The door creaked open, and two corpses walked in. Or at least that's how it looked.
Raizen stumbled inside first, hair stuck to his forehead with sweat. His bandages were smudged and frayed, one sleeve torn off.
Hikari followed close, pale and stiff. They didn't speak.
"Holy metals!" Obi whistled. "Did you two get run over by a cart? No, wait - by two carts? Going in opposite directions?"
Raizen groaned, collapsing into a chair. His cheek rested on the table with a dull thud.
"Now now, Obi…"
"Oh, don't say my name like it's a curse! You should be thanking me for gracing you with my presence."
Obi sat cross-legged on the floor, with a lump of half-finished metal in his lap. Another grapple head
Hikari let out a faint exhale, the closest thing to laughter she had managed all day. Takeshi didn't even look up from his bench.
"It's basically one-time use, Obi… This point will break"
Obi clutched his chest like he'd been shot.
"Whaaat? Old man, this thing is revolutionary! I already teste- AHEM."
"Not revolutionary... Yet. More like a prototype"
"Obi… Please get out, before I throw something at you" Raizen groaned louder.
Obi beamed. "See? Even a walking corpse loves it! Anyway, I didn't come here just to show off my genius.
"Hm?"
"I need your review, Takeshi. The underworks won't take my word for brilliance unless the scary old assassin says something."
"Scrap metal, barely holding together, three out of ten for the effort" Takeshi said flatly.
"You wound me! Fine. Be that way. But when you're begging for one of my world-famous inventions don't come crying!"
"Keep dreaming"
"Well, I'll surely come with something that'll leave your jaw on the ground! I'll take my leave now."
With that, he tucked the lump of metal under his arm, shot Takeshi one last dramatic look, and ran out the door, humming some weird tune.
Silence finally returned. Raizen finally learned back on the mattress, and from there he didn't move anymore. Neither touched the suspicious food waiting on the table.
Sleep caught them both instead - Raizen's head buried in the mattress, Hikari curled somewhere very near.
Takeshi stayed awake. He moved quietly, pinning new scraps of paper and sketches to the great map on his wall.
Red string stretched tighter, connecting dots into patterns only he seemed to understand. His jaw tightened as he pressed another pin into place.
A new lead.
✦ ✦ ✦
When Hikari stirred awake hours later, she found him gone. Raizen wasn't in bed either.
She blinked, rubbing her eyes.
Raizen was on the floor, doing pushups - or what you could barely call pushups
"Ninety-seven… ninety-eight…"
Hikari blinked awake, watching quietly. "You'll break yourself."
"I'll break even more.. If I don't try..." Raizen panted.
His face twisted with effort, but his eyes burned with something else. Something harsher than his usual smile. Determination.
"If I can't even do this… I'll never be strong enough."
She sat quietly, watching him, unsure why her chest felt so tight.
On the table, pinned under a knife, a small note that read:
Kori's waiting. I have things to manage.
Takeshi's handwriting, simple message, nothing more.
✦ ✦ ✦
The Rust Room was the same when they got there. The same white lights burned bright over the Balance Grid, the tile floor shifting and grinding in restless patterns.
Mina was at the controls again, sliding toggles and calling out readings.
Kori stretched in the middle of the chamber, silver bob catching the light. "Morning, sunshines!" she said.
Then she threw a closer looks, eyes sharper.
"Or... Uh... Whatever counts as sunshine. You look like you fought a mattress and lost!" Kori chuckled. "Perfect. That means yesterday worked."
Raizen forced a grin. "We're alive. Barely"
"Barely's enough, I can work with that." Kori smirked. "Come on, balance time."
"Again...?"
She snapped her fingers at Mina. "Set it low-speed, low drop. Let's see if they can stand on two legs."
Today's trial was simpler in design, crueler in execution. A wide chamber with a floor of tiles and platforms, each one no bigger than a step.
They shifted constantly - sliding sideways, dropping out, rising up again with sudden movements.
A wrong step meant a long fall into a padded pit below.
"The Balance Grid" Kori announced. "Looks easy, breaks people faster than a hammer. Don't think, adapt. You fall, you fail."
Raizen and Hikari exchanged a glance, then stepped onto the tiles. The ground shifted instantly, nearly dropping them both.
The floor jolted again, and Raizen dropped into the padded pit below with a grunt. He groaned, climbing back up, and Kori's laugh rang out like bells.
"Perfect landing, beautiful start!"
