The Will to Begin (SOLO)

Day 6:

It was becoming apparent to Elena that she was not the only one that could manipulate their spiritual energies. Yesterday she had slain a Hollow with almost no effort after practicing her energy manipulation for as long as she could each day since she figured out how it worked. It made her job a lot easier, but her current predicament posed a particularly powerful question to her. What happened when she faced an enemy who could also manipulate their energies? This Hollow seemed to be able to pour his energies into various parts of his body, but Elena was seeing a pattern. After experiencing what it was like to have all of your energy in your arms after getting sent flying into a vehicle, the first thing that came to Elena's mind was the deficit of having most of your body unprotected.

However, it seemed that this creature was adept at moving its energies. Even moreso than Elena, which was fair considering she'd only had a few days to practice. Despite her hours of practicing and training, it still wasn't enough. In some cases, she was even being beaten out by the Hollow. A few strikes of the creature's arms would send her skidding backwards on her feet, but she managed to learn to dampen the blow by keeping her weight centered and her reiatsu spread evenly enough to keep herself from suffering too much kickback. Elena had no idea what this Hollow was supposed to be. Everything about it just looked like a giant human, with a slightly upper body and arms. It wasn't quite ape-like, but it wasn't completely human either. Its mask was something of a mayan design, or something along those lines. Whatever it was supposed to be, it wasn't too intimidating by appearance.

Yet Elena could feel the pressure of her situation building up even more with each passing blow. She managed to block several and dodge the rest, but her stamina was still something that wasn't quite on her side. Maybe that would fix with time. Another forceful punch came at her, and Elena held her blade sideways to block the blow. Once more she was sent skidding back. If she weren't doing this in the middle of the streets, this would be a lot more of a problem, but thankfully there was still plenty of road to go. Keeping the environment on her side was something Elena had made good use of so far. Hopefully she would keep that up.

The beast roared and beat its chest, making the cop regret calling this creature anything but an ape. It might just be trying to intimidate her now in the middle of their fight, but it didn't scare Elena too much. What scared her was the fact that she was becoming increasingly tired. That and the light forming in the creature's mouth. But mostly- wait what?

As Elena watched the beast prepare some kind of special attack, what felt like every synapse in her brain went into full panic mode. This was not something she should be standing here for, but even as she tried to leap to the side to get out of the way, the thing just turned its head to adjust its aim. At least 3 seconds passed and the thing still hadn't gone off. Elena felt lucky that this was taking so long, but she knew that if she didn't have some way to move faster than this thing could react then she was dead meat. Never once in her life had she thought that this would be the way that she would go out, but now it felt almost certain. The sweat on her brow dripped down the side of her face as she looked around for a way out, until it hit her. Thankfully in the heat of the moment, Elena was able to remember something that her first "mentor" showed her. With no instruction, Elena forced all of her spiritual energies into her legs and feet and prayed to god she was able to mimic what she had only seen happen before.

Just as the Hollow fired its cero, a beam of pure energy which Elena had never seen used before, she vanished from sight and dodged the attack completely. What she didn't expect was how far she would have gone. Since it was only her first time using this technique, she flew clean over the Hollow's head and hit the ground far behind it. There was no landing, as Elena was unprepared for the moment she hit the ground. Instead, she merely skid along the ground before stumbling into a roll that lasted for a good few seconds. Due to the fact she still had her reiatsu channeled through her legs, the lower half of her body remained unscathed. The upper half sustained plenty of bumps, bruises, and scrapes. There was a tad of damage control as Elena tucked into a good position to keep rolling, but the sheer force and speed of the roll still made her skin tear off in a few places.

Thankfully the creature didn't hear her, but now she was too far away to do anything. As the woman recovered from her piss poor landing, she decided the quickest, and possibly only way, to defeat this creature would be to do what she did again, but actually focus. Once more, with the energy still laden along her lower limbs, Elena forced herself to move at speeds the normal human eye couldn't see. This time, she managed to not stumble as much since she had a very rough idea of how fast she would move, but she couldn't help but still stumble a little bit. Catching herself mid step, the woman managed to impale the creature through its abdomen. Not enough to kill it, but the creature came tumbling down on Elena quickly. Spinning out of the way in a fairly elegant manner, Elena managed to bring her arms up over her head mid spin in order to bring her sword down on the Hollow's mask in one swift motion, cleaving its head in two. Apparently it had no idea where to focus its energies after that surprise attack, and thankfully Elena was able to use that moment of supremacy to defeat it once and for all. Next time, she wouldn't have to rely on her luck nearly as much.