Strike

There was a mellow sunset that signaled the end of days in the Albastor Courthouse. Despite this, the crowd remained, astonished by Natia's arrival. The streetlights began flickering as hazy darkness shrouded the perimeter. Natia's entrance was a sign, for most, that there was someone out there who wanted everything to change. The Kathuz civilians witnessed her with the sunset's crisp reflection blanketing her in a shadow. News station vehicles and drones both captured the bravery of her stance, facing the Jester with no holds barred.

"And... the truth is... that Edelweiss Tianne Waters is lying to all of you!" Natia accused, using the microphone to support her booming voice.

"What?" Weiss said, irritated by Natia's accusation. The number of times that Natia said her full name only made her imaginative inner demons come to light. The little girl that haunted her sanity cloned herself, rushing toward Natia's side to further increase an imaginative spiritual aura.

For the second time, Weiss was scared. She was scared that she was about to lose everything. Again.

"The ones who started the plague weren't the damn Seraphians!" Natia shouted. "It wasn't the Jester either! It was Genesis! It was Rion Stormfield!"

"What...? Genesis?" The crowd murmured with one another.

"Did she say Rion Stormfield? Didn't he die a couple of months back?"

"How could that be?"

Weiss's chest began closing itself, holding her heart against her. "That's enough." She said.

"Rion Stormfield took the girl that stands before you now and experimented on her! It is because of her that she is the Jester! She enlisted the help of the crime syndicates across the Earth to infect all of you with the plague! But that time is over. All of it is over!" Natia bravely spoke out. "And I am one with all of you."

Ryo, who was immediately shocked by Natia's hasty course of action, swapped his worries with proudness at Natia being able to stand for herself and for the others she wanted to protect. He knew that she was thinking about her family at the moment, and she yearned for the chance to never repeat the same mistake.

"I too lost my home," Natia explained. "I was young, and I never wanted to go through it again. But I blamed myself for years for not being able to protect them. But I realized that it wasn't my fault!" She exclaimed, holding Ryo's words to heart. "And I won't fault myself this time! I know everything about the Jester and how she's being controlled! And I won't stop until you all get what you deserve, a fair chance at life like all of us!"

"Yeah!" The crowd replied to Natia positively.

"No..." Weiss whispered to herself. The Seething Vipers beside her wanted her orders to assault Natia off the premises, but she did not give the command.

"The Jester, whose real name is Weiss, loved Claire her twin sister!" Natia revealed this to the public. "They were the closest out of a family of eleven, and Weiss's misguided heart only made her want to fight back against the systems of oppression across the world. But Rion Stormfield took advantage of her strengths and used her to ruin all of your lives!"

"LIES!" Weiss cried through the microphone as the little girl in her imagination began surrounding Natia, with praise and affection. "She's lying! All of it is lies!"

"And in reality, she's scared of losing Claire! She's scared of losing herself to the world because she was just as alone as her sister!" Natia continued. "But she needs us. She needs us to heal her, just as we need to heal ourselves! She-"

Natia paused. Her tense eyes unraveled the scene in front of her, where Weiss grabbed the nearest Seething Viper and unmasked it entirely to reveal a young man in a jumpsuit. The crowd witnessed Weiss gripping the top half of the viper's gaping mouth and the bottom half leading to its jaw, splitting it apart by brute force. The viper's tongue flailed around as Weiss tore the man's entire head in half. Massive blood spurts covered her widened and dilated eyes, coating her body in droplets to stay sane while Natia continued accusing her of the sad truth. Weiss had previously slit the other viper's throat, leaving its blood to stream down the stage like raindrops.

"She's right," Weiss whispered to herself, head shaking and bobbing like a maniac. She placed her hands on top of her forehead, fingers spread as she tenderly tickled the surface of her face. She licked the blood dripping down her face and onto her fingers before opening her bloodshot eyes. At that exact moment, she was no longer Weiss.

She was the Jester.

"These... are all things that none of you should know. The only way to fix it... is to KILL EVERY SINGLE LAST ONE OF YOU!" She cried, aiming her pistol at the crowd.

