The corridor explodes into chaos.
Cyborgs pour from every opening—rusted nightmares with grinding gears and flickering red eyes. Their metal claws scrape against the walls, their footsteps a thunderous drumbeat of approaching death.
Jean Bart meets them head-on.
His massive fists crash through the first wave, sending sparks and shrapnel flying. Each punch carries the weight of a battleship's cannon, crumpling metal frames and shattering reinforced limbs. A cyborg lunges at him; he catches it by the face and drives it into the floor with enough force to crater the metal deck. "Keep moving! Don't let them surround us!"
Ikkaku swings her wrench in wide, brutal arcs. The tool connects with a cyborg's knee joint, and the creature crumples. She pivots, drives the handle into another's chest, and sends it crashing into its companions. "I'm not dying in this rust bucket!"
Ember's laughter echoes through the corridor like shattered glass. Her Sparkler Rounds fly in every direction, each one finding a target. Cyborgs detonate in showers of sparks and debris. She spins, pirouettes, dances through the carnage. "Boom boom boom! Josiah says they're all going to pay!"
Vesta plants her feet and strikes a chord on Mikasi. The guitar hums with otherworldly resonance. From the soundwaves, spectral coyotes materialize—translucent, snarling, hungry. They launch themselves at the cyborgs, their ethereal jaws snapping at metal limbs, tearing through cables and circuitry. "That's right! Get 'em, boys!" Vesta's rainbow hair whips around her face as she plays, her fingers dancing across the strings.
Eliane takes to the air, her Lunarian wings finally unfurled, dark and majestic. She darts between cyborgs, her bamboo practice sword finding gaps in their armor. A thrust here, a parry there—she's not killing, just disabling. But then a cyborg grabs for her, and she reacts on instinct. A burst of flame erupts from her palm, engulfing the creature's face. She freezes, staring at her own hand in shock.
"Did I just—" Her voice trails off, her blue eyes wide.
The cyborg stumbles backward, its head a smoking ruin.
Jelly bounces through the fray, his gelatinous body absorbing impacts and redirecting them. He morphs into a trampoline, launching a cyborg into the ceiling. He stretches into a net, catching another and bouncing it into a wall. "Bloop! Bounce time! Hee hee!"
The cyborgs keep coming. But so do they.
---
Then the shadows move.
Three figures emerge from the gloom at the far end of the corridor. Tall. Skeletal. Cloaked in tattered robes that trail like smoke. One carries a scythe of pure starlight. One drags chains that rattle with each step. One hovers, its body half-rotted, scales floating around it like a macabre halo.
They move through the cyborgs like knives through paper.
The scythe-wielder cuts a path, its blade severing metal and flesh with impossible ease. The chained one wraps its bonds around a cluster of cyborgs, pulling them together and crushing them into a single mass of scrap. The scaled one simply dissolves them, its touch reducing machinery to rust and dust.
The cyborgs fall. Dozens of them. Scores.
Ikkaku's jaw drops. "What the hell is that?!"
Jean Bart's fist connects with another cyborg's faceplate, sending it spinning. He glances at the approaching specters, his brow furrowed. "I don't know, but whatever it is, it appears to hate these things as much as we do!"
Eliane's wings beat once as she hovers higher, her eyes tracking the skeletal figures. Recognition dawns on her face. A smile breaks through her shock.
"It's Marya!"
Everyone's heads snap up.
Ikkaku's brow furrows. "That's Marya?"
Vesta pumps a fist in the air, her guitar still humming. "Woo hoo! It's time to go!" She strikes another chord, sending another coyote to finish off a straggling cyborg.
---
The last cyborg falls. Its components scatter across the floor in a messy heap of gears and pistons.
Jean Bart stands panting, his fists still raised. Ikkaku leans on her wrench, catching her breath. Ember's giggles subside into a satisfied hum. Vesta wipes sweat from her brow, Mikasi still humming softly. Eliane lands, her wings folding against her back.
Jelly bounces once, twice, then announces: "Bloop! Snack time!"
Eliane snaps her head toward him. "We don't have any snacks with us!"
Jelly bounces again. "Bloop! Snack time!"
Eliane rolls her eyes so hard it's a wonder they stay in their sockets.
The Reaper with the scythe raises its blade, pointing down the corridor. The other two hover behind it—one with chains, the other with scales—waiting.
Ikkaku stares at the pointed scythe. "What does it want?"
Jean Bart squints into the gloom. "It looks like it's pointing at something."
Vesta cheerfully waves her hand. "Come on, let's go!" She's already moving, her boots echoing against the metal deck.
Ember's head tilts, her mismatched eyes distant. "Josiah is hungry."
Eliane groans. "Come on, we have food on the ship."
Ember's face lights up with a manic grin. "Oh! Lunch time!"
Ikkaku shakes her head, her voice flat with disbelief. "What is wrong with them?"
But she falls into step behind the others. Behind the Reaper. Behind the scythe that points the way forward.
The corridor stretches ahead, dark and waiting.
And somewhere beyond it, Marya waits too.
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