Fu Hua
The wind on the rooftop of ME Corp whipped around Fu Hua as she stared down the Herrscher in front of her.
Neither of them said any words, seemingly taking the time to size each other up.
Fu Hua made the first move.
She quickly closed the distance between them, her fist blurring as she launched a probing strike at Zero's throat. Zero swatted it away, but his movements were sloppy.
Taking the moment to counter, he tried to sweep her legs. But she met the strike head on, sending her own kick to stop it in its tracks.
They traded punches and kicks, but neither seemed to land on either opponent. Both were taking their time at the start of the fight to gauge each other's strength.
Too bad for him, she already found a weakness she could exploit.
'He's fast,' Fu Hua analyzed instantly, ducking under his retaliatory swing. 'Faster than Kenji ever was. But he lacks Kenji's skill.'
She pivoted on her heel, putting more strength into her strike and driving her palm into his solar plexus. The impact was solid. She felt his ribs creak under the force.
Zero grunted, stumbling back a step, but he didn't guard.
Fu Hua pressed the advantage. She unleashed a chain of punches that forced him back, her fists blurring together.
She hit his jaw, his sternum, the soft tissue of his neck. Every blow was calculated to incapacitate, targeting nerve clusters and pressure points that would drop a normal human instantly.
But there was one odd thing she noticed.
Zero looked oddly… ecstatic at being hit.
He was pushed back, his head snapping to the side as her fist connected with his cheekbone. Blood sprayed from his lip. But he didn't raise his hands to block. He didn't shift his stance to deflect.
He was laughing.
"Is that it?" Zero cackled, spitting a mouthful of blood onto the concrete.
Fu Hua stepped back, narrowing her eyes behind her red glasses. The bruise on his jaw was already fading. The split in his lip knitted itself back together before her eyes.
'His regeneration is outpacing the damage,' she realized. 'And he's not even trying to defend himself. He's enjoying it!'
"You fight like a textbook," Zero taunted, wiping his chin. "Perfect form. Perfect execution. But so... predictable."
He rushed her.
It was a brute-force charge, devoid of technique. He swung a haymaker aimed at her head. Fu Hua saw it coming a mile away. She sidestepped easily, letting his fist sail past her ear.
'He has the physical ability,' Fu Hua noted, watching him overextend. 'Superior strength. Superior speed. But he fights like an amateur. He has none of Kenji's instincts for close-quarters combat.'
This was her chance.
Zero was off-balance, his side completely exposed. Fu Hua channeled her strength into her legs, launching herself forward.
Her battlesuit glowed a fiery orange as a ball of energy manifested on her palm.
'I need to slow down his healing. Bursting his heart should give me enough time to destroy his other organs!'
She was inches away. Her palm was aligned perfectly with his chest. He couldn't dodge in time.
Zero didn't try to. He just looked at her, his red eyes gleaming with amusement.
Fu Hua's strike didn't land.
It didn't miss, either.
It just... stopped.
There was no impact. There was no sensation of hitting a wall. There was no jarring whiplash of sudden deceleration.
One moment, she was moving. Next, her velocity was absolute zero.
Fu Hua froze, the ball of energy hovering a millimeter from his jacket. Her brain screamed in confusion.
The momentum she had built up should have sent her flying forward if she stopped this suddenly, but her body felt nothing.
The inertia had simply vanished.
It was as if reality itself had pressed a pause button on her existence.
"What..." Fu Hua breathed, her eyes widening.
Zero grinned, looming over her frozen form.
He pivoted his hips and delivered a roundhouse kick to her exposed ribs.
CRACK.
This time, the physics decided to work. The force of the kick hit her body with tremendous force. Fu Hua felt her ribs fracture as she was launched sideways.
She flew across the street, smashing through a heavy AC ventilation unit before crashing into the concrete wall of a building.
She slumped to the ground, coughing up dust and blood.
"You don't get it, do you?" Zero called out, casually dusting off his clothes where she had almost hit him.
He walked toward her, his movements loose and arrogant.
