"D-did I see that right?"
"Did that cha just reattach a leg?"
"I’m not sure... because what I rember seeing were spider-like tentacles that reached out and grabbed the leg..."
The crowd had devolved into soft murmurs, voices hushed as if speaking too loudly might confirm that yes, reality had absolutely just bent in front of them.
People looked around. Not for answers. Just for confirmation that they weren’t hallucinating. That others had seen it too. That what had just occurred was indeed real and not a fever dream brought on by too much spiritual exposure or not enough sleep.
Then ca a very different voice.
"Kyle! Did you see that? Isn’t my brother so cute?!"
Ollie Mylor, ever the devoted sworn-sibling and part-ti chaos enthusiast, was bouncing in place. His hair practically glowed beneath the observation do lighting, and he was waving a hand-painted sign with Luca’s na surrounded by glitter stickers.
"Look at those limbs!" Ollie gasped. "And how he even patted the leg down like a dic trying to reassure a patient!"
Where others saw a horrifying dical horror show, Ollie saw artistry. Precision. Love.
"See! Look at that!" Ollie jabbed a finger toward the battlefield. "He’s even fixing the joint connection aside from patching the damage on the chest!"
He was now waving the sign so hard it was a miracle it hadn’t taken flight.
Kyle, to his credit, remained quiet.
Because what most of the audience was seeing had very little in common with his little star’s cheerful comntary.
What they saw... was a white cha crouched like a hunter beside another, its tools wrapped around the damaged limb like surgical restraints. They saw sothing that very clearly had not been broken before—now removed with the delicacy of soone dissecting a frog—only to be "lovingly" reinserted once the chest plating had been stitched back together.
It was the stuff of nightmares.
If Kyle didn’t already know about Luca’s borderline obsessive need for correctly aligned joints, he too would have assud this was a live demonstration on psychological warfare.
Still, despite the trauma inflicted, the pilot did walk away.
Their cha functioned. Possibly even better than before. But the pilot would probably flinch every ti they saw a wrench for the next six months.
Then ca more.
A damaged stabilizer was replaced.
An entire energy canister was swapped out after Luca deed the impact radius too risky for future pressure containnt.
Wings were reattached. Not re-welded. Reattached. Like they had never fallen off to begin with.
And then, casually, as if it were just part of his job description, Luca perford a full torso reattachnt on a cha that had crumpled against a boulder.
By the ti he’d completed his ninth repair, the arena looked like a hybrid of a battlefield and a surgical operating theater.
And then it happened.
While circling back, Luca stumbled across sothing—an opportunity of a lifeti.
He paused.
His expression lit up.
The kind of mont that made Kyle instinctively tense and Ollie squeal.
And it started when Deputy Officer Curtis managed to flee far enough to feel proud of himself, not because he believed in desertion, but because he was following orders.
The Marshal had said to attempt to flee or fight.
Attempt. The operative word.
And while so of his fellow volunteers might go down in history as brave souls for at least trying, Curtis had no desire to be rembered as the idiot who stood his ground against a cha that so clearly outclassed him—especially when he, more than anyone, knew exactly by how much.
He had a career to maintain. A pension to look forward to. Bones to keep unshattered.
So he chose flight.
With pride.
He just didn’t expect to be found this fast.
Not that he was surprised.
Marshal Julian, after all, was no longer just a man in a cha. He was a war deity in pilot form, with a new suit that should have co with a planetary hazard warning.
Curtis tried. He did.
Because when he realized there was no more hope of running, he made sure to put up the best fight he could at the mont, relying on the years they’ve worked together to predict what could happen next.
First, a lateral boost across the terrain, landing hard behind a jutting ridge. His cha dipped low, systems humming as he readied a series of auto-triggers.
Then a fake-out move before he lunged.
A spiral dive. A vault. A blade feint that forced even Julian to turn just a bit too sharply.
And for a mont, just for a mont, Curtis thought—
This might actually work.
The rear thrusters flared. He jetted underneath Julian’s arm, twisted, and brought out the core move he had been thinking of using for years.
A spiritual attack.
He didn’t use a blade. Didn’t bother with cannons.
He used condensed spiritual energy that had been sharpened like a scalpel.
He struck, targeting a joint—specifically designed to target the areas he thought were vulnerable, or in this case, just less durable. It was the cleanest opening he’d seen all day.
If it landed, it would be beautiful.
And it did.
Or it would’ve.
If not for the sudden, shimring pulse that unfolded before the Marshal’s cha like a curtain of defiance.
A shield.
The kind of shield the Marshal hadn’t used today.
Gasps echoed from the observation deck.
He’d defended.
Marshal Julian Theron actually defended.
From her seat, even Eden raised a brow.
Curtis. That dork. That paperwork-burdened, bundyclock-loving deputy had just made the Marshal defend.
For a glorious mont, everyone thought this was it. The underdog mont. The surprise twist.
They were wrong.
The Marshal retaliated. Swiftly. Brutally. With the kind of efficiency that scread overkill.
Curtis’s cha crumpled with a single strike, several limbs bending in ways no limb should. The torso nearly split. The thrusters sputtered like they were choking on grief.
Curtis cried out in disbelief.
"This was supposed to be a mock battle!"
He flailed his arms, or what remained of them.
"How did I end up like this?!"
Marshal Julian had the decency to look mildly apologetic.
"I still haven’t figured out how to assess the strength of this cha," he admitted. "Particularly the armor. Even the plating works for offense."
That was not comforting.
But before Curtis could respond, his comms exploded.
Not literally. But the shared channel lit up.
"Deputy! Run!"
"Click it!"
"Declare disqualification now!"
"Don’t wait! GET OUT!"
Curtis blinked.
"Huh???"
Why was everyone so panicked?
Different voices. Different screams. Sa ssage.
It was less like a tactical command channel and more like the pleas of those haunted by the sa ghost.
Then he saw it.
And when it arrived, he didn’t think it’d be that close.
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