The Pointillist student hummed softly to himself, the melody light and airy—completely at odds with the scene before him.
His "canvas" was a man.
The student's new tool ,a long and slender spear polished to a painter's perfection, slid across the man's flesh. Carving shallow lines that bled in thin rivulets. The sound of steel against skin was almost like the scratching of a paintbrush on coarse canvas.
It was a beautiful noon. Sunlight from the half-shuttered window dappled the floor, catching on the red drops that spattered onto the tile. The Pointillist student leaned in, tilting his head to study the way the "paint" caught the light.
If the contrast was striking enough… maybe he'd earn a perfect grade this time.
Then the world outside his door erupted.
The distant rumble became a crash, then a shudder through the floorboards. Yelling. Footsteps. The sound of steel and explosion smashing into the Ring's south hideout.
This wasn't the main headquarters of the south branch–but it was important. It was a shield for one of their precious assets, José, the researcher who knew the secrets behind the golden coins. And the shield was breaking.
The student frowned, annoyed at the interruption–right before his door exploded inward.
Kamina strode in like a thunderclap, took one look at the "artwork," and without a word slammed a fist straight into the Pointillist's face. The student crumpled instantly, sprawling onto his half-finished piece like a ruined sketch.
"Ah…" Shmuel muttered from the doorway. "Maybe you shouldn't hit 'em that hard if you want answers."
Kamina glanced at the limp body, shrugged, and turned back toward the hallway. "He'll live. Probably."
With no time to waste, the two charged back into the chaos, their boots hammering the worn floorboards as they joined the flood of Fixers storming the hideout.
The halls were already a mess—Ring students shrieking as they lashed out with sharpened tools, An older student was giving out orders and trying to corral their juniors. The air was thick with the metallic tang of blood and the acrid sting.
Fixers from Pardoner's Contract, La Parure Group, Merchant's Ledger, Silas Chainers, Gold-Bug Solutions, and a sizable chunk of the 7 Association's South Section 6 poured through the corridors, smashing into the Ring's defenders in a storm of steel, fists and smokes.
A Fauvist with a lion mask tried to lunge at a Merchant's Ledger Fixer–only to be gutted by a Chainer's hook before he could even roar. Paintings on the walls–grotesque portraits of broken bodies–were torn and shredded in the crossfire, leaving smears of color and gore alike.
Kamina grinned wildly at Shmuel as they turned a corner into another knot of chaos.
"Kid, this place is gonna be nuts!"
Shmuel adjusted the grip on his mechanical hands, the faint click of gears.
Kamina's katana met the Pointillist's spear with a sharp clang, the ringing sound echoing down the narrow corridor. The student pressed forward with quick, darting jabs, each one aiming to perforate Kamina like a dotted sketch. Kamina grinned, the fight stoking that familiar fire in his chest.
With a twist, he slid the blade halfway back into its sheath–then yanked it free again. The polished scabbard caught a glint of light before he swung it upward, intercepting another strike from above.
The second attacker–a Cubist student–had tried to drop in from a rafter, his weapon descending in a jagged, angular arc. Kamina's sheath caught the blow mid-fall, forcing the Cubist to twist awkwardly before hitting the ground.
Beside him, Shmuel was locked in his own duel, parrying a Fauvist's cleaver-like brush with the hard metallic clack of his mechanical hands. The two fighters grunted and shoved against each other, sparks jumping between their weapons.
"This," Kamina said through gritted teeth, "is a good time for the DUO COMBO we practiced!"
Shmuel didn't even look at him. "Please don't."
But he knew better than to think Kamina would listen.
"Too late!" Kamina shouted, already moving.
He disengaged, springing backward, and Shmuel immediately dropped into a crouch. Kamina vaulted forward, planting one foot onto Shmuel's broad back.
With a yell, Kamina spun–body twisting in a full circle–katana flashing in a silver arc. The cut swept through the Fauvist Shmuel had been clashing with, opening a crimson spiral across his torso.
Now it was two-on-two.
