My first move was to take advantage of the opening from the Shadow Swamp to attack Beat head on. Using my still active Leaf on the Wind to dart to one side and circle around. I'd considered every angle here, and Beat was pretty much my only option. I had zero experience countering a talented swordsman and far more avoiding straight punches, not to mention close combat was the only way I could hang long term, given my stored attacks were running low and the ones I had were mostly up close hits.

On top of all of that my still overclocked body was pulsing with life force, and Beat's wasn't. Even with all that I would have been screwed, except Benny and Callie were right on my heels, and with the three of us we should be able to take advantage of the wolflike circular tactics I'd developed with Balam to keep the already frustrated and tiring G-ranker off balance...hopefully.

As we approached, I let Callie pull ahead. My girlfriend had a much higher Might stat than I did, and a higher Skill level in Balam as well. She was infinitely more dangerous than I was outside of some of my unique tricks, most of which I was running low on. I considered using a heal burst on her, but on second though decided to hold off. I could always apply it later in the fight, and I only had the two left. I needed them in case someone got injured, and Callie was in decent shape already, having gotten a top up from Jessie directly before we came here.

As she closed in, her form blurring from her armor, she split into about a dozen of those shadows duplicates, fanning out around Beat and pulling his attention even more thoroughly than the head on attack had. The masked fighter snarled a bit at the action. "Damn it, I hate the tricksy ones. Why can't any of you just fight me head on. I can handle a straight fight so much better than this nonsense."

Callie actually snickered at that. Or rather, all of the Callies snickered. When they spoke, the words sporadically came out of the mouths of the constructs at random, bouncing around in circles as the different clones called out part of her sentences. "That's funny. I thought I saw you barely managing to hold on against Abel. And you needed your brother to fight Mel. You don't seem as tough as you like to pretend." The bouncing, alternating speech pattern was deeply creepy, and Beat seemed offput by it as well.

Despite that, he shook it off fast, attacking the last clone to speak and smashing it into wisps of darkness with a concussive burst of concentrated force. His snarl didn't so much dim as change into more of a sneer of frustration. "Whatever. I don't need to justify shit to you rookies. Just shut up and die." His fists blurred, thunder cracking the air as it literally shattered under the blows like a lightning strike unleashing rumbles of thunder.

Balam Mastery came in handy as Callies clones circled around him in strange, constantly changing patterns, but he still managed to land a few blows. The force acted as a long range attack with each swing, magnifying what was probably an already terrifying Might stat. I wasn't sure if it was his ability, the gloves, or a combination of both, but those blows fired off like cannon shells, and I could see the air warp in a sort of sphere as they fired off, detonating as they hit to devastating effect.

I wasn't pleased either. Callie was holding his attention, but Benny and I needed to get in there. Callie couldn't get close either, she was just playing distraction for all she was worth. I considered my resources. I was too low to use charges, but I had a bunch of stored attacks. I could combine them with DS Mastery skills, so what was to say I couldn't combine them with each other.

Without much to lose, I decided to try it out with something I had more than a few of. I unleashed a shadow blade attack, and one of the triple strength tranq blows that I had seven of. A forest of shadowy stabs erupted from the ground, and Beat swatted them aside. A few managed to nick him, but he showed no sign of slowing down. It would have been easy to assume it failed, but the tattoo was gone for each attack, and I felt them resonate the same way my normal Skills could. It had worked.

Unfortunately even triple strength that tranq punch wasn't actually a G-ranked ability. Benny had set it up when he was an H-ranker, and it was barely functional against someone our rank without a ton of solid hits to stack it. Since I'd gotten a few light scratches tops, I knew it wouldn't do the trick. But that didn't matter. What mattered was that I COULD use the attacks in conjunction with each other. At least a few of them. I had to mind the soul weight, since I was guessing trying to do a huge invocation on my own would kill me. But I had options.

Beat hadn't bothered to search for his attacker when I used the move either. The upside to using ranged shadow attacks against a guy fighting my shadow manipulator girlfriend was that when shadows tried to pincushion him, he didn't bother to wonder where they were coming from. He just assumed it was her and raised his guard against her even further. Though I do think that he assumed the attack meant the last clone he'd been aiming at was the real Callie, as he seemed to be prioritizing that one now. What a dumbass.

I prepared myself for another attack. This one was triple stacked, and it was HARD. I wasn't sure I could do another one of these in my current condition. I added a triple stack density shifted attack, and the spider leg attack, and this time I unleashed all of them using my cane (which was still imbued with poison fire) as a focus. Beat barely had time to react as a forest of black metal spider legs blazing with toxic green flame scythed up from the ground and did their best to tear him to shreds.

