"I really don't, Sir Tan." Christine said, though the fact she was sitting in front of a table full of weapons somewhat contradicted her words. Dressed in simple brown leathers, her hair tied and bound behind her head, even a lack of makeup and sweat staining said hair to a mass of fallow, clumped strands couldn't wholly defeat the brightness of the woman's face. Many women were blessed with fine hair, clear eyes, full lips, unblemished skin, and that delicate, symmetrical bone structure that caused people to use words like 'beautiful' and 'gorgeous', but few could be said to possess a light within their eyes and features. Christine Brynn was the kind of woman who lit up the room when she smiled, and encouraged others to give her a reason to if she wasn't. At the moment, her expression was earnest and solemn, speaking of truths she held close to herself. Not that Artberth Tanhim, or as he prefered, 'Art Tan' or just Art, thought she would lie to him. It was more of how deeply she believed she could not lie to herself, so to speak.
"What would you prefer to do then, Miss Brynn?"
"....Just...work things out? Stop fighting, work together? I know that's not what the world is like, but you asked."
"And those who don't want to work together?"
Christine said nothing, her gaze falling to the table.
"Miss Brynn, do not get me wrong. I wish all I did was teach people to survive. But in truth, I teach people to kill. Maybe they'll never do it, but I honestly think they are better off knowing how. If all you wanted to do was stay behind the war zones and help the wounded, you wouldn't be here. It doesn't mean you secretly desire anything that you couldn't stand about yourself."
"I guess I'm not going to change anything thousands of years decided was good, am I?"
"A bad attitude. Being a pacifist is a fine thing. It's not for me, but then again, neither are the healing arts. But there are two kinds of pacifists, Miss Brynn. One will refuse to fight until there is no other choice. The other will refuse to fight at all. The latter doesn't make you stronger than everyone who can resort to violence, Miss Brynn. It makes you a victim. It makes the people whose lives you want to save victims. I know it hurts the warmth and kindness you prefer to look upon and share with the world...but sometimes, the world is cold. You need to be cold in turn. If it makes you unhappy, well...I think that's better than being happy about it."
"...How many people come out of this world of yours happy, Mr. Tan?"
"If I have my way...none of them."
----
"Bitch."
"Here's my first bit of advice, Miss Brynn, of the easy to learn but difficult to master kind. Give them a chance, and many people will defeat themselves for you. And since you don't really care for harming others, why not let them do just that?"
It was sometimes scary to Christine how right Art had been, and he hadn't been the only one who'd had that message in his lessons. Here she was, nearly helpless, having just singlehandedly taken down several of this army's squads all by herself. Did they shoot her immediately? Did they demand she surrender? No, of course not. They insulted her. Their brains registered her primarily as a female, and their egos leapt ahead of any sense they had. Why immediately disable a threat when you could try and reinforce gender roles, or what these lot saw as them?
Their loss. They thought they had her at their mercy already? That they could do whatever they wanted, because in their mind they could? They hadn't noticed the fact she wore a rapier on her back?
They thought she needed a weapon?
Christine shifted dramatically, her hand going to her back...
"It really is quite astounding how much of the work they'll do for you, if you let them."
Then she fell directly onto her face, flat on the ground, the smallest target possible. She missed the first few crossbow bolts by inches, as the many wielders panicked and let loose.
It was never a good idea to surround certain targets in certain situations, and the soldiers promptly learned that lesson the hard way as the bolts flew over Christine and hit their fellow soldiers instead. She knew what came next. Shock. Panic. Precious seconds to act, which she was already doing, rolling across the muddy ground to her primary weapon, the glaive she'd been wielding before her horse ride had been abruptly terminated.
"Your power is explicitly chronal, correct?" Caranthir said. Christine suspected the Hemel already knew exactly what her special gift could do. Hemel were analytic by nature, and Caranthir didn't accept anyone who had just walked off the street as a student. He was probably assessing what she herself thought of her power.
"Yes sir. Oriam calls it 'entrophic denial'. I can manipulate, what was it called..,the local radius? I forget their word. I can alter time around me to a small degree. Slow it down. Speed it up. Reverse it."