Lightning flashed in the blink of an eye from a mile away as Jinrai and Ryo harnessed their speed to reappear behind the Jester. They seized the bound Seraphians on stage before disappearing. The Jester spun around, astonished by the speed of their disappearance. Meanwhile, the crowd began screaming as they dispersed at the sight of the Jester's overbearing insanity.

"We need to get the people somewhere safe!" Ryo's voice called through the communicator. "You need to hold her off, Natia! Distract her for as long as you can!"

Natia dropped her communicator's signal off, leaving nothing to distract her in the waking moment. The Jester, irritated by how much power Natia had over the people that she attempted to manipulate, applauded her valiant effort to protect the people who needed a leader to guide them.

"Hahaha..." The Jester chuckled, smiling at Natia from a distance. "You fucking bitch. You just had to ruin everything. All this work for years... and you ruined it all in seconds."

"Tough luck, slut," Natia insulted, covering herself with her black nanosuit. She inhaled to further enhance her mental and physical strength through the Sixth Sense ability, turning her nanosuit into white. She brandished both of her energy blades and flipped them over to hold them on the opposite side. "You had this coming. You're not going to do this, not until I'm done with you."

"You're a little confident for someone with a big fucking mouth!" The Jester cackled, taunting Natia with a palm-waving hand gesture. She placed her pistol away in her holster and spread her arms and legs open for her. "Surely you can fight better than you can-"

"RRGH!" Natia shouted, diving toward the Jester with her elbow extended. The Sixth Sense ability on her nanosuit amplified her ignition booster's speed tenfold. She dashed toward the Jester in a half second, ramming through and colliding with the back side of the pavilion curtains. After recovering from her attack, she realized she had missed completely.

The Jester only took a single light step to the side to dodge Natia's thunderous dash in even less than half a second. According to Natia's helmet visor, she missed her target by four-fifths of a half-second. As Natia turned her head around slowly, the Jester widened her stance and grinned at her with all of her madness enveloped into her physical being. All of her pearly white teeth shined in the darkness as her insanity took over.

"You're fast," The Jester giggled, placing the back of her hand against her mouth. She flipped her brown ponytail back. "But you're not fast enough."

In less than a blink of an eye, the Jester reappeared behind Natia and seized control of her throat. She wrapped her arm around her windpipe, squeezing the life out of her despite having the nanosuit protect her from the outside. Natia's eyes sunk deeply as she flailed her legs, hoping to escape. She coughed and hacked for control while the Jester pressed her cheek against Natia's face.

"I may look like a normal person," The Jester whispered in her ear. "But I'm actually quite strong."

The Jester spun Natia around like a graceful dance partner before sending a thundering kick toward her gut. The force of her kick was beyond impactful that it rippled the air from where she delivered her blow. Natia was flung toward the opposite side of the pavilion where she crashed into a building an entire mile away.

Thrilled by the fight, the Jester cackled and spread her arms wide open to express her excitement. "This is so fun!" She taunted. "Fun, fun, fun!" Her knees lowered themselves and extended in another split second, vanishing in thin air. In reality, she traveled toward Natia's crash site and reappeared behind her while she was flying and suspended in midair. She delivered another forceful roundhouse kick toward Natia's back, letting her baleful identity take control of her strength.

Natia flipped in midair and stopped herself from free falling with the help of her Sixth Sense ignition booster. "Damn it," She scoffed, checking the back of her white nanosuit. "Her attacks are getting to me." Each physical blow that the Jester threw at Natia managed to break through her nanosuit's defenses. Comparing her strength to the Jester, she was significantly weaker in all aspects. "Fuck those memory fragments..."

"Ooooover here," The Jester's voice startled Natia from behind. Natia spun around and found the Jester upside down in the air. She clapped both of Natia's ears and held onto her, rotating until she began floating with Natia without the need of an ignition booster. "Now then... let me see that face of yours."

"Fuck you." Natia insulted.

"Wrong answer!" The Jester cackled, pressing her palm on Natia's helmet visor. She clenched the visor and forcibly yanked it off to reveal Natia's face. The Jester licked her lips, stroking Natia's short black hair. "Ooh, look at you. You're a pretty girl. It's too bad I have to tear your face right off!" She sunk her nails into Natia's cheek, digging through her skin without hesitation with the hopes of ripping her skin apart.

