MUST READ
To give everyone a better idea of how Aqua Jet works, I'll explain it in detail. In the anime, it's usually depicted as simply wrapping the Pokémon in water and launching it forward. However, I'm going to tweak it slightly: water will be generated from multiple parts of the body to envelop the body entirely.
If used at a low output, the user can coat a specific body part instead, though the damage dealt will be much lower. For instance, wrapping the legs would enhance mobility, while wrapping a specific body part could help absorb incoming damage.
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The ruin at the lowest level of the subterranean building was a desolate graveyard of fading digital static.
The last shimmering, fragmented pixels of the ten beasts he had just slaughtered dissolved slowly into the oppressive, suffocating gloom.
They left behind only a few slowly degrading crystalline fragments scattered across the bare, cracked concrete.
They crackled and popped—bzzt... snap...—like dying embers in a cold, unforgiving world that had violently rejected their existence.
Cedric's frail frame was already a ruin in its own right.
He forced himself to his feet, gritting his teeth as he pushed off the shattered, blood-stained tiles of the platform.
"Nngh..." A wet, rattling groan escaped his tightly pressed lips as his body violently, immediately betrayed him.
His left shoulder was utterly destroyed, reduced to a horrific mess of torn tissue and shattered bone.
The joint was completely pulverized, and the collarbone had been cleanly, brutally fractured.
The limb hung dead and useless at his side.
It swayed with a sickening, heavy gravity that pulled relentlessly at his spine with every agonizing, shuddering micro-movement.
A deep, jagged gash ran down his right thigh, veins throbbing as the wound vehemently refused to clot.
It painted his torn sneaker a slick, wet crimson that pooled slightly on the debris-covered floor—drip... drip...
Worse than the physical trauma was the creeping, freezing numbness of advanced ether erosion crawling like venomous ivy up his pale neck.
His vision tunneled dangerously, edges bleeding into a flickering static blackness as his stamina hollowed him out.
"Don't fall yet," Cedric muttered, his voice a dry, rattling rasp, trembling with exhaustion but heavy with stubbornness. "You... can't fall yet. Hah... hah..."
But the Hollow did not grant reprieves.
The ambient rhythm shifted. The sputtering static was swallowed by a new, terrifying pulse rolling from the pitch-black abyss of a collapsed tunnel.
RUMBLE...
Deep. Heavy. Unforgiving.
A thundering baseline made the pulverized concrete floor actually vibrate beneath his wet sneakers, shaking the loose gravel around him.
GRRRRRRRR...
A low, guttural growl echoed from the darkness. Cedric locked his blurry purple eyes onto the swirling shadows as a monstrous, massive beast emerged.
Its quadrupedal form was encased in heavy, dark-grey geometric stone armor—complex, interlocking plates making it a walking, unstoppable fortress.
Huge, jagged, opaque crystalline formations bristled aggressively from its thick neck, broad chest, and sweeping tail like tightly packed glacial ice.
This massive mane scraped and ground with a dry, stony sound—shrrk, krrshk—with every slow, prowling, methodical step.
The beast was over a meter tall at the shoulder and at least 2 meters long.
Its heavy jawline was tightly interlocked within a blocky stone helmet to seal the highly volatile energy within.
Thick, dark claws raked harsh gouges into the concrete—SCREEEECH—as it stalked forward with the inescapable finality of a collapsing mountain.
"System," Cedric breathed, a cold sweat breaking out across his pale, dirt-streaked forehead. "What am I looking at?"
The System's voice flickered into his mind, remarkably human, laced with a heavy, anxious sigh.
[According to my data, its name is Hati, Cedric. An incredibly dangerous Elite Ethereal.]
[That heavy stone armor acts as a strict physical limiter for its unstable core.]
[If it takes enough kinetic damage to shed that shell completely, its weaknesses will be revealed... but its combat style will shift dramatically.]
[Its speed, ferocity, and raw power will multiply exponentially.]
A cold, heavy dread washed over Cedric, making his bruised lungs seize in sheer panic.