"I see. And have you ever thought of how to use this talent offensively?"
"It's not really my way, sir."
"Well my dear, I think we can do quite a lot with it. If you can control how fast things move, then you can do more than dodge bullets..."
Laws of motion. Mass-energy equivalence. Electromagnetic radiation.
All of it went a little funny in the head when exposed to something that could alter the fundamental underpinning of the universe that time was.
Light was a good example. You needed light to see, and if you slowed down time, then the light took longer to affect your eyes and your vision went wonky as a result. Christine did it anyway; she couldn't stop time, but she could slow it to a nearly complete stop for a few seconds around her. It meant she was blind, so she closed her eyes. It meant no air could reach her, so she held her breath, as she counted off her own seconds in her head. One Mississippi, two Mississippi...
None of the soldiers would have been able to hit her even if they'd wanted to and had the opportunity: their arrows and weapons would have gotten close and then slowed to the apparent point of standing still. Not that it would have helped Christine either. Her eyes had no light to see, and with light being slowed to a virtual stop, everything around her had vanished in darkness. She couldn't know where the blows were coming from and dodge them.
But that was not the point.
Three.
Christine released the time bubble, and all the photons that had run into it immediately snapped back to moving at their correct speeds. End result: a gigantic brilliant burst of light as they synched back up with their unaltered brothers, blinding the soldiers looking at her as they let off agonized screams. Instant surprise flashbang, with no indicator it was coming that those trained in Stream or Blackbird based combat could detect and prepare for.
Not bad for a little girl...
"I don't care if you're a little girl! I was told you're tough! If you're not tough, I'll make you tough! If you are, I'll make you...even more tough! Ah ha ha ha!" Laminar said, one hand running over his pointed van-dyke beard. Laminar was unlike his partner Art in every way: shorter and wider and built like a tank compared to Art's precise musculature and grace, boisterous and loud compared to Art's quiet and serene, and a smashing, hammering force compared to Art's judicious execution. Christine wasn't really sure what he could teach her, but Ash swore by him, so she would be giving him the benefit of the doubt.
"...I could be called tough in some ways, sir?"
"Good, good! That some people think you're tough is a start! But when I think you're tough, then NOTHING the world throws at you will budge you! AH HA!' Laminar thundered, constantly stroking his beard in a way that edged up on being a nervous tic. "So, you wanna fight, do ya?"
"I want to defend myself."
"Just as good! Well young lady, the first thing I'm going to teach you has made men out of many! MOMENTUM! It's what all fights are about! All that stuff about wait and see, stalemating, that's for those who don't know how to put on the pressure! You stand and make others stumble, you'll win half the time doing just that! You don't have giant muscly arms and a thirty pound weapon? Then we'll find something else! Pressure, force, weight, you bore down on a foe and more will snap in two before they even realize they're in a fight! So what can you do, girlie?"
Time.
Another good example of what time affected was momentum. Throw a punch at someone, and a close dodge might give you a sensation of the force behind the blow, the faintest tinge of altered air pressure. If it took you a second to throw a punch, and someone took that time and literally cut it in half, done correctly, it meant you were throwing a punch that hit twice as hard.
Hence, Christine swung her glaive in a circle around her, speeding up the blow a good thirty times just before starting the spin.
End result: the mud all around her spraying outward like she'd detonated a bomb with her as the epicenter, the wave of outward force even knocking down the closest, blinded soldiers, while confusion and the myriad globs of violently propelled mud did the rest. Men screamed and panicked at this latest, constant stream of turnarounds, fear blotting their minds and keeping them from realizing that they really should have prepared for this.
But no. They'd called her names instead. Their mistake.
But...some were trying to get up. Keep fighting. Christine felt a prickle of admiration for them. Enemy side or not, they were still human beings, and capable of bravery and a desire to defend their comrades. She'd give them that.
It was the only thing she'd give them. Some mud had splashed on her face, mixing with the mud that had made its way there when she'd thrown herself on the ground, and she briefly reached up and wiped away any part of it that could get into her eyes, leaving the rest in fanged patterns as she raked her fingers down her cheeks.