I had to actually put my cane against the ground to prop me up as my head pulsed with agony. Triple stacking stored attacks was something I should save for when I was in good condition. Physically I was still riding high on the heal burst energy, but it didn't patch up soul fatigue, which I'd accumulated quite a bit of. It could manage the pain a bit, but lifeforce didn't repair the strain on my soul, only time did that. I decided to stick to exclusively doubled attacks from this point on.

I was just lucky it had worked. Beat had been speared in the side by one of the vicious legs, and the wound was blazing with poisonous green fire as it seared deeper into him. His eyes flicked over to Serenity, who was currently holding off Abel and Mel with Sever, and cursed under his breath. He could tell there wasn't going to be any rescue from that corner. Sadly he'd destroyed or evaded all the rest of the legs, but the one that hit got him deep. Which was good, because I had one of those damn spider leg attacks left, and they were painful and difficult to trade for Benny.

With the damage done he'd slowed down significantly, and I could see if I stared at his face that his eyes were flickering shut, having to be forced open with concentration as something tried to make him pass out. I grinned behind my mask. The tranquilizer effect. It stacked, which meant it stuck around. While using a dozen of them would put someone down, compromising their Vitality with a grievous wound and a potent poison was another good way to render them vulnerable as long as you caught them while they were still affected.

With Beat's faculties affected, I decided to approach, giving Benny a nod, as we closed with the brawler from either side. We took our cues from the wolves, coming on from opposite points, but we didn't attack immediately. We waited for Callie's clones to dip in for a series of assaults and dashed forward under the cover of their joint attack. Beat, who was already groggy, lashed out hard at the shadow that had been closest during both shadow attacks, a fact I'd arranged on the second try to keep him thrown off about their origin.

As his fist scattered the dark figure into a cloud of mist, my cane dipped in and smashed into his side. I unleashed what charge I had in my cane right into the wound, along with another triple strength tranq blow, darting away before he could react. He turned angrily to attack before his eyes widened and he threw himself sideways to avoid a blow from Benny's spider legs. By the time he got back to his feet we were both gone and the clones had circled in again, blocking his view of us.

From the corner of my eye I could see Abel and Mel dominating Sever and Serenity. Between the supercharge to counter the tiredness and the fact that they were exponentially better at joint combat than the other two, it was easy to see who was going to come out on top. It was a good thing too, because from brief glimpses that sword was scary, and the bracelets seemed to increase Serenity's energy output by several times over. Still, Mel and Abel were seamless, perfectly integrating their combat styles together without any hesitation.

It was kind of beautiful to watch, and I wondered if Callie and I would ever be like that. Their cooperation wasn't just one plus one. They were more than the sum of their parts, managing to output an absurd amount of power. If it wasn't for the overpowered gear I somehow doubted that the other two would have lasted even a second. Titan Twenty or not, Beat and Sever just weren't in their league. Speaking of Beat, the brawler was swaying on his feet, which seemed like it would make him LESS dangerous, except those fucking erupting punches were just being hurled haphazardly around because he was too punch drunk to aim them properly.

I slipped around behind him, making a spread out gesture to Benny and Callie and getting them to move apart on the other side, the clones doing the same to split his attention as much as possible. As tired as he was hopefully this would be enough. I spun up my cane, twirling it between my fingers, getting it ready for the final blow, and waited, looking carefully. When there was a hitch in his stance from seeming to nod off I jerked my hand to tell them to close in and they both attacked, Benny falling into the crowd of clones.

When they moved, so did I, pushing off the ground on a long, low leap, Leaf on the Wind helping me maintain distance as I completely avoided the ground to prevent noise. As I closed in, I tucked into a roll mid air, pulling my body into a tight front flip and using my momentum and rotation to put as much force behind the cane as possible as I brought it smashing down from overhead, triggering a pair of triple strength tranq blows through that cane as it smashed into the back of Beat's head.

There wasn't even a second of wait time as he dropped like a rock, slamming into the ground, out like a light, though whether the blow or the skill was to blame I couldn't say. I landed on the other side of him, stumbling but easily catching myself with the effects of Leaf on the Wind. I planted my cane once I did, my head hurting as the adrenaline drained out of me. It was a strange feeling, being energized and tired at the same time. But I'd done it. Beat was down, and Sever and Serenity were on the ropes. We just needed to check on things on Cicero's end and this whole thing could be over. Finally.