He didn't have the physical strength to pierce that impenetrable armor. He had no elaborate traps left to set. He had no backup.
But his mind, locked into the hyper-perceptive state of [Perfect Sync], began to rapidly process the environment.
"I know," he whispered, swallowing a mouthful of blood. "But I don't have other choices."
He shifted his bleeding weight, agonizingly squaring his good shoulder.
"Let's finish this."
SWISH!
Hati simply vanished into a terrifying blur of violent motion.
The heavy metronome in Cedric's mind plummeted into a [Beat Drop].
Driven by pure instinct and the terrifying premonition of death, Cedric triggered a low-power mobility burst of [Aqua Jet].
Instead of a full-body envelopment, a thin, highly pressurized layer of water washed only over the sole of his right sneaker.
It carried zero offensive damage, but it eliminated all friction, allowing him to slide rapidly backward just as the physical space he had occupied a fraction of a second prior was torn completely apart.
CRACK!
The air popped with a deafening, vacuum-like explosion where Hati's claws sheared the empty space.
Hati landed heavily where Cedric had just been standing, its claws gouging deep trenches into the solid concrete.
Cedric didn't stop moving. He couldn't.
He frantically shifted the localized water pressure to his left foot, pivoting wildly as Hati lunged again.
ROAARRR!
The beast unleashed a horizontal sweep of its massive, crystal-studded tail.
Cedric dropped hard to his bruised knees, sliding desperately under the lethal, sweeping arc.
KRRR-SMASH!
The heavy tail obliterated a rusted ticket kiosk directly behind him, sending jagged shrapnel flying like a frag grenade.
A piece of twisted metal sliced a shallow cut across Cedric's cheek, but he ignored the stinging pain, scrambling backward.
He used frantic, localized micro-bursts of water from his shoes to propel himself across the uneven, debris-covered ground like a skipped stone.
He dove desperately behind the rusted husk of a derailed subway car, pressing his back against the cold metal, gasping for air.
But Hati didn't go around the obstacle.
The massive, armored beast rammed straight through the center of the metal train car with locomotive force.
SCREEEEECH! KRA-CRASH!!!
The shriek of tearing, twisting metal was deafening.
The train car was literally ripped in half, showering Cedric in a terrifying rain of sparks, shattered glass, and twisted steel.
Cedric rolled frantically out of the way, coughing violently in the thick, choking smoke and dust.
His deeply slashed thigh finally buckled mid-dash under the immense, sudden strain.
He stumbled pathetically, losing his balance entirely.
Hati's heavy, blocky stone head whipped around through the smoke, slamming brutally into Cedric's ribs like a wrecking ball.
THUD!
"Hrgh—!"
Cedric's jaw clamped shut, swallowing a cry as he spun wildly from the sheer kinetic impact, crashing hard into a rusted ticket turnstile.
He filled his mouth with warm, copper-tasting blood, biting his inner lip hard enough to pierce the skin just to fight through the blinding, paralyzing pain.
Hati shook the dust from its stone mane and pivoted, its glowing red sensors locking onto the bleeding boy on the ground.
It prepared for another locomotive charge.
Cedric scrambled frantically on his hands and knees, dragging his broken left arm across the rough floor.
He had analyzed the beast's brutal attack pattern. Hati was incredibly heavy. Its stone armor was a fortress, but it was also a massive flaw.
Once the beast committed to a high-speed charge, it acted like a missile. It couldn't easily hit the brakes or change direction.
Cedric deliberately pushed himself up, limping heavily toward the center of the ruined terminal.
He put his back to a massive, severely cracked concrete load-bearing pillar.
Above him, suspended by failing, rusted rebar and weakened concrete, hung hundreds of tons of twisted ceiling girders, rubble, and industrial air conditioning units.
Hati locked onto him, its thick, unnatural muscles bunching visibly beneath the heavy geometric stone armor.
The beast crouched low, digging its dark claws deep into the floor, preparing to charge with full, unstoppable force.
