Chapter 50 What We Aim to Do Part 3

“It is because I do not believe in your ideals, that I refuse to kill any more through my action.” - Paradigm, to Unknown.

“Ranpo get away!” Aiden yelled as Ranpo flew away, eyes trying to find the boundaries of this space.

Turning back to his opponent, Aiden began the fight with a snake.

A brown serpent lashed out like a whip towards Rain, however she easily dodged, and with what appeared to be a single step, appeared directly in front of Aiden.

Ninety centimetres in front of him.

She glanced to the ground as she found that her steps no longer travelled distance, for though Aiden wasn’t holding it, he had wrapped it around his leg, so that it still contacted his skin.

The serpent struck out, aiming for her neck.

But Rain casually caught it with a single hand, eyes still glued to the ground.

Aiden leapt back, and suddenly Rain was able to move a step forward.

“Three ruler lengths,” she said.

Aiden kept retreating. The defense of the Umbrella was great, but not omnipotent.

If he allowed Rain to properly measure and observe its capabilities, he would lose an entire ability.

However, Rain didn’t chase after him, instead flicking her hand. The one that wore a jade ring.

A sword appeared in midair, pointing towards Aiden, and with a tap on the hilt by Rain, it multiplied to two.

Then four.

Then eight.

Then sixteen.

Then thirty-two.

And just kept doubling until all Aiden could see before him was a wall of sharp blades.

All blades flew, and Aiden was forced to stop in his tracks, lest the changing movement accidentally put him in the way of a blade. All flew true, except for the ones directly approaching him.

Numerous passed by his sides, stabbing into the ground, for they were moving parallel to, not towards him.

And in that single moment when his sight was blocked, Rain was beside him, an opened palm striking the air.

There was a sound like a thunder crack as Aiden lost his hearing.

Wind roared as the sheer strength of her hand compressed the air into a burning red hot bubble that shot towards him, before hitting the range of the Umbrella and utterly stopping.

But where it could not go forward or backward, it escaped sideways, throwing a secondary blast of hurricane force winds that whipped the area, none directly reaching Aiden, but they whipped around him with such force that he was forced to kneel to the ground, hand holding onto the black surface for support as the leftover blades were scattered all around the area.

Aiden only heard a loud ringing.

“Only stops things that move towards you, similar to the Void Spatial Reality Warping Arts,” Rain said, somehow, despite the ringing of his ears, her words came clear. “Yet sound still reaches you.”

Aiden dabbed the lobes of his ears, finding his fingers red.

“It seems I have poor luck with women in strange sub dimensions,” he quipped, but he heard not a single word he said, only the sensation of vibration in his throat and mouth gave any indication to his deaf ears that he had spoken at all.

“Not your first time?” Rain asked with a raised eyebrow. “I suppose it would be too boring if it was.”

She raised her fists, “Now tell me how durable you are, before I am forced to find out myself.”

“Why would I tell you that?”

Rain shrugged, “Because of this.”

Rain moved.

That was all Aiden managed to process when he saw her directly next to him.

She figured it out.

Half of her body was outside the thirty centimetre zone, the other half was firmly inside.

And she took a single step with the inside half, bringing the rest of her right in front of Aiden.

Aiden’s fist shot out, his arm screamed in pain as his tattoos forced it to strength beyond what it was normally capable of.

An average gorilla can punch with many times the strength of a normal human. He no longer knew the exact amount, but the Aiden that made the decision to do this knew this was likely the strongest force he could exert within the limits of his human body.

His fist slammed in Rain’s nose, the soft tissue of her body, and his bones broke. His fingers breaking and splaying out as all that was left of his fist was a nose shaped indent.

“Is that the best you could do?”

His other hand, the prosthetic shot out with a serpent tattoo that slammed two fingers covered in the fangs of the Inland Taipan that easily pierced through her coat and shirt-

And broke when they reached her skin.

He instantly changed the claws of his prosthetic to the Giant Anteater, a creature known to mortally wound and cripple jaguars with their claws strong enough to tear into termite mounds as hard as concrete.

