There was a brief instant of complete stillness as Lindsey and I watched each other. Sizing up an opponent in the system was always a tricky endeavor. Yes, I could use the Analyze skill, but that did have a windup and lag. It was also obvious as hell when any scrutinizing skill was used. In this exact moment it was even more dubious because it was obvious Narrators were writing prompts and capable of adjusting die rolls. That piece of information made me circumspect of the skill in general and unwilling to use it in this particular moment.

That didn't mean I wasn't picking up a few important things. Lindsey was in a dress suit. The clothing wasn't made for full movement in mind. She was also considerably smaller than me. Even if the system put our strength in the same general weight class -something I don't think it did- I had better reach and leverage.

There was also Wilson overtly stating I could kill her in a fight way back when. However this clash wasn't going to break continuity. Did that mean she couldn't permanently hurt me? Could we not hurt each other?

Lindsey wasn't idle as I was contemplating next moves. She sprang from her seat, and more less vaulted onto the table. Midair, Lindsey planted her hand on the table and leveraged that into a spinning almost Capoeira style kick. The heel of her foot would have collided with my temple, but I caught her leg and turning at the hip as I stood flung her at the far wall.

I would like to say she slammed into the wall and splattered against it like one of those sticking goo guy toys that then flip-flop down the wall. Trouble is that didn't happen. Instead Lindsey twisted catlike and planted her feet on the wall and launched herself back at me. Once she got close she tried to hit me with a jump powered right cross. I blocked that with a wave of my left arm. Lindsey expected this and seized my arm and the opportunity. Using my arm as leverage she struck with her knee right at my solar plexus.

That partially worked. She hadn't bank on me simply continuing to swing my arm. I slammed her head first through the table. The big hunk of furniture wasn't some particle board piece of shit. It was a good inch and half thick plank of 'real' wood. It cracked and split with a catastrophic noise. The middle sagged and the edges rose as Lindsey slammed into the ground.

Her knee clipped my ribs hard. The hit was more glancing than anything, but it still tweaked the floating ribs pretty good. The bones bent but didn't break. A hit like that should have stopped me cold and hurt like hell. It did too…briefly. That felt relatively normal, like Titanic Regeneration removing damage almost faster than it could be registered.

But it wasn't registering this time. There was no prompt. I felt the jolt of impact, and registered the shock of pain from being kicked, but no damage was applied. Lindsey was clearly dealing with more or less the same thing. She rolled away from me. The back of her jacket was perforated with large, strong, and upsettingly long splinters. Those things should have stabbed into her back. She should be bleeding. Nothing left any permanent mark.

"So this is a huge waste of time," I declared.

Wilson's voice over the intercom replied, "Technically no because no actual time is passing on screen. Also bragging rights. So, fight for my amusement. It's not like that is unfamiliar territory for you."

I had been watching Lindsey as Wilson spoke. She had taken her earrings off, and stuffed them in a jacket pocket. She then shrugged out of the suit coat and draped it over a still standing chair. She also untucked her shirt. "I have been wanting to do this for a long time."

"You've wanted me to smash you through a table?" I asked.

Rather than continue the banter Lindsey rushed me. She came at me low this time. Just to set the tone she threw an uppercut right at my bawls. Having raised a child, and being a man in general I knew how to protect myself from such incidents. I took a half step back and turned my hips. I also pushed Lindsey's arm off target.

She kept trying to hit me, but one thing became very apart in the next few seconds. Her hitting me was a matter of me letting her. I was too fast, too strong, and ultimately too tough for anything she did to have any meaningful effect on what happened next. I simply kept swatting away any attack she threw at me.

"Fight back!" Lindsey roared as she tried to drive her shoulder into me.

I side stepped her and pushed her off balance, she stumbled and almost face planted onto a propped up edge of the table, "What fight Lindsey?"

"Don't you condescend to me!' she screamed. In the same instant she grabbed the edge of a table chunk and flung it at me.

It was a simple matter to shatter the projectile with a chop of my hand. Among the blizzard of splinters Lindsey struck. It was a constant stream of kicks, punches, feints and dodges. By all rights she should be counting points with a hell of a combo multiplier.

The thing is because of the system and my big numbers I could keep up. Hell for all I know Wilson was maxing out the dice rolls for me.

