Garou's Rival

Chapter 11 - Fubuki, Blizzard of Hell

I roll onto the floor, woken up by knocking. "Uuuuuggh..." I groan and glance at the clock. "It's 2:30 in the afternoon... Some people are trying to sleep!"

I open my door, dreading to find Lily. But instead, it's an equally unwanted esper. "Silver Bullet of Silverfang's dojo!" she says authoritatively. Ugh, I hate that name. Couldn't even be bothered to think of the first half of the name and just reused it.

"Hey, Fubuki! My friend works for you! You've probably heard of her, Lily?" I ask cheerily.

She holds her hand up in my face. "Yes, unfortunately, despite her efforts to keep me from recruiting an extremely valuable asset, we find ourselves here." She's not messing around. She has Eyelashes and Mountain Ape with her. If I'm gonna get out of this, it gonna be with a fight. "You. Join us and you can secure your placement in Rank B."

I laugh at them. "Is this how you usually recruit people? Just march up to their houses, wake them up at the crack of dawn-"

"It's the middle of the afternoon..." Mountain Ape mumbles.

"Shut it. Wake them up, demand them to join you and it just happens? Just how entitled are you?" I laugh. Then my expression darkens. "So self-entitled just because you think you have a little taste of power. You've built a pyramid just for the sake of putting yourself at the top... That brings back some memories." I knock Mountain Ape and Eyelashes away with both hands. "In my experience, the only way to deal with people like you is to give them a good beating. They handled their losses respectably. I wonder if you'll bounce back like they did?"

She starts to levitate off the ground and glows light blue. "What, do you think that just because you took down a few small fry, you can best me? You have no idea who you're dealing with," she says fiercely. She pushes her hands down and forces me to one knee, cracking the ground below me.

"Oh, wow. A brat with powerful psychic powers. Yeah, you're right. I've... never seen that before," I grunt.

"Now, you have two options," she says. "Either join my organisation as my underling, or I'll beat you so badly you'll never work as a hero again."

I groan and struggle to stand up. "Oh yeah? What're you gonna do?" I ask with a smile. "Maybe stab me with a blade manifested from your powers? Group up on me with some friends and break both my arms so I can't fight back?" I stand up on both feet and look up at her. "Or maybe you'll pretend to be my friend for a month, just to drag me out to a secluded area, ambush me and beat me half to death. Because at the end of the day, all you espers are the same."

Fubuki uses her full power to keep me in place, using both hands now. "I don't know who hurt you and made you hate espers, but it's none of my business and, really, you're not worth my time," she says condescendingly.

I snarl and jump at her. If I can get one good hit, it'll break her concentration and I can take her down. Now that I've adjusted to her powers, it'll be easier to overpower her. But right when I'm almost there, she changes her focus and hits me out of the air with a boulder. I land on the ground, catching the boulder and tossing it aside. "You can't focus on two things at once. The second you start throwing things your powers don't affect me!" I shout. "So let's get this over with." She flies towards me and grabs me, grinding me into the ground until we come to a slope. I knee her in the stomach, making her drop me. She throws the boulder at me again, switching between me and the boulder rapidly to keep me in place. But at the moment she switches to the boulder, I punch it, shattering it to pieces. They all glow and stay still in the air. "Oh... crap." I run away as fast as I can, dodging the hail of rocks and rubble and try to get closer to Fubuki. Eventually, I catch two rocks and throw them at two more, destroying them. I repeat this until she's practically throwing around sand and dust. But instead of dropping it and changing her strategy, she draws the sand towards her as it starts spinning around her.