"My jacket is ruined!" Najo bellowed, glaring at Mukai through the settling spray.
"You weren't supposed to run in without a plan," Mukai snapped back.
From the corner, muffled behind the door Moto had broken through, Sukai heard them. He pressed his voice through the gag as loud as it would go.
Mukai's head turned. Six assassins stood across the cavern, watching. Still. The King himself hadn't dared face them directly, which meant assuming they were formidable was the only safe assumption. One wrong move and someone went for Sukai. His mind locked up, spinning in place, unable to land on anything.
Moto threw himself backward with his full weight.
The door cracked apart. He landed in the room with Sukai in a cloud of splinters and dust, already brushing himself off.
Mukai stared at the empty space where the door had been.
Alicia watched from across the cavern, her head tilting slightly. "Prioritising the mission," she said, to no one. "Determined one."
Sukai looked up at Moto from the floor, bound but breathing. "Why did you come?"
Moto smiled and wiped dust off his uniform. "Can't let anything happen to the good twin."
Across the room, something sharp moved through Mukai's expression and was gone.
Alicia straightened. "Three of you — round up the important ones. Kill the rest."
Kangetsu, Sifiso, and she stayed where they were. The other three moved.
Sheu went pale.
"Wait." Sifiso's eyes had found Najo. "Isn't that Ginimbi's grandson?"
"What's it to you?" Najo said.
Alicia's grin spread wide. "Another cash cow. Don't kill him either."
One of the advancing assassins slowed. "So... we can only kill the girl?"
Sheu was already moving. Her hands worked fast at the rope behind her back, and then she was across the floor, pulling at Moto's binds, then Najo's.
"Don't let them scare you," Moto said. "We're elite students now."
"Doesn't count if we're at the bottom of our class," Sheu said.
"Fair point." Moto grinned. "Good thing Mukai is here."
"Hey," Najo said, cracking his knuckles, "what about me?"
"Stop joking!" Mukai's voice cracked. "We need to get out—"
"They won't just let us leave," Moto said, his stance shifting. "So."
Najo's eyes burned. "Time to crack some skulls."
He moved first — a blur of lightning, fast and direct, crackling with every impact. Moto slipped into the nearest shadow of smoke and closed with his man in the tight quarters of the cave. Sheu took the third with a wind-driven push, staying close to Sukai.
Najo's opponent was an earth-user. The man slammed both hands to the ground and the ceiling groaned, chunks beginning to drop. Najo held his ground, bracing against it — then the floor rose sharply beneath his feet and he lurched sideways. The assassin smirked.
Najo looked up at the ceiling still falling, at the assassin's hands still raised to manage it, and let it keep falling. The man's arms shot up instinctively to hold the weight. Najo drove a lightning-charged fist straight into his gut and the man folded and dropped.
On the other side of the cave, Moto threw a dense cloud between himself and his opponent, slipped the first wild swing, and drove the assassin hard into the cave wall — a fast sequence of precise kicks, spinning finish to the face. The earth-user Najo had put down flew backward at the same moment and took Moto's man with him. Both down.
Alicia watched, one eyebrow raised. "You see, Sifiso. This is why I recruit stronger. For cases where the target is too sharp for intimidation alone."
"Shall I?" Sifiso offered.
"No." She glanced sideways. "Let's see what Gehen can do."
Kangetsu was already smiling. He leaned over to Alicia and lifted the knife from her thigh strap with two fingers. "May I borrow this real quick?"
She let him.
Mukai had been watching all of it. His top-of-class certainty had told him the assassins were out of their reach — and then Moto had put one down with smoke and kicks. I must have overestimated them. His eyes moved to Kangetsu. But this one is different.
Najo charged him like a bolt. Kangetsu sidestepped without urgency and redirected him in the same motion, sending him skidding across the floor to Alicia's feet. She placed her foot on his chest, pinning him by the jacket, and watched the rest of the room.
Moto came in swinging. Kangetsu moved around every single hit — not scrambling, not retreating, just stepping aside with the calm of someone who already knew where each punch was going to land.
"Your style is familiar," Kangetsu said. "I'm impressed you've already mastered it."
Moto threw a wide punch and connected. It landed with a sickening solidity and left Kangetsu's blood smeared across his knuckles.
"Not so predictable now," Moto said.
Kangetsu smiled. "Not quite."
The blood began to glow.
It detonated before Moto could wipe it off — a sharp, violent burst that snapped his arm back and left his ears ringing.
"Careful," Alicia called from across the room. "I still want him. The others — two minutes, and you can stop holding back."
"Sure, boss."
Sheu and Sukai came from both sides. Kangetsu pivoted — knife handle to the side of Sukai's head, sharp side swinging to Sheu's neck in the same motion. Moto wasn't close enough.
Then the lightning came from the floor.
Najo, still pinned, fired from flat on his back. The bolt hit the knife and wrenched it spinning out of Kangetsu's grip. Moto caught it out of the air. He slashed across Kangetsu's face — a clean cut along the left side — and Kangetsu roared.
He seized Moto's wrist and drove a punch into his ribs. Then, as Najo ripped himself free — leaving the jacket under Alicia's foot — Kangetsu smeared the blood from the knife blade across Najo's chest.
The explosion sent Najo into the far wall.
Mukai watched him hit the ground, and something that had been locked up in his chest broke open. I am at the top of my class. And I am standing here paralysed. The comparison arrived before he could stop it — himself, rooted with fear, and his father, and every time he had said the word weak like it had a clear definition. His jaw tightened.
He pulled from the puddles on the cave floor — the water from his own earlier entrance, still sitting in the cracks of the stone — and shaped them fast into a row of glittering daggers.
He threw them.
Kangetsu grinned and walked through them, letting each one open a new cut, his body beginning to glow from the inside with a light that had no warmth in it. He spread his arms wide and leapt.
"Watch out!" Moto and Sukai together.
"Nox Pool!" Mukai slammed his palms together. The water cylinder closed around Kangetsu in a wall of pressure and the glow went out, the explosion suppressed, the blood dissolving in the liquid around him. Kangetsu went still inside the prison, holding his breath.
The room breathed.
Then Alicia's voice, from her chair, perfectly level.
"Four."
The water inside the cylinder began to glow.
"Three."
Kangetsu's smirk was visible through the wall of water, slow and patient.
"Two."
The blood hadn't dissolved. It had spread.
"One."
Cold silence filled the cave from wall to wall.