Most people don't really talk all that much during a fight. It takes a lot of focus to articulate words, and getting punched in the nose hurts like a bastard. Also even when you are in great shape running fullbore for a few minutes is going to leave most people sucking air. However Lindsey was a Narrator. She cared more about story, drama, and spectacle than reality. Her over the top fighting style with its wire fu vibe drove that idea home.

As she worked through her attack combo she let loose a verbal barage as well. "Do you have any idea how hard I had to work? Do you know what I went through? I spent twenty years working with grond as a minor narrator! The things I had to do to survive. Now, as soon as I get control and can finally make things better for myself. You fuck everything up! Do you know what happens to me when my players die?"

I caught Lindsey fist, and with my free hand pushed her away, "Are you asking me for help?"

Lindsey stopped dead in her tracks, "Are you fucking kidding me?"

"Yes or no, Lindsey," I asked.

"No, you mental deficient. Why would you ever think I would demean myself in such a way?" She demanded.

I looked around the room, "Is this triumph for you? Do you not realize you're at rock bottom?" Celeste was right you have to tailor your insults. Honestly I was just relieved she hadn't asked for help. That would have been human like vulnerability. That would get complicated.

Arguably I did mess up a bit here. Rather than continue to spill more information about Narrators and perhaps give me something useful to exploit later, she just called me a bunch of mean names. In an effort to dissuade her from continuing to attack me I started mixing in the odd counter attack. To Lindsey's credit the pain of being pummeled by me didn't slow her down at all. I can't stress this enough, being able to withstand pain is not easy. I am hesitant to call it a skill because that runs dangerously close to glorifying suffering. Some people though in pursuit of a goal can power through a near infinite amount of pain. Lindsey in an effort to inflict harm could do that.

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That had to be acknowledged, not respected but acknowledged. That told me where her limits were. In this case there wasn't any. She was not just prepared but eager to hurt herself if she could harm me.

That wasn't exactly a surprise but certainty brings peace. I would go so far as to say now, both Lindsey and Brandon were completely known quantities. That raised the last question. Was now the time to try and kill her. The damage I did certainly wasn't piling up. Lindsey's makeup was smeared, and her hair was a mess. The left sleeve of her shirt had torn off at some point, and her leggings were tattered, but Lindsey didn't have a single cut or bruise on her.

I couldn't kill her in this room. Whatever effect was forcing this bastardized equal protection this was, would prevent that. I hit the narrator with a quick hammer punch after batting another of her attacks away.

Lindsey stumbled back a few steps and spat. She was trying to clear blood that wasn't flowing out of her mouth. She had taken a beating before. "Bet you feel all strong right now."

"No, Lindsey, I don't take pleasure from hurting others. That would be cruel. All cruelty is weakness," I was telling the truth there. Killing the Narrators wouldn't make me happy. Not directly anyways. The idea of a world without the yoke of their manipulations… Well honestly that was still a scary prospect. It would still be a world full of people. It would be messy, chaotic, and full of trouble.

It would be beautiful.

It would be worth fighting for.

Nothing of value was exchanged between Lindsey and me after that. It was just violence.

I was back on the battlefield. The blood soaked ice around me swarmed with mobs frozen in time. I was encased in three layers of ablative shell and armed with Grond's Claws. Above me Celeste was nearly impaling Grond.

Time surged. Grond didn't die. Instead he spun with the impact and flung Celeste away. That stupid chain of his also lashed across Celeste's back. I could tell it hurt her. The sound of children screaming pierced the noise of battle. The noise was horrifying. It was like a knife to my soul. They were in danger. I'd brought them here. The terror of these things were almost enough to make forget: the Narrators had arranged to lower the body count, Celeste was on her way to protect them, and the noise shouldn't be able to reach me.

Kids are loud but not loud enough to carry over half a mile, much less half a mile over a deafening battle.

I didn't really have time to bitch. Grond wasn't interested in giving me time to do anything.

I wasn't certain how a level fifty Demigod stacked up to a level thirty-something angel, but the differences between Grond and me was noticeable. When he lashed out with his chain, I tried to block. I got a lesson in physics as the chain continued to swing around my arm and clip my head. Grond tried to pull me a la Scorpion from Mortal Kombat, but I did not get over there. Tenebrous Form let me phase through the chain.