Cedric stood his ground. His legs were trembling so violently he could barely stay upright.
Then he closed his heavy eyes, forcing himself to ignore the overwhelming terror screaming in his mind.
He listened only to the chaotic, heavy rhythm of the Hollow and waited for the drop.
Hati launched itself forward, a living meteor of dark stone and crystal, aimed straight at Cedric's fragile chest.
Thump... thump... PLUNGE.
The [Beat Drop] shrieked in his skull.
At the exact millisecond the beast was upon him, Cedric threw himself sideways, pouring every single ounce of remaining stamina into his right foot.
The low-power [Aqua Jet] blasted him horizontally across the slick, bloody concrete.
Hati realized the deception a fraction of a second too late.
The beast frantically tried to brake. Its massive claws screeched agonizingly against the floor—SKREEEEEK—tearing up massive showers of sparks, but its colossal momentum was too absolute.
It plowed face-first into the massive central support pillar with an apocalyptic, deafening crash.
KRA-BOOM!!!
The impact violently shook the entire subterranean structure, sending a shockwave that threw Cedric off his feet.
The thick concrete pillar cracked violently, showering Hati in a thick cloud of dust, but it didn't break completely. It held on by a few thick strands of rebar.
Cedric didn't hesitate. He couldn't let it recover.
He used the momentum of his slide to plant his sneakers firmly against a nearby derailed train car.
He bent his knees, firing a burst of water from his soles to hurl his own battered body back at the dazed beast.
He focused the low-power water envelopment entirely around his good right shoulder to act as a localized hydraulic cushion.
With a feral, wordless grunt, Cedric slammed his entire body directly into the compromised, crumbling concrete right above Hati's armored head.
CRASH!
The localized hydraulic pressure acted as the final, necessary battering ram.
The concrete pillar snapped completely with a sound like a massive gunshot.
Hundreds of tons of ceiling debris, steel girders, and massive slabs of concrete rained down in a blinding, catastrophic avalanche.
RUMBLE... KRRRR-SMASH!
It buried Hati completely under a mountain of industrial wreckage.
Cedric rolled away, covering his head with his one good arm, wheezing violently as the thick, choking dust washed over him.
"Cough... cough... Got you…" he rasped, spitting thick clots of blood into the dirt.
But the Ethereal did not yield to falling rocks.
Beneath the massive pile of twisted steel and concrete, a terrifying, neon-green glow began to pulse through the gaps in the rubble.
Cedric couldn't explain how he knew.
But through the pounding, chaotic rhythm vibrating in his skull, he felt an overwhelming, suffocating wave of pure, unadulterated rage radiating from the crushed stones.
The beast wasn't just surviving under there. It was humiliated. It was absolutely, terrifyingly furious.
The wreckage heaved. Krr-crack...
With one final, earth-shaking tremor, the debris was violently blasted outward in all directions.
BOOOOM!
Hati's remaining geometric stone armor had shattered completely under the immense kinetic crush, exploding in a cinematic spray of jagged shrapnel.
What emerged from the settling dust was simultaneously far less covered and exponentially more savage.
The true form beneath the limiter was a sleek, incredibly powerful black-grey ether core body, corded with unnatural muscle and entirely lethal.
Intense, glowing neon-green power channels raced across its long legs and broad chest like a complex, beating network of internal radioactive light.
The blocky, restrictive head armor was completely gone.
It revealed a terrifying, flared formation of intense glowing crystal that opened into a massive, wide-open maw designed specifically to tear, rend, and consume.
From its mouth, a pulsing, pitch-black sphere—its true, unshielded core—was clearly visible.
SKREEEEE-ROARRRR!!!
Hati let out a screeching roar of pure, corrupted static that made Cedric's ears ring, and became a black blur.
Its combat style shifted instantly, exactly as the System had warned.
Gone were the heavy, bruising tackles. It was now a hyper-fast frenzy of snapping crystal jaws and slicing claws.
But… it didn't go for the immediate kill.
The beast's fury had morphed into a cruel, sadistic malice. It wanted Cedric to suffer for the indignity of being buried.
