(A/N: This chapter took a lot of time to write. First time writing a fighting scene with 2 Nen users. Would really appreciate comments, suggestions, and criticisms)
March 6th, 1956. 11:00 a.m.
Bloc Nine.
Near the guild courtyard.
Fen felt them from half a mile away.
He had not been in a hurry that morning. After his meeting with Carven he had gone back to his quarters in the middle ring and done what he always did after a debrief—ate two bowls of grain porridge with rendered fat and washed his face in the basin. He spent forty minutes sharpening his steel senbon on the whetstone he kept in a cloth roll under his sleeping mat, and then sat on the floor for an hour doing nothing. The nothing was important. Seren called it wasting time. Moss called it decompression. Fen called it sitting.
He arrived at the guild by eleven and was scoping the courtyard from the grain store roof—his usual perch, two streets north.
The space below was empty. The guild children were gone—scattered into the market passages on Cord's standing order for mornings when the eastern section ran hot. Jobs were plenty during this time of day. Cord was inside. Sable was not. Fen did not know where she had gone. He had just arrived and hadn't had time to look.
The aura trail Knell was following ran from the facility on the eastern edge, through the market rows, and ended at the entrance below. Whoever had left it had walked through those gates hours ago and then—nothing. No trail leading out. No residue on the exits. The person had either died inside or learned to stop leaking. The trail had gone cold.
Fen had not been searching for it, but it was hard to miss when it was this blatant. The traces told him two things. The volume was enormous. The control was absent. He didn't know who had produced them though he had a guess, and for the time being he didn't care. All that mattered was that Knell was coming, following the trail straight to the guild, and the guild belonged to Carven.
He counted them through the vibration in the sheeting under his chest. Five sets of footsteps. One heavy, four lighter. The heavy set belonged to Knell. The pressure of his Ten preceded him—a blunt wave that pressed against the passage walls and leaked upward through the stone and the corrugated layers. Fen could feel it on the roof. He did not need to see Knell to know where he was.
The four lighter sets were Crane and three Saltfang enforcers. Fen knew Crane. Crane worked for Harrow. Harrow was Carven's man. Crane was therefore not a target.
The Saltfang men were replaceable.
Knell was not a target either. Killing Voss's enforcer would start a conflict between Voss and Carven, and Carven did not start conflicts. Carven ended them. Master preferred his wars to be other people's.
Fen lay on the roof and watched them enter the eastern approach.
They stopped at the entrance. Knell looked at the gap in the corrugated wall and the area beyond it.
He gathered aura into his right hand.
Fen's stomach dropped.
Knell was going to hit the perimeter wall. He was going to flatten the entrance, walk through the rubble, and ask his questions in the wreckage. That was how Knell worked. He broke things first and talked to whatever was left.
Fen could not allow that. The compound was Cord's. Cord was Carven's. The structure was part of the network's infrastructure in Bloc Nine, and its destruction would cost months to replace.
He made his decision in less than a second.
-x-
One hundred and fifty metres. The distance between the grain store roof and Knell. The bare minimum distance he needed to incapacitate Knell completely.
Fen rolled onto his back. The corrugated sheeting did not creak. He had distributed his weight across his spine and shoulders in a way that produced no sound on the surface. He looked at the sky. Grey. Overcast. No wind at roof level. He had checked this when he arrived.
He closed his eyes. He had already read Knell's position — the angle of his shoulders, the set of his feet, the forward lean of his weight as he gathered aura into his fist. He had watched for four seconds. Four seconds was enough. He knew where Knell's heart was. He knew which rib it sat behind. He knew the space between them.
He decided his target.
A spot on the left side of Knell's back, fourth intercostal space, two centimetres left of the spine. The point sat behind the dense wall of Knell's Ten and behind the muscle and bone of a man built like a piece of industrial equipment. None of that mattered. The weapon would pass through all of it.
Fen's partial Zetsu had been running since he left his quarters that morning. It ran 24/7. He allowed just enough aura to keep his body fed—the output so low that it blended with the ambient aura of the stone, the air, and the bodies in the streets below. He had maintained this partial Zetsu constantly for nineteen years. It was no longer a technique. It was his baseline.
He went deeper.
