The first year after the affinity revelation was a study in contrasts.
The colossal coliseum was their world now. K would manifest simple training dummies made of condensed light.
"Focus, Anya," K instructed, his arms crossed. "Enhancement is not a blunt force. It is a surgeon's scalpel. You are not increasing strength; you are convincing reality that your muscles are more than they are. Find the frequency."
Anya closed her eyes, her brow furrowed in concentration. Her emerald gauntlets flickered. Then, they glowed with a steady, intense light. She threw a punch. There was no wind-up, no dramatic shout. Just a simple, straight punch that hit the dummy with a sound like a thunderclap. A web of cracks spread across its surface.
"Good," K said, a note of surprise in his voice. "Again. Faster. Make it instinct."
She did. Each punch was more precise than the last.
Deo watched, then turned to his own dummy. He remembered the System's words. Authority. He had everything. So why was it so hard to grasp one thing?
"Alright," he muttered to himself, cracking his neck. "Surgeon's scalpel. Not a hammer. Let's try... Fire."
He focused, reaching for that burning potential inside him. A flicker of orange flame danced around his fist. He threw a punch. The fire sputtered and died on impact, leaving a faint scorch mark.
He grunted in frustration. "Okay. Lightning."
White energy crackled around his hand. He punched. The dummy shuddered, and a small black mark appeared. It was something. But it was messy, uncontrolled. It was a hammer.
"Your energy is wild, Deo," K observed without looking at him. "You are trying to command an ocean with a shout. You must whisper. You must ask."
"I'm trying!" Deo snapped, frustration boiling over. "It's like... it's like there's a wall. I can feel the power, but I can't make it do what I want."
"Then feel harder," K said, his tone infuriatingly calm.
The years bled together. A decade passed in the coliseum.
Anya's progress was a straight, ascending line. She didn't just learn; she absorbed. Enhancement became second nature, layering over her movements until she was a blur of green light and devastating strikes. When she turned to Healing, it was the same. A deep, resonant green would envelop her hands, and a crack in a training dummy would seal shut as if it had never been.
Deo's progress was a jagged, stumbling graph. He'd have a breakthrough with Spatial energy, managing to teleport three feet, only to then spend six months unable to replicate it. His Fire would rage one day and be a damp squib the next.
He spent most of his time watching her.
"You make it look easy," he said one day during a rare rest period, leaning against a weapon rack. He was nursing a bruised ego more than a bruised body.
Anya looked up from where she was effortlessly mending a tear in her simple tunic with a touch. She shrugged, a new, confident ease in her movements. "It just makes sense to me. The energy... it wants to be used. You just have to get out of its way."
"Get out of its way," Deo repeated, a bitter taste in his mouth. "Right."
He wasn't getting out of the way. It felt like he was fighting his own soul.
The difference became impossible to ignore during a spar. K had them face each other.
"Anya, your goal is to land a touch on his center of mass. Deo, your goal is to prevent it using any means except direct physical force. No projectiles."
They began. Deo settled into a stance, ready to use his raw physicality, honed by a decade of death.
Anya moved.
It wasn't speed. It was efficiency. Every muscle, every tendon, was perfectly coordinated by Enhancement Devinity. She was beside him before he could even process she'd moved. He swung a backhand, but she flowed under it, her body contorting with impossible grace. Her fingers, tipped with that gentle green light, tapped his chest.
"Point," K said.
Deo stared, stunned. "Again."
They reset. Again. He focused, trying to predict her. He feinted. She didn't fall for it. She saw the tiny tension in his shoulder, the shift in his weight, and reacted not to the feint, but to the intention behind it. She slipped past his guard like water and tapped him again.
"Point."
A third time. Deo growled, lunging forward with everything he had. This time, Anya didn't dodge. Her grin turned sharp, feral. The nurturing green of her healing light vanished, replaced by a violent, brilliant jade. She met his charge not with evasion, but with a perfectly enhanced punch of her own.
Their fists connected.
Deo felt the impact shudder up his arm. It wasn't just strong. It was perfect. It was the absolute pinnacle of kinetic force, delivered with impossible precision. He was thrown backward, skidding across the floor of the coliseum.
He lay there, staring at the shimmering ceiling, his knuckles throbbing. She hadn't just beaten him. She'd overwhelmed him.
Anya stood over him, not with pity, but with that wild, excited light in her eyes. The alter ego that loved the fight was front and center. "You okay? You left yourself wide open."
He just nodded, unable to speak. The gap between them was a chasm.
Later that year, K summoned a Bane-class demigod a hulking brute made of molten brass.
"Anya. Neutralize it," K commanded.
Deo watched from the sidelines, a spectator in his own training.
The fight was brutal and beautiful. Anya was a darting emerald hornet. She didn't tank the blows; she redirected them, her enhanced senses reading the demigod's movements before it even made them. She used its immense weight against it, her healing energy instantly repairing the minor shocks and strains she sustained. She found a flaw in its armored plating, a seam in the brass. She focused a dozen enhanced punches on that single point, moving too fast for the beast to track.
With a final, shattering blow, she drove her fist through its chest and ripped out its molten core. The demigod exploded into fading embers.
She stood panting, covered in glowing ash, a fierce, triumphant smile on her face.
K nodded. "Adequate."
Adequate. She had just soloed a Bane-class entity, and he called it adequate.
Deo looked down at his own hands. A decade. Ten long years of constant, grinding effort. And what did he have to show for it? A few sparks, a shaky short-range teleport, and the ability to get knocked on his ass by his partner in three seconds flat.
He clenched his fists. The power was there. A ocean, just like K said. But every time he tried to touch it, it felt like a hand was wrapping around his throat, holding him back.
Whose hand?
He looked at K, who was giving a quiet note to a beaming Anya. He looked at the endless coliseum.
"Something's wrong with me," he whispered to the empty air around him. "And I'm going to find out what."