Glitch in the God Complex (AmpCore #1)

36 - One Day They'll Have Nightmares

The first bolt cracked off her barrier, and Piper was almost insulted.

Odiye's attack ricocheted away to impact against the ceiling, and she gave him a withering look, spreading her hands.

"C'mon, Tambo!" she shouted. "Don't go easy on account of my pretty face." Then she winked at him, and whipped out a testing combustive shot of her own, sending a snarling tongue of orange-red fire across the arena.

Odiye caught it with his amplifier, and with a deft flick of his wrist, sent it straight down into the ground at his feet. The backwash of explosive force struck his barrier harmlessly.

"Right back at you," he retorted, as a fresh swell of cheering erupted from the onlookers. His amplifier crackled with fresh energy and a mist began to gather around him. Piper felt a chill in the air, moisture clinging to her skin.

He moved without the elegant precision of Toran or the predatory viciousness of Ferra. Odiye's style was altogether more economical, his movements short and sharp. His hand snapped up; coils of mist swelled through the arena, obscuring him from view for a few seconds, but through her implants Piper felt the cyclone of force rippling behind that curtain.

Coming right at her.

With a hiss of effort she launched herself sideways into a roll as a stream of floor plates were torn open where she'd just been standing. Twisting to one knee, she flexed her mind; felt the crackled of the implants against her bones. Her amplifier snapped up and she dragged it across the space in front of her.

A wall of searing heat snarled its way through the air, evaporating the curtain of mist Odiye had created. Steam hissed, and she straightened up in time to see a combustive bolt come blazing through the clearing air.

Piper snapped her barrier up in the nick of time, catching the full force of the attack. It was enough to make her stagger, but she rode the impact and retaliated in kind. Roars of encouragement swelled from the onlookers as she swept her arm back, before ramming it forward in a violent stabbing motion.

Blue fire blasted from the tip of her wand.

Odiye's face flickered with surprise before he spun aside, loosing a bubble of gravity to bend the attack away from him. A section of the wall behind him was blown apart the joy of the watching Sharks.

More bolts rattled back and forth between them, shields buckling, chunks of the room exploding, and soon the air was thick with the acrid burning tang of combustive blasts. The floor looked like a battleground, with great trenches of wrecked metal scarring its length.

Before long both of them were smarting from several direct hits. She managed to flip Odiye head over heels with a whip of gravity, only to then catch a miniature tornado head on that sent her flying. The landing rattled her bones and her implants erupted with power.

Bruises, burns and scratches littered her body as the duel continued, and with every exchange she could feel the majestic tendrils of Odiye's implants, reaching across the gulf between them to entangle themselves with hers. The pain became addictive – each strike dragging them closer and closer into harmony.

A boulder of ice the size of a car blew apart against her barrier, melting and shattering all at once to shower her with a spray of water. Shards clattered to the broken plating all around her and she straightened up, panting for breath as she looked Odiye in the eye.

He was closer now. The duel had brought them barely twenty feet apart, and she could see the sweat beading on his cheeks, his broad chest heaving underneath his clothes. His eyes crackled with energy, the glow of the implants in his skeleton visible for all to see. Piper glanced down at her hands and saw the same orange-red light blazing beneath her skin.