The instant Starboy gained altitude, the field snapped into place.
Below him, Pyro was a burning streak—fire wrapped tight around his fra as he juked sideways through falling debris.
He dragged fla across the surface of the vine he’d been harassing, scorching long sections of it as it recoiled and snapped back, chunks of burning matter sloughing off and crashing into the street below.
Starboy angled to dive—
Then the boom hit.
Not close. Not here.
A heavy impact rolled through the ground and up his spine, strong enough that even in the air he felt it in his chest. His head turned on reflex.
In the distance, the chanoid stood its ground.
A vine lashed toward it, tangled thick as a building, coming in low and fast. Blue light flared as the shield snapped into place—hexagonal plates locking together just in ti. The vine struck—BOOOM~—and the barrier held.
Then the chanoid fired back.
A focused blast hamred into the sprout’s main body, aid with brutal accuracy at the base of a single vine. The impact tore straight through it, ripping the limb free in a spray of ruined growth and scorched matter.
For half a second, it worked.
The severed vine fell away.
Then another ca down.
The shield flashed again—but the second hit ca too fast, too heavy. The hex pattern fractured, light breaking apart as the vine slamd through and struck the chanoid square in the shell.
The massive fra dragged backward several ters, tal enduring as its legs dug into collapsing ground to stop the slide.
The sprout didn’t pause.
Multiple vines lashed out at once.
Starboy sucked in a breath—
And paid for the distraction.
The vine Pyro had just burned shifted mid-motion, its charred side rolling toward him as it redirected. It snapped through the air straight at Starboy, still trailing smoke and fla.
His eyes widened.
He raised his arms, too late to dodge properly, bracing for the hit—
Sothing exploded behind and below him—BOOM~—
He didn’t look.
Didn’t have ti.
The world blurred at the edge of his vision—
And then Don was there.
A sar of motion crossed Starboy’s periphery and slamd into the oncoming vine head-on. Don t it with a punch, body twisted into the strike, and released the blast at point of contact.
BOOOOM~.
The vine ca apart.
Its own force folded back into itself as the blast tore through it, the front half disintegrating and the rest ripping free from the sprout. The severed end fell into the street below, smashing into debris and sending hounds scattering in all directions.
So fled.
Others regrouped instantly and leapt upward, jaws snapping as they tried to reach Don as he fell.
The rest of the injured vine went wild.
It lashed in every direction, slamming into buildings, whipping through empty air, forcing Starboy to burn altitude fast as he dodged sideways. Don dropped hard under gravity and hit the ground in a crouch just as the street erupted around him.
The system flashed again.
———
Ti Remaining: 2:30
———
Don didn’t look at it.
The seconds stretched anyway, heavy and endless.
Hounds poured in.
Don grabbed the chunk of vine he’d torn loose, fingers digging into its ruined mass. He hauled it up with a grunt and spun, using it like a flail.
The vine segnt whipped outward—crushing the first hound outright and sending another flying through a shattered storefront.
He turned again.
Another swing.
Bone snapped. Bodies hit debris and didn’t get back up. One creature ca apart midair, upper half tearing free as it was smashed into an overturned car.
Above him, Pyro and Starboy converged.
Fire streaked across one side of the remaining vine as Pyro poured it on, teeth clenched, posture tight. Starboy took the opposite angle, beams hamring into the other side, carving through already weakened sections.
They struggled to keep the pressure aligned.
The vine twisted, writhed, fought back.
Then the sprout shifted.
Its massive feet moved, grinding the earth beneath them and sending tremors rippling outward—DOOOM~.
More vines dropped all at once, slamming into the streets and broken rooftops. Pyro and Starboy split, dodging hard, even forcing two vines to crash into each other mid-swing—BOOM~—sending visible shock through the sprout’s bulk.
On the ground, Don finished his turn.
Three more hounds were airborne—one already torn in half as the vine segnt completed its arc. He let it fall and finally stopped moving.
For a second, he just breathed.
Then he looked up.
Pyro and Starboy were still fighting above—outnumbered, pressed.
Don didn’t rush in.
He stayed where he was, eyes tracking the movent, watching how the vines struck, how they pulled back, how the sprout adjusted after each exchange.
He wiped blood from his mouth with the back of his hand.
And started thinking. Fast.
Don didn’t have the luxury of doubt.
