Chapter 441: Facing Gaspar [4]

"What was that?"

I did not answer.

My left eye still burned.

The dark-green color had not faded yet, though the pain behind it made every blink feel like somebody had driven a needle into my skull. Blood ran from the corner of my eye down my cheek, mixing with the blood already on my face.

Gaspar stared at me.

Then he looked at the spot where his own attack had been turned against him.

His expression hardened.

"You reversed it."

I stayed quiet.

Gaspar wiped the blood from his temple with the back of his hand.

"A power through vision," he muttered. "Interesting."

The yellow Plasma around his body moved.

The torn pieces began pulling themselves back together. Membrane crawled over the damaged sections, sealing the gaps in slow, thick layers. The wound on his head remained, but the blood stopped running.

I watched him repair himself.

The sight made me only more annoyed.

Everything I had done until now had barely mattered.

The axe had cut his cheek.

My wind blades had torn his Plasma.

Kinetic Reverse had slammed him into the road hard enough to damage the pavement beneath him.

Still, he was standing.

Still, he looked ready to keep fighting.

Gaspar’s eyes returned to mine.

"That ability exhausts you," he said. "I can see it."

I clenched my hands.

"You don’t know anything about me."

"I know enough." He took a step forward. "You need to see the attack coming. You need time to trigger it. And every time you use it, your stamina gets worse."

My left eye pulsed in pain as if it had heard him.

Gaspar smiled without humor.

"You can push back a hit. Maybe two. But you can’t reverse everything I throw at you."

He was probably right.

I did not care.

I had already come too far to stand down now.

The Matrix was behind him.

The Screamer was still active.

People were fighting for their lives in the Boardwalk while I stood here letting Gaspar talk.

I moved first.

Wind blades erupted around my right arm.

The dark-green gust came out rougher than usual, spinning too fast and cutting close enough to my skin that I felt thin lines of pain open across my knuckles. I drove forward anyway, closing the distance before Gaspar could prepare another shield.

I swung my arm toward his chest.

The blades struck him.

Yellow Plasma rose immediately to block them, but I did not stop with one attack. I punched again. Then again.

Each strike sent another burst of dark-green wind tearing toward him.

Gaspar blocked the first.

The second cut across his shoulder, ripping the Plasma open.

The third struck his side and forced him to step back.

I moved in closer.

My fist hit the side of his face.

Gaspar’s head snapped away.

I followed with an elbow toward his ribs, wind swirling around my arm as I drove the strike into him. The force pushed him sideways, and I heard something crack beneath the Plasma around his body.

For a moment, I thought I had finally gotten through.

Then one of his tails wrapped around my waist.

It pulled me backward.

Gaspar recovered instantly.

He turned and drove his fist into my stomach.

The yellow Plasma around his knuckles hardened at impact.

My body folded.

He grabbed the front of my shirt and threw me into the side of the truck again. The damaged vehicle shook from the impact, its loose door swinging open with a horrible metallic screech.

I hit the ground beside it.

Gaspar walked toward me.

"You keep coming back like an idiot. Try something else," he said bored.

I pushed myself up.

"Shut up."

The yellow tails behind him lashed forward.

I jumped left.

One tail stabbed through the truck where I had been. Another swept at my legs. I jumped again, using the hood as a step before pushing myself onto the roof.

Gaspar’s third tail came from above.

I saw it.

My left eye darkened again.

The tail stopped inches from my shoulder.

I focused on the force behind it.

The pressure pushed backward.

Gaspar’s Plasma tail snapped away from me and whipped toward its owner. It struck him across the chest, tearing through the yellow membrane covering him and throwing him back a few steps.

Pain stabbed behind my eye so sharply that I nearly fell from the truck roof.

I pressed one hand over it.

Blood ran between my fingers.

What the fuck was happening?

It feels even more painful than before.

Gaspar looked down at the damaged Plasma across his chest.

Then he looked back at me.

"Again," he said.

He sounded angry now.

"That’s what you did."

I stayed on the roof, breathing hard.

