Aurora Over a Dead World

"..." Nightmare proved to be irritatingly problematic. Even though she wasn’t absurdly fast in that wave-of-flesh form, she kept me from running on the ground, so I had to keep leaping from structure to structure, where one slip would send me falling straight into her.

Fortunately, the factories were far from people’s homes, so I managed to lead Nightmare to an open area where materials like pipes, metal bars, mechanical parts, and other junk usually piled up.

"Finally decided to stop running?" she says as the wave of flesh takes Zenith’s form again, as if that would somehow help her.

"Yeah, yeah, this is good enough for me to finish you off." The truth was, I just needed to get her away from the factory. Without her there, a new team could arrive and deal with it without her helping those criminals.

"With that toy? You think you can beat me?" She speaks with an ironic smile on her face as I grab the machine gun from my back. I toss it to her, leaving her confused, but the reality is it wouldn’t even serve as a distraction in my hands, so better to keep her off balance.

"..." She looks at the weapon and takes a step back, showing caution.

"You hesitated. Are you really that afraid of me?" I taunt, gaining some slight advantage. In our fight in the past, I was prepared and had proper equipment. This time, I have nothing adequate.

"Afraid!!? I would never be afraid of you!!" She moves her hand as flesh rises around me. I jump upward, dodging the copy of Zenith’s power. Since she can’t destroy space, her power copy only follows Zenith’s standard attack patterns.

’I’ll need to go full [Sun State] to fight...’ I rush forward toward her. Despite hesitating at first, she decides to advance. When she steps over the weapon I threw, I make it explode with heat, hitting her from below.

She lets out a scream as the flesh writhes. Heat has always been effective against her, since all her attacks are made of her flesh.

Reaching her, I deliver a kick, applying heat to my strikes. The hiss of burning flesh echoes through the empty space as she grabs my leg. I spin my entire body and kick her in the face with my other leg, forcing her to release me while I roll across the ground.

I grab an iron bar and drive it into her chest, heating it until her flesh clings to the bar. She starts spreading flesh and blood across the ground, forming spikes that I dodge.

"...!" I catch a spear of flesh she fires at me and throw it far away quickly. The attack expands into a ball of spikes. I recognize this attack from a colleague in the past.

’Damned mimicry ability...’ I don’t know how many powers she’s already mimicked, and considering how much time she’s had to grow stronger, she must have many copies.

Clap

I strike my palms together and open them, generating a sphere of heat. I would love to have Zenith’s versatility — spatial powers, electric, electromagnetic, gravity, and so many other variations her vector generates.

"You think that’s going to work again?" A wall rises in front of her, but I’ve already marked her with the Sun Mark. With it, I increase her weight to the maximum I can manage. Her body becomes so heavy that she and the wall in front of her are crushed against the ground.

I throw the heat sphere at her, trying to fry her in a single attack, but she still manages to defend herself, turning into an immense ball of flesh to protect her body. The entire flesh ball vibrates and writhes.

’Some studies suggest that her body might be a complex being formed by billions of cellular units, a collective hive-style supermind... so attacking her with heat would make the entire colony panic... is that real?’ Every physical reaction she has to heat is this writhing in multiple places that weren’t even hit.

If she really is like a collective mind, then certain attacks I make will break her concentration and form.

"Urgh!!" In a moment of distraction, I’m struck from behind and thrown forward where multiple hands of flesh rise up and grab me.

"You’re a bastard!! A bastard!! How can you disfigure a lady like me?" she says as her heat-deformed face regenerates. She approaches, forming a giant axe of flesh that she drags across the ground.

"..." I calmly look at the ground and kick an iron bar into her face. Caught by surprise, her head is pierced from one side to the other. I make the iron bar so hot that it melts, spilling liquid metal over her flesh.

’This should distract her...’

"GAAAAHHHH!!" She screams, her entire body deforming, and countless eyes emerge, staring at me with hatred before her shape distorts completely, trying to reconstitute the affected parts.

’What was that?’ She has never reacted to heat with so much pain before. But I take advantage of it to escape the hands and unleash another wave of heat against her body.

’The liquid metal adhered to the flesh, so it wasn’t just heat. Logically, the incandescent mass keeps transferring energy without giving her time to expel the burned tissue... is that it?’ I have an epiphany and feel like an idiot for never having thought of this before.

How had no one seen this before? She needs to replace destroyed flesh to regenerate. If the part she needs to regenerate keeps taking continuous damage and something is obstructing the part that needs to grow back, she can’t regenerate.

The molten metal keeps burning for several seconds until her body cools the metal, and while the metal is inside her body, any flesh that tries to grow is immediately destroyed again. And that’s why she can’t even expel the heated metal — because it sticks to the flesh!

’That explains the desperation. The metal inside her head was trapped.’ She retreats backward as I grab another iron bar, but she reacts far more aggressively, launching a wave of flesh at me. I dodge by jumping onto a support tower for cables, watching her there in the middle of all that flesh.