"Put on your war paint..."
Christine planted her weapon into the ground, pole vaulting up into the air, yanking the glaive up after her, the troops around her seeing a brown blur as she swung the weapon up...
"LOOK-!"
Too slow.
Down the weapon came, another dome of force slamming up off the impact site, Christine tanking it via armor, position, and Stream-bracing (thank you Aarde training, not every channel had to be T.A.N.G.L.Espam), and everyone else being swept away like bugs on a strong wind. Christine pulled her weapon back up again, her eyes observant and blank. Were they running?
No?
More of the same then.
Christine was amazed that Incael's army had managed to regroup to the degree she found it had after she ran for a dozen seconds. She'd expected to find another pocket or two, the fog of war obscuring her vision. Instead of a dozen or so soldiers, she found a few hundred, battered and alarmed, but regrouping-
"OH SHIT!"
Christine plowed into them, her accelerated weapon swinging wide, roundhouse blows, slamming terrible, disabling impacts into anyone that strayed into her range, men falling like puppets in a snowballing circle pattern as she ran through the clustered soldiers, like wheat under her hand. Sometimes, she felt the bone break when she hit. She took the disgust that followed that sensation and locked it in a box. She and Ash had tried to be peaceful. They'd thrown it back into their face, her face. If they wanted a fight, they'd get her best. And they should be thankful that 'her best' in her eyes meant holding back so that she just broke a few bones instead of cleaving men in half like cheap cheese. She could do that if she wanted to.
She'd never want to, but she could. It was her consolation that she knew how to at all. To hold a weapon, to be a weapon...
To have the head of your weapon unexpectedly grabbed by a small group of soldiers who were more on the ball than expected.
"GET HER!"
The first mistake the soldiers made was yelling their command before yanking the weapon out of her hand. Even as they were speaking, Christine was hissing.
"Kshor."
The nonsense word promptly fused the reinforced and enchanted wood shaft of the glaive to the skin of her hand. They'd have to literally carve the weapon free if they wanted her to let go of it.
Their second mistake (or rather, their companions who rushed to attack her's mistake) was assuming that because they held the weapon, she couldn't fight with it.
The first soldier no sooner swung his sword then he found it blocked by the gripping length of the glaive, and then had the gripping length firmly introduced to his helmeted face. The second one attacked from behind, and discovered that martial arts kicks that were incredibly impractical in real-life combat suddenly became a lot more practical when they were delivered in a quarter of a second with a leg wrapped up in impact-negating enchanted leather, Christine slamming her foot under the man's chin and sending him staggering backwards before he fell. The third one actually had a clue, and stopped to shoot her with his crossbow.
"Tsshor."
The binding charm on her hands de-activated, another taking its place as the length of the weapon went from rock rigid to bamboo flexible, and Christine bent the weapon back and rode the snapback towards her shooter, the sudden shifting position yanking her weapon free from its holders, even as Christine slammed both her feet into the crossbow shooter's face, and before he could even fall, flipped off the impact, landed on her feet, spun around the shooter, and baseball-swung her weapon directly between his shoulder blades, throwing him into her attempted weapon-thieves before they could come after her more conventionally.
"Tsshor."
"Tsshor."
The weapon shaft reverted to its former rigid state. Good timing, as Christine turned around to a surprise. Another staff weapon, this one plain, but wielded by skilled hands, the soldier yelling as he swung and snapped its ends at Christine, seeking holes in her guard to strike, break, and bruise. Christine was forced back several steps, their weapons a storm of clacking lines, soldiers regaining their composure and beginning to cluster again...
The soldier spun and swung down, knocking the weapon from Christine's hands.
Unfortunately, that was exactly what Christine had wanted; the soldier immediately ate a snap-kick to the face before he could recover from his downward momentum. Christine kicked her weapon back up into her hands, her eyes flicking around. Still just her, against the world. Her world, against theirs.
"SOMEONE KILL THE BITCH!"
Angry. Desperate. Stupid. The old tune, heard so many times.