His nodes closed completely. The ambient bleed keeping his muscles warm and his senses sharp ceased. His body temperature dropped a fraction. His vision dimmed at the edges—the aura that had been feeding his eyes was gone. His heartbeat slowed. His breathing shallowed until his chest no longer moved the sheeting beneath him.
Full Zetsu. The total cessation that his Hatsu required — every node sealed, every pathway dark, his body producing no more aura than a corpse. The only difference between Fen in full Zetsu and a dead man on a roof was that the dead man's heart had stopped.
He conjured the senbon.
Secondary activation condition. Senbon only. Minimum range: 150 metres. The senbon is thrown in full Zetsu — no Enhancement on the throw, no Gyo to sharpen vision. Usable once every six hours. Before the throw Fen selects a precise point on the target's body. If the senbon strikes within 1mm of the chosen location, the target enters complete involuntary Zetsu — every node shuts — for five seconds.The needle appeared in his right hand. Thin. Steel. Twelve centimetres long. The conjuration took less than a second. Aura flowed through his palm into the steel via Shu and then applied In in the same breath—the single channel his Hatsu carved through the Zetsu. Every other node on his body stayed shut.
Fen must be in full Zetsu when he initiates the attack. Every node on his body stays closed. The Hatsu permits exactly one deviation: aura flows through his hand into the conjured weapon via Shu, and nowhere else. This singular flow is immediately concealed by In. The aura, and the weapon it feeds, become completely undetectable. The moment the weapon leaves his grip or strikes the target, the channel closes and his body returns to full Zetsu.
Fen must conjure the weapon within one second of the strike. He cannot walk with the weapon pre-summoned. The conjuration and the attack are near-simultaneous. This removes the safety of preparation.
He did not sit up. He did not look. He threw from his back—a flick of the wrist, the needle leaving his hand at an angle calculated entirely from memory. One hundred and fifty metres. No Enhancement. Just the strength of his arm. The needle crossed the distance in a shallow arc, parting the air without a sound.
One hundred metres.
Fifty.
Twenty.
The needle reached Knell's upper back. It touched his Ten and parted it. The Shu negated the aura barrier at the point of contact—the defence did not register. The weapon slid through the Ten layer like water. No resistance. No deflection. The tip cleared the aura. It punctured the fabric of Knell's shirt, and the steel point kissed the skin over his heart.
Knell's left shoulder dropped.
This is not Nen, nor a technique. Knell's body reacts to lethal threats before his mind processes them. His muscles flinch, his weight shifts, his head turns—the movements are small, involuntary. It is how he survived the years before Voss. He does not know he does it. He cannot do it on command. It fires when his body decides he is about to die, saving him from strikes his senses never registered. It does not make him faster. It does not make him smarter. It makes him harder to kill on the first try.
The senbon missed the marked point by three millimetres.
Marked Kill did not activate.
The Hatsu's condition was absolute—within one millimetre or nothing. The point was wrong, so the aura node-closing pulse did not fire. Fen's Marked Kill was now on cooldown for six hours.
The senbon dissipated after half a second. The entry point remained—a thin puncture in the upper back, bleeding lightly.
Knell's hand stopped gathering aura. He felt the prickle. He reached over his shoulder, fingers finding the sting. They came away wet. He brought his hand forward and looked at the blood.
His head snapped up. His eyes scanned the passage. His En pushed outward—the blunt, heavy field he used for sensing, pressing against walls, rooftops, and open air. It found nothing.
Knell's jaw tightened. Someone had put a needle through his Ten without him feeling it approach. The needle had dissipated. The wound was shallow but the fact of it was not.
-x-
Fen was already moving.
He had rolled off the roof the moment the needle left his hand. He dropped two storeys to the alley below, landed on his feet without sound, and ran. Towards Knell. The Marked Kill had failed. He felt the absence of the pulse through the Shu's dissipation. He shifted to his base Hatsu.
The conjured weapon carries the node-closing pulse. On a hit, the percentage of nodes forced shut scales with the weapon tier and the hit location. The disabled region becomes an absolute dead zone. Aura from the target's remaining open nodes cannot flow into or cover the affected area. The conjured weapons pierce any physical defence—armour, hardened skin, Nen-reinforced Ten, Ken, even Ko-concentrated aura barriers. The Shu negates the target's defence at the point of contact. The weapon passes through as if the barrier were not there.
