Chapter 20: 20. Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting
Nails hard and sharp enough to rend steel and punch through solid granite destroyed flesh and perforated organs before hitting a solid bone which, against all logic, withstood the hit. The nails' owner, one Shalltear Bloodfallen, had only a second to be surprised before three blades cut her left arm. Materials strong enough to withstand weapons of high-level players and undead flesh of godlike qualities alike parted like butter against a red hot knife. Shalltear had only a second to be surprised before her severed arm fell off.
Surprise giving way to rage, Shalltear hit once again, this time a left hook at her enemy's face. Once again, flesh was torn asunder, but the bone remained inexplicably whole.
That is not to say the hit was useless, as her enemy, blood flowing freely from his ruined face, went flying like a missile before smashing yet another hole in the bar's walls. This was enough for Shalltear to think through what just happened and inspect the surprisingly still open wound.
Shalltear was a high level vampire and, as such, could only be hurt by weapons with either enough magic or of a special kind, like high quality silver. This meant that any damage done by 'common' ones would simply disappear as if it had never existed. Yet Shalltear's stump remained and blood flowed, though slowly as she didn't have a beating heart. It either meant whatever those hand-grown blades were had either a high magical level or were made of some other special material and both were bad things for different reasons.
Yet, is he dead?
While Shalltear had felt some part him survive her previous hits, she was not sure he had actually tanked the last one. No matter what skeleton one had, once the flesh was destroyed they died.
Of course that was exactly the moment her enemy choose to get back up and re-enter the building.
"Girl ya ain't gonna put me down so easy. Simmer down and I promise we'll talk about this," spoke the man as his face healed at an alarming rate.
So he is a regenerator of some kind. A skill maybe? Or a racial ability?
As Shalltear's mind rushed through the possibilities the man took another step forward and then another and another. His hands were open but Shalltear knew better than to trust him, especially if he was actually strong, unlike his looks.
Well, it doesn't matter, if he can regenerate then I just have to kill him faster than he can heal.
Having decided on what charitably could be called a plan, Shalltear rushed forward, a beautiful silver coloured lance manifesting on her remaining hand as she charged the man.
The man, clearly surprised by the sudden appearance of the lance and Shalltear's speed, couldn't react in time and took the full brunt of the hit head on. His stomach was pierced and he was pushed back against yet another wall. But before Shalltear could do a follow up attack he was already swinging at her, a hit she easily avoided by taking a step back.
"I told ya, it ain't gonna work. You'll get hurt and I won't, now I'm tryin' ta be nice about this, but stand down." His words were almost sincere, but of course Shalltear was too smart for him, or so she thought.
Another claw, this one coming low, went towards Shalltear's remaining arm but she skillfully parried it with the butt of her lance, which thankfully withstood the hit without problems.
In another lighting quick move Shalltear reversed her lance and hit the man in the face, breaking teeth and opening recently closed wounds.
With her opponent unbalanced Shalltear moved back before once again pushing forward, this time not caring about holding back at all. Her movements were too fast for any human to follow and the enemy in front of her was turned into human shaped mincemeat, her consecutive lance thrusts piercing him so fast that it looked as if hundreds of wounds suddenly opened all over his body. As a finisher Shalltear hit him once again, this time putting her all behind the strike, in hopes of turning the man's brain into mush.
His head shot back and his entire body mass was enough to punch yet another hole into the now badly damaged bar.
"Pff, filthy human. Why won't you do as I order and die?"
To her now lessened surprise the man once again stood up once again his body -now barely covered by his tattered clothes- mended itself.
"Girl," he said as he spat a mixture of crushed teeth and bloody spit, "I heal, I can't die, stop this 'fore I hurt ya."
"You heal?" Shalltear said mockingly, "Well, so do I." Her last word was punctured by another punch, this one from her previously severed arm, now whole once again.
If her enemy was surprised by this development he didn't have any time to show it, as he was once again sent flying. Only that this time he smashed through the bathroom's door and more than half the stalls behind it.
