sweet-Face.

Pap! Pap! Pap!

Resin-threads exploded into being from the resin-spears, and in a sudden zip! all the threads snapped shut around the jelly-boy.

The jelly-boy landed with a final thud onto the ground, fully bound and wrapped tight in our resin-threads.

We bounded forward, drawing closer to Clang.

Clang had stopped going onto the attack, and instead was holding his sword which was lodged into the ground. A fierce blizzard-like aura continued to swirl around Clang, and ice continued to blossom across the ground where he was standing.

The jelly-boy Sweet-Face squirmed on the ground, unable to get away. It saw that it was well and truly trapped, and began to cry and kick its jelly legs in panic – its shrill scream piercing our ears.

"No kill! No kill!" the jelly-boy cried, "No kill!"

Ice fell away from Clang's sword as he pried the huge metallic slab from where it had stuck into the astroturf pitch ground.

"So we're finishing it, then?" Clang's voice rang.

He raised his sword like an executioner's axe.

"Pah!"

The jelly-boy spat, and from its mouth shot a tiny cube.

It had two distinct sides: one raspberry, and the other plump marshmallow-white.

The cube landed on the astroturf, rolled, and finally landed on the raspberry-hued side.

"Ay-yo!" shouted one of Sweet-Face's men from beyond the chain-link fence.

We and Clang looked to the men standing there, all of whom looked suddenly afraid.

Makes sense, we thought, their leader just got beat.

"What?" Clang's voice rang coldly.

"What side did it land on?!" the same man yelled.

"Raspberry-red," we resonated.

It was then, all at once, all of Sweet-Face's men began to flee back up the playground.

"Not much loyalty," Clang's voice rang.

The jelly-boy Sweet-Face, who was still trapped in my resin-threads on the ground, started to jibber and jabber, and what looked like candy-rocks – the kind that popped on your tongue – foamed at its mouth in great abundance.

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