"Where is she getting all this energy from?" The Jester muttered to herself, afflicted with the trepidation that she would be defeated by a wretch such as Natia herself. She curled her fingers forward and pulled out her antique pistol through a swift quickdraw, blasting bullets at Natia at where she stood.
Natia closed her eyes, concentrating on providing a balance of speed and recovery with her next attack. As armored-piercing bullets soared toward her, her flaming ignition booster and spiritual aura allowed her to incinerate them all at once as she dashed forward. She rotated her body with the speed of her neural uplink by her side to dodge the final bullet barely striking the tip of her nose. By the time the Jester had fired all of the bullets, Natia reappeared in front of her, punishing her with a well-timed critical blow to the gut with her right fist.
The Jester coughed up blood and saliva as the pressure of Natia's unsuspecting blow did more damage to her than previously before. Agitated by her newly profound strength, she swung her left leg out, only for Natia to block it with her elbow. The collision of her leg to her elbow relayed a pulsing shockwave of force and air to extinguish the scorching flames beneath them. It rippled through the stone ground like an invisible force.
Natia, clenching her teeth and seething in fury at the Jester's inability to understand her perspective, roundhouse kicked the Jester away with a spiraling twist of her body. The Jester's body flung itself toward the stage, crashing through the back of the pavilion. The curtains collapsed on her body, muffled her face and audible rage as she loathed Natia's power. She reloaded her pistol and fired bullets at her once more, only for Natia to channel flaming energy around her white gauntlets to block them with the swipe of her hands.
"How is this happening?" The Jester cried, struggling to reload her bullets promptly. "You shouldn't even be standing! I'm stronger than you! I'm fucking stronger than you!"
"We'll see about that," Natia's fearless attitude stirred up the flame inside her soul. She inhaled a deep breath through her mouth, amplifying the flaming energy around her nanosuit with her eyes shut. "Sixth Sense... Pale Thrall!" After channeling enough energy, Natia shouted, conjuring a spiritual flaming phoenix thrall with pale white slanted eyes and a tiger-orange beak behind her back. The phoenix mimicked all of Natia's upper-body movements, utilizing its radiant and divine feathers for its arms.
"I hope you're not letting that balloon animal of yours get to your head!" The Jester shouted, vanishing and reappearing behind Natia in the blink of an eye. Before she could land a blow, Natia's phoenix surged out flames from her body to push her away. Natia turned around, clenching her blades tightly with her reddened eyes engulfed in tinged flames and fury.
The phoenix screeched as Natia collided with the Jester, swinging both of her blades toward her arm. She grazed her skin while the phoenix swung its wing at the Jester's figure, igniting her body full of stinging flames. The Jester cried out in agony as Natia flip kicked her into the air. "Go!" Natia shouted, sending her phoenix toward the suspended Jester in midair. The phoenix enveloped her in a heat shield that prevented her from free falling.
As the Jester recovered in midair, the continuously rotating phoenix blocked out her vision by providing an impenetrable barrier that was barely visible from the inside. Natia dove toward the phoenix and penetrated through it with her fist primed, striking the Jester in the cheek. The Jester traded two powerful blows with Natia, who blocked and dodged it with ease.
Natia clenched her teeth and slammed her fist against the Jester's cheek once more, bruising and stunning her momentarily. She redirected another blow toward the Jester's left cheek, using the memories of her family to permeate her strength that scorched her aura.
That was for my brothers and sisters, she thought.
She jabbed the Jester's gut with a redirected knee.
That was for my mother!
Natia recalled the rotating phoenix back, hovering over her back like a spiritual thrall. She pushed herself back, summoned her full strength, and cartwheeled with the end of her foot setting on fire. The phoenix assisted Natia by holding her body with its divine wings, flipping Natia around, and sending her punishing blow toward the back of the Jester's bent-over head.
This is for my father!
Her foot struck the back of the Jester's head, sending her flying back toward the stone ground. The collision split the stone ground in half, creating a flaming crag in between riddled with cinders and ashes. While the Jester remained on the ground, Natia combined her twin swords into one giant claymore, igniting it with blue azure flames.
And this... is for Ryo!
"RRAGH!" She shouted at the top of her lungs, sending her phoenix toward the crash site as she dove downward. She stabbed the ground beneath her with her azure blade, sacrificing her weapons to create a frenzied outburst of raw flaming energy that engulfed both her and the Jester. The streetlights flicked in response to Natia's attack, sending out pulsating heat waves of energy that shattered glass windows, toppled over ground vehicles, and incinerated almost all of the fleeing news station drones.
