Chapter 44: Tongue of the Leviathan

"French Kiss."

The muscles of the war tongue flexed and contracted, contorting the massive fleshy structure into a point. As the flesh was compressed, it made a horrible frothing sound as saliva was wrung out of it. The folded up tongue formed a tightly tapered 'U' shape, like how a dog drinks water. Then it lashed out.

With a lunging motion like a titanic snake, the war tongue barreled forward. It tore into the PenDragon, making a thunderous wet crack sound like a great sodden whip and leaving a neat circular hole in the mech's hull. Air rushed past Laddie's head as it escaped out of the pressurised cockpit and into the surroundings. Laddie could see the ground from the hole which the attack had left. He'd had to move his leg to avoid it being taken with the rest of the sundered steel.

"Fight back," Redd commanded. "I'm not keeping you alive so that I can enjoy watching you squirm. Fight back."

Laddie whimpered and made a pathetic swing with the PenDragon's lance. Dire deflected it trivially, the large and clunky weapon sliding off of the war tongue's slick surface. Laddie followed up, swinging down with the shield arm. Dire met it with an equal force, and the villain's monstrous tongue hammered away at it. Laddie was forced back against a wall by the heavy, constant smacking he was receiving. Each strike was strong enough to tear a man's torso off of his legs. The PenDragon absorbed them all.

"Watch out for that move, Dire. If you keep hammering away at that shield, then they'll just counteract with all the force that you put into it," Redd instructed.

"Right," Dire hissed. Laddie desperately deployed his hidden weapon. The shield began to glow as the mechanisms within it filled it with energy ripe to be released. If that charged up shunt of kinetic force struck Dire head-on then he would be launched so far and high that he would collide with the academy's security shield and get fried. So that wasn't going to happen.

"Buckler-"

"French. Kiss."

The war tongue cleaved through the PenDragon's armour like it was a chisel and the machine was merely soft marble. Laddie felt the suit shudder as the attack cleaved through its shoulder. Then they heard the arm crashing to the floor, and the controls for that side locked up.

Dire had taken the PenDragon's shield arm right off.

"I... I can't watch this..." Rory whimpered. "This can't be happening..." The boy's entire body shivered non stop. The cold hand of death was creeping it's way up his back as it had before. But not to take him. Just to mock him. Subject him to some more turmoil before the reaper finally came for him. Rory was convinced it would take everything from him before it was his turn. In his mind, his peers and allies had already been executed by the invaders. There was no sliver of light or ray of hope in his mind. He was in a self-serving doom spiral.

Redd wasn't having much fun watching the kid wail and curl up.

"Dire. It's time to finish up."

"Gotcha," Dire smiled in reply. But before he finished the man in the metal suit off for good, he was going to use every move he had left. Just to try them out. If they had to die, Dire liked to think that they would prefer to burn out in a blaze of glorious teeth and tongues and acid. It was only humane.

"Predatory Consummation: Komodo Dragon's Tongue."

The hideous forked tendril which Dire produced from their brand new maw was special, in a way. Of all the tongues that Laddie had seen the boy produce, this one was by far the most revolting. It was the thickest and slickest with that rotten, abhorrent spit of them all. It bubbled and toiled with the stuff, a thick, filmy layer completely surrounding it. The tongue probed around lazily, splattering its drippings around before flicking itself violently in the direction of the PenDragon. The fork acted sort of like a slingshot, hocking massive globules of acidic spit onto the PenDragon. Completely soaking it in corrosive poison. It was deforming now. Where there was once a proud and strong form of stark angles and solid metal there was now a figure reminiscent of melted wax or a rotting, decayed carcass.

Laddie was being digested before being swallowed.

Acid dripped onto his head from above. It dripped onto the control console infront of him. One thought predominated his mind.

"This isnt fair."

Dire summoned countless tongues, they emerged from his back like spider's legs. He hoisted himself up in the air with them, and he set them upon the PenDragon with glee. Some were topped with mouths of their own, like a xenomorph's tongue. They gnashed impatiently as they snaked their way towards Laddie. They were fixing to consume the metal titan, but not before ripping it into a thousand bite-sized pieces. Dire threw his arms out to the side as he engaged his attack.