A lethal Hatsu requires fewer conditions, rendering it weaker. By forcing himself to finish the kill with his own hands, the system rewards him. The node-closing pulse is stronger precisely because it cannot kill.
If the target detects Fen or the weapon through any sense at the moment of the strike, the forced-Zetsu effect does not activate. The Shu dissipates. The weapon still cuts as a physical object. But the node-closing pulse is dead. The strike becomes an ordinary attack by an ordinary weapon .
If detected, Fen cannot use any concealment effect (Zetsu, Mu, In) for 10 seconds.
He closed the distance along the alley parallel to the eastern approach. His body produced nothing. No footfall. No breath. No displaced air. Nineteen years of Zetsu and Mu compressed into a sprint that left no trace of his passage.
He halted exactly fifty metres from Knell.
Standard Zetsu closes all aura nodes and stops emission. An En user can still detect a person in standard Zetsu because the physical body displaces the En field—the absence of aura creates a readable void.
Mu eliminates that void. Fen's closed nodes do not repel incoming aura. They absorb the En's pressure at the surface, letting it pass through without distortion. The En touches him and registers nothing because nothing pushes back. No void. No resistance. No shape.
Mu works only while Fen is motionless. Movement creates displacement, regardless of technique.
The three Saltfang men were standing in a loose group behind Knell. Crane was at the rear. Knell's En was pushing outward in all directions, but Fen was inside the field now, motionless against a wall. Mu held. The En passed over him and registered nothing.
Fen held four steel senbon in his left hand. He had palmed them from his pouch before entering the En field. The steel was cold against his fingers.
He had one window. Knell's En cycled—the field contracted and expanded with his breathing, a pulse that left gaps at the edges. The gaps lasted less than a second. Fen needed less than a second.
The En contracted.
Fen's hand moved.
Four needles left his fingers in a single fanning motion. The throw was not sequential. It was simultaneous—his wrist turned and his fingers opened in a staggered release, sending each needle on a separate trajectory at the same instant.
The first senbon hit the nearest Saltfang man in the side of the neck. The carotid. He was dead before the steel stopped moving.
The second senbon hit the man behind him in the temple. His legs folded. He dropped straight down without a sound.
The third senbon hit the last Saltfang man in the base of the skull. The brainstem. He fell forward onto his face.
The fourth senbon hit Crane at the base of the neck. Not the brainstem—lower. The nerve cluster where the cervical spine met the thoracic. A precise insertion that shut the body down without severing anything. His eyes rolled. His knees buckled. He hit the packed earth with his arms at his sides. His breathing continued. His pulse continued. He would wake in twenty minutes with a headache and no memory of the last half-second.
Four bodies hit the ground within the same heartbeat. The sound was a single collective thud—not four separate impacts, but one noise spread across four points.
Knell had not turned around yet. His En had been contracting when the needles flew. By the time it expanded again, the four men behind him were already on the ground, Fen was motionless against the wall, Mu held, and the En found nothing standing.
-x-
Knell turned.
The passage behind him held four bodies. The Saltfang men were dead — two with senbon in their necks, one with it in his skull. Crane was face-down, breathing, a thin puncture at the base of his neck with the senbon still embedded in it.
Nobody was standing. Nobody was visible. The passage was empty.
"The fuck," Knell said.
He could not feel anyone. His En was pushed to its maximum radius — a crude sphere that filled the passage and pressed into the buildings on either side. It registered walls, floors, bodies on the ground. It did not register a standing threat.
The senbon hit his right bicep.
Senbon on a vital-point hit: fifty percent of nodes forced into involuntary Zetsu for ten seconds.
The needle went through his Ten at the bicep and sank into the brachial artery junction. A vital point. The pulse fired. Fifty percent of Knell's aura nodes clamped shut.
The effect was immediate. The right side of Knell's body went dark — his right arm, his right shoulder, the right side of his torso. His Ten collapsed across those areas. His right leg was untouched. The pulse had radiated from the bicep and spread through the connected tissue on the right side but the leg sat far enough from the impact point that its nodes held.
The senbon dissolved half a second after impact. The puncture in his bicep bled freely.
