The basement of Sunny's house was designed to withstand a siege. The walls were lined with reinforced, impact-absorbing plating, the floor was covered in dense matting, and the air filtration system worked overtime to cycle out the smell of sweat and more.
Right now, the engineering was being pushed to its absolute limit.
Sunny ducked under a sweeping backhand, the displacement of air violently ruffling his dark hair. He twisted sharply on his heel, using his own momentum to drive a punishing, essence-infused kick aimed squarely at Cielle's ribs.
She didn't block it. She simply rotated her upper body a fraction of an inch.
Sunny's heavy boot grazed the side of her dark shirt, hitting nothing but empty air. Before he could retract his leg, Cielle's hand shot out like a striking viper. Her fingers locked around his ankle with the bone-crushing grip of an vice.
"Too slow," she stated. Her breathing was perfectly even, despite the fact that they had been going at it for the better part of an hour.
With a terrifying flick of her wrist, she hoisted his leg upward, completely disrupting his center of gravity, and slammed him down toward the unforgiving mat.
Sunny commanded his shadows.
Halfway to the floor, his physical body dissolved into a plume of absolute darkness. The momentum carried his shadow-form through her grip, allowing him to slip past her defenses and re-materialize three feet behind her back.
He didn't hesitate. He instantly summoned the Midnight Shard.
The heavy, obsidian tachi sang as it materialized in his grip, cutting through the air in a brutal, sweeping horizontal arc aimed right at her shoulders. It was a finishing strike. Fast, ruthless, and perfectly angled. In the Dream Realm, it would have cleanly severed a fallen beast in half.
Cielle didn't turn around.She didn't even raise her hands to block the strike. She just stood there, looking mildly bored, and lazily flicked her fingers.
A flash of brilliant white essence erupted in the air, directly between the center of Cielle's back and the incoming, razor-sharp edge of the Midnight Shard.
CLANG.
The sound was absolutely deafening. It was the horrific, teeth-rattling sound of a blade striking an immovable object of world-ending density.
The Midnight Shard rebounded so violently that the shockwave traveled straight down the blade and up Sunny's arms. The force nearly dislocated both of his shoulders and entirely numbed his hands from the wrists down.
Sunny stumbled backward, a strangled gasp escaping his lungs. His fingers instinctively opened, dropping the obsidian blade to the mat with a heavy, unceremonious thud. His biceps violently spasmed from the recoil.
Sunny fell to one knee, rubbing his wrists furiously, trying to force the feeling back into his nerve endings. He looked up, a scowl of pure, murderous indignation forming on his face.
Hovering in the air, occupying the exact space where the blade had struck, was the Neighborhood Menace.
The Supreme Beast, still entirely shaped like a fluffy, slightly overweight orange cat, had been summoned directly into the path of the killing strike. It hung suspended in Cielle's fading essence for a split second before dropping heavily to the mat. It landed with a floor-shaking thud that vibrated through the soles of Sunny's boots.
The cat sat down. It casually lifted a hind leg, licked its paw with agonizing slowness, and let out a raspy, utterly unbothered meow.
"What the actual hell is wrong with you?!" Sunny yelled, his voice cracking as it echoed off the reinforced walls. "You used a Great Beast as a meat shield?!"
Cielle turned around, looking down at the cat, then back at Sunny. She offered a small, entirely unrepentant shrug. "It is nearly indestructible. The runes said so. I wanted to verify the integrity of its defense attribute against a slashing attack."
"You almost shattered the Midnight Shard!" Sunny shouted, pointing an accusing, slightly trembling finger at her. "My arms went completely numb! You cannot just throw a Supreme entity into the middle of a light sparring match!"
"It worked," Cielle pointed out reasonably, crossing her arms over her chest. "You dropped your sword. And you are on the floor. I won the spar."
Sunny opened his mouth, drawing in a massive breath to deliver a blistering, multi-point lecture on the ethics of using echos as parrying tools.