Hati crossed the floor in a microsecond.
The first strike wasn't a lethal blow. It was a precise, surgical slash to Cedric's right calf.
SHLICK!
The glowing claws sheared through the muscle, violently ripping the tissue but deliberately sparing the main artery.
"Nnggh!" Cedric's head snapped back, a guttural, choked groan tearing from his throat.
His leg gave out completely, and he crashed face-first onto the hard concrete. SMACK!
He desperately tried to scramble backward, using his one good hand to drag his ruined body across the floor.
He refused to give it the satisfaction of a scream. He ground his teeth together so hard his jaw ached, leaving a thick, morbid smear of blood in his wake as his fingernails cracked against the tiles.
Hati didn't rush. It stalked him slowly, its heavy, unarmored paws padding silently behind the boy.
It stepped directly onto Cedric's trailing, bleeding right leg.
The beast didn't stomp. It simply pressed down, slowly applying its unnatural, colossal weight.
SNAP!
Cedric's eyes widened in sheer agony as his femur fractured. The bone snapped with a loud, wet pop.
"URGHHH!!!"
A sharp, ragged hiss escaped his clenched teeth. His fingers dug deeply into the concrete, scratching until they bled, but he kept his jaw locked tight.
The monster leaned down, its flared crystal jaws parting to let out a low, vibrating hiss of static that rattled Cedric's bones. Bzzzzzzz...
Then, Hati's crystal-studded tail whipped out like a massive python.
WHOOSH-SMACK!
It wrapped tightly around Cedric's waist, lifting his frail frame entirely off the ground.
The constriction was terrifying.
Crack.
Cedric felt another rib snap, the jagged bone threatening to pierce his lung.
"Urk—" He choked, blood bubbling up his throat, his hands weakly grabbing at the massive tail as he was utterly unable to draw a single breath.
Hati held him suspended in the air for five agonizing seconds, forcing the boy to look into the blazing yellow-green abyss of its unshielded core.
Then, with a dismissive, violent flick of its tail, the beast hurled him into a rusted metal pillar.
WHAM!
Cedric slammed into the steel and slid down to the base, completely limp.
His vision was swimming in a sea of red and black. He couldn't feel his legs anymore. His entire lower half was numb.
Hati approached again, the heavy metronome of its footsteps echoing in the absolute silence of the ruin. Thud... thud... thud...
The monster extended a single, glowing neon-green talon.
It dragged the razor-sharp tip slowly across Cedric's back.
Riiiiiip... Shhhhk...
The horrific sound of tearing fabric mixing with parting flesh filled the air. It deliberately reopened the deep gashes it had made earlier, peeling the boy apart inch by inch.
Cedric's entire body spasmed. He bit straight through his lower lip, a muffled, wet shudder escaping him as warm blood ran down his chin.
Finally, Hati stepped its heavy, clawed foot directly onto Cedric's already pulverized left shoulder.
It ground its paw into the joint.
CRRRR-UNCH.
The sickening, mushy sound of the remaining shards of his collarbone grinding into fine powder and tearing through muscle echoed loudly.
"URRGH!!!"
Cedric's back arched violently. A strangled, agonized snarl vibrated deep in his chest, but his lips remained sealed shut.
The beast leaned in, the intense radioactive heat of its core singeing Cedric's eyelashes and drying the sweat on his dirt-streaked face.
It watched the feral, unrelenting defiance burning in Cedric's dull purple eyes. Irritated that its prey refused to break, Hati decided it was time to end the game.
The beast didn't bite. It simply spun on its front legs.
Its massive tail whipped around with the sheer kinetic force of a swinging steel girder.
BAM!
It smashed directly into Cedric's ribs.
The horrific crunch of shattering bone was drowned out by the booming impact. Cedric was violently launched off the ground, hurled backward through the air like a discarded, broken doll.
He flew twenty meters across the desolate terminal, soaring over the debris before slamming brutally into the base of a distant, reinforced concrete wall.
