Callie had given us each our moves to start out, and the first up was Cark. A huge wall of blue flame leapt up between Aiden and us, limiting his access to us. With the trees still keeping vigil to prevent him from leaving he was penned in. He strode forward purposefully, and Mr. Gray faded out of existence as his boss passed. Cark, Callie, Cold Snap, and Benny were all on primary for the fight with Aiden, but my job was to take care of the stealth attackers before he took care of them, then join in once that was done.

I shifted into stealth. One big benefit of stealth was that because it functioned by letting you detect and then eliminate all traces of your presence, it also functioned as a counter to opposing stealth. Two people using stealth near each other were essentially pitting their Perception against each other in a head to head confrontation. As shown by Mr. Gray's vanishing act, higher level stealth even allowed you to hide your physical presence from senses like sight and hearing directly.

The mechanics of it were tough to explain because I hadn't reached that point yet. Vanishing from sight was beyond the human limits of a Stealth Skill, which made it an ability of Lesser Stealth, which I didn't have yet. Anyone else pitting Minor Stealth against at least Lesser Stealth would be screwed, but I had an ace in the hole. I triggered Seek Hidden, resonating my DS Mastery with Stealth and Enchanting both.

It didn't improve my own stealth skill at all, but it DID let me brute force my way through Mr. Gray's. My DS Mastery was Beginner level, which I assume made up some of the difference in Perception. Still, even with the skill in place I had to concentrate hard to get a grip on where he was. I could make out an insubstantial form circling around from behind his boss, heading towards my friends. By necessity he moved slowly, making sure to completely erase his presence as he stepped so that they wouldn't see him coming.

Knowing that his Perception would make sneaking up on him completely unfeasible even if I could see him, I decided to come in at him fast. Before he could get too far I activated Leaf in the Wind and jumped full force toward him. I aimed to intercept him before he reached my friends, but he saw me coming and diverted. A Cloud Step changed my direction mid flight and I adjusted, heading straight for him once again. He lashed out with a pair of knives when he realized I was about to make contact and his stealth broke along with his concentration.

As he faded back into existence I dropped my own stealth, triggering Flurry of Blows and my overlay as the fight started. The arrows sprung up, and I attacked, deciding to take the offense rather than be overwhelmed. Luckily my Might was higher than his, but not by much, so I was faster. Not so luckily I was dealing with a Perception focused fighter, so he was able to read my moves and react to them quickly enough to deflect most of them. I felt the force pine slam into his limbs at a few glancing angles, but none of my solid blows connected.

As I engaged him, I realized I'd been ignoring a pretty serious aspect of my combat training. Technique. I had no formal instruction or even a Skill for tonfas, and while gimmicky abilities and power boosts were useful, I quickly found myself at a disadvantage against the much more skilled Mr. Gray. I was faster and stronger, but even with the overlay telling me where to attack he managed to divert or slip aside every blow. The combination of skill and perception locked down my superior speed and strength for a minute, and all I could do was force him to defend too hard to counter me.

My tonfas were blurs, my tempo occasionally increasing in a short burst with the use of a Flurry of Blows. The space between us became a cloud of metal and wood, with the occasional unchecked blow landing like lightning through the storm of attacks. The sleeper seemed immune to pain just like the others, because I was positive I felt bone crack a few times as my blows connected, and the impact points lit up with poison fire, but no matter where I caught him Mr. Gray's blank face never wavered or changed at all, even to display a brief flash of pain.

I wasn't the only one landing hits either. Though mine were much more prevalent, he got his own shots in. I felt blazing lines of pain flash across my skin in a few places where his daggers managed to slice through my costume. Despite that, he did seem to be slowing down. Lack of pain or not the poison fire was starting to permeate his body, eroding his muscles and bones. Most of my blows were ones he purposefully chose to take with arms and legs, so his life wasn't in danger yet, but this battle wasn't going to be going on for much longer.

Finally after a solid minute or two of combat the overlay detected an opening and I triggered Flurry of Blows to exploit it. With his damaged limbs he couldn't react fast enough, and a pair of brutal smashing blows to his shoulders officially rendered his arms non functional. His knives dropped to the ground from limp, motionless hands, and without his weapons I made short work of him, shattering his knees and leaving him slumped on the ground. His Vitality was countering the destruction in his limbs enough that it wouldn't flood his system and kill him, but it should at least keep him from healing even the surface wounds.