They trained until sweat slicked their skin and their legs trembled with every step. Mina's calm voice cut through between rounds. "Boy's reaction time improving. Girl's readings… Unusual… Again"
During a short break, Raizen collapsed on his back, chest heaving. "Who designed this? Masochists?"
Kori chuckled. "Close. The Phalanx. Back when I was with them, this was warm-up."
Raizen wiped his face. "Phalanx?"
Kori raised a brow. "Never heard of them?"
He shook his head.
"They were… Let's say, the ones who fought when no one else could do the job done. Seven of us. Best of the best. Nyxes died where us Phalanx were."
"But...?"
"There's no but. Nothing lasts forever. They're now legends, some whispers in taverns. Almost half are... Gone."
Raizen's grin came back, crooked but real. "Then I'll just have to be better than them."
Kori looked at him dead in the eyes. No amusement this time. "Kid, I like your insanity."
Then she whispered into his ear "If you want at least to get close... Let me show you what it takes."
She flicked her fingers at Mina.
"Grid: hardest pattern. Max shuffle. Let's give them a show."
"Come on, Kori, you know the max setting jams the motors sometimes…" Mina sighed, as she was hesitantly pushing buttons and turning knobs until they looked like they were going to pop off.
The tiles snapped into violent motion, impossible to predict, yet Kori stepped onto them casually. Her body flowed with the shifting ground, each movement confident, playful even. She strolled across like the floor was steady earth, with unshakable balance. The tiles were moving so fast, they became a blur, as far as Raizen could see.
His eyes widened. Not just at her skill - but at her right eye. For a moment, when her hair swung, it was visible.
It wasn't human.
A snowflake pattern shimmered across the bright blue iris. Cold, beautiful, terrifying. Kori kept moving, tiles still blurring beneath her. She caught him staring, grin turning sharp.
"What's wrong, kid? Never seen real skill before?"
✦ ✦ ✦
The Balance Grid settled with a last metallic sigh, tiles locking into a flat plane. Kori hopped down as if she'd simply stepped off a stair, silver hair still swinging.
Raizen couldn't stop staring at her left eye - now covered by her hair. The glimpse he'd caught a moment ago was still replaying in his head.
Mina's voice drifted from the booth above.
"Heart rate, around five hundred beats per minute. Nice recovery curve!"
Raizen decided to confront her head on.
"Miss Kori... Your eye. That… Isn't human."
"First of all, it's"Kori" not "miss Kori". For you, I'm Kori." Kori laughed. "Second of all... Ohhh, so that's why you were staring!"
"Huh?"
"I thought you were charmed by my beauty!"
"Well - Hm - Uh... I'm just trying to breathe, thanks. But- What even is that!?"
Her grin broke through anyway. "Oh, the eye? It's called a Chasmis."
"Chasmis?"
"You don't buy it. You don't train into it. It opens when something breaks you so much that the soul has to grow a new shape."
"What does that even mean?" Hikari asked, quietly.
"They say the eyes are the gateway to the soul, right? So when the soul brutally changes shape, the eye follows."
Both listened, quietly.
"Default package..." Kori went on, counting on her fingers, "your muscles move faster, your timing sharpens, sometimes the world slows down. And you can read someone's hit by their muscles contracting, way before they even raise the knuckle.
"Unfair!" Hikari protested.
"That's the baseline. But man, it's tiring! That explains the heart rate, too... I cover it with my hair, so it doesn't get too exhausting"
"That's it?"
"Not even close. The rest? Abilities? It pretty much depends on who you are and how you fight."
"How is that even possible!?"
She stretched her back. Frost bloomed in her hand, a thin blade of ice formed out of nowhere and sat between her fingers.
Mina's mic popped. "Please no more frozen daggers inside the grid, Kori. We talked about this…"
Kori rolled her eyes and let the ice evaporate into a sparkle.
"Mine does ice. It's surprisingly useful for convincing bastards to calm down."
Hikari was poking the tile with her shoe, testing whether Kori left any frost behind.
"Come on" Kori clapped. "Stop looking so dead! Field trip!"
"Haa... Field trip?"
Kori didn't bother to answer Raizen's question. She just started walking.
They moved down a long white corridor, past rooms that thudded, hummed or echoed with brutal yet efficient violence. A reaction room pulsed with lights all over the walls, teaching hands to move without thought, from pure reflex.
