The speed of the fight to external observers not familiar with how the power worked might have thought we were going all out trying to land a strike on Sweet-Face.

Not only were we chasing after him with superhuman bounds, but between Clang and me our attacks were constant.

Clang threw an endless barrage of punches and kicks, and at times even tried to slam his entire body golden-armour-first into Sweet-Face.

Each time Sweet-Face would dodge the attack, block with his regenerated candy-canes, or would find a stupefying means to slink out of harm's way.

I was wary of using the power to slow down my perception of time, and did so only enough to keep up with the furious pace of the fighting.

I remembered back to my sparring session with Snap, and how quickly I had completely drained my willpower because of the extent I had used my Intuition ability to predict what her next moves would be.

With Sweet-Face I couldn't take that risk, nor did I have several day's worth of memories for the power to analyse the way it had with Snap.

It had been several minutes since the start of the fight and neither Clang nor I had landed a single blow dealing any meaningful damage to Sweet-Face.

Clang was cut and bleeding from the several counter-blows delivered to his face and arms.

The wounds weren't deep, and the blood loss was quickly stopped because Clang used his power to clot the wounds into silver-scabs.

It was impossible to shake the feeling that Sweet-Face was toying with us, and was merely going through the motions of steadily whittling Clang down.

Sweet-Face hadn't landed a blow on me yet, but that was more because Clang hardly left an opening for me to join the fight. Even after the bone-racking counter-blows from Sweet-Face's candy-canes, Clang kept on the attack as if he could only move into the fight and not away from it.

Clang rocketed up from the ground using a powerful gush of steam to add to his superhuman leap.

Sweet-Face's marshmallow-covered body wriggled and writhed as he dove out of the way with inhuman precision. His right arm, which was holding one of the candy-canes, extended by a quarter of its normal length.

CRACK!

I swung the resin-sword and blocked the attack from striking Clang's head just in time.

TAT! TAT! FLUMP!

Sweet-Face bounded acrobatically into the air, summersaulted backwards, and landed with a soft thud several meters away.

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For the first time in the fight Clang stopped attacking and instead stayed where he was.

Despite all of the exertions he and I had just done, neither of us were breathing heavily.

Heat radiated from Clang like an oven, and the steam rose away from him like an aura.

"He's a better fighter," Clang's voice rang.

"He's using the outer layer of marshmallow to help move himself out of the way of our attacks," I resonated.

Clang nodded. And then he grinned and looked at me.

He didn't have to say anything for me to know he was having the time of his life.

His eyes moved to the resin-sword.

"That's too slow," Clang's voice rang.

"Yeah," I resonated, "Thought it was worth a try."

I willed for the resin-sword to lose its shape. It rapidly returned from a solid into liquid-resin and reabsorbed into my body - first through the resin-suit, and then into my skin.

"I'll have to go into the next state to overpower him," Clang's voice rang.

Sweet-Face clacked his candy-canes together as if to beckon for the two of us to continue the fight.

"Two versus one gives us the advantage," I resonated, "We'll lose that if you burn yourself out."

"Holding back's not how I do things," Clang's voice rang.

He crouched lower, and extended one arm in front, and one arm back, and then his whole bulked and shiny body began to tense. Knowing what was about to follow, I took several steps back.

"TENSION!" Clang's voice rang, "TIMES TWO!"

A much greater rush of steam escaped Clang from all over his body as if a pressure valve had been released and the true force of the steam was being unleashed.

Specks of gold and silver rose away like embers from Clang's body, and then all at once he burst into motion and rocketed towards Sweet-Face.

I watched on, knowing I wouldn't be able to keep up with Clang's speed in his second-tension state as I currently was.

I had anticipated Sweet-Face to look unnerved or surprised by the sudden display of speed and power from Clang, but instead the marshmallow-man remained poised.

With his fist raised and ready to strike, Clang let out a metallic cry as he soared directly at Sweet-Face, who showed no sign of attempting to dodge the incoming golden missile that was Clang.

Clang reached Sweet-Face, and all at once not just Clang's punch, but the brunt of his golden pseudo-metallic body slammed hard into the marshmallow-man.

The impact was clean and powerful enough that I was sure if I had been on the receiving end of it I would be little more than broken pseudo-resin pieces shattered across the playground.

But something was wrong.

Sweet-Face's marshmallow-self had lost all of its human shape and instead had become one great melted mass, all of which covered nearly every inch of Clang.

Clang had been like a charging bull diving head-first into where Sweet-Face had been a moment before. And Sweet-Face, like a bullfighting matador, had side-stepped out of the marshmallow-suit and out of harm's way.

The brilliant thinking behind this move from Sweet-Face proved itself not just in how cleanly he had avoided being crushed by Clang's immense power and metallic weight, but also because the marshmallow-mass was being rapidly cooked by Clang's body heat and great rushing steam.

The marshmallow-suit-mass lost all of its plump whiteness and instead became hard crusted and black, thereby adhering to every inch of Clang.

Clang flailed under the blackened-and-burnt marshmallow-mass, but his attempts to tear it off were proving futile, and his face was suffocating from the burnt-mask covering it.

"Clang!" I resonated.

I bounded forwards, feeling slow despite the speed and power of my body hurtling forwards.

Before I could help Clang, Sweet-Face, with his raised amber-hued candy-canes and fully-sugar-encrusted body, blocked my way.

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