Natia clutched her hands and tried pulling them off of her face. Her strength was outmatched. She couldn't stop the Jester from getting her way. Natia's eyes watched the Jester's widened smile, gaining unadulterated thrill over plain acts of torture. Her cheeks grazed along with the Jester's scratches, and she could not do anything to stop it.

"Get... off... me...!" She cried, turning on her ignition booster. The force of the engine flipped her upside down, kicking out her legs against the Jester's gut to send her back.

"Hmm," The Jester said, observing Natia's face after her torturous attack. "You look much better now."

Natia yelled, flipping her twin swords around to channel flaming energy within her suit. She shouted at the top of her lungs, creating the same echoing filtered voice inside her nanosuit to make her sound as if there were two versions of Natia speaking at the same time. After discharging her full power, Natia's nanosuit expunged itself in scorching flame. "Shining Flame Restitution!" She cried, diving forward with her blades sliced outward.

She rammed into the Jester's hands and pushed each other down to ground level. They crashed through the Albastor Pavillion and burned the wooden stage. Natia lifted her head, witnessing the Jester flawless from her flaming attack. Enraged by her weakness, Natia expended more stamina to enhance her neural uplink. Her speed dramatically increased, slashing flames toward the Jester's visible figure.

The flames engulfed the Jester, obscuring her vision as she backed away. The heat from the flames tinged Natia's eyes as the flaming light contrasted with the night skies. Her stamina decreased after utilizing too much of her neural uplink to fight for her. Her breathing pattern increased in speed, and she lowered her guard.

But it was a mistake. With a single swipe of her hand, the flames dissipated out of existence. With another impish grin on her face, the Jester approached a weakened Natia without a single scratch on her body. "Is that your best?" She taunted.

"You-" Natia lashed out with her flaming sword, only for the Jester to catch it with her bare hands. The force of her catch extinguished Natia's flames, removing her Sixth Sense transformation with a single blow. Natia lost her breath in shock at the Jester's strength. Her saucer-eyed expression left her speechless and slack-jawed.

"I guess it is." The Jester said, pulling Natia closer to her. She ducked down and used her palm to strike Natia's lower tricep, snapping her bone in half.

"Ahh... shit...!" Natia cried in agony, collapsing to the ground on her knees while clutching it. Her breathing dramatically increased once again, profusely sweating. Severe tenderness zapped her tricep, rendering her unable to move a single inch. She dropped her blades to the floor, leaving the Jester to kick it away. "F-F...Fuck...!" She drooled and spat copious amounts of saliva on the scorched stone floor.

"Let me ask you something," The Jester began, using her weight to sit on Natia's back as she leaned forward. "That story that you told to those people about yourself..." She took out her pistol and spun it by the trigger with her index finger. "Was it true?"

Natia did not answer, for she wanted to manage the pain as best as possible. She tried controlling her breathing, but the outburst of tenderness only made it worse as time progressed. The Jester's sitting weight made her suffering even more devastating like an inextinguishable flame igniting in the body.

"So, you do know how it feels to lose a family," The Jester monologued, flailing her legs out like a child on a swing set. "Then you must know how it feels when they look at you that way. The way of disappointment, that everything that you do can never change them."

"Let me in, let me in..." The young girl in her imagination begged from faraway, rushing to touch Natia's cheek to comfort her.

"SHUT UP!" The Jester yelled, pulling herself off and sending another thundering kick toward Natia's gut. She coughed out blood and spit, losing her balance and crumbling to the ground. "I will never let you in, Claire. Never fucking ever!"

"You... you're fucking insane," Natia whispered. "Throwing away family like that... you're the disappointment."

The Jester slugged Natia in the cheek after sitting on top of her. "You think you know me?" She laughed. "You know, I have to give you credit for revealing all that information to the public. Claire taught you well. But even she disappoints me sometimes. They never found a way out of their disillusionment when they realized that I had potential. That's why they deserved to die."

