Chapter 165: America Vs ???
The flags slammed into the center of the screen, and Julie’s voice cracked the tension open.
"AMERICA... VERSUS... GERMANY!"
The colosseum roared, and in the German alcove, there was no debate to be had. They had one fighter left, one who carried four hundred and fifty hard-won points on her back, and everyone in the building already knew her name.
Walküre rose without a word, took her spear off the rail, and started down toward the stage.
"Representing Germany," Julie called, "the last soldier of a nation that refused to fall... WALKÜRE!"
In the American alcove, Nicholas was already unclasping his coat cuff.
"You’re not seriously going out again." Selena stepped toward him, though her heart clearly wasn’t in the objection this time. "Nicholas, that’s five fights. FIVE. Against the woman who gets stronger the closer she comes to losing."
"I know exactly what she does." Nicholas rolled his shoulder, testing the taped ribs, and found them, if not healed, then at least willing. "That’s why it has to be me, and that’s why it has to be fast."
He didn’t tell her the real reason.
Because the real reason had nothing to do with Walküre at all.
’She’s dangerous,’ he admitted inwardly, glancing down at the woman planting herself at the center of the fresh stage, sunlight catching the grey of her plate. ’But she isn’t what I’m here for. She isn’t the puzzle.’ His eye drifted, just for a moment, across the arena to the monk in saffron. ’I need to see him fight one more time. I need the last piece. And to get it, I need to still be standing when China is called.’
Which meant this could not be a war of attrition. Not against Walküre. Every second he spent bleeding was a second she grew stronger, and he had a god to study afterward.
’I’m sorry,’ he thought, cracking his knuckles as he dropped onto the bridge, ’but this will have to be a quick match.’
{Ding!}
{+220 Charm points}
The chant rose to meet him, and he crossed to the center of the stage.
Walküre watched him come. Up close, the wound down her back from her fight with Danqing had been field-dressed but not healed, and there was a stiffness in her stance she was working hard to hide. She looked him over in return, cataloguing the tape, the split cheek, the accumulated damage of a day spent dismantling the strongest fighters alive.
"They say you plan to take the monk yourself," she said quietly. "After all of this. After everyone."
"That’s the plan."
"Then we are two tired soldiers, you and I." A grim, weary smile touched her mouth. "Only one of us gets to keep marching. I would apologize for what I’m about to make you spend, but I don’t think either of us has the breath for courtesy."
"FIGHT!!"
Nicholas moved first, and he moved to end it.
He crossed the distance in a single stride, faster than a woman with a fresh back wound should have been able to track, his fist already driving for her guard with enough force to have flattened Veloce and staggered Mercury. A clean opening strike. A fast one. Exactly what the plan required.
Walküre caught it on the haft of her spear and did not move an inch.
’...What?’
Wings of white-gold light flared off her back, and where his blow should have folded her, it fed her instead. He felt it happen through the point of contact, felt the force of his own punch pour into those burning wings and come roaring back at him as she shoved the spear forward and drove him back a step.
"You forget," Walküre said, rising into the air on wings that burned brighter for the pressure, "the harder you hit me, the higher I burn."
The stage erupted.
She came down on him like a falling star, spear leading, and Nicholas twisted aside as the point cratered the fresh stone where he’d stood, the shockwave alone shearing his coat. He answered with a gravity-weighted cross to her ribs, a blow that should have ended the exchange, and her wings drank it, flaring, and her return elbow caught him across the jaw and sent him skidding.
’This is the problem with her,’ he thought, spitting blood, resetting his feet as she wheeled overhead. ’Every hard hit I land makes the next one hurt me more. I can’t overwhelm her. Overwhelming her is exactly how she wins.’
And he couldn’t afford a long, careful fight either. Every second bled him, and somewhere behind him a god was waiting to be understood.
The quick match he’d wanted was already gone.
They crashed together at the center of the stage, and it became a genuine brawl, spear against fists, light against gravity, a tired champion and a tired soldier trading blows neither could fully afford. She fought like a woman with nothing left to lose because she had already lost everything, her whole nation buried and reborn on her shoulders, and every exchange she survived only made the flames climb higher. His speed and his stolen powers kept him a half-step ahead, but a half-step was not a finish, and the longer it dragged, the worse his position became.
Blood ran from his reopened cheek. Her wings guttered and flared with each collision, feeding on the violence between them.
Up in the stands, sixty thousand people who had watched Phantom carve through five opponents leaned forward, because for the first time since Mercury, the champion was not simply winning. He was in a fight.
[Opalion: wait. WAIT. she’s actually pushing him?]
[Zerox4575: the wing thing. every big hit makes her stronger. this is the worst possible matchup for a slugger]
[MarcoTiebosch: phantom looks... frustrated? is he on a CLOCK or something?]
[Marypaz13: five fights deep and Germany’s angel says not today. GOOSEBUMPS]
In the American alcove, Selena’s knuckles whitened on the rail. "He’s holding back," she murmured. "Why is he holding back? He can hit harder than that."
Dana’s eyes narrowed on the stage, on the way Nicholas kept measuring his blows, kept pulling force out of strikes that could have ended it. "No," she said slowly. "He’s not holding back. He’s trying to win without hitting her hard. Against her, those are two completely different fights."
Down on the stage, Nicholas ducked under a spear thrust that parted the air by his ear, and his mind ran cold and fast beneath the exhaustion.
’Can’t out-muscle her. Can’t outlast her. Every answer that involves force just makes her stronger.’ He slid back a step, buying half a breath, his gaze flicking over the burning wings, the field-dressed wound, the stiffness she kept trying to hide. ’So I stop trying to break her.’
His eye settled on the old wound at her back.
’And I start trying to unbalance her instead.’
Walküre’s wings flared, and she dove.