Before he could start yelling, his communicator buzzed sharply from the metal bench by the wall.
Sunny snapped his mouth shut. He grumbled a string of highly creative curses under his breath, pushing himself off the mat and shaking out his tingling hands. He walked over to the bench, snatched up the device, and tapped the screen.
It was a message from Kai.
[Kai]: Hey Sunny. Effie is demanding a full cohort gathering tonight. She wants to go to a high-end restaurant in the central district. She specifically requested that you bring Cielle too. I tried to talk her out of it, but you know how she is when she smells gossip.
Sunny groaned, a long, drawn-out sound of pure suffering.
He immediately started typing out a refusal. I am currently recovering from a near-death experience caused by my own sword bouncing off a cat. We are absolutely not—
He stopped typing. He felt a sudden, familiar warmth press against his back.
Cielle had walked up behind him without making a single sound. She was leaning over his shoulder, her chin resting casually against his shoulder, her green eyes tracking the glowing text on the screen of his communicator. She smelled like sweat, rain, and the faint, sweet scent of the robust tea from earlier.
Sunny froze. His thumbs hovered nervously over the digital keyboard.
"Who is Effie demanding?" Cielle asked, reading the text aloud.
"Us," Sunny muttered, trying very, very hard not to lean back into her warmth. "She wants us to go to a fancy restaurant in the city center with the rest of the cohort. But we aren't going. You hate crowds, I hate spending my hard-earned money on overpriced, tiny portions of food, and Effie is an absolute menace to society."
Cielle considered this. She remembered the loud, abrasive woman from that morning. She remembered the absolute, exhausting chaos Effie had brought into the house, and how she had openly mocked Sunny's grumpy demeanor until he wanted to crawl under the floorboards.
"I want to go," Cielle stated simply.
Sunny dropped his hands to his sides. He tilted his head back, looking at her with an incredulous expression"Are you insane? Effie is going to interrogate you. She is going to ask highly inappropriate questions about our personal lives. She will actively try to humiliate me."
"I know," Cielle said, her green eyes perfectly clear and entirely serious. "That is why I want to go. I find it entertaining when you make the weird breathing noise through your nose."
Sunny's left eye twitched. "I do not make a weird breathing noise."
"You are doing it right now."
Sunny exhaled sharply, through his mouth, purely out of spite. "Cielle, the central district is packed with people. Your Flaw will act up. The noise, the lights, the sheer chaos, it's going to be a nightmare for you. You hated the transit last time."
Cielle didn't argue. Instead, she just tightened her arms around his waist a fraction of an inch, pressing herself fully and comfortably against his back. "I will be fine," she murmured, her voice dropping into a softer tone. "I will just stand very close to you. You are quiet. You act like a wall."
Sunny's heart did that stupid, treacherous flutter again. He closed his eyes, his legendary willpower crumbling into dust. He instantly recognized that he had already lost the argument. He was completely, irrevocably doomed to whatever she wanted.
"Fine," Sunny sighed, his shoulders slumping in defeat. "Damn gremlins"
He deleted his drafted, highly logical refusal and typed a single, reluctant word to Kai.
"Good," Cielle said. Her tone instantly returned to its usual flatness. She stepped back, breaking the contact. "What is a high-end restaurant? Do I need different clothes? I currently only have your shirts, these pants, and the jacket the small loud person gave me."
Sunny turned around, looking at her slightly rumpled clothes. A sudden, horrifying realization struck him like a physical blow.
If they were going to a restaurant with the cohort, she couldn't just wear the clothes she possessed, while she could be content with wearing the memory, he was absolutely not fine! She needed actual, socially acceptable civilian clothes.
Which meant they had to go shopping. In the city. Together.
Sunny looked at the indestructible orange cat, which was now using the Midnight Shard as a scratching post. He looked at the ceiling, praying for guidance from gods he knew were dead.
"Get in the shower," Sunny ordered, his voice dripping with profound exhaustion. "We are going to the mall."