May 10, 2020

  The thoughts lingering inside of Waldo’s mind were confirmed. This mutated figure, or rather this mutated human, indeed looks familiar to him. Although warped, he shares certain distinctions characteristics of that one corpse Mara was with. He steps forward while cracking his neck, until Mara suddenly tugs at his cape. Waldo looks behind him with a glare. He removes Mara’s hand from his cape.

  “You dare put your hand on me, child? You must be looking for something terrible.”

  “Please… let me fight him. I want to be the one… please let me do it!”

  “Ordering me around, are you? You have quite the daring tongue on you!”

  Waldo grabs Mara by the collar and lifts her up. He stares angrily at her, but Mara looks back at him with resolve in her eyes. An unyielding, unshakable resolve. Waldo sees that burning flame in her eyes, and lowers his grip. He is convinced by her purpose and drops her to the ground. Mara looks up with confusion, not knowing Waldo would let her go just like that.

  “Although you dare speak to me in such a manner, your words carry meaning and purpose. And purpose is what fuels victory… Very well, I’ll allow you to take the initiative just this once. Be sure to entertain me.”

  “Yes sir!”

  The mutant takes a stomp forward and lets out a low growl. The face of Mara’s father can be seen in a deformed and ugly picture. Their body is burly and large, almost as if something purposely pumped unethical steroids into it. And this cursed energy wasn’t there before. Could it be a side effect of the mutation? Suddenly, the mutant runs forward and attempts to tackle Waldo. Waldo simply stands there and lets Mara come in between them and block the tackle.

  “You’re dealing with me, Dad! Me, and only me!”

  Waldo grins and disappears. He reappears back on top of a tree, standing there while overseeing the beginning of a battle. He crosses his arms, getting the full extent of the flowing wind.

  “A father versus daughter fight, eh? This will surely prove to be a splendid spectacle.”

  The mutant roars and pushes Mara to the side. Mara jumps back and sends a blast of air towards the mutant. The mutant gets hit by the air blast on his stomach and stumbles back. He stomps his foot and begins rushing forward. Mara shoots even more blasts of air towards the mutant, but the mutant continues to charge towards Mara without taking damage. Mara sees that the air blasts aren’t doing anything so she steels herself and looks for the right time. Once the mutant gets close enough, Mara gets out of the way and the mutant crashes into a tree, bringing the entire arbor down to the ground. He has a lot of power, but he doesn’t have much of a way to use it. Even so…

  (I need to be able to use that power from before! I probably won’t be able to beat dad if I don’t use it. But how can I do it? How do I use it?)

  The mutant spins around in circles, dizzy and hurt from crashing into the tree. The mutant shakes their head to get rid of the dizziness and come back to their senses. They look at Mara and growl. Mara then dashes towards the mutant and lands an uppercut. Following the uppercut, Mara lands a few more punches to the mutant’s chest and core before landing a roundhouse kick on the neck. The mutant falls down to the ground with a thud. Mara takes a breath and jumps back.

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  “Did that do it? It didn’t feel like I did much damage to him.”

  The mutant suddenly looks to its side and sees a sharp piece of wood. It quickly grabs the piece of wood and rolls back up. It attempts to crush Mara under one of its fists. Mara dodges the heavy attack but is suddenly caught off guard and stabbed in the hip by the piece of wood. Mara coughs out some blood but then clutches the wood. The mutant tries to take out the wood but Mara is holding it in place.

  “I got you now!”

  The wood is suddenly turned up in temperature and ignites. The mutant’s hand catches on fire and the flames begin to spread across their whole body. They yell out in agony from being burned alive. They let go of the wood and flail their arms around, one of them striking Mara in the face and causing her to fall down. Meanwhile, Waldo looks from the top of the tree. She managed to allow herself to get hurt in order to land an unavoidable attack. Although it is quite the risky move depending on who does it, it’s effective no matter what. She’s slowly but surely turning into an ideal sorcerer.

  “Now the battle is getting more interesting. Way to turn up the heat, Mara.”

  The mutant continues to flail around as Mara’s technique burns them down. Mara looks at her hand, which has suffered a small burn from the power of her attack. She clutches at her hip wound, falling onto one knee. There’s a lot of blood coming out from the stab wound as well as several splinters of wood stuck inside of the flesh. The punch that she sustained from the mutant earlier also did a number on her jaw. She’s hoping for a miracle that the mutant goes down with this one attack. Of course, as Waldo was looking down at the battle, he knew that it would take much more than some fire to defeat a thing like this.

  Like Waldo predicted, the mutant’s burning flesh begins to regenerate. Any visible black and brown marks of ash are reverting back to normal. Mara sees this and her eyes widen. Now that the mutant is regenerating, his eyes are locked onto Mara and he growls. His fists are then reinforced with cursed energy and he stands stronger than ever.

  “Kill… I must… kill… I kill you!”

  The mutant suddenly gets on all fours and quickly covers the distance. Mara is struck in the face with a heavy headbutt. She stumbles back, covering her bloody nose, and is then struck with a punch to her ribs. As soon as the mutant punches her, she reinforces her own fist with cursed energy and attacks back, kicking him in the shin. The mutant is staggered for a split second, but that gives Mara enough time to kick them away and charge a blast of air. The blast is released in a compressed size, the mutant being sent several meters away.

  (She’s learning more about her technique as the fight progresses. She most likely hasn’t realized it yet, but she increased the temperature around her wounds to allow a sort of stabilization. With her body temperature increasing, she’s able to exert more pressure. But the opponent she is facing is a large tank as well as a mutant She’ll be forced into serious mode sooner or later.)

  Mara continues to stand her ground as she watches the mutant slowly get back up. She quickly picks up a nearby boulder using her cursed energy reinforced body and throws it. The mutant sees the boulder coming towards them, winds up a punch, and shatters the flying boulder. Mara then uses hot air to propel herself forward, attempting to catch the mutant off guard, and lands an upward kick on the mutant’s head. The mutant quickly recovers from the attack and manages to grab Mara’s leg while she is still in mid air. He slams her small body into the ground with much force, causing her to nearly lose consciousness upon impact. However, she wasn’t going to allow herself to go down just like this. She needed to do more. She needed much more in order to let her father finally rest.

  Mara creates a small blast of air to release herself from the mutant’s grip. She gets a moment to take a breath and rolls out of the way of the mutant’s stomp. She jumps back up but only to see the mutant dash towards her as fast as they can. Mara jumps in surprise and is suddenly thrashed into the air. She collides with a random tree stump and coughs out more blood on her clothes.

  “I kill… kill anyone who hurts me. You hurt me… I kill you! I kill you for Mara!”

  Mara’s eyes are shot wide open. The mutant, her father, just said her name unexpectedly. But how would he still know? He has to still remember her in some way!

  (His consciousness must somehow still be alive. Although, he can’t recognize that he’s fighting his own offspring. What a pitiful sight. At the end of the day, this mutated human is nothing more than a mindless brute, destroying anything on instinct.)

  Mara slowly gets up, the mutant staring at her with angry eyes. Mara eases up, the tension leaving her body. Her dad still knows of her, how could she possibly kill him now? That would just be cruel. She walks towards the mutant, the mutant growing in hostility. When Waldo sees this spectacle of mercy, his hand curls into a fist from irritation. Did what he say earlier do nothing?

  “You idiotic, naive child! That thing will eat you without a second thought!”