AKAME ASSASINATION (58)
"Okay then."
Her voice was unchanged—flat, detached, as if his declaration had been nothing more than background noise. Fragment combat was a chess game of known quantities and hidden moves. Gil had learned that brutal lesson fighting Jericho back in Kisumu—a messy, desperate draw against his second human opponent. It was pure arrogance to think he could easily overwhelm a seasoned veteran who had spent years honing her sorcery into a weapon.
'But I'm sure I can win now.' The thought was a spark in the dark, fueled by recent growth. He settled into a fighting stance he'd seen somewhere—a loose, rooted posture that felt right.
"!" Jessica's blue eyes widened a fraction, not in fear, but in analytical surprise. The stance was recognizable, but his F.E. control still screamed amateur. Her gaze flickered past him. 'The white-haired one, though… he read my displacement like a children's book. He's the real variable.'
Gil seized the micro-distraction. He lunged—
—and the world stuttered.
Streaks of dark-pink F.E. bled from her form to a point to his left. In the space between heartbeats, she was gone, then reappeared beside him. A fist, dense with enhanced force, buried itself in his gut.
WHUFF.
All the air left his lungs. He curled inward, only for a second blow—an uppercut to the base of his skull—to slam his face into the marble floor. A crater of splintered stone bloomed around his head. Dazed, he felt a hand clamp around his ankle. Then he was weightless, his body swung like a sack of grain before being hurled across the room.
CRASH.
He shattered through a framed historical tapestry and slid down the wall in a heap of dust and splinters. Blood, warm and metallic, traced a path from his hairline across his vision.
Before he could rise, she began to skip.
It wasn't speed. It was reality having a seizure. She flickered in and out of existence—there, gone, there—a strobing phantom closing the distance. When she solidified before him, the assault was a storm.
A punch to the solar plexus. Another to the ribs. A hammer-blow to the collarbone. Each impact was precise, brutal, layered with that dark-pink energy that seemed to sink into his flesh, denting bone and rupturing capillaries from the inside. He tried to reinforce, but her rhythm was disorienting, her attacks coming from angles that defied physics.
Through the haze of pain, Gil's analytical mind latched onto a pattern. He wasn't being hit by one person. He was being hit by several. Faint after-images of her fists, each glowing with that same pink aura, overlapped in his vision—a simultaneous, multi-directional beating.
Then, it stopped.
She reached down, not to hit him again, but to grab the front of his ruined shirt. She didn't pull him. She pulled on him.
A ghostly, blue after-image of his own body was yanked out of his physical form, hovering between them for a split second. Jessica pivoted, her right fist a blur of concentrated power, and drove it not into Gil's flesh, but into this stolen echo.
BOOM.
The effect was catastrophic. The phantom image shattered like glass, and the kinetic force translated directly into Gil's real body. He was launched backward like a cannonball, tearing through the drywall and into a dimly lit service hallway beyond.
Gasping, spitting blood, Gil forced himself to his knees. The pain was immense, but his last-second reinforcement had saved his organs. He was bruised, broken in places, but not out.
"You are a very persistent person," Jessica's voice carried through the new hole in the wall. She stepped through, dragging her maul, Hoshi, behind her with a low scrape. "I'll give you that. Can you feel that? The presence that just vanished?"
"What?" Gil rasped, wiping blood from his eye.
"My brother. And your friend. Their signatures are gone. Well, one vanished. The other… I never really sensed him to begin with."
Gil pushed himself fully upright, his body screaming in protest. "That's nice. Means we can fight for real now."
"What?" She tilted her head, leaning on Hoshi. "Are you one of those people who enjoys getting beat up by women? What's the term… masochist?"
'What is that technique?' Gil's mind raced, trying to categorize the impossible. Displacement? Phantoms? Echo-theft? It doesn't fit Fullbringer, Witch, Hunter… the categories are useless. She's rewriting the rules.'
"Hey. I'm talking to you." Jessica snapped her fingers, the sound sharp in the dusty hallway.
