July 11, 2022 - 12:36pm

Eden City, New Eden, Bir Tawil

Esme Montoya, for as long as she’d known herself to be a maestro, had very little atma. Pitiful amounts, in fact. On a good day, she had twenty minutes of continuous reinforcement before she ran out, and that number dropped greatly with each use of her technique. So, she learned to fight. Really fight. That dedication to getting stronger is what gave her the skill to sidestep Monika Rose’s reinforced punch, and instantaneously counter with the flat side of her spear’s wrapped head.

To get around her little atma problem, Esme only used it to reinforce her body just before taking hits, and relied on Instruments to deal damage. Monika jumped back immediately but was unable to avoid another strike from the strangely-shaped spear, Calypso’s Net. She stumbled backwards while Esme adopted a firm, defensive stance.

“This’ll be harder if she’s on the defensive…I could shape my atma into projectiles, but I’d use up too much if I rely on that. I need to be smart…” Monika thought.

After a moment, the girl turned left and ran towards the closest tree, effortlessly jumping up to its gnarled branches.

“Did I win already?” Esme taunted, shifting to face Monika as she maintained her stance. Monika said nothing. She broke off the thinner, vine-like, branches drooping from the banyan’s canopy and snapped them into smaller pieces.

“What’s with the arts and cra—” Esme stopped mid sentence as she remembered one of the basics of atma control: Flow is more efficient than Shaping.

Monika launched the plant matter at her at that moment, loaded with atma. The older girl adjusted her stance to hold the spear out in front of her, the hoop directly in her face. The sticks that flew through stopped midair, but the one that didn’t found its way to her finger and exploded on impact. It was small, but enough to break her defensive pose. She dropped the weapon, and looked back up when she heard another BOOM, just in time to see Monika flying towards her with a fist ready to strike.

Total Wipeout.

Threads of atma wrapped around Esme sewed themselves intricately into the shape of her technique; limited control over friction. A paltry technique when compared to those of her peers. In her hands however, it was a formidable tool. She reduced the forces of friction around her body, and in doing so, gave herself the necessary mobility to avoid Monika. She hit the ground, but barely needed a second to pivot and launch herself at Esme again.

They continued this ferocious waltz as Esme tried desperately to regain the upper hand.

“This is no good. Monika’s atma’s trait is a bad match for me. I need to get the Net back!”

~

“There’s one more thing you must know about my granddaughter,” Yasu said, “her atma has a trait…”

“A trait?” Isadora asked.

“It’s like a passive property that some maestros have in their atma. Their atma can be cold, or hot, or, abrasive or whatever,” Esme explained, impressing the old woman.

“You’ve been reading well, girl. Monika’s is...pyrophoric, in a way. Instead of igniting when exposed to air, it explodes when in contact with atma. She relies on that, instead of using her technique.”

“Explodes on contact with atma…even her own?”

“Even her own. I had her master Flow when she first awakened. She cycles atma through her body like a circuit, and is able to use her trait to her advantage by either touching her opponents’ atma, or ‘crossing wires’, as she used to call it. It’s been a few years since I saw her, so there may be some new things she’s learned.”

~

Distracted, Esme finally misstepped, and tripped backwards over the root of a tree. As she fell, Monika caught the collar of her windbreaker with a grin. At that range, any explosion would be unavoidable, and would only be made worse with reinforcement. If only she’d been more attentive. If only she hadn’t used so much atma during the first round. If only she took a backup Instrument like Niko had suggested before they arrived.

“Fuck that” She mentally slapped herself.

The girl reached into her back pocket and brandished a knife that she used to keep in her boot. At the same time that a stream of twisting atma rushed into Monika’s palm, Esme stabbed the hand holding her, earning her release. Bursts of energy rattled her entire left arm with the disruption of the circuit. The young Rose yowled in pain as Esme ran for her Instrument, using her technique to increase friction between the ground and her boots, and reducing the friction everywhere else.