An endurance bay reset its mats like a living thing. In one lab, a metal vehicle hurled itself down a test track and braked hard enough to make Raizen's teeth ache just watching.
In another, hundreds, if not thousands of locks. Complex ones. Two individuals were trying to crack them, with no luck.
They were nearly past a wide doorway when Hikari suddenly stopped.
On the other side, a matte-black motorcycle sat mounted on a rig, wheels held just over a track... But the track wasn't a track at all - it was just panels and rollers that could change angle and texture in the blink of an eye.
A curved screen wrapped around almost the whole room, dark for now. The rig itself swiveled a bit.
Hikari took a step toward it, almost unconsciously.
"What… is that?"
Kori followed her look and grinned. "Bike rig. Teaches balance, speed, control. You break your fear here, not your neck on the tunnels."
She smiled. At the room above. "Mina, sim?"
The screen blinked to life - an underground road winding along a cavern wall, thin rails and rusted pipes, glowing marks flashing as checkpoints. It looked almost like the Underworks. The bike rig buzzed awake, tilting forward a degree.
Hikari didn't smile too often. She did now, shyly. "Can... I?"
Kori smiled back, and gestured with her hand. "Yes. Boots on the pegs. Grip with your knees and legs, not your hands. Eyes where you want to go, not where you are. And when you think you're leaning enough… Lean even more."
Hikari swung a leg over. The bike dipped, rig catching smoothly.
"Beginner assist is on" Mina said. "No over-rotation. Throttle curve softened, impact minimal."
Raizen stayed by the door, turned on a bench, watching. He felt a bunch of contradictions - tired to the bone, wired in the head, yet something else tugging at the corners of his mouth.
The track rushed up the wrap-around screen. Hikari abruptly accelerated, slamming into a virtual barricade and the rig jolted - softly, by design. She laughed out loud, surprised at herself, cheeks flushed.
The world moved for her, rig tilting forward, softly imitating impact. Rewinding, she overcorrected the first turn - too cautious - then too bold on the second.
The rear end drifted. The motor vibrated strongly, and in the last second, she saved herself from a wall.
Her hair flicked at her jawline as she leaned again.
The next corner she took easier. Then quicker. Kori jogged alongside, one hand hovering by the kill switch. But she never touched it. She didn't have to. There was something in Hikari's movements that seemed... Too perfect.
"That's it!" Kori said. "Breathe through the turn. Let the machine guide you... Good."
"Lap time improving by twelve percent" Mina reported, not being able to hide a smile.
✦ ✦ ✦
Across the Underworks, Obi's smithy was filled with warm air. Sparks exploded like tiny fireworks as he kept hammering a glowing piece of brass, face blackened with coal at the cheekbones.
"Come on, come on, don't embarrass me!" he muttered to the glowing billet on his anvil. He brought the hammer down in a hard, happy rhythm, with considerable force.
"One for glory, two for money, three for wome- OW! These sparks really do bite! fine, three for honor."
He overheard a pair of regulars in the doorway, trading news.
"The pot's doubled this week, can you believe that?" one exclaimed.
"Yeah... The Scrapper's Gauntlet's gonna be ugly!"
Obi's hammer paused mid-swing. He didn't look up, but his eyebrows raised slightly.
He looked at the metal shaped into a set of knuckles, made to sit perfectly over his own fingers.
"You two beauties need a name..." he made a satisfied face.
"Obiterator? Too much. Obijection? Meh."
He just sat there for a second, biting his tongue in pure concentration.
"Obi-Wand? No. Obi-Wan! I'm a genius..."
Suddenly, someone knocked at his door. Granny Louissa's voice slipped in.
"Obi, you eating or pretending not to be hungry again?"
"Not hungry, Gran!" he sang back. "I'll swing by later. Promise."
She didn't step inside. Instead, she chose just to yell at him from the other side of the room.
"Keep your hands where they'll still be functionable in the morning!"
He blinked at the door, then back at the glowing steel. "That's… Weirdly specific, Granny."
After he gave them a bath, he dried the knuckles on his apron, slid them on, and threw a couple of jabs into a sack of coal with a satisfying look. "Okay..." he told himself. "It's a conversation starter, alright?"
The two men had moved on, their gossip trailing into the hall. Obi set the knuckles on a cloth, stared at them a long second, and then at a big poster on the wall:
SCRAPPER'S GAUNTLET - NO RULES. NO LIMITS. WINNER TAKES IT ALL.