Shalltear didn't lose any time in capitalizing upon it, quickly following after the man. Before he could even think about getting up Shalltear's lance pierced him in the chest and while once again his bones held, he was robbed of more vitality from the hit as Shalltear's wounds healed further.
Shalltear's surprisingly quick healing was not due to some innate ability or spell, nor was it some kind of skill. Her creator, the Supreme Being Peroronccino, had seen fit to equip her with a powerful item known as the Spuit Lance, which healed its user with each strike to the enemy, which allowed Shalltear to effectively convert her enemies lost health into her own. For this reason Shalltear didn't fear having to fight a powerful regenerator, as she could simply outlast them by virtue of her greater firepower.
Pushing her enemy through the bathroom's flimsy wall and noticing her physical attacks were not having the desired effect she instead settled for trying magic instead,"[Penetrate Magic - Implosion]"
After casting the tenth tier spell — which was highest tier of magic — the body of man began swelling up from inside.
There was no time for him to cry out. All the man could do was watch his body expand inexorably, an expression of ignorant terror, or was it confusion?, on his face. Then, in the next moment, his body burst in a shower of gore, like a balloon popping.
"Hahahahhhahahaahaha! Sooo prettyyyyyyyy~" Shalltear let out a happy laugh at the view. While she had never been really worried, she had still been wary of fighting an unknown opponent with equally unknown capabilities, something the Supreme one had warned her about before sending her off.
Turning around and going back to her actual task, that of interrogating the patrons of the half-demolished bar, she didn't see the bizarre sight behind her.
A silver-colored skeleton surrounded by a pool of blood, gore and torn clothes stood up. Pieces of meat and half-torn muscle grew like vines, expanding upon the silver surface and refilling the many flesh free areas. Empty orbits became full once again and a destroyed throat regenerated as easily. Before Shalltear had gone more than two steps a naked humanoid thing with almost no skin and dyed red from blood, crashed against her, bladed hands first.
As much as Shalltear had lowered her guard, she was still a powerful level 100 NPC. She easily intercepted the flayed man's charge, her hands taking ahold of a blade and a forearm respectively in a diamond hard grip. Then she started pulling.
At first Shalltear had thought about using more magic, but the Supreme one had asked for her to keep a low profile and she knew magic was anything but. Even more, the man that was opposing Shalltear had already fully recovered from a tenth tier spell even after suffering what appeared to be grievous damage, implying that he had some kind of defense against such spells. It was for this reason that Shalltear had decided to depend purely on her Supreme Being given strength and tear apart the insect before her, limb from limb.
If someone, like the mostly unconscious patrons of the half-destroyed bar, were to see the scene that unfolded they would have found it both hilarious and terrifying.
A young girl wearing a beautiful high class victorian dress gripped a mostly naked man twice her size and with at least 50 kilograms over her, yet she held him like he weighed nothing even as she slowly spread out his arms more and more, causing the man to cry in pain.
"Ohhhh, you don't like it? Too bad, because I loooove it!" Laughed Shalltear, her eyes taking a demented glint.
The process was slow and painful and Shalltear was enjoying every second of it, as it was normal for her to do when torturing her enemies. But to anyone who was familiar with Shalltear the situation would look as anything but normal.
Shalltear was both prone to losing sight of her objectives and falling prey to her lesser instincts, it was for this reason that one could be excused for thinking something similar was at play now. But Shalltear was not so shallow minded and once the mission itself became endangered she would use all of her available strength to get rid of whatever stood in her way and she would do it quickly. Yet that was not the case here and it was for one reason.
W-what is this thing made of? Muscles strong enough to crush concrete and tear steel to pieces found themselves strained to the breaking point, delicate milky white hands applying enough pressure to crush diamonds. The ground itself seemed to shake under the titanic forces of the True Vampire as she put her all into ripping the one who had dared oppose her, into pieces.
