The First Harem Tournament 17 – A friendly Spar between Sisters [Metra POV]

Sand crunched beneath Metra’s armoured feet. The tiny island was one of a couple that dotted the oceanic environment now around her. Wolf ears twitched as an artificial breeze tickled the fur along their edges. In a series of clicks, the segments of her armour enclosed her head fully.

Across the vast, restless sheet of deep blue water, on her own island of white sand and wind-bent palms, Ehtra stood. From the beginning, the First of Hatred had sported her black plate, granted to her by their Emperor’s Perks like so many other boons. She held the nameless sword of grey Astrotium in her hand, a part of her being in all the time that Metra had known her. The heavy gun strapped to her right thigh was a recent addition.

The heavy thud of a drum reminded Metra of the weapon planted in the ground next to her. ‘Do I make use of you?’ she silently asked Rex Magnar. The weapon was quiet in turn, an alien consciousness that could not understand such questions.

“Pick it up.”

Ehtra’s voice echoed across the waves with scornful clarity. The demanding tone ignited the anger always pulsing through Metra’s veins. Embracing the sensation, she stretched out her right arm. One finger after another curled around the silver-white shaft of the Fusional weapon. “Three!” his voice echoed through the arena. “Two!” Rex Magnar cheered with the sounds of a shredding guitar. “One!” Metra whirled her weapon around once, adjusting her grip. Ehtra dropped her sword. “FIGHT!”

Both ancient weapons took aim. Metra moved first, hurling her halberd with all of her might. A predictable opener by her and one that Ehtra dodged easily. The supersonic projectile boomed past her and violently disturbed the waters as it passed over them. A shimmer of arcane tore open the air in front of the weapon.

Metra’s eyes flicked to a position to Ehtra’s left. The air there began to shimmer. At their pace of fighting, the delay was notable, certainly notable enough that the First of Hatred could have moved. She stood her ground, waiting for the exit portal of the Vector Break to open up. Rex Magnar re-emerged, only to be swept aside by a perfectly timed beat of Ehtra’s wing.

All this time, Ehtra had kept her gun trained on Metra. The First of Wrath had counted the seconds since Ehtra had changed into her Accuser Stance. Four seconds were needed for No Remorse to reach its maximum potency. Metra moved to the side in anticipation of the bullet. It came a second later, after Metra had committed to the motion.

The bullet struck Metra in the head. The combination of Hailey’s absurd creations and Ehtra’s Gun Mastery made it a devastatingly fast and powerful impact. Astrotium cracked, the unforgeable material blasting off the side of Metra’s face. Fury and Contempt rose as damage was received and created. Beneath her helmet, the Breaker of Armies grinned.

“Good! MAKE ME FIGHT, SISTER!” she roared.

Ehtra did not respond. The First of Hatred was already before Metra, moving with the speed the impact granted her. For one second, Ehtra was 150% stronger, faster and more durable.

Metra’s rage allowed her to rip her arms up in defence. The Astrotium blade met her Astrotium armor. Sparks flew, as did Metra. She sailed over the ocean, incapable of adjusting herself midair. Before she could determine where to place the exit end of a tear, Ehtra plunged into her from above.

Metra was shoved violently underwater. The bubble of air the rapid speed of her motion had carried with it soon collapsed. The familiar taste of the ocean filled her senses. She was sinking. The crack in her helmet mended itself. She righted herself in the water, keeping her rage from taking over as she always did. Wrath was the fuel to enact a decision, not the means to come to one.

The wait to reach the bottom was agonizing all the same. Her feet eventually reached the sandy bottom of the water. The crack in her helmet had mended, the Astrotium thinned for now. Another advantage of her new state of being would recover the material in due time, saving them time to search later.

Metra walked along the ocean floor, moving up the sandy shelf of an island. ‘If there are palms, are there coconuts?’ she wondered, laying out her plan for the next interaction. This was her fight to lose. It spoke highly of Ehtra that she had won the initial engagement, but the Breaker of Armies would not surrender her title as their Emperor’s most effective weapon so easily.

Metra was in the shallows now and immediately accelerated into a sprint. The drag of the water held her back for a moment, then she was out in the air. She called Rex Magnar to her hand, whirling mid jump to keep a potential dive at bay. Ehtra had kept her distance, standing on a nearby island. Now, she pointed her bolt gun at her sister once more.