Knell could feel it — the absence. He spun. He swung his left fist at the space behind him. The fist hit air. There was nothing there.
10 seconds remaining. 50% of nodes locked. Right arm, right shoulder, right torso dark. Right leg and left side active.
Another senbon hit his left calf. Not a vital point. The needle went through his Ten on the left side — the side still active — and sank into the gastrocnemius muscle. The pulse fired.
Senbon on a non-vital hit: thirty percent of nodes forced into involuntary Zetsu for ten seconds.
Thirty percent of his remaining active nodes shut. He had fifty percent accessible. Thirty percent of fifty was fifteen. His open nodes dropped to thirty-five percent — spread across his left arm, the left side of his torso, and his right leg.
8 seconds remaining on first hit — 50% locked. Right arm, right shoulder, right torso.
10 seconds remaining on second hit — 15% additional locked. Left calf and lower left leg.
Total: 65% of nodes locked. 35% accessible. Left arm, left torso, right leg.
Knell's left leg buckled below the knee. The calf muscle on that side had lost its Enhancement. His weight shifted to his right leg.
He could not find the attacker. His En was still pushing outward but the field was weaker now, fed by thirty-five percent of his capacity. The edges of the sphere contracted. The resolution dropped. He was sensing through fog.
He poured everything he had left into the En. Every open node channelled aura outward. The field stabilised. It was smaller and patchier than before.
It found nothing.
6 seconds remaining on first hit.
8 seconds remaining on second hit.
A kunai went through his heart.
Effective range: 8–12 metres. On a vital-point hit, eighty percent of nodes forced into involuntary Zetsu for ten seconds.
The blade was broader than the senbon. It came from his left — the side where his remaining arm aura was concentrated — and it passed through his Ten and through his skin and through the intercostal muscle and between the ribs and into the pericardium. It touched his heart. The pulse fired.
Eighty percent of his remaining open nodes shut. He had thirty-five percent accessible. Eighty percent of thirty-five was twenty-eight. His open nodes dropped to seven percent of his total capacity, spread across two limbs — his left arm below the elbow and his right leg below the knee. The two extremities furthest from the kunai's contact point at the chest. Everything between them was dark.
The kunai dissolved. The wound in his chest bled. His heart was still beating — Fen's Hatsu was non-lethal. It closed nodes. It did not stop organs.
4 seconds remaining on first hit — 50% locked.
6 seconds remaining on second hit — 15% locked.
10 seconds remaining on third hit — 28% locked.
Total: 93% of nodes locked. 7% accessible. Left forearm and hand. Right lower leg and foot.
Knell stood in the passage with blood running from four wounds and ninety-three percent of his aura locked. Seven percent of his total capacity was split between two extremities that had no business keeping a man upright.
He was upright.
-x-
Knell was standing with ninety-three percent of his nodes locked, his chest bleeding, his right arm dead at his side. Fen ran the arithmetic. Another kunai to a vital point would close eighty percent of the remaining seven which is five and a half percent. He would drop Knell from seven to one and a half. But the first senbon's timer was four seconds from expiring. When it expired, fifty percent of Knell's nodes would reopen. He would go from one and a half to fifty-one and a half in a single tick of the clock. The gain was five and a half percent. The loss was fifty. The trade was backwards.
He could not put Knell down in four seconds from range. Not with a senbon nor with a kunai. The man had taken three senbon and a kunai through the heart and was still standing on two partial limbs and looking for something to hit. Fen had fought people who did not go down before. He had never fought someone who did not go down on seven percent.
The window was now. Knell was at his weakest. In four seconds he would not be. Fen needed to be close, armed, and running full aura when those nodes reopened — not crouched in Zetsu ten metres away conjuring another kunai that would buy him five and a half percent for ten seconds while giving back fifty in four.
He dropped his Zetsu.
Once the strike connects and the node-closing pulse fires, Fen's Zetsu obligation ends. He can drop Zetsu, activate Ten, use Ren, and fight with his full aura.
But the release triggers a cooldown. He cannot enter Zetsu again for the next ten seconds.
His aura flooded back through his body. His nodes opened. His Ten wrapped around him. He drew his tantō from the sheath at his lower back — not conjured. A real blade he carried for close work when the Hatsu was not in play. The blade was coated. A thin layer of contact poison along the flat, applied that morning, dried to a film that would not transfer unless the steel broke skin.
