Obi shoved the doors wide again with a hip and a grin, carrying some screws On the center bench, he'd already built his newest bad idea: a sturdy frame of iron with a cradle for a stone and a drop-blade on a guided rail.
"Not a bad idea," he told it. "A terrible one. But not bad."
He'd lined everything he could think of. A chalked cutting line around the yellow sphere. A diamond scorer. Clamps sturdily holding the stone at four points. A rubber catch below the rail. A copper grounding strap that ran from the frame to a fat nail sunk into the concrete.
"Alright, beautiful," he murmured to the Luminite. The pale sphere didn't reflect his face so much as consider it. Light breathed inside it - slow, patient pulses like a sleeping animal.
"Just a clean split. No explosions. No burnt eyebrows. Don't embarrass me in front of myself."
He tightened the last screw, wiped his palms on his apron, and took the lever in both hands.
"Three," he said to no one. "Two. One-"
The door creaked.
Obi blinked. The lever was already falling.
Steel hissed down the rail with a decisive, merciless grace. The blade touched the scored line.
The forge went white.
Light cracked out of the Luminite in a ring - no sound at first, just pressure - as if the stone exhaled lightning. Filaments of gold crawled the clamps, raced the grounding strap, and still had enough temper to leap into Obi's hands.
Obi shieked. It wasn't pain like a knife - it was the full-body insult of touching the wrong end of a thunderstorm. His curls stood on end so fast, he looked like he had a bush on his head. He stumbled back into a stack of scrap with an undignified cymbal crash and sat down hard, blinking smoke out of his eyes, a thin seam of soot now running perfectly across his nose like a painter's signature.
"What in the - you absolute idiot!"
Cinderette was in the doorway, half in, half deciding whether to storm in farther. Cloak. Boots. The full package, minus the mask. Her hair was tied back in a quick, irritated knot. She took two hurried steps and then another despite herself, fingers hovering as if unsure whether to slap him or check his pulse.
"I had it," Obi said heroically, while little sparks still snapped across his sleeves. He tried to stand and sat again. "Mostly…?"
"You were splitting something with a… guillotine!?"
"A very precise guillotine," he corrected, then remembered to look toward the bench like a man checking a coin toss that determines his entire future. His vision swam for a heartbeat, then cleared.
Smoke curled off the blade. The clamps were still buzzing faintly, as if reconsidering a life choice.
And in the cradle lay two perfect semispheres.
The glow inside them hadn't dimmed. If anything, it had learned a new trick - light pulsed from one half to the other in a slow, shared breath, as if the split suns were talking to each other about what they had just survived.
Obi forgot to pretend to be cool. He whooped, the sound cracking into laughter he couldn't stop. "Ha! Look at that! Science by audacity!" He slapped the rail (regretted it, hissed, shook his hand, kept grinning). "Perfect line. No fracture. No shatter. Tell me I'm not a genius. Go on. Try."
Cinderette's mouth wanted to be a smile. It settled for a scowl that came with color at her cheeks. "You could've died."
"But I didn't! The forces of nature don't have what it takes!" he exclaimed, already on his feet again, already leaning to inspect the cut. "And now Raizen gets true twin cores - balanced, matched – ohhh, this is going to be a masterpiece!"
"Your hair is… Uhh…" She lifted a hand, then aborted the gesture halfway. "Wild."
"Thank you," he said earnestly. "It's called innovation. Sometimes it happens to your head."
She huffed a laugh despite herself, then bit it back like she hadn't meant to let it out. "Imbecile," she muttered, "Are you… hurt?"
"Only extremely handsome," Obi said, then softened. "I'm fine." He wiggled every finger to show he could. "You came to…?"
"Commission," she said too fast, then slowed.
"And to see if you were still alive after what you pulled at the Maw. Half the Underworks thinks you three robbed a prince. The other half thinks you saved one."
"Neither half is wrong," Obi said, and because he couldn't stand still more than ten seconds in a row, he was already clearing a second bench, already pulling out his wonderful collection of hammers and screwdrivers, putting them in order for the fifth time already.
"So. For him - twin blades. No drama. Spine straight, edge honest. I seat each half in a channel along the core, so the cut carries the current instead of just the grip. Right here" His pencil stabbed a dot in the cross-section. "Weight perfectly balanced, so he doesn't outrun his own footwork. Then-"
He stopped himself mid-breath, catching himself red-handed. Realized he's been talking for minutes without breathing properly. He just info-dumped at a girl in his doorway who could make his lights flicker with a handful of gas if she wanted.
"I'm ranting" he said sheepishly. "Whoops…"
"Yes" Cinderette approved, and laughed - a quick, bright sound that startled both of them. She put a hand to her mouth like she could catch it before it escaped. "I don't mind, go on!"
Obi blinked. Then recovered like a professional. "So… You are commissioning something."
Her gaze flicked to the split gems, back to him. "I might be."
"What do you want?" he asked, and for a rare moment his voice didn't joke first. "Not as a show. As a tool. Let me guess: something that hates you when you swing the wrong way and loves you when you're nailing it?"
She hesitated. "Something that doesn't need me to be loud," she said finally. "Something that moves when I decide."
He nodded, as if that made immediate, beautiful sense in his head. "Not loud… Wouldn't say it's quite my specialty, but I'll sort something out. You can say no, but uh…" He pushed a stool toward her with his foot, casual as breathing. "Stay a bit? I need a witness when genius happens so I don't get blamed for modesty."
"You're insufferable," she said.
"And yet." He gestured at the hemispheres. "Two stones make sparks when you hit them"
Obi bent back over the bench. In the corner of his eye, the twins pulsed - one, two - like a promise.
Hikari woke with her cheek on something soft. Raizen's spare shirt. She lifted her head, blinked with a blurred vision, and listened.
Thud… thud… thud.
Not angry. Just stubborn.
She was at one of the sides at the the room with the pillar. The lamp was still there, tired and willing. Raizen stood in front of the post he'd been abusing for days - wraps new, knuckles already red through them, shoulder setting and resetting like a machine he had tuned too tightly.
He hit clean. He hit right. He hit as if each punch made a small path through something nobody else could see.
Hikari watched one more combination - jab, cross, hook that never turned sloppy - then let the smile happen at the corners of her mouth.
"You never learn, do you?" she laughed.