As Lina's tattoo glows velvet, I'm starting to have a hard time seeing her clearly. Which is odd, because I'm not too far away from her and Messa. That's... her ability, isn't it? It's almost impossible to tell that I'm looking at a person.
"That's a pretty interesting ability." Regardless, Messa doesn't seem too phased by this development. He seems more entertained if anything. "I wonder if..."
The blur seems to almost spike up in anticipation, before moving closer to Messa, forcing him to block!
"Ah, good. I can still tell if you're throwing out a physical or mental attack."
Lina continues pressuring Messa, with her almost impossibly ambiguous attacks.
"I admit, it's difficult to block in the right places with such an ability."
His words definitely have weight too, since quite a few of her hits are easily getting past his attempts at blocking. It's nearly impossible to tell the difference between a punch or a kick, and when feints are thrown in, it's basically complete guesswork on what he's gonna be hit by.
It was inevitable that Messa was gonna get knocked down. When she got on top of him afterwards, it was basically impossible to see what's going on. I could only assume that Messa was set to lose this battle.
Until he figured out something.
"Ah, I think I understand now. This blur you've put around your body isn't an illusion. It actually actively displaces your body in such a way where certain parts of your body could actually selectively be in multiple places at once."
"Even still, how are you going to find a way out of this?" I call out.
"Well, one thing that I've noticed while being pummelled against the ground, is that her attacks are phasing through the ground."
"Uh, yeah? Why would they?"
"It's not a question of why they would, but why they wouldn't. This means that if something is physically inhibiting her body, it won't be able to displace through it."
"Ok, you don't have to explain everything while you're still being pummelled, you know that right?"
"It's okay. I'm not in much danger to begin with."
Are you kidding me? You're clearly in danger!
"Because fun fact, I can summon rings in positions where it's touching me, touching another ring that I've already summoned, or touching something that my hands have touched within the past minute."
Just as he says that last part, rings the size of bracelets start spontaneously appearing across Lina's body! This creates a sort of bottle-neck effect, where the blur is almost contained within each of the rings appearing across her body! These rings and bracelets were summoned across her arms, legs, and even one on her torso! Even though her body is still blurry, it's now clearly possible to at least see which limb he's being attacked with!
With this newfound advantage, Messa was able to quickly find an opportunity to get back up after a dodged mental punch allowed Messa to swat Lina off his body with a physically charged push to the side, also allowing him to put two more rings across Lina's torso.
The two are back at a neutral state now. Since this is the first time I've seen either of them fight, I still have no idea what their limits are. I've thought several times that Messa was about to lose, or that he was a significant disadvantage, but he's always found a way around it. Where's Lina has only gotten the upper hand after just revealing a new ability, and considering what is likely her final ability has already been countered...
Messa hits Lina with a clean sweep, making her lose her footing! He does the same uppercut to make her fly into the air, but since it's much easier to land a punch than a slash on someone who you can't see clearly, he doesn't repeat the same combination of attacks from when he hit her in her green form, but instead ends the combo with a hearty punch to the chest! She slams into a tree right next to the two of them, nearly causing the entire tree to fall down with the huge cavity made in its trunk!
Messa continues his pressure with mental attacks against Lina. With nowhere to run except to the sides, Messa does well in making sure she doesn't have any openings to escape. Well, I feel like basically all the pressure shown throughout this fight has been impossible to escape, but they've done it so far, so I guess it's not inescapable. Regardless, every time I would have a pattern from Messa's attacks, he always switches up several hits before that! As he's thoroughly beating her down, the purple glow she's emanating slowly fades away, and...
Lina focuses back into her normal shape!
"Ah, good! It seems you're out of that ability, but I know you still have some green and yellow back in you, so c'mon!"
Lina eventually finds an opening in Messa's offense, allowing her to dodge a crucial attack and get a few feet between them.
"But since you're finally out of that purple ability..."
The rings on Lina's body then quickly disintegrate, causing dust to flow through the air, then quickly disappear.
"It's actually a lot more effort than you think to keep so many of those rings active for a long time, you know?"
Lina takes a deep breath, before reactivating not only her green ability, but her yellow ability as well!
"Putting all your eggs in one basket, huh? That's not wise. I can easily stall you out."
Lina didn't care though, she immediately rushed towards Messa, with him immediately jumping back in response, resulting in him grabbing another tree in mid air, and using one of it's branches as a stepping stone to send himself soaring through the air!
But the thing about maneuvering in the air is that you don't have much control. So Lina was easily able to see that Messa was flying towards another tree. In response, she ran towards the tree, jumped into the air, and as if her now spinning leg was an axe, she straight up kicked the tree off of it's trunk! The deafening cracking sound is like thunder, with the sound radiating throughout nearly the entire forest!
