-VOLT VS RAZE -
While Marshal faced Voss at the centre of the bridge, the rest of Sentinel Prime engaged the crew.
Volt took Raze. He went airborne immediately - instinct from three years of fighting ground-based opponents. High altitude, lightning raining down, keep the range. Standard.
[VOLT - AERIAL LIGHTNING BARRAGE]
Raze watched him go up. Then he crouched slightly and pressed both palms flat to the bridge surface.
[KINETIC SHOCKWAVE - STRUCTURAL TRANSFER]
The shockwave didn't go up. It went into the bridge - into the metal, the cable anchors, the suspension points - and travelled through the entire structure before releasing upward through a support tower directly beside Volt's position.
The tower shook. Volt lost his magnetic purchase on the air current and dropped twenty feet before he caught himself.
"Clever," Volt said.
He didn't go back up. He came in low instead - fast, skimming the bridge surface, lightning trailing behind him like a contrail. He hit Raze with a direct discharge from six feet.
[VOLT - CONTACT DISCHARGE: CLOSE RANGE]
Raze took it full body. Staggered back three steps, smoke rising from his jacket.
Then he grinned.
He clapped both hands together once.
[KINETIC SHOCKWAVE - CHARGED RETURN: ELECTROMAGNETIC]
The shockwave that came back was different - threaded through with every volt Raze had just absorbed, amplified, turned sideways. It hit Volt's suit at the electromagnetic frequency his own discharge operated on. The suit's power cells shorted. Volt hit the ground and slid fifteen feet, system failure lights blinking across his visor.
He was still conscious. Barely. Suit fried. He pushed himself to one elbow and stayed there, watching Raze crack his knuckles.
"Stay down," Raze said. Not unkind. Just fact.
-BARRIER VS HOLLOW -
Barrier had watched Hollow walk through his maximum-density wall the first night. He came in with a different strategy.
He didn't make walls. He made cages - small, fast, layered. Threw the first one around Hollow's left arm. The second around his right.
[BARRIER FIELD - LIMB CONTAINMENT: LAYERED]
Hollow hardened both arms and pulled. The cages held for two seconds - then Hollow sprouted bone spikes from his forearms in every direction simultaneously.
[HOLLOW - BONE SPIKE PROJECTION: RADIAL]
The cages shattered outward.
Hollow came at him directly after - no tactics, just forward. Barrier backpedalled throwing barriers as fast as he could generate them. Hollow broke through each one without slowing down. The sixth he didn't break - he caught it with both hands and threw it back.
The barrier hit Barrier in the chest and he went over the guard rail. He caught himself - barely - hanging by one hand from the bridge edge, generating a platform under his feet with his other hand.
He looked up. Hollow was standing at the rail looking down at him.
Barrier made a barrier inside Hollow's mouth.
[BARRIER FIELD - INTERNAL: ORAL CAVITY]
Hollow's jaw cracked sideways. He made a sound - the first sound he'd made since the fight started - and staggered back from the rail.
Barrier climbed back up. Both breathing hard. Hollow's jaw reset - he hardened it back into place with a grinding sound that was unpleasant to hear. He looked at Barrier with something new in his expression.
He grabbed a section of bridge guardrail, ripped it free, and used it like a club.
[HOLLOW - HARDENED IMPROVISED WEAPON]
It hit Barrier's barrier wall and the wall held - but the force behind it was enormous, V2 strength amplified by full-body hardening. Barrier went skidding. He made a cushion barrier at the last second before hitting a support pillar. Survived. Barely. Sitting against the pillar trying to remember how breathing worked.
-SABLE VS ARIA BLAZE -
Aria had been watching Sable since the crew arrived. Shadow travel - instant repositioning through any dark surface. Blinding fields. Unpredictable movement. Everything Aria's Velocity Fracture was supposed to counter and somehow didn't.
Because Sable's first move was to turn off the lights.
[SHADOW VEIL - AREA DARKNESS: FULL SECTOR]
Total blackness. Not just the bridge lights - the glow from buildings, the news drone lights, the ambient city illumination. All of it, swallowed.
Aria ran at full speed and hit a support cable she hadn't seen coming.
[VELOCITY FRACTURE - SPEED: 0.3 MACH]
At that velocity, hitting stationary steel felt like hitting a wall made of pain. She bounced, rolled, came up - still moving, still functional, but the darkness was absolute.
She went still. Listened.
Sable moved through shadows without sound. Aria couldn't hear her coming. Couldn't see her. Speed meant nothing if there was nothing to aim at.
Except Aria wasn't just moving. She was occupying multiple positions simultaneously.
[VELOCITY FRACTURE - MULTI-VECTOR PRESENCE]
Three versions of herself, moving at different speeds through different paths, creating a probability field - she was everywhere her trajectory could have taken her. Not teleportation. Pure speed.
Sable appeared directly behind where Aria had been standing. She hadn't been standing there. She was four feet to the left.
She hit Sable once - open palm, clean - and Sable staggered.
[SHADOW VEIL - BLINDING PULSE: OMNIDIRECTIONAL]
Sable released light from every shadow simultaneously - a pulse of pure white that came from everywhere at once. No direction to avoid. Aria caught it full in the face.
Even at her speed, she couldn't dodge something with no source point. She went down - disoriented, vision white, velocity fracture destabilized.
Sable stood over her. Darkness pooling back around her feet.
Then Aria's hand shot out and grabbed Sable's ankle. She'd been tracking the footsteps through vibration, not sight. She hadn't been fully down. She'd been waiting.
[VELOCITY FRACTURE - GROUND SPEED TAKEDOWN]
She didn't win. But she didn't lose either. Both of them sat in the darkness breathing, neither able to finish it.