His claws slammed into her neck, and did not move.

“That’s it?” she asked.

Then Rain punched him in the stomach.

Every single layer of his clothes in addition to his skin was covered in tattoos.

It did not help him as he was thrown several metres away, slamming into the ground rolling before he forced himself to a stop with Octopus Suction Cups gripping the ground.

But the moment he rose, Rain was in front of him.

He could not see how many times she punched him.

In that single second, her hands blurred until they could no longer be seen, and Aiden simply began to collapse.

Yet before he even fell to the ground, a kick struck his midsection, punting him further away.

“Even holding back, you can only take this much?” Rain asked as she strolled towards him.

Aiden vomited blood onto the ground, even as he forced himself back up.

She was right in front of him, waiting.

“Show me your best,” she told him.

Aiden obliged.

He ignored the pain of his real hand as he pulled it back for an attack. The strength of a tiger swipe was known to instantly behead people, and he stacked concepts until he had a Supremely Physically Overpowering Strong Siberian Tiger tattoo that covered his real hand, arm, shoulder and the rest of his body, so that he could exert the full force of momentum as he swung with the whole of his body.

The swing was fast enough to completely escape his perception as it slammed into Rain’s face, a sonic boom rang out, which he only felt because of the sheer force of vibration as powerful winds whipped the air around him, splaying Rain’s long hair into a multitude of directions.

She staggered to the side slightly.

Rain grabbed his outstretched arm.

“All that just to ruin my hair.”

She threw him.

Aiden flew, yet before he could land, a hand grabbed his neck, a fist flew out-

Before stopping inches from his stomach.

“It appears that anymore and you may die.”

Blood seeped out of Aiden’s mouth, yet worst was his left arm, underneath the tiger stripes it was horrifically mangled and bruised.

The attack was less like a swipe, but more like a whip as Aiden threw his arm with such strength.

And what was left of his arm was as limp and disjointed as a whip.

It was barely together because the tattoo held it together.

“Was that your strongest attack?” Rain asked, “The strength to shatter a boulder, but a Cultivator of the Third Stage practices such strength every day.”

She raised him higher by the neck, like a piece of limp meat.

Aiden spat blood onto the ground, coughing as he tried to weakly speak.

His voice was weak and quiet, but Rain could hear it fine.

“I… I have better bites, but I fear I would only break my jaw like that.”

“Hah!” Rain laughed, “To resort to biting your opponent, this isn’t a bar fight, but I suppose you do not have the luxury to have class.”

Aiden tilted his head- no, more correctly, he let his neck go limp. “What now?” his voice croaked out. “Will you kill me?”

“My benefactor might complain if I do,” she shrugged, “I only planned to beat you up slightly, yet you went ahead and broke yourself wielding such mediocre power.”

“I admit, I am not the calm thinker that I want to be,” Aiden coughed out, before he smiled slightly. “How strange… you are the second person I have so earnestly wished to die.”

He could feel his hearing returning as his regeneration did its work. However, despite eating much more recently to account for the increased caloric need of his regeneration…

Aiden knew he could not save his remaining arm without dying of starvation in the process.

“Who was the first?”

“Someone who doesn’t exist in this world,” Aiden replied.

She tilted her head at that, but seeing as he didn’t elaborate, continued.

“So,” Rain asked, peering directly into his face, “do you still want to kill me?”

Aiden gave her his most radiant smile.

“I want hyenas to rip clean your flesh, I want vultures to swallow your bones, and I want to use the resulting shit as fertiliser for a garden.”

He never had a garden before, it would be an interesting experience.

Rain smiled and laughed.

“Cries of a weakling, lacking in substance.”

And Aiden thought to the one memory he had that he could use to match her, if only for a moment.

Tacking on numerous concepts to the tattoo allowed him to briefly emulate his physical strength, but that was an enhanced version. The tiger’s base strength was nowhere near the base strength of him. If he enhanced that, he might be able to wipe that shit-eating grin off her face.

Johnjohnjohnjohn.

“Hmm?” Rain asked, “Is that defiance I see in your eyes? One final trick that you have?”

