"Talk about rotten luck, Levi."
Behind the iron door, Kenny chuckled and flicked a look to his men.
They'd fought a hundred scraps under this captain. The instant Kenny's eyes moved, they understood.
He set his palm to the iron, counted silently, then shoved—
Clang!
The door slammed open and banged the wall.
Shotguns leveled on Levi outside the threshold and fired in a single volley.
Bang bang bang bang!!
The air filled with buckshot and smoke.
Levi slipped aside. After one shot that dropped two enemies, he rolled and slid behind solid cover.
He reloaded fast. Counting beats like Kenny would, he waited for two more bursts from the other side, then popped out and returned fire.
Kenny hadn't expected that. He'd thought Levi would dance like the old days, easy to toy with.
He hadn't realized how far Levi had come—no longer a junk-picking stray.
Bang!
Buckshot tore into Kenny's left shoulder. Blood poured down his arm.
He toppled into the stairwell.
"Captain!"
A man shouted and rushed down to him.
The fight raged on—Kenny was already hit.
"Didn't expect it to be that brat Levi…"
Flat on the steps, his skull split on an edge, blood slicked half his face.
He hadn't imagined getting snared by the very student he'd trained.
But if you thought that alone could finish the teacher—too naive.
"Ed, get me up," he said. "Once we're out, take cover and pour it on. Pin Levi. Seal every gap."
"Yes, sir!"
Orders given, his squad—drilled by Kenny—snapped into positions behind every scrap of cover around the stair mouth.
Just then Levi's reinforcements—Tours Beak and the rest—hit the line from the east. They had ODM gear and, like the Anti-Personnel Control Squad, carried man-killing shotguns.
The rank-and-file MPs had only rifles and steel blades. They were no match.
But Levi was isolated.
Tours came in from the east; Levi had slipped in alone from the west.
No help at hand—only waiting on Tours to break through.
Kenny's unit had the numbers. Even with three heads and six arms, Levi couldn't punch through that fire net. He hunkered behind a low wall and waited for the window.
When the moment ripened, Kenny drew a short knife and zipped out on ODM lines.
He landed in a crouch at the low wall, wrapped his shoulder, a single wall between him and Levi.
Kenny felt Levi there.
Levi felt Kenny, too.
Back to back with stone between, both ready to fight to the death.
The gunfire ebbed.
Kenny's voice cut the quiet.
"Levi, you remember how I taught you?"
As he spoke, he unhooked the shotgun tubes from his rig, linked them with a grapple line, and knotted them into a cluster charge.
Levi was silent for a beat.
"Of course," he said—and lobbed a small canister over the wall.
Whump!!
Kenny flinched.
What was that?!
A bomb?!
He snapped a line and yanked himself out of the blast path.
The "bomb" burst weakly—less kick than a firecracker—but it belched thick smoke, rolling over the field.
"Smoke… grenades?"
Kenny frowned. He'd seen smoke before, but not thrown like that.
Homemade, by the look. And heavy on the mix—the haze swallowed everything fast.
Levi used ODM gear to slip away.
Roger Eikam's homemade smokes were his ticket to flip the board—he wouldn't waste them.
The sudden shift surprised Kenny for a heartbeat, then he fired his last shotgun tube into the bundled cluster and blew the low wall to rubble.
He watched the gray for a long, long count, unsure if Levi was dead, never relaxing.
As the fog thinned and the field came back into view—
In that not-quite clear moment, Kenny eased just a fraction, thinking he had the field in hand.
Levi pounced on that sliver. He ripped through the murk on ODM lines, spinning straight at Kenny on the high ground.
"Kenny!!"
Levi shouted. In his hands weren't reload-hungry shotguns now but two short blades—the twin knives every Scorpio fighter carried.
With blades, he owned the close—
Seven steps out, guns are faster. Within seven steps, blades are faster.
On that, he and Roger already agreed; those knives were added to the loadout at his suggestion.
One blade in a standard grip, the other reverse, Levi spun in and cut for Kenny.
If the first stroke in standard grip landed, the second in reverse would, too.
Kenny had read that there'd be a follow-up. He was still surprised, but his hands moved first—steel crossed and caught the strike.
"Not bad, Levi!"
He blocked the first cut—thought it over—then the second sheared through his knife and kissed his throat.
"?!"
For the first time, Kenny felt cornered. He tried to bring up his left arm to save his neck, ready to trade a ruined limb for a breath—
But he'd forgotten: buckshot had already ruined that shoulder and arm.
"Hahahaha…"
Kenny laughed. Levi had counted it all out—or he wouldn't have risked the rush.
The kid was good now—more than good.
Kenny Ackerman was just a graying, thinning relic.
The world still belongs to the young…
Damn it all.
They hit the ground together. Levi rode the fall on Kenny's body and came up clean; Kenny's insides took the slam, tore and ruptured; clotted blood gushed from his mouth and smeared his chest.
"Good job… brat!"
He grinned one last time, teeth red.
Levi stared down, face flat as stone.
That was when the ground began to shake, knocking everyone off their feet.
"What's happening?!"
"What the hell—!!"
"AAAH!!"
A colossal hand burst up through the earth. Five fingers clawed into the street, cutting five trenches, shredding the nearby buildings as it hauled, dragging something titanic up out of the soil with everything it had.
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