The tension in the air was so thick that Zoey could practically taste it. Dozens upon dozens of magjistars surrounded her from every direction, their mahna flaring with hostile intent. Some wore the white uniforms of Peacekeepers, others dressed in civilian clothes but carried themselves with the rigid posture of trained fighters. A few even had daemonic weapons drawn, their cursed edges gleaming with hungry anticipation. And at the center of it all stood Zoey in her panda mask, arms crossed, waiting.
'This is it,' Inner Zoey practically purred with satisfaction. 'This is what we came here for.'
'Try not to drool,' Outer Zoey reminded herself.
Elena Vasquez, the silver-haired woman who apparently ran this entire city, had just finished introducing herself alongside her two companions. Yimeh, the arrogant redhead with flames dancing across his knuckles. Layla, the turbaned woman with sand swirling lazily around her body. All three of them radiated power that marked them as genuine threats. But they weren't moving yet. They were waiting to see what she would do.
"Well?" Elena's voice cut through the silence. "You said we could come at you all at once. I'm giving you one final chance to reconsider."
"I'm good." Zoey rolled her shoulders, loosening up. "But thanks for asking."
"Tch. Arrogant bitch," Yimeh spat, flames intensifying around his hands. "Let me just…"
Elena held up a hand, stopping him. Her eyes never left Zoey. "You're not from Dhara. I've never seen your fighting style, never heard of a magjistar matching your description. Who are you really?"
"Nun Ya." Zoey shrugged.
"A magjistar named Nun Ya who kidnapped my Chief Peacekeeper."
"You didn't get it..." Zoey was saddened her joke didn't even get to land.
Behind Zoey, Tiffany giggled from her position next to the unconscious Amelia. Her massive sword rested casually across the Chief Peacekeeper's throat, a reminder to everyone present that any rescue attempt would end poorly. "Don't worry about her! I'm taking really good care of your boss lady! And I got your joke, Panda!"
Several Peacekeepers bristled at Tiffany's cheerful tone, their grips tightening on their weapons. One of them, a young man who couldn't have been older than twenty, took a step forward with murder in his eyes.
"That's enough." Elena's command froze him in place. She turned her attention back to Zoey, studying her with calculating eyes. "Fine. If you won't talk, then let's see what you're made of." She raised her hand and made a simple gesture. "Take her."
The first wave surged forward. Zoey counted twelve of them in the initial charge. A mix of Peacekeepers and what she assumed were volunteers hoping to claim the bounty on her head. Their coordination was sloppy, their formations loose. They were relying on numbers to overwhelm her rather than any real strategy.
'Disappointing,' Inner Zoey noted.
'Let's not get sad yet. The real threats are watching.'
Zoey shifted her stance as the first attacker reached her, a bulky man with earth-brown mahna coating his fists. He threw a haymaker that would've caved in a normal person's skull. Zoey ducked under it, hooked her arm around his neck, and drove him face-first into the cobblestones with a devastating DDT. The impact cracked the stone beneath them. Before his two allies could react, she was already up, clotheslining them both with a single sweeping arm that sent them spinning through the air.
She couldn't use her boxing here. That was the problem. Her fighting style was too distinctive, too well-documented from her time in the YFTL and her various public appearances. One clean combination and anyone with half a brain would connect "Panda" to Zoey Winters. So instead, she fell back on pro wrestling moves. Flashy, theatrical, and absolutely brutal when applied with real strength. Less elegant than her boxing, but no less effective when you had stats like hers.
A woman with wind magji tried to blast her from the side. Zoey sidestepped the gust, grabbed her by the waist, lifted her clean off her feet, and drove her into the ground with a spinebuster that left a crater in the plaza. The woman didn't get back up.
'That's four down.'
A man with a glowing sword rushed her from behind. Zoey didn't even turn around, she simply caught his sword arm as it came down, ducked under it, and lifted him onto her shoulders in a fireman's carry. Before he could process what was happening, she spun and launched him directly into an oncoming fireball from one of his allies. His scream was loud.
'Five.'
"She's not using any magji!" someone shouted. "Get in close! Overwhelm her!"
