Four Months Later
The night air buzzed with tension.
Takao stood alone in the clearing behind his house.Scorch marks scarred the grass. Trees near the perimeter leaned away, their bark cracked and branches singed from months of concentrated discharge.
He rolled his shoulders, stretched his arms, and closed his eyes.
Tonight's the night.
He had mastered Lightning to the point of fluency. At 70% output, he could shape it into arcs, spears, coils, and lashes. He could smite it down from the air, or build it up for explosive burst attacks.
Thunder was no longer just a foundation, it was a pulse, a beat beneath his control. It gave his movements force, gave his strikes shockwaves. It allowed him to crack sound barriers with his limbs alone all though this stil took alot out of him.
Separately, they were formidable.
Together?
He had no idea.
'I've spent months breaking myself down to reach this point, no more holding back, it's time to test myself.' He thought.
He stood in the center of the field, breathing deep and calm. The stars blinked above him. Takao clenched his fists and spoke softly, deliberately:
"Aspect of Zeus: Thunder."
"Aspect of Zues: lightning."
Two forces awoke.
Thunder surged into his limbs a deep, resonant vibration that filled his body with a trembling hum. It crackled through his muscles, empowering him.
Then came the Lightning, a sharp, biting flood of energy that danced along his nerves like hot lava. It wrapped around his arms in spirals, flickering at his fingertips.
His heart rate spiked. His vision blurred slightly.
But he held on.
And then… he moved.
His first step was like a cannon bolt.
BOOM!
Thunder launched him forward, air cracking around his body. He skidded across the field with impossible speed, turning mid-motion, eyes glowing electric blue.
With a flick of his hand, a bolt of lightning tore through a steel target twenty meters away, imploding it from the inside.
He spun, and raised both palms "Storm fang."
He slammed his fists together overhead.
Lightning exploded outward in a forked arc, just as Thunder rippled beneath it, launching the bolts at sonic velocity.
The blast struck three trees simultaneously, cleaving them in half before they even had time to fall.
Takao dropped to one knee, panting. Blood trickled from his nose. And His head pounded.
Five minutes, that's my limit. But he wasn't done.This was just the opening act.
He stood again, teeth clenched, sweat rolling down his temple.
Now comes the hard part.
"Aspect Combination," he whispered.
"Thunder and Lightning." He raised both arms, and then he brought them together.
The field erupted in a dome of white-blue light.
A sphere of compressed power spun out from Takao's body, a perfect fusion of thunder and lightning, as the thunder amplified the speed and size of the lightning, while Lightning sharpened the force of the thunder into concentrated, radiating pulses. The result?
A shockwave of power that cracked the ground in a twenty-meter radius and lit the sky like artificial daylight.
Takao floated at the center, suspended by the blast itself, a silhouette of black and white crackling with raw divine energy.
He shouted words not heard, but felt.
Aspect of Zeus: STORMBREAKER!"
The blast fired.
It was beautiful. And terrifying. And then it ended. Like a god snapping his fingers, the field fell still.The air sizzled. Smoke rose from the earth. And Takao fell.
He landed with a heavy thud, body limp, arms spread wide in the dirt. His chest rose and fell slow but steady. His mind flickered in and out like faulty circuits.
'Can't move…' he thought to himself His body wasn't broken.
But his mind had shut down to recover.
Thirty minutes passed in silence, save for the distant crackle of a smoldering tree and the soft hum of residual energy dissipating into the night.
Then…
Takao's fingers twitched.
His eyes opened, sluggish and glassy, but focused. "…It worked," he rasped, voice hoarse.
The combination of thunder and lightning hadn't destroyed him.
But it had nearly wiped him clean, still he was awake. Breathing.
'Next time, I'll last longer, next time I'll do it better, be better.' He thought to him self as he laid there for another few minutes, staring up at the stars that now seemed just a bit closer.