The return to the coliseum was not a triumph. There was no fanfare, no acknowledgment from K. One moment they were standing over the subdued, breathing form of the Scarlet Boar in the humid jungle, the next they were back on the familiar, shimmering platform, the sterile air a shock to their lungs.
K stood before them, as impassive as ever. His gaze swept over them, noting the lingering grime, the faint scars on Anya's arms, the new, quiet steadiness in Deo's posture.
"The entity is neutralized," he stated, his voice devoid of inflection. "The objective was met. Barely. And two years behind an acceptable schedule."
The criticism was a bucket of cold water. Deo felt a flicker of the old defensiveness, but it was quickly doused by a newfound resilience. He had held the line. He had created the opening. The memory was a solid thing inside him, a cornerstone.
Anya, however, did not bow her head. "We learned its patterns. We adapted. We worked as a unit." Her voice was calm, but there was steel in it. She was not asking for praise; she was stating a fact.
K's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. He looked at her, then at Deo, and for a fleeting second, something unreadable passed behind his eyes. It wasn't approval, but it was a recognition of a shifted variable.
"The foundation of a unit is trust," K said, his tone shifting from dismissive to analytical. "Trust is a liability if it is not backed by indivdual competence. You," he nodded at Anya, "have begun to master your body as a weapon. You," his gaze landed on Deo, "have touched the barest shadow of your potential. You stopped a beast. Now, you must learn to stop an army."
He snapped his fingers.
The coliseum floor rippled. Instead of one or two demions, a dozen appeared. Then twenty. They were the same Nuisance-class entities, but they moved with a hive-mind synchronization they had never shown before, flanking, surrounding, attacking in waves.
"The parameters have changed," K's voice echoed. "The objective is no longer survival. It is synchronization. You will not win by being two individual fighters. You will win by becoming a single entity with two bodies. Begin."
The horde descended.
Old habits died hard. For the first few minutes which contained several dozen simulated deaths they fought as they always had: Anya as the unstoppable spearhead, Deo as the struggling, peripheral support.
« SIMULATED DEATH #15,002: LOGGED. CAUSE: OVERWHELMED BY NUMERICAL SUPERIORITY. »
They respawned.
"Your rhythm is discordant!" K's voice was a lash. "You are two separate songs crashing into each other! Find the harmony!"
They tried again. Anya, frustrated, carved a path through three demions, only to find Deo had been cornered behind her, his spatial distortions unable to cover the gap she'd created.
« SIMULATED DEATH #15,041: LOGGED. CAUSE: ISOLATION AND DISEMBOWELMENT. »
Darkness. Light.
They stood back to back in the brief moment of respite before the next wave formed.
"This isn't working," Anya breathed, her shoulders tense. "I can't just fight. I have to fight with you."
"I know," Deo replied, his mind racing, the memory of the crystalline lattice fresh in his mind. "I can't just defend. I have to defend for you."
The next wave came. This time, Anya didn't surge forward. She held her ground, a pivot point. She became the anvil.
"Left flank, high!" she shouted.
Deo didn't look. He trusted her. He flung a hand out, and a wall of solidified air, shimmering with that new silver potential, erupted to their left, deflecting a leaping shadow demion.
"Charging, center!" Deo yelled, sensing a build-up of kinetic energy.
Anya didn't question it. She planted her feet, her gold light flaring, and met the stone demion's charge not with evasion, but with a perfectly timed, enhanced palm strike that used its own momentum to send it crashing into two of its allies.
It was clumsy. It was imperfect. But it was a start.
They weren't just sharing a battlefield; they were sharing a sensory map. Deo's growing spatial awareness painted a picture of the battlefield's flow, which he fed to Anya in short, sharp commands. Anya's enhanced perception read the micro-expressions and tells of their foes, predicting attacks before they came, which she relayed to him.
A month of this new, grueling training bled by. The death count was still high, but the nature of their deaths changed. They died together, caught in a crossfire, or making a simultaneous error in judgment. It was a shared failure, and somehow, that made it easier to bear.
During a rest period, sitting against the cool wall of the coliseum, Anya looked at Deo. "That thing you did with the boar. The… stopping. What was it?"
Deo stared at his palm. "I don't know. It's not one of the affinities. It's… something before that. It's like I'm not creating energy, I'm just… convincing a tiny piece of reality to be something else for a second."
"Stasis," she said, the word simple and definitive.
He looked at her. "What?"
"Stasis. A complete cessation of movement or change. It's not a shield. It's a full stop." She gave him a sideways look, a ghost of her old grin playing on her lips. "A surgeon's scalpel."
The term fit. It felt right. He had a name for it now. Stasis.
The next time they faced the horde, something clicked. They moved not as two fighters, but as a single, coordinated organism. Anya was the fluid, unstoppable motion; Deo was the sudden, unyielding stillness. She would create openings with her whirlwind attacks, and he would seal them with precise Stasis fields, trapping limbs, freezing projectiles in mid-air, creating momentary platforms for her to leap from.
They cleared the first wave without a single death. Then the second.
K watched, his arms crossed, saying nothing.
By the fifth wave, they were breathing heavily, their energy reserves draining, but they were standing. The last demion, a hulking stone brute, charged Anya. She was off-balance, her Restoration energy focused on mending a deep gash on her leg.
Deo didn't panic. He didn't try to summon a massive power. He simply looked at the space between the demion's foot and the floor and whispered, "Stop."
A small, localized Stasis field crystallized the air under its foot. The demion, mid-stride, tripped perfectly, its own momentum sending it crashing face-first into the ground with earth-shaking force. It lay there, stunned.
Anya didn't need an invitation. She limped forward, gathered the last of her Enhancement energy into her fist, and drove it down, shattering the creature's head into dust.
Silence.
They stood in the center of the coliseum, surrounded by fading motes of light, chests heaving, drenched in sweat and the phantom ache of a hundred near-deaths.
K was silent for a long time.
Finally, he spoke. "Adequate."
It was the same word he had used for Anya soloing a Bane-class entity. But this time, it felt different. It felt like the highest praise he was capable of giving.
He looked at them, his gaze lingering on Deo. "You have found the first note of your song. Do not forget the melody." He turned away. "Dismissed."
As he vanished, Deo looked at Anya. She was smiling, a real, tired, triumphant smile. She offered him a fist.
He bumped it, his own grin spreading across his face.
They had not just survived. They had synchronized. The two-year grind in the jungle had not just given them a victory over a boar; it had given them the language to become partners. And for the first time, the endless, grinding path of the trial ahead didn't seem quite so desolate.