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MHA Paragon 2.0 Chapter 23: USJ Incident Pt. 5
🕑 Added 2025-01-08 03:51:24 +0000 UTCTime seemed to slow to a crawl as I stared at what remained of my left hand a few inches away from my face. The Chimera's spine had torn through the flux surrounding my arm and pierced into my flesh, severing tendons and muscles before stopping halfway through. Watching my lifeblood spray through the air and drip onto the ground made my vision swim and my mouth dry. An acrid metallic smell clogged my airways, nearly making me sick. My stomach clenched like a vice as it threatened to void my lunch, and it took all my effort not to succumb to the urge.
But all of those sensations were secondary to the pain that flowed up my arm and spread through the rest of my body. It wasn't just the pain but the cold, numbing shock that came after it as my subconscious mind tried to process the stream of information as my nerves fired in rapid sequence.
My racing heart, unaware of the pitfall opening beneath me, continued to pump blood around the spine embedded in my palm, spilling the sanguine fluid onto the ground and forming a dark puddle that quickly grew to surround me. My body froze as, for the first time in my life, I received a grievous injury, one that could lead to my death if I responded incorrectly.
Instinct and logic demanded that I flee, run away as far as I could, seclude myself from the outside world, and lick at my wounds. Life was precious, after all. For some inexplicable, I had been given a second chance after letting my first life go to waste and ruin. How many people could say they had a chance to start over? To truly attempt life again from the very beginning with all their knowledge and experiences intact. I, more than anyone else, should have cherished life, taken it, and fled far from any danger to live another day.
But the moment the thought crossed my mind, the flux across my body recoiled, sending another freezing shock through my body and mind, scattering the primal fear that had ensnared my train of thought. All of a sudden, the seemingly overwhelming pain faded, clearing the fog lingering in my head. My inevitable demise looming on the horizon vanished, revealing a path ahead.
The pain was still agonizing, and my stomach still coiled into a knot at the sight of my blood, but I could move past them, realizing they were only momentary sensations, distractions I needed to cast aside. My vision cleared, and my gaze shot up to stare at the real threat.
The chimera's glowing red eyes were fixated on me, and while it bore no facial expression, I could tell the monster took great pleasure in seeing my blood pool on the ground and the agonized look across my face.
The chimera was only an animal in form. It didn't kill for the sake of nourishment and survival. There was an intelligence in its crimson gaze, one that had experienced pain and understood its actions caused the same horrible sensation in others. Instead of sympathizing, the chimera reveled in its ability to cut and pierce.
Seeing its malice transformed my pain into anger, which was quickly ignited by the hunger of my flux, encouraging me to take an eye for an eye.
With a clear mind, my perspective of time snapped back into a steady flow, and I was moving once more. From an observer's perspective, not a single moment had passed since the Chimera's spine pierced my hand, but within that interval, my mind had thrown off countless shackles that would have made others freeze and flee.
'You almost got me,' I thought, addressing the chimera as I resumed my evasive maneuvers, 'You almost made me forget why I'm different from everyone else.'
Bringing my hands together, I winced as I grabbed and pulled the razor-sharp spine out of my hand, leaving behind a massive hole in the middle of my palm. But before the open wound could exsanguinate, the little blood left in my arm, countless strands of flux emerged from the still raw wound, numbing everything below my wrist.
Moving with a mind of its own, my flux sewed the wound closed while also burrowing within my flesh, connecting severed tendons and pulling together the fragmented bone. In the blink of an eye, the once gaping hole in my hand was replaced by new, unblemished flesh, leaving me free of pain, and as the numbing sensation faded, I had full control of my fine motor skills.
But healing such a severe wound hadn't come without a cost. My overall flux capacity had decreased by a noticeable amount. Not enough to impact my combat prowess, but I doubted I could regenerate an entire hand without using every last bit of flux in my body, leaving me bone dry.
Despite this limitation, a broad smile crossed my face as the margin of error suddenly expanded, 'Any weakness of mine is temporary, only a flaw in the current design.'
Gliding across the ground, I carved a wide arc around the Chimera, which launched spine after spine at me, each attack punctuated by the sharp crack of its tail slicing through the air.
Even though I tried to keep my movements random, the monster was slowly growing accustomed to my maneuvers, each spike getting that much closer to landing a devastating blow.
Then it happened: one spine launched out of the rhythmic pattern perfectly placed to intercept my path. Instead of shrinking away from the impending collision, I rushed to meet it as the flux around my arm swirled, solidifying and gaining a dull metallic sheen like carbon fiber, forming a protective casing around my fist as I punched at the spine.
I felt the tremor from the impact travel up my arm, followed by a sharp crack and a flash of pain. My flux, in its hardened state, had utterly failed to absorb the blow, and the recoil snapped my radius and ulna like dry twigs. But it wasn't a complete failure as the spine had shattered on impact with my fist, thanks to the lattice reinforcing my flux armor.
The exchange happened in an instant, and I spun, letting the momentum of the collision carry me out of the path of the follow-up spine the chimera had already flung, trying to secure a kill.
My face was a grim smile as I cradled my broken arm to my chest while celebrating my partial success, 'Again, it's the problem of absorbing energy, but I can transfer between liquid and solid. Too soft, and the spine will cut through, too hard, and the impact will break my arm.'
My mind raced as I tried to design a solution while my capacity drained once more as my fragmented bones were pulled back together and sealed over.
'I need both simultaneously,' I thought, pulling at ideas from the back of my mind, tearing apart old blueprints and trying to mash together the pieces to form one cohesive whole, all while evading the Chimera's spines, which were getting frighteningly accurate.
Less than a second later, another spine threaded the needle, and I once more met it head-on with my fist. However, I could already tell my design was flawed. I hissed as the barb sliced through my flux and embedded into my knuckles and fingers.
'Too soft, the lattice didn't have time to form,' I noted mentally as I dashed away while ripping the spine out of my hand and letting my flux heal my latest wound, 'I need too-'
Before I could finish my thought, another spine curved to cut off my path, and without thinking, I brought my other fist around to collide with the projectile designed to cut through All Might's impenetrable flesh.
Needless to say, I lost the exchange, and my bones fractured. But the pain wasn't as vibrant as the first time, and it wasn't just my tolerance for agony growing, 'I'm getting closer.'
My eyes glazed over as the final design coalesced, 'I've suspended the lattice in the fluid to transfer between liquid and solid. It needs to be condensed...'
Switching my hands, I suddenly cut back, shooting straight for the Chimera. The monster could predict my movements with deadly precision, but I didn't have the flux to spare.
Offending by my bold approach, the Chimera roared before flicking its tail with a crack, sending a dark stream slicing through the air aimed directly at my face.
With absolute confidence, I raised my palm as the flux covering my hand underwent a dramatic shift. The smooth, ambiguous fluid began solidifying, but not into the impossibly hard plating from my first attempt.
As the lattice folded, individual thread-like strands formed at a dizzying speed, condensing and consolidating its properties. Those threads then wove themselves together, creating a length of pitch-black cloth with a faint hexagonal pattern on its surface and what appeared to be flowing stripes of liquid flux between the threads.
And as the spine slammed into my open palm, all I felt was a soft tap while the barb imploded into a fine dust.
