Lightning Blade (3)

"What level are you?"

Terry didn't understand what the words meant, but they chilled him to his core. Nevertheless, he didn't have the leisure to dwell on it as Prime began squeezing his arm harder.

"AAAUGH!"

Terry cried out in pain, feeling his bones begin to crack. Not even his body which was in the Enhanced Realm could withstand a mecha's strength. The pain nearly made him black out, making him lose concentration. With his mind elsewhere, his lightning blade flicked and disappeared, turning his wakizashi back into its normal state.

Jamie, who kept observing the fight, smiled, and raised Prime's other fist, intending to finish Terry.

Fortunately, the Agent was able to catch himself before he fully fainted. Quickly observing how his lightning blade dissipated, and Prime about to deliver the finishing blow, Terry made a split-second decision, knowing that his next move would take another chunk out of his pitiful remaining mana reserves.

He jammed the blade into the exposed area of Prime's torso from his previous attack, and with a surge of mana, he activated his signature spell once more.

"Lightning Blade!"

Once again, an excessively large lightning bolt came from the sky, intending to strike Terry, and by extension, Prime, Jamie turned around and ran, making Prime let go of Terry and fly away, missing the lightning bolt by inches. Fortunately for Jamie, he remembered how Terry had activated his lightning blade for the first time, and how large the explosion was, prompting him to flee the moment he saw what the Agent intended to do. 

An explosion came from behind, and Terry stood in another crater, his lightning blade alive and pulsing around his wakizashi once more, though the blade didn't look as solid anymore compared to the earlier one.

He wiped some blood that leaked out of his nose, sighing. Terry was starting to run on fumes. If he fully exhausted his reserves, and pushed himself even past that, he ran the risk of collapsing during the fight, or worse. For a Wizard, severe mana exhaustion led to their body breaking down, possible permanent damage to their mana capacity, or in very rare cases, going into comatose or even death.

Hearing a burst of wind from above him, Terry looked up to see a detached steel arm flying at him, fist clenched and thruster flames where the elbow should have been. Terry jumped to the side, only to flee again as the rest of Prime crashed into the ground behind him.

'I have to keep my distance.' Terry constantly reminded himself, knowing that getting caught by the mecha would immediately lead to his death.

On the other hand, he couldn't stay too far away either, as not only did the enemy have those lasers as well as other unknown ranged attacks, but he himself did not have any. Terry's skillset was wholly as a close-ranged specialist. This was a terrible matchup for him.

Suddenly, Prime raised an arm, a box containing rows of tiny cylinders popping out from the mecha's wrist. Two shot out, moving towards Terry, who in turn ran at Prime, ducking under the micro-missiles and delivering a quick slash to Prime's foot before putting distance between them once more. With the target gone, the missiles simply blew up some random trees.

Before Prime could launch another attack, Terry circled around to the mecha's back, running up and slashing quickly before running away. Considering the tools he had at hand, along with his current disadvantages, Terry decided to skirmish instead, using a hit-and-run strategy to keep Jamie and Prime on their toes.

Little did Terry know that Jamie was still partly holding back. If he wanted, he could have easily killed Terry already, whether by flying up and carpet bombing the area with missiles, using a few Fire Blasts, summoning a Killipede… he wasn't exactly short of options.

What kept Jamie hesitant to go ham was attracting too much attention. Of course, he had no doubt that the previous explosions and carnage would attract a lot of attention, but he felt that bringing out the big guns would put their fight under the scrutiny of the stronger entities, such as the "Elites" he had just learned about earlier.

Instead, he saw this as a training moment for him, to dispatch a tough enemy without using magic or large scale attacks. He wanted to hone his pure ability as a Pilot, to perfect his strategy and decisions during a fight. Although, if the fight kept dragging on longer, he might change his mind.

"Plus, I don't like how much damage Prime took from that… I hope Terry will be enough to level up the Mecha Core so I can repair him…" Jamie muttered as he continued to watch through the trees, seeing Terry implement his new strategy.

"Either way, getting a new affinity will be nice, lightning seems to be great for offense." Jamie yawned. "Alright, this is getting boring."

Back in the clearing, Terry ran up to Prime from behind, intending to hit the mecha with another quick slash before running away. His lightning blade had gotten shorter, and the blade was now translucent, meaning it wasn't long before it would begin to flicker and dissipate.

