What if in that Pivotal Moment, Joe unlocked his super-speed semblance?
Semblance
I barely had time to react. Without the life fiber energy coursing through me I would have had no time to react. As it stood it took my training, divine reflexes, life fiber alterations, direct enhancements from Tetra, and the full force of One Thing at a Time just to have a hope of taking any action. Mostly it was allowing me to experience the onset of mind-numbing terror at a rate that would have impressed the most cowardly individual on the planet.
Make no mistake. Terror was the correct response to this situation. I was surrounded by death. Absolute, unquestionable death. All my touted invincibility, the progression from the durability of a piece of steel strapped to my wrist, upgraded to hyper-alloys, then Skyforged metals, then mithril, then enchanted metals, then adamantium, then volcano wrought hybrid materials, then full-on divine armor, none of it made any difference against this attack.
A single instance of it could kill me. The assembled blast from dozens of copies would reduce my body to the consistency of chunky salsa, at least what portions of it weren't annihilated by multidimensional effects of the blast.
I was staring death in the face and only had an instant to find a way out. It took much less than that to realize there wasn't an 'out' from this situation. I would be limited to the slightest of actions before the effect went off. March had timed this as close as possible. Whoever, wherever the original Oni Lee was, he would have barely enough time to cast down the bomb board and save himself. Of course, with March what would normally be considered 'barely enough time' was basically a guarantee of success.
I put the mechanism of this trap out of my mind. I stopped thinking about how it had been set up, how this attack mechanism could basically kill any cape on the planet with a decent shot against Endbringers. I didn't consider the implications of this, what would happen if I failed, the aftermath, and my very probable death on a single mistake. Instead, I focused solely on finding a way out of this alive.
I couldn't kill enough of the Oni Lee clones before the detonation. My reflexes weren't that fast, and every other attack method was too slow. There was no way to clear the crowd.
Or was there?
In that moment of fear, as I faced death's door, I felt a resonance. I was Jozef Duris, and I was facing my biggest threat yet. And what did Jozef Duris do when faced with hardship? I'd turn around and run away.
My Aura burned and laced itself into my very being, and time truly slowed to a crawl. I had time to run away. I felt the strain on my Aura and I knew I could only hold this for 20 relative seconds, but those were worth so much more with Life Fiber power suffusing my flesh, meaning I had, effectively speaking, three minutes to act. I looked at the Oni Lees around me, noticing each was redirecting their gaze at another, in a spiral pattern, except for the last, who was looking to the ground, likely about to teleport there. I pushed him down and to the right and began to descend rapidly, keeping my grip to drag him down with me.
As I did, I flexed my hand, pressing on Oni Lee's optic nerve. There'd be no escape for him. No way to teleport. He'd die to the attack he tried to kill me with.
As I hit the ground, I saw Lung and Triumph engaged in battle, Triumph about to have his chest punctured by March's massive gaudy sword. March had to die. I ran at her and dropped a damaged, incapable-of-teleporting Lee next to her, the plate with her power applied pressed against her back. They'd both die.
I felt my Aura flicker. This was straining. I was connected to a deep aspect of myself, that of running away. To do anything but that took a lot of focus and effort. I glanced to an alcove where I could see Bakuda standing with two men who were holding cameras. Nothing I could do about that. I glanced to Lung and Triumph. The former would maim if not kill the latter, so I grabbed the Nemean cape and ran out of the port.
I made it about a block away before my Aura depleted and I crashed.
Triumph dove into a roll as I let him go and ate asphalt. And I heard him cough. "Tha-" another rough cough left his throat "Thanks."
I stood up and nodded as the crack of an explosion made its way to us a block away. "You're welcome."
"I think he was gonna kill me…"
"I agree."
I heard the roar of a thruster, and jumped up, grabbing the motoroid of my duplicate, hitching a ride back towards the Port. I waved to triumph and sent my duplicate a message through my implant "Hey."
"Alright, I felt that, who'd you take out?"
"Yeah, souls are one and all, got Oni Lee and March."
"Ready to take out the rest?"
"Yeah, let's slow down a bit though, let our reserves recover." And the Fleet within the motoroid obeyed.
The copy of Survey in the motoroid sent us a message, "Scanners of the main motoroid were not damaged, high-quality scans of March's power have been caught. Main Survey did not manage to send the data before our communication broke down."
We both signaled our thanks to the AI, now more excited to retrieve the main motoroid.
"I'll focus on Lung, you focus on Bakuda." My duplicate laced this message with glee, which concerned me, but I nodded.
We flew in, and I hopped off, using Trauma to grapnel down towards a confused, ramping up Lung, who was covered in the remains of his two sidekicks. I engaged my HF capacitors and poured as much life fiber energy as I could into the kick. He had to die.
He looked up and glared at me just as my leg connected to his head.
It was turned to paste.
Classy Contortionist kept my body language from portraying the dread at what I had done, and my Military memories allowed me to realize this was a necessary action.
He began regenerating rapidly, and I sent "Your turn now!"
I practically teleported to Bakuda with the Life Fiber Energy in my body, and punched her right between the eyes. My fist went right through her head, and I scowled as I reminded myself that me letting them live would've hurt a lot more people.
I grabbed the mechanism of her deadman's switch that she had connected to her spinal cord. It wasn't hard to hack it and disarm all her armaments, now that I understood it perfectly through my Technokinesis.
The two ABB thugs had run away as soon as I had killed Lung, so my duplicate just webbed them.
I then heard a blood-curdling roar.
I turned back to find a 10ft Lung, murderous intent as bared as his roaring fangs as he glared at me.
"Buy me a minute!" My duplicate asked. I sighed and sent a confirmation back.
Lung ran at me, but I pushed him back and began to pummel him. I was only hitting metallic scales at this point, but I didn't mind.
