Grigorovich came down like a meteor.
BOOM!
Vali crossed his arms and his mist hardened into a solid black shield at the last second. Zaria threw her Strings into a dome.
Grigorovich's massive fist shattered both.
They were sent flying off the mountain of bodies, crashing through a concrete barricade. Vali took most of it. Zaria landed on him.
Grigorovich landed softly on the bodies. Licked his teeth.
"Cute trick, mist boy. Your father's presence alone choked cities. You barely worth acknowledging, what was it you did again when I acted the mansion.....thats right nothing, because you're weak, you're the most pathetic of Seamus' children if you ask me"
Vali was on his feet instantly, wiping blood from his lip. His eyes were pure grey-blue now. No white left. His blood was boiling but he didn't rush in.
"You talk too much."
He vanished.
Not speed — Mist. Vali dissolved into his own Abyssal Mist and reappeared behind Grigorovich, driving a mist-formed dagger straight for Grigorovich's kidney.
CLANG!
Grigorovich didn't dodge. The dagger shattered. His tiger hide was too dense.
He elbowed backwards. Vali caught it with both forearms. Felt both bones crack.
"VALI!"
Zaria's Strings shot out — not white now, blue. She was burning her reserves. They wrapped around Grigorovich's arm, legs, neck. She pulled with all her weight, feet digging into concrete.
"Got him! Hit him!"
Vali coughed, reset his arms with a sickening pop, and poured every ounce of mist he had into his fist. The mist screamed. It formed a spinning drill of void.
He drove it into Grigorovich's chest.
Grigorovich looked down at the drill, bored. Then flexed.
The Strings snapped like thread.
The mist drill imploded.
Grigorovich backhanded Vali across the entire courtyard. Vali hit a wall and didn't get up for three seconds. Which in a Vali fight, is forever.
Zaria was next. Grigorovich was on her before she could re-string. He picked her up by the throat with that human right hand.
"Little puppet girl. You should have stayed in the cage where we found you."
Zaria choked, clawing at his wrist, her Strings trying to cut his fingers off but bouncing off that black ring's faint shimmer.
That shimmer —
From the shattered far wall, a voice cut through the courtyard like a razor through paper.
"Put her the fuck down."
Every White Tiger goon left alive turned their head.
Kazunai Yaizumei walked through what was left of the gate, revolver in his left hand, aluminum baseball bat in his right. The bat was dented. Stained. His rune — Kharzun's rune — was thumping on his chest so hard you could see it through his sleeve, pulsing orange like a second heart.
Behind him, his firing squad lowered their rifles.
Grigorovich dropped Zaria. She hit the ground gasping.
"Well," Grigorovich purred, fully turning, tiger tail lashing. "The main event. Kazunai Yaizumei. The boy who burns everything he touches."
Kaz didn't look at Vali. Didn't look at Zaria. His eyes were locked on Grigorovich. And they were starting to fill with Abyssal Flame.
"You," Kaz said, voice low, "you destroyed my home. You took my little sister. You put hands on my family."
He raised the revolver. Fired.
BANG! BANG! BANG! — three shots, center mass.
Grigorovich didn't move. The bullets stopped mid-air, two inches from his chest. Hovering. Spinning slowly. Then dropped.
Telekinesis. The ring.
Grigorovich tapped his right hand. "You like this? Taken off a dead soldier in Vladivostok. This thing cost more than your whole team."
Kaz tilted his head. The orange in his eyes got brighter.
"Okay."
He ran at him.
Grigorovich roared — a real tiger roar that shook dust off the walls — and met him.
This wasn't a fight. It was two trains colliding.
Kaz swung the baseball bat with all his Abyssal Flame behind it. The bat ignited. Grigorovich caught it with his left paw. The flame ate at his fur but his telekinesis field pushed most of it off.
Kaz used the momentum to spin, firing the revolver point-blank into Grigorovich's armpit — the one place with less fur. The bullet went in. Grigorovich snarled and ripped the bat from Kaz's hands and threw it through a truck.
Kaz didn't stop. He punched him. Bare fist, rune blazing. Flame vs Tiger.
They traded. Blow for blow. Kaz was faster. Grigorovich was stronger. Kaz would land three flaming jabs that left black scorch marks on white fur. Grigorovich would land one claw that sent Kaz skidding ten feet, shirt torn open.
Vali forced himself up, dragging Zaria with him. "We have to help him."
Zaria, coughing, managed to make her Strings glow white again. "He's... he's losing it. His eyes..."
Kaz's eyes were fully orange now. Small black horns beginning to push from his hairline. He was growling. Not talking. Growling.