Finally she felt something snap as one of the shoulders of the man was pulled out of its joint, brutally dislocating it. It had taken all of her strength but Shalltear had only done that much damage. Yet before she had time to despair something happened.
When Shalltear had finally pulled off the man's shoulder, she had momentarily relaxed her grip on his blades, something which proved to be a mistake.
The blades slid back into the man's hand as if it were a sheath and as slick with blood as it was they easily slipped through Shalltear's weakened finger grip.
"Filthy anim-" a ball of bloody phlegm hit Shalltear square in the face, covering her eyes for a precious second. A second her prey didn't waste.
Shalltear didn't see the blades coming for her neck, but she sensed them as she deflected the man's arm with her own. Of course it was never the man's real target, as the man's bladed hand changed its path and impacted his other arm, cutting deeply into his flesh and through Shalltear's hand holding it.
"I ain't do-" the man never got to finish, a fist moving faster than sound crashing against his opened mouth, sending him flying into the surrounding forest even as the destroyed remains of his teeth turned into deadly shrapnel inside his own mouth.
He dared spread his filth on me! To sully this body created by Peperoncino-sama himself. I'm going to kill him!
Shalltear's vision had gone red from fury. All ideas about plans or careful hoarding of spells for the purpose of operational security long forgotten. She charged head on.
The air exploded as Shalltear broke the speed of sound half a dozen times in a second, her once again materialized lance piercing her enemy before he even touched the ground.
"[Force Explosion]!" As Shalltear spoke a great wave of directed kinetic energy shot forward, turning her enemy's body into meaty paste and all the trees behind him into hypervelocity splinters.
"I'm not done! [Time Accelerator]," Shalltear's perception of time seemed to slow, as everything but her own body started moving slower. In truth Shalltear had just partially removed herself from the proper flow of time, giving herself an incredible boost of speed on top of her already ludicrous speed.
While she could not physically harm him while using the spell, Shalltear could make use of it to instantly close the gap and that's exactly what she did.
The man's body, which was only halfway regenerated by then, had been on a collision course with one of the few trees in the area to survive Shalltear's attack. Seeing nothing wrong with this Shalltear took her time to close by, grab the man by his half regenerated head and push him forward.
The already incredible collision speed of the man was magnified tenfold, the crash against the thick tree trunk causing another shockwave.
Quickly as it had come, the tree was gone, its remains vanished into a cloud of evaporated snow, dirt and its own obliterated body.
"Whyyy won't you dieeee!?" Still flying at speeds that most jet fighters could only dream off, Shalltear lowered the man until his head was scraping against the ground, then she pushed him down as she dialed her speed back up.
The man's face literally ignited, as snow, trees and everything else around them was turned into incinerated rubble.
Shalltear continued pushing the man until all the trees in a square kilometer around the bar were gone, only to suddenly stop.
Grabbing the man by the scruff of his neck and continually stabbing him with her lance Shalltear took to the skies, her vertical flight path taking her quickly to a high enough altitude that the bar, and most of the devastated surroundings, were no longer easily distinguishable.
"Hope you enjoy the trip down," And with those words Shalltear threw him.
---
Longan had felt pain, Logan had known pain. Pain was his acquaintance, it was his ever present companion. Logan had been sure he understood pain.
Logan had been wrong. But he understood now.
That girl's a monster.
He could barely remember what had happened since the fight, if you were being charitable and decided to call it as such, had started. Most of his actions had been pure instinct, Logan's desperate attempts to survive the world of pain inflicted upon him, just like the first time he woke up in the wilderness, alone and without memories.
There had been great fights before, fights against the odds, fights where he had to give it his all as his body bled and broke. Logan had known more than one fight where his body was broken apart only to have it mend itself back again, but never had he been so utterly brutalized over and over with no time to rest or even understand what was happening. What he was currently experiencing was what he had always feared, an endless loop of violence where his body kept on fixing itself even as a relentless enemy broke it again. To most surrendering to the inevitable and just letting go would have been the most logical choice.
But I ain't just anyone.