After the explosion site was clear, Natia flipped back and sent the phoenix back into her nanosuit for safe-keeping to preserve her energy. Her stamina still was rampantly present, but she had no weapons to assist her besides her fists. She watched as the Jester feebly stood up from her all-out assault, arms and legs crooked like a skeleton's. Her brown hot-streaked ponytail ow fallen to her shoulders and back, opening up into long flame-scorched hair. Her zombified groans of annoyance and pain were both disturbing and volatile at the same time, catching Natia off-guard for how she managed to survive the attack.
With her brown hair fallen toward her shoulders as her head pointed down at the ground, the Jester revealed her face to Natia; part of her face's skin had been completely charred and darkened from Natia's attack. Her eyes dilated in size, and crimson blood dripped down her forehead toward her chin. Her smile was even wider to express her complete madness and insanity over her self-conscious condition, revealing her teeth like a clown with a false sense of charisma.
"You... almost... killed me... you BITCH!" The Jester fatally cried before clasping her palms together to send out a shockwave of invisible energy around her. "That was your... final... mistake! Now... I'll kill you... if it's the last thing I DO!" Natia took a step before, unprepared for what was ahead of her. But then, the unexpected happened to a point where she could not grasp the situation any longer.
The amber-infused memory fragment lodged in her brain revealed itself on her forehead in the form of a shimmering crystal protruded outward. Part of her tight clothes tore off, creating a tattered appearance with a resemblance to formality; her short breasts were half exposed, and her arms and legs were all exposed with pink streaks of unknown energy forming on her skin. Her hair expanded and wrapped her with a revealing hot-pink and orange sundered outfit combination. Another memory fragment, one that was even bigger and wider than the one on her forehead, emerged from the center of her chest with a blinking monstrous eye infused with lightning-pink energy.
Hundreds of bulging veins began surfacing and covering her face as she shouted to build strength. The veins covered all of her arms, legs, and body, pulsating as seconds passed. Her brown hair had completely transformed in color and size, dynamically blending black and pink together to create a monstrous glow and sheen to her hair color. Her eyes rotated back into her head, revealing another eye completely in amber color similar to the amber memory fragment. The crash site's terrain beneath her began to cave in for the both of them as Natia observed her hideously grotesque transformation at the hands of the memory fragment empowering her body.
Natia's eyebrows drooped down as she held her guard. The Jester shouted one final time to release all of the stored energy inside her core. Her resemblance to Edelweiss Tianne Waters was no longer there, where previously, hints of her personality and past self remained. This time, she was the true form of the Jester, awakening after accepting the agonizing pain of the young girl in the figment of her imagination. Her bottled-up envy and distress called upon the power of the memory fragment within her, granting her a state that Natia had never witnessed before.
After heavy breathing commenced from the Jester's expanded lungs, she regained control of her stamina and grinned at Natia from a distance. Her slim, yet vein-bulged figure was straight in posture. Her jet-black and pink hair flailed behind her like Medusa's mythological snake hair. Her pale white ghostly skin protruded memory fragments, and the giant blinking third eye in her chest was completely unexpected to Natia. She stood completely still as an invisible psychic force lifted and suspended parts of her tattered clothes and the side of her hair in flight.
"I... am... THE JESTER!" She shouted at the top of her lungs as giant violet-colored tendrils and vines emerged from the stone ground. Unaware of where the tendrils were coming from, Natia leaped backward as the colossal tendrils slammed against the ground to shatter the base of the floor beneath them. The tendrils slithered back into the ground, hiding from sight as Natia was unsure of how to handle the situation.
Is this what memory fragments do...? Natia thought, impacted by the effects of Genesis Laboratories. Without the extractor in her hand, she could never remove the memory fragment stowed away inside the Jester's body to weaken her. For a moment, Natia greatly feared the Jester after her grotesque transformation threw her off entirely.
"Kathuz... IS MINE TO RULE!" The Jester's earsplitting cries sounded off the sound of another gut-wrenching battle. She smiled widely at Natia once more, leaping toward her as she cackled in pure ecstatic entertainment at her new power. Natia was now faced to face with another monster that she had unintentionally awakened, and this time, she hoped she was evenly matched with the Jester as she summoned her pale flaming phoenix thrall to assist her.
She leaped to counter her assault without knowing the consequences of her actions. Before they collided with each other, the underground tendrils wrapped Natia's arms back without being impacted by the flaming aura of her phoenix. The fire-proof tendrils pulled her back, leaving her completely vulnerable. The Jester sliced through Natia's white nanosuit with her bare hand, digging through a nearly fatal wound from her left shoulder to her chest.