Spotting what she had sought, Metra readily engaged in a repetition of the opening gambit. The halberd howled metal tones as it flew past Ehtra once again. It disappeared in the Vector Break portal, to surface again in a few moments. In that in-between, Metra kicked up a coconut lying to her feet, caught it and then hurled it at the First of Hatred with all her might.

The brown piece of plant fibre should have been harmless. Alas, in the hands of Metra EVERYTHING was a weapon. Ehtra moved one Astrotium wing in front, the feathers managing to rebound the supersonic coconut just as the other wing once more flicked Rex Magnar aside. Just as Metra had wanted, that left a grey wing in-between Ehtra’s gun hand and her target.

The delay created, the distractions made, was enough that Metra confidently shoved her hand through a suddenly opening portal. Ehtra tried to pull her foot back. The First of Hatred’s reaction was a bit too slow. Metra grabbed her ankle and Ripped her hand back. Her limb returned alone, but while the grasp was gone, the force of the pull remained.

Ehtra turned her backwards fall into a roll, but her aim was ruined now. Fury burned on Metra’s armour, her claws and will Tearing open the world. She leapt through the portal, finding herself sailing through a conceptual space of colours and flickering lights of gold and silver for a moment. Just one second later, she emerged beside Ehtra. Enough time that the First of Hatred had prepared for her arrival.

“A COCONUT?!” Ehtra howled and brought her fist down.

“If it works,” Metra responded with her usual easy-going attitude and caught the fist. She summoned Rex Magnar to her other hand, gripping the halberd just beneath the head.

You let Tiamat do whatever she wanted. You are the reason why Akkad fell.

The weight of her sin slammed into her, making her hesitate for just one moment. The Contempt Aura bought the First of Hatred just enough time to keep pace with her sister. Had it not been for the spike of anger in the wake of the memory foisted upon her, Ehtra would even have been faster.

BLAM!

SKREEK!

Halberd and explosives made simultaneous impacts in the midriffs of the two warriors. Sharp pain and a clear sensation of absence told Metra exactly why the pregnant members of the Imperial Choir were barred from participation. For her part, it only made her rage burn hotter. Her hate-fuelled sister shared her impulse, both ancient warriors slamming their head forwards.

Armour cracked on both sides. Dented and broken, helmets fell apart. Half-revealed faces showed the annoyed scowl of the darker skinned of the two, while Metra grinned the half-crazed smile that only a mixture of rage and joy could produce. “YOU HAVE IMPROVED!”

“SHUT UP AND FIGHT!” Ehtra screamed back.

Metra pulled her halberd back. Absent the second of boosted Stats, Ehtra could not stand up to the First of Wrath in a melee. In the time it took the First of Hatred to stagger back, Metra readjusted her hold on her weapon. Breaking her own being, sacrificing her vitality to empower this next attack, Metra swung the halberd in a massive arc.

Ehtra accepted the strike. The axe-blade of the halberd bit deep into her chest, carving a groove from collarbone to hip that would have been lethal for almost all beings of flesh. She was no flesh, beating her wings without hesitation to gain distance the second the arcing halberd hit the ground.

Metra gripped space itself. No portal this time, nothing so small in scale. By the clenching of her fist, she commanded the area before her to crunch up, for grains of sand and waves of water to overlap on themselves in a confusing mess of physics. Space unfurled swiftly, but Ehtra remained dragged before Metra, who pulled her halberd back up. Ehtra attempted to back away with another beat of her wings, only to hit the back spike of the mighty halberd.

“You’re staying,” Metra growled, letting her rage win out for a moment.

“If you insist,” Ehtra returned with a modicum of amusement, crowned by a halo of blood red.

The inversion of roles set off alarm bells. Metra Tore open a portal and was promptly shoved through it as shards of black armour exploded in every direction. The First of Wrath’s HP bar took another solid hit, her armour shredded in multiple places. The hastily placed exit point saw her drop into the shallows of the water behind where they had been entangled moments ago.

Metra whirled around on her feet, finding herself staring up at her unclad sister, bereft of armour and armaments and yet more dangerous than ever. Her rich brown skin glistened with divine radiance, though cracked and covered in a mixture of black liquid and blood red veins. Her wings had multiplied. Where there had been two there were six, where they had been grey alone these were grey and crimson and required no beat to keep the grey angel afloat. Layered halos hovered behind the First of Hatred, each part of a network of magic.