He could feel his body shift, muscle reknitting itself as organs regrew enough to be able to keep him alive. It had been years since Logan's healing factor was pushed to such extremes and so quickly.
And I'm sure that girl ain't done yet.
As he tried to stand on wobbly legs, Logan felt the ground shake under a great impact, not so different from the Hulk's landings. Behind him a cloud of steam obscured the view of whatever hid inside.
I need to stop this right now, Logan was growing desperate, not only was his enemy a young girl who, no matter how seemingly vicious, he didn't want to kill, but she also possessed some kind of healing factor of her own. I need ta talk this out.
Logan was not the most used to talking out his problems, but his time as headmaster had changed him in a lot of ways and after having to deal with rowdy teenagers and children, a new appreciation of the powers of diplomacy was one of those.
Taking a step forward, he decided to be the one to extend an olive branch.
"Lis-" but he never got to say more than the first syllable before his body exploded, figuratively and not so figuratively, in pain.
It was as if a hundred Colossuses had hit him at once. He felt his newly regenerated body turn into mush once again, organs shattering and splattering from the transferred force as the surrounding muscles exploded into its component parts.
Once again he felt himself losing consciousness before his healing kicked in once again. His mind coming back into focus after the blessed darkness almost took him.
He couldn't feel anything below the neck, one of the punches probably having damaged his spine even as his adamantium covering had protected the integrity of the bone itself.
I need to stand. This time the girl hadn't grabbed him, instead letting him smash into the motorcycles in the bar's parking lot. But that didn't mean she was not going to grab Logan again.
The few moments it took for his spine to fix itself were painfully long but heal it did and in less than a second he would be back on his feet, claws ready to tear his enemy apart. Sadly for Logan it was still not fast enough.
The strange lance-like weapon struck Logan square in the neck, both crushing and piercing his throat before re-breaking the barely recovered spine once again. The thrust was quickly followed by an uncountable number of cuts and punches, Logan's body once again turning in something better described as 'minced meat with an skeleton'.
"Now stay there for a second, I'm going to try something new," as the girl spoke she raised her left hand while her right continued to stab Logan with the lance "now, [U-]."
Logan could not hear what she said, what with the spear piercing his eye at that exact moment, but the next thing he knew was that waves of solid darkness burst forth from the girl's extended hand and fell on Logan's wounded body. Even as the girl once again threw him violently to the other side of the parking lot, the black mist clung tightly to Logan's body, its oily tar like substance moving as if alive, towards his open wounds.
Surprisingly there was no follow up, the girl not moving from her spot as she watched Logan crack the pavement under the force of the impact.
Logan immediately tried to stand, his instincts pushing him to make use of any break in the battle flow of his enemy. While the pain of his wounds made it hard, he eventually managed to stand on his two wobbly feet as he took a fighting stance.
The girl on the other hand just stood unmoving, her ruby red eyes locked on him as a wicked smile, one too wide for a human, set on her features. Logan was no coward, but a part of him, the most primal and animalistic one, shivered in fear. It was just like a wild dog finding itself in front of a great predator, one ready to devour it whole.
I ain't gonna be stopped by dumb fear. Logan was no animal, nor was he going to let himself be treated as such.
Logan took one step forward… and fell on his face, his entire body screaming from pain.
"What's wrong doggy, you aren't feeling veeery well? Do those little scratches bother you?"
"Wha-?" another spike of pain shook Logan's body, dark murky blood staining the snow around him.
While he had by no way become accustomed to it, Logan had accepted that pain would be a constant companion during the fight and had more or less learnt how to ignore it in favour of trying to fight back. But even with the way Logan's body was constantly torn apart, the pain was never enduring, it always went just as fast as it came. Except that was not the case anymore.
With great effort Logan got back on his knees and looked upon his battered body.
The wounds were uncountable, smashed flesh, muscle torn apart, some areas missing everything altogether. Even the blood that flowed from the open wounds was a terrible sight to behold, its dark colour and pungent smell a sign of rot and decay. One that his healing factor was not accounting for.