'Oh, dumbass,' Inner Zoey laughed. 'Close is exactly where I want you.'
Three of them tried to tackle her simultaneously. Zoey caught the first one mid-charge and swung him around into a discus clothesline that nearly took his head off. The second one she met with a leaping knee strike to the jaw that sent him ragdolling backward. The third actually managed to get his arms around her waist, for about half a second before she broke his grip, lifted him overhead in a military press, and hurled him into the fountain like a lawn dart. Water exploded everywhere.
The remaining four from the first wave hesitated, suddenly unsure. Their eyes darted between Zoey and their fallen comrades groaning on the ground around her. Zoey tilted her head, cracking her neck. "Is that it?"
"You…" One of them, a young woman with ice forming around her hands, took a step back. "What the hell are you?"
"Someone who's getting bored. Come on, I said you could all attack at once. I meant it."
Elena's eyes narrowed from her position at the edge of the plaza. She made another gesture, and the second wave charged.
______________________________________________
Sammy Heights couldn't believe what she was witnessing. She'd followed these two masked criminals all the way from the Peacekeeper's headquarters through the city, recording everything she could. She'd expected them to flee, to hide, to go to ground somewhere and wait for the heat to die down. Instead, they'd walked to the most public location in all of Dhara and sat down on a bench like they were waiting for a bus.
And now this. Sammy adjusted her grip on her magji tool, making sure the camera was capturing every moment. Her hands were shaking, but she forced herself to stay focused. This was the story of a lifetime. Two criminal magjistars taking on what looked like half the city's fighting force and winning. No, not winning. Dominating.
"The panda-masked assailant continues to tear through Dhara's defenders with what appears to be a pro wrestling-based fighting style," Sammy whispered into her recording device, her journalistic instincts overriding her fear. "She's not using any visible magji techniques. No spells, no incantations. Just pure physical combat. And she's… she's making it look easy."
The second wave was larger than the first, maybe twenty magjistars this time, with more cohesion and better spacing. They'd learned from watching their comrades fall. They were trying to keep their distance, using ranged spells to pin her down while their melee fighters flanked. It didn't matter. The panda woman moved through their formation like a force of nature, always exactly where they weren't expecting her to be. When they tried to create distance, she closed it instantly. When they tried to surround her, she broke through their lines and turned their numbers against them. Bodies flew through the air with alarming regularity, crashing into fountains and statues and each other.
"Holy shit," Sammy breathed, forgetting her professional tone for a moment.
A magjistar tried to trap the criminal in a cage of lightning. She grabbed him by the collar, hoisted him up, and powerbombed him directly into his own lightning cage. He screamed as his spell electrocuted him. Another one summoned stone spikes from the ground. The panda woman ran up them like a staircase, launched herself into the air, and came down with a flying elbow drop that cratered the cobblestone beneath the summoner's chest.
"She's playing with them," Sammy realized aloud. "She's not even trying."
And that was when Sammy noticed something even more terrifying. The polar bear woman, the one who'd single-handedly defeated Chief Patil, was barely doing anything. She'd positioned herself next to the unconscious Chief Peacekeeper and was casually deflecting anyone who got too close, but her attention was entirely focused on her partner. She was watching the panda woman fight with an expression that Sammy could only describe as adoration.
"Isn't she amazing?" the polar bear woman sighed happily, batting away a fireball with her massive sword without even looking at it. "I could watch her fight forever."
A Peacekeeper tried to rush past her toward Amelia. The polar bear woman's sword flashed, and suddenly the Peacekeeper was embedded in a nearby tree, groaning in pain but alive.
"No touching~" she sang. "Panda said to keep her safe, so I'm keeping her safe!"
Sammy swallowed hard and kept recording.
______________________________________________
Zoey was having the time of her life. It had been so long since she'd been able to just cut loose like this. Sure, these weren't exactly challenging opponents individually, but there were so many of them. Wave after wave of magjistars throwing themselves at her, each one a fresh opportunity to test her skills, to find new ways to turn their attacks against them.
'German suplex into the fountain. Nice.'