SMASH!
He hit the ground with a sickening, wet thud, leaving a thick smear of crimson on the concrete as he slid down into a lifeless, tangled heap.
Absolute silence filled the ruin.
Cedric lay in the dirt, his chest rising and falling in ragged, bubbly gasps. Wheeze... gurgle... Every breath tasted of copper and failure. His entire lower half was numb. His left arm was a mangled mess.
Through the static-edged periphery of his vision, his hyper-perceptive mind began to coldly analyze the grim reality of his situation.
He knew, with absolute certainty, that the only weapon capable of piercing that core and killing the Ethereal was [Aqua Jet] at its maximum output.
But as he forced himself to take stock of his current, pathetic physical condition—his ruined limbs, his shattered ribs, and his completely hollowed-out stamina—he knew the bitter truth.
He could only use it one single time.
Just one final, full-power activation before his body gave out forever.
Yet, even with that single, desperate chance, a heavy, suffocating doubt crushed him.
Even if he threw everything into that massive, full-body hydraulic charge, he wasn't even sure if it would connect. Hati's current speed was terrifying.
It was a blur of supersonic motion. A telegraphed, desperate tackle across this distance would easily miss. The beast would simply sidestep.
He couldn't chase it. He couldn't risk his one and only shot on a gamble of speed.
He had to make the beast come to him.
And even then, another problem flaw surfaced in his mind.
A standard [Aqua Jet] envelops the user's entire figure in pressurized water. If he somehow managed to collide with the monster, the fluid dynamics would be entirely wrong for a killing blow.
Basic physics dictated the result: the immense kinetic force of the water would naturally spread out. It would disperse equally over the beast's massive crystalline jaw upon impact.
By spreading the force over such a wide surface area, the overall PSI (pounds per square inch) would drastically drop. It would hit like a blunt wall, not a spear. It wouldn't possess the focused, piercing pressure required to shatter that hyper-dense black core.
'How do I increase the hit chance?' he thought, blood bubbling in his throat.
A plan formed in his mind.
What if he generated the immense, full-body volume of water required for a maximum activation, but violently refused to let it naturally envelop his body?
If he could trap, control, and compress all of that roaring hydraulic pressure meant for his entire frame into one single point—his fist—the resulting PSI would multiply exponentially into immeasurable power.
But… it was a completely suicidal gamble.
The localized, explosive recoil of physically holding that much raw kinetic energy in one place would almost certainly blow his right arm completely off at the shoulder the exact millisecond it made contact.
But as he looked at the beast approaching him, Cedric's pain was entirely eclipsed by a feral, spiteful stubbornness.
It had toyed with him. It had tried to make him scream. It was arrogant and that was its fatal mistake.
If he was going to die bleeding out on this concrete floor, he was absolutely taking this monster down into the dark with him.
Cedric painfully, agonizingly dragged his bruised knees beneath him. Every movement drew a sharp, suppressed hiss of pain.
He raised his trembling, blood-soaked right hand, making a tight fist and pointing his knuckles directly toward the beast's blazing core.
"All of it. Every last drop."
Ignoring the blazing, frantic red warning screens flashing aggressively across his retinas, he forced the system to obey his suicidal command.
He activated the skill at maximum output.
The skill attempted to generate the massive volume of water from all of his body parts to safely envelop his frail frame.
But Cedric fought it. He actively, violently suppressed the fluid's natural flow.
Instead of spreading, the immense, full-body mass of water violently, terrifyingly contracted.
It rushed and condensed entirely around his right forearm and fist alone.
Vvvvvvvvvrrrrrmmmmm...
The physical pressure built instantly, an anomaly the skill was never meant to handle.
It felt like a heavy, industrial steel vice rapidly attempting to crush his radius and ulna into fine powder.
Cedric's jaw locked tight, a low, guttural snarl of pure exertion vibrating in his chest.
His muscles physically tore under the immense strain and his knuckles and wrist joints popped audibly in the quiet ruin.