"Predatory Consummation: Feeding Frenzy!"

"It just isnt fair."

Teeth raked along the PenDragon like the claws of a feral beast. They left deep cuts along the surface and ripped instruments out as they went. They kept digging in, closer and closer to the core where Laddie resided.

"He should be the one... to be punished... But I can't touch him... Because of what? Some hostages? Fuck that..."

Acid soaked into the machine, corrupting it. It melted and peeled as the substance seeped through it, permeated it.

"I don't care..."

The hundreds of maws ripped off hunks of softened metal in concurrence and swallowed them, turning them into mush within themselves and continuing to feast.

"I don't care if I die," Laddie thought as Dire's tongues ripped his creation to shreds. "I don't even care if the hostages die."

The tongues wormed their way into the suit's mechanisms and began to pry it apart, pulling away from the last pieces of metal which separated Laddie from the monster which was knocking, coming to swallow him whole.

"Right now, I don't care about anything except ending you, 'Dire'."

Acid hissed and toothy maws roared and licked their lips hungrily as the PenDragon was brutally taken apart. Dire laughed and shook with elation. Laddie looked on in disgust and rage. Worse than he had ever felt in his life. A possessing rage that banished rational thought.

"Don't think I've forgotten. Heroes always have something up their sleeves, right? Some final weapon that has the power to banish evil once and for all? They always come out on top in the end. Even if it kills them. I'm just the same. I have one more. One more weapon. Something that will kill you for sure. Everything else be damned."

The PenDragon creaked and heaved like an ancient battleship. It used the last of its energy to raise its one remaining arm forward. The lance was pointed, aimed directly at Dire's heart. Dire was confused for a moment as to what this would achieve. He didn't know what was awaiting him. He nor Redd had any idea what this last weapon was. That gave Laddie one chance to end it.

"I'll see you in hell. Murderer."

"Final Justice: Flaming Spear."

Ignition. Angular thrusters engaged.

The lance lit up as searing white flames encircled it. It began to spin, the rocket propulsion taking it around at mind-boggling RPM in the thousands. Laddie felt the heat of his own weapon. So did Dire.

Engage primary thruster.

Release.

That blast of flame could've sent a man into orbit. The PenDragon's own arm was evaporated by the fire and crumpled from the explosive force of the lance's launch. It fired off like a guided missile, trained on Dire's centre. A roaring spiral of flame catapulted forth an arrow of light, and Dire recoiled in shock. The war tongue spasms and wrapped itself around the boy, blocking the spear's tip. The missile dug into Dire and pushed them backwards. They sent out tongue after tongue, latching onto anything solid. They dug in their heels and shielded their eyes from the blaze. The spear ignored it all and drilled forwards, taking Dire with it. They flew back, colliding with the opposite wall of the academy.

Then, the spear began to peter out. The flames died down. The rotation ceased. It's incessant drilling ended, and it turned into just a spike of smoking metal embedded in Dire's tongue. What a disappointment. Redd breathed out. That was a showy attack. They almost thought it would work.

"Is that all you got?" Dire boasted.

Laddie grinned.

"No."

Click.

Dire's eyes widened.

Detonation.

A pillar of flame erupted from the PenDragon's lance. The metal splintered and was washed away as if by a burning tidal wave. The first thing which Dire felt was the shrapnel entering his body. The second thing was the heat. Then the shockwave.

The erupting explosion levelled that entire segment of the school building, collapsing several floors worth of masonry and metal on top of Dire. A plume of smoke reached as high as the clouds. The blast blew back Redd's coat and almost threw them and Rory off of the roof. The queen was caught by the blood knight, who also secured the hostages. Rory had the suit.

The PenDragon was bathed in an orange glow from the inferno. It raged on the spot where Dire had just been standing. The machine fell back. Its purpose was fulfilled. The damage it had sustained was too much. That last act was its final one.

