6.21 – Implosion


    Like thest time Zoey had fucked a goo-monster into submission, her opponentsy on the ground, their bodies seeming to dissolve. zey copsed on her back, her hand on her forehead as she panted, and Ignis on her stomach, groaning softly, the two of them turning intova pancakes as their bodies lost solidity.


    Though Zoey was also exhausted and would very much like toy back and catch her breath, she forced herself to sit up after only a moment. Because the fight wasn''t over. She knew without an explicit announcement that she had won against Ignis and ze, but that didn''t mean the bigger problem had been solved—the rampaging twenty-foot elemental who was the <em>real </em>boss.


    Rosalie, Delta, and Maddy had been fighting the thing tooth-and-nail the whole time. Zoey''s encounter against the two smaller elementals had hardlysted forever—or even all that long, considering how good their bodies had felt—but even a handful of minutes was a long time when fighting for one''s life.


    "So, I won?" Zoey asked, just to confirm.


    "Don''t be … too proud of that fact, human …" Ignis groaned, the words muffled by how she was lying stomach-down, face pressed into the floor. Or rather, her own gooey body, since she was melting.


    "I don''t know, Ignis," ze panted, her words clearer because of how she was lying on her back. "I think she can be proud. That was <em>amazing</em>."


    Ignis huffed, shooting her ally an irritable look. Then she looked at Zoey. "So, what is it you wish of us, then?"


    "What I wish of you?"


    "You''ve asserted your dominance," Ignis said, sounding not entirely pleased by the fact. "We''re yours for the rest of the fight."


    "You … are?" Zoey asked. Mel hadn''t worked like that, but then again, Mel had been a solo encounter. Would all fights with ''add-ons'' work simrly, or was it just this one?


    Getting to her feet—and swaying a bit as she did—Zoey appraised the fight. She considered the best way to join back in. And also the best way to utilize her two hard-earned allies. Though, considering their gooey exhaustion, Zoey had maybe done too good a job of fucking them to their breaking point.


    Zoey was two things, when it came tobat: a mage, but also an alchemist. And there was one category of potion she''d yet to put to good use. The extinguishing potions.


    "Could you rejoin him, you think?" Zoey asked, an idea forming in her head.


    "Rejoin him?" ze asked. "Why would you want us to? Shouldn''t we fight?"


    Zoey pulled a potion out from her inventory and presented it to ze, waggling it between two fingers. "I''ve got a feeling," Zoey said, "that if I can get this thing to go off from <em>inside </em>an elemental, it''ll do some serious work."


    ze tilted her head, presumably reading the item''s description. If monsters could even do that. "Hm," she said after a moment. "I suppose it''s worth trying."


    "It won''t hurt you though, right?"


    "Of course it will," ze snorted. "It''ll be going off on us, too. But we''re all the same boss. And it''s not like you can <em>kill </em>us."


    "It''s our duty as the defeated party," Ignis grumbled.


    Zoey didn''t like the idea of her two partners getting caught in the crossfire, but as ze had said, boss monsters couldn''t actually be killed. They were the shard itself, if anything Mel had said was to go by. Their defeats would always be temporary.


    "Okay, well, not to rush you or anything," Zoey said, pulling out the second potion, this one for Ignis. "But yeah, join back into his body, and get as deep as you can. Then break those potions. Head or chest, I guess, wherever you think will do the most damage."


    With visible effort, the two meltingva-girls tugged themselves back into coherency. They staggered to their feet. Zoey sympathized with their exhausted motions. They''d wrung her out as much as she had them, after all.


    She ced the two me-extinguishing potions in either of their outstretched palms.


    "You fought … adequately," Ignis said, eying Zoey. "I shouldn''t have underestimated you. If we went again, the oue would be different."


    Zoeyughed. "I liked fucking you too, Ignis."


    Bothva girls blushed.


    Then, they faced the hulking body of the main boss monsters. Gripping their respective potions, they shoved the items into their chests, bodies parting to suck the ss vials in. A momentter, they melted down, turning into a pile of goo, losing their bodies entirely. Rolling forward as sentient balls of liquid, they rushed toward their master, carrying the deadly payload with them.


    Rosalie and Delta, aware of their surroundings like they always were, saw what was happening. They disengaged. The boss didn''t pursue, seeing his two elementalsing to rejoin his main body. Zoey wondered whether he knew the betrayal wasing. To some degree, he had to; again, the entire shard was one organic entity, wasn''t it? Were their minds even split? Were Ignis and ze the same person?


    Who knew? In the best of cases, Zoey suspected shard biology was weird.


    That said, the roar the boss released <em>sounded </em>pleased. He was ecstatic he would be regaining his two arms, which Ignis and ze had formed from.


    But, of course, that wasn''t what happened.


    ze and Ignis rejoined his body, slithering up his legs, then, out of sight, presumably deep into his chest.


    Zoey didn''t hear the cracks of ss, but she knew the moment the potions went off. Behind thick tes of stone armor, thevaposing his body shuddered, then imploded all at once, sucking inward and then bursting outward, globs ofva sttering the ground in all directions. But more importantly—spots ofva cooled rapidly across his entire chest, darkening as it solidified into hard obsidian. One went off inside his skull, too, as Zoey had requested, and his gruesome features froze over and turned ck.


    It didn''t seem to kill him outright, but the roar that ripped from his half-solidified mouth wasn''t so much a <em>roar</em> as a whimper. He staggered side to side, dropping his weapons and his hands wing at his chest and face.


    Rosalie and Delta, like the predators they were, surged forward, sensing weakness.


    Zoey started to pull together her own spells to help finish the thing off, but it wasn''t necessary. Rosalie, Delta, and Maddy had already been fighting this thing at full tilt since Zoey''s encounter against Ignis and ze had begun; they''d whittled it down in that time. The massive heat implosion issued by Zoey''s potions had put it on itsst leg.


    Not more than a minuteter, the boss copsed to its knees under theirbined assault, providing even easier ess for Rosalie to execute it with a spear through the face, the de sneaking between chunks of frozen obsidian to m deep.


    And so, the third-shard boss was defeated.


    Approaching its corpse, Zoey hoped to see the two bustyva elementals reemerge, but no such thing happened. Despite that she should have expected it, her heart twinged. She''d have liked to give them a proper goodbye. Even if all they''d done was try to fuck each other senseless. In a possibly life-or-death situation.


    As a squad of four, they gathered around and looked down at the copsed beast, now a lumpy collection ofva, rock, and obsidian.


    "How''d that happen?" Delta asked, ncing at Zoey with a curious look.


    "Had them drag the extinguishing potions inside," Zoey said. "They became my allies when I won, I guess."


    "Huh," Delta said. After a moment of digesting that exnation, she followed up: "You have fun, then?"


    Zoey considered the question.


    "Lava girls are something else," she answered sinctly.