Gaspar rushed toward me.

I jumped down from the opposite side before he reached the truck. His Plasma tail smashed through the roof a second later, tearing open the metal with a shriek.

I ran around the vehicle.

Gaspar came after me.

The road had become a mess of broken concrete, shattered glass, damaged cars, and the yellow stains left behind by his severed Plasma. The Matrix still stood in the middle of it all, glowing steadily while its wires carried the Screamer’s signal across the Boardwalk.

I could not let him push me farther away from it.

I turned.

Gaspar was almost on top of me.

Dark-green membrane burst from my arms.

My Plasma appeared without warning.

It spread across my forearms and hands, uneven and unstable. The material moved differently from the wind. It did not swirl or strike outward. It clung to my skin, forming a layer that thickened whenever Gaspar came close.

I tried to force it into shape.

A blade.

A shield.

Anything.

The Plasma stretched from my hand into a jagged point.

I pushed it toward Gaspar.

The dark-green membrane extended less than a foot before losing its shape. It bent downward, sagged, and splattered against the road.

Gaspar stopped.

Then he laughed.

"You’re trying to control it?"

I reached for the Plasma again.

This time, I tried to make it wrap around my fist.

The membrane rose from my wrist and crawled over my knuckles. I forced it forward, trying to create something like the giant hand Gaspar had used against me.

The shape began to form.

Then it collapsed.

The Plasma slipped across my own arm and pulled me off balance.

I stumbled forward.

Gaspar’s laughter became louder.

"You look like a child trying to hold water in his hands."

I swung my fist anyway.

Gaspar stepped aside.

"Nghh!"

His foot struck my ribs.

The kick sent me rolling across the road. I hit the ground hard, and the dark-green Plasma disappeared beneath my skin as quickly as it had appeared.

Pain burned through my side.

I pushed myself up, breathing through clenched teeth.

Gaspar had not even needed his tails for that.

He was faster than me.

Stronger than me.

And the more I tried to use Plasma like he did, the more obvious it became that I did not understand it at all.

But I could not stop.

I had to beat this bastard.

I had to kill him.

This was my chance to save everyone.

I ran at him again.

Gaspar shook his head.

"You really don’t learn."

Wind blades gathered around both my arms.

I attacked from the left.

Gaspar blocked.

I shifted right and struck at his legs.

One of his Plasma tails pushed me away, but I twisted in the air and used the wind to force myself back toward him. My fist connected with his jaw. He staggered, and I drove another strike into his chest.

The wind blades tore across the damaged Plasma around his body.

Gaspar grunted.

His hand caught my shoulder.

Yellow membrane wrapped around my arm before I could pull away.

He tried to throw me.

My left eye darkened.

I reversed the force.

Gaspar’s pull stopped.

The momentum snapped backward.

His own Plasma jerked him off balance, dragging his arm toward me instead of pulling me toward him. I used the opening to knee him in the stomach and drive a wind-coated fist into the side of his head.

He stumbled back.

The pressure behind my eye grew worse.

My vision dimmed at the edges.

Gaspar wiped blood from his mouth.

For a few seconds, neither of us moved.

Then he looked at the dark-green Plasma forming weakly around my arm.

"How pathetic."

Gaspar’s tails struck at once.

I ducked under the first.

The second hit my dark-green Plasma-covered arm.

The membrane around my forearm rose on its own, thickening just before the impact. It blocked the tail, though the force still pushed me backward several feet.

The third tail came for my chest.

My Plasma moved again.

A dark-green layer spread across my ribs and caught the strike before it could pierce through me. The defense cracked almost immediately, but it gave me enough time to roll away from the next attack.

I landed on one knee.

So that was it.

I had been trying to make Dullahan’s Plasma behave like Gaspar’s.

But it was not his Symbiote.

It was not yellow. It did not move the same way. It did not want to become long tails or giant hands just because I wanted an easy answer.

It reacted when I was threatened.

It protected me.

That did not mean it was enough.

Gaspar rushed me again.

