Nightsea Outlaw

"Step."

Alex jumped the distance between himself and Mister Tyson. His feet blurred as if they were hitting the ground hundreds of times in a single instant. He reappeared in Mister Tyson's face, swinging his fist as he gathered power in his right arm.

"Might."

"Rebirth Retreat!"

Fwoosh.

Flames erupted as Alex's muscles bulged along his right arm. He hadn't had time to gather metal around himself. He had focused entirely on getting a quick hit in so that he could end the fight.

He wished he could have been that lucky.

His fist slammed through flame and air, and nothing else. A burning sensation raced across his knuckles as the fire fell on him in a cascade. It seared his skin before dissipating almost as quickly as it had started. Alex dropped to his hands, his muscles burning as his nerves went numb in his arm. His eyes searched for Mister Tyson, but the man had disappeared in the burst of flames.

"Running away after all that big talk?" Alex asked, keeping his senses keyed to the area.

It was bait, but that didn't matter. Alex just needed to know where Mister Tyson was. Alex hoped his curse didn't allow him to turn invisible. That would be incredibly annoying.

Flap. Flap.

He did the one thing no one did in movies until it was too late. He looked up. Two resplendent orange and red wings burned brightly on Mister Tyson's back. They flapped in a slow, deliberate motion that felt surreal.

Alex knew the wings shouldn't support Mister Tyson in the air. Lifting a human couldn't be done with just wings. Mister Tyson didn't have hollow bones like a bird, or at least, Alex doubted he did. That didn't matter. Curses didn't have to obey physics, and neither did techniques. They warped reality to make the impossible possible.

"I'm not running away." Mister Tyson raised his leg, and an arch of flame roared down it. "Rebirth Slice!"

Fwoosh.

"Steel Wall."

Bzzt.

Alex threw his hand up, conjuring a wall in front of him as the cut slammed against it. Again, it warmed to the touch from the flame, but held strong. They weren't getting anywhere. So long as Mister Tyson kept his distance, Alex couldn't hit him hard enough to end the fight.

"Junk Arms."

Alex threw out both his hands, and electrical sparks ran down them with a surge of aether from his gate. Power pulsed in his head as pain arched down the side of his skull. With an electric zap, metal formed over his arms, extending them further than his normal reach and armoring them with jagged metal.

On Aherlow, he had managed to conjure an entire suit of armor around his body, but that had been because he held an amplification device. Holding both arms together at the same time was something that put a heavy stress on his mind. The further he pushed, the more he strained body and mind.

However, he had gotten better. The time spent training with his crew had bought him that much.

"That won't be enough." Mister Tyson leaned forward, flames exploding out from his back in a massive eruption of orange and red. "Rebirth Descent!"

A flaming wheel was the best way Alex could describe it. Mister Tyson spun forward like a car taking off from a dead stop, cutting through the air and leaving a flaming trail behind him. Alex clenched his teeth and jumped. He couldn't let Mister Tyson control the momentum of the fight.

"Acceleration Piston!"

His legs blurred as he took off from the wall, his mechanical arm reaching back before snapping forward. His body disappeared for a brief instant, no different from his use of the Path of Step. It was a combination of technique and curse, a way to double dip into the Surreal and warp the world around him to a greater degree.

Thud. Screech.

Feet met metal fist mid-air. Alex's arm groaned at him. For a moment, Mister Tyson stood on his fist, his arms outstretched behind him as the flame trail rose behind him like a waterfall. In the next, Alex was forced down, not only by the force of the kick but also by the weight of both their bodies. However, he wasn't about to let the opportunity go to waste.

"Not yet." Alex reached forward with his left arm, grabbing hold of Mister Tyson's ankle with metal hands that ignored the flames flowing across his body. "You're not getting away!"

They fell together, back toward the wall.

Thump.

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Alex landed hard. He caught himself on his knees, but still held on to Mister Tyson's legs. Kicks crashed down onto his right arm from Mister Tyson's free leg, but Alex held it up to keep any of the flames from coming down into his face. He had some high pain tolerance, but even he would buckle under third-degree burns across his face.

Flap. Flap.

"Let go!" Mister Tyson yelled as he kicked Alex's arms again and again.

His wings tried their best to pull away, but Alex's grip was l as strong as steel. He pulled hard against Mister Tyson's leg, finding his footing on the stone wall. He swung hard with one arm, taking the leg down in a line right toward the floor. There was no chance for Mister Tyson to escape. So long as Alex could keep his grip, the end was a given.

Splat.

Alex slammed Mister Tyson face-first into the ground. He leaned forward on his toes as fire raced through his chest. His breaths came in quick gasps, but he didn't let go. He wouldn't let Mister Tyson gain distance on him again.

"How about another one?" Alex pulled hard on Mister Tyson's leg, swinging him into the air again and bringing him crashing down on the other side.

Splat.