Grigorovich saw it and laughed, even as he bled from the mouth.
"YES! Come on! Be the monster! Just like your father was!"
He slammed Kaz into the ground and started mauling him. Claws raking. Kaz's flame was sputtering — too angry, too wild.
That's when the courtyard wall exploded inward.
Riko came crashing through followed by Jamie who was flanked by a creature unlike anything the others had seen before, it was shark Jamie's newest weapon.
Jamie made quick assessment of the situation and slammed his fist into the ground.
His Abyssal Armory woke up.
Black liquid shadow spread from his palm. It rose, formed, solidified.
First — a spear. Perfect balance, tip made of condensed night. He threw it without looking.
"Vali! Catch!"
Vali's hand shot up. Caught it. The second his fingers touched it, his Abyssal Mist rushed into the spear, coating it. Mist + Armory. It turned into something new — a black spear that trailed fog. Vali felt its weight and finally smiled. Cold.
Second — Jamie pulled his hand up, flicked his wrist. A long whip of interlocking shadow plates formed. He tossed it.
"Zaria!"
She caught it. Her Strings instantly wrapped around the handle, and the whip lit up — white, then blue, then bright, bright blue. Her ability feeding it. She cracked it once and the air screamed.
Third — for himself, Jamie formed a massive battle axe. Double-headed, handle wrapped in shadow cloth. He roared and charged.
"Get off my brother!"
Grigorovich had just raised a claw to finish Kaz when Jamie's axe took him in the side. It didn't cut deep — tiger hide — but it had weight. Real weight. It knocked Grigorovich off Kaz.
Kaz gasped, horns receding an inch. He saw Jamie. Saw Riko. Saw them.
Riko was already on Grigorovich, obsidian armor fully deployed, forming crystal spikes from his knuckles and hammering Grigorovich's face. "You like picking on smaller kids, huh?! HUH?!"
Grigorovich was getting annoyed now. He grabbed Riko's crystal-covered arm and bent it until the crystal cracked. Riko screamed.
Kaz saw the ring on Grigorovich's right hand pulse as he used telekinesis to throw Riko at Vali who dodged his body flowing like water, Vali threw the shadow spear at their opponent's shoulder who grabbed it with a clawed hand.
A smug grin spread over the villians face but was quickly replaced when vali ran up and kicked the end of the spear with all his might slicing open Grigorovich's palm and lodging its blade in his shoulder, he shoved Vali away with a burst of telekinesis and slowly and agonizingly pulled the spear out of his shoulder and tossed it to the side .
That pulse —That ring, m that split second of clarity in Kaz's berserk rage — Kaz's burning eyes focused. Not on the tiger. On the ring.
Jamie was pressing Grigorovich with the axe, trading blows, but Grigorovich was bigger, angrier. He was hitting his own White Tiger men who got too close. Hitting Sharks who tried to help. Pure berserk rampage.
Kaz got up and rushed Grigorovich like a mad man.
He ran at Grigorovich's back while Jamie had his attention.
Grigorovich spun, telekinesis throwing Jamie twenty feet and pulling him in again. He raised his claw to end him —
CRACK!
Riko's Obsidian coated fist slammed against his jaw, followed by the stinging pain of Vali sinking the spear into his thigh Grigorovich roared in angered and swung more wildly.
CRACK!
Zaria's new whip wrapped around Grigorovich's other leg, her blue Strings burning hot, sawing into fur.
Grigorovich roared again, distracted for exactly 1.5 seconds.
That was all Kaz needed he leapt like a carnivore hunting prey, grabbed Grigorovich's right hand with both of his. And bit.
He bit his finger off. Ring finger. Ring and all.
Grigorovich howled — a sound no tiger should make — and stumbled back, clutching his hand. Black blood and white fur. His telekinesis field flickered. Died.
Kaz spat the finger, ring still on it, onto the ground and stomped it. The black ring cracked.
"My family," Kaz panted, horns slowly emerging now, flame pouring from his mouth, "doesn't belong to you, and we're surely not your's to destroy."
Grigorovich looked at his bleeding hand. At the broken ring. At these kids who wouldn't die.
He went fully feral.
He lunged at Kaz, mouth open, aiming for his throat —
And ran into a wall.
Not a wall. A gauntlet. Five shadow gauntleted fingers dug into his snout, holding him mid-air.
The air behind Jamie shimmered. Shark stepped out, ready for battle.
7ft tall. Faceless. Made of pure dark energy that flickered like a shifting night sky. One yellow shark eye opened in the void of its face.
The temperature dropped twenty degrees.
Jamie clenched the axe tighter, he felt the shadow tether from his chest to Shark's back. This was his. His construct. But bigger than anything he'd ever made.
