Stronger Together chapter 171

I was stunned. These bastards had fused together like some kind of  evil douchey wolf megazord. Fifteen feet tall may not have sounded like  much, but the actual power this combined version had was much more than  doubled. This thing was undoubtedly at least twice as strong as the two  of them together inside the Authority. The question was, why hadn't they  done this at the beginning. The Authority clearly had more holes in it  in terms of weaknesses, so the only reason I could think of was that  there must be a downside to it.

Not  that it really mattered at this point. It was probably some stupid  limitation like a one hour time limit or something that wouldn't help  here at all. Luckily, the twins clearly agreed that I was the most  annoying because the massive wolf monster vanished and his ham sized  fist smashed into me like a wrecking ball, hurling me backwards like I'd  bounced off a trampoline to smash into the stands of the actual soldier  field stadium behind me. I felt the flesh around my godsteel burst and  the godsteel itself actually groaned at the impact, but I was channeling  klurkor still and the influx of never ending soulfire healed me up  quick.

Still,  climbing to my feet was an exercise in agony even as my muscles knitted  back together interspersed with even more godsteel. At this point  pretty much half my muscle fibers and all of my bones except the marrow  were godsteel and the subdermal layer of mesh that acted as my natural  armor had...well it was the same size actually but the mesh had become  denser as more metal was added in and compacted down. I could probably  have condensed even more because I knew for a fact I could redistribute  the huge amount of metal in my arm if I needed to.

Still,  I'd decided a while ago to leave my arm metal because of the increase  in combat power. Shaking off the thought I started to stalk back down  the steps of the stadium seating after climbing out of the crater left  by my impact. As the field came back into view I saw Kara and Morgan tag  teaming the monster, the Kryptonian using her enhanced speed  and heat  vision to distract it while Morgan, glowing with her semblance darted in  for sucker punches wherever she could manage them. Cinder and Raven was  using every spell they could think of but the bastard wasn't budging.

As  for the others Yang was protected by her cloak and Barb her mail but  they were so slow in comparison to that thing even with Gard protecting  them from the worst of the time manipulation that they was just staying  back with Sam. River and Harry were hurling everything but the damn  kitchen sink at the super wolf and it mostly just ignored them, so there  was no chance of normal levels of combat doing any damage. Cinder's  glass blade was ripping holes in the wolf monster, but they were healing  nearly instantly so it didn't really matter, and Raven's tentacles of  dark light were doing basically the same.

I  hurled myself down from the stands, knife still in hand and lightning  and wind cranked to max, vanishing from my spot and appearing behind the  bastard then he turned to try to swat Kara, getting his hand fried with  heat vision. Without a speck of hesitation I drove the knife down into  his calf and wrenched it out, trying to tear as much of the muscle as  possible, and even sever the achilles tendon if I could manage it. The  wolf beast let out an earthshaking roar and whirled on me but his arm  passed right through my wind aspected form and I made it out of range  quickly.

Kara blasted it with heat  vision again in the back of the head but it was so pissed off at me it  seemed to literally freeze up as it tried to decide who to respond to.  From my current vantage point I could make out the wound on it's leg,  which while not closing instantly was healing at a somewhat visible  speed, if a fairly slow one. It would take a few minutes to knit  completely but this combo wolf healed much faster and more thoroughly  than either of the original two. As I noted that though I realized  something a bit odd. The monster wasn't talking or even really planning,  just reacting.

That  was the weak spot, this form was just a raging beast. Granted it  appeared to have instincts honed by millennia on the battle field but  still, despite being bigger and stronger they had combined to form  something dumber. Which I could work with. I should have noticed sooner  honestly, Morgan and Kara were using the same tactic Cinder and I had  used in out fight with Remus and it was working much better. This crazed  wolf beast was too blood drunk to think more than a few seconds ahead. I  dove forward, passing through his arms and landing some light fast  slashes as quickly as I could, doing what I could to slow him down.

The  more energy he had to use on healing all these cursed cuts the less he  had to try to murder us with. Unfortunately while he wasn't smart enough  to figure out a two person rotation he seemed more than smart enough to  figure out I had to solidify to cut him, which meant I had to halve my  number of landed cuts because I needed to dodge as soon as one hit. The  wolf beast had amazing reflexes and even my lightning aspect wouldn't  have been able to keep up without the mounting damage from Cinder,  Raven, Harry, and River or the constant flanking from Kara and Morgan.

There  was so much gold tinged blood on the ground the grass was starting to  squelch under out feet, but we just kept attacking, barely managing to  hold a stale mate seven against one. I suspect Yang, Sam, Barb and Gard  would have helped, but the howl when I'd stabbed it had somehow called  more Vukodlak and the girls were keeping them off Gard while she did her  best to limit the time shenanigans that this stupid brute could  apparently do by instinct. Luckily, being dumb as a box of rocks meant  that we could strategize out loud in front of it.