Aiden ignored the pain.

He ignored the cracks of the shattered fragments of his arm bones grinding together as he moved his arm purely through his tattoo.

If he threw all those concepts that he used on the tiger onto Johnjohnjohnjohn, he might be able to hurt her.

She leaned forward, baring her face for his hand to strike, taunting him.

He reabsorbed the Supremely Physically Overpowering Strong Siberian Tiger tattoo.

And-

“Thank you, I will try to remember you, to never forget who you were.”

His arm fell limp to his side.

“Hmm?” Rain tilted her head towards it, “Giving up?”

“Apologies,” Aiden replied, the fight leaving him, “I will not use him.”

“Why not?” she asked, “Do you believe you cannot beat me even with that technique?”

“No,” Aiden replied. “I believe I can still harm you if I used him.”

“But I promised I would not forget him.”

Silence.

Rain stared at him.

Moments passed, until slowly she gently lowered him to the ground and took a step back, staring at her hand.

Then once again at the sky that was not there.

“Aiden!” Ranpo yelled. Returning once the brief sounds of battle subsided.

“I have committed a great injustice,” Rain muttered. “I have spent too long in these lands to even forget honour.”

To everyone’s surprise, she lowered herself until she knelt, and bowed until her head touched the ground.

“Immortal Warrior, I have shown you great disrespect and mocked your techniques.”

And she slowly rose back to her full height. “Stand.”

Aiden’s response was more a reflex, as he struggled to bring himself up to his full length.

“I have not been using any of my Breath techniques, thus far using only my Physical Cultivation to battle you,” she quietly explained, flicking her hand to reveal a sheathed sword. “I shall rectify this.”

And she unsheathed the sword.

Strangely, there was no blade, only a hilt and guard, nothing above.

“To match your boulder breaking strike, I shall use a technique that shall similarly cost me greatly, for I cannot replenish my Breath energy within this airless world,” she said as she entered a stance.

It was a beautiful, practised movement, the result of centuries of tireless repetition and training. She held the hilt as if it were a true sword, its tip pointing right towards Aiden.

“What is your name?”

“Aiden,” he gasped out.

“Son of Fire, that is a fine name,” Rain replied. “I will remember it.”

From above, Vanta popped down from the remaining opening, seeing Rain in her stance, before hurrying back up.

Ranpo desperately beat his wings, trying to get to them just a little bit faster.

And Aiden wondered if he should try to run.

He figured he shouldn’t bother, his legs were too weak anyways.

And the Rain that Beholds the Morning Grass began speaking.

No, it was more like a Buddhist chant, a quiet thing under her breath, rhythmic, regular, droning yet Aiden felt like he would never forget it.

“We are eternally trapped in the cycle of reincarnation.

Reach towards the endless Heavens, cultivating to achieve immortality.”

But the words, the meaning of the words spoken didn’t sound right.

And Aiden realised it was the strange translation effect of the language Rain used.

The sounds she was speaking sounded melodic, beautiful, haunting, they rhymed and had rhythm, yet when it was automatically translated to Aiden, only the literal meaning carried.

“But immortality is ever a lie.

We cultivate to escape old age, to live ten thousand years, yet we still die of old age at ten thousand.”

Aiden had the realisation that he may never fully understand what Rain was truly saying.

The translation effect of her words, her name which might’ve sounded perfectly normal in the sound of her original language was rendered a long, meaningless word soup. Just like how she had called him the Son of Fire, the meaning of the name Aiden was carried, not the actual name. Even if he did his best to match the meaning in English to the foreign words she was speaking, they would never perfectly fit.

“We rage against the Heavens and Earth, we cultivate immortality so we can declare ourselves above both.

Yet in the end, Heaven and Earth always outlasts us.”

Her bowing, a meaningless gesture when Aiden prepared to fight. Her falling to the ground in apology for a reason he still couldn’t fathom. She wasn’t an ability user, she gained no advantage from such actions.

Aiden may never understand Rain, and Rain may never understand Aiden, for the simple reason that they were from different worlds and spoke different languages, that no matter how well they were translated, simply didn’t mean the same thing.