He stepped into the passage.
Knell saw him.
Average height. Average build. A short blade in his right hand.
Knell's lip pulled back from his teeth.
"There you are," he said.
Fen said nothing and closed the distance.
What happened next should not have been possible.
Knell had seven percent of his aura. He had two partial limbs running Nen — his left forearm and his right lower leg. He had four open wounds and a heart beating inside a chest that had no Nen support. He should have gone down. Any Nen user operating on seven percent should have collapsed thirty seconds ago.
Knell did not collapse. Knell came forward.
Knell concentrates his full available aura into whichever hand he swings with. The blow holds the target in place at the moment of contact — cancels backward inertia — and transfers all force and Nen directly inward. Nothing scatters. It goes in.
He put every open node into his left fist and right leg. Seven percent of his aura volume — Ko compressed into a single hand for the strike, and the right leg for movement.
He came forward. His right leg drove him. The calf and shin were the only part of that leg still running Nen but the Enhancement flooding them was everything Knell had left below the knee — the muscle swelled under the skin, the tendons tightened, and the leg launched him forward like a piston. The acceleration was savage. His left leg dragged dead below the knee. His torso had no support. His right arm hung useless. But his right lower leg pushed and his body followed and the speed was wrong for a man this broken. He covered the distance between them in a single explosive stride.
Fen sidestepped. He had fought Enhancers before. He knew what Ko looked like when it was loaded into a fist. He knew what Dead Weight was — Carven's files on Voss's people were thorough. He knew the blow held the target in place and put everything inward. He knew not to be where the fist landed.
He was not where the fist landed. The fist hit the passage wall. The stone did not crack. It caved. The surface compressed inward at the contact point and the force transferred through the stone and the wall behind it buckled and the dust came down from above.
Knell's left hand was bleeding. The knuckles had split against the stone. The skin in his fingers had a fractured.
Seven percent. Seven percent of his aura had done that to a stone wall.
Fen revised his assessment of the situation. Knell on seven percent was still dangerous enough to cave a wall. Knell on full capacity would have put the fist through the wall and the building behind it.
Knell pulled his fist from the crater and turned. The bones in his hand were already resetting. The knuckle skin closed. The fractures fused. Seven percent of his aura fed something in him that kept repairing the damage. Fen watched the hand heal and noted it.
He swung again. His right leg fired — the same piston drive, the same explosive acceleration from the single working lower limb. Faster than the first time. Fen had expected him to have slowed down a bit. He had not slowed. The leg hit the ground and the body followed and Knell closed the gap in a burst that ate the distance before Fen's weight had fully transferred out of his sidestep.
Fen raised the tantō.
The fist hit the blade.
Condition Two: Blowback. Knell's body suffers the same damage the target does. If the target is living, every injury Dead Weight inflicts is mirrored in Knell's own body at the moment of impact.
The tantō shattered. The steel broke along the spine and the fragments went sideways and the blade ceased to exist as a weapon. The force went through the handle and into Fen's right hand and up his forearm. The bones in his wrist broke. The radius cracked at the midpoint. The ulna fractured at the same line. His hand opened involuntarily and the hilt dropped from fingers that could no longer close.
Knell's right forearm broke at the same points. Radius. Ulna. Wrist. The bones that had already been locked out of Nen support took the mirrored damage with nothing to cushion them. His right arm, already dark, hung at an angle due to injury.
The tantō shattered but the blade caught Knell's left forearm on the way through. Knell was using Ko. His aura was concentrated entirely in his fist, leaving the wrist stripped of defence. The steel left a thin cut across the skin. Shallow. Barely bleeding.
Knell was still standing. His left hand's bones were resetting again. He was going to swing a third time.
Knell's Blowback condition does not only multiply the force of Dead Weight. The self-harm it demands has, over fifteen years of use, amplified his Enhancement's passive effect on his body. His bones break and reset. His tissue tears and mends. Every fight has trained his Enhancement to treat damage as a trigger. The result is a body that heals faster than a normal person's — broken bones reset in minutes, cuts close in seconds. He has been stabbed, burned, beaten to the edge of death, and walked away from all of it. Butcher's Body is what makes Blowback survivable. Without it Dead Weight would kill Knell on the first use.