"W-what did ya do?" It hurt to speak, but if Logan had learnt one thing in all his years as an X-men it was that...
"Hahahaha, do you like it? I opened some wounds you will never heal. I wanted to finish this, to be honest throwing you around this place isn't that fun and I do have things to do."
...If you let them people will spill any secret as a way to look impressive.
While whatever she had done was not enough to kill Logan the fact was that his healing factor couldn't fix it, only keep it at bay. For most people this would have been it, even if they could survive, they would be out of the fight.
"Oh you ain't havin' fun anymore, yeah? Don't ya worry," in one swift motion logan pushed through his pain and feebleness and struck down with his claws.
Struck his own body that is.
Adamantium edges cut through partially rotten flesh as if it weren't there. Tainted flesh barely kept at bay by an overworked healing ability was cut cleanly off his body. Organs and skin, muscle and tendons, it was all cut away in a series of swift moves, every one more painful than the last.
The bloodthirsty girl simply stared, either confused or surprised at Logan's sudden self-mutilation. Something which gave Logan enough time to fully heal.
Pointing his claws, still slick with his own blood, to the girl Logan spoke, his tone unwavering and lacking the previous weakness. "This ball ain't done yet. Wanna dance, bub?"
There were a number of emotions displayed on the girl's face, incredulity and finally an all consuming rage. Her face changed into a rictus of anger as she released an animalistic snarl. Her lance, which she had lightly held besides her body was now held in a white knuckled grip and pointing towards Logan.
While he had not been fighting her for long, Logan already knew what came next and did his best to prepare himself for another or the girl's lighting fast attacks.
The girl, her arm slightly shaking from what could only be repressed fury, took a step forward…
And was unceremoniously blasted away as a high explosive round hit her square in the back.
Logan had but a second to be surprised before a hail of high caliber bullets fell upon him. He was quick to roll away but a not inconsiderable number lodged themselves into his body.
Deciding that the pain of the rounds was nothing compared to what he had been previously subjected to, Logan stood up and tanked the enemy fire as he searched for its origin.
The sudden attack had come from behind the girl, where Logan now saw an armored squad of soldiers, clad in heavy powered armor and lacking any identifying badge sans a small styilized'K'.
Damn bastards. What're ya doing here?
Deciding that he could ask them after removing a few extremities, Logan sprang forth at his full speed, ready to get hit as many times as it were necessary before he tore them to pieces.
But before he could take more than one step, a dark blur shot past him and smashed into the closest trooper. Both the suit of armor, probably worth millions, and its only slightly less valuable operator instantly turned into a mess of gore and metal as nails stronger than diamond tore them to pieces.
The recently demised trooper's companions opened fire with no hesitation, high caliber bullets and micro-missiles powerful enough to gut a tank raining upon the girl only a few meters away. The heavy laser cannon one of them carried joining shortly after.
It was all completely useless.
With a loud explosion of expanding air, a piece of metal, probably from the remains of the deceased trooper, smashed into the closest enemy. The trooper's armor was good, made to survive what could at any time turn into brutal close quarters fighting with mutants and other super powered people. The armor was strong.
It was still not even close to strong enough to stop a multi kilogram piece of metal moving faster than the speed of sound launched from less than ten meters away.
Before the rest of the squad could understand what had happened the blur struck another of them, this time not even bothering to do more than rip their head off in passing, before throwing it at another one in a swift movement. In less than a second another two troopers were dead and the figure was already moving on its fourth victim.
There had been at least a dozen enemies when the 'battle' had started but in a few seconds that number was reduced to six. Six clearly desperate men and women who opened fire with all they had and even then could not even hit the enemy in front of them.
Logan took it all in, quickly deciding that the best part of valour was to leave. After all, he never actually wanted to fight the psychotic girl and didn't particularly care about what destiny befell Department-K's goons either.
Yeah, this ain't my fight.
But before he could leave destiny once again decided he had to get involved.
