"Join us, Valiant Bardean." The Devil repeated her invitation. "Become a Fiend. Don't worry about appearance. With your potential, you won't look as terrible as that pitiful kid." She casually pointed at the lifeless Rex.
"Come. We will refine that talent, remove the needless restraints of the human heart. We'll provide you great materials for your music and grant you true power. You will no longer be limited to storms of this world. You could command storms of the other worlds too."
Vale's fingers moved again on the Lute. Shifting the melody from raging war to something discordant, sharp, and deeply unsettling.
"I will pass." Vale stated flatly. His eyes narrowed. "I don't join useless parasites who prey on the desperate."
He struck the strings. The lute glowed with bright purple radiance. The sound was a vibrating frequency designed to bypass flesh. And cause chaos to the structure of the mind. [Mental Storm].
The air didn't change visually. But, it felt heavy. Viscous, like wading through thick mud.
Vale projected pure psychological dissonance. A sonic wave designed to overload the Devil's highly developed mind with chaos. Random clashes of noises, emotions, doubts, and terrors.
The Devil paused. Her smile faltered for the first time. She felt the pressure. The sudden, overwhelming mental attack attempting to flood her consciousness.
"An interesting trick." She conceded. The effort of resistance making her horns glow faintly.
Her hand rose. Palm open toward her own face. Her eyes hardened. "But merely a trick."
She exerted her will. The wave of noise seemed to break apart. Collapsing into a small, frustrating pressure. One that she dismissed with an annoyed sigh. The Devil quickly nullified the mental attack.
"Now, it is my turn to show you what happens when a student uses a toy against a true executioner."
Dark energy began to coalesce around her hand. Swirling into a dense sphere of annihilation. "You made your choice, Bardean."
The darkness sphere grew. Lethal and final. Ready to strike Vale down. But then, a movement caught the Devil's attention.
It was a small, almost comical sound. A loud, satisfying CRUNCH!
From the pile of rubble where Jester had been violently deposited, a figure sat up. It was Jester. He was sitting casually. Covered head-to-toe in blood, grey dust, and concrete grit.
He was still missing an arm. But otherwise, he looked perfectly intact. And healthy. Chewing loudly on a massive, perfectly dust-free green cabbage.
Jester took another enormous bite. Savoring the crunch. His expression was one of profound relief and mild irritation. Like one having been interrupted during lunch.
The Devil stopped. Her concentration was momentarily broken. She stared with widened eyes. The boy should have died. Or severely injured.
Jester gulped the last part of his [Recovery Cabbage]. And wiped his mouth with the back of his single remaining hand.
"Alright! That was rude." Jester called out casually. His voice was slightly muffled. "I was building momentum. And you ruined the setup."
The Devil's golden eyes tracked the movement of his remaining arm. Then, she stared at the gap where his right arm should have been. And then, at the place where she should have thrown the ripped arm. It was gone. Not there.
"You..." She started. Her voice laced with confusion. A rare human emotion for a Devil.
Jester leaned over. Dug his left hand into the rubble beside him. And retrieved his severed right arm. It was filthy, grey, and still clutching the Wild Nunchaku.
He picked it up like a dropped pen.
"Oh, there you are!" Jester said to his own arm. Giving it a light dusting off.
He held the severed limb up to the empty socket on his shoulder.
SPLOINK!
The arm simply popped back onto his shoulder. The fit was seamless. Immediate. And accompanied by the wet, cartoon sound of a plunger being pulled free.
The damage had surprisingly improved the affinity his real body had with his Toon Avatar's body. He could use the Toon Talents greater now in the real world. Including his unreasonable [Toon Physique].
Jester rotated his recovered shoulder once. Testing the joint. It worked perfectly. He tossed his weapon upward. The nunchaku flipped on air. And Jester caught it with a practiced flair.
He was whole. Even better than before.
He stood up. "Sorry about that, Bard!" Jester commented. Aiming a bright, unsettling smile at the Devil. "Letting this impolite chick to throw me around like that. Should have known this pretty chick had a rotten heart."
He looked directly at the Devil. "Right. Where were we? Oh yeah. You were interrupting my grand finale, Imp Girl!" He twirled his [Thunder Nunchaku]. "And you smelled quite bad, you know. I hate stinky chick."
The Devil's calculated poise shattered. She had just wasted a powerful attack. Only to watch that being glue himself back together with a... cabbage.
His recovered arm. His mocking smile. The utterly disrespectful moniker 'Imp Girl'. And the insult he said about her body odor... They all hit her at once.
The air around the Devil compressed into a dense, oily blackness. Pulling the ambient light away. She pointed her palm toward Jester.
"Die!"