“Fuck this”, thought Monika. She wound her atma into several small balls of energy, and flung them at her slippery assailant. The resulting explosions kicked up soil, dust, and plant matter. When the debris cleared, Esme stood smugly with Calypso’s Net in her hand. She’d exhausted almost all of her atma, but that was hardly a bother. Her body was muscled and taut from hours of extensive training. As long as she was armed, atma was just a bonus.

“You’re almost depleted,” Monika observed, “are you sure you don’t want to take a break? All you have to do is stop moving so much.”

“You started jumping around, ” the maestro replied. She dropped her spear head onto the ground, and drew a wide circle around her, faintly marked on the loamy forest floor.

“Come,” she said, “I won’t move from here.”

“Don’t piss me off…” Monika approached, rotating her arm to stretch out her shoulder. After the attack on the farm, she decided to add something new to her repertoire. As excited as she was to showcase what she’d practiced, this girl who barely qualified as a maestro taunting her was almost disrespectful.

~

Meanwhile, Kuro jumped from branch to branch, focusing atma on his legs to go faster and reach farther. He followed the pull of nearby atma users, hoping one of them was the girl who put a target on Soji’s back. He spotted a group of blooms below him, wandering around and following the same trail as him. The boy shuddered at the sight of them, unpleasantly reminded of the days he spent below ground.

He didn’t need to think before he unsheathed his machete and erased the space between himself and one of the cloth-skinned creatures. He landed silently behind it. Before it could turn around, and as the others became aware of his presence, he held the bloom’s head and decapitated it violently. His blade swam through the aberration like a jet of water cutting through sand. The creature stumbled away from him as its head dissipated in Kuro’s hand. Instead of the body following suit, however, a new head was threaded onto its neck.

Kuro jumped back immediately, just barely evading his target swinging at him.

“What the hell? Oh, that’s right…” After a moment of assessment, he charged back at the bloom, this time slashing at its abdomen. It disintegrated instantaneously as he flooded its body with atma.

“The types of blooms we’d been fighting were bound to organisms, CKs. Destroying the organism’s ability to function was enough. But these ones…the ones we read about…I need to destroy their core.”

He focused the atma around his eyes to see faint circuits of energy flowing through the blooms, and more importantly, how they bundled together at various points in their torsos.

His knuckles went taut gripping his machete tighter. One by one, he cut down the four blooms aggressively, smashing his fists into them, slashing their faces and limbs apart before finishing them off. A habitual mauling he learned in the pit. Kuro hoped that he remembered how to fight people before he found that girl. The boy continued his hunt, prowling deeper into the forest.

~

“So, let me get this straight,” Soji said, “A rank one bloom is one of those useless wisp things that are floating around, and the rank twos are the ones that look like mummies…that’s a hell of a jump.”

“It’s ‘cus of the atma that they eat, it helps them grow,” Penny shrugged. She had to resist the urge to check on Dione hopping from branch to branch, attentively keeping watch over them. Alex had since gone on his own to hunt down blooms.

“I suppose. I wonder if I could get a powerup like that,” he wondered, not realizing he spoke out loud. Penny backed away.

“Don’t get any ideas, bloom boy,” she joked.

“I’m not…” he whined, “where the hell are we walking? Isn’t it better to lure people our way by just staying in one place? If I just power up, you atma users can sense it, right?”

“I wouldn’t recommend it. Our target would notice…”

“Who’s our target?”

“One of your kind,” the girl giggled. Even Dione stifled a laugh.

“Hey! What’s that mean?!”

“A bloom, obviously. We’re looking for the Rank 3 bloom. It’ll be better for you to end this game sooner.”

“I seeeee…how are we finding this thing, exactly?”

“Look at that,” she pointed at the protruding roots of a nearby tree, “look at how the roots are black. And the leaves…can’t you see the sparkly blue in their veins?”

“Huh, I suppose you’re right.”

“Of course I am,” Penny continued, “that means we’re getting closer to the Rank 3’s domain.”

“Ugh, I’ve had enough domains to last me a lifetime,” Soji muttered.