While the girl was currently busy turning the troopers close to the half-demolished bar into pieces, another trooper had come from what used to be the forest. Much like the ones before, Logan had missed him due to the way the smell of his own blood and the girl's stench of death masked them.
Another mook ready to get killed would not have been a problem if not for what he carried in his hands. It was a long grey weapon, vaguely shaped like a smaller missile launcher. On its tip rested, a spike.
Logan had only seen this weapon once, and in pictures at that. It was a new development by Department-K, one that would make their work much easier. It was a power nullifier.
The idea of a power nullifier was nothing new and Logan and his friends had found themselves on the wrong side of one more than once. But this weapon was more worrying than any before, as it could cancel a mutant's abilities for up to twenty four hours and was completely mass producible, not requiring any kind of exotic component or mutant cooperation. Once a mutant was hit with it they would become completely powerless and be at the mercy of whoever had fired it. The weapon's only real drawback being its high cost, something which Logan was sure wouldn't last.
They were about to shoot the girl and she was too distracted with her slaughter to notice. Logan had to make a decision.
"Ah, dammit."
Before he could fully process what he was doing Logan was already on top of the unsuspecting trooper, who only had time to raise the weapon before Logan's claws sliced it off, alongside a part of the man's hand.
On another day, at another time, the soldier may have given Logan a fight but right now he stood no chance. Synthetic muscle and ceramic armor were cut as easily as the flesh hidden beneath, the man's feeble attempt at defending himself feeling like nothing to Logan, who had just came out of a torture disguised as a fight.
Once the man was disarmed and the suit taken care off, Logan turned around, ready to see how the monstrous girl fight was going on. It was with great surprise that he came face to face, or at least as close as their different heights allowed, with said girl. She was looking straight at him, her left hand tightly holding the severed arm of one of the troopers while the right one pointed the strange lance she had used in their fight.
"I ain't wantin' no trouble girl, I just wanna ask the shitheads inside some questions," some may have found the scene intimidating, but Logan was well past the point he could care about such things. He spoke clearly and without fear. "come on, I'll invite ya ta a drink".
The girl looked at him inquisitively and for a moment Logan worried she would once again attack him. But eventually she looked aside and dropped the arm, the lance disappearing in a shower of lights.
"I will accept your offering then. Better make it so I don't regret it or so will you," and with those words the girl walked back into what remained of the bar, her bearing like that of a queen as she ignored the corpses and destruction all around her.
Yer a difficult one eh, bub?
Sighting deeply, Logan followed behind and wondered what kind of mess he had gotten himself into.
---
AN: So this is done, yay!
I'm not really happy with what I got, I have a lot of trouble writing good battle scenes (read: I suck at writing fights) so this one was a hurdle to overcome and I don't actually think I managed. Regardless, I did the best I could and that's all I can ask from myself.
Now, I'm sure someone will comment on how "Shalltear's 'can't heal wounds' skill shouldn't be that easy to overcome" and yes, you are right but here I am going with this interpretation of Shalltear's skill. Basically her "Cursed Knight" skill makes it so that wounds can't heal by contaminating the body with some kind of negative energy which then means that any wound they have in the contaminated area won't heal. Thing is, Logan's healing factor contained the spread of this, so only the immediate area around the wound couldn't heal and once he amputated this everything was fine.
If you don't like the watsonian answer then the Doylist answer is "the world doesn't run by RPG rules so I don't have to follow them completely when interacting between Marvel locals and Overlord characters".
Addendum: Please do note that Shalltear never actually went all out, her attacks were all "measured" (according to her own weird definition of the word of course). If she had stopped being dumb and gone full power then she would have found a way to kill Logan, no two ways about it (and she would have also lit a signal for anyone with a speck of Power to see, never mind the many shady organizations™ going around).
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
Lasyandra
Lasyandra Please support the original writer here :
https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/of-maple-syrup-skeletons-and-warcrimes-overlord-marvel-round-robin.757444/reader/
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