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Thousand Blooms — My Beloved Name.
For context: this was Shuten-dōji's third Noble Phantasm, and like Nero's Laus Saint Claudius, it wasn't a beam or a blast or a classical projectile weapon. It was a technique. An innate ability so refined and so deeply hers that the Throne of Heroes had categorized it as a Noble Phantasm by necessity, because there was no other container large enough to hold it.
What it did, in plain terms, was extract bones.
Not metaphorically. Not as a debuff. Literally — reaching into an opponent's body and drawing the skeleton out, leaving the rest to manage on its own.
Whether the ability had come from her father, Yamata no Orochi, a ferocious god of catastrophe, or from her mother, a man-eater, or had simply emerged from Shuten-dōji herself as a natural expression of what she was — no one knew. What was known was that when she used it with killing intent, it functioned as a high-probability instant-death Noble Phantasm. And "high probability" in Shuten-dōji's stat range meant something very close to "certainty."
The setup had been clean. The execution had been clean.
She'd used the first Noble Phantasm to hold Medea's attention, then moved through the poisoned fog to circle behind her, then reached out a hand toward Medea's back and activated—
Max had shoved Medea out of the way.
Which meant his right hand was exactly where Medea's heart had been.
[TimeFreezing]: WHAT.
[NooooOOOO]: MAX NO—
[Processing]: She grabbed his hand. She grabbed his hand and activated the bone extraction Noble Phantasm on MAX—
The smile that crossed Shuten-dōji's face in that moment was the small, pleased, genuine kind. Not the theatrical warmth she deployed for audiences. The real thing.
Then the explosion hit.
Medea's reactive defensive burst — triggered the instant she registered what was happening — detonated between them with enough force to hurl Shuten-dōji backward across the ruins, landing her on the remains of a multi-story building with practiced ease. In her hand, white and stark against her fingers, was a bone.
Max's right arm ended at the elbow.
[Screaming]: HIS ARM. HIS ARM IS GONE.
[Hyperventilating]: She extracted his ARM BONE—
[InstantDeath]: Wait. Wait wait wait. The instant-death effect. That should have— he should be—
[Confused]: Why is he still standing??
Shuten-dōji looked at Max from across the ruins with an expression of genuine puzzlement. She tilted her head. She tapped one finger against her lips.
"That's strange~" The tone was light, almost conversational. "Master, I clearly activated that with killing intent. The instant-death effect should have triggered. Why aren't you dead?"
Max reached into his jacket with his remaining hand and produced Medea's Lucky Charm.
It caught the light — small, carefully crafted, the product of A-rank Item Construction and whatever Medea had been thinking about while she made it.
He looked at it for a moment.
Then he kissed it.
The chat lost its mind. Medea, who had been in the middle of launching a pursuit barrage, froze completely. The magic circles behind her kept firing on autopilot while she stood very still and experienced something she would later describe as a thermal event originating from the top of her head.
[HeartExplosion]: HE KISSED THE CHARM MEDEA MADE—
[MedKitSidelined]: Medea is no longer thinking about healing. Medea has left the building.
[Coach]: I too would like to learn this particular skill.
[HonestPoll]: Okay actual question: is he going to win this fight?
[Realist]: He's losing.
[Majority]: Definitely losing.
[AlsoRealist]: Yeah he's cooked honestly.
[MaxHimself]: HEY. I can still hear you. I can still win. It's just a little difficult right now.
[SurprisedByThat]: Did the developer just respond to his own chat while missing an arm??
Max, to his credit, had not sat down to have feelings about the arm situation. Medea's healing magic was already running — she'd snapped back to functional the moment he'd said her name — and the regeneration process was underway, circuits knitting bone back together with the focused urgency of someone who had decided this was absolutely not how today was ending.
He took stock while the healing worked.
The pattern was clear now. Shuten-dōji had three tools: the sword Noble Phantasm, the poisoned sake gourd, and the bone-extraction technique. All three were powerful. None of them were unlimited. The gourd required her to stay relatively stationary when she committed to it fully. The sword Noble Phantasm was devastating but telegraphed. And the bone extraction required physical contact — which meant closing distance — which meant passing through Medea's firing lanes.
The coordination between him and Medea was the counter. He drew her into close range; Medea punished her for committing. She went for Medea; he covered. Neither of them alone could handle her. Together, the math worked.
Probably.
He was still thinking through the third engagement when Zhang Dahai's voice cut across the entire battlefield.
"MOTHERF—YOU STAND THERE! STAND THERE RIGHT NOW! I SWEAR TO GOD I'M GOING TO—COME BACK HERE YOU—"
Every head turned.
The scene currently unfolding in the adjacent block was difficult to categorize.
Maverick — composed, professional Maverick, who had spent the entire encounter executing clean tactical plays — was running. Not strategically repositioning. Running. Full sprint, arms pumping, looking back over his shoulder with an expression that Max had never seen on him before and hoped to never see on anyone again.
Behind him, gaining ground at a rate that suggested the presence of some kind of supernatural anger multiplier, was Derek.
Derek, who was covered in something yellow.
Derek, who was wielding a mop.
Derek, who had the thousand-yard stare of a man for whom social contracts had ceased to apply.
The grenades, it emerged, had found the sewage line.
Shuten-dōji, midway through dodging an Arcane Missile, glanced at her Master.
The missile grazed her arm.
She didn't notice.
Her expression — previously controlled, precisely calibrated, the mask of someone who found everything mildly amusing — had developed a crack. Specifically the crack of someone who was experiencing secondhand humiliation on a level they hadn't budgeted for.
Her beautiful eyes communicated, clearly and without ambiguity, I did not sign up for this.
[ArtOfWar]: Maverick has invented a new combat technique: grenading the sewage pipe.
[Genuinely_Crying]: I cannot breathe. I physically cannot breathe right now.
[ShutenvFan]: My wife just got hit by a missile because she was too busy being disgusted by her Master. I don't know how to feel.
[Summary]: So to recap: Max is missing an arm, Medea is having a moment, Shuten is disgusted, Maverick is running from a man with a mop, and Derek smells terrible. Perfectly normal ranked match.
[ChaoticUpdate]: ALSO SOMETHING JUST FELL FROM THE SKY—
It arrived without warning.
Something large — very large — impacted the center of the street with a force that sent shockwaves through the remaining rubble in all directions. A nearby streetlamp snapped and toppled. Dust and debris billowed outward in a clean ring.
When the wave cleared, a man was standing beside the fallen lamp post.
Blond. Expressionless. The particular stillness of someone who had decided that dramatic entrances were beneath him and had arrived dramatically anyway.
He surveyed the scene — the craters, the ruins, the pink haze, Maverick running from a mop, Max's recently reattached arm, Shuten-dōji's expression of aristocratic disgust — with the unhurried patience of a man reading a situation he found moderately beneath his standards.
"I had no intention of joining this engagement so early," he said, to no one in particular and everyone present. His voice carried without effort. "But since you seem so determined to accelerate your own deaths—" a slight pause, "—I'll oblige."
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