“Don’t be a baby…listen up!” she scolded.

“Agh, this girl is just like Monika…”

“A Rank 3 is made when one of those ‘useless wisps’ combines with a plant or animal. It can make a domain that turns similar— Dione, what’s the word?

“Organisms!”

“Organisms…it turns organisms similar to itself into blooms and blackens nearby plants. That means we need to look out for weird animals.”

“They call CKs by a different name…it’s getting really confusing to keep up with all of them,” the boy thought back to the unending wave of knee-high rabbit-men bouncing around in the darkness of the pit.

“I see a weird animal right now,” Angelo’s voice called out from the cluster of trees ahead of them. He was alone, standing on a particularly long and thick branch.

“Ugh, this guy!” Soji groaned.

“What’s up with him?” Penny asked.

“He’s got some weird obsession with taking me down…don’t you remember how he was all possessive about tagging me in the first round?”

“I didn’t notice…I was too busy winning, actually,” her carefree attitude somewhat soothed Soji. Without warning, Dione drew her slingshot, and fired a small, glass marble at the masked maestro. The projectile caught the light at just the right angle, and alerted Angelo of its rapid approach.

Without any time to react, he simply wrapped his body in atma and braced for impact. Instead, the marble buried itself into the branch he stood on. Where did this come from?

“Atlas Alchemy: Ten Thousand,” the name of Dione’s technique reverberated throughout her body. The marble’s weight ballooned as it swelled with artificial mass, facilitated by the girl’s atma. The branch, as a result, cracked under the pressure of the sudden weight, taking Angelo with it as it plummeted to the ground.

“Maneki…” The boy tried to call up his technique, but was too late, and landed with a muted thud.

“At least I had my reinforcement up.” He rolled over to quickly regain balance when he saw that Soji and the girl next to him were looking up. Suddenly, he realized that the branch he’d been standing on was not on the ground with him. He didn’t bother looking up, and instead launched himself towards his target, only to hear something heavy crash down behind him. Splinters and soil peppered his windbreaker and hair. Again, he scrambled back onto his two feet.

“Whoa, how’d she do that?” Soji asked, awed by the branch suddenly breaking, proceeding to float for a moment, before falling again.

“I can convert atma into mass, and mass into atma,” Dione answered as she and her snake floated down from her perch.

“Dione!” Penny scolded.

“What? It’s an oversimplification anyway! And you two were looking real cozy a minute ago,” she teased. The three of them readied themselves when Angelo finally stood. Soji whispered something to Penny that forced her to roll her eyes.

“Fine,” she sighed. She put a hand on Dione’s shoulder and the two sank into shadow with a splash.

“You think you can take me alone?” Angelo yelled.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Soji spat back, “I’d lose an arm to make it fair, but it’d still be a long shot…for you.”

“I’ll cut out your tongue, you demon!” The masked boy approached Soji. His staff was likely tucked firmly between a branch and the ground, but he didn’t need it. Hatred and atma bent flesh and titanium into a boxing stance.

“It’d grow back,” Soji retorted. He inched towards Angelo with a similar stance, his gloves vibrating with heat.

Angelo swung first with unexpected speed, loading his metal hand with atma. Soji dodged effortlessly and countered, but his target was prepared and blocked.

This was a mistake.

Even reinforced, the heat singed his windbreaker. But that was nothing compared to the bone-rattling force of the punch that shook his entire body. The boy recoiled and took several steps back, cradling his ringing prosthetic arm.

“He’s even stronger than before…if I had blocked with my left, even with reinforcement, it might’ve fractured…”

“Hurts, doesn’t it? My strength is relative to my body temperature,” Soji explained, flexing his hand, “I had to go through some messed up shit to learn that…to make it this far.” He extended his hand towards Angelo as he remembered Doc’s words.

“You only need to think about it, and the glove will…”

The bandages coating his outstretched arm cooled and unraveled, shooting themselves at Angelo and wrapping around his waist. Soji clamped down on the rope and forcefully reeled in his prey. His expression darkened with memories of the pit, Victor, Daisy, his parents, Franklin, and Farah. It all had to be made right, and this stranger’s obsession with him was a threat to his justice.

