Stronger Together chapter 214

The training room inn the high class in near the castle was impressive  as hell. The walls were that same white marble with gold and blood  crystal veins, and the floor was a woven straw mat, though one thin  enough that hitting it would still hurt like a bitch. Yang and I made  our way down to work on training after we got some sleep and ordered a  giant breakfast. The food they brought was some kind of meat on top of  some kind of porridge. Weird but actually really good and Yang and I  were forced to admit that infernal cooking was not a talent of ours.

Yang  was grinning at me for what seemed like the first time since the lake  as we circled each other. She had her hair up in a ponytail and was  wearing a tight midriff bearing shirt with no sleeves over her normal  tight shorts to allow for mobility. Her hands were wrapped in woven  blood red bandages and held in front of her in a guard, and she had a  predatory gleam in her violet eyes. "So, you want me to just come at you  and go all out? You sure you can take that big man?" Despite her  reticent words he tone was dripping with eagerness and I knew she was  excited to see what this place could do.

The training room  was apparently a state of the art tool down here. We would fight and  the room would analyze our power and skill set, then when we finished  and rested up we would be able to fight a copy of ourselves at full  strength. The idea was that we would have to find our own weak spots to  get through our defenses, and that having to find and use them would  help us patch holes in our form. I just smirked. "As a handicap I won't  use my semblance. You aren't up to dealing with an aspect."

She  narrowed her eyes but she knew I wasn't wrong. With my much more  advanced angelization and my godsteel reinforced muscles and skin even  with a normal Aura up I was a match for her with her semblance active.  That said the more refined her body became the less damage she took and  the more energy she could store as strength so this would be a close one  without using magic or aspects. We'd both decided to train the physical  first and move onto the magic afterwards given out preference for punch  magic.

We circled a bit longer, slow easy steps, careful  not to cross our legs in case we compromised our balance, just a bent  kneed, flat footed shuffled. Then without warning Yang darted forward.  While I was using Klurkor Yang and I had spent the weeks in the desert  drilling Fenrir's combat style for her. She'd been training it on her  own since she got the gist of it and it meshed incredibly well with her  natural instincts. She came around at my head with a right hook, and  rather than dodge I just raised my guard to take the hit on my metal  arm.

The bandages she wore were infernal tools designed to  cushion hard blows so her hand didn't break when she hit my arm but  there was a definite wince. Despite that she kept up her assault.  Fenrir's style of attacking was all about unrelenting offense. I slipped  into my klurkor stance and lashed out with a kick at her throat and  Yang whirled to the side sinking into the spin and came up under it  still rushing me. She hit me in a charge and I pushed off backwards,  relaxing my muscles after I exerted force so our combined impact threw  me a few feet.

I leaned back as I fell and bounced into a  hand spring and by the time I came up Yang was halfway to me. I shuffled  my feet into a grounded stance and angled my body like a spear, using  my sunk in back foot to create a post with the line of my body  channeling all the strength from the ground and her own momentum into  the strike. Rather than dodge like I expected Yang slammed into my hand  and just rolled over it, smashing down at my head with a brutal backfist  as she came around, using the saved up impact from the hit to return my  blow twice over.

Godsteel or not I wanted absolutely no  fucking part of that and I let my body go limp. As I fell I shifted my  legs into a sort of half seated position and rolled my hips as I whirled  like a breakdancer taking her leg out from under her as I rolled over  on top of her to take this to the ground. I got her arms up over her  head then clamped my metal hand over them both like manacles and grinned  down at her. Her eyes widened as I started smashing my left fist into  her ribs repeatedly as she bucked under me.

Her eyes began  to glow, but instead of their normal bright cherry red they flashed a  deep crimson that reminded me of hellfire. It made me curious how her  semblance worked, was she somehow inverting her soulfire? I didn't get  to answer because she wrenched her shoulders nearly out of their sockets  and lunged up to smash her forehead into my nose. The godsteel  reinforced bone didn't break, but it hurt like a son of a bitch and I  released my hold out of reflex. Yang wriggled her hips and threw me off,  then climbed on top of me and started giving as good as she got.

The  only thing that saved me was the fact that my arms were free so I was  able to turtle up, but with all the impact she had stored and her  stronger body I could actually feel the pain in my arm as she rained  down blows on me. I grunted as she smashed punch after punch into my  arms, shoulders, and ribs, but I didn't let my guard drop. Still, even  my reinforced bones were fucking groaning. She could really dish out the  hits. I needed some way to turn this around, she had me pinned in such a  way that if I tried to buck her off I'd have to open myself up and take  her hits under my guard.

