Shade: Unbound

The silver lining of this situation was that they were a ways out from the more populated areas, and that the burst of sound got less lethal the farther it traveled. He could see that it stopped shattering buildings after the first few hundred meters.

But that didn't mean there was no damage.

Or did it?

Barriers were spawning all around the area, high and wide at every section near the transportation hub that wasn't too far off from their location. From underground, the seemingly innocuous metal lining suddenly lit up and began emanating strange waves of noise. Sound? But why specifically that in response to the…

And then he realized.

It was Central's security system limiting the damage. Designed to counteract large scale destruction in a district where Unbound fought on the regular. Of course; he had known it existed, and even seen it in action. But this was the first time he had ever interacted with it from the other side. As someone whose fight was triggering it.

Before he had any more time to think about it, Lyra rushed forward and tackled him without hesitation. Her arms clenched around his waist in a death grip. "Were you trying to make me puke my guts out?" she asked, voice breathy.

He was trying to get her to stop resisting, but he didn't care to respond either way; the fight was back on, and he had to deal with her again. No further thought could be spared for the area surrounding the fight. He needed to win.

Just now had been close, there had been an opportunity, and yet he'd hesitated like a complete moron. If there was going to be another chance, he had to create one. So he didn't twitch when she smashed him and tried to grab her head with electricity crackling in his palms.

She disengaged and let it hit her arm instead, which he grabbed in order to slam her down next to him. Except she turned intangible and flew away, kicking both feet down to make the earth tremor beneath them.

"Lyra," he said, unable to hear himself over the noise, "Just stop this already. I didn't want to have to do this."

"I don't know," she shouted back with an expression of tired glee on her face. She burst back into close range to throw some concussive kicks, all of them easily blocked. "I'm really enjoying myself!"

A rock floated up to her hands after she jumped back again, and she crushed it in her fingers. The dust compressed into a dense sphere no bigger than a golf ball, pulsating with dark ripples over its surface. Then she tossed it at him.

He didn't run.

Didn't block.

Simply raised his arms to block with maximum reinforcement.

He was fine.

Everything else was not.

Where his armor withstood the majority of the damage, the tiny ball destroyed the ground itself. It didn't explode so much as it unraveled. Eerie silence was all he heard from it as this thing served like some sort of magnet for sound waves. Any disturbance in the environment, seen but unheard. His senses tracked the expanding death curtain interacting with the molecules of the air and ground alike. Billions upon trillions of particles obliterating themselves, and drawing in nearby vibrations to further propagate the ruin.

It tore and tore at the hard asphalt until there was nothing left, and Finn had to float once the explosion burrowed downwards because there was no ground left to stand on. When it was done, they hovered over this enormous crater while they faced each other.

There wasn't a pause between exchanges this time, only another charge from Lyra that started with her grabbing his wrists so he couldn't shock her in the face. But she kept pushing, far away and out of the area.

Seeing her face above his own, he thought about how easy it would be to just ram his hardlight blade through her chest and be done with it. He… couldn't do it. Even if she survived, he didn't think he had it in him to be that brutal. Did he?

He watched on with a pained expression that was entirely unrelated to the physical sensation of being rocketed through a steel wall like it was styrofoam. A high-pitched whine built up around them in preparation for her next attack.

No. Enough.

His left hand wrestled against her grip, and he tore off a piece of metal. Then he activated his nanites as he brought it to her face. She yanked it out of his hand and threw it away.

"You're still holding back," she noted with a frown.

He brought his hand up in front of her face and she leaned back as expected, but he didn't need to touch her. Instead he aligned it with the stray shard of metal in the air behind them, and completed the circuit. He had, after all, given it a positive charge while his hand had a negative one.

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In stony silence, he watched Lyra's head get electrocuted. She seized up, and he used that moment to take over and shake off her grip to grab her in turn. A window shattered as they passed back out of the empty building behind them, and he flew them back away from civilization. But Lyra snapped out of it and banked in the opposite direction. He couldn't properly contest her in the air with no leverage. She was the faster flyer.

Making him vibrate at her frequency, she made them both ride a soundwave to a building in a populated area. He switched back his field when he realized what she was trying to do but she was somehow changing her frequency to stay permeable to him despite his new counter.

In response, he adjusted the configuration of his own frequency on the go. It never worked for long though. Every time he attempted to grapple, she would literally slip through his fingers after a brief moment. And she generally kept her distance a lot more now that she knew he could touch her if given the chance.

But he wasn't out of tricks. Not even close. After spending such a long time away, he had gained a far more versatile power. One that granted him the ability to control the building blocks of his body and the immediate area around him to an extent. Knowing that, he started setting up for the takedown.