“I won’t let you get in the way…”

“I wasn’t expecting that! Maneki: Tails” The force of Soji’s gloved fist was dampened by Angelo’s cat-like wraith spitting a coin at its owner. The boy tried to wrestle away the half-bloom’s grip. While his technique made him invulnerable for an incredibly brief period, his wooden oni mask slowly splintered under the repetitive pounding.

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“Why aren’t you—?” Soji realized that Angelo stopped flinching, and simply glared at him. The older boy gathered atma in his prosthetic and discharged it into Soji’s face with a punch, granting him the freedom from the boy’s grip.

He barely had a moment to recuperate when the half-bloom recovered and struck him again. His atma felt like it bunched up and absorbed the force of the impact, leaving Angelo unscathed.

“He’s incredibly resilient…is this his technique? I need to wear him down.”

The boys traded blows, Angelo continuing to be unfazed, and Soji adding more and more power to his attacks. No matter how hard he hit him, or how far he threw him, the masked maestro got back up.

“Why are you so persistent?!” Soji mustered as much power as he could into his legs, with a wave of heat surging down his right to plant a burning hook kick into Angelo’s chest. He only meant to break the boy’s seemingly impenetrable reinforcement. However, at that very moment, his technique timed out, leaving him to take the full brunt of Soji’s attack with only basic reinforcement.

The CRACK of his ribs caving in was made even more sickening when accompanied with the THUD his body made when it hit the tree he first fell from. Angelo slumped over motionless.

“Jesus!” Soji cried, inching closer to Angelo, “I- I- I thought- I thought you were stronger!” Fear jellied his legs. Murderer… That’s right. Angelo had been the first one to call him that.

Suddenly, the boy came to, gasping for air.

“What do I do?” Tears flowed freely as the boy panicked.

“Maneki: Tails!” Suddenly, the gasping ceased, and Soji backed away at the appearance of the white cat.

“My ribs are definitely broken…I’m not coughing up blood…nothing’s punctured. Thank God I guessed correctly. At least that’ll prevent the damage from getting worse.”

White hot anger was his remedy for the pain as he slowly reached for his bo staff.

“I won’t beat him head on…but I think I know how to get in his head.”

“Why am I so persistent? You’re a devil masquerading as a human being. You come in here smiling, laughing, joking, with no remorse,” Angelo coughed, “Like you didn’t kill your own parents, like you didn’t kill Franklin!”

Soji froze, as his sweat turned cold.

“W-what?”

“You. Killed. My. Brother!” Angelo roared. His mask split into two, and dangled from his ears as they revealed absent lips and a missing cheek on the left side of his face. The wounded flesh was uneven, primal, as though clawed off by a wild animal and had long since been cauterized, stitched, and scarred.

A frigid arm draped itself over Soji’s shoulder and ran across his chest. Franklin’s rotted corpse rested its full weight on the boy, draining the strength from his body. Two pairs of smoldering hands wrapped around his ankles. Even Farah’s ghost watched from the darkness of the surrounding trees. A block of ice-cold guilt paralyzed him. The only thing he could hear over the blood rushing to his head, was his heart, beating in a frenzy.

Finally, Angelo charged at the immobilized bloom, re-equipped with his staff. Emboldened by the dead look in his target’s eyes, he held the weapon overhead and brought its raging divine judgment down on Soji’s head with full force. The impact blurred, then darkened the younger boy’s vision with a CRACK. His hot blood spilled in waves, but was cooled still by Franklin’s frosty breath as he was dragged downwards.

“Wait…wait…heeeeelp meeee…” the ghost whispered coolly.

~

A familiar crushing darkness embraced him, one he hadn’t felt since Daisy appeared at his house. It felt…lighter.

The roaring red iris from before spoke in a language he felt he should’ve known. The words were foreign, and yet their meaning was within his grasp. Those child-sized rabbit-blooms from the pit danced around him, swimming freely in a circle. Why were they here? What were they trying to tell him?