Without  looking away I shouted up to Raven "Rae! We can't keep this up forever,  if I stay in this state for more than another twenty minutes or so I'm  going to turn completely into godsteel!" If I could turn back before  that I had gotten an idea from the extra dense mesh. I should be able to  shift all the extra metal to my arm and condense it into a stronger  state. My current ratio of godsteel seemed pretty much perfect so I  would shift back to the forty percent of my body converted that I was at  now, but if I turned completely to godsteel before I could do that I'd  have no more biological parts to heal to replace the metal.

Raven  cursed loudly "We do have an option, something Cinder and I have been  working on, but you'll need to hold it back without us while we get it  ready. Can you keep this thing busy by yourselves while we work?" She  could clearly tell that we were barely managing at the moment and was  worried about us dying, but we would eventually miss a step if we kept  up at this rate, if we needed to crank it up a notch to end the fight  sooner that would just have to be how it was, twenty minutes was a  pretty generous estimate, and I didn't want to be made completely of  metal.

With a  grunt shifted my stance pushing towards the next klurkor form. The  consumption was higher but they produced more energy the upside. My  speed pushed up higher and I saw Kara and Morgan both push their bodies  to blitz the wold monster too. I could feel my body shifting to  godsteel, at this consumption level I would have already been a hunk of  metal last year, but as the soulfire purified my physical body it became  more and more able to resist the conversion. Eventually (probably when I  was an angel) I would be able to use this state perpetually and not  have any of my body changed.

I  was a long way from that. I was only barely able to use the third form  of the thirteen with my current flesh and that was pushing it. Despite  using martial arts from all thirteen forms as my foundation the forms  themselves were designed to get more difficult as you went. It was hard  to describe exactly what being in a state of third form vs being in a  state of second form was like, but the energy produced was massively  more powerful each step up. The unusual thing was that the godsteel  wasn't the source of the energy even though it resulted in conversion.  If I ever became fully metal I wouldn't be able to use this power  anymore.

Whatever  god had created this art had set the thirteen forms up to mimic a  ladder to ascension, but only beings of flesh could ascend. I was lucky  the soulfire was able to refine my body because it was mimicking the  effects of ascension as my flesh became more perfect, letting me climb  up higher. I was blown away by the thought of what I might be when my  flesh body was fully ascended. Half god half super dense godsteel. I was  knocked out of my reverie by another swipe at my now solid head I  managed to dodge.

I  needed to focus. But how much longer would this damn fight take, I was  changing too fast right now. I had maybe three minutes left. "Raven?  Honey? I really need you to hurry the hell up right now! Are the two of  you almost done? Cinder? How's it going babe?" I blurred through a blow  to the chest and solidified to shiv the furry asshole in the thigh. I  immediately darted back out to avoid the retaliatory blow it aimed at my  face when it realized I was solid before I'd even finished driving the  knife in. I barely avoided the hit, but I wasn't bothered. I was elated.  I could feel the mounting power behind us and the wolf could too. It  was distracted.

Raven's  voice rang out "We're finished, move!" I hurled myself to the side,  Morgan and Kara doing the same as the wolf looked up and froze. I  followed it's gaze and couldn't really blame it. Raven and Cinder were  floating side by side both with a hand on a massive sword. The thing was  obviously party one of her glass blades, but the veins roared with fall  maiden soulfire and the glass was a solid condensed form of the dark  light that Raven wielded as her weapon. It was obvious that the soulfire  was binding and strengthening each part.

The  material, the maiden power, all of it should have looked messy or  disconnected but it didn't, it looked like one single terrifying whole,  and I was just as frozen in shocked awe as the wolf. The girls angled  the glade down and drove it forward, and it literally cut through space  itself to slam into the chest of the wolf monster. It bisected the  sternum of the beast leaving it spitted before it started to twitch. The  fire inside the blade flared up and the twitching increased, before the  wolf finally threw back its head with a scream and was slowly consumed  by alternating tongues of red white and green flame.

Fire  poured from every orifice, eyes, mouth and snout as the thing howled  its death screams into the dark night. It's veins lit with an inner fire  and they grew brighter as the burned their way out of its skin until it  looked like a neon wire frame monstrosity spewing gouts of flame from  it's head. Finally it faded the blade hanging untouched in mid air as we  tried to blink away the brilliant network of lines burned into all of  our eyes. I turned to Raven and Cinder dumbly as I finally allowed my  klurkor state to drop. "Why the fuck didn't you just do that to start  with?"