Laddie slid back in his chair in the cockpit of the PenDragon. He saw the critical system failure warning show up on his multitude of screens before they blinked out and turned to a mix of simple black or nothing but static. He felt the controls become heavy until they stopped responding completely and the suit went limp.

The cockpit was not shielded from the outside anymore. The cold night wind blew in from the dozens of holes of various sizes that Dire had punched in the suit. There were waves of warmth. Laddie was feeling the pulsating heat emanating from the fireball of his own making. It was comfortable. Like a campfire.

The man was dazed. In shock at what he had just done. The consequences of which had not yet reached him. He just collapsed in on himself, exhausted. Revenge was his, he supposed. Now what?

Redd cleared their throat hoarsely and re-adjusted their coat as the blood knight set the queen down.

"Well," They said, regarding the flames grimly. Their voice was coarse and croaking. Rory felt as though they might have been embarrassed. But they still held the cards. "I'm going to kill two of the hostages, and then I'm going to kill both of you. Then I'm leaving."

They snapped their fingers. The noise was sharper and harsher than usual, on account of their adversary's ceramic gauntlets. It sounded more like striking flint or banging rocks together.

The mosquito mutant got to work, grabbing the first two hostages to hand, which happened to be Mr Etsuko and Mr Coleridge. Feldon was spared. Perhaps their higher executive status gave them more value as a hostage. Perhaps he was just lucky.

The blood knight held the two hostages up to the moonlight, gripping them by the hair on their heads. Then, they pulled their head to the side, priming their knife-like proboscis like the blade of a pendulum.

"Wait."

Redd sighed.

"Ok, which one of you was it? Don't you know begging will get you nowhere? Plus it's entirely undignified."

It wasn't Rory. Rory only watched in horror and clutched the sides of their head. It wasn't Laddie either. The man only smirked, fully prepared for death in their entirely idle suit. Then… Who had just called out?

Their voice was somewhat distorted… Redd couldn't tell at first.

...

...

...

Within the flames, Dire persisted. Something was enveloping them. A new skin of sorts. It was like hundreds of layers of grime and sweat and oil and fat had congealed on top of him and made a solid mass. Like an egg. All of his pain disappeared.

"Remember. Dire. I love you."

That voice wasn't a voice from Dire's memory. That voice was a physical entity inside of Dire's body. It was like there was a microscopic mouth forming the words in his inner ear, or like his innards were vibrating in just the right frequency to form an audio signal. They were being spoken too directly by something inside of them. Dire burst from the soft shell in which they had been enveloped

The villain emerged from the flames.

"I said wait."

"D-Dire…?" Redd stammered. This wasn't right. Redd… Redd had never seen anything like this before. They had seen the size and felt the force of that explosion, and the amount of time which Dire had spent burning…

In order to have survived that…

Redd had never seen That Man give anyone so much power before. It's as if… There really wasn't a Dylan Adonis anymore. Like That Man had swallowed them whole, digested them, and spat out a monster. A monster by the name of Dire. A monster that was an extension of That Man himself. A drone.

They were shambling forward, completely covered in flames. The war tongue burned and blistered all over, arched so that its foul spit dripped directly onto Dire's head. Next, Dire, still consumed by a blanket of fire, reached up and unhinged his jaw. Rows of elongated teeth stretched out and punctured the tip of the tongue. With a feral roar and violent jerking motion, Dire tore their own tongue to pieces. Blood spewed out as if from a high-pressure hose nozzle. Like a macabre fire sprinkler, Dire was extinguished.

Blood ran down their body, putting out the last of the embers. They were covered in it. From head to toe, they were completely red. Save from the off white teeth which jutted out of their body all over, and the black of the gums to which those teeth rooted themselves.

"Redd… You said… That you would only kill the hostages… if I lost… right? Well… I'm still kicking, so that means I haven't lost yet… So why don't you save it? Are you trying to embarrass me or something? In front of our guests?"

"R-right…" Redd concurred, putting the hostages back down. The heroes werent fighting anymore. Laddie. Rory. They were both catatonic. No more lively than an extra rare steak.

"...Hey, you wanna see something really fucking cool?"