“As the First Sage, the only one to be Honoured Between Heaven and Earth had declared.

There is no immortality save that which lies in the memory of men.

In the legacy we carry and leave behind.”

“Rain!” Ya yelled through his computer screen, “Don’t kill him!”

It was too late.

“Sword Technique, Hollow Immortality.”

And the Rain that Beholds the Morning Grass stabbed her bladeless hilt forward.

The Umbrella was still touching Aiden’s skin, its effect was still active.

But it blocked nothing.

There was nothing to block.

And nothing stabbed into Aiden’s heart, piercing a hole through his chest and back.

Aiden fell to the ground with nothing stabbed through his heart.

Blood pooled beneath Rain’s feet.

There was a moment of quiet shock. The Son of Fire’s crow beast had turned silent upon landing next to his master, his crow face unreadable to her.

Worse off was Ya, who had turned deathly pale upon seeing the body, before vomiting off screen.

“You… you killed him,” Ya finally said, wiping vomit from the corners of his mouth.

“No,” Rain replied, “Not yet.”

And she saw the crow realise the same thing she had.

The blood was pooling in a perfect circle around the body, around a ruler’s length, before stopping, unable to move towards or away from the centre.

It was still leaking to the side, like a flood that hit an unbreakable wall, the blood was moving tangentially to the circle, so that the pool still expanded, but at a lesser pace.

And she saw the crow ready its resolve as he turned to her.

“You intend to save him?” she asked.

“I do,” he replied to her simply.

“With what power?” she asked him.

That stung him, she saw. Like she suspected, the creature before him was no mythical creature, it didn’t carry any strength.

“You are just a bird who can talk,” she said as she sheathed her sword.

Despair.

Silence.

Then laughter.

“I am!” the crow yelled with a harsh laugh, “I am just a bird who can talk, what manner of life form is not greater than me?”

“Many,” Rain replied, “the worms you feast on for one.”

“And you?” the crow asked.

“I am above you,” she told him the truth they both knew.

“Then do you have a way of saving him?” the crow asked.

Rain thought about it, even as his blood stained her shoes.

The crow was getting impatient, stealing glances toward the unmoving body. Even mortals could live without a heart, though not for very long.

Then Rain remembered that the doorman had stolen three alchemical elixirs of some sort a few days ago.

“I do.”

A flash of relief.

“But why should I?” she asked him.

Silence, for a breath and not a moment longer.

“You spoke of legacy, and of remembering people.”

“I did,” she answered simply.

“Yet you cut his short,” he accused.

She shrugged, “The heavens are cruel, countless perish due to reasons beyond their control, what difference does his death make?”

“Of everyone I’ve met in this city, he has the most potential,” the crow replied with a steel in his voice. “His power is difficult, it has its weaknesses, and he is a bit fucked in the head, but give him enough time, and he can achieve whatever he wants.”

“Geniuses of every age and era perish before greatness,” Rain said, “They are born to impoverished villages and starve before they know how to count, they grow and are sent to wars before with swords taller than they are, they are accidentally killed by wandering masters, or they simply find power not worth the risk, and retire to die of old age.”

“Then did you feel good beating him?” the crow cut in, “Did you feel anything fighting a person who has had their power for barely two months, did it feel nice cutting off any potential he had? To beat up a child?”

“Do you feel anything when you hear the yapping of an ant?” she asked him. “Do you feel anything when you step on it?”

He shrunk back slightly, but did not cower.

“If you felt like he was an ant, why did you humour him with a technique? Afterall…” his eyes went to her sword, “You sheathed your sword, you would not use a sword to kill an ant like me, yet you did with him.”

“Do you think that you can change anything with your words?”

“If a farmer had to go to war with no weapon, they fight with their hoe whether they like it or not,” the crow answered her.

And she took a step towards him.

He did not move.

She took another step.

He stood in place.

She took one last step, until she stood right in front of the crow, a fist pointed towards him.

And she swung.

Faster than the crow could perceive, faster than sound itself.