The massive volume of water compressed further and further until it formed a hyper-dense, violently vibrating sphere of mathematically impossible kinetic energy perfectly encasing his tiny fist.
It glowed with a blinding, piercing sapphire light, humming with a catastrophic, high-pitched shriek.
[New Skill Unlocked: Jet Punch.]
Hati, suddenly realizing the terrifying spike in energy, launched its massive head forward, its jaws wide open to finally consume him.
ROAARRR!
Pushing off the cracked concrete with the very last ounce of his fading physical strength, Cedric threw his broken body straight forward.
But he didn't dodge. He offered himself directly to the maw.
The beast bit down viciously on Cedric's advancing right arm.
CHOMP! CRUNCH!
Jagged, razor-sharp crystal teeth sank agonizingly deep into his flesh.
Squelch... grrrk...
The horrifying sound of teeth tearing through muscle, chewing into living tissue, and violently scraping against bone echoed sickeningly in the terminal. The beast desperately attempted to sever the boy's limb before the fatal strike could land.
His arm was locked completely, immovably in place deep within the glowing, static-filled maw. The pain was beyond human comprehension.
But Cedric's dead, pain-hollowed expression suddenly shifted into a faint, bloody, triumphant smirk.
The beast had just flawlessly secured his arm right against its own exposed core. And it had voluntarily anchored itself, ensuring the attack wouldn't miss its target.
"Thanks… you idiot," Cedric whispered, blood bubbling past his teeth.
He unleashed the impossible, hyper-compressed hydraulic pressure directly into the center of the pitch-black sphere.
KRA-THOOOOOOM!!!
The punch landed with a wet, thundering, cataclysmic impact that momentarily ruptured the very air and physics of the Hollow.
Shaped, contained, and fueled by the ultimate sacrifice of Cedric's arm, the immense hydraulic force didn't disperse by a single millimeter.
It punched straight, violently through the hyper-dense crystallized ether like a supersonic cannonball through fragile glass.
KRRR-SHATTER!
Hati's core instantly shattered into a million jagged, screaming pieces.
A blinding, apocalyptic explosion of pure, radioactive yellow-green light engulfed them both as the beast let out a final, corrupted, dying digital scream.
SKREEEEEEEEEE—!!!
The hyper-dense black ether making up its body unraveled instantly.
The creature literally folded inward upon itself as the attack tore it apart from the inside out.
The explosive, concussive kinetic shockwave violently ejected Cedric backward.
He sailed through the air, completely limp, a broken ragdoll, then slammed brutally, mercilessly into the far reinforced concrete wall.
SMASH! CRACK!
A sickening, wet crunch of his remaining ribs echoed through the space.
A massive spray of blood erupted violently from his mouth, splattering the wall behind him, before he slid down into a lifeless, tangled, broken heap on the floor.
The glitching, fragmented remnants of Hati's broken body rained down onto the concrete floor with a heavy series of thuds.
Thump. Thump.
It immediately broke down into a raging storm of neon static, dissolving and fading away forever into the ambient ether of the ruin.
Absolute, heavy, deafening silence finally fell over the underground graveyard.
It was broken only by the incredibly faint, agonizing sound of Cedric's ragged, wet, bubbling breathing.
"Hhhhh... gurgle... hhhh..."
He stayed on his hands and knees in a rapidly, slowly spreading dark pool of his own blood, utterly unable to move a single inch of his ruined body.
Deep, horrific gashes wept freely across his chest, back, and legs.
The dark, necrotic veins of severe ether erosion pulsed violently, aggressively against his neck, crawling closer to his jawline.
With agonizing, heartbreaking slowness, he pressed a violently shaking, blood-soaked right hand against the deepest, most lethal wound on his stomach, struggling quietly as he desperately tried to physically hold his own failing body together.
"I'm...done..." he whispered to the cold, echoing air, the fight completely, finally leaving his tired purple eyes.
He slowly closed his incredibly heavy eyelids.
He let his head drop forward until his feverish forehead finally came to rest against the freezing, uncaring concrete floor.