Dire was limping and mangled, but still smiling. He was hungry for more. He shambled towards the PenDragon, with that gigantic tongue wrapped around him.

"It's my 'ultimate technique'. I just came up with it now… Even got a good name for it. I bet you're dying to see… right?" Dire gently petted his war tongue as if he were caressing a horse, drawing Laddie's attention towards it.

"The size of the tongue goes up with the width of the mouth… Theres not much space to put a mouth any bigger than this one on my body… But what if it didn't go on my body? What if it went here?"

The war tongue reared. Ivory white spikes erupted from it, tearing it in half vertically. Horrifically, it ripped itself open leaving shreds of flesh hanging between the separate halves. A gaping maw of serrated teeth went all the way down the length of the tongue. Far larger than anything Dylan could have fit on his bony frame. And then, from within that giant and terrifying maw, came something even more gigantic and terrifying.

"Predatory Consummation Killer Technique: Leviathan's Tongue…"

-REGENCY ACADEMY WEST CORRIDOR-

Gawain did not like useless people. Gawain liked capable people. He knew that not everyone could be as capable as him. He didn't expect such a thing. He only needed people to be good at something. Useful in some way whatsoever. As far as Gawain was concerned, Nikau was not one of those people. Separated from his weapon of choice, and lacking in potency even with it in hand, all that Nikau could do is cower Gawain's legs. It pissed him right off.

Nikau saw it a different way. He wasn't incapable, just temporarily embarrassed. He would prove his worth. His moment would come. This hero business wasn't a silly trifle to him. He was aiming for the top, no matter how unlikely it seemed. He was going to show the world and Gawain just how capable he was, and this was his opportunity to do so.

Gawain had been stuck in a stalemate with the ribbon using villain a painfully long amount of time. The battle, if you could even call it that, had devolved into an aching stalemate. Once Ruban realised that she couldn't use her hostages as leverage against someone so cold and pragmatic she had resorted to obscuring herself and waiting for an opportunity to strike. Gawain had been maintaining a constant Paso Doble, his counter stance, feeling the world around him with Jormungandr's senses and merely reacting to any slight perturbation in the equilibrium.

Gawain was like an old west gunslinger in a standoff, down to the pose which he had chosen to lock himself into. His state was close to meditative apart from the nagging presence of Nikau. Oh, and there was one more person there.

"Wait... I can hear something..." Tanith said, her tail prickling.

"Oh really? Well, at least one of you is making yourself useful. What is it that you hear, Haneyama?"

Was that praise? It felt sort of backhanded, but Tanith couldn't help but squirm, feeling like she had just received a compliment, not something she took well. Nikau silently seethed.

"The vents... I think she's moving through the air vents..." Tanith stammered. Gawain looked up and extended a curious limb of Jormungandr.

"Where. No, don't tell me. Just fire off a volley of those spikes the next time you hear her, and I'll follow your lead. Deal?"

"What about me?" Asked Nikau.

"Stay out of the way."

Tanith saw the noise in her soundscape. It was the lightest possible thumping. Not a noise that a person with ordinary senses would be able to hear. But to Tanith, it was as clear as day. She focused in on it... Aimed her tail... And...

"Hair Stinger!"

Ruban was stunned when the vent which she crawled through was perforated with poison quills. She quickly initiated her ribbons, rapidly pulling herself back through the way she came.

"She's retreating. That way!" Tanith exclaimed, firing another volley of stingers. These ones were blocked by a falling ribbon that caught them, but Gawain had enough of an idea. You see, he wasn't looking for an exact location. He only needed the right vent. Jormungandr roared like a dark flame as it ripped into the ceiling. It clamped down hard on the metal exterior of the vent, proliferating until it had grabbed the whole thing. Then, it tugged. The ceiling gave way, and the vent was pulled out of it by force.

"Did... did we get her?" Tanith wondered.

Gawain shrugged. He had acted quickly, but there was no guarantee. Feeding Jormungandr into either end of the square metal tube, he soon realised that he had come up empty. Or so he thought. No, there was something slick in the vent. Something that Jormungandr was very interested in.

"She's bleeding." Gawain smiled.