Luckily for Messa, he jumped high enough to grab onto one of the branches, allowing him to redirect his course to hit another nearby tree. He braced his impact pretty well, and then proceeded to let go of the tree and land on the ground, doing a roll to minimize the damage.
Lina jumps from the collapsing tree as an attempt to catch Messa, but he quickly jumps back to another tree in response. But rather than immediately chase after him, Lina stops, and takes a deep breath, waiting for her to see exactly where he was going to head.
Then, Messa jumps off the tree, and sends himself directly above Lina's head. Whether she predicted this would happen or if she just reacted to it, but she's able to respond to this almost immediately. She focuses herself, before jumping directly up, doing a mid air uppercut, which rapidly changes between physically enhanced and mentally enhanced!
Despite his incredible skill, even Messa can't defend against a devastating attack like that! He gets launched far in the air immediately, since the attack ended up being physical, and he flies through a small hole in the forest roof, meaning there's no branches or even leaves to redirect his position! With no way to dodge, and no way to block, Lina's next attack is guaranteed! If you add the fact that she'll likely have a huge amount of follow up options, and the fact that Messa will take a huge amount of fall damage. Then, is this fight over?!
I... can feel Messa's energy. He put a massive amount of energy into his two feet, which he's put together along with his legs. This level of energy is about equivalent to what I felt in Messa's leg when she kicked that entire tree down! He looks like he's about to do a swan dive?
Then, I witness Messa's plan unfold in front of me. Chains start shooting out from the four trees that he recently touched. These chains are really just the ring being summoned inside of each other, allowing them to combine in a chain like shape. These chains quickly wrap around Lina, while also creating a second layer of larger rings around her body, quickly binding her.
In this position, even if she's able to enhance herself with mental power, she isn't able to properly block this massive attack! The only way to do that is to use physical energy to first break out of her bindings. Messa is planning to hit her with a devastating mental attack before she can even break out of her bindings! At that point, it doesn't matter how fast she can swap between mental and physical defences if she can't even properly defend herself at all!
I can feel physical energy surging inside Lina's bindings, desperately trying to burst out. It feels like minutes pass as Messa falls towards the earth, ready to deliver the finishing blow onto Lina, until...
The sound of Lina's failing binds is heard! She breaks out of her prison, allowing her to properly block against Messa's attack! All of the rings and chains quickly disintegrate, since they are no longer needed.
It's over!
Wait... what's that sound? It sounds like metal clashing against each other. Wait, that's the sound the rings make when they're summoned! Just as I remembered that, a chain made up of sharpened ring blades flies just past my head and towards Lina! These ring blades are only about the size of a bracelet, but they're still incredibly sharp! But how...?
I look back to see a ring blade lodged into a tree! That's right, the second ring blade that Messa summoned! Lina lodged it into a tree so that Messa wouldn't be able to use it, but that only enabled him to do this! The deadly sharp chain flies past my head, and makes a direct course towards Lina! From this angle... it's going to hit her neck! Messa's gonna hit her with a devastating physical and mental attack at the same time!
It seems like Messa has this in the bag but... he still isn't close enough to hit Lina! At this rate, she'll block the chain attack using her physical defences, and with her yellow ability, she'll be able to swap back to mental defenses quickly enough to block his final hit!
At this incredibly intense moment, time seemed to slow down to a crawl, even more so with the enhanced reflexes Psynesis users gain. This affected even Isaac, even though his life was not in any danger, and it seemed like he didn't care about the outcome of this battle. But even though he lost his memories, his passion for Psynesis combat was reignited!
Messa's chain attack... stopped?! Just one ring blade link away? No, that's not true! He only stalled the attack! I see the last link manifesting! This one will stab itself into Lina's neck, causing her to die almost instantly! He's controlling the rate at which each ring is summoned! But that's insane, that would mean that he manually summoned each and every single ring making up this chain. This chain is more than 100 feet long!
It was at this instance in time that everyone realized not only that Messa's mental and physical attack would hit Lina at the same time, but also the true depth in skill and experience between the two opponents. Lina was the one who was the most impacted by these realisations. But the most important thing that she could do right now, was to pick her poison. Despite both choices making her lose the battle, she knew exactly what she would block the instant she knew she would have to make that choice.
"I'm not risking my life for that asshole." She thought.
So...
Lina is immediately knocked out by Messa's devastating kick! She flies into the ground face first, and Messa drops to the ground only a little bit more gracefully. At least he was able to use his limbs to help break his fall.
"OooOOooohh..." he groans.
"You good?"
"Could be worse, I guess. You were only watching our fight, so can you lead me back to the road?"
"Sure, it's the least I can do."
I can't help but feel bad for Lina though. She was only trying to solve the murder of someone she knew. Sure, the guy was kinda an asshole, but he doesn't deserve to die! Speaking of which, I check to see if Lina's still alive.
"Still has a pulse, good. C'mon man, let's head home."
"Thank god." He says, chuckling to himself a bit.