They were three children sent to collect a king.
And the king was not amused.
Zeri's plasma tore jagged scars through the office, forcing Ravion to break stride or be incinerated. Ravion's spear lunges carved lethal white arcs, but they were single-minded, territorial—boxing Zeri into corners, stealing her firing lines.
Darian moved like a ghost between collapsing cover, lungs burning, vision swimming. He wasn't looking for victory.
He was looking for a place not to die.
They weren't coordinated.
They weren't layered.
They were noise.
And Kerro Vance stood in the center of it like a man watching children overturn a dinner table.
His massive frame barely shifted as plasma and steel struck him. Impacts sparked. Armor blackened. Nothing meaningful gave.
He adjusted his cuff—what remained of it—almost absently.
"So," he said, voice low and resonant, more boardroom than battlefield. "POND sends cadets now?"
He didn't shout.
He didn't rage.
He sounded inconvenienced.
"My organization runs half this city's arteries. I negotiate with ministers. I move markets." His eyes tracked Ravion without urgency. "And they send me… children with sharp toys."
Ravion lunged again, furious precision behind the thrust.
Vance caught the spear shaft in one hand.
Stopped it.
"I don't know your names," he continued mildly. "And I don't care to."
He twisted.
Ravion's footing collapsed as Vance seized him by the gorget and lifted him clean off the ground.
"But I do recognize the look."
He hurled Ravion aside. The knight smashed through a slab of reinforced paneling and disappeared in a cloud of dust.
"Ambition without leverage."
Zeri screamed and overcharged, twin cannons locking together into a blinding lance of energy. The beam struck Vance square in the chest, driving him half a step back.
Half.
He glanced down at the smoking crater in his armor.
"Hm."
His gaze rose to her.
"You burn everything around you," he observed calmly. "Including your own."
He stepped through the afterglow and backhanded her mid-charge. The blow detonated her shield and sent her skidding across marble and shattered glass.
Darian ran forward before he could think better of it.
A stupid swing.
A desperate punch.
Vance didn't even look.
He swatted Darian aside like an interruption.
Darian struck a support pillar hard enough to hear something inside him crack. He collapsed, coughing blood, ears ringing.
For one fragile second, Ravion and Zeri found rhythm—steel and plasma striking together, forcing Vance to brace.
It almost worked.
Vance exhaled slowly.
Patience spent.
He drove both augmented fists into the floor.
The ferrocrete ruptured.
Not energy.
Not light.
Force.
The shockwave tore outward, ripping the balcony from its foundation. Ravion flew. Zeri's barrier evaporated on contact. Darian, already broken, was carried by the blast toward the yawning gap in the tower wall.
Wind roared up from the abyss below.
Concrete screamed.
The balcony gave way.
Vance stepped forward through drifting dust like a man stepping onto his private terrace.
Darian was the closest.
The slowest.
The smallest.
Vance's hand closed around his wrist.
He lifted him effortlessly, dangling him over open air.
"This," Vance said conversationally, inspecting Darian's trembling form, "is what POND thinks of me."
His grip tightened slightly—not enough to break yet. Just enough to hurt.
"A message."
Darian gasped, struggling uselessly.
"You come into my tower," Vance continued, voice quiet and controlled, "in my city… to make an example of me."
His fingers tightened further.
Wet grinding.
Then the clean crack of bone snapping in two.
Darian screamed.
Vance leaned closer, studying him with clinical curiosity.
"You are not my rival," he said. "You are not even my warning."
Another twist of pressure.
"You are paperwork."
Across the shattered span, Zeri forced herself upright. Her cannons locked together, overloading to lethal brightness.
Her expression wasn't heroic.
It was furious.
She wasn't saving Darian.
He was simply holding the target still.
Her jaw tightened, eyes blazing as the energy climbed toward rupture.
"Cool speeches. Die now." she spat, voice shaking with fury.
The cannon fired.
A beam of annihilating white ripped through the tower and punched clean through Vance's torso.
For the first time, something like surprise flickered across his face.
He staggered back—smoke and molten alloy pouring from the wound.
But his grip never loosened.
If he was falling—
He would take something with him.
The balcony collapsed completely.
The world inverted.
Wind shrieked past. Steel and glass tumbled in slow-motion catastrophe.
Darian dangled from Vance's broken arm, pain screaming through his body. His free hand flailed wildly—then caught.
Fingers dug into an optic socket.
He didn't think.
He clawed.
Vance roared—not volcanic fury.
Not rage.
Offense.
"You dare—"
Darian drove his fingers deeper.
The titan convulsed mid-fall.
Balance lost.
Gravity claimed them both.
They hit the plaza below like a dropped god.
Silence.
Then pain.
Darian's legs shattered on impact. White flooded his vision. His regeneration ignited immediately—threads tearing through bone and muscle, knitting him back together in a process so violent it felt like being rebuilt from the inside out.
He screamed until his voice broke.
When it ended, he was breathing.
Shaking.
Alive.
Vance was not.
Smoke curled upward from the crater.
Footsteps approached.
Guards. Civilians. Survivors.
Faces lit by firelight.
"He did it."
"He killed Vance."
"The hero—"
The word landed against Darian's ears like a coin tossed into an empty cup.
Hero.
Applause began—hesitant at first.
Then louder.
Rhythmic.
He found himself counting without meaning to.
One.
Two.
Five.
Eight.
Every clap registered.
Applause meant narrative.
Narrative meant safety.
Each cheer layered armor over the truth.
He hadn't won.
He hadn't led.
He hadn't even mattered.
He had survived.
And they were building a monument out of that accident.
Darian straightened slowly, blood drying on his collar.
He adjusted his posture.
Lifted his chin.
The smile came easily now.
As the chanting grew, he kept counting.
Insurance.
Protection.
Belief.