Ash held all four fields he had out.

The alley floor beneath the extrusions began to crack, the localized gravity dragging the Chimera’s right side down. The beast shrieked, that high-calcium rasp, forcing raw new bone through its shoulder joints to fight the crushing weight. Ash’s vision swam at the edges. The air around the extrusions warped like heat haze, the invisible pressure locking the bone limbs in a juddering, slow-motion struggle against their own mass.

Vivian drove for the rough patch.

She went in at the steep angle again, the seam below the loosened triangle, and the blade seated, and she put both hands behind it, and she drove. The Chimera’s left side tried to rotate toward her. The gravity field on the triangle slowed the realignment by half a second. She had the half-second.

The bone chipped again. Deeper this time. A longer crack, running three inches from the first fracture point, the ivory plating splitting along a fault line the first chip had opened.

A new, violent tension locked into Vivian’s shoulders.

She reached back with her free hand and pulled the tie from her hair in one swift motion. The ponytail came loose, and her hair fell around her shoulders. She drove the katana deeper into the seam. The Chimera released a shrieking, metallic rasp, the sound of a dozen skull plates vibrating in pure mechanical agony.

She pulled the blade free and drove it in again two inches to the right of the first crack.

The Chimera swung its left limb cluster in a devastating horizontal arc. Instead of dodging, Vivian stepped directly inside the guard. She took the vertebral club flush across her left shoulder. The impact cracked the concrete beneath her heels, sending a shockwave of dust rippling outward. She didn’t yield an inch.

"Stand out of my way!" she yelled through the dust.

Vivian stepped inside the Chimera’s guard and abandoned defense entirely.

The katana became a jagged blur of silver and sparks. She hammered the blade into the fault line with the rhythmic, terrifying speed of a pneumatic drill. Friction superheated the steel. Ivory shrapnel exploded outward with every strike, lacerating her cheeks and arms, but she ignored the blood. It wasn’t surgical anymore; it was pure demolition, her blade tearing the crack open centimeter by agonizing centimeter as the air around the seam began to warp from the heat.

It was working. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

The ivory plating at the collarbone region had fractured across a six-inch span. Fresh calcium pushed up from below but couldn’t keep pace with the speed she was moving at. The triangle arrangement had nearly collapsed. Another three good strikes and the seam would be fully open.

The yellow gas came all at once.

The collarbone plating didn’t just seep; with a sickening crunch, the entire ivory structure shattered.

The rupture detonated. A pressurized shockwave of necrotic sulfur-yellow gas violently expelled from the hollow cavity. The blast was so dense it instantly blistered the paint off the alley dumpsters, expanding fast enough to swallow Vivian mid-swing.

Ash overclocked his cognitive senses. The world snapped into suspended animation. The explosion of yellow gas hung in the air like a solid, creeping wall, centimeters from Vivian’s unblinking eyes.

He overclocked his physical abilities immediately. His shoes tore the concrete as he launched himself forward, grabbed her wrist, and ripped her backward out of the cloud’s radius just as the world snapped back to real-time speed.

The Chimera stood behind them in the yellow cloud with its bone arsenal partially extruded and every compound eye in its skull plates burning with the gas. It stood in the cloud and didn’t pursue any further.

Three blocks away, Ash finally realized he was still holding onto Vivian’s wrist and let go of it, only to drop both hands down on his knees and try to breath.

The breath he pulled in didn’t come clean. The necrotic sulfur had found the phantom scars in his lower lobes, dragging across the tissue like wet sandpaper on every inhale. He took three more breaths, and none of them came fully clear.

Vivian stood beside him with her hair loose and her katana at her side. Her black sleeveless top was cut, making it look like a crop top more than anything. Her once glossy thigh highs now shredded, looking dull and blunt from the blood seeping into them. She was breathing hard. The arm she had grabbed hung at an angle that protected the shoulder. She was looking back toward the alley.

"What happened back there?" she demanded.

Ash finally caught his breath.

"The gas was about to detonate onto you," he said.

She looked down at herself, then at Ash, who wasn’t in any better condition.

"Oh. Thank you then." She took a long, deep breath. "I know a diner to crash out at; follow me."

The diner was three blocks north of the industrial district. Despite the hour, they were still open, neon lights buzzing overhead as they entered through the door.

"Sit where you like; I’ll be with you in a sec," a voice called out from behind the counter.

They took the nearest booth and waited for the server to come. She looked to be in her fifties. She took one glance at Vivian and had a smile on her face.

"The usual?" she asked Vivian.

"Add a burger for him," Vivian said. "Along with everything else."

Twenty minutes later their table was full of food. Plates of high-stacked pancakes, sides of fruits, and bowls that looked like stew came out at first.

Vivian ate furiously, saying nothing; the only sounds from her side of the booth were the clink of silverware and the steady rhythm of chewing. Every time she cleared a plate, another slid into its place.

Eventually the burger she had ordered for Ash came. He took a small bite of it and set it back down.

"So," Vivian said, picking up that burger, "you ready for round two?" she said through a mouthful of food.

Ash looked at the table, not responding to the question or to her eating the burger.

"Yeah," she said after a minute. She flagged the server for more orange juice. "Me neither. Not yet at least."

They stayed until Vivian had cleared the table down to the condiment bottles. Ash drank a coffee the server had brought and watched the street outside.

The walk back to the academy was mostly quiet. Vivian had her heels off, carrying them in one hand and a takeaway bag in the other.

They passed back through the same south checkpoint.

"Andy, the usual for you," she said, throwing the bag into the monitoring station.

Andy peered into the bag and nodded. "Thanks. Same time tomorrow?"

Vivian poked her eardrum with a finger and cleared it of any wax. "I’ll probably stay in for the next few nights. Anyways, this is Ash. You’ll be seeing him around."

Andy glanced out from his station and saw the similarly looking bloodied student.

"Nice meeting you," he said.

"Likewise," Ash responded.

They were in the academy’s main corridor, the one that ran between the residential blocks and the faculty wing, when she stopped walking.

"I’ve fought Evelyn," she began. "I’ve fought Lucia. I’ve fought Azure." She tested her grip on the katana hilt, the fingers opening and closing once to check the shoulder’s range. The lag was still there. "None of them held my attention the way you do."

Ash looked at her.

"You’re the one I want to fight the most," she said. "When you’re ready, that is."

She looked at him for a moment, then turned to jog towards the women’s residential block.

"I’ll be waiting at the restorative facility entrance," she said over her shoulder. "Don’t take too long."

---

Phoebe hummed on her bed, kicking her legs back and forth as she read from a textbook. She had an oversized academy shirt on over her leggings. Three soft knocks on her door interrupted her.

"Come in," she spoke, just loud enough to be heard on the other end.

Ash opened the door.

Phoebe looked up from the textbook to Ash standing in her doorway, covered in blood and bone shards still inside of him. His breathing was now steady, but it sounded wet at the top of each inhale.

"I have an applied theory test tomorrow," he said. "Or rather, I guess it’s today. Can you help me study?"

Phoebe looked at him for two full seconds. Then she sat up, moved the textbook to her desk, and pulled her notes from the shelf.

"Sit down," she said. "I’ll find the section."

"Actually..." Ash trailed off. "Vivian is expecting me at the restorative facility in a bit. I’m sorry for coming."

Phoebe sighed, took off her reading glasses, and placed them onto her desk. "Alright, we can study in there then."

"We?"

"Yes, we are," she said. She was already closing her books and turning off the lights. "And I’m coming with you. Don’t argue."