The Pointillist lunged with a spear, its tip whistling toward Kamina's face–but Kamina met it with the solid thunk of his katana's hilt, stopping the strike dead. Then he surged forward, closing the gap. His forehead smashed into the Pointillist's face, shattering it and staggering the student. Before the man could recover, Kamina's blade split him from shoulder to hip.
The last student swung low at Shmuel, but Shmuel stepped into the strike, his mechanical hands twisting to trap the weapon. With his other hand, he drove a hardened metal palm into the student's throat. And the student dropped instantly.
It should've felt like progress.
But then the doors along the corridor creaked open. Four tall figures stepped out–Docents, each wearing two-coiled rings.
Their movements were slow until the air around them warped. One by one, the doors stretched wider, revealing not more hallways–but swirling voids of distorted space.
The Ring's singularity.
In an instant, the battlefield shattered into fragments. Fixers, corpses, and furniture were swallowed into the twisting doorways, torn from the corridor and scattered across unseen pockets of space. The raid's united front dissolved in seconds, scattered into small, isolated skirmishes the Ring could easily control.
Kamina felt the pull before he could react, his vision lurching as the floor dropped away. He and Shmuel slammed down onto a different patch of corridor—this one lit by sickly yellow bulbs and reeking of wet paint and blood.
They weren't alone.
Twenty-four members of the Merchant's Ledger Office had been dragged through the same door, their yellow-banded coats a sharp contrast against the grimy walls. Ahead of them stood one of the Docents–tall, sharp-eyed, a walking gallery of stitched-together scars–and half a dozen fresh Students flanking him like brushstrokes around a masterpiece.
The Docent tilted his head, smiling faintly.
"Let us… make something beautiful."
The office rep of the Merchant's Ledger Office charged straight at the Pointillist Docent. The man's weapon was a spear in shape, but in his hands it looked more like an extravagant calligraphy brush.
The rep shouted out, "Your head would be worth a fortune!" as he closed the distance. He swung with confidence, but the gap in power was glaring. The Docent's casual, almost lazy counter-swing sent the man flying across the room, his boots scraping the floor before his body slammed into the waiting arms of his comrades. Even catching him knocked them off-balance.
"Brute force isn't a good way to express yourself," the Docent said, his tone dripping with disdain. "So take notes." His students nodded.
The fixers from Merchant's Ledger Office had never accounted for fear—it wasn't in their spreadsheets. But now it was there, quietly growing with every second, pressing against their ribs and gnawing at their resolve. They were doing the math in their heads, but not the kind they liked with the what-ifs, the should-haves, the if-onlys. If only their leader had been less reckless. If only they'd taken a safer contract. If only this wasn't happening.
Kamina saw it. Saw the way the fire was fading from their eyes, the way their hands shook on their weapons.
He stepped forward, voice booming.
"Don't be distracted by the what-ifs, the should-haves, the if-onlys! The one thing you choose for yourself–that's the truth of your universe!"
Without hesitation, Kamina launched himself high, cloak flaring, katana raised for a downward strike. His blade met the Docent's in midair–blocked effortlessly. The Docent's expression barely shifted, but there was some malice in his gaze now. He didn't appreciate the speech.
The spear-brush twisted, aiming to cut Kamina down but Shmuel was there.
He stepped in, mechanical left hand flashing up. A muffled click sounded inside the arm—one of his precious bullets fired, the micro-explosion rocketing his strike forward. His augmented fist slammed into the Docent's weapon, halting the motion cold.
Halting. Not pushing back. Not deflecting. Just… stopping.
A bullet, worth more than some people made in a week, spent for the sole purpose of not dying right this second. The absurdity of the power gap was suffocating.
Shmuel's jaw was tight, his breathing sharp. Fear was there, but buried under grit. Kamina grinned, even with the Docent's shadow looming over them.
"At the very least, pretend to be strong," Kamina said, voice like steel. "Act like you own the world, overcome the moment. That's how you live like a man, kid. That's how a man lives."
Shmuel glanced sideways at him, still straining to hold the block. "…Alright. But did you really have to say that twice?"
Kamina only laughed.