"ARCHERS LINE UP TO-!" The officer, or sergeant, or yelling soldier, Christine couldn't tell, he was yelling and she shut him up with a palm strike to the shoulder, sending him spinning down to the ground. Three more soldiers ran in, again, again yelling, again swords in front of them. The shock on the two not wearing helmets indicated that Christine's counter move, that being charging, ramming her glaive lengthwise into said weapons, and CONTINUING, shoving them all backwards like they were children, was not what they expected. Another combination palm-strike backed by Stream augmentation into the middle of her staff sent them all flying backwards, Christine's weapon dropping into her other hand as she spun and baseball-bat slammed another unfortunate, sending him flying into a nearby withered tree.
New soldier. A big one, armed with a greatsword....
No, two of them. In full armor too. More than rabble...and unexpectedly fast, one splitting off to flank her as the other closed in, swinging his weapon with a speed that denoted his own enchanted equipment and Stream-training.
No, two of them. In full armor too. More than rabble...and unexpectedly fast, one splitting off to flank her as the other closed in, swinging his weapon with a speed that denoted his own enchanted equipment and Stream-training.
Which did nothing to save him against the bubble of slowed time he plowed into.
She could make one bubble like this, and it would last three seconds. It did not, however, stop her from speeding up her upwards golf swing, the blade glowing as it bit into the heavy armor. Bit and caught, Stream energy and adrenaline exploding through Christine's muscles as she lifted the large, armored soldier right off the ground, over her head, and used him as a hammer against his friend, the two meeting with a mighty crashing din of damaged armor and shattered resolve.
That last move had been unconventional, and Christine took a moment to flip one of the armored soldiers off his partner to make a brief double check. The unflipped one was suitably unconscious. The flipped one had landed on something sharp, blood pouring from the shredded padding beneath his destroyed chest armor, his breathing the agonizing gurgle of someone who'd gotten a lung puctured...
No.
Christine knelt down, one hand firmly pressed on the soldier's chest. His breath exploded through him in a agonized, surprise wheeze, pieces of sharp metal extracting from his body and ejecting from his flesh as the hole in his lung closed over, veins knitting back together and allowing blood to flow as it should. Christine spun up; she couldn't take the time to knock him out, and she wanted to stay there and double-check her work, but they just kept COMING, they just wouldn't BREAK...
So Christine ran.
Not away. Not at anyone in general. She just ran, spinning her staff and hurling it.
Directly into the air, like she was suddenly taking the time to train for the javelin throw. A few soldiers even stopped to look at the weapon as it arced upwards.
"KI-!"
Christine stopped, her legs coiling beneath her. As she was, she'd have to jump at a hard angle to catch her weapon.
With a time-accelerated leap, she not only made incredible air, she caught up to her weapon before it reached its apex.
She immediately spun and reversed the weapon's course, firing it into the ground.
Directly into the center of the being-reassembled Vurnir squadron.
The explosion of force, both by physics-manipulation and Stream empowerment, made her original circular swing look like the clumsy swipe of a drunk. The mud literally rose in an outward wave, consuming the men as they screamed, ran, and failed to escape, dozens and dozens of soldiers sent flying off their feet, some literally out of their boots. Even the ones farther away from the bomb-blast were knocked reeling, their inner ears rattling and their sense of equilibrium disrupted, tripping over their own feet or equipment that was nominally familar to them.
The weapon stood where it had impacted, sticking out of the ground like the earth itself was making a disparaging gesture to those it had swept away. The battlefield had gone quiet enough that Christine could actually her the mud squelch beneath her boots as she landed.
There was no one left. Christine plucked her weapon from the ground and spun it onto her shoulders in a defensive stance. Ready. Waiting.
She wasn't surprised that the next face to see her looked like it had just lost control of its bowels. She was, however, glad to see it was friendly. The Crown Point army had finally managed to take advantage of her efforts to advance. She took a moment to draw in a long, slow breath, then nodded at the soldier, gesturing which way the enemy was. He nodded back with a gulp, moving away from her as his peers and fellows began to trickle in behind him.
