>Theshold has Been Quenched!<
Jay's eyes focus on the message that appears in his vision. It had been a minute and a half already, which meant his Debuffs from his threshold would naturally go away. Jay's vision clears back up, and he doesn't feel nauseous from the intense dizziness he's had. The sudden jump in tension also fades that was created by shock.
Looking to his left and right, Jay can see Blaze and Sandra armed and ready for an attack.
"W-why'd you guys come to protect me anyways?" Jay asks.
"Are you stupid?" Blaze responds, "You did the same for us even though we rebuked you!"
"Aren't we the ones who fought you at the beginning of this match?" Sandra explains, "Yet you still sliced through Geyser and protected us!"
They were right. Jay felt the need to block Tide's attack, seemingly because of the representation of the situation. It reminded him of how he met Josh and Isabelle.
"Y-yeah, but..." Jay stutters.
"Think of this as payback!" Blaze says, "Now, what's the plan?"
Blaze was right. They needed an actual plan to take Tide down. Jay held the rest of his words and accepted the fact that they were a team against a mutual opponent. It looks like he would have some aid during this match.
Tide's armor was such strong material, none of the team's attacks seemed to contact Tide himself. They sure did scratch away at his armor, but Tide has lost zero HP.
"W-we need to concentrate our attack i-in a single location. We have to penetrate his armor." Jay explains.
"Agreed, it's several layers thick and very durable," Sandra says.
"Hey, wait, are you sure you're up to fight still? You're still in your threshold!" Blaze panics.
"N-not anymore," Jay says, "I just quenched it."
Once a player lasts through their Debuffs from their threshold, which all last a minute and thirty seconds each, they will have successfully 'quenched' their threshold. They won't regain HP, but their Debuffs will go away.
"How much HP do you have?" Sandra asks.
"Twelve points," Jay says.
"Well then, yeah! You're not in a good state to fight—" Blaze says, but Jay cuts him off.
"No!" Jay calls out, "I-I won't let you guys fight him on your own for me. I-I can contribute!"
Sandra and Blaze both look at Jay like he is joking, but he is completely serious. Jay was staring at Tide with ferocity in his eyes, even though Tide could practically breathe on him, and he would fall to the ground.
"...Are you sure?" Sandra reiterates.
"Yes." Jay says, pointing over to his sword, "Can one of you grab my sword over there?"
Sandra looks over to where Jay is pointing and spots his broken blade. She quickly dashes over to it and tosses it over to Jay from where she is. Jay spots it in the air and effortlessly grabs hold of his sword's handle. He holds the blade to his side as Sandra comes back to his side. The three new friends look on to Tide as he starts to take a step forward in rage.
"Uh, just out of curiosity, how much AP do you have, Sandra?" Blaze asks nervously.
"Close to none." She mumbles.
"Ah, great! So we both can't do anything crazy then! I'm about to hit zero as well!" Blaze nervously jokes.
Jay closes his eyes, concentrating on the world around him, and uses Preloading. The amount of health he had generally tired him out since the less HP a player has, the more exhausted or worn out they'll feel. It isn't considered a Debuff in its own right, but it sure does feel like one.
Jay senses that Tide won't move, which he interprets as anticipating their team assault.
"He looks like he's going to wait for us," Jay calls out to Blaze and Sandra.
Tide's axe was nowhere in sight. Ever since Blaze had deflected it into the air, it was entirely out of the equation. Neither side of the opposition knew where it could've been.
"Ok, then it's now or never!" Sandra replies to Jay.
"Agreed!" Blaze says.
And after they had said this, Jay, Blaze, and Sandra all started their approach to Tide. Blaze in the front, with Sandra following suit in front of Jay. They never discussed their means of taking Tide down, but each player felt in tune with each other.
'These stupid players!' Tide thinks, looking forward as Jay and his friends start to rush over to his location, 'How is this fair in the *first* place?!'
As Jay and his team race towards Tide, Jay couldn't help but feel empowered. He had so little health, but he finally had some teammates in this thing. Not only that, but Preloading was an insane ability he never thought he would ever understand.
But, although he could let Blaze and Sandra push up ahead on their own, he makes sure to follow closely, remembering what he promised inside of his head just minutes ago. The fictitious Helmet told him to put in the work to achieve his goal, and he was going to stick with that plan, not allowing others to achieve it for him.
"Sandra, back me up after this!" Blaze announces.
Blaze is the first to approach Tide directly and extends his shield in an offensive bash. Tide's armor weighs him down enough for Blaze to hit the bash, but all it did was send Tide back by an inch before he rebounds back without a scratch on him. Blaze is sent a foot away, landing on his feet firmly, but Tide raises his right fist for a hefty punch.
"I got you!" Sandra calls out, sending out her chain blades in Tide's direction.
The chain blades launch into Tide's arm, and Sandra pulls on them to keep Tide's force to a halt. Tide struggles to launch his attack as Sandra lands over him, planting her feet on each of his shoulders.
Tide then shifts his attention to the counterattack, grabbing the chains of the chain blades and pulling down on them. This, in turn, launches Sandra down to the ground, slamming her on her back and dislodging the chain blades from Tide's armor. Tide, however, doesn't let go of the chains and arches his posture to his left. He then throws the chains—along with Sandra tethered onto them—away from him and Blaze.
"Agh!" Sandra exclaims.
Jay gasps as he sees his teammate being launched away and crashing into the side of a nearby building, but he tries to keep his momentum and concentration. Tide was focused on her and not him and was faced in a different direction. Jay grips his weapon tightly as he sends his arm forward in a horizontal slash.
It makes contact with Tide, but it was only to get his attention.
'If we want to focus an area to weaken his armor, then we need to open up an area for a kill move!' Jay thinks, 'We need to kill him in a single shot once we open his armor to minimize effort!'
The desired location would be either on his head or somewhere on his chest. Due to the amount of trouble it would be to gradually open up his helmet since it was a more challenging target to hit, Jay follows up his previous attack with another slash at Tide's chest plate.
His cracked blade digs into Tide's armor cleanly, creating a significant cut in Tide's amour. Again, no HP leaked out of the attack, but it was progressing.
Jay's eyes widen in fear as he uses Preloading following this attack. A white line near Tide's left arm was aimed directly at Jay's face. One move like that would end Jay's life for sure since he was so weak in HP. Jay dodges Tide's punch promptly after, leaning behind himself.
Tide's fist goes right past him, but Jay sense another issue arising. Tide's leg was lifted, and Jay had no time to close his eyes to use Preloading again. Tide was definitely going for a kick.
"Watch out!" Blaze says, jumping in front of Jay with his shield in front of him.
Tide's knee collides with Blaze's shield, and Tide throws another punch at Blaze's guard right afterward. It seemed like Blaze was blocking each move without an issue, but this wasn't the case.
"OwW!" Blaze groans as he hides behind his shield.
Each one of Tide's attacks was so strong in and of itself, the tension created from his blasts into Blaze's shield caused Blaze to feel immense pressure. The pain started to swell into his arms the most, causing him to lose HP. Jay quickly runs to Blaze and puts his hands on his back in an attempt to help push back Tide's sudden flurry of hooks and jabs.
Blaze's situation wasn't good, as Jay couldn't be touched a single time from Tide's attack in order to survive, but Blaze couldn't keep going much longer, so Jay needed to do something.
"What? Can't you keep going, hero?!" Tide yells as he throws punch after punch at Blaze's shield.
"M-maybe not, but a true hero *always* has a sidekick to two!" Blaze says, gritting his teeth in pain.
Suddenly, Sandra appears in Tide's peripherals to his left. She was using Aspect in short amounts to vault across the ground like a cheetah, flipping forwards while sending mini-blasts of air behind her with her hands. She was gaining lots of speed, and as she got closer, she flipped twice and roundhouse kicked Tide in the face.
"Hah!" Sandra yelps while she launches her move.
Tide's helmet blocks the damage of the blow, but he's knocked off balance. Sandra's attack gives Blaze and Jay the moment they need.
"Don't ever call me your sidekick again!" Sandra yells at Blaze.
"Shut up and roll with it!" Blaze complains, "It sounded so cool!"
Blaze jumps forward with his shield straight horizontal instead of vertical to block an attack, and he rams his weapon into Tide like it was a brass knuckle. Although his shield is blunt on its sides, the force put behind it deepens the large scar that Jay had managed to put into Tide's breastplate earlier.
'No!' Tide thinks.
Jay jumps over Blaze after he attacks and takes another swing at the scar, cutting straight down into it this time. It deepens the cut once again, but skin hasn't been met yet.
Sandra—who had backed off after kicking Tide—approaches after Jay's attack, sending her chain blades at the scar as well. This time, the rag-tag team sees something they've been waiting for. A glowing red liquid pours out of the fault in Tide's armor after Sandra's attack.
'He lost HP!' Jay thinks.
'That's it!' Blaze thinks.
'We've made contact!' Sandra thinks.
They had finally made the scar in Tide's armor deep enough to deal some damage.
'These... these little bugs!' Tide thinks, completely in shock at the team's sudden composition, 'They need to be *SQUASHED*!!!'
Tide responds to this attack by sending a large sweep kick towards the entire team. He regrets throwing his ax in the first place since he could've cleaned them up by this point if he had it. The three-person unit easily dodges his move, seeing Tide slowly run out of steam.
'Why did I try to show off?!' Tide thinks, shuffling after his kick to catch his breath.
"N-now! H-he's weak!" Jay calls out.
The next move would decide the match. Blaze quickly responds by snapping his fingers, igniting his pink flames.
"Burning Palm!" He says, creating his signature move.
Bright pink light merges around Blaze's fingers, which act as a fire starter, and starts to form a giant flaming hand, which shoots forward at Tide. It knocks into him right at the scar, sending him backward a decent distance.
Tide slides across the asphalt runway but loses his balance and shifts one of his legs back awkwardly in the process. Burning Palm manages to force the scar on Tide's armor open by another couple of inches.
Sandra then starts to converge both of her hands together and clasps them together in front of her. The stance she held was similar to that of someone praying, but her hands were facing opposite directions while her arms were bent forward, creating a strange display. She loosens the grasp on her hands and extends her fingers outwards while still making her hands have contact with each other. Suddenly, the wind around her grows restless and rapidly spirals around her outstretched hands.
"Ok, my turn," Sandra says, letting her hands go freely and arching her right hand open behind her "*«Hurricane»*!"
The large spiral around Sandra's open right hand freaks back and forth, and Sandra launches her entire arm and body forwards as if she was pitching a baseball. The Hurricane projectile makes debris on the street from Tide's previous attacks flow into it. It continues to shoot its way to Tide's scar.
The scar is opened up to a vast extent as Hurricane lays into him, and loads of HP gush outwards. The balance Tide once had was stripped from him as Hurricane pushes him all the way back, and he falls heavily onto his back in the process.
"He's low!" Sandra announces, "Just one last attack!"
"O-on it!" Jay replies fiercely.
"Damn you, cheaters!" Tide yells back, "You know only two of you will pass!"
Jay runs up to Tide with an insane amount of concentration. His broken blade sways back and forth as he runs straight ahead for his enemy.
He hadn't noticed it at all until here, but HP was covered all over Jay's face in streamlines. It looks like his skull was crushed, but Jay didn't feel pain anywhere. He felt exhausted for sure, but there wasn't any bruised or sharp pain anywhere on his body.
The only pain he could feel was in his own mind. If he didn't kill Tide, then he would lose this match. Without the help from Blaze and Sandra, he would've died already. He had to do this for his mother, and he was determined to win. Jay jumps above Tide once he makes his way over to him, bringing his sword above him with the blade facing downward. He grips the handle with both hands as he prepares to drive the word directly into Tide's stomach, with the entry point being the scar.
As he does this, he gets flashes of his progress in just a short amount of time after his mother's second anniversary in the hospital. Meeting Helmet and subsequentially gaining access to the Slayer tryouts, meeting Dillan and Kira for the first time, and even learning and trying to understand what Preloading was. He can only use Preloading or what he thought it was for only a second at a time, having to close his eyes in the process, but it felt good making progress at all.
And the one true obstacle in Jay's way was right in front of him.
"Is this how you succeed? You're WEAK!" Tide yells as Jay prepares to launch his final attack, "You aren't strong at *ALL*! You've just been hiding behind your friends!"
"..." Jay takes a moment to visualize his friends and family, "You're right!—"
Axel and Ivy, along with Dillan and Kira, really did contribute heavily to him being here at all, which Jay knew he had to change eventually. His heart pounds out of his chest.
"—I-I'm... I'm not strong at all! In fact, Aspect isn't even a thing I can use..." Jay says, with tears falling from his face as he gets uber emotional, "But that doesn't change the fact...!—"
Jay's mother visualizes herself in Jay's eyesight for a split second, awake and smiling at him.
"...T-that I can't lose this fight."
Jay drives his sword directly through Tide's body and into the ground below him, making HP shoot everywhere from the wound.
"Ack!" Tide flinches as pain rises throughout his body.
Tide's body twitches for a moment, then goes limp. He starts to fade away as if he was respawning, which meant Jay, Blaze, and Sandra were finally successful in their troubling skirmish.
Tide was officially dead.