The battle field was a choir of grinding metal.
Rook and Dante were locked in a clinch, their foreheads pressed together, teeth bared.
As Rook's metal gauntlet connected with Dante's chest, the black hammer——responded it was a Symbiote which merged with dante.
It didn't just parry; it unraveled. Black, oily tendrils lashed out from the weapon, piercing Rook's metal armor and sinking into his skin.
Rook's vision blurred, but he didn't pull away. He went for the throat. He drove a short-arm elbow into Dante's temple, the metal reinforcement on his sleeve shattering the skin. Dante didn't flinch; he countered with a gut-wrenching knee to Rook's midsection, then a vicious headbutt to Rook's head.
"I... am... the foundation!" Rook roared.
He grabbed Dante's wrists, his fingers turning into liquid steel that fused to Dante's skin. He pivoted his hips and performed a violent hip-throw, slamming the giant into the concrete ground. As Dante hit the ground, the Symbiote hammer flew loose. Rook didn't give him a second. He dropped into a full-mount, his fists encasing themselves in jagged, three-inch steel spikes.
Punch. Crack. Punch. Rip.
Dante tried to buck him off, but Rook used Metal Manipulation to pull the rebar from the floor, pinning Dante's ankles. Rook rained down a ten-strike blitz: left hook to the jaw, right cross to the eye, a double-hammer-fist to the throat. Dante's face was a mask of purple ichor and red blood. In a final act of desperation, the Symbiote lunged for Rook's face, but Rook caught the black mass and crushed it with a Thermal Fuse, turning his hand into a furnace until the alien mass shriveled into ash. He delivered one final, overhead piston-punch that drove Dante's head three inches into the concrete. Dante went limp. And took was victorious, but injured.
THE SURFACE
On the surface, the air didn't just hum; it screamed.
Valkhyre was a streak of obsidian light. He appeared in Drayke's blind spot. Reid snapped his fingers—"Vector Shift: Lateral!"—flipping Valkhyre's momentum. Valkhyre used the shift to spin, his heel aimed at Reid's neck. Liora moved in, her eyes dilated to the size of a cat's. She caught the kick with her forearm, the bone cracking but regenerating.
As they traded light-speed blows, the Second Division Top 10 stood a hundred meters back, their eyes straining to follow the flashes of impact.
Cyro (Vice-Captain) narrowed his eyes, his shadow-tendrils twitching. "So... this is the strength of the Captains," he whispered, his voice thick with awe.
"If we had joined that," Nyra added, her hands trembling as she held her sound-dampening gear, "we would be long dead. That alien... he's moving at a frequency I can't even harmonize with."
"Stay focused," Vex cautioned, his hand on his stopwatch. "Liora told us to stay back for a reason. One stray shockwave from Reid's vector shifts would shred us."
The Trinity moved like a single mind—Drayke providing the arena with vacuum walls, Reid providing the control of fight, and Liora providing the savage physical teeth. But Valkhyre was laughing, parrying Reid's vector-changes with raw, light-speed twitch fibers.
In the hideout, Cyrus's four mechanical arms were a blur of spinning saws. Mikasa didn't just dodge; she flowed.
She summoned a Nodachi and met Cyrus's first two arms in a high-speed clash. Clang-Clang-Clang. She dropped the blade and performed a back-handspring, summoning two Hand-Axes mid-air and burying them in Cyrus's shoulder joints as she flew over him.
Cyrus whirled, his chest-cannon charging. Mikasa landed, summoned a War-Hammer, and slammed it into the floor. The shockwave knocked Cyrus off-balance, causing his blast to miss. She moved in for the finish, hand-to-hand. She summoned Spiked Cestus onto her fists, ducking a mechanical claw to land a liver-shot that pierced Cyrus's outer casing. She followed with a lead-hook and a spinning back-kick.
"Too late," Mikasa whispered.
She summoned a Chain-Sickle, wrapped it around Cyrus's neck, and pulled him toward her. As he flew forward, she summoned her Final Armament: a Twelve-Foot Lance of Light. She drove the lance through Cyrus's central processor, pinning him to the back wall.
The lance pulsed once, twice, and then Cyrus's red eyes flickered and died for good. Mikasa stood back, her hands empty, her chest heaving as the weapons vanished into mist. She leaned against the wall, sliding down to the floor,
She had won.