"Damn it…" Terry huffed as he was about to swing again. So far, he hadn't left anything but superficial scratches, a far cry from the chunk he tore out of Prime's torso earlier. 

A feeling of doom began to loom over him, something that he didn't want to acknowledge. He should have.

Before Terry could connect another slash, tiny holes opened up on Prime's back, spewing out smoke right into his face. Terry was forced to stop his attack, coughing badly as some of the smoke shot directly into his mouth.

As Terry had no clue of his surroundings, Prime punched him directly in the face. The Agent was sent flying until he crashed into a tree, his face bloody and his wakizashi dropped somewhere during his flight. 

The blow knocked Terry out, but the pain he was enduring was far too much to not wake him up. When he opened his eyes again, he saw the smoke was gone, his wakizashi nowhere to be seen, and Prime stood a short distance away.

Terry trembled, and let out a shaky breath. Right now, with how fucked up he was, and how Prime still stood tall, covered in mud and scratches, unbothered by the jagged hole in his torso.

Only one thought went through Terry's head. 'I have to run.'

With a yelp, Terry painfully got to his feet and ran for the trees, intending to escape. If he could get out of the forest, or find someone that was most likely already coming to investigate the commotion, then he would be able to survive. 

Unfortunately, he wasn't even able to run for 5 seconds before a red laser pierced his calf, making him faceplant into the dirt.

"No, no… ugh!"

Terry made another sound of pain as he felt fingers squeeze his hair before dragging him to a part of the clearing that didn't have a crater in it. 

Jamie laid Terry on his back before mounting him, locking his arms in place with his knees. He sighed, seeing Terry's pitiful condition, and how his eyes showed how terrified he was. He was still fairly recognizable, but his face was messed up nonetheless. 

Looking at his belt, Jamie noticed that Terry still had his communicator, having not touched it once.

"Why didn't you call for help?" Jamie narrowed his eyes. This whole time, Terry could have called for backup, yet he didn't.

"This is… personal…" Terry was somehow still able to speak, though flecks of blood accompanied every word.

"That's… fair of you, I guess." Jamie frowned and tilted his head before sighing. He held onto Terry's collar with his right hand and pulled back his left hand into a fist.

"I really wanted things to finally become normal, you know."

Raining down punches on Terry's face, Jamie began to rant.

"You think I killed Victor, for what, just for kicks? That I'm some villain that killed your friend? Guess what, that was for survival! It was the only way to get out of the slums."

"I could have let you live if you just wanted to beat on me a little, but you went and made me reveal Prime… and you know where my family is." 

"It's funny, you know… I was actually thinking that hard times were over."

"Sucks for you, though. If it were anyone else, you would've had an overwhelming victory."

Finished with his rant, Jamie stopping punching with a huff. His left fist was bruised and bloody, though not much of it was his own. Terry's face actually didn't seem to have taken that much damage. If anything, Jamie hurt himself more than he hurt Terry with those punches.

"Right, his body's in the Enhanced Realm while mine's just at the Mortal Realm. Oh well."

Just about tired of this whole fiasco, Jamie let go of Terry's collar, the latter's head falling back onto the dirt. With a flick of his wrist, the hidden blade shot out again, somehow having survived the scuffle.

He held on tightly to Terry's face with his ghost hand, needing to keep the target steady if he wanted to get a proper thrust in with his bad arm. He raised his hidden blade and prepared to stab it into Terry.

The Agent's eyes widened in utter terror, and he tried to scream, but despite being transparent, the purple hand was for all intents and purposes, still a hand, so what little sound came out was muffled and distorted.

"Goodbye, Terry."

Jamie smiled, already imagining the changes to Prime after killing Terry.

However, before he could thrust his blade downwards, a voice spoke out, a voice so familiar that it sent a chill down Jamie's spine.

"J-Jamie… what are you doing?"

Both Jamie and Terry turned towards the sound of the voice, having similarly shocked reactions. There, near the edge of the clearing, a boy stood. No older than 10, the boy had messy black hair, red eyes, wore a messy school uniform, had a black eye and a bruised chin, but most importantly…

…He was the spitting image of Jamie.

"Aiden!?"