[Ehtra Angel AI: https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/cd4f3d4701a7.png ]

“Nothing held back!” Ehtra shouted, her gun and her sword appearing in her bloodstained hands.

Metra braced herself for the attack. She embraced her rage, let it rise higher until she-

“What do you think, first daughter mine?” Tiamat asked with sweetness of a rotting mother. “A tower to the empire’s greatness! Akkad, Babylon, whatever, whatever, does it really matter? A tower! A tower to stand taller than Gaia!”

A sense of shame she had not known in many, many lifetimes depressed her rage. Halberd and sword met.

“I’m a weapon, not an advisor.” Metra shrugged. “You are the patron goddess, mother chaos. Guide the people as you think is best.”

Metra’s knees gave, nearly hitting the ground as the weight of sin behind the strike hit her. Her mind reeled, more memories scratching against the confines of her past. What had been her pride, her lifetime of services rendered without question, haunted her like a school of swirling sharks. They teemed the waters around her, swimming in the deeper waters beyond the shallows – creatures of the ocean with a four-segment maw.

Clenching her teeth, Metra honed her willpower to a point. An angry roar tore from her throat. The manifestations of regret remained in her periphery as she pushed against the First of Hatred, shoving her back. Monster Form or not, she was…

Ah, who cared if she was stronger! She was Metracana Metra, Breaker of Armies, and she would not win off strength!

Ehtra landed on the island. A pleased expression shifted to surprise when Metra charged after her at diminished speed. The First of Wrath controlled her sin, leaving the two as equally matched as they could be.

The grey angel was framed by the faces of Marduk and Ishtar, memories of gods betrayed by Metra’s inaction. Beneath their judging gazes, Metra swerved left, then right, escaping the bullets as they flew towards her. Immediately, Ehtra dropped the ranged weapon and met her sister with an overhead strike.

Metra blocked with the lower end of her shaft. The energy of Ehtra’s strike directly translated into the head of the weapon coming up from its position low to the ground. A feathered shield moved in-between.

Nothing. You did nothing.

The visions. The words. The thoughts bubbling from her depths. None of them were shaped by Ehtra. The grey angel was a catalyst, not a writer. The sins she pulled out of the First of Wrath were Metra’s own.

Wickedly sharp feathers whistled through the air. Ehtra turned her entire body, leaving Metra no choice but to back away. A dancing dervish, the grey angel kept on advancing, each step a graceful display of her warrior’s body and bladed wings. Metra always stayed one step out of reach, reading her sister’s motions carefully. Millennia of experience told her when the First of Hatred spun for the last time.

Ehtra took a lunging step, her wings stretching into a wall of sharpened feathers like a row of a phalanx. In the same moment as the multitude of Astrotium tips came for her entire body, Metra activated the Extreme Plasma Burst. Violent energy tore her along. There was no holding Rex Magnar, only guiding its trajectory. At absurd speed, she turned on her axis. The feathers screeched over the surface of her back, leaving horizontal slits in the metal.

Panicked, the First of Hatred tried to pull the other side of wings in as a shield. Too little, too late, Rex Magnar blemished the divine curves of her sister by cutting into her side, stopping shortly after breaking the grey angel’s spine.

Excess energy kept Metra moving. She spun around herself once, before the burning lance of energy dissipated, allowing her to stop. Ehtra was flung towards the island, breaking two palm trees before coming to a stop.

Metra would have given chase with greater urgency if the visions hadn’t faded moments thereafter. When she trotted up to Ehtra, the First of Hatred was still in her Monster Form (inaccurate as that moniker was for something this alluring). The Blood Halo had not yet fully drained. All the same, Ehtra raised her hand.

“I yield,” she pressed out, only those two words for everyone to hear. “Can’t even beat you in this form…”

“Little as you like it, in duels you will never surpass me,” Metra stated bluntly the reality of the situation. “You made it a lot harder than I thought you would.”

“So you underestimated me all this time?” Ehtra hissed.

Metra let her helmet fold into the collar of her armour, showing off the tomboyish smirk beneath. Regeneration belied the fact of the damage she had taken throughout this fight. “Just take the compliment, Sister.”

Lips pressed together, Ehtra looked for a long moment at the hand offered. “Fine… I… l-love you too much to be resentful anyway!”

As she looked at the grey angel, at the curvy, blushing, embarrassed mess that her fellow Metracana had suddenly become, only a single thought rushed through Metra’s mind.

‘My little sister can’t possibly be this cute.’