Looking at the field as it was—vines cycling, hounds spawning, the sprout advancing in slow and heacy steps—he knew survival hinged on sothing simple and brutal: using everything he had, at the sa ti.
Vanguard strength without structure would get him buried. Tactics without force would get him sward.
This wasn’t about whether he could do it.
He had to.
Don lifted his head and used his battlefield scan fully.
The world broke apart.
Beastshift carried the change through his vision like a hard switch being thrown. Colors flattened. Depth sharpened. Motion slowed just enough to matter.
The sprout stopped being a single towering mass and beca a layered construct—growth patterns overlapping, load-bearing nodes flaring faintly where stress accumulated, connective trunks feeding power and mass through buried routes.
A blueprint.
Weakpoints lit across it in his perception—junctions where multiple vines converged, dense cores near the leg-structures, internal channels exposed briefly whenever it shifted weight. None of them were easy. All of them were guarded by timing, distance, and violence.
He’d seen this already.
The problem hadn’t been finding them.
It had been this: every ti he committed to one, the rest of the field turned hostile. Defense took over. Vines pressed harder. Hounds flooded in or montum died.
Split targets wouldn’t fix it either. One vine distracted ant another crushed soone flat. One opening exploited ant three counters followed.
Don exhaled through his teeth.
’Not alone. I can’t beat this thing alone.’
The scan stayed active as he bent his knees and launched upward, clearing a broken building foundation and tearing into open air.
"Starboy! Pyro!" he shouted, voice carrying over the ruptured street. "Follow my instructions!"
Starboy jerked midair, half-turning, irritation written all over his face. "Why the hell shoul—"
He never finished.
A vine ripped sideways through the space behind him, fast and heavy. Pyro’s head snapped around at the sa instant.
"Yo—look out!"
Pyro twisted as he spoke, dropping altitude as a hound sprang up at him from a collapsed car. He drove a flaming fist down into its skull—CRACK~—and rode the recoil into a lateral dodge as another vine scythed through the space he’d just occupied, shredding concrete and tiles in its wake.
Starboy wasn’t as lucky.
The vine caught him clean across the back.
His body folded around the impact and went loose, flung end over end before he slamd into a heap of broken wooden material and twisted tal—dust and debris erupting outward.
He skidded to a stop on his side.
Hounds were already moving.
Three shapes tore free from a nearby fissure and leapt, claws scraping over rubble as they closed the distance in seconds.
Don was already moving.
Mid-jump, he stretched one hand out, fingers splayed. Pressure snapped into place around the nearest two hounds, invisible force locking them mid-lunge.
Their bodies jerked and strained, limbs spasming as they hung suspended a ter off the ground, jaws snapping at nothing.
"Listen to !" Don yelled, teeth clenched as he held them. "If you want even a chance at beating this thing—get up. Turn around. Fire to your left and right. Arms out. About ninety degrees. Fast."
Starboy coughed and pushed himself up on one elbow, dust streaking his face. He looked furious—at the vine, at the sprout, at Don for barking orders in the middle of it.
But under that, he felt it.
This wasn’t sothing he could brute-force.
He got to his feet anyway, boots grinding against debris, and turned just as Don said.
The timing was razor-thin.
Two hounds were already airborne above him, silhouettes cutting across the gray sky, claws extended toward his head.
Starboy didn’t think.
He fired.
Twin beams tore outward from his arms at the rough angles Don had called—one left, one right—slamming into both creatures across the torso. Not center mass. Not clean.
But enough.
The impact hurled them backward in a spray of broken asphalt and gore, bodies crashing into a collapsed bus stop and a streetlight—before they hit the ground and writhed, limbs twitching uselessly.
Don released his grip.
The suspended hounds dropped and smashed into the pavent hard enough to crack it—and Pyro incinerated one mid-fall, fla ripping through it in a short, violent burst.
That was all Don needed.
He didn’t have perfect numbers. Couldn’t calculate every vector, every rebound, every counterstrike. None of them could react with machine precision—not him, not Pyro, not Starboy.
Not yet.
But close was enough.
Close ant injuries instead of deaths. Close ant openings instead of collapse.
Starboy stared at the downed hounds, chest heaving, then looked back at Don.
Sothing shifted in his expression. The anger didn’t vanish—but it set, hardening into focus.
He nodded once.
No words. Just agreent.
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