Shark looked at Riko. Dismissed him. Looked at Jamie. Then at Grigorovich, still held by the snout.
"Shark.....food" boomed through everyone's head.
Grigorovich, even in tiger form, whimpered. Then enraged, he slashed Shark's arm with his left paw — four deep gouges that should have severed it.
Shadow just poured back together.
Shark didn't move. Just opened his other hand.
Grigorovich was thrown back by an invisible force — Jamie's Armory, Shark's will.
Jamie stood up, feeling that tether burn. He threw his axe at Shark who knew what to do.
Shark caught the battle axe one-handed. The axe drank his darkness and doubled in size.
Now Grigorovich was facing the Shark's strike team.
Jamie, Riko, Vali, Zaria, Kaz, and Shark.
They overpowered him.
It was brutal. Vali's mist spear kept appearing and disappearing, stabbing from fog. Zaria's whip kept binding his legs, her Strings glowing so bright blue they hurt to look at. Riko kept making obsidian hammers from his forearms and shattering them on Grigorovich's skull. Kaz was a demon with his bat , flame coating every swing, finally free of telekinesis.
And in the center — Jamie and Shark, fighting in sync. Like father and son.
Jamie would feint low with shadow daggers, Grigorovich would block, Shark would bring the massive axe down.
They were winning.
Until they weren't.
Grigorovich, bleeding from a dozen wounds, one finger gone, saw Jamie overextend. He faked a stumble from Vali's spear, then twisted in a way that was inhumane — and drove his claws straight for Jamie's gut.
Time slowed.
Riko screamed, "JAMIE!"
Jamie couldn't dodge. The claws were coming. Four white tiger claws, each a foot long, aimed to disembowel him.
They hit.
Jamie felt his shirt tear. Felt hot blood trickle down his stomach. Grigorovich's claws dragged across his stomach, not deep enough to kill, but deep enough to see that he almost claws his guts out. Jamie collapsed to one knee, hands over his stomach, shadow trying to form but failing.
Grigorovich grinned, bloody.
Then the grin died.
Because Shark had gone still.
That one yellow eye, which had been calm, dim, observant — flared. Wide. Bright yellow. Filled with pure, deep-water hate.
You hurt his summoner. You hurt his master.
Shark moved faster than anyone had seen him move.
He didn't use the axe. He grabbed Grigorovich's left arm with one hand.
And pulled.
Grigorovich screamed. A real scream this time. Not a roar. Fur tore. Muscle tore. Bone popped.
Shark tore Grigorovich's left arm clean off at the shoulder.
Threw it aside. It dissolved into white fur and blood before hitting the ground.
Grigorovich collapsed, holding his stump, reverting partially — face half-human, half-tiger, sobbing, snarling.
"You... you... fucking mongrels..."
He pressed something on his belt with his remaining right hand. The slimy bastard had an escape trick.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
All around the facility, red lights started flashing. A calm automated voice: "SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE INITIATED. T-MINUS 3 MINUTES."
Grigorovich laughed, blood bubbling from his mouth, and his body disappeared as in white smoke filled the room. Kaz lunged at him one finally time.
But he was gone.
Kaz fell to his knees, horns receding as fast as they grew, flame dying. "Jamie!"
Jamie was on the ground, Riko pressing obsidian over his stomach to stop bleeding. Shark stood over him, axe gone, both hands hovering over Jamie's wound, shadow trying to knit it.
Shark put a hand on Jamie's head. Gentle. Just like Seamus would.
Then Shark looked up. At the flashing lights.
Vali pulled Zaria up. Zaria was crying but her whip was still glowing. Riko helped Jamie up, Jamie leaning on him and Shark.
Kaz picked up his bat and revolver, spat blood.
From the far side of the compound, Toma and Daiji came sprinting through smoke, the kids trailing behind them . And behind them — Kimara, shivering, her hands covered in black frost, and Amy, wide-eyed, holding Kimara's hand.
"WE GOT THEM!" Toma yelled. "KIMARA AND AMY! WE GOT THEM! BUT THIS PLACE IS GONNA BLOW!"
The Sharks were already running for the broken gate, carrying freed children on their backs.
Jamie, bleeding, looked at his family. Vali, spear in hand, mist gone. Zaria, whip still blue. Riko, armor cracked. Kaz, horns gone but eyes still orange. And Shark, 7ft tall, one yellow eye looking down at Jamie like — We need to go, kid.
He grinned, manic, bloody, alive and they ran.
Shark took the rear, his massive shadow form shielding the group as the science research center counted down to zero behind them.