"Looks like someone got their feelings hurt," I say, seeing her cry. But it’s a reaction of pain rather than anything emotional. In the past, defeating her had been a complicated fight.

And I had used a lot of explosives that seemed effective, but apparently the point wasn’t the explosives — it was the continuous damage that the heat from the explosives stuck to her flesh generated.

’The research went in the wrong direction.’ Everyone just deduced that explosives were useful because of the impact and massive instant damage. No one went down the path that what was hurting her was the continuous damage caused by the heated fragments.

"You had 12 years, and in 12 years you didn’t overcome the weakness you had. How pathetic," I taunt as I make a hand motion, cutting a piece of the tower I’m standing on. I throw it over her and heat all the metal until it melts into a liquid rain falling upon her.

She quickly forms a barrier above her like a ceiling to defend her body, but the metal falling onto the flesh makes her entire defense vibrate and writhe so violently that you can see veins bulging from the flesh and bleeding starting in places that weren’t even hit.

"BASTARD!!!" She screams at me, forming hundreds of flesh blades that she launches in my direction. I break off a piece of the tower, using it as a staff to defend against the attacks. The blades deflected to the sides expand into massive spike balls.

’E-Even knowing this weakness, it’s still difficult...’ To melt metal this fast, I have to use a lot of my powers, which has already started giving me a headache.

"You coward!! Coward!!! Coward!!! Coward!!! Coward!!! Coward!!! Coward!!! Coward!!! Coward!!! Coward!!! Coward!!! Coward!!!" She screams at me in rage as she brings down the tower where I’m standing.

She starts firing the iron bars, beams, and debris from the ground at me, forcing me to dodge in midair with great difficulty. Before I can fully register it, the entire ground around us for hundreds of meters has turned to flesh.

I see teeth at the edges of the flesh as it closes above. It’s like a giant mouth, and I’ve ended up inside it.

"You’re still an abomination, just like in the past." I heat the steel bar to have some illumination. Soon she appears, striking at me with a flesh axe that I defend against with some difficulty.

"You!! I’m going to devour you!!!" I dodge an attack from behind, but something grabs my leg and spins me. This thing tries to slam me against bone spikes on the ground, but I cut whatever is holding me and twist in the air, narrowly avoiding falling onto the bones.

’I don’t see the debris. This bitch took everything metal out of my reach... it seems she really does have a weakness to molten metal or anything else that causes continuous damage... ice... ice would be perfect for facing her...’

"..." I only have the staff still in my hands. If I melt it for a single attack, it won’t be enough.

"You’re not going to win this time, Nadir!! I have more powers than yo—" As she speaks, she ends up giving away her position, so I simply run in the opposite direction, which makes her stop talking and start screaming at me, cursing me out.

Since I’m relatively fast, I manage to reach the wall holding me in and melt the metal of the iron bar, throwing it onto the wall that traps me. The wall writhes, recoiling from the metal as expected, so I escape from within the area she controls.

"...What an immense thing." After getting out, I see that the flesh structure is the size of a city block at minimum. But returning to an area where I have the advantage, I spot the metallic debris.

’Having Zenith here using magnetism would be so useful to throw heated metal at her...’ All the flesh forming the dome shrinks, being compressed back into Nightmare’s body.

"Why!! Why do you do this, Nadir? Why can’t you just accept my love and let me devour you?" she speaks in a desperate tone, forming an axe with all the compressed flesh. The axe is gigantic, and when she swings downward and I dodge, its impact on the ground causes a tremor.

I heat the metal near the axe, making her lose control of it while I advance straight toward her.

"And why don’t you just die already?" I say, kicking her face and knocking her to the ground. I kick with so much force that my foot goes inside her skull. I heat the metal pins beneath the sole of my boot, letting the liquid metal fall in drops inside her head.

"GHHAAARRRR!!" She screams in pain, grabbing my leg as her hands form mouths trying to bite me. But before she can manage it, I kick her away and shake my leg to get the blood and flesh off my boot.

"Why are you hurting me so much? Don’t you care about Zenith? Why do you disfigure her like this?" she says, getting up with that hole in her face. It’s grotesque.

"An abomination like you would never understand that for someone we care about, appearance isn’t everything. You copying Zenith doesn’t make you attractive or worthy of pity. In fact, it fills me with disgust and revulsion for scum like you." I hate how fixated this thing is on hunting me.

It’s so irritating. Because of her, I’ve even received complaints, since she won’t leave Aurora Island because she’s too busy chasing me.

"Hahahaha." She laughs in a lunatic manner, regenerating her face into an unpleasant expression that Zenith would never make.

"I’m going to kill you. I swear I’m going to tear your body apart." She spits drops of hardened metal onto the ground, confirming what I suspected — that she can only remove the metal after it cools and she’s able to touch it.

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