I threw wind blades at him.

He shielded himself with Plasma, but this time, I kept moving instead of waiting for the attack to finish. I ran through the dust and broken concrete, coming at him from the side.

The wind blades kept striking his barrier.

Gaspar raised his arm to block them.

I kicked off a piece of fallen barricade and jumped over him.

Dark-green Plasma covered my legs as I came down.

I drove both feet into his back.

Gaspar was forced forward.

He caught himself before falling, but the impact pushed him into the road hard enough to crack the concrete beneath his hands.

I tried to form Plasma around my fingers.

It extended from my hand in five dark-green strands.

For one second, I thought I had managed it.

Then the strands twisted around one another and dropped uselessly across Gaspar’s back.

Gaspar looked over his shoulder.

His expression turned amused again.

"You almost had it."

He swung one arm backward.

"AAGHHH!"

Yellow Plasma smashed into my chest.

I was thrown through the air and hit the ground near the Matrix. My head struck the pavement. The flashlight I had been carrying slipped from my pocket and rolled away, its beam spinning across the road before stopping against a broken curb.

I lay there for a moment.

My body did not want to get up.

Blood ran from my left eye, my nose, and the corner of my mouth. My clothes were torn apart in several places. Every part of me hurt, and I could feel Dullahan’s strength beginning to fade beneath the exhaustion.

Gaspar walked closer.

The damage I had dealt to him was already closing.

His Plasma regenerated over the torn areas again and again, repairing each place my wind had cut. The wounds on his body were not gone, but they were becoming smaller.

It felt like my attacks had done nothing.

Like I had been throwing myself against a wall and expecting it to break.

Gaspar stopped several feet away.

I forced myself to stand.

My legs shook.

My left eye kept flickering between grey and dark green, refusing to stabilize. I could not use Kinetic Reverse again. If I tried, I might lose consciousness and I didn’t want to take that risk against him.

But there was one other thing.

Time Freeze.

The last time I had used it against a Symbiote Host, I had learned that it did not affect the Symbiote itself. Penny’s body had frozen, but her Plasma had kept moving.

Gaspar’s would do the same.

I knew it.

Still, I did not need to freeze everything.

I only needed one opening.

Gaspar raised his hand.

The yellow Plasma gathered around it, forming a blade-like shape.

"Stay down," he smiled.

I lifted my left hand.

The world stopped.

Gaspar froze in the middle of his step.

His eyes remained open, fixed on me. The yellow Plasma behind him did not freeze. The tails continued to move through the air, twitching and lashing as if they were trying to reach me without his command.

Just like Penny.

Just as I expected.

One tail shot toward me immediately feeling danger.

Dullahan’s dark-green Plasma rose around my arm and blocked it automatically. The impact cracked the membrane, but it bought me the second I needed.

I pulled my right arm back.

Wind began gathering around it.

Not the normal wind blades I used in short bursts.

I forced more into it.

More.

The dark-green gust twisted around my arm, spinning faster until it formed a miniature cyclone. Blades of compressed air circled through it, tearing chunks from the road beneath my feet and pulling dust, shattered glass, and scraps of yellow Plasma into the violent current.

The force ripped across my damaged arm.

Blood ran down my skin.

My shoulder shook from the strain.

I kept pulling wind into it anyway.

The cyclone grew.

Gaspar’s frozen body stood in front of me.

His Plasma tails thrashed harder, sensing what I was about to do. One struck my side. Another scraped across my shoulder, cutting through my shirt.

I did not stop.

The Time Freeze was already weakening.

I had one chance.

I stepped forward.

Then I drove my right arm into Gaspar’s chest.

The miniature cyclone exploded.

A massive burst of dark-green wind blades tore through the road.

The impact swallowed Gaspar completely.

Concrete lifted into the air. The Matrix’s wires snapped away from the ground. Yellow Plasma burst outward in shredded pieces as the force carried Gaspar backward.

BOOOOOM!!

Then he disappeared through the wall of the building behind him.

The explosion shook the entire street.