Novel Full Chapter 2184 Decision Fatigue
— Kat —
Kat was focused on her surroundings while gently rubbing a finger along Lily’s spine. She was still throwing up, and Kat almost didn’t blame her. It had actually taken two ’attacks’ to clear off all of the burning, as Lily, even with all those hands, had missed the poison around the bones on her neck. Luckily that was a much quicker process then the first time… but Kat had needed to turn around for it to be easier, and Lily felt it was a bit too close to backstabbing her girlfriend.
Hence the vomiting. Not that there was anything left to throw up. *Do you want to forfeit now? You’ve proven that you can do this when necessary. I’m fine now, my regeneration has fixed everything and whatever Greaves used isn’t burning me anymore so we know it works.*
[N- hmmm] Lily instinctively wanted to say no, that they should keep fighting… that there was no reason to give up now that the hard part was done… but of course halfway through that thought Lily felt the need to throw up again and realised that she… really wasn’t in the best condition to keep fighting. [Maybe? I mean… I’m not ok, not at all but I should be? I don’t think… I mean… we just need to beat her right?]
*Perhaps, but Greaves might just teleport away again and you’re clearly not ok. Even though I’m fine, that was pretty hard on you and as I said before, and will say again… we just don’t NEED the win.*
[No, I wan to knock that bitch out of the running!]
*Lily, the glow from the bracelets are pretty distinctive. I don’t think Greaves will get knocked out from this. She’s got at least a day’s worth of energy stored up so even if we win, while it might knock her out down the line, won’t be instant.*
[I just want to beat the shit out of her!]
Kat sighed. Lily wasn’t wrong exactly. Finding some measure of revenge against Greaves did seem like a good idea… but there was no rush. Now that it had been a few seconds of Lily keeping her lunch down, Kat scooped her up and pulled her into a proper hug. Kat was a bit surprised when Lily transformed… and less surprised when she started to cry. Kat adjusted her hold on her girlfriend so that she could properly rub Lily’s back and try comforting her.
*This is a mess. I’m still not sure it was the right call letting you go through that…*
[Why are you feeling bad for me? You’re the one that got hurt!]
*Did I though? Did I really? I’m completely fine, I’m no longer in pain… but you are. I don’t want to point it out, because there’s nothing wrong with it… but Lily you just spent the last few minutes throwing up and now you’re crying into my shoulder. I don’t mind, it’s all fine, and I’m happy to comfort you as you get through this… but it’s also VERY clear that this whole thing was a lot worse for you then it was for me.*
[I can tell you’re hurting as well though…]
*Perhaps but I can manage. It’s just some minor inner turmoil, mostly about, as I said, if it was right to get you to go through with all of this. Though I’m also probably not feeling the full force of that worry. I guess it depends on how fast YOU move past this.*
[I think there was meant to be something about supressing trauma with silly memories soon afterwards? Or acting like everything is fine?]
*Pretty sure that even if we aren’t already past that ’soon after’ threshold you probably can’t recover in time to find anything amusing. Plus we are in a combat arena. Speaking of which-*
Kat was about to comment on her next set of plans when the sound of something grinding against the ground rang out from the distance. Kat glanced around but didn’t see any sign of Greaves… but the sound was still going and… *Wait the wall! The arena must be getting smaller and the sound is both a warning, and a way to tell us how close it is. We’re not far from the edge so we might need to move soon.*
[That should be fine. Most of my tears are gone at this point.]
*Alright. Would you prefer to transform or stay as you are? I don’t mind holding you like this, and being able to look over my shoulder gives us better vision, in theory… in practice though you’re a much larger target.*
Lily sniffed and started to shrink, reducing in size until she was a small Memphis hidden in Kat’s arms once again. She was still sniffling a bit, despite her claims that her tears were over, but Kat was willing to ignore that for Lily’s sake. There was no reason to point it out. *We’ll need to move soon. Not sure how fast the wall is moving, but if we don’t leave soon we’ll have no way to dodge backwards, we’d just slam into the wall.*
[Yeah let’s go. Hopefully with the arena closing in Greaves won’t be able to just teleport away again.]
*Alright let’s go.* Kat took to the skies, or at least, she tried to. As soon as she left the safety of the crater something shot towards her. Knowing Greaves to be a much more dangerous opponent now, Kat took in the object flying their way carefully. It was an arrow and the fact it was glowing implied it was enchanted rather heavily. Kat considered what to do… and Lily simply fired a ball of paper at it.
The arrow and the paper collided in the air and exploded into a thick green mist that seemed to be sticking around. It was easy to fly around it, but just to be sure Kat refrained from breathing anywhere near the cloud. No reason to take risks here… at least, not yet. Kat followed the arrow back to where it had been fired but there was no sign of Greaves. Instead, there was a small contraption that had clearly been the thing to launch the arrow at her.
Unlike the original launcher, it didn’t seem primed to throw out more arrows and was remarkably more flimsy. Kat supposed it was a one use item… but that didn’t tell her where Greaves was… and in truth, Kat wouldn’t find evidence of her for quite some time. Lily and Kat covered quite a lot of ground, flying around and even reaching the other side of the slowly shrinking arena. Explosions still went off, especially when the wall passed over them but Greaves didn’t manifest visibly…
Not even once the barrier shrunk to its seemingly smallest size. The circular arena stopped expanding once it was about a hundred metres in diameter. A good deal of space, but not too much. Things were fairly tight… and Greaves was still missing while Kat and Lily were up in the air. There wasn’t too much ground to scan either. Two craters remained partially inside of the dome, with a third that just barely made its way inside and hardly counted.
There wasn’t too many places to hide though. One of the craters had their elemental, while the other two had the elemental outside the wall. There might’ve been a hidden bunker somewhere here, or Greaves might’ve simply dug into the rock… but the entrance was clearly hidden from the air, assuming it existed.
*Alright what’s the plan? Clearly it’s not easy for Greaves to come up here and get us, but if she’s got some sort of secret bunker that she carved out we could be in for a lot of pain. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if she trapped the area a whole bunch so I’m not sure I want to go down to the ground…*
[Yeah it seems like this wasn’t properly designed for people who can fly… or maybe Thyme allowed it to be that way? Or perhaps simply allowed someone else to design it and not point out the clear mistake. Though I agree going down to the ground feels like a mistake… I’m not really sure what else we can do.]
*I mean… we need less food between the two of us and I’m quite sure we’ve got more energy… is that ticking down while we’re in here? I know it’s not taking up real world time unless we lose…*
[That… is a good question I don’t know the answer to. We haven’t really been here long enough for it to be easy to tell. Still… seems like we wait? That’s… oddly anti-climactic.]
*I mean, probably for the best. No reason to give Greaves more info, or fight her when we don’t have to.*
[… Yeah I guess. I wanted revenge but I want to risk you getting actually hurt even less.]
*Technically…*
[NOPE. I’m going to call it ’hurt’ and ignore the greater rest of… everything that happened afterwards because I do not want to think about it anymore.]
*Fair enough.*