Grond with a quick spin on his part dodged a flaming wheel from Sunit and then lashed out at me again. After failing to dodge this attack, I was wrapped up by the chain and then yanked toward Grond. Grond brought his heel down on my neck with a brutal axe kick… that I deflected. He just sort of bounced off of me. He then dodged my counter-attack with his claws. I wasn't even close.

I phased out of the chains. The two hits he had inflicted had actually inflicted closer to eight total hits. While each individual instance of impact and stab of the barbed chain inflicted minimal damage that still translated to having 25 points of my ablative shell ripped out immediately. Yeah I had the full three stacks and each one was buffed up to 76 Structure Points of damage before they broke, that meant I was like seventeen seconds from getting flayed by a spiked chain.

A prompt flashed in my eyes and I hit yes instantly.

The mobs were still rushing me as well. Believe it or not this was a complicating factor for Grond. I leveraged the action economy destroying aspects of my cosmic martial art, The Unrelenting Glacer to block, dodge, deflect, and then counter, but every attack I launched was at Grond.

The press of bodies also limited the jerks ability to attack me. That chain of his was meant for wide sweeping attacks rather than tight quarter fighting. I could tell he wasn't able to leach MP or health from mobs he killed. That isn't to say Grond was without options.

Right hand of Claws of the Beast God has been stolen by Grond.

That was not ideal. Between dodging my attacks, Grond was systematically destroying my armor. Technically this was what I wanted. I had a plan. It was a bad plan. It was a plan that required me to take damage to work.

Knife fighting is often shown as this acrobatic endeavor with a lot of flipping and an unnecessary amount of twirling blades and for reasons known only to perverts licking. Most knife fighting in real life is putting your shoulder into someone, controlling their arm, and then stabbing the life out of them.

My problem was Grond was a profoundly good knife fighter. He had managed to get my left arm twisted and pinned and was stabbing my ribs and kidney. After cracking the armor flowed. It was the gauntlet. Since he had one of the two, I couldn't phase it out of his grasp without giving it up. I didn't want him to have both and be moving free. This next bit was going to suck.

I turned off Tenebrous Form. I needed the health regen. My stomach split open and parts of me fell out and were shredded as Grond continued stabbing. I tried to counter, but Grond could dodge my kicks easily enough and would lever my left arm whenever it tried to punch him.

My head hit the ground as Grond kicked my legs out from under me. He immeditely rolled me on my back. Grond was on top of me. "Fuck!" He stabbed the claws into my neck then cleaved then through my collarbone and down through me ribs. "You!" he laughed. You couldn't beat me because you don't have what it take to- oof! AHHH!" His monologue was cut short.

I had punched the arrogant bastard in the dick with my free hand. Then when he doubled over I reach up and hooked two fingers into his eye… I got it out of his head.

This provoked Grond to go apeshit on me. He stabbed and punched and even bit me. The whole time he screamed, "Die! Die! Die! Fuckin' DIE!"

It was about time to make my move. Besides the fact that I just couldn't take anymore, my health was below a hundred and dropping. Then I got a message. Now was the time. It was going to work.

Expend Free Action? Yes/No

Note: You must select the total number of seconds spent before activating.

This was another one second situation. Rather than attack Grond I grabbed some the free length of Grond's chain, and tossed a loop over his neck.

"You think you can hide in a time sto-ack!" Grond tried to taunt me as he forced through the time stop, but I pulled the chain tight.

Grond's head rocked a moment before the boom a Brand's sniper rifle reached us. The bullet hit Grond in the temple. It tore the skin and abraded the bone but clearly wasn't going to do much than knock him off balance. It didn't need to do all that much though, it was a distraction. That was when Sunit's flaming wheel slammed into Grond's back. The Demigod probably would have dodged but the chain around his neck held hims in place as it sawed through his flesh.

Sunits attack was fundamentally more substantial. The spillover of the heat from the flames removed the frozen condition from me. Grond's skin charred as the steam from his boiling innards hissed out of his wounds and throat. His hair burned as his eyes bulged. He would have screamed but the chain had rent his vocal chords.

Sadly though this wasn't enough to kill him. It didn't do me any favors either.

That's when Philip struck. The goblin had managed to sneak through the frenzied crowd of monsters. In true goblin fashion the little guy had moved toward a clash between a god and titanspawn, and he meant to do something about it.

Grond spotted him an infinitesimal moment before Philip could strike.

The claw flashed as the spear struck.

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