Stronger Together chapter 215 (Patreon)

I imagine many people would refer to fighting yourself as  masturbatory. That would be inaccurate for two reasons. Firstly there  are genuine gains to be gotten from finding holes in your combat style  and leaning the weak spots your enemies can probe. Already i was finding  gaps between the klurkor forms I had never noticed, for while the forms  flowed perfectly from beginning to end, they were arranged in the  optimum order, and steps had to be taken to patch the gaps when you used  them on the fly. Secondly, because masturbating is FUN.

A  thought that went through my head about a split second before the  conjured metal fist of my opponent tried to do the same. Fortunately (or  unfortunately depending on your point of view) the fist was stopped by  my skull. Well...mostly. Even less fortunately I couldn't say the same  for the floor when the back of my head smashed into it, leaving a divot  in the hard stone floor beneath. I frown because I'm almost positive  that other me is somehow faster or stronger than I am, but no, he's  based on my fight against Yang so that can't be it.

Something  about engaging in battle with someone who knows your every move before  you make it is terrifying on a visceral level, even if you know theirs  too. I started getting agitated by the constant blocks and am trying out  new and unusual form combinations to take him down. When I switch to  new on the fly tactics I actually start doing appreciably better,  managing to get in under his guard and hammer his ribs with an unusual  shuffling back step kick I just kind of made up on the fly.

Most  people think that any move you make in a fight without yourself will be  immediately countered, but what they don't get is how much environment  counts for. From which side you're standing on your attitude as the  aggressor or defender, so many things about your situation influence the  choices you make, and the deeper you get into the fight the more  pronounced these differences become as your counterpart adapts to you  differences and tries to capitalize on them. It's an intricate game of  dominos, one knocking into the next to create a tapestry of chaos.

It's  insane to think otherwise really. Humans aren't characters in a  fighting game who jam a combo out at the start of the battle. Human  minds are complex and varied and a skilled fighter has hundreds of moves  he can make at any time, to think two people in completely different  positions and mindsets would always pick the same one is ridiculous.  Still, there is some truth to the idea that you can read yourself well,  because every new move is countered almost immediately and I have to  keep finding new ways to improve.

My kick pushed other me  back a few steps as he leaps back to mitigate the impact, which opens up  the distance so I can set myself properly. Other me seems much less  affected by pain than I am sadly, and within seconds he's back on me. I  lock up for a second, guessing and second guessing what to do in  response to his attack, constantly throwing ideas away because he might  know they were coming. In the end I decided to do the last thing I would  expect, and collapsed. It was lucky I did because he smashed a backfist  through the air where my head had been.

Feeling the rush  of air from the metal fist passing over me I planted both hands, roll my  body, then wrap my legs around his neck from below and swing myself,  using my body as a lever to hurl him across the room. He hit the ground  at a skip as he bounced like a stone on a lake and I came back to my  feet and charged after him. Shockingly even in mid air his defense was  pretty decent, at least enough to prevent me from landing any really  debilitating hits. Despite that he couldn't block Newton's third law of  motion and the impact shifted his trajectory midair, sending him  slamming into the wall.

His head cracked the marble and I  was on him as his defense faltered, pouring a blistering combo down on  his dead like a tide of molten iron as my godsteel arm smashed into his  head over and over again. Despite being woozy and off balance from being  thrown around like a rag doll and smashing his head repeatedly he had  the presence of mind to start wailing on my ribs. Unlike my fight with  Yang this one was partly illusionary (I'd asked how it worked but hadn't  understood a word of it) so the extremely fun feeling of my ribs  shattering into powder under the force of my own punch was muted.

Muted  did not however, mean gone, and I still felt every blow, only able to  stay upright because the weave of godsteel in my bones was thick and  dense enough to act like a wire frame of my skeleton, something I don't  think normal metal could have done but I definitely wouldn't be  questioning. We kept up the barrage for about fifteen minutes, and I got  to experience a psychosomatic version of feeling my skeleton crushed  up, like that fake stained glad they use on sugar cookies under the jaws  of a fat kid.

Finally I called time, and the version of  me disappeared along with the actual damage that had been done, though  somehow not the pain, which seemed extremely unfair. I slumped back onto  the mat, gasping for breath and shaking from exertion. This strange  training room was a combination of illusions and hypnosis that let you  literally experience fighting yourself. I wasn't actually sure how my  other self's head had cracked the wall when he hit, because as I'd said I  didn't understand the explanation but I definitely felt like I'd had a  workout.