Condition: Nen Cost. Butcher's Body runs continuously and draws from Knell's aura at all times. The faster and harder it works, the more it consumes. Under normal conditions the drain is negligible. Under sustained damage — multiple breaks, deep wounds, systemic trauma — the consumption accelerates. A Knell with depleted aura heals slowly. A Knell with no aura does not heal at all.
Butcher's Body found the poison. The Enhancement in his left forearm attacked it — his immune response amplified, his cells fighting the compound at the site of the cut. Seven percent of his aura against a toxin designed to drop a man in half a second.
Knell's Enhancement fought it for two.
He threw the third punch. His left fist came forward. His right leg fired — the piston again, harder this time, the calf muscle burning through the last of its Nen to drive him forward. The speed was faster than the second charge. Faster than the first. His body was spending everything it had left in a single forward motion.
The fist hit Fen in the ribs.
The blow held him in place. His body did not fly backward. The force went inward. His ribs broke — three on the left side, clean fractures, the bones snapping inward. Knell's ribs broke at the same points. The Blowback was immediate. Three fractures on Knell's left side, mirrored exactly, the bones cracking in sequence.
Fen's legs gave. He went down. The pain was white and total and it filled his chest and he could not breathe. He hit the ground on his left side and his broken ribs ground against each other and his vision went grey at the edges.
Knell stood over him. His left arm was shaking. The poison was in his blood now. Butcher's Body was burning through his last reserves fighting it and losing. His broken ribs pressed inward against his left lung. His right arm hung useless.
His eyes were on Fen. His left fist was still closed.
He took one step forward.
His right knee buckled. The poison reached his central nervous system and his leg stopped receiving instructions. He swayed. His eyes stayed open. His fist stayed closed.
He took a half-step. His body tilted. His shoulder hit the passage wall and he leaned against it and his breathing came in short, wet pulls.
"Whuh," he said. The word was thick. His tongue was going numb. "WWhuh the phuck — re ooou"
Fen lay on the ground six feet away. His right arm was broken. His left ribs were broken. He could not move without the grey coming back. He looked up at Knell through the pain.
Knell's eyes lost focus. His left hand opened. His fingers uncurled one at a time. The fist that had caved a stone wall relaxed.
He slid down the wall. His back dragged against the stone. He sat. His chin dropped to his chest. His breathing slowed. The poison took the last of what Butcher's Body could not hold back and his eyes closed.
Knell was unconscious.
1 seconds remaining on first hit.
3 seconds remaining on second hit.
7 seconds remaining on third hit.
First hit unlocks in 1 seconds — 50% of nodes reopen. Right arm, right shoulder, right torso. Butcher's Body accelerated but still at partial capacity. The poison will slow it. He will not wake soon.
-x-
Fen lay on the packed earth and breathed. Each breath moved his broken ribs. Each movement sent the sharp pain through his chest.
He turned his head. Crane was on the ground ten metres away, unconscious, breathing steadily. The Saltfang men were down — three dead. Knell was against the wall, chin on chest, blood on his shirt.
Fen started laughing.
The laugh was high and breathless, and it hurt. It hurt in his ribs, his broken arm, his chest, and his throat, but he kept laughing. The sound bounced off the passage walls. It was not the laugh of a man who had nearly died; it was the laugh of a boy who had won a game he had no business winning. He was so pleased with himself that the pain was just another thing happening in his body—something he didn't have time to care about.
Seven percent.
The man had fought on seven percent. He had caved a wall and launched himself like a battering ram with less than a tenth of his power. Fen had hit him with three senbon, a kunai, and a poisoned blade. In return, Knell had thrown three punches. The third had shattered Fen's ribs; if the poison had taken a second longer, the fourth would have taken his head.
He laughed until his vision went grey again and then he stopped laughing and lay on the ground and breathed and smiled at the sky.
"Absurd," he said to no one. "Absolutely absurd."
He heard footsteps.