Alex started to do it again the moment that Mister Tyson hit the hard stone on the opposite side, but his grip slid. No, that wasn't right. It wasn't that his grip slid, but Mister Tyson's skin slipped off his leg. Alex pulled back on the leg, and the skin came with it.

Rip.

"Rebirth Molt!"

Fwoosh.

The skin came off like clothing, and Mister Tyson kicked back into the air as flames wreathed around him. Alex stood with a limp skin-suit in his hand as Mister Tyson rose in his true form. Alex smirked, recognizing the grizzled face that looked down on him. Mister Tyson was back in the form Alex had seen back on Aherlow. He didn't quiet understand how it worked, but he wore disguises like rip-off costumes, except they were as convincing as a real person. The size could vary—the woman he had been was much shorter than his normal form, and it didn't appear to harm the form beneath. The man even still wore a pinstripe suit.

Alex just chalked it up to curse shenanigans.

Flap. Flap.

"I needed that face for a time, but I think that its usefulness is fading." Mister Tyson's eyes focused out into the distance. "Our time here grows short, Ortega."

Fwoosh.

He drew his arms into a wide arch, and flames rushed around his hands in circles. They rotated, blending the flames into long, almost beam-like constructs. Alex raised his arms as he watched them. He had a few ideas, but it would all depend on what happened next. Mister Tyson raised his hands high, carrying the flaming rings with them.

"Flare Binds!"

Fwoosh.

He threw the rings down at Alex, and they arced through the air on two separate circular paths. Alex wasn't an idiot. He wasn't just going to stand there and tank them. If the rings were coming for him, then he would just have to not be where they were aimed. However, he didn't charge toward Mister Tyson. His first instinct was that Mister Tyson was prepared for him coming straight at him again.

"Step."

Alex jumped to the right, his feet blurring again. He reappeared closer to the stairs that led to a higher part of the wall and prepared to jump at Mister Tyson to bring him down. Then he noticed the circles changing direction mid-air. Alex's eyes widened as they turned and came for him again.

"Of course." He breathed in a deep breath. "We can't ever have anything be easy. That would just ruin everything. Step."

"Flare Binds!"

Fwoosh.

Even as he jumped away from the first two, and they crossed each other where he had been standing, Mister Tyson formed two more, slinging them down at Alex. The first two didn't disappear either. The odds just kept stacking against Alex, and he didn't like it. The next two arced down as Alex raised his hands.

Above him, Mister Tyson raised his arms again, and two new circles started whirling around his hands. Four wasn't the limit to the technique, it seemed. Alex slammed his arms into the ground and took in a deep breath. He formed the image of a metal box in his mind. He needed to buy himself time to think out of sight, and he trusted the metal to hold off the flame for a few moments.

"Steel Cube."

Bzzt. Thud.

Darkness surrounded him, cutting off the light of the day and the flames in the same moment. Alex knelt down, and the warmth of blood dripping down his nose told him he was pushing his curse again. It wouldn't matter, at least in the short-term. He wasn't doing anything crazier than what he normally did in a fight, after all.

"How do you get yourself into fights like this?" Alex sighed. "It's not like you can just fly."

He had some tricks to get in the air, and stay there for longer than he should. However, it only really worked when fighting with grounded opponents, or ones that were just jumping. With wings, Tyson could easily get out of the way if Alex just charged at him. Flight just granted too many degrees of movement, especially when a curse could nullify the need to follow physics.

He would have to come at the fight from a different angle.

Hiss.

He turned his head, but there was no light, just the sound of metal heating echoed through the box. Outside, he could hear some faint rumblings of a deep voice. Mister Tyson was probably announcing how he would cook Alex to a crisp inside of the box, or something along those lines.

Alex, of course, had no intention of staying inside the cube.

Thud.

He raised his metal fist and slammed it into the stone beneath him. It was heavy, but it wasn't designed to hold against attacks from above. It was a roof, and there would be space inside the wall beneath. That was Alex's goal with the cube. It allowed him to break line of sight and come back to the fight from a different direction.

He just needed to hurry before his box turned into an oven.

"Better get to work," Alex said, raising his fist again and slamming it down against the stone.

Thud. Crack.

He smiled as he raised his hand again. One more strike broke through the stone and sent stone crumbling down into the hole beneath him. He dropped down, landing in an unlit room. A light glowing beneath the door on the far side gave him enough to navigate with. Alex rushed through the door, slamming his shoulder into it as more yelling happened above.

Thud. Slam.

He pushed out into the hall, finding it unoccupied, but lit with white stones down the wall in small cradles. Alex rushed down the line in the opposite direction of the stairs above, and at the end of the hall, he saw the stairs that led to the top of the wall. As he ran down the hall, his hold on his box above broke, but he had already done what he needed.

Bzzt.

With a wave of his metal hand, he conjured metal spikes around him. It was time to clip Mister Tyson's wings.