The problem was, they were near now in the middle of a street, his body having carved a trench in the road after a particularly nasty throw from Calliope.

And she was indeed Calliope again, just as he was Shade, because they had re-equipped their mask and disguise, respectively. He could already feel they were being watched.

Some part of him wondered why no heroes had shown up, but he supposed they hadn't really been staying in one place for long. Plus, they were only now getting more eyes on the fight due to having moved far enough from their starting point.

That said, he was planning to finish this fast. The less interference, the better. Protecting the innocents would be a pain if this kept up too. Therefore, a quick win, it was.

Assuming a looser stance, Finn inhaled deeply. Channeling the enhanced impulses through his nervous system felt more natural now that he was beginning to hone his control over internal electricity after months of training. Couple that with his reinforcement limit having gone up, and he had more speed on his hands than he'd displayed so far if he truly pushed himself.

Lyra had said he was holding back. She was right, but he would beat her in his own way. Right here, right now.

One second, he was leaning forward slightly, letting himself fall. The next, he had closed the distance faster than his cognition could keep up with. He was simply there next to her. And she reacted just a second too late to block his knee against her arm. He could see the fractures appearing in her humerus as he clenched his fist.

Unsurprisingly, she made distance again to prepare another large-scale attack. The difference was that he was already after her in less than a heartbeat. This level of speed tore at his muscles and tendons, and the damage would compound with each successive jump if he didn't give himself time to heal.

And since he gave it barely a breath, he would be forced to keep doing so until Lyra was down, he had a limited number of jumps in him before he would have to let up the pressure. Of course, it wouldn't come to that.

They played a game of chase across the district, clashing with thunderous force and then appearing somewhere else faster than normal humans could follow. His priorities were subduing her while keeping collateral damage to a minimum. However this looked to other people, he didn't care—he just wanted her back.

His sharp trajectories and impossible angles and turns were executed without mistakes, courtesy of his AI calculating the exact trajectories for him and dropping instructions in his head prior to each jump. Finn chased the lost girl and gained a bit of ground in each exchange. Brought her more off-balance with each hit, forcing her to suffer more broken bones in quick succession.

In the end, her mistake came in the form of assuming he had adapted to her new intangible frequency again when he hadn't. He had merely swiped with a hand, not even touching, in order to bait it out. And he followed that up with an actual counter to her power, the frequency having become apparent in his outline of her future action that had now clarified enough that he could discern exactly how she was timing her oscillations the instant she decided on them. It was only possible to get this much precision in a precognitive aura overlay because of how many times he had dealt with that same ability.

Left with no way out, she found herself being shocked by his bare hands. Her muscles locked up. And she couldn't defend herself as he threw her to the ground in the middle of a public park and straddled her. From his sleeve, he extended leathery chords to wrap around her wrist to prevent any more phasing. The armor had adapted to her vibrations by now, enough to dampen that part of her power by keeping her limb still.

Her mouth opened in preparation for yet another defiant scream. He jabbed her in the throat, and she choked on her breath. Her other arm came up, and promptly got batted aside. Gritting his teeth, Finn brought his fist down on Lyra's face.

It rattled her, but she was still moving, struggling to escape. He hit her again. More movement. Again. Again. From behind him, she brought a house-sized block of soil down on his back. He didn't care. He just kept hitting. No reality anchoring. Just his physical strength.

Harder and harder. Until her mask cracked, and he began to feel warm blood splashing from each hit. "Stop. You can't win this," he told her.

But she was too damn resilient. She just kept fighting. That was why he didn't let up.

Raised arm, clench, splash. Clench, hit, splash. Clench hit splash clench hit splash clench hit splash hit hit hit splash hit hit hit hit splash hit splash hit splash hit hit…

Finally he saw her consciousness waver, prompting him to stop. Hesitate. A costly moment of indecision.

Although her face was bruised and broken and bleeding all over, she had the presence of mind to start vibrating her arm. That wouldn't get her free, so what was she doing?

It exploded at the elbow, splattering him all over.

A parting blast did the trick of sending him into the air for a second. The future outlines didn't matter if the attack was omnidirectional. And he couldn't dodge without giving her too much room. He endured but she slipped out, torpedoed out of the hole he had her in. Then she phased into the ground. He readied his power again, paying attention to his senses? Where would she come up?

She didn't.

Like a fish in water, she kept swimming away through solid matter at astounding speed, all the way until she was out of his range. He could've given chase, but he didn't. He just collapsed to his knees in what used to be a grass field.

The fight was over.

All he had left was blood on his skin and a broken bird's face at his feet.