"S-so?" Nikau inquired.

"Tanith, can you hear anything right now?" Gawain asked while he had Jormungandr poke a hole in the vent and pull out the offending material.

"Nope... Basically, only the noise makes when her ribbons rub together, which is coming from everywhere at once. She must be moving through the air on them to avoid making any footsteps. S-sorry..."

"Don't be. You did a good job, but your usefulness has run out. I can take it from here."

Gawain held something in his hands. It was a torn scrap of ribbon. On it was a few scant drops of blood. Ruban's blood. Jormungandr devoured it greedily.

"Fetch, boy."

Jormungandr did not smell. It more accurately tasted the air. And what it was tasting right now could not have been more indistinguishable. The taste of blood. It was thick and clear through the jungle of ribbon. Jormungandr honed in on it as if it were a shark and gave chase. Like a thorny bush laden with blade-like leaves, Jormungandr grew off of Gawain's neck.

She was right down the hall, suspended in the air by her ribbons. She thought she was slick, but Gawain knew right where she was. The cat and mouse game ended now.

The boy gave his weapon a little twist. He gestured as if he were casually re-adjusting a steering wheel, and Jormungandr began to rotate with enough force to blow apart the dangling vines, creating a clearing from where it was to its target. The monstrous red ball of hunger opened wide its jaws, ready to clamp down on something sanguine and delectable.

As Jormungandr barreled forward, Gawain got a foreboding feeling in his gut. It felt almost too… easy. Something was wrong.

Jormungandr blasted past the final barrier of ribbons and unfurled to ravage its prey. Gawain saw what was wrong just in time. He pulled back the leash on Jormungandr like he was halting a rabid bulldog from tearing out a child's throat. That wasn't Ruban. That wasn't even Ruban's blood he was tasting.

"Lola…!?"

The girl was dripping with blood. From her neck and her wrists, where the ribbons were digging particularly deep into her flesh. She looked afraid. Her mouth was gagged with another ribbon.

Gawain had come centimetres away from killing her. He recoiled from the sight. He had been chasing a phantom! Dammit!

So where was Ruban?

Jormungandr bristled. Gawain was under attack. The villain had launched an assault from the rear. Attacking a man with his back turned? Hardly honourable, but it was no matter. Jormungandr could easily defend against...

Gawain felt his Jormungandr torn through like tissue paper against an electric drill. Milliseconds later, he felt a cold crunch and wet squelch as ribbons entered his body. Some struck only flesh or organs as they bored into him. That was the squelch. A few of them, three to be precise, struck bone. The spine. That was the crunch.

Gawain's body became nothing but a blank fuzz. Static below the chin. Like a rock was sewn to his neck in place of a torso. He toppled forward, unable to even utter a word. He couldn't feel any pain from the deep, deadly wounds. He couldn't feel anything. He felt about as much from Ruban cutting him apart as you might feel from watching somebody else cut into a raw steak.

Apart from his head, he had already died.

While his limp cheek reverberated from impact with the tiled floor, Gawain could only ponder. In those precious few moments between him halted his own attack and Ruban successfully launching her own, what had transpired?

Looking up, he saw a reflection in one of the glass doors leading to a nearby classroom. It was of the ribbon which Ruban used to attack. The ones which had ripped through Jormungandr's defences for just long enough to launch what could well end up being a lethal blow.

Gawain's usual counterattack formulated such to counter Ruban's ribbons by taking advantage of their harsh physical limit, their shape, was as such. When Jormungandr detected hostility, Gawain reflexively sent out a four-way pincer to intercept. At least two of those would be cut on their way to intercept, this Gawain anticipated, but due to the shape of the ribbon, it could only possibly have two sharp sides, whereas there were far more angles to attack than just that. Gawain's other two pincers would clamp down on the ribbon and consume it.

This was where Gawain had gone wrong. The ribbon that he was looking at had no such harsh division between flat sides and sharp sides. It was… a corkscrew. Ruban had coiled the ribbon into a double helix, a drill of sorts. The edges had been twisted into two complimenting spirals, It was sharp on all sides. With a little bit of spin, Ruban could punch a hole straight through Gawain's usual defence.