'That one's getting back up. Piledriver next time.'
'Ooh, he's trying to use earth magji to trap our feet. Cute.'
Zoey ripped her feet free from the stone that had started to form around her ankles, charged at the earth magjistar, caught him around the waist, and launched them both into a spinning belly-to-belly suplex that sent him crashing through the decorative stonework of the fountain. Water exploded upward as his body demolished the structure. Twenty-three down. Maybe twenty-four, it was getting hard to keep track.
The plaza around her was a disaster zone. Unconscious and groaning bodies littered the once-pristine cobblestones. Scorch marks, ice patches, and craters marred the beautiful magical landscaping. One of the statues, Scholar Lin surrounded by his floating boulders, had been toppled when Zoey used it as a launching point for a diving crossbody. And still more magjistars were coming.
'This is great and all,' Outer Zoey noted, 'but the real ones still haven't moved.'
She was right. Elena Vasquez stood at the edge of the plaza with her arms crossed, watching everything with cold analytical eyes. Yimeh was practically vibrating with restrained aggression, flames crawling up his arms. Layla's sand had expanded into a small cloud around her, ready to strike at a moment's notice. They were letting her tire herself out. Letting her thin the herd of weaker magjistars before they stepped in. What a shame that Zoey Winter's endurance was at level 33! She'd have to fight hard for probably several days before she could actually get tired or something.
'Should we force them to come to us?'
'Not yet. I want to see what else they throw at us first.'
As if on cue, a new group arrived at the edge of the plaza. These weren't Peacekeepers, they looked younger, maybe around Zoey's age. Students, probably. One of them, a passionate-looking young man with wild hair, was pointing directly at her.
"There she is!" he shouted. "The one worth a million cavons!"
"Leo, this is insane," a girl with a dark braid hissed at him. "Did you see what she just did to those Peacekeepers?"
"Yeah, I saw! But think about it, Maya, she's been fighting nonstop. She has to be getting tired. If we hit her now while she's worn down-"
"You have got to be kidding me," the third member of their group muttered.
Zoey watched them argue with mild amusement. Bounty hunters. Student bounty hunters, from the look of them. They'd probably seen the news about the million-cavon reward and decided to try their luck.
'Oh, this is going to be so fucking good.'
'Should we go easy on them?'
'Are you fucking nuts?! They're after your head!'
The one called Leo made his decision. With a battle cry that was probably meant to be intimidating, he charged toward Zoey, mahna flaring around his body. His two companions hesitated for a moment before following, loyalty or stupidity, Zoey couldn't tell which. Leo threw a punch coated in crackling energy. It was actually pretty good form, all things considered. He'd clearly had some training.
Zoey caught his fist in her palm. Leo's eyes went wide behind his mask of bravado. He tried to pull back, but Zoey's grip was iron. She could feel the electric mahna trying to shock her through her glove, but her Abnormal Conditions skill shrugged it off like a mild static shock.
"Nice try," she said.
Then she yanked him forward, ducked low, and launched him skyward with a back body drop that sent him sailing over her head. He crashed directly into his approaching companions, and before any of them could recover, Zoey was on them, grabbing Maya by the ankle, spinning her in a giant swing, and releasing her into the third member. All three of them went down in a heap of tangled limbs and pained yelps.
"Stay down," Zoey advised them. "You're out of your league."
Leo tried to get back up. Zoey planted her boot on his chest, pushing him flat.
"I said stay down."
He stayed down.
______________________________________________
Elena had seen enough. The criminal calling herself Panda was everything the footage had suggested and more. Her combat skills were extraordinary, not just powerful, but refined. Every movement was efficient, every counter perfectly timed. She wasn't just strong; she was experienced. This was someone who had spent years perfecting her craft. And she wasn't even using magji.
That was what bothered Elena the most. Any competent magjistar would have started throwing spells by now, if only to conserve stamina. But Panda fought exclusively with physical techniques, as if she either couldn't use magji or didn't want to reveal what her magji could do. Either option was concerning.
"She's testing us," Layla observed quietly. "Gauging our strength. Our tactics."
