Rheba coughed and wiped some blood from her face after another stray blast of sand managed to hit. The Needaimus called New Moon wasn’t much of a tactician; the blows of sand were hardly unpredictable as a clear pattern of attack formed, but the occasional scream from a captured tourist outside the gigantic sand castle was enough to capture her attention and throw the warrior off her game.
“You're like worse than a bug, can you like just die already?”
The metallic person snapped as Rheba swerved around a sandy sword. The ground grew teeth and snapped shut just as the warrior flew into the air to avoid it.
“Please, I don’t want to die!” a tourist shouted from the side. Sandy spikes blasted into Rheba’s stomach while she remained midair, and she rolled hard into one of the columns marking the edge of New Moon’s castle.
Cages of sand with prisoners inside continued to orbit, held together only by the mad Needaimus’ will. It was a losing fight; Rheba didn’t even need her warrior instincts to tell her as much. The moment she got the upper hand, the tourists would start dropping.
The Needaimus sitting in her sandy throne laughed and crossed a leg over the other. Leaning back, Rheba’s foe began to mock her.
“Die. Die. Die. The Bentulousian is like going to die.”
“Do you ever shut up?” Rheba snapped back. She pushed herself back on her feet and shook her body violently to remove the remaining sand in her fur.
“Oh, do you like want me to shut up? Do you really want me to?” The human-shaped Needaimus leaned forward. “Why don’t you make me, biaskylo.”
Rheba muttered under her breath several phrases. “I will defeat you. I will catch everyone. I will escape.” The values for each claim appeared in her vision. Straight-up defeating her was too expensive. Running was cheap, the warrior expected that it would be, but escaping was a badge of shame she didn’t want to wear.
Which left the out-of-left-field idea. She would remove the hostages and rescue all of them. Doing so would put her points in the negative, which her Needaimus allowed her to do once, but meant she would need it to be a move that wouldn’t require the ability a second time for this fight or anything to come.
There were two schools in Bentulousian culture that addressed situations like this, at least as far as the hostage situation required. The first said to ignore the hostages; defeating the obviously threatening foe would be worth their sacrifice. The second said to save them at all costs, even if it meant forfeiting her own life. Rheba’s mentor, Zenith, was of the second school, but the giantess didn’t like how that sat with her.
Why should she have to lose to save everyone? Why couldn’t she do both? Gwyn came into her mind for a fleeting moment. His monstrous look while half possessed by the disease that ravaged his body. His fearful eyes at the thought of fighting again after losing to Nighthawk.
His look of pure giving up, no longer happy about the joys, or angry about the setbacks. Watching him the last few months had been both saddening and enlightening. She had not known people could get so down, as if they had no purpose in life. She knew she couldn’t understand it, but Rheba also knew she wanted to fight against it in her own way. To be able to say to Gwyn, look what is possible in the world—you need not be so afraid.
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Rheba wasn’t sure if she was right. She wasn’t sure if her successes would mean anything to the purposeless Nonpareil, but she felt giving up this fight with New Moon was exactly the opposite of what she was willing to allow.
“I will capture all the foes and defeat you!” she declared. Her Needaimus flashed -2000 points in her vision. One use, and she would be doing every little good gesture to try to get out of the deficit. The giantess didn’t hesitate; she wasn’t about to let innocent people die, and she certainly wasn’t about to let the mad Needaimus have its way with everyone.
“Defeat me? Like, girl, do you totes hear yourself right now? I can’t even.”
Rheba made a small nod, a simple reaction she worked out with her Needaimus years before to indicate the points should be spent. The number in the lower part of her vision turned red, and a timer flashed on the opposite corner. Three minutes was plenty of time for the effect to last.
Power coursed through the giantess's body. It felt like electricity had just arced from her heart to her feet and fingers. Her vision intensified, colors became more extreme, and details turned more apparent. Time seemed to slow, though everything still moved normally; her mind was now accelerating past normal Bentulousian limits. Rheba hated the feeling. In all her uses of her Needaimus, she had never attempted such an extreme maneuver and never felt such profound changes to her senses.
She didn’t have time to get used to it either; the clock was ticking, and New Moon’s butt wasn’t getting kicked on its own.
With a heavy burst, Rheba charged her foe. Sandy attacks came from all sides, a clear sign of panic at suddenly being rushed. But it moved much too slowly for Rheba in her boosted state. She easily side-stepped the worst of the blows, letting some weaker strikes brush off her body like they were nothing, while staying full sprint in her charge at New Moon.
The Needaimus yelped as Rheba grabbed it by the neck and flung it over her shoulder. Metal back crashed into the sandy floor below. “Biaskylo!”
Rheba wanted to continue her beat down, it would be so easy if she could do it. However, tourists came next, and sure enough, all the sandy cages began to disintegrate slowly at the bottom. She charged.
The sand castle floor gave way to air as Rheba crashed against the first of the sand cages, still half intact. She scooped a bikini-clad Aqueenian girl from the air and hoisted the poor thing across her shoulder before leaping to the next. A Hobusian was next to get hoisted over her other shoulder. Weight might have started to be an issue, but Rheba felt strong. Much stronger than ever before.
Things still appeared to move slowly, so she fluttered under another cage with a couple. Both landed in the Bentulousians' open arms as she sailed into the side of the tall sand castle. Rheba pushed off the structure and carved a groove into the beach below before she let her held rescues go. There was little time to wait; several more cages remained in the air, and several more people were free-falling from their cages. It seemed New Moon caught onto Rheba’s goal and made the remaining cages break away in an instant rather than the slow dissolve for what must have been dramatic effect.
Rheba didn’t have time to waste; she quickly snatched a closed umbrella and rope from nearby and used her boosted legs to leap back into the air. The castle made for a good springboard as she sailed up to the top once again.
New Moon waved an arm dramatically as if a big attack was going to come, and it perhaps would have if not for the umbrella being lodged in her metal shoulder like it was a spear. Rheba caught a Netzian man and quickly lassoed the next nearby tourist. With a yank, the two were in her arms, and Rheba thrusted off the castle once again to boost to the ground. She wasted no time carefully dropping off the shocked tourists before bursting into a sprint to the last two. Time was nearly out, and they were already so close to the ground that no amount of fancy maneuvers would help her, just good old running.
The giantess caught the first with a hand outstretched above her head, and the second at just that last moment before the beach would turn red. She breathed heavily as the last two, shaking the most out of fear, were set on the ground and turned up to the Needaimus above.
New Moon’s hands were outstretched, and it let out a vile giggling laugh.
“Oh, you're more fun than I thought. I totes am going to enjoy killing you, you know?”
Rheba forced a smile. She wasn’t sure she had energy left to spare to shout back, but she managed to mutter a reply all the same.
“I hate to be such a spoilsport… no, actually I don’t. I’ll enjoy beating you.”
