"TENSION!" Clang's voice rang out across the playground, "TIMES THREE!"

A great rush of steam erupted all around him again, with such speed and ferocity that his hair rippled like a black flame. His ability to use this level of Tension had clearly improved, because there was a noticeable lack of silver and gold specs rising away from him like embers – which had been a major drawback before, since those flecks were his own pseudo-metallic body rising away. There was enough steam rising from Clang's shining skin and armour, like a signal fire, I was sure it could be seen from quite some distance.

"Now, Slip!" Clang's voice rang.

Slip, let's do this, I thought.

And Slip's psyche meshed with my own again.

We found ourselves bounding forward, because hesitation was simply not part of the equation when we worked together.

Sweet-Face had bounded backwards, using the marshmallow at his feet to spring himself away.

He wasn't moving particularly fast, but then again it didn't seem as if he were trying to.

Speed was what we needed to give us the edge.

This was a matter of willing more strength into our muscles, which thanks to the combination of pseudo-metal, rubber, and resin, meant our body was capable of taking on much greater levels of physical stress.

After several bounds powerful enough to leave cracks in the playground concrete, we worked up enough speed to switch to using the soles of our resin-boots to sail frictionlessly onwards.

Sweet-Face soared rapidly nearer, and Clang, though able to move even faster than we currently were in his third-tension-state, was hanging back. He wasn't merely watching what was about to happen between us and Sweet-Face however - Clang had his wrists pressed together, and his fingers open as if he were holding an invisible football. Steam and something else was beginning to build within the gap between his hands.

Flump!

Another one of Sweet-Face's cubes tumbled at high speed through the air.

Our first instinct was that the cube, which had half of its sides blackberry coloured, and the other half raspberry, was being used as some means of attack.

But our high speed pursuit down the decline of the concrete playground was well out of the path of the cube, which landed and began to tumble over itself over and over again.

We made the decision that the cube in and of itself wasn't a threat to us, because as far as we had observed with the power, constant contact from the powered person's body was needed to maintain a modicum of control over the power-made substance.

Which was another way of discerning that the cube wasn't going to sprout legs or teeth and come chasing after us.

The decline of the concrete playground ran out, and was replaced by a stretch of cut field grass.

Sweet-Face kept moving away with springy flumps until, finally, his marshmallow-mass-covered body sprang up and over a very high chainlink fence - beyond which lay a huge astroturf football pitch which belonged to the school.

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Sweet-Face landed with a soft thud a good distance within, and came to a stop with his candy-canes raised and ready to fight.

We were already putting our plan to trap Sweet-Face into motion on our way up to the top of the chainlink fence until, at last, we entered into free-fall on the other side, with our resin-suited back a handwidth away from the chainlink fence.

We threw three resin spears in Sweet-Face's direction which sunk into the ground around him in a loose triangle formation.

Like firecrackers, the sound of many pops! and cracks! filled the astroturf pitch.

And newly-made resin-threads, more than a dozen of them, surrounded Sweet-Face in the blink of an eye.

All three of the resin spears had been connected by a resin-thread each, all of which fed like power cables back to where they were adhered and held by our hands.

Sweet-Face could cut or remove a few of the resin-threads, we thought, but he can't remove over a dozen!

The next step in the trapping plan was for the resin-threads to zip! together, thereby firmly wrapping Sweet-Face so tightly he would have no hope of escaping.

Our signal to the resin-spears to burst simultaneously began the process of causing the threads to zip!

The resin-threads caught Sweet-Face's marshmallow-mass covered body like a web of super-strong razor-wire webbing.

And just like that his arms were pinned back to his body, his legs bound together, with no room whatsoever for him to do anything except remain rigidly still. And it was something we could maintain because we could continually keep the resin-threads strong and tight because more threads were still adhered to us.

We did it, we thought with an excited smile, We trapped him.

It was then a second sun joined the sky. This one brilliant and gleaming, and ringing out with a great battle cry.

Clang, soaring through the air after bounding over the high chainlink fence, was ready to make his attack.

In his palm was a beachball-sized ball of molten silver-and-gold metal, which was bubbling and contained by the great rush of steam erupting out of Clang's red-hot palms.

He cried out the name of the move he was about to carry out.

"LIQUID! METAL! WAVE! HAH!"

He thrust his palms forward, and like a wave the bubbling silver and gold liquid metal ball burst, pushed on by the steam.

It looked like a giant shining sword cutting through the sky.

And it was moving at such speed and power it looked as if it could cut a building in half.

Our perception of time slowed to make sense of what was happening with Sweet-Face.

The great gold-and-silver wave of solidifying metal was moving dramatically closer to Sweet-Face with each micromoment.

The marshmallow-mass covering Sweet-Face exploded from within in all directions.

The resin-threads cut through what remained of the marshmallow to zip with razor-wire sharpness to the figure beneath.

But it was no longer the pseudo-amber-hued-lollipop-encrusted Sweet-Face we had seen before.

Instead it looked as if Sweet-Face's outer layer had become a blackberry-hued gelatine.

This gummy-like gelatine rapidly swelled all over Sweet-Face, giving him the appearance of an eight-foot tall gelatine-baby.

Clang's liquid metal wave cut deep across the gelatine-baby from the left shoulder down to the inner left thigh; thereby slicing clean off a good third of the gelatine-baby in one go.

But our heightened vision could see deeper into the gelatine-baby, and there it was clear none of the actual Sweet-Face was harmed beneath.

What we could see however was that Sweet-Face no longer had any skin.

Instead, floating within the blackberry-hued gelatine-baby were all of Sweet-Face's bones and organs – his heart, lungs, colon, kidneys, as if they were all in the process of being digested by the giant gelatine creature.

Clang's liquid metal wave had cut through our resin-threads, severing our connection to most of them.

We willed the remaining resin-threads to zip! back into our body.

Clang landed beside us, the sandy astroturf sizzling beneath the soles of his feet.

One of his eyes was pinched shut, and he wheezed as if every breath was a great effort. The steam which had erupted from him before with such intense pressure had dwindled to a ghostly aura.

The giant jelly-baby side-stepped away from the huge silver and gold slab of metal stuck into the ground.

"It wasn't enough," we resonated.

"Yeah," Clang's voice rang.

His eye settled on us.

"That sugar-cube he threw," Clang's voice rang with additional gruffness, "It landed on purple."

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