Natia shouted and pulled the tendrils off with her bare hands. The two of them pummeled each other with shockwave-induced blows laced with fire and pink energies that were generated throughout their position. Each of them blocked their respectful blows; Natia jabbed twice before spinning to roundhouse kick the Jester. The Jester slid down on her knees and sliced through Natia's hands, but her swift dodges made them evenly matched.
This entire time, the Jester smiled widely to signal the thrill of the battle. Even a simple smile herself demoralized Natia into believing that her strength had no impact on her. After she tried to rear up another punch toward the Jester's face, more violet-colored tendrils emerged from her side, wrapping her hands and preventing her from moving. The Jester giggled as her amber eyes gleamed with spite and unadulterated amusement. Her veins and malformed pale skin made Natia believe that she was no longer fighting someone human anymore.
She was a monster. A monster who enjoyed everything single second of torture.
The third eye on her eye blinked as the Jester laughed once more. She sent her tendrils up from the ground, surrounding Natia in an inescapable bind. Some of the tendrils tickled Natia's dark-skinned face and body as they seized total control of her. The Jester walked toward Natia as tendrils began forming the desolate ground beneath her, making a self-creating platform for her to traverse on. She grinned widely as she approached Natia, stroking her face.
The phoenix thrall behind Natia could not act without her moving. Natia attempted to break free from the tendrils that bound her, but there were too many around them that supported each other to add weight to her injuries. The flames that she called from her aura were not enough to fight back. This time, there was no escape. She yelled in defiance as she frustratingly attempted once more, to no avail.
"Poor girl," The Jester relished in her relinquished suffering. Her snake-like hair flailed behind her as she touched Natia's chin. "What's your family going to do for you now? Now, you'll watch as they burn in hell... never to set foot in this world again. Just... like... you." She spoke slowly, pushing her face close to Natia's.
"You don't know shit about my family!" Natia spat in her face.
The Jester reared back, wiping the spit off of her cheek before jabbing Natia's face with her pale fist. "Disgusting fucking... BITCH!" She emphasized. Her transformation's newly profound strength sapped Natia's stamina with a single blow, removing the pale phoenix thrall behind her. "I don't need to know your family to know that they were a bunch of pathetic fools. They gave birth to a failure like you, after all. So did mine, but here I am! Their beautiful creation! They made me! And I will show them how it feels to lose everything, keel over... and die."
Blood leaked from the side of Natia's mouth after the Jester's punitive punch struck her. "You keep telling yourself that," Natia muttered, reminiscing of their happy faces before they died. "But... I know that they weren't failures. They loved me. You don't know what love is... because you gave up on it. You gave up on Claire before she even had a chance-"
The Jester dug her fist into Natia's gut as the tendrils drilled into her two arms and legs. Some of the violet tendrils pierced her sides. The tendrils penetrated her nanosuit, skin, and muscle, gouging out the life of her body as blood gushed around her. Natia's blood-curdling scream of terror was enough to be heard from miles away.
"CLAIRE THIS, CLAIRE THAT!" The Jester mocked with a childish tone. "Claire... is dead. She has been dead inside me for so long. Nothing that she does or says will ever change me! She will be the disappointment that she always has been, just like you," She said, ramping up the strength of the tendrils piercing Natia's skin. She removed them, revealing the darkened wounded spots on Natia's skin dripping down to the ground. "In fact, you remind me of her... trying so hard to win me over again. But it won't work."
"R...R..." Natia was about to go into shock from the torturous pain. But she controlled her breathing despite her body bleeding profusely. Her eyes rolled back in agony. Her sweat dripped down her face. Her neural uplink was weakening, and the nanosuit was fighting back against her. Tears leaked from her eyes as she gathered what little strength she had to call his name. "Ryo... help..." She whimpered.
"What's that?" The Jester was unsure of what she said.
"Ryo..." Natia's weak voice was at the same volume. "Ryo... help me..."
"I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" The Jester frustratingly slapped Natia's face, spreading the leaked blood on her mouth down to the ground and on her palm. She wiped it off on one of her controlled tendrils, disgusted by it. "SAY IT!"
"Ryo..." Natia continued whispering, closing her eyes to envision what little life she had in her.
"I've had enough of you...! Just DIE!" The Jester lunged her hand forward toward Natia's heart as the tendrils all collapsed on her for her final execution. The execution that reminded Natia of her mother's death as her head rolled across the floor.
Her life flashed before her very eyes, and instead of expecting to see her family greeting her in heaven, she saw Ryo's smile, opening his arms, waiting to embrace him.