"I noticed." Elena's eyes tracked every movement, cataloging the criminal's fighting style for future reference. "She's also hiding something. That wrestling style, it's not her main fighting style."
"How can you tell?"
"Watch her hands. She keeps making fists instead of open palms. She's restraining herself."
Yimeh scoffed, flames dancing higher around his arms. "Who cares what she's hiding? Let me burn her and be done with it."
"Patience."
"Patience? She's humiliating us! Every second we stand here watching, our reputation-"
"Our reputation will survive," Elena cut him off. "What won't survive is rushing in blind against an unknown opponent who's already dismantled thirty of our people without breaking a sweat." She paused, watching Panda effortlessly dispatch the three student bounty hunters. "We go together. Coordinated. No heroics, no grandstanding. We treat her like an S-Grade threat until proven otherwise."
Layla nodded. "Understood."
Yimeh's jaw tightened, but he didn't argue further. Elena waited until Panda finished stepping on the student's chest, then walked forward. The crowd parted for her, magjistars dragging their wounded comrades out of her path. She stopped about twenty feet from the criminal, close enough to engage but far enough to react.
"You've made your point," Elena said calmly.
Panda lifted her foot off the student and turned to face her fully. Even through that ridiculous mask, Elena could feel the weight of her attention shifting.
"Have I? Because I feel like I've just been warming up."
"Thirty-two of my people are on the ground."
"And none of them are dead. You're welcome."
Elena's eye twitched. The casual arrogance of this woman was infuriating. "You expect gratitude?"
"Nope. I expect you to stop sending appetizers and give me the main course." Panda gestured toward Elena and her companions. "You three have been standing there this whole time. I'm starting to think you're scared."
Yimeh's control finally snapped. "Scared?! I'll show you scared, you-"
"Yimeh." Elena's voice was ice. "What did I just say?"
The fire magjistar caught himself, flames receding slightly. But his glare could have melted steel. Panda laughed, a genuine, delighted sound. "Oh, he's got spirit. I like him. He's going to be fun."
"You seem very confident for someone who's surrounded and outnumbered."
"I've been surrounded and outnumbered since this started. Hasn't really been a problem so far." Panda shifted her stance, lowering her center of gravity. "So what's it going to be, Elena Vasquez? Are you going to fight me yourself, or are you going to keep hiding behind your henchmen?"
Elena felt her own mahna stir in response to the challenge. It had been a long time since anyone had spoken to her like this. Since anyone had dared. She looked at Layla, then at Yimeh. Both nodded.
"Very well." Elena raised her hand, silver mahna beginning to coalesce around her fingers. "You wanted the main course. Let's see if you can handle it."
Yimeh stepped forward, flames erupting across his entire body until he looked like a walking inferno. "Finally."
Layla's sand cloud expanded, forming into dozens of razor-sharp tendrils. "Together, then."
Panda cracked her knuckles, the sound somehow audible over the crackle of flames and hiss of sand.
"Now we're talking."
Yimeh moved first, because of course he did. A torrent of flames screamed toward Panda like a horizontal pillar of destruction. The heat was intense enough to crack the cobblestones and send the nearest onlookers scrambling backward. Panda ran directly into it. She burst through the other side of the flames, her clothes singed but her body seemingly unharmed, and closed the distance to Yimeh in three explosive steps. Her hand shot toward his throat…
Sand intercepted her, a wall of grinding particles that forced her to abort the attack and leap backward. Layla's tendrils followed her, whipping through the air with lethal speed. Panda twisted mid-air, dodging two tendrils and deflecting a third with her forearm. She landed in a roll, came up smoothly, and had to immediately dive to the side as Yimeh launched another stream of fire at her previous position.
'Now this is what I'm fucking talking about,' Inner Zoey purred.
Elena hadn't moved yet. She was circling, watching, waiting for the perfect moment. The silver mahna around her hands had grown brighter, more concentrated. Panda engaged Yimeh directly, ducking under a flaming punch and scooping him up for a snap suplex. But before she could capitalize, sand wrapped around her ankle and yanked her off-balance. Yimeh recovered and brought both fists down in an overhead strike that would have crushed her skull if she hadn't twisted free at the last second. They were coordinating. Covering each other's openings. Not giving her time to focus on any single opponent.