If he had seen the ribbon before sending out his attack, he would have easily been able to counteract it. It was still as flat as it was sharp, like before. It would only have taken a few more degrees of precision on Gawain's part to avoid the edges. Then he would have neutralized it as easily as before.

If Gawain had been struck in a non-vital area, he could have done the same thing.

If Gawain had not been caught in a moment of hesitation after calling off his attack due to Ruban's misdirection, he would have been able to use Jormungandr to move his body and dodge the attack. Then he would have been able to do the same thing.

Words could not stress the extent of the thinness of the breadth by which Ruban had outstepped Gawain. There had not been any mistake on his part. He acted exactly as he had meant to. It was only due to a number of microscopic faults in Gawain's usually pristine armour which had been exploited that Ruban was able to force exactly one attack through. She had outpaced Gawain by exactly one step. She made sure that it was that one step that would bury him.

Jormungandr undulated confusedly. It was not receiving orders anymore. It merely acted in accordance with its restraints, staying tightly wound around Gawain's neck. Like many of Gawain's vital bodily functions, heartbeat, breathing, etc, keeping Jormungandr in check was something that typically happened subconsciously. The newly vegetative Gawain couldn't command the beast at all, and thusly it stayed in its pen.

Before showing herself to gloat, Ruban made sure to wrap Gawain up nice and tightly. She took to that task methodically, slowly scooping each drooping limb off of the floor and binding it up as tightly as if she were binding a broken bone. Once the limbs were finished, Ruban completely covered Gawains body, then she affixed the limbs to the body and wrapped him up like a spider cocooning a fly. Then came the neck. She was extra careful when it came to the neck. She piled layer upon layer around and above Jormungandr. She wasn't having it slipping out or coming loose. Eventually, the mass of ribbon around Gawain's neck was as thick or thicker than the one around his body. That was when Ruban felt that it was safe enough to show herself.

She dangled down from the ceiling suspended like a marionette, the widest, smuggest smile across her face. Behind her, the array of hostages she had taken were displayed like trophies. Those useless oafs. The ones who had only held Gawain back. Useless weaklings. They expected to call themselves heroes one day, but Gawain didn't think of them as worthy to shine his shoes.

This was their fault.

"Ahahahaha! You really thought you had me, didn't you! You morons!" Ruban jeered.

Tanith sprung into action. Her tail filled with venom. It spilt out of the minute holes in which her spent quills usually sat. It was positively saturated. The girl wasn't playing games. That looked particularly lethal.

"Death Sting!"

Ruban snapped her fingers. Tanith was wrapped up in mere milliseconds. Only her tail escaped, and it thrashed helplessly, occasionally catching a ribbon which it could melt through. It was not, however, nearly enough to overcome the heap of ribbon under which the girl was being restrained.

"Do you mind, um, leaving us alone? You two werent really a threat to me, and you don't look very important... So... Uh... Give up and I won't hurt you so much, I guess."

"Fuck that!" Cried Nikau, rushing into the jaws of death. Ruban sighed. Gawain joined her. If Tanith didn't stand a chance, then he was right out. Especially without a weapon.

"Dont worry, Nikau... You can't disappoint anyone if they never had any expectations in the first place..."

With the two side characters out of the way, Ruban closed in, and again Gawain was reminded of a spider creeping across its web to suck the liquefied innards of its prey.

"So... Are you… going to kill me? You should probably kill me…" Gawain croaked. Ruban sneered.

"What's that, little bargaining chip? Begging for death already? Ha. You wish."

Ruban got very close to Gawain's face and whispered her words with as much of a sinister aura as she could muster.

"We know who your daddy is, Williams. You are far more valuable alive. In fact, you are my most valuable hostage. By far."

"My father is not going to pay a ransom. He would sooner track you down and personally rip you a new one than he would put a penny towards my wellbeing. Trying to extract any leverage from that man is a fool's errand. He might even disown me first half out of disappointment in me and half out of spite to show you exactly how useless your attempt was."

