VS. Shadow Clones

I was out of practice, but I was reasonably happy with how I delivered my kick.

I was less happy that he looked past the eyehole of that hideous horse mask with glowing yellow irises and he turned to shadow the moment before my kick caught him across the small of the back.

My kick tore through his shadow's midsection, and the upper half reached out to catch me by the throat with shadow hands. It had no lower body, and it was keeping up the fight.

Ahrima had given him a bit of help at the right moment.

I hadn't wanted to use the Wretch to hit Seir when Vista couldn't necessarily protect me. Now? I could use it like this. I let it unfurl, expanding out from me to cover me and extend into my immediate surroundings. Teeth, legs, arms, hands, feet, without much in the way of rhyme or reason.

Fuck you for making me do this, I thought, and I pushed my aura out hard.

The Wretch tore through the shadow and several of the surrounding channels of Seir's dark energy.

The Wretch and I began to go on the offensive, adding to the pressure on Seir by removing shadow duplicates and cutting off his power before it could extend too far out.

A bullet hit the Wretch, and I felt it disappear.

*****

I continued to go after Seir, chasing his real self in a mad, dangerous game of whack-a-mole, where the mole always won and the person with the hammer could be shot at any moment. The Wretch returned, and a well-timed punch from a shadow Seir destroyed it a moment later.

The yellow eyes weren't there all of the time, or even ten percent of the time, but Seir was evasive, capable of creating doubles and swapping places with them constantly. He didn't need danger sense to give us a one in twelve chance of hitting the real him.

*****

I destroyed two more shadow copies. A projectile I only barely saw destroyed another two with one shot.

We'd reduced it down to three Seirs. I went after one before more duplicates could spring into being, hit it, and reduced it to tufts of shadow.

*****

I punched another two Seirs, well aware I was fighting an uphill battle.

- Pitch 6.1