The obfuscation of senses was wholly useless against either side. It was a sign, more than anything. A declaration of a boundary crossed, a dispute to be settled with violence when words proved insufficient to reach a resolution.

Exactly the outcome Finn had been aiming for, but now came the difficult part: he had to follow through. Of all things, not even a week after returning to Apexia, he was fighting Lyra.

His needle was in the way before she swung her sword, the vibrating blade clashing with the unique alloy of his reinforced weapon. It bounced off, but she turned the rebounding force into another spinning slash maneuver that would've cut most opponents in half.

Sadly for her, he wasn't most opponents. With a flick of his wrist, he tapped the side of her blade upwards with the haft of his new instrument of combat. Given that his range was superior, he didn't close the distance and stayed in place so he could slam it into her side.

Only for it to swish right through her, the blurry form of her torso not offering the slightest resistance as his needle completed its swipe. He narrowed his eyes. How? What had she done…? Wait, of course. She was using vibration to phase through solid matter. It was something Jack had brought up to her during one of their training sessions long ago as a hypothetical, but not something he'd realized she ever managed to pull off in practice. Until now.

Strange as it was, he almost wanted to compliment her just for that, though he kept his mouth shut and channeled electricity through the supernatural steel in his hand. He swung, and Lyra didn't bother dodging, since the electricity was ineffective against his insulated bodysuit and the rest of the attack passed through her once again.

Logically, the solution was to shock exposed skin. Except she would hear him move that way and dodge ahead of time. That was the advantage of her silence field; she was the only one who could discern any of the dampened noise. So it was favorable for him that he had acquired something of a counter during his extensive training.

Fading was a part of his power he had unlocked while under the influence of Casey's ability augmentation. The technique itself worked by unanchoring himself from reality, causing his physical body to interact with the surroundings less. Air molecules wouldn't register his movements as clearly, the actions he took wouldn't create as many ripples.

Obviously, it wasn't complete intangibility. And so, there was no rendering himself invisible to Lyra's senses. Yet despite that, he could create one small burst where his environmental distortion was extremely low, like an insect landing in a pond.

On top of that, he was also going to create a reinforced bubble around himself with controlled light just to fool her hearing for the smallest instant. Because that was all he needed.

He dashed, faster than sound with his faded body not creating nearly enough of a disturbance to cause a sonic boom. Even if there was, he wouldn't have been able to hear it. This just was the next step in their eerie, muted exchange.

So when he appeared behind her faster than she could track, the first thing she did upon figuring him out was try to counter, which resulted in a narrow miss. His electric shock connected for the briefest moment before she retreated, a silent burst that carried her to the other side of the warehouse.

Lyra stomped on the ground, causing the ground under his feet to tilt upward. He flew up and over it so he wouldn't get slammed into the wall, then was met with a scream that pierced the oppressive quiet with the force of a battering ram hitting glass.

The shockwave, while fairly easily stopped by Finn's reinforcement, devastated the structure around them, blowing open the roof and wall. Both of them were bathed in moonlight, Lyra rushing up to him as he rocketed away.

For a moment, he looked at her. A wild grin adorned her face, dark eyes glinting in a wide, intent stare. Wind-tousled black locks fell down behind her shoulders once she came to a stop right above his position, arms poised to launch another blast.

She was beautiful.

The thought rose unbidden in his mind, but he lacked the time to examine or acknowledge it any further as he needed to respond immediately. Therefore it was pushed away, and in its place came the idea to use a move he was wary of utilizing against people. Doubly so against her.

His hand came up in a finger gun sign, leather peeling back as he turned transparent and light started to accumulate at the tip of his fingers. When he fired, it flashed, left a scorch mark on her shoulder and she was sent spinning through the air until she righted herself.

Finn was about to fire a second laser, again without reinforcement, but she sang and a plate of metal floated in between them to block the shining beam. The shockwave she fired in response trailed the next scream, though it hit only air and pavement—Finn had dashed out of the way, kicking off a piece of debris as leverage.

Lyra didn't miss a beat, sending all the rubble at him in a wide arc. He flew out of the way again, only for her outline to appear behind him. Anticipating her future movement, he turned and clapped his hands together with full force and reinforcement. The shockwave came from him this time, forcing her to block with both arms while dampening it.

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Around them, windows in surrounding buildings were shattering from the devastating force of their clash. Thankfully they were away from the residential areas.

Finn remained unfazed by the pieces of road and warehouse pelting his back, more than durable enough to withstand the impacts that would have splattered him just a couple of years prior. Easing his eyes shut, he stowed his weapon away in favor of his other abilities. He didn't require the needle to win.