'This is actually challenging,' Zoey admitted.
'I know. Isn't it the shit!?'
She caught Layla's next sand tendril and pulled, yanking the magjistar off-balance. But Yimeh was already there with a spinning kick wreathed in flames. Zoey blocked it with both arms crossed and felt the impact travel through her entire body. That actually hurt. She grinned beneath her mask.
'More. Give me more.'
______________________________________________
Tiffany watched her beloved Panda fight against the three strongest magjistars in Dhara, and she felt her heart flutter.
"So cool," she whispered.
A Peacekeeper tried to sneak past her while she was distracted. Tiffany's sword moved almost lazily, catching him across the chest with the flat of the blade and sending him tumbling away.
"I said no touching," she reminded him without taking her eyes off the fight.
Panda was in her element. Even against three coordinated opponents, she moved with a grace and power that made Tiffany's stomach do little flips. The way she flowed from defense to offense, the way she turned their attacks against each other, the way she…
Tiffany frowned. Something was wrong. She'd watched Panda fight before. At the auction, at the Peacekeeper headquarters. She knew how Panda moved, how she attacked, how she killed. This wasn't it. Panda was holding back. A lot. Tiffany couldn't put her finger on exactly what was different, but the fighting style felt… constrained. Like Panda was fighting with one hand tied behind her back.
'Is she trying to hide something?' Tiffany wondered.
It didn't matter, she decided. Panda was Panda, and Panda was amazing, and that was all that mattered. Tiffany would support her no matter what secrets she kept. Besides, the fight was really heating up now. The silver-haired woman had finally joined, and her mahna was doing something weird, creating constructs of solid light that hemmed Panda in from multiple angles while the fire and sand users pressed the attack.
"Ooh, she's good," Tiffany murmured appreciatively. "Maybe I should fight her after Panda's done."
The unconscious Chief Peacekeeper groaned at her feet. Tiffany patted her head absently.
"Don't worry, boss lady. Everything's going to be fine."
______________________________________________
Zoey was having a problem. It wasn't the three magjistars attacking her. They were strong, yes, Elena especially was proving to be a genuine threat with her ability to create solid constructs of silver mahna that restricted Zoey's movement options. But individually or even together, they weren't beyond her ability to handle. The problem was her mask.
Every time she went for a finishing blow, every time she committed to an attack that would actually end one of these fights, she had to pull back. A full-power strike, a proper combination, any of her real techniques, they all required movements that would shift or dislodge her mask. And she couldn't afford that.
'This is bullshit,' Inner Zoey snarled as she ducked under another fire blast. 'We could end this in thirty seconds if we actually tried!'
'I know. But our face-'
'Fuck our face! Let them see! Who cares?!'
'Everyone who knows Zoey Winters cares. Everyone who's ever watched our fights cares. Every magjistar in this city would know exactly who we are within five minutes of that footage getting out.'
Another sand tendril wrapped around her arm. Zoey ripped free, but Yimeh was already there with a flaming uppercut. She blocked it with both arms crossed and felt the impact knock her head back, and she felt her mask shift. Just slightly. Just enough. She caught it with her free hand before it could fall, pressing it back into place. But that moment of distraction cost her. Elena's silver construct slammed into her side, sending her skidding across the plaza.
'Shit.' Zoey rolled with the impact, coming up in a defensive crouch. Her mask was secure again, but that had been too close. Way too close.
The three magjistars pressed their advantage, closing in from three directions. Zoey's mind raced through options, discarding each one as too risky. She couldn't use her boxing. Couldn't use her full strength. Couldn't use any technique that would expose her fighting style to the cameras she knew were recording everything. For the first time since this fight started, Zoey felt genuinely frustrated.
'We have to run,' Outer Zoey admitted.
'No! We can still-'
'We can't. Not without exposing ourselves. And if we're exposed, everything falls apart. The mission, our normal life, everything.'