I let my eyes fall closed as the tension drained  from my aching body. Withing a minute I felt a subtle shift in the air  and detected a minute change in the light leaking through my eye lids  and opened my eyes to see Yang leaning over me with a grin on her face.  "Well, that was pathetic." Of course the jokes was on her because I was  looking right down her shirt, but on second though I doubted she cared.  She looked over my exhausted form. "Did I look that ridiculous when I  fought me? Because you were flailing like an injured porpoise."

I  sneered at her as I got to my feet. She was right. Rather than the  counters, the biggest issue with fighting me was that despite having  different moves we had the same rhythm. Trying to change my rhythm and  counter it at the same time ended up producing conflicting responses  that slowed me down. "I didn't see you doing much better." Which was a  lie. She had done much better by virtue of her free form brawling style.  Fenrir's method of combat relied on instinct more than rote movement,  which made it unpredictable even to the user at times.

Of  course Yang wasn't entirely familiar with that formless style yet and  had stumbled more than a few times. Something I knew she had noticed as  well by her grimace of distaste. I rolled my eyes. "I was fucking with  you. You did better than I did. I was panicking and ended up losing my  composure, you were doing fine, your slip ups were because of technique.  Honestly you get way more out of this than I do. With that formless  combat style you're the best person you could be fighting against. A  similarly unpredictable opponent exactly as strong as you is just what  you need."

She grunted, turning to head to the snack table  for more food. "Yeah, I know. It just sucks. I spent years boxing, and  another year learning klurkor. Now I feel like I'm starting from  scratch. It's a mind fuck you know? Because Fenrir's combat style isn't  really a style I always feel like I'm both doing it wrong and so close I  can taste it." Which was a legitimate concern. The god wolf's combat  technique was less of a technique and more of a mind set. He had  practiced a type of unconstrained freedom that let him use all his  experience and techniques in a sort of singular mishmash.

Which  was what Yang was aiming for, but she was missing that. "It's not that  you need to throw away all your moves and just react on instinct. Your  training is PART of your instincts. What you need to do is free your  mind from the logic and structure of those moves. Just let them sort of  float around in your brain as a big soup and pluck out what you need  when you need it." Which sounded stupid. The only reason I had even  managed to attempt teaching her was that Fenrir's grasp of the concept  was so overwhelming it was obvious in his fighting. He was a walking  manual for how to fight like him because he was that perfect at it.

I  however was not a walking manual for teaching it, which was the  problem. The old dog had long since reached the point of branding his  unique mindset and style into every move he made in battle, and it was a  perfect match for Yang, but how the hell was I supposed to teach being  completely free form. It shouldn't have even been called a combat style,  and wouldn't have if Fenrir hadn't refined it into some kind of peak  level trance state. What I wished most was that there was some way to  share my memories of the battle with her, let her experience it herself.

Unfortunately  I didn't know any illusion magic and it wasn't like I could make  a...construct. Holy shit I actually could do that. The energy that my  arm manifested, that light that seemed to be the secret to manipulating  godsteel after it was forged, I could make things with that. Detailed  and incredibly nuanced things. Things like a scale model of Fenrir in  battle. I gestured for Yang to vacate the center of the room and  concentrated, pouring power into my arm. I built and built the energy  until I was sure I had enough.

It  had taken me a while to figure out what the light energy actually was.  It was godsteel, or rather it could be godsteel. Much like as I  condensed it the godsteel became darker and harder, when spread out over  a huge area godsteel was energy. I wasn't sure how the hell that even  worked, but I knew it did. Which meant that the amount of power I needed  for this had to be carefully managed. Too much density and the  construct would solidify, though not into anything useful with this  small level of power.

I  had to be careful unless I wanted a cloud of godsteel dust. But not  enough would see the construct fail to bind together. It also explained  how the energy let me manipulate forged godsteel. By adding minute  amounts of the metal energy into the structure I was essentially  returning it to its pre forged state. Making it "molten" again.  Regardless I managed to balance things out properly and created the  construct I wanted, a scale model of Fenrir, though holding it together  was taking way more concentration than expected.

I  closed my eyes and focused on my memory. My brain could hold onto  images much more deeply than most now that it was infused with godsteel,  and this particular memory wasn't one easily forgotten in any case. I  imagined the power and ferocity of the god wolf, of the beast that had  come closest to killing me out of everything I'd met in this world, I  focused and remembered. Once I had the images in my head I sent them out  into the construct, imbued the memory into the shining iridescent  figure, and as I opened my eyes, Fenrir, son of Loki, began to move.