Ruban slapped Gawain. Hard. Right across the cheek. He barely felt it on his skin, but his brain was rattled enough to make him feel dizzy. Or maybe that was the blood loss.

"We don't want a single shred of your father's filthy money. We only want to send a message. I could regale you with the details, but that's far above your post as a helpless captive. Just know that the possibilities are endless and that I'm deeply looking forward to it."

Suddenly, there was an explosion of light. The classroom nearby. It had lit up like a rave. Beams of rainbow filled it to the brim, eye bleedingly bright. The earth shook as some colossus lumbered by. Gawain could see it in the window. They were on the second or third floor, but that only brought you eye level with this creature's shoulder.

That was… another one of the villains attacking the school, wasn't it?

But who was that fighting them?

"Oooh! Has the show started already?" Ruban exclaimed excitedly. She threw open the door to the classroom and brought Gawain inside with her. "Do you know who that is?"

Gawain didn't, of course. But Ruban delighted in explaining it to him.

"That's one of my very best friends. Her name is Jessica."

"You're telling me her name?"

Ruban punched Gawain on the back of the skull.

"How many people named 'Jessica' do you think live in this country? You're going to triangulate the coordinates of our secret fucking Batcave because I let that little detail slip? As if. That villain name shit is confusing anyway. I don't care."

"Fine… Fine…"

"If she's using that form, then whoever she's fighting has got to be pretty tough. What do you think, hostage? Friends of yours?"

Gawain looked out of the window, squinting from the flare that constantly came off of the giant. He saw a familiar silhouette leap through the air and collide with one of the monster's wrecking ball fists. Feminine form. Rippling muscle. One glowing horn.

Was that… Ginger?

The two fighters struck each other with a flash of light and a thunderous sound.

No. It wasn't just Ginger. Gawain thought back to the royale. Right at the end, that girl had pulled something. Some kind of combination move with another student. That's what gave her those strange markings and that particular cobalt glow. What was his name again? Jonathan? Jonathon? Something like that.

When they were together like that… Gawain could attest to their strength. Then again, he had just been bested by Ruban, and whatever that thing was outside it was at least five rungs higher on the food chain than this girl. Gawain... Had his doubts.

The two fighter's thunderous clash made the floor rumble. Chairs rattled around across the floor and stationary toppled over. Then, they were back at it, throwing a flurry of blows in a frighteningly fast exchange. With the colour and the speed of their movements, Gawain couldn't understand what he was looking at. He tried not to look, but Ruban forced him.

"Nonono… How's that for gratitude. I give you front row tickets to the fight of your friend's life and you spit on my generosity? Shameful."

"They aren't my friends, you know. Don't care for them all that much. Had something of a row with them during a school exercise. Ended rather embarrassingly for me."

"Maybe you don't like them, but you aren't that cold that you wouldn't care if they died. I saw how you cringed away from harming even a hair on the head of that hostage. You put on a good facade, but you aren't completely empty inside. You can feel despair. You arent a killer. That's why you and I are going to sit here and you're going to watch them die."

"They could win."

"As if!" Ruban grabbed Gawain's cheeks with one hand and peeled his eyelids open with the other. "I've never seen anyone survive against Jessica when she was half as happy as that. Those kids are fucked. Maybe they don't know it yet. But they're as good as dead. Both of them."

Ruban brought Gawain's face even closer to the action. So close that the rainbow light from the villains ungodly quirk burned bright spots into his retina. His face was right up against the glass. He couldn't avert his gaze. He couldn't move a muscle.

He could only watch.

TO BE CONTINUED

Aaand we're back! So sorry for the delay everybody. But exciting news! With two more fights quote-unquote 'concluded' (we'll be coming back to the courtyard, you'll see) theres only one conflict left unresolved. You might have guessed it, it's Jinger against Vadoll! A straight shot to the finish! It's amazing to say, but by chapter count, this arc by its completion may well be half of the story... I never thought I'd write anything half this substantial in my life, but here I am!

Anyway, if you liked the chapter, leave a review telling me what you thought! And as always, thanks for reading! I'll see you in the next one.