1: “...Magnetic pull – magnetic repel!”

Noel: “What’s magneti—waah!”

Without warning, Noel’s body suddenly rose a few inches off the ground and rushed forward like a positive charge being drawn to a negative charge. Succeeding this; the deadly pair of saw and needle charged towards Noel as if drawn to his body!

Noel was forced to grit his teeth and bear with the irresistible pull. His body drew ever closer towards the flying weapons as he watched the saw continuously spin in a counter clock - wise motion; undecidedly alternating between a vertical flight pattern, and a horizontal one. The needle spiraled in an untamed, clock – wise movement, increasing its momentum more and more as the milliseconds ticked away.

Until finally..!

.

.

.

He grabbed hold of the spinning needle that was first to arrive; producing a searing smoke from his right hand that clasped it. After a second, Noel’s grip tightened, which inadvertently made the needle come to an immediate halt. Not bothering to check his small hand for damages, he averted his focus.

With acute attentiveness from a mixture of success and adrenaline: he breathlessly prepared himself for the saw to strike. Luckily, it was MUCH slower than it’s partner in crime, the momentum enwrapped needle.

Once the circular saw drove close enough to part his breath, Noel slammed both fists against the saw’s centerpiece. A webbing of deep and invasive cracks spread throughout the device until it shattered into pieces of debris.

Noel chuckled as he continued floating through the air – heading directly to the man codenamed One. The experienced mercenary sucked in air through his closed teeth – followed by a soft – yet – fierce “Damn!”. Of all the jobs he had to choose, it had to be a child massacre involving THIS creepy monster pair! It’s probably that old saying – when the hunter becomes the hunted! THAT is the feeling he’s getting from this fight right now. They came to hunt some children, but the children suddenly started to hunt them…

Maybe he shouldn’t have agreed to this.

.

.

.

...Well, this IS the only job his ‘Boss’ could find, offering the correct amount of money upfront. Only because of an emergency, did ‘One’ accept this dirty role. In order to save ‘her’ – Any sacrifice was acceptable.

Any sacrifice…

…

One lifted the clasps sealing 3 chest pockets, and pulled out a pill from each of them. Just as he was about to crush these tablets in between his fingers…

...his eyes softened a little.

*CCRRACK!!*

The pills disappeared and what replaced those three were a trio of gas clouds. Normally, released smoke would scatter and dissipate in the forest wind. But once these clouds of smoke met with fresh oxygen...they exploded!

As if devouring a feast of delicacies: the air around looked to only serve the three clouds’ growth. They expanded and contracted...each pulsating like beating hearts receiving a fresh pump of blood.

…

Without any sense of warning, the smoky mass shook - immediately transforming into massive, ethereal, gaseous monsters. The once blobby forms took shape: One grew tentacles...or roots? It was difficult to tell the difference when this creature had no physical form to begin with, but it maintained a set of ‘eyes’ above what appeared to be squiggly limbs or tentacles. As if maintaining a pointed hat up above, the entire thing ended up looking like a squid.

A giant squid with numerous jellyfish - like tentacles.

The second strongly resembled a lion...if lions had 3 deadly scorpion stingers and a porcupine - like mane of quills.

The third was a Bird.

A really… Really... REALLY big bird sporting three… no, four legs.

There wasn’t a wisp of sound emitting from these creations – and if one looked closely: kind of like how Noel was gazing at the entire chain of events right now…

then like Noel, you would also detect traces of tiny reflective particles within each of these gas cloud monsters.

1: “Magnetic puppetry. I’ll have to recover your head only IF it remains intact after this. Die!”

The bird was first to silently swoop down, while ‘1’ threw Noel directly towards his metallic dust puppet. Its mouth opened wide – ready to accept the offering being made before it.

...Noel watched onward as the lion – like creation, and the squid – like cloud completely ignored everything around them. It didn’t APPEAR that the clouds had sentience of any kind. They sort of moved and behaved more like robots than anything alive…

What Noel didn’t know about this ‘cloud’ was that it was actually a special metal not found on earth – broken down into fine powder and granted ‘life’ to an extent, by a special woman’s experiment. Whenever it came into contact with vast levels of oxygen, the dust cloud would EXPLODE with delight, and start reclaiming their successfully designed forms, unique to each pill. He only received a handful of them – namely five. They were unique and non-replicable. NORMALLY he would never use more than a SINGLE pill against unidentified threats...but he needed to know just what he was dealing with… Exactly WHAT was this kid and more importantly, what was he capable of?