"You're trying to fight me with superior skill. You're trying to use leverage, momentum, and force."
He tapped his temple.
"But those things rely on rules. Physics. Inertia."
He stopped a few feet away, looking down at her with a sneer.
"This ability I have is called Gearshift. I can control the speed and velocity of anything I touch—including myself. I can go from zero to Mach 10 in an instant. I can stop on a dime without G-force turning my brain to jelly."
Fu Hua grit her teeth, forcing herself to stand. 'Did he really just reveal his power that easily? Good for me then. So he can rewrite velocity… Of course, Herrschers and their little tricks.'
This made things much more complicated. While she did have attacks that could be used at a distance, Zero would dodge them all anyway. There was no way for her to fight without some kind of direct contact.
"You're holding back," Zero observed, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous growl.
He pointed a finger at her.
"I can feel it. You're still treating me like a student you need to reprimand…" He stopped himself, seeming to realize something as his grin widened.
"Wait, don't tell me, you're holding back because you can sense your connection with him?"
Fu Hua's eyes widened just a fraction, but that was enough for Zero to start laughing again.
Finally, he gathered himself, and the red lighting surrounded him more fiercely. "Try to kill me, Fu Hua. Or I promise you... You're going to die here."
Zero's taunt hung in the air, echoing off the cracked asphalt of the street. He stood amidst the wreckage of a parked car he had crushed upon landing.
Fu Hua stared at him. Her side throbbed where his earlier kick had fractured her ribs, but she brushed that aside.
'Sorry about this, Kenji.'
She reached up and slowly removed her red-framed glasses. She folded them carefully, almost reverently, and placed them in a pouch on her belt.
The deliberate action earning an amused look from Zero.
"Shadow Knight, limitations off."
When she looked up again, the air on the street changed.
Her suit started to glow a bright orange. And the pressure… It was a suffocating, heavy weight that settled over the two fighters.
The dust hanging in the air seemed to freeze, pressed down by sheer force of will.
Zero's grin faltered. He tilted his head, his nostrils flaring as he tasted the shift in the atmosphere.
"Oh?" Zero whispered, his red eyes widening in genuine delight. "There it is."
He could feel it. The restraint was gone. The hesitation was gone. Standing before him was no longer a Class Monitor worried about her student.
Fu Hua had finally released her Killing Intent.
She vanished.
She moved not with speed, but with perfect, lethal timing. Zero blinked, and in that fraction of a second, Fu Hua was already inside his guard.
She didn't punch his chest. She drove two stiffened fingers directly into his eyes.
"Gah!" Zero recoiled, blinded instantly as his eyeballs were ruptured.
Fu Hua didn't let up. She spun, driving the ridge of her hand into his throat, crushing his windpipe to cut off his scream. As he gagged, stumbling back, she swept his legs.
Zero fell. But before his back could hit the asphalt, Fu Hua grabbed his wrist. She wrenched his arm, using his own falling momentum against him, and slammed him into the ground with a force that cratered the street.
The pavement shattered. A spiderweb of cracks exploded outward from the impact point.
He jumped backwards to gain distance, but she was right back in front of him. She threw another punch at his sternum, one that he was able to block, but didn't account for the orange ball of energy that fired point-blank.
The attack sent him flying through multiple buildings. Fu Hua quickly gave chase.
A loud boom rang out in the facility as she saw Zero rushing towards her. She narrowly dodged a kick to her head.
Ducking low, she swept his feet. Making him lose balance and grab his ankle before bringing him overhead and slamming him into the ground.
Fu Hua didn't let him recover. She mounted him instantly.
'Destroy the vessel to stop the pilot,' she told herself coldly.
She rained down elbows and punches. Left. Right. Left. Right. Each strike sends reverberations through the ground beneath.
Zero tried to push her off, but she swiped and twisted his arms.
She smashed his nose. She shattered his jaw. She aimed for the temple, the throat, the solar plexus.
She couldn't fight with the goal of subduing him. She needed to fight with the intent of an execution.
'He can heal all of the damage anyway.'