It stopped, inches from the crow’s head.

The crow did not move, he did not flinch, he did not run or scream.

“What is your reason for saving him?” Rain asked him.

“Because he can do better than me,” the crow replied. “I am not the limit of his power, I am a random test he decided to do one day.”

And the crow stepped forward, flapping its wings until it landed on her outstretched arm, and stared directly into her eyes.

“He can do better than a bird who can only talk.”

“A meaningless metric,” she answered. “Do you think he can create something to threaten me?”

“He can copy powers, that’s what the distance effect is,” the bird replied, but his eyes weren’t looking at her anymore, it was to the computer screen behind her, still held by the doorman, towards Ya.

He was trying to move her through Ya.

“It’s just a matter of time until-”

Rain did not let him.

“Answer my question.”

The crow paused, eyes finally turned back to her.

“With my entire being.”

She met his eyes.

“I like you,” she said.

She withdrew her fist, and the crow leapt off, flapping his wings to stabilise as Rain turned towards the exit.

“Doorman, make sure they don’t run.”

With that said, Rain moved.

With a single step, she leapt out of the building Aiden’s apartment was in, with a second step, she reached the cafe where their base was.

Opening the door, she saw Ya waiting, anxiously ripping into his already dwindling hair.

“Fucking hell, you had to make this complicated.”

“Do you object to me taking one of the elixirs?” Rain asked.

“Do you think I can stop you if you want to take the NectarTM?” Ya asked instead.

“Not at all.”

Ya sighed, removing the scarlet ring from his finger, “Use the Scarlet Letter on the both of them, it should take easier since we’re giving away such a valuable thing. Taking control of that Concept will be more difficult, but having a power copier on our side might make it worth it.”

“Even if one of them wishes for our tortuous deaths?” she teased.

“You know the actual rules as much as I do,” Ya sighed, “we’re fucked if he dies, at least he’s a known threat, we can’t take the thing that enforces the real rules.”

“You keep saying that, yet it has yet to face me,” Rain replied.

“Just take the damn potion before I regret it.”

One sip.

One sip of the golden liquid and the dying man hacked out a glob of blood as his heart restarted and he instinctively cleared his airways.

A second sip, and that broken, purple mess of an arm snapped back to normal, the inflammation, the horrific bruising, gone as if wiped away like an ugly stain.

A third sip, the bottle emptied, and the bony appearance brought about by his natural regeneration healed as his body looked plump and healthy. Something even sprouted from the stump of his arm, they looked like fingers, but were much too small.

“Understand that the both of you now owe us,” Ya said as Rain stamped a scarlet ring into Ranpo’s chest, before moving to do the same thing to Aiden. “Don’t try to contact any authorities, we’ll know, and they won’t be able to remove the mark.”

A scarlet A appeared on his chest, as did on Ranpo, though his was obscured by his feathers.

“If we need you, we’ll contact you,” he finished as Vanta sunk into the shadows with the laptop.

Rain turned to them before leaving.

“I look forward to the future,” she said simply.

And the two were left alone in silence.

“Are they gone?” Ranpo finally asked.

“I couldn’t sense the one covered in black paint before, I doubt I can now,” Aiden replied.

Either way, Ranpo hopped up close to Aiden, right next to his ear so he could whisper something.

“When that crazy woman left… it was only for a moment, barely a minute before she came back, but… Vanta, that one didn’t turn off the face call.”

Ranpo had heard everything Rain and Ya had discussed.

“One of the elixirs,” Ranpo quoted, “the one they fed you isn’t the only one.”

And a harsh smile appeared on Aiden’s face.

“Do we call the cops for help?” Ranpo asked.

“No, for who calls the cops to help them rob someone?” Aiden laughed, “If we called them, they might take it for themselves as ‘civil forfeiture.’ They’ll be the backup option.”

They were refreshingly similar to his old world in that one regard.

“And to be perfectly honest, they’re not the worst boss I’ve had.”

And just like them, Aiden had no loyalty, he worked so long as he was paid, and would leave when his goals were met and better pastures were found.

It’s just this time, it would be personal.