With my assignment done, I turned to check on the progress of the battle with Aiden. Cark was running point with his high might, with Benny and Callie harrying from behind and from range respectively. Cold Snap appeared to be trying to pin the false saint down. Aiden looked to actually be struggling to overpower Cark, who was apparently MUCH stronger than we'd expected. His Might specialization was no joke, since fire was almost completely geared to that stat, and he was obviously trained in some kind of hand to hand combat. Sheathes of flames coated his arms and were working to mitigate the shining energy that Aiden was using, though it wasn't entirely successful.

Benny was slamming tranq blows into Aiden's back when he could manage, but most got deflected by the glowing man's wings so he wasn't having much luck. Callie's shadows were mostly melting before they made contact with him, though they seemed to be soaking up a ton of that power when they did it. With Mr. Grey down we were officially in crunch time and I started looking for an opening to put Aiden down with my final combo. I didn't burn it now because I wanted to to get the most bang for my buck, but with Leaf in the Wind still active I did hurl myself at him in an arc, coming down on him with a series of hits interspersed between illusions as I triggered the enchantment on my tonfas.

While the others were attacking front and back, I was the first to try an assault from above. I expected that to be effective, but sadly it just seemed to remind the blowhard that he had wings, and he flapped them once, hurling them back as he took to the sky, coming right at me. I cursed and used a Cloud Step to avoid, and then another to get behind him. One benefit of the wings being so damned big is that they could be easily hit. I slammed my tonfas into his wings and the poison fire climbed the feathers as he roared with actual pain, dropping like a rock, before catching himself partway down.

He managed to impede his fall, but it left him close to the ground. Close enough to be in range of Benny, who was able to use his density shifting leg to push off into a massive jump right up at the enemy. Looking back, I think it must have been the luck he wished for. Between Cark and I and the wing damage Aiden's attention was completely consumed, his wings were spread in such a way as to give an easy target and Benny was standing right in his blind spot. The leap carried him right up between the wings, and I saw Benny clasp his hands and deliver a punishing underhand spike to the back of Aiden's head.

The triple strength punch ability apparently worked on the spike too, because it seemed to stack with the tranq ability. Aiden's eyes went wide and then lost focus as he passed out midair and he dropped from the sky again, but this time without the ability to catch himself. His wings dissolved in a burst of glowing feathers and he plummeted, and I saw Benny realize he was about to fall after he delivered the final blow. No one really cared much about catching Aiden, the fall wouldn't kill him, but Callie used a shadow construct to catch Benny before he hit the ground.

I drifted back down to my feet casually, getting jealous looks from Benny, before making my way over to check on the crumpled form of Aiden. I kicked him over to check if he was alive, and when I noticed his chest rising I called out to the others. "He's not dead. Clockwork, come tie him up? Nightstrike, what's our next move here." Everyone was gathering up to check and see if it was really over, but for the most part we all had started to relax after we dropped Aiden.

Callie looked as relieved as I was. "After he's tied up Cold Snap can freeze him in place. Just the limbs if possible, we don't want to kill him by accident before we can question him. Clockwork, after you finish with him make sure all the others are tranquilized and tied up." She looked around with a wince. "The ones that lived anyway. I'm fairly sure at least some of the H rankers died in the initial assault. Cark, go get Agria and the others and escort them down here. I have questions for Sarah."

I did too actually. I wanted to know what the hell that energy had been and how it worked. It wasn't something I'd seen before but it was obviously potent stuff to be able to dispel one of my wishes, even if it had been a pretty low level one. Cark nodded and sprinted off toward the hatchery and I turned to Callie, who had stepped up to check on me. She was tracing her fingers over the slashes in my costume and the blood leaking out. "Are you ok? Looks like you got cut up pretty bad."

I shrugged, wincing slightly at the motion as the pain in my side made itself known again. "The cracked ribs are more of a problem. The cuts are all shallow and will heal up pretty quickly, even with the higher ranked weapon being used to do the damage. I'm just lucky the gray man didn't use poison. With Agria here I'd be fine but it would still have sucked. How about you, any damage from your fight?"

I limped over to lean against a tree as she helped me walk. Now that the fight was over and I wasn't focusing on combat, the adrenaline was leaving my body and every injury was starting to hurt more. Not just my ribs and cuts, I had a plethora of bruises and what felt like fractures. I was annoyed my costume was cut up, but at the very least I'd charged up the absorbing feature. As we waited for the rest of our team I leaned back against the tree. This was almost over. We just needed to find Cark's sister and all of this nonsense could finally end.