Angelo stood over Soji’s body, and could feel his life force flickering away. He did it. It was a hollow victory, but it appeased Yasu and avenged Franklin…right? The boy sat down against a tree, exhausted and pained. It’d be a miracle if he managed to raise his arms that high again, even with Maneki. Was it really that easy? Was this the boy with the x-shaped scars that sent ripples through maestro society?

He vomited.

“Looks like I couldn’t handle killing a bloom that looks like that, after all. I hope Esme will forgive me.”

Several minutes passed, with Angelo weaving in and out of consciousness. He couldn’t risk moving without activating his technique. And he couldn’t risk activating his technique, lest he guess wrong about whether it’d be heads or tails. Dealing with the consequences of an incorrect guess, in this state, could be fatal.

“When will this damned match be over? My team should only need a few more points to win…”

A sudden eruption of smoke from Soji’s head alarmed the boy. The dark pillar rose high into the sky like a beacon, an omen of something terrible.

“Did he heal!? Blooms shouldn’t be able to heal from my Burning Man! I swear I cracked the boy’s head open, and yet…”

Soji shot up, burning orange glimmering around his forehead wound. Black wisps like smoke emanated from the area. He caressed the wound, disconcerted. The sight of his own sticky blood made it clear to him, at last, that Angelo fully intended to kill him by any means necessary.

Soji’s glove extended a rope-like bandage at a nearby tree branch and pulled him upwards. He twisted his body to land on the perch facing his assailant. Maroon irises complemented his bloodied skin.

“What to do with you…”

~

Esme and Monika were deep in the throes of their own heated battle. The young Rose was careful to avoid being caught in Calypso’s Net, and its skillful wielder was methodical in avoiding explosive touches. Her ears rang from the constant booms. Their fight drew the attention of the odd bloom, looking to graze on atma. They took turns eliminating the intruders.

“You’re doing pretty good for someone with such little atma,” Monika taunted between breaths. Esme didn’t reply. The next bloom appeared next to her. Based on the unintentional order they set up between themselves, it was her turn to get rid of it. However, Monika dashed at the creature unexpectedly.

“Stealing my points?” Esme thought. She almost used her technique to make the girl slip, but refrained, feeling the tug of atma depletion in her stomach. Instead, she motioned to cut the thing down with her Net.

Monika hoped for, no, anticipated this, and immediately adjusted her trajectory with a BOOM while Esme was still mid swing. She jumped forward and twisted her body to wrap her legs around her head.

“It was a feint!?”

She’d seen this over a hundred times after the farm attack. After being pulled into the past by memories of the time spent with her mother, she rushed to YouTube for what she believed might’ve been the answer to her question. Monika had forgotten what she loved. She was forced to. It was only when she saw Rey Mysterio once more, flying through the air for his Running Hurricanrana, that her heart ignited with the same ferocity as her atma.

Mounted on Esme’s shoulders, she used the explosive atma around her hands to rocket herself backwards. As her body dropped, she loosed another blast around her feet to drag Esme down with her.

The older girl somersaulted through the air and landed on her back with enough force to leave her winded. Disoriented, ears ringing, and gasping for air, she felt Monika’s foot on her chest.

“Mierda,” she whispered.

“Yeah,” Monika replied. A smaller explosion rocked Esme’s torso. The pain of her ribs being dislocated sent her into shock. She fainted.

The young Rose groaned.

“That was way too difficult! If this had been a proper one-on-one…I think I would’ve lost,” she lamented, diving deeper into the woods. Without slowly conditioning Esme to go for the blooms that popped up, she never would’ve had the opportunity to try out her new moves. The girl was otherwise too attentive, too quick, and incredibly ruthless. Even with Monika’s training, she would have devoured her.

“I never did find out why she has Calypso’s Net…why would someone with an Aria need to take the Orchestra?” The girl wandered deeper into the woods at last, following the hums of atma in the distance.

“Yo, Momo!”

