He moved first, closing the distance to Angel in a single blink-fast stride that left a back-draft of pressurized air in his wake. Crimson-and-white chi flared along his knuckles in jagged, high-frequency bands, turning his leading fist into an unyielding battering ram. Angel barely got a blood wall up in time, throwing her hands forward to manifest a dense, ruby-hard lattice of crystallized blood, but the impact sheer-cleaved the structure straight through. The kinetic shockwave detonated the wall into a rain of sharp red glass, the momentum lifting Angel off her feet and launching her backward into a bank of high-yield monitors. Frame-housing buckled, glass exploded outward, and blue electrical arcs hissed violently as spark showers rained down across her shoulders.