Inner Zoey raged against the logic, but even she couldn't deny it. They'd pushed as far as they could with one hand tied behind their back. Any further and they'd have to untie it.
"Tiffany!" Zoey shouted, decision made. "We're leaving!"
"What?!" Tiffany's voice was pure disbelief. "But you're winning!"
"Now!"
Zoey didn't wait for a response. She feinted toward Yimeh, making him commit to a defensive burst of flames, then pivoted and sprinted toward Tiffany's position. Layla's sand tried to intercept her, but she powered through it, ignoring the grinding pain as the particles tore at her clothes. Elena moved to cut her off, silver constructs forming a wall in her path. Zoey gathered mahna in her legs, the first mahna she'd openly used in this entire fight, and leaped over the wall entirely. She landed next to Tiffany, grabbed the still-unconscious Amelia, and threw her over her shoulder.
"But-" Tiffany started.
"Move."
Something in Zoey's tone must have conveyed the seriousness of the situation, because Tiffany stopped protesting. She fell into step beside Zoey as they sprinted toward the edge of the plaza.
"Stop them!" Elena commanded.
Spells flew at their backs, fire, ice, lightning, stone. Tiffany's sword danced behind them, deflecting what she could while Zoey simply tanked what she couldn't dodge. And then they were out of the plaza, disappearing into the streets of Dhara.
______________________________________________
Elena Vasquez stood in the ruins of what had once been the most beautiful park in the city, surrounded by the groaning bodies of her people, and tried to process what had just happened. They hadn't won. Oh, the criminals had retreated. They'd fled the scene. On paper, that might look like a victory. But Elena knew better. The panda woman had chosen to leave. She hadn't been driven off, hadn't been overwhelmed, hadn't been outmatched. She'd been in the middle of fighting all three of them simultaneously and had simply decided that continuing wasn't worth whatever she was trying to protect.
"Should we pursue?" Layla asked, her sand settling back into a passive cloud.
"No." Elena's voice was flat. "Get medical attention for the wounded. Secure the area. I want a full casualty report within the hour."
"What about the Chief Peacekeeper?"
"She's gone. For now, we focus on damage control."
Yimeh kicked a piece of broken statue, flames dying out around his body. "This is bullshit. We had her. A few more minutes and-"
"And what?" Elena turned to face him, silver eyes hard. "She went through thirty-two magjistars without using any visible spells. When she finally did use mahna, it was to escape. She held back the entire fight, Yimeh. Against all of us."
The fire magjistar opened his mouth, then closed it. Even his pride couldn't argue with what they'd all witnessed.
"She's not from Dhara," Elena continued. "She's not from any OM branch I'm aware of. Someone that powerful, that skilled, there would be records. There would be rumors, at least."
"So where did she come from?" Layla asked.
"I don't know. But I'm going to find out." Elena looked at the ruined plaza, the destroyed statues, the scorch marks and sand drifts and craters. "Whoever she is, wherever she came from, she just made herself the most wanted criminal in Dhara." She turned to leave, then paused.
"And get that journalist out of hiding. I know she's been recording everything. I want to see her footage."
______________________________________________
On a rooftop several blocks away, Sammy Heights clutched her magji tool with trembling hands and tried to remember how to breathe. She'd gotten everything. Every moment of the fight, from start to finish. The panda woman's brutal efficiency. The polar bear woman's casual deflections. The way both of them had fought against impossible odds and walked away when they chose to.
This was bigger than a scoop. This was the story that would define her career. Her fingers moved almost automatically, beginning the upload process. Within hours, this footage would be everywhere. Every news outlet in Dhara would be running it. Within days, it would spread to other OM branches.
"Panda and Polar Bear," Sammy whispered, testing the names.
They'd need better ones, eventually. But for now, those would do. Sammy Heights had set out to uncover the truth about the masked criminals who'd attacked the Peacekeeper's headquarters. What she'd found was something far more terrifying. A monster in a panda mask who fought an army for fun. And somewhere out there, that monster was still walking around with the Chief Peacekeeper slung over her shoulder.
"Just who the hell are you?" Sammy asked the empty air. She had a feeling she was going to spend a very long time trying to find out.