Monika’s hairs stood on end as she coated herself with atma instinctively, and turned to the direction of Niko’s voice. She held a more traditional spear with a black shaft. Its blade was gold-lined titanium with a diamond-shaped cross section. A Rose-crafted ryō-shinogi yari.

“Niko…”

“I don’t appreciate what you did to Esme…”

“That’s the game,” Monika’s voice wavered. She couldn’t quite read her cousin, and that made her nervous. She wiped her throbbing left hand against her pants, only now taking note of the blood spilling from it.

“So you won’t mind if I return the favor,” Niko smirked. The younger Rose sighed.

“Really? Over a girl? Simp!”

“Shut up!” A hand-sized pair of white wings erupted from the spear’s midsection. The Instrument shot above the forest’s canopy, and disappeared from sight. It screeched as it soared through the air, a lethal bird of prey. Monika backed away from her cousin, eyes glued to the skies.

“It’s pointless. Cloud Diamond can go mach speed when I put my wings on it. You can’t avoid that,” Niko explained smugly, “If you stay still, it’ll only shatter your leg!”

BOOF!

As if on cue, the weapon broke the sound barrier. In contrast, David King quietly deserted his hiding place behind a nearby tree, and waltzed up to a distracted Monika.

“Ain’t that a beaut,” he whistled, startling the girl.

“David! Don’t scare me like that!”

“Apologies, miss. I just couldn’t help but notice you’re in a bit of a pickle. I thought I’d swing by and help.”

“You wanna help? Go look for some blooms, I’m busy,” she didn’t even spare a glance.

“I don’t mean to suggest you’re incapable of handling yourself, but it’d be problematic for you and your friends if you waste time here. Plus, I play a mean support.”

“What do you have in mind?” Monika sighed, turning to him.

“Hold your breath.”

At that moment, Niko’s Cloud Diamond descended behind the girl and rocketed towards the back of her knee. David closed the distance between them and extended his hand upwards. A bubble of air shimmered around them.

The racing spear blasted itself into the bubble, but was drastically slowed as it distorted the shimmering air with its speed. It inched towards Monika’s leg, and the girl watched in amazement, taking a step towards David to avoid its tip. The weapon finally came to a complete stop before it was sent spinning in the opposite direction.

“What is this now?” Niko thought, “I can’t put my wings on either of them…is it because of that shimmering air?” She motioned for the spear to return to her.

“Nice technique…what is it?” Monika asked, only an inch away from the boy. The air seemed warmer, more humid. His atma resonated softly with notes of a lyre. David dropped his hand, and returned the atmosphere to normal, clearing his throat.

“Elasticity…anything my atma touches,” he replied vaguely.

“So that’s how you avoided slipping last round…” Monika mused.

“That’s right. I elasticized a thin film of air and stood on it.”

“Then I think I’ve got an idea…”

As soon as the words left her lips, Niko, carried by her brilliant wings, and accompanied by a BOOF, appeared before them. She thrust her spear forward before either maestro could evade, leaving Monika no choice but to rely on her reinforcement and catch it. The weapon sliced through her palm, but this wasn’t enough for the older Rose who continued to push through the air.

Monika clamped down on the spear’s shaft to prevent it from penetrating further as she stifled a yelp. She’d felt worse.

Suddenly, David rocketed his fist into Niko’s face. As he pulled his arm back, the air behind his elbow shimmered with elasticity, and rebounded his fist into the girl’s face again and stunned her. She loosened her grip on her weapon enough for Monika to gain control and strike her with the blunt end.

Niko stumbled back, caressing her face as her wings unraveled. In just a moment, she became the prey. All because of the nosy American who now, accompanied by her cousin, inched towards her with caution. This would be difficult.

~

Kuro’s fruitless search continued. Every bloom he came across was brutally cut down with no hesitation. There seemed to be no end to this game but somehow, he hadn’t come across any other participants. Curious.