"What?" Gil blinked, dragging himself back to the present.
"You were trying to analyze my technique. Don't bother. Everyone does. It's called Echo-Step: Phantom Driver. It lets me leave kinetic after-images and manipulate the 'echo' of impact. Simple, really."
She was disarmingly forthright. "I've got yours figured, too. Electrostatic teleportation. You polarized my maul, then yourself. Basic physics, just… executed with sorcery. Cute trick."
Gil stared. Her analysis was cold, clinical, and completely accurate. "You're… really good at this."
"I suppose."
A wave of humiliation washed over him, cooling the fire of his earlier bravado. "I guess I'm really eating my words here."
"Jeez, you're making me feel almost bad." She hefted Hoshi. "Almost. I have a particular dislike for prodigies. You all think you have something to prove to the world."
"What do you mean?"
"You lean into other people's expectations. Like my idiot brother. He's strong. Really strong. But he's always looking up at someone—at a ghost—instead of looking at himself. He thinks he has to prove he's worthy of a dead man's title. You're the same." Her blue eyes pinned him. "You remind me of him. It makes me want to beat your ass even more."
"There's something I want to do," Gil said, the words feeling fragile. "Something I couldn't do before. He… Akame… helped me see I could."
"And?" Jessica's voice suddenly gained an edge, a flicker of real anger beneath the icy calm. "What else? You talk like you owe him your life. If you're going to dedicate your entire existence to someone else's vision, you're not a disciple. You're a slave."
The accusation hit like a physical blow.
'Metaphorical strength, the strength of conviction… that's not something I can teach you. It's a path you walk alone.'
Akame's words echoed back, finally finding purchase. Gil had heard them, but he hadn't understood.
"So what?" Jessica pressed, her contempt now naked. "A bunch of powerful people tell you you're 'special,' and you just… mold yourself to fit their narrative? You never stop to ask what you want? God, I never want to be a prodigy if that's how you people live."
"Okay then," Gil countered, a new defiance rising through the pain. "Why are you here? You're with your brother. Doesn't that mean you're also conforming? To your family? To the Blight name?"
"God, you're stupid." A dry, almost weary smile touched her lips. "I'm not here for him. I'm here because of him. To show every smug elder in the House of Blight that my brother isn't a fluke of lineage. That anyone can stand here if they work for it. Bloodlines, 'special powers'… it's all just noise."
Gil clenched his fists, the motion sending a fresh ache through his bruised knuckles. "We're fighting… but answer me. What do you think your strength is?"
It was a question that had nothing to do with star rankings.
"I don't deal in philosophy," she said, her gaze steady. "Sorcerers are, by nature, selfish. To grow, we sacrifice. We live for ourselves. I'm not doing this for my brother's glory or my family's legacy. I'm doing it to show that stubborn idiot he can live for himself, too."
The pieces slammed together in Gil's mind.
'The problem with you folks from the Vatican is that you always take strength to be one-dimensional.'
Akame's lesson from the rooftop. Jericho's rage. Koji's quiet resolve. Blake's cryptic plans. It wasn't about raw power. It was about purpose.
Gil let out a sudden, ragged laugh. "Of course. There are different kinds of strength. I was too blind to see it." He met Jessica's eyes, his own clearing. "I'm sorry. I was arrogant. I thought because I trained hard, I deserved to win. You… you trained hard too, didn't you?"
"A little bit, yeah." For the first time, a genuine, unguarded smile broke through her detached mask. It was small, but real.
"You're driven by something that makes you strong," Gil said, slowly finding his footing again, both physically and mentally. "I still don't know what drives me yet. But when I figure it out… I hope I'll be strong, too."
"Why do you sound so sure you're walking out of here alive?" she asked, the smile fading, replaced by focused intensity.
"Because," Gil said, rolling his shoulders, a new energy—clear and self-directed—crackling around him. It wasn't the wild spillage from before. It was concentrated. Chosen. "Just like you… I'm starting to find it."
TO BE CONTINUED!