Using them for such a purpose, for eliminating the largest threat to this mission, which would effectively save HER life in the process: is a MUCH more worthy and explainable reason to back up this heavy loss on his pockets. A great loss, but to aid his chances in the battle, a worthy one!

This metallic dust, when in contact with humans or any other living organism – they tend to ‘break’ into – or ‘invade’ the physical body, drain ALL of the fluids dry, drain all of the OXYGEN dry to support their own growth…

...before scattering the now skinny, mummified corpse that had effectively LOST all of its nutrients into the wind. THIS was how these type of beings operated. Without differentiating between friend or foe, they would just continuously absorb and grow non-stop off of everything alive within its vicinity.

Or at least, that is how they NORMALLY functioned before 1 came along. With his extremely rare magnetic AND spacial abilities: he can easily shape it into whatever form he pleases, and have it attack whomever he chooses as an enemy. The first attack could be considered ‘testing the waters’. He wanted to find out exactly HOW much of a threat the kid was to him.

But then came that irritable chuckling. And when Noel lifted a single finger towards the bird: Sparks of black and purple fused together to enshroud the digit, directly before contact. The energy collided with the cloud shaped like a bird as it completely swallowed Noel up….!

...And silently: the bird evaporated like a magical eraser deciding the creature wasn't worth keeping around any longer. From its indignant face, all the way down to its wings, tail and four legs. The creature really did NOT get to do much, aside from appearing before Noel – and looking overwhelmingly intimidating.

It wasn’t just the bird that his ‘touch’ destroyed either. Noel also brushed against the ‘energy’ binding him with his own and disintegrated that too. Furthermore, the moment he even whipped out the energy – clad index finger...the entire Gravitational Dome started to vanish.

This alarmed 1 so much more than the quick destruction of his prized pill. What was that…?! Was that…? No. It COULDN’T be! There’s no way a kid barely old enough to go to school can know about ‘that’!!

It was suppOSED to be a process that took a guy’s entire life to complete, or very close to it at least. For a mere ‘infant’ to already be capable of wielding it…? Just what was this world coming to??

He didn’t want to believe it, but…

...if it WAS the case...then he needed to alter his plans a bit.

Or… drastically change them.

He spread his awareness over both massive gas colossus’s and gave only one order to both.

1: “(Spread yourself out like air particles and follow my command!)”

Thanks to his magnetic control, his ‘will’ branded itself onto the two puppet – like beasts and scattered them. Like the air itself...these extremely fine particles now blended in with the air Noel breathed,

…

...or was supposed to breathe.

Noel: “Hmmm~ Good thing that I brought my mask. It’ll protect me from both Covid – 19 AND these tiny, invading specs of...uhh – metal? Yeah. I guess so.”

1: “…”

Noel: “What? Jealous of my genius? It’s a shame that you weren’t blessed in the same light as I was. Attacking kids for money is really the makings of a deadbeat brute.”

1: “These particles can invade your bloodstream WITHOUT getting breathed in. The pores of your skin are MORE than wide enough. This battle is reaching its climax!”

He threw his arms up into the air – ripped ANOTHER portion of his invisible energy to actually ‘rebuild’ the gravitational dome, and fetched a few more devices from deep inside of his inner vest zipper. Inside of here, was yet another contraption. It allowed for him to hastily pull out his hidden arsenal of deadly devices that couldn’t be carried in a simple pocket.

From within the pocket, similar to the ‘trick’ Noel pulled off against 4...except that it was real this time...

...appeared 6 or 7 automatic, circular saws, each perching themselves around the veteran 1. They first appeared around his cranium like a deadly halo, before separating into varying practiced patterns. They managed to remain afloat: continuously pervading the forest with intimidating racket all the while.

This battle was just about to intensify even further.

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