"-STER! ARE YOU MILKSOPS GOING TO LET A WOMAN DO ALL THE WORK?! MOVE IT OR I WILL KICK YOU IN THE ASS SO HARD YOU'LL FOLLOW IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF BLOODY STUPID!" Came a voice Christine vaguely recognized. What was his name, Captain...
Ah yes. Reemer. It was pronounced 'Rhymer', but more than a few said it phonetically, for obvious reasons.
-----
"GET THESE SHITS DISARMED AND RESTRAINED! I DON'T LIKE IT EITHER, BUT THAT WAS THE DEAL! STAB 'EM ONLY IF YOU HAVE TO! WHAT ARE YOU DOING, CORPORAL?! Captain Reemer yelled as he nearly stumbled into one of his fellow soldiers, looking around him to see what had stopped him.
It was something that would have given many pause. Dozens of men, lying on the ground, broken, moaning, thrashed.
It was something that would have given many pause. Dozens of men, lying on the ground, broken, moaning, thrashed.
"YOU ARE NOT ON VACATION, CORPORAL! STOP SIGHTSEEING!"
The terrified corporal couldn't speak, only stare. Reemer followed his gaze to the doer of the deed, as she headed towards him. Christine Brynn. A step above being called a slip of a girl, who wore armor of 'pretty colors' that made Reemer want to tear his hair out and looked like she should be hanging off an Oriam billboard selling cookies to children instead of anywhere on a battlefield. Who was the type of goody-goody who went looking for trouble so she and her fellow goody-goodies could try and help everyone, because trouble affected everyone.
They called her some other things too. The Hourglass, for one. And something more fitting what was laid out before him and his horrified subordinate. The Time Bomb.
Reemer may not have really cared for her type, but he cared for results first and foremost and she produced. Everything else was just bullshit, in the end.
"Ah heh heh. She's one of the 44, lad. Your eyes should drink this in, you might never see anything like it in your life! But do it LATER! MOVE! BEFORE THEY REGROUP AND SHE HAS TO MAKE YOU ALL LOOK BAD AGAIN!"
The corporal ran off, rather pointedly in a way that took him away from Christine. She didn't seem to notice, as she approached Captain Reemer.
"Status, sir?"
That was something else about her. By the virtue of being one of the 44, Captain Reemer should have been calling HER by honorifics, if not outright kissing her ass if that was what she wanted. Not only did she never do that, she called everyone with an official military rank 'sir', even if they were a recruit fresh out of training. Sometimes, Reemer wasn't certain if he should wait for another shoe to drop, or marvel that sometimes, yes, there really were people like that in the world. Sometimes, too good to be true was true, and the proof was in the pudding she'd made of the who-knows-how-many Incael soldiers.
"It took you a bit to get it right, girl, but when you did you rammed right through these shits like my last meal went through my gut."
"I have pills for food poisoning, if you want them." Christine said.
"Er, no! Maybe later! Fall back! You've done a lot, you should get back to the back lines! Help with the wounded! Provided they don't-"
The low WHUMP! was barely audible, but Christine felt the hairs on her neck raise up at the sound. She knew that noise.
"Did you hear something?" Captain Reemer said, drawing his two short swords.
"Yes." Christine said, eyes darting around.
"What was that?"
"Them refusing to don't." Christine said. She hung around Oriam enough to know the pneumatic bursting noise of someone launching a specialized mortar, as her eyes drifted skyward.
It crashed down into the mud a mere seventy or so feet from the pair.
"WHAT THE HELL DID THEY-!" Reemer began.
The bomb bounced upward at his word. No, not bounced. The ground was too wet and swampy for that. It was launched, a tiny throw upward to project the dull blue beachball sized spear, ugly letters written along its serrated lengths.
Tatterdemalion.
The sphere exploded, the air filling with slicing, impaling lengths of metal.
That's another war crime, using those on people, you know...
The power of time let you do so many things. Close wounds. Wing your feet. Dodge a bullet.
Dodging a hundred bullets, on the other hand...
That was a fight perhaps no one could win.
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