Blood sprayed across her face. Zero's skull cracked against the asphalt with a wet, sickening sound.
His regeneration factor worked furiously to keep up, knitting bone back together, but Fu Hua kept going. She was dismantling him piece by piece.
She didn't stop until his face was a ruin of gore and his body went limp beneath her.
Fu Hua paused, her fist raised for another strike, her chest heaving.
'This should be enough, ' she assessed. Slightly wincing at the sight. 'Even with regeneration, the brain damage should keep him—'
"Are you done?"
Fu Hua froze.
Below her, amidst the blood and broken teeth, a mouth twisted into a smile. The regeneration accelerated, snapping his jaw back into place with a wet click.
Zero's eyes, fully healed, snapped open. They were glowing brighter than ever.
"Finally," Zero laughed, the sound bubbling up through the blood in his throat. "You're actually trying! I've always wanted to know what your real punches felt like!"
Before Fu Hua could bring her fist down, Zero's hands shot up. He caught both of her wrists mid-swing.
"My turn."
He flicked his finger.
Fu Hua was blasted off him as if she had been hit by a truck. The power in that mere flick was much stronger than anything she had expected. She flipped in the air, landing on her feet ten meters away, skidding to a halt.
She looked up to re-engage, but the street in front of her was empty.
'Where—!'
CRACK.
A heel slammed into her spine.
Fu Hua gasped, her vision whitening as she was launched face-first into the asphalt. But she didn't just hit the ground. She ricocheted off it.
Zero had used Gearshift on her.
He had accelerated her impact velocity so that she ricocheted off the street like a rubber ball. Fu Hua flew upward, disoriented, her body screaming in pain.
She tried to right herself in mid-air, but Zero was already there. He caught her by the collar of her battlesuit.
"No, no," Zero tutted, his eyes wild with adrenaline. "Don't touch the floor yet."
Another punch.
BANG.
He used Gearshift to increase the lethality of his punches. The force sent her flying backward, but before she could gain distance, Zero blurred past her.
He appeared behind her.
BANG.
A kick to the kidneys stopped her momentum instantly and reversed it. The shockwave created was so strong that it decimated the surrounding buildings.
He was juggling her. He was using Gearshift to manipulate her velocity, accelerating her body into his strikes and then freezing her momentum so she couldn't get away or fight back.
She tried to counter, but he kept dodging and moving around her. It was impossible to fight back!
She was trapped in a loop of kinetic abuse, unable to find her footing, unable to breathe.
He was everywhere at once—a blur of black and red. A punch to the gut. A knee to the face. An elbow to the spine.
And throughout it all, he was laughing out loud.
Fu Hua couldn't think. Every time she tried to focus to defend herself, he shifted her speed, throwing off her equilibrium, making the world spin in a nauseating blur of streetlights and pain.
"Too slow!" Zero laughed, appearing again in front of her.
He grabbed her leg, spun her around with centrifugal force, and slammed her into the side of a parked bus.
CRUNCH.
The metal groaned and buckled around her. Fu Hua slumped forward, embedded in the chassis of the vehicle, blood dripping from her mouth.
She tried to lift her arm, but it wouldn't obey.
Zero landed softly on the street, barely a few feet away. He wasn't even winded. He looked at her broken form, and he smiled.
"Now that," Zero said, wiping Fu Hua's blood off his cheek, "was a fight."
/ — /
Zero
Zero walked slowly toward the wreckage of the bus, his boots crunching on the glass-strewn asphalt.
Fu Hua was embedded deep in the metal siding, held there by the crumpled chassis. Her head hung low, blood dripping from her chin onto her torn uniform.
"I expected more from you, Fu Hua. But you did alright," Zero sighed, stopping just in front of her.
He grabbed her chin and raised her head to meet his. She tried to move her head away, but he held her firmly in place.
"Even if your strength has diminished, I can see what used to be power that shook the earth."
He leaned close to her ear, "Truly worthy of being a Flame Chaser."
Fu Hua's eyes widened. She tried to respond, but only blood spurted from her mouth.
Zero let her go.