The darkness sphere shot forward. Silent and terrifying. Aimed squarely at Jester's chest. It moved faster than sound.
Jester, however, was already in motion. Even before it was shot.
He had activated [Sprint!]. His earlier movements had been fast. Now, they were a practically breaking the logic of physics. Now he had become a jagged blur across the devastated classroom floor.
He might not be fast enough to avoid the faster-than-sound ball of darkness. But he was definitely quick enough to move away from the attack trajectory, before it was launched.
The sphere hit the rubble behind him. Imploding the remnants of the already ruined wall with a heavy, sucking sound. Leaving a perfect, smoke-free crater.
Jester was gone before the echo returned. He had closed half the distance to the Devil in the blink of an eye. Running low.
The Devil sneered, anticipating the angle of attack. She swung a dark, clawed gauntlet in a horizontal arc. Designed to bisect Jester at the waist.
Jester activated [Shrink!].
He dropped instantly to a fourth of his original size. His limbs were compressed. His head and body were condensed. His center of mass plummeted.
The whistling swing of the Devil's claw passed a few centimeters over his head. Disturbing only the air.
Jester didn't pause his movement. His change in mass and momentum was instantaneous. It didn't affect his sprint much.
He continued his charge. Now he was a tiny, incredibly fast blur. Maneuvering between the Devil's armored shins.
He activated [Stretch!] and reached the back of her legs. Using it as a pillar to break his acceleration.
Jester was now fully in range. His unhinged mischievous expression terrifyingly felt out of place with his current tiny size.
"Got you!" Jester yelled. His high pitched voice sounded weird but piercing now. He initiated the activation of his weapon's [Toon Momentum].
His [Thunder Nunchaku] became a blur of motion. The focus of this technique was not power per blow. But the rapid accumulation of velocity. Every strike fed energy into the next.
Whack! Against the back of her knee joint. Thump! Against the leather armor of her thigh guard. Clang! Against the metal covered toes. Whack! Against her forearm...
The strikes were fast. A continuous vibrating crisscrossing lines of wood and metal. They hit too quickly for the Devil to react. She was struck. Multiple times.
She felt the vibrations. The humiliation. But not the pain. The relentless, irritating drumming of impact against her body was enraging for her. But, whenever he turned around, the speedy rogue was already somewhere else.
For his now-more-cartoonish body, the combination of [Sprint!] and [Shrink!] was devastatingly effective. At least in the speed part.
Vale saw his chance. Jester was occupying the Devil. Forcing her to focus her considerable power on localized defense and irritation. Rather than mass destruction.
Vale raised the [Stormlord Lute]. He knew his storm calling might not be strong enough to harm the Devil. But he could make her more uncomfortable.
Vale struck the strings. The music that erupted was not harmony. Nor was it melody. It was the sound of a discordant tone that was as irritating as thousand radios searching for signal simultaneously. Or the shriek of metal grinding against bone.
It was another version of [Mental Storm]. The sound was a sonic torture designed to confuse, disrupt, and incapacitate.
The Devil was already annoyed by the tiny, buzzing irritant at her feet. She didn't expect to be attacked mentally again.
She got caught unguarded by the mental attack. Staggering slightly. Her powerful aura flickered. Momentarily disturbed by the psychic assault.
She hissed. A sound like hot oil spilling on iron. For a fraction of a second. That fraction of a second was all Jester needed.
He had built up maximal velocity. The [Toon Momentum] had reached critical speed. The nunchaku chains were invisible. A solid disc of motion.
His form snapped back to full size as he leaped from the ground. Utilizing the stretch of his arm to launch even more devastating attack.
He aimed at her head. More specifically, the right temple. He poured as much Glitch Energy as possible into the weapon.
"Eat this, Bitch!" Jester shouted as he activated the [Thunder Blast].
BOOOOMMMM!!!
The blow was a perfect fusion of absurd kinetic energy and raw sonic power. It wasn't just a physical hit. It was also a localized, concentrated explosion of distorted sound waves. Designed to rattle the brain inside the skull and overwhelm the sensory input.
The nunchaku rebounded violently after it slammed into the side of the Devil's head. The force was so extreme that the weapon was almost thrown away from Jester's grip.
The Devil's beautiful head snapped sideways. Pivoting on her neck in a complete, unnatural 90-degree angle.
Jester landed perfectly. Breathing hard. The built-up [Toon Momentum] dissipating from his limbs in visible trails of distorted air. He looked at the Devil. who was now standing impossibly still. Her body was facing them. But her face was facing to the side.
"Did we..." Vale started. Not lowering his Lute yet. The chaotic sound was fading into a harsh ringing silence.
Jester held his breath. Anticipating the fall of the Devil.
But then, slowly, mechanically, the Devil's head rotated back to face them.