He did not flinch. He had sensed her after he dropped his Zetsu during the fight — a presence at the edge of his awareness, watching from the roofline two streets south. She had let him sense her. Her concealment was good — far below Fen's level but disciplined enough that most Nen users would have missed her entirely. Fen was not a detection specialist. He was a stealth specialist. The distinction mattered. Seren was the detection specialist. She had let him find her because she wanted him to know she was there, and she had not intervened because she had assessed the situation and concluded that Fen did not need her to.
The footsteps were light and precise and spaced at exactly the interval that covered the most ground with the least noise. They stopped three metres from where he lay.
Seren stood over him.
She was thirty-two. Lean. Narrow through the shoulders and hips with the long limbs of a distance runner. Her hair was snow white. It had been white since she was fourteen. She wore it cut short, close to the skull, practical. Her face was sharp — high cheekbones, thin mouth, a jaw that came to a point. Her eyes were pale grey and they missed nothing. They were looking at Fen with an expression that sat precisely between amusement and exasperation.
Fen looked up at her. He grinned. The grin split his lip where it had hit the ground and a thin line of blood ran down his chin.
"Hi, Seren."
He wheezed. The grin stayed.
Seren knelt beside him. She looked at his right arm and his chest. She reached out with two fingers and pressed them against his left side, directly on the broken ribs.
Fen's wheeze became a yelp. The yelp became a string of sounds that were not words. His legs kicked. His left hand slapped at her wrist.
"Dumbass," she said.
She pulled his left arm over her shoulders and stood. Fen came up with her. His ribs ground together and the grey came back at the edges and he bit down on the inside of his cheek until it passed.
"I won," he said. His voice was thin.
"You won against a man who had less than tenth of his aura and you have three broken ribs and a shattered forearm." She adjusted his weight against her shoulder. "That is not winning. You were lucky."
"Luck is also part of my talent."
"Shut up."
She walked him two steps and then stopped. She looked back at Knell against the wall. The Enhancer's breathing had deepened. His nodes were reopening — the first hit's timer had expired. Butcher's Body was stirring under the poison. It would be hours before he woke but the healing had begun.
Seren sighed.
She lowered Fen against the passage wall. He sat and held his arm and watched her work. She crossed to Knell, pulled a length of cord from her belt, and bound his wrists behind his back, tight enough to hold, loose enough that circulation continued. A dead enforcer was a problem. A bruised enforcer was a message.
She lifted Knell. He was twice her weight. She put him over her shoulder the way a woman carried a sack of grain and stood without adjusting her balance.
"I will drop the fatass at Voss's western outpost," she said. "The storehouse at the Bloc four border. I'll leave him inside the door. They'll find him by evening."
Fen nodded. The western outpost was in the middle ring in Bloc four under Mritz which handled Voss's operation in western Meteor city — far enough that no one would connect the drop to Bloc Nine, further mudding the water. Voss would get his enforcer back alive and undamaged. The message was clear: someone had taken Knell apart, put him back together, and returned him. No note. No demands. No explanation.
Seren looked at Fen. Knell hung over her shoulder like a dead animal. Her expression had not changed — the same mix between amusement and exasperation she had worn since she arrived.
Fen was troublesome. He had always been troublesome. He left messes and grinned about them and expected her to clean up what his kindness, naivete and his absurd loyalty kept producing. She loved him the way a person loved a pet that kept knocking things off shelves — with a resignation so deep it had become indistinguishable from affection.
"Stay out of trouble, Fen." she said. "I'll come back for you."
Fen saluted with his broken arm. The pain made his eyes water. The grin did not move.
Seren turned and walked north with Knell over her shoulder.
Fen sat against the wall. Everything hurts.
He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the stone and the smile on his face was wide and warm, pleased with himself.
Master would want a report.
He would not mention the Marked Kill miss. Carven would know anyway. Carven always knew.
He kept smiling. It hurt. He kept smiling anyway.
The ten seconds expired. The partial Zetsu settled back over him.
The guild door opened after a few seconds.
Cord stepped into the passage. He stopped. His eyes moved across the ground — three Saltfang men down, Crane flat on his chest with a needle in the back of his neck, breathing.
Then his eyes found Fen sitting against the opposite wall with his arm at a wrong angle and a split lip and the expression of a man who had just had a very good morning.
Cord looked at the bodies. He looked at Fen. He looked at the bodies again.
"What the fuck," he said