"I-I don't think I do... I feel... different now... but... I'm not sure what to do with it.", Caliphandra stated.
"I understand. I was much the same when I started out. I didn't know what I was or what I could really do. It was a demon who taught me, well... a fictional one. It is... a bit jarring. We are not our bodies. Our bodies are tools, weapons, whatever we need, but they are not us. Even if our bodies are destroyed entirely... we do not ever die and we reamalgamate over time. We endure in spite of endlessness. Any form of hell you can think of... we can survive it and we can use the pain as a weapon!"
"The pain?"
"That's right, even your emotions. You can make those into weapons!"
"Woah... h-how?"
"Let's try a little test! I'm gonna turn into a bit of an animal and I'm going to attack you! For real! Remember... you're immortal... so I don't need to hold back... your only impedance is pain... no matter how much I rip you to shreds... you will not ever die... you will stop me... or the pain will not stop. Do you understand?"
Krysti had a peculiar way of pace-talking, like she was really trying hard to translate in a way that made coherent sense, but Caliphandra was still at a loss.
"I-but, what..."
Krysti could sense her confusion and went on, "STOP! Stop thinking! You are going to be attacked. It will cause pain. All you need to do is think about wanting that pain to stop, your body will react autonomically to attack. You only need to think about stopping the pain, nothing else. Do you understand?"
Caliphandra nodded sheepishly, sensing that Krysti was getting flustered.
"Mind over matter, emotion over matter, yeah, yeah... I'm ready.", she thought to herself, trying to psyche herself up to the task at hand.
"I'm ready!", she exclaimed aloud, giving Krysti a definitive nod.
Krysti gave her a slow nod in return, not quite as convinced as Caliphandra was convincing herself.
"Stay here, don't move, unless it's to stop pain!", Krysti commanded as she started walking off in the opposite direction.
The planet was otherworldly. This one had violet grass that seemed to glow under the light green sky. The bluish grey clouds in the distance were suddenly on fire.
"Wait, wha-"
She wasn't ready.
Krysti powered up without using her sword as a temporal regulator, in turn her DNA became increasingly destabilized until she resembled something that looked like a Greek sphinx with a Cheshire face.
It took all of no seconds for Krysti to start slashing at Caliphandra, causing her to fall screaming in agony as she tried to huddle away from the attack.
Still reacting out of human instincts, but she quickly corrected, remembering what was worse than pain... endless pain. The attack wouldn't stop. Krysti wasn't kidding, this wasn't some comic book, she wasn't some breakable little super hero, she was a living God, her ability to physically die had been functionally burned off. Just like before, just like her "initiation". She understood... this didn't end until she learned to fight against infinity itself with the intent to outpace its threshold for suffering.
She felt a violent explosion of anger as another painful set of slashes ripped over her and she suddenly felt herself lunge out in response, her fingers ripping away to reveal yellow liquid crystal claws. Her "blood" as a living God had become living liquid crystal emotion and that was all of "her" that was even "real" in any sense of the word. She was like a living cartoon with unlimited real world super powers. The sheer ridiculousness of her power potential was only effectively muted by her own ignorance of how to use her capabilities. Meaning, even in an unthinking state she was still a literal super weapon.
Krsyti smiled to herself, she could see that the lesson wa- before she could finish the thought Caliphandra suddenly warped the space beneath her feet.
Krysti could feel the temporal collision coming and attempted to correct to avoid a direct impact.
Caliphandra flash boiled the hyperfluid beneath her feet, that thing you call "space". The resulting nuclear kinetic shockwave gave her a hypersonic burst of speed as she cannoned straight at Krysti, her clawed hands outstretched for attack.
But Krysti could feel it. The incoming attack. The intent to kill. As clear as a memory in her mind of something yet to happen, she KNEW it would and instantly corrected mid-flight... but, wait...
Caliphandra suddenly shifted the momentum of her gravity. She was in a gravity slide! All momentum in her body was now in an exponential free fall, meaning, the more she moved... the faster she got! Like The Juggernaut with the ability to fly, she wasn't reacting with rational context.
Krysti was actually in trouble now and she knew it. She instantly reversed approach, snagged her sword off the ground and then immediately hyper-burst into Caliphandra's oncoming attack! The longer she waited the more power she would need to counter with. She could feel the energy explode into the sword like a burst of pain ripping through her soul.