For a moment, he seemed to just stand still and stare at her. Her eyes narrowed as she spotted what looked to be hesitation beneath his gaze.
But that expression was gone in an instant, and Zero's smug grin returned full force. "As a form of respect. I'm going to let you live another day. Killing you like this just seems… sad. "
Fu Hua raised a brow, fully expecting him to lie and kill her anyway.
"But I am going to knock you out."
He drew his fist back.
"I'll make sure this is painless—"
Danger
'Oh, you've got to be kidding me—!"
BOOM.
A fraction of a second before Zero was about to attack, the sky above them screamed.
The air dropped so violently that the windows of the surrounding buildings shattered outward. A colossal column of green wind dropped from the heavens like the hammer of god, slamming into the street directly between Zero and the bus.
"Seriously?" Zero snarled.
The wind was too dense. The backlash kicked Zero backward, his boots skidding across the pavement as he was forced to retreat from the bus to avoid being shredded.
He dug his heels in, grinding to a halt ten meters away. He looked up, his eyes narrowing.
The tornado died down as quickly as it had appeared, dissipating into a gentle, swirling breeze.
Wendy stood in front of the bus, floating inches off the ground. Her face was pale, sweat beading on her forehead from the exertion of dragging everyone up from the lower levels, but her eyes were furious.
"Get away from her!" Wendy screamed, the Gem of Desire glowing brightly on her chest.
Behind her, Himeko and Kiana rushed to the bus, prying the crumpled metal apart to free Fu Hua.
"Fu Hua!" Kiana cried, grabbing the Class Monitor's arm as she slumped out of the wreckage. "Stay with us! You're okay!"
"She's got multiple fractures," Himeko assessed quickly, "Internal bleeding. She needs—"
"I'm fine!" Fu Hua smacked Himeko's hand away, slowly standing back up. Immediately glaring at Zero
'Wow, she can still stand? I guess I should have expected that. You can't be a Flame Chaser if you die from just—"
Danger.
Zero tilted his head sharply to the left.
A golden chain, tipped with a heavy spearhead, whipped past his ear. It moved so fast it tore the air, missing his temple by a millimeter.
Zero looked back slowly.
Theresa stood near the gaping hole in the street they had emerged from. The Oath of Judah was planted firmly beside her, its golden cover open, revealing the arsenal of spears and chains within.
"Don't take another step," Theresa ordered. Her voice was cold, devoid of the hesitation she had shown in the Hangar. She wasn't looking at him like a student anymore. She was looking at him like a target.
"You missed," Zero taunted, turning back to face them.
"I wasn't aiming to kill," Theresa replied, retracting the chain with a sharp metal hiss. "I was aiming to get your attention."
Zero looked around. He was surrounded.
To his left, Mei stood atop a pile of rubble, her katana drawn, arcs of violet lightning jumping between the debris.
To his right, Wendy hovered, controlling the winds to create a perimeter.
In front of him, Himeko hefted her massive Nexus sword, shielding Kiana, who was helping Fu Hua stand.
"You hurt my friends," Kiana said, her voice trembling with rage. She let go of Fu Hua and stepped forward, drawing her pistols.
Her blue eyes burned with a fierce, unwavering light. "You hurt Auntie. And you stole Kenji's body."
Kiana racked the slides of her guns.
"I'm done talking."
Zero looked at the Valkyries. He saw their anger. He saw their desperation. He saw the way they positioned themselves to cover each other's blind spots, a seamless unit forged in fire.
Most people would be terrified.
Zero felt a smile spread across his face. It started small, then grew until he was grinning like a wolf staring at a flock of sheep that had decided to bite back.
"Good," Zero laughed, the sound dark and jagged.
He cracked his knuckles, then his neck. The red lightning around him flared up, screaming with power, breaking the pavement beneath his feet as he released his full output.
"One-on-one was getting boring anyway."
He crouched low, his red eyes leaving trails of light as he scanned them.
"Come on then!" Zero roared, the sound shaking the glass in the windows above. "All of you at once! Show me what this 'family' can really do!"