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~~((Thanksgiving Special - page 14 of 30))~~
Wind might be the trick, Hector thought. If a solid object couldn't stop the smoke, then maybe a tornado would. He'd recently gotten a crash course in tornadoes, after all.

But could he actually generate one with just his iron? In his battle with that tornado back at the airport, he'd been trying to smother and calm it, and this was basically the exact opposite.

He had an inkling of how he might attempt it, but not having pulled this off before, he couldn't help feeling enormously anxious in a background thought process.

He needed to create a whirlwind with orbiting iron cubes. The problem, though, was that the point of origin for the orbiting was not himself. It needed to be Bloodeye. Who was still moving.

If he'd had more time to think the problem through, Hector probably would have just been even more hesitant. Creating orbiting cubes around an enemy--much less ones that were moving fast enough to stir up a violent wind--that was a shaky idea, at best.

But he went for it.

His spatial awareness was key. Without a good sense for Bloodeye's exact location within Hector's own sphere of influence, this technique would be horrifically imprecise. Concentration, experience, and the Scarf of Amordiin were the deciding factors.

The literally fuming Bloodeye made for a terrible target. His amorphous body seemed like it was going everywhere at once--but of course, it wasn't. Bloodeye's aim was clear, at least. Hector used that to his advantage.

The cubes materialized around the red smoke, moving with it as they spun up, accelerating. The disturbance of the wind was made more visible by the distortions it created in Bloodeye's form. Perhaps that was hesitation on display as well, mixed with confusion.

But no. Fuck. It wasn't working. It was barely slowing Bloodeye down, if at all, even as Hector kept trying to ramp up the speed.