He breathed fire at me, but I grabbed it like it was fabric, and backed up. I scrunched it up into a ball of bright blue-white fire and laced my hand in it as I punched Lung. His scales melted and his flesh flaked into ash, and he began to regenerate.
My duplicate sent me a message "Back Up!" right before his motoroid dropped and opened, and he jumped out with a large transmutation array being held between his hands.
I barely had time to react, but turned around and jumped away as he hit the ground and activated the array.
Alchemical Power ran along the Dragons Pulse and Lung was suddenly surrounded by an asphalt structure, three winding columns of compressed road, with curving branches made of various materials I recognized from the construction of the motoroid, which I now noticed was gone.
I then looked to the cape, who was confused and ramping down.
I recognized elements of the construction, I knew what this was. The Arcane Craft. The Dragons Pulse showed the power behind his rage being pulled out by the structure. The energy was sucked into the structure and sent upwards, following a mantic spiral.
Lung, who was not weak in his base form, ran forward, only to collide with the Mantic Field creating a prison around him.
My duplicate made a second change, and the branches multiplied and crossed over, changing the effect slightly.
Natural Energy was also drawn into this mantic spiral, only the cross-overs drew it back down. The area was essentially filled with an intensifying Natural Energy field.
My duplicate threw in a canister of sleeping gas, which was boosted by the natural energy, and Lung fell unconscious.
"I've noticed, our thinking patterns are kinda different, even if we're mostly similar."
"That's how you came up with this?"
"Yup."
"You had multiple canisters, the prison was nice, but why do the thing with natural energy?"
"1. We don't like to be wasteful."
"I'll give you that, but-"
"-2. We like to show off."
"I really don't."
"Really? Just accept it! It's so much easier to know!"
"I don't show off."
"Jesus you are dense. Is that why Aura is easier for us duplicates?"
"I don't like showing off! Can you just laser Lung to death already?"
"Alright Captain."
The duplicate's motoroid raised an arm, releasing a laser array. A red line blasted out and tilted, leaving but a red smear.
I then transmuted a large doorway under the motoroid. I inserted the key into the lock, and swung it inwards, tossing the remnants in.
I sealed the workshop, then began absconding away with my duplicate, bounding over the roofs of the city.
"Ok, but on showing off, Remember when we had Aisha over to help with Beria?"
"Ugh. Yes?"
"We started technobabbling about the material of the plating and the skeleton, and the adaption."
"She had to know the specs!"
"We didn't just tell her specs, we bragged about the Raginite Engine and the wind-Dust-precipitated Enhanced Mithril infused with high-grade Ceramite thermal resistance."
"So what!"
"ADMIT WE LIKE TO SHOW OFF!" the duplicate seemed annoyed "Look at the outfit you're wearing! You like it! Admit you're a Goth Showboater already!"
I sighed as I unlocked the warehouse through the ceiling access of some burnt apartment building and walked to the Alchemy Lab. "Goth maybe, but I don't like to show off that much."
The duplicate seemed to want to bash his head into a wall until he popped "I get you live forever and whatnot, but how can you just… live in denial like this?"
"I'm not in fucking denial." I insisted as I donned a divine invisibility cloak and began to leave. I felt the Forge move to the Size domain, and I grabbed a mid-sized mote, with two free ones following.
I wanted to laugh as the design principles entered my head. The power was called Miniaturization/Efficiency, and it provided the knowledge of design principles much more potent than those of Gadgeteer, but also fully compatible with other principles, being completely separate.
This was bullshit miniaturization, on the level of Armsmaster.
But that wasn't what made this power amazing, it was one of the free ones that came with it. It was called Out Of Context Problem. It made me immune to all precogs and thinkers but one. "Coil."
I'd have to look into him. Judging by my passenger's reaction to him, he wasn't much of a threat though.
That was just two of the powers I had just gotten. I heard a rumbling and looked over to the locker that had just appeared. A cache of tinkertech, specifically tinkertech, made with Miniaturization/Efficiency.
"We'll look at that later."
"How about I look at it, and you leave me and garment here, and walk home alone? I promise I won't upgrade anything without you here!"
"Alright." I left in my cloak, and sealed the workshop. I walked back to my apartment and entered. I opened the workshop to find the duplicate laughing his ass off.
"Hey- J- Fuchahahahahha! Ok! Sorry! You know how we were like 'This is some Armsmaster shit'?"
"Yes?"
The duplicate held up the items he was holding behind him.
He held up Armsmaster's Armor and Halberd. He then swung himself around to reveal Armsmaster's bike.
"You have to be kidding me…"
"Nope! Literally Armsmaster's power! And it gave us his gear as well!"
"…What else did the cache have?"
"Oh, a bunch of Armsmaster's other weapons, and a second copy of his armor."
"Great…" I then frowned "You were not laughing for the last ten minutes. What did you do before that?"
He held up his hands in surrender "I really didn't upgrade anything. I just decided to take my 20% time early, and Garment and I just made you a new wardrobe."
I groaned as a literal wardrobe manifested from my duplicates personal dimension. He swung it open and my voice died in my throat.
It was that same style, "Grown-up Hot Topic", Mature yet Sharp. Various shirts, pants, tank-tops, shorts, all in that same style. I had to admit that I loved it.
My duplicate smiled "I'm not asking you to die your hair black and get ear piercings, but just, be yourself a bit more. Embrace the brag!" he then manifested a jacket. A leather jacket in that same style, with a couple of tiny, dull iron spikes on the shoulders. He tossed it at me and I grabbed it, feeling its power. I knew that kind of power… "What's it Named?"
"Fae."
Fae. The word of Soul. I had a guess, but I asked anyway "What's it do?"
"Should help you with your Semblance, it's a development tool, kinda like Ren."
