The kitchen of the Prime Minister's estate was no longer a place of sanctuary.
Vela stood in the center of the wreckage, her hair shadowing her face. When she looked up, her eyes were no longer the bright, hungry orbs the 10th Division was used to. They were cold, flat, and dangerous—the eyes of a predator whose kill had been stolen.
"Aren't you a Xenocide?" Bola asked, his voice echoing with a synthetic reverb. "Well, looks like I'm going to use you as a warm-up before I cleanse the rest of your little—"
CRACK.
Bola didn't see the movement. He didn't even register the shift in the air. Vela had bridged the ten-foot gap in a heartbeat. Her fist, small slammed into the bridge of his nose.
The sound was sickening—the unmistakable snap of a reinforced skull shattering. The force of the impact was so concentrated that Bola's eyes were literally jarred from their sockets, dangling for a fraction of a second before the sheer kinetic shock sent his body hurtling through three marble support pillars.
Vela didn't follow up immediately. She stood where
From the pile of pulverized marble, Bola rose. The violet tattoos on his skin flared with a blinding white light. His skull knit back together with the sound of grinding stones, and his eyes surged back into his head, refocusing instantly.
"Hmm. Looks like you are quite strong, little girl," Bola whispered, wiping a smear of blood from his lip. "But You aren't perfect. You are still... human."
Bola moved. He didn't teleport like Nyx; he simply accelerated, his "Perfected" body moving with a fluid, terrifying grace. He lunged with a straight palm strike aimed at Vela's throat.
Vela tilted her head by an inch—no more, no less. The wind from the strike whistled past her ear, but she was already moving inside his guard. She drove a palm into his jaw , followed by a lightning-fast elbow to his ribs.
Bola didn't flinch. He caught her following wrist and twisted, attempting to snap the bone. Vela didn't resist the twist; she used the momentum to flip over his arm, her boot catching him under the chin in a brutal back-flip kick.
Bola's head snapped back, but he grabbed her ankle mid-air. He slammed her into the kitchen island with enough force to crater the granite. Before she could roll away, he rained down a flurry of punches—each one a "Perfect" strike, calculated to hit the most vulnerable points of the human anatomy.
Vela took the hits, her arms crossed in a tight guard.
She was using raw, conditioned durability. Between his third and fourth strike, she saw the opening.
She dropped low, sweeping his leg while simultaneously driving her shoulder into his hip. Bola lost his balance for a millisecond, and that was all she needed. She unleashed a combination : a rapid-fire sequence of liver shots, throat jabs, and a final, devastating headbutt that sent both of them reeling.
Bola snarled, . He caught her with a heavy roundhouse punch to the stomach.
Vela felt the air leave her lungs. She was sent flying backward, her body skipping across the floor like a stone until she smashed into a heavy industrial oven. She slumped to the floor, blood dripping from a gash on her forehead, staining the white tiles.
Bola's halo turned from a jagged crown into a perfect, glowing ring of white fire. His muscles grew leaner, his movements even more precise. His eyes began to smoke with violet embers.
"Why would you turn against your own people?" Vela asked, her voice raspy. She pushed herself up, using the oven handle for leverage. She looked at the destroyed kitchen, then at the empty, vaporized plate on the floor.
"People?" Bola laughed, a sound like glass breaking. "I was a man trapped in a cage of politics and fragile flesh. I didn't turn against them; I rose above them. Why rule a kingdom of ants when you can become a god of perfection? My evolution requires a clean slate. The Xenocides, the Zethrians, the Border... they are all imperfections that must be erased."
His eyes snapped toward her, and two beams of concentrated violet light erupted from his pupils.
Vela dove to the side, the laser eyes melting a hole through the reinforced steel door behind her. She grabbed a heavy iron skillet from the floor—not as a weapon, but as a distraction. She hurled it at his face.
Bola swiped it aside with a flick of his finger, but by then, Vela was already on him.
She didn't punch this time. She grabbed his head and drove her knee into his face three times in a row, the sound of breaking bone echoing through the room. She was a blur of pure, unadulterated violence. Every time he regenerated, she broke him again. She wasn't fighting like a soldier; she was fighting like someone who had lost everything.
"You vaporized... my chicken," Vela whispered, her voice low and terrifying as she locked her arms around his neck in a desperate chokehold.
Bola's halo flared, burning her arms, but she didn't let go.
"It wasn't just food," she hissed into his ear. "It was the only thing that felt normal in this hell! And you took it!"
Bola let out a roar, his energy exploding outward in a massive shockwave. He grabbed Vela by the throat and lifted her off the ground. His laser eyes began to glow again, inches from her face.
"Then die with your 'dish ,' little girl," he hissed.
As the laser beam was about to hit her Vela pulled out a mirror from her pocket and redirected it into he's eyes, "damn you" bola said as he threw Vela into the ground, and then blasting her with a
n energy beam from he's hands.