Bursting forward, he knew Lyra hadn't been idle and had charged yet another shockwave in preparation for his charge. This one, he took head-on by keeping his chainmail under-armor in place in midair, reaching a hand out to grab her face. Predictably, she phased and twisted for an elbow to his temple.

He caught it, surprised at the sheer force behind the blow. Thrice more she struck, whaling on him hard enough to shatter concrete. She hit like a truck, a far cry from the physically unimpressive girl he had first met in that alley. Standing against him now was a mighty young woman.

Who held the same potential as Omega.

He caught a right hook in his palm and threw her over his shoulder in a simple grappling move. It was of little use seeing as they weren't on the ground. Time to change that, he thought.

In the half-second Lyra used to turn upright, Finn clapped and sent an explosive wave of wind at her. It pushed her back slightly, but that didn't matter because it was just a distraction for his next move: he blitzed past her, got her in his fairly short range, and pulled on the ferromagnetic sword she carried.

Not wanting to let go, she allowed herself to be pulled closer. He turned his hand, and the electromagnetic repulsion flung her down onto a building at full force.

Given that she broke her fall by emitting a concussive burst of sound, the rooftop cratered beneath her impact, stone and steel bursting outward in a hail of sparks and concrete dust. Finn rocketed down after her without waiting for her to get up. He got down into the gray cloud of dust where sight was obscured a second time. Neither of them paid it any mind and re-engaged, now on the ground and testing their respective martial skill in earnest.

He dominated in pure combinations and technique, but she turned intangible to dodge any hit he would've otherwise landed. Her style was rough, efficient, and strangely rhythmic in spite of that.

"You have more for me, don't you," Lyra said, a little out of breath. Finn didn't respond to her taunt, focusing on the vibrations as her kick glanced off his forearm. The shockwaves she was sending through his body were decreasing in effectiveness because of his adaptive armor putting in work. A tool in his arsenal that made it so a battle of attrition would be in his favor.

If his objective was to stall, which was not the case. He needed to subdue her. How, though? Her frequency itself was causing the phasing. Aided by some conceptual power, he imagined. The question was how to cancel that effect, how to touch her in a way that would keep her in his grip.

Lyra didn't give him time to think. She screamed.

High, terrible and discordant, piling on the pressure and compressing into a smaller bubble of concentrated sound waves around him to keep up a constant sonic assault on his brain, armor be damned. Finn staggered and was too late to dodge a shoulder check, right up until he pushed his reinforcement near the maximum.

Alright, he took back his earlier words; a battle of attrition was not in his favor. But it didn't matter. He knew ways to end this fight. Permanently. Yet that wasn't the aim. Capture, containment.

In order to deal with her phasing, it would be prudent to create a configuration of his own nanite settings to either vibrate at the same frequency or have an energy combination up that would allow him to touch her.

Granted, he wouldn't be doing the precise calculations required to perform the technique. There was the option of simply changing the modulation himself and feeling it out, but that was inefficient. All he did was figure out potential solutions and forward the specifics to his mental helper. The assistant AI creature woke from its idle state, taking in the stream of data he was feeding it in order to complete what he asked of it.

Left and right he dodged, the projectiles coming one after the other. Chunks rose up from the ground and shot at him, spikes tried to skewer him and might have succeeded with his reduced speed, if he couldn't foresee all the relevant attacks.

Then came the blade again, thrusted straight at his eye with the tip rushing at it fast enough to pierce his brain too. Pushing his head to the side with a hair's breadth, he managed to evade the attack in time. He felt a sense of mild shock settling over him when he saw no malice in her aura. Puzzling as it was, faith and loyalty radiated out of her in waves.

She was… earnestly trying to kill him. And trusting him not to die.

Ridiculous.

He gnashed his teeth together. The moment his mental helper came back with the right answer to the problem, Finn clenched a fist, feeling the oscillations starting there and slowly traveling up the body. His power would never reach the same level of control or destruction hers could, even after accepting help from the nanites.

Luckily, that didn't matter. All he needed was the magnetic field around it alongside a negligible distortion in the gravitational field, both down to the exact values provided. Then, he maximized his reinforcement in that arm, dashed inside her guard, and punched.

It connected.

Straight in the solar plexus, the force expelling all dust around them. She folded over his fist, eyes defocusing as she gasped breathlessly. Blood dribbled out of her wide-open mouth. The sword clattered to the ground the second he pulled his fist back, and her aura flickered.

Although it was only for a second, Lyra lost consciousness.

Guilt stabbed him in the chest, the horrid feeling crawling on his skin at the thought of hurting his girlfriend like this. His resolve faltered, and he was about to go over and help her. But it made no difference.

Because when she coughed and stumbled, the tight grasp she'd had over the scream field burst open, and the ruinous sound rolled over the surrounding buildings in one massive cascade of noise. Beyond the confines of their battle.

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