I really didn't want to be  healing broken ribs or a cracked sternum, even the glancing blows she  was landing around my defenses hurt like hell a solid punch would be it  for me. In a completely unexpected turn of events for me I actually  started to panic. I felt trapped, I had no way out and blows were  raining down on me and I just wanted them to stop but I didn't know how.  Klurkor was not a ground fighting style, not really, the forms had a  few grappling moves but they were all done on your feet.

Which  brought me up short. My feet. Yang had me pinned at the waist and I  couldn't get myself free oh her, but my legs were completely unbound. I  bent my knees and slammed my feet down into the ground. Now, when most  people say that they would mean smashing them ONTO the ground. But that  isn't what I did. I shoved my fucking feet through the matter floor and  literally embedded them in the stone, a feat which would have been  impossible before my body got to its current state even with my godsteel  weave.

My Aura helped, even without my semblance, making  me sturdier and blunting the pain, but I managed to get them in fairly  deep and then I braced myself and LIFTED. Using my feet as an anchor,  and with muscles only possible through klurkor training and godsteel  reinforcement I kept my body stiff as a board from knees to shoulders  and hauled us both off the ground and up into the air with only my  thighs. It hurt. A lot. Even with super strength. This was not a way  people used their muscles and it felt like I was planking and doing a  leg press at the same time.

Without her knees braced on  the ground on either side of me Yang's furious assault became unbalanced  and when she wobbled to fix it I sprung my arms apart and wrapped them  around her, locking her biceps to her sides and squeezing as my muscles  gave out and I fell back to the ground with a pained grunt. Great. Now I  was on my back on the ground with my arms keeping her pinned and no  fucking way to get up. I rolled my eyes. "Can you give up please?  Because I can't get out of this nonsense position until you do and we  can't stay like this all day."

She growled with  frustration, her crimson eyes blazing with annoyance before she sighed  and they faded to violet. She just nodded and I let her go. I slumped  back onto the mat with a groan. "Damn, Yang that was fucking rough. You  really took the whole "go all out" thing seriously huh?" My body was  sore and tired from the fight, which was good, it meant I was growing. I  staggered to my feet and over to a small table we had in the corner  with some water and food on it. The food here was amazing for healing,  as we had already seen.

Yang  chuckled and groaned as she followed me over. "Well yeah, how am I  supposed to fight my copy properly if it isn't up to my full standards.  You didn't do too bad yourself. I expected you to be at a disadvantage  without your semblance. You're a damn monster at klurkor." Which was  true, I trained the stuff daily and had for more than a year and a half,  add in my metal infused brain's ability to think faster and retain more  information it would be pretty sad if I wasn't able to keep up with  pretty much anyone. Granted Kara was still better in a straight fight,  but I was second place easy.

She  stuffed a piece of dried meat into her mouth and nearly groaned at the  relief when the power flowed through her, when I finished drinking I did  the same to similar results. My regen was already pretty impressive, so  kick starting it like that worked even better than one would expect.  Yang was in a similar position so we got to feel out bruises literally  fade away. We walked back over to the spot we had been fighting and Yang  elbowed me in the ribs. "Nice move with the floor, but somehow I doubt  they'll be thrilled about the big holes."

I  just shrugged. "We're here at the Lord of Dis's invitation. Call me  crazy, but he doesn't strike me as the kind of boss to foster an open  and communicative work environment where people feel at ease to  complain." Yang burst out laughing at the sheer understatement of that  sentence. "All in all I think that was good. Now we can fight our copies  and start to patch out flaws. I figure a week fighting the copies, then  we have another match to reset the copies with the new data from our  improvement. We can do that for three weeks then switch to magic  practice."

Harry  had gone our of his way to train us all in magic best suited to us, so  we each had spells we could use the other couldn't. Yang had been  learning earth magic recently, I knew wind magic and she didn't, and she  had a much stronger grasp on fire magic where I was much more  accomplished with force. My aspects provided something of a helping hand  in all honesty, allowing me to understand the nature of the energy  through having it be a part of me. Once I had aspected a type of magic  mastering it was a slow but steady process. With a node we both split  up, each heading to work on our training. Guess it was time to get in  fight with myself.