Krysti was flying straight into unrestrained emotional reaction with the power of a living God backing it. If she screwed up, well, there are things far worse than any silly notion of death you might have. She watched ahead of herself with intense focus, she could effectively "see ahead" of herself by several seconds if she put a lot of effort into it. Think of it like having time traveling eyeballs, but they can only see into the future by a few seconds.
"More than enough of an advantage to calculate counter reactions accordingly.", she thought to herself.
But Caliphandra was not backing down and responding exactly as instructed... to "stop" the attack.
"Wait, did I remember that wrong?", Krysti wondered.
She realized almost immediately that she may have made a mistake and that the situation was actually far more serious than she first thought. She hadn't told her to "stop the attack", she told her to "stop the pain". Which, given her emotional sense of presently not aware, well obviously Krysti was registered as "pain" and it was operating accordingly. To stop Krysti, not the attack.
Krysti dimensionally shifted a split second before impact with her claws and instantly appeared over her, slamming her straight into the rocky planet with the force of a large scale nuclear explosion.
"STOP?! STOP THE PAIN?!", Krysti screamed at herself.
"WHAT WAS I THINKING?!"
Krysti was now largely in humanoid form and had Caliphandra all but pinned into a crater. Whose entire being was now shrouded over like diamond splintered armor. She resembled a living shadow made of broken, gold gleaming glass shards thrashing about, popping and cracking as they continuously shattered and reformed. This was her pain. The physical manifestation of it made her shatter herself apart into trillions of razor thin shards. (note: have a bad guy call her a glass cactus at some point)
Caliphandra was reacting like uncontrollable emotion incarnate when an unexpected "third arm" violently ripped itself out from her side and took a swipe at Krysti who couldn't maneuver away in time. She felt the yellow crystalline claws slash straight through her wing right before ripping it clean off with a side swipe that sent her careening into the ground at hypersonic speed along with a giant gash on her back.
She only lost balance for a second as she righted herself mid-slide, back into a standing position. She began dusting herself off while continuing to slide backwards. This time she paused for a moment, letting her skin heal and her wing regrow itself. She rotated her shoulder a bit, loosened up her arm. She felt okay. Or at least she didn't feel any differently.
"Okay sweetie, so your claws aren't poisonous... that makes this a lot easier."
Caliphandra no longer looked like Caliphandra... more like a stick figure made entirely of fluidic crystalized emotion that continued to grow larger and larger.
With claws!
Krysti repositioned the sword in her hand. The blade dimensionally folded. Krysti could feel the power of infinity itself well up within her. The blade's third dimension imploded into a second temporal dimension, creating time within time and giving Krysti a way to balance more power in the present than she normally could. Krysti's next attack was largely without physical description, but it looked something like giant sky lasers blasting into Caliphandra from every direction all at once. The creature Caliphandra had inadvertently transformed herself into tried to struggle and fight against the attack, but this was no ordinary attack.
The intent wasn't to kill, just to hold. Krysti was shunting enough raw power into her being to hammer into Caliphandra at the speed of light from every point in space at once. The ensuing shock hold blew the entire training planet apart like a dust mote in the wind. The hyper-dimensional light-speed attack effectively trapped her within herself at which point physical attack became moot. The forced lull caused her emotions's resolve to crack and in turn her monster body began breaking back into itself and her original state.
Krysti flew towards her and caught her falling through the loose shards.
"Wh-where...", Caliphandra asked, slowly regaining consciousness.
"Shhh, it's good! You did REALLY great!"
Krysti folded space once again and the two were once again back in the living room where they started the day.
"WHAT DID YOU DO THE TRAINING PLANET!", screamed Mimkrys, pointing out the window of the house as they could see random comet fragments careening across the horizon in the distance.
"Myeh... the planet took offense to the seriousness of our training intent! Or I sneezed..."
Caliphandra giggled and nodded in collapse, completely worn out.
"Oh, honey, are you alright?!", Winderleigh asked, rushing towards her.
Krysti leaned towards Mimkrys and critiquely whispered, "We may have created beyond ourselves... let's hope we don't raise any loose regrets. Might want to be more... forthcoming, with your shy truth."
Caliphandra was nearly nodding off now as Winderleigh helped steady her off to bed.
Krysti headed towards her own room as Mimkrys called out after her, "Hey. Did you ask me because you wanted to be the one to tell her?"
Krysti could feel a twinge of pain stab through her emotions as her hair briefly burned bright white.