Of course, the moment he dared to fully form that thought, leaping across branches, he saw another contestant on the ground. She had bright red hair covered by a black toque, sunglasses, and a scarf on top of an extremely baggy hoodie. The disintegrating bodies of a dozen blooms lay around her. She surveilled the surrounding area.

“She took them all out at the same time…that girl is strong, but she’s not the one I’m looking for,” the boy thought. At the same time he jumped to carry on elsewhere, Kuro watched as she unexpectedly started taking her top off.

The boy shut his eyes so fast that he didn’t have time to see the branch he meant to land on. His foot slipped and sent him plummeting to the ground. Atma hugged his entire body as he braced for impact. Instead, something wet and spongy cushioned his fall then retracted, dropping him onto the damp forest floor.

“What the…?”

Kuro’s eyes flicked open. There was nothing more bizarre or unexpected than what he saw: a childlike octopus-human hybrid. The red hair, evidently a wig, was on the ground in a pile of clothes. If not for the fact that he could see the atma emanating from the thing, he’d have thought it was a bloom. Still, he asked to make sure.

“Are you…that girl…?” he asked.

The octopus nodded. She was the size of a toddler, with similar proportions. She had a small torso, and Kuro could see that each limb was composed of two intertwined tentacles. Her head was bulbous and had big, black eyes. No nose, but a mouth. She simply looked like a strangely composed baby, and was somewhere between adorable and off-putting to look at.

“Are you a bloom?”

She shook her head.

“Why did you help me?”

The girl simply turned around and ran off into the woods, her small size and unique composition allowing for an impressive display of speed and dexterity.

Kuro just stood there, perplexed.

“What the fuck was that?” He had to ask out loud. The negativity that had been gathering in his stomach vanished, replaced with the laughter of disbelief.

~

“What’s taking those girls so long?” Soji jumped onto another branch as Angelo’s staff, Burning Man, whizzed past him.

It hit the trunk, then clattered to the ground where its owner dragged himself to pick it up. This had gone on for the past five minutes. The maestro would throw, miss, then hobble to pick up his weapon, wheezing as he did so. It was a sad display of desperation. Soji would’ve left him to wander, but needed to secure the points from beating Angelo without worsening his condition. He hoped to achieve that by tiring him out, but even like this, he was relentless.

Angelo coughed as he readied the Instrument to throw.

“Just…a little…more…”

Soji could feel his body’s desire to blight, to give in to his bloom side and dive into strength and ecstasy. His fingernails excitedly sharpened themselves. However, he was still shaken by how easy it was to break Angelo, so with the help of his bandages, pushed back the transformation rumbling in the back of his mind. He hopped out of the way yet again, then landed on the ground, this time hoping to seize the Instrument, and put an end to this.

Suddenly, he felt the presence of six other atma users in the area prickle his skin. Before he could react, two metallic strings materialized from behind the tree he stood before. They wrapped around his neck and the trunk, digging into his flesh, and acting as a pair of garrots to pry the oxygen from him. He heard a boy’s timid apology behind him.

“So that’s what you really look like,” Sandy West drew both boys’ attention. She emerged from the surrounding darkness and stood next to a slumped over Angelo. Four other maestros followed suit and melted away from their hiding places and circled his arborous prison.

“Ah shit…”

“Get away!” Angelo growled, “he’s mi—” He fell to the ground.

“He’s mine!” Sandy mocked, “You keep saying this, but that thing is standing, and you are not.”

“Your time is up!” Sandy declared. Barely a second later, one of the surrounding maestros fired a volley of hot atma pellets, shredding Soji’s shirt and sizzling his skin as they scraped by. The other contestants rushed at him, eager to obtain the easy win his points would grant. Eyes bulging, he forcefully pulled on the strings strangling him, tugging the boy holding them off his feet, and slamming him into the tree. The garrots dissipated with what was surely a nose breaking against wood.

With exhaustion setting in, Soji leaped into action, wrapping his bandages around the branch of a tree across the clearing. He pulled himself forward with astonishing speed, evading the oncoming assault. His arms ached from the movement. Although a huge fan, he was no webslinