Chapter 36
All or Nothing
"Again!" Tara yelled, standing up from the ground and ignoring the profusely bleeding hole that had just been opened in her upper right thigh. A faint, barely visible sheen of light coated her as she rushed forward at Ethan who stepped to the side where Ronald's fist was waiting for him. Absorbing the blow gently with his side, he trapped the boy's hand by pressing down with his arm and locking it in-between, while kicking out at Tara and landing it squarely at her chest, pummeling her backwards into a flight that lasted ten or so feet.
At the same time, he yanked Ronald forward and heaved him over his shoulder, throwing him like a ball near Tara. All through it, he did feel faint resistance, a whiff of energy trying to create a separation between him and Ronald, but it was too weak to make a difference.
Tara and Ronald stayed lying on the ground, too tired, bloody, and in too much pain to move. Every fibre of their beings was screaming at them, and pulsating bursts of pain were almost a welcome change to the persistent, dull ache they had been experiencing for hours now, battling. Elijah hurried over, wobbling almost, and helped them sit up and drink some water while cleaning them up with a wet towel.
The boy was sweating heavily, a side-effect of rapid Mana consumption (as well as general nervousness, Ethan imagined), having tried desperately to support them in their attempts to break down Ethan's defences. It was unsuccessful, thus far, but there were definite improvements: Elijah's timing in when to exercise his anti-gravity spells was almost perfect, seemingly by intuition alone, but the spells themselves were simply too weak to do much. For now.
"That was better," Ethan walked up to the trio, looking down. "Still pathetic, but not infant-level pathetic. You're toddlers now. Congratulations."
"... fuck you," Tara mumbled.
"Elijah," Ethan turned to the boy. "For the next go-around, you have full autonomy."
"H-huh?" The boy mumbled.
"Think of these two as your dolls," Ethan explained. "Your marionettes. And you're the puppeteer. Whatever you say, they have to obey. If you command them to bend over and strip, they'll bend over and strip. You will, right?"
"Sure," Tara nodded. "And aim my ass high enough to shit into your throat."
"I–I, I don't know…"
"Just give it a whirl," Ethan shrugged. They'd been fighting repeatedly for some five-six hours, with some hour-long breaks when Tara and Ronald would pass out. He eased up on intensiveness and didn't inflict any of the truly scarring wounds just yet, wanting to see whether there were any improvements. And, thankfully, there actually were some.
For their whole time battling, Ethan had purposefully left crumbs that neither Tara nor Ronald seemed to have picked up, but Elijah did. He'd observed the boy cringe and wince at very specific timings that Tara and Ronald missed, which was why he had him act the role of a shotcaller.
Ethan himself would never stand in the rear with a comprehensive overview of the battlefield. As such, his ability to command others would be quite diminished and based entirely on predictive factors rather than real-time adjustments. If Elijah, even in half the capacity, could do some of that work… it would be life-saving, especially for their upcoming nuptials with the Tunnel.
About ten minutes later, Tara and Ronald stood up and resumed their positions with Elijah at the rear. Though they were spite-tongued and bitter and angry, they would listen to whatever the boy said. They'd also noticed that his timings when he tried to intervene were almost perfect. If he could intuit something on such a micro scale, there was every chance he could also do as much on a more macro scale.
The three mumbled something between themselves and Ethan pretended that he didn't hear any of it. Inwardly, he was somewhat surprised; Elijah's plan was rather naive and short-sighted, but it was a plan going in the right direction, for the first time. Ethan, like most monsters the kids would face, could not be tackled conventionally–he was vastly more experienced than them which meant that moment-to-moment fighting would always leave them weaker as they could neither react nor predict as well as he could.
Ronald and Tara stepped forward, and Elijah stuck to their rear, though within touching distance of the two. Ethan waited patiently as they rushed forward, seeming to go in for a direct attack, but diverging once they got within fifteen feet. Tara and Elijah turned left, from their perspective, and widened the flank as Tara cast her conal ability while Elijah used his Quantum Weave to send a few of those particles directly at Ethan. They landed within a nanosecond, indicating that Elijah knew the absolute maximum range of the transfer to a tee. Ethan nodded inwardly as he felt a prickling sensation across his right arm where the blood particles had landed, caused entirely by irritation.
Just as that sensation occurred, Ronald swung forth with a fist. In the meantime, Tara and Elijah both had already started rushing toward him, reaching him at the exact same time as Ronald's fist was about to land.
Ethan smiled, his heart swelling with excitement momentarily. It was still not optimal, but it was a strategy that would work. After all, 'optimal' for Ethan included twenty-plus years of failures and experimentation. In today's world, without Ethan's foresight, this was optimal. Ranged attack as an aggro shifter and a distraction while a melee fighter rushed in for a quick, but weaker, jab. As soon as the ranged fighter cast a spell, they moved forward in a motion that suggested they would also engage in a melee brawl. But, of course, they wouldn't.
As Ethan, purposefully, shifted his attention to Tara, seemingly intending to absorb Ronald's punch, Tara and Elijah came to a halt as Tara threw the tiny dagger of blood she made at him. At the same time, Ronald's punch landed–and it bruised. It wasn't all Ronald, however, since Elijah used the Pulsar Surge as a fuel rather than a barrier–it repelled space itself between Ronald's fist and Ethan's skin, skimming resistance and increasing the strength of the punch by the magnitude of ten, at least.
Fuck, Ethan sighed inwardly. It became clear quickly why and how Elijah rose to the heights he did in his past life–it wasn't luck. It was the genius of it all. The boy, were he a sociopath who didn't care for others as much as he did, would have likely become and stayed one of the strongest Awakened in the world, and definitely one of the most desired as a party member. These tiny details of battling, seemingly insignificant factors, can never be learned dryly–they can only either be beaten into someone until they know them instinctually, or they can be intuited from the onset by those whose minds worked on a plane slightly different from the rest.
In the end, though, it didn't matter; the punch, though ten times stronger, was still not strong enough to even crack Ethan's bones, let alone do any permanent damage. Tara's thrown dagger barely reached him before it started losing quantitative Blood, and he easily swatted it as though it were a fly.
At the same time, he reached out and in a crisp, singular motion latched onto Ronald and dragged the boy forward, taking a few steps toward Tara and Elijah before tossing screaming Ronald who attempted to thrash at Ethan's back. Ethan threw the boy at such an angle that it blocked Tara's and Elijah's view of him, so much so that by the time Ronald's body was out of the way, Ethan was standing behind the confused duo. He gently tapped Elijah's shoulder just for the boy to experience some pain and kicked Tara into her side rather violently, cracking several ribs in the process.
She yelped in pain and bit her lip to stop herself from screaming as she fell down to her knees, holding onto her side as tightly as she could, gasping for breath. Ronald sat up and vomited to the side, and Elijah cried out softly as he started massaging his shoulder.
"You've sensed it, haven't you?" Ethan asked as he retreated back to his standard position.
"... yeah," Tara replied, looking away.
"The kid's a fucking genius, right?" Ronald asked, coming to. Elijah's cheeks blushed red as he quickly waved it off.
"No, not at all! It was all, it was all because you guys are super fast and strong!"
"If they were super fast and strong your plan might have even worked," Ethan shrugged, causing Elijah's cheeks to redden even further and for Tara and Ronald to look away in embarrassment for a moment before recovering.
"Disregarding that it's you and it definitely would not have worked even if we were strong and fast enough," Tara said. "Would this help us inside the Tunnel? Against the monsters?"
"Yeah," Ethan nodded. "But you still need to get stronger. Well, get is the wrong word in this context. You are strong–you are strong enough to punch through a tank."
"H-huh?"
"Your stats," Ethan said. "They are barely lower than mine. Like, we're talking a difference of 5-6 cumulative stats on an even Level. That's legitimately nothing. Like the difference between benching 200 and 210. So, why do you feel that much weaker than me?"
"... wait. You're being serious," Tara frowned. "You're not fucking with us."
"I'm not."
"Then shit, say so, you piece of shit!! Teach us!"
"..."
"..."
"Right," she coughed. "But still, this can't be the most efficient way."
"It is, though? Beating you until you get used to the fact that it doesn't hurt nearly as much as it should, that it doesn't have any actual long-lasting consequences, and getting you used to the sight of your body in such disarray it should ascertain death when it doesn't… all of this is the cornerstone of getting you adjusted to one, simple reality: you are now superhuman. Not just stronger than other people, not just faster than you've ever been before. You guys would slot in somewhere in Marvel's neverending assortment of superheroes, and you would land somewhere near the top. Well, not top of the top, but certainly top half. Your minds simply aren't adjusted to your bodies' new capabilities."
"... and the best way to get it adjusted is to push the body to its limits, showing the mind what it's capable of," Elijah mumbled unconsciously, prompting both Tara's and Ronald's eyes to light up with a sheen of understanding.
"Sure," Ethan smiled faintly, staying silent afterwards. While the goal, partially, was to adjust the mind to the new reality, in truth, the main directive was still the bodies themselves, getting them adjusted to the variety of sensations and extremes as they begin to reshape and remould to fall in line. But it didn't matter–it was beginning to work, and Elijah's interference simply accelerated the process. More and more, Ethan felt confident–no, confident, perhaps, was wrong and too optimistic. He simply wasn't as insecure about their chances, which was good enough for him.