Natia struggled to remove the Jester off of her, but she pinned her down too forcefully to even budge an inch.

"That is what family is. Brother or sister, mother or father... all life is, is just a disappointment," The Jester continued monologuing before she smiled at Natia. "Just like you! Look at how weak you are! You can't protect the people of Kathuz, let alone your friends! You let that girl that I shot dead in the streets, and you couldn't protect her either!" She referenced Sumire. "That's because you're just a weak little girl, and you haven't learned a single thing."

"I've learned... that you talk too much." Natia breathed.

"Ha, good one!" The Jester pulled herself back while she remained sitting on Natia, reaching for her left hand. She grabbed her ring finger and pulled it back, snapping the bone off. Natia screamed for her life, slamming the back of her head on the ground and writhing in agony. "And you scream too much! Come on, doesn't it feel good? Tell me. Tell me to stop."

Tears surfaced below Natia's eyes, nearly wanting to die to end the pain. But she made a promise to Ryo that she wanted to keep. She wanted to see him again so that he could prove that death was not worth the risk. She clenched her teeth and glared back at the Jester. She couldn't die. Not yet!

"Look at those eyes," The Jester laughed. "You won't tell me to stop, so it looks like you want more!" She snapped Natia's pinky bone, and Natia seemingly resisted the pain after remembering Ryo's promise. "Ooh, look at that. You've gone all toughy now. What's the point in all of this... if you're just a disappointment? You... your friends... even your family."

"My family...?" Natia whispered.

"Natia, get out of here! Run!" Her father's voice echoed in her ears.

"That's right," The Jester continued. "I'll bet they raised you only to watch you fall. They never cared, just like mine. That's exactly what they do. Love... doesn't exist. The only thing that does exist... is a disappointment."

Wait...

This whole time...

Have I been focusing on that only moment?

Natia rested her cheek on the scorched stone ground, lost in thought. Why did I keep focusing on that memory? Was there really no other? Is what she said... true?

"Now then..." The Jester concluded, pointing her antique pistol directly at Natia's cheek. "I think I'll kill you now. It was fun while it lasted, pretty girl."

After sensing the barrel of the pistol connecting with her cheek, Natia reared her face back toward the Jester. Her left hand realigned her bones temporarily with a swift cupping gesture. She swatted the Jester's M1911 away and seized a tight, controlling grip over the Jester's throat. Natia's eyebrows slanted down, her nose perked up, and she cowled in denial. She lifted the Jester in the air as she stood back up, recovering from her injuries.

"No," Natia's confidence ignited her vocal cords to raise in volume. "You're wrong. My family loved me. They treated me with respect. They cared about me! I'm not like you, because the only person you have in your life right now, is Claire. And you're choosing to throw her away!"

The Jester swiped her palm against Natia's grip, severing their connection to push herself back. She clenched her teeth, irritated by Natia's confidence despite their enormous strength and speed gap.

"My family might be dead, but at least they loved me," Natia said, lowering her knees. She swept her right leg back shoulder-width apart and used her mag boosters to recover her twin blades. With a swift twirl, Natia was back in action. "Dead or alive, it doesn't matter! They're still there!" Natia slid herself back and struck a combat pose, exuding an unknown fiery aura out beneath her that invigorated her spirit and morale. "And I'll move on!" She finished.

The Jester was negatively astounded and purely disgusted by how much stamina Natia revived within her even after weakening her into a beaten pulp. "Don't get cocky, you bitch!" The Jester cried, lunging toward Natia after her words generated a deep sensation of envy and resentment.

That envy and resentment was the key to defeating the Jester, and Natia knew it existed inside her. As the Jester rushed toward her without a plan of attack, Natia dodged a swift swipe from the Jester and sent an uppercut underneath the Jester's chin. She maintained a neutral menacing facial expression while sending another low kick toward the Jester's gut to send her back.

"Oh..." The Jester exclaimed, wiping her chin with the back of her palm. "This'll be interesting..."

Natia brandished her blades out, confident in her ability to defeat the Jester. She stayed in her combat position, prepared for anything that she would throw at her.