The Docent surged forward, his spear-brush carving the air. He slipped between the 24 members of the Merchant's Ledger Office as if they were practice dummies and one lunge pinned a fixer through the chest, the next sweep tore a second man's leg out from under him.
A parry, a pivot, a downward thrust–crunch–steel through bone. He stepped aside from a wild swing without looking, the counterstroke opening his attacker from hip to shoulder.
The Merchant's Ledger fixers pressed in, shouting orders over the chaos, but their voices died in the rush of movement. Each step the Docent took left someone crippled or bleeding. His strikes had the precision of a calligrapher's brushstroke.
Kamina's blade clashed against a student's spear, sparks flying. He twisted his wrist, slapping the shaft aside, but another point came for his ribs.
He ducked low, cutting across the knees, only to feel a third spear scrape his shoulder.
Shmuel's mechanical hand snapped out, catching a spear mid-thrust, the servos whining as he shoved it aside–only for another student to slash across his thigh. He gritted his teeth, then suddenly drove his metal shoulder forward, ramming into the attacker's chest. The impact sent the student sprawling into two others, breaking their formation and buying a heartbeat of space.
A spear tip darted for Kamina's neck–he slapped it down with the flat of his blade, spun, and drove an elbow into the attacker's face. The spear clattered, but two more replaced it, their points weaving in from opposite sides. Kamina blocked left, caught the right on his forearm guard–steel hissed as it cut through the leather.
Shmuel swung wide with his metal arm, knocking a student sideways, but the moment he did, three more closed in. He stepped back, mechanical fingers clamping on a spear haft and twisting.
Shmuel's eyes darted, searching for an opening in the chaos. The moment came when two students lunged at once–he twisted sideways, brought his right arm up, and triggered a single round in the chamber built into his wrist. The recoil turned his fist into a cannon.
CRACK!
The punch tore through one student's ribs and carried into the second behind him, snapping their spines with a wet, meaty thud. Both crumpled before their spears hit the floor.
Kamina didn't let that moment go to waste. "MOVE!" he shouted, surging ahead in a blur, cleaving the next two students down before they even realized the gap in their ranks.
Blood sprayed across the floor. Eight left.
They were still breathing hard, each shallow cut on their arms, legs, and sides burning like acid. The wounds weren't deep, but pain was pain–and it was chipping away at their stamina. They couldn't drag this out. Not against trained spear fighters.
Kamina's mind sparked with an idea, reckless and stupid–the kind of thing only he would try. He shot Shmuel a look, then jerked his head toward the far side of the hall. "Follow me!"
They broke backward at full sprint, spears stabbing after them, the students instinctively chasing in tight pursuit. The pointillist formation began to compress, their long hafts clattering together in the rush to catch up.
"Now!" Kamina roared, grabbing Shmuel by the waist mid-run. With a grunt, he swung the fixer over his shoulder and hurled him forward like a boulder.
Shmuel didn't waste the launch. Both arms came up, the chambers in his wrists clicking as he primed two rounds. He landed in the middle of the clustered students and fired both at once.
BOOM!
The dual recoil turned his body into a steel whirlwind–metal fists smashing through bone and skull, shattering ribs, crushing throats. The shockwave of impact threw the last bodies back, limp and broken, until the hall went silent save for the ring of steel on stone.
Eight down in one brutal instant.
On the other side of the room, the massacre was already over. The Docent stood alone in the midst of a carpet of bodies–twenty-four fixers from the Merchant's Ledger Office, every one of them lying in a grotesque sprawl. Blood ran in dark rivulets across the polished floor, pooling around the fine tips of broken spears.
His breathing was calm. His uniform spotless save for a single streak of crimson on the edge of his glove. He rested the butt of his spear lightly against the ground, the blade angled down as if the killing had been nothing more than an idle exercise.
He looked toward Kamina and Shmuel, eyes narrowing as they stood over the corpses of his students. "Ahhh…" he exhaled slowly. "You killed my hand-picked students… and your performance was quite loud."
His tone shifted, dripping with contempt. "Your grading will be an F…" He turned the spear in his hand. "…and I won't bother making you an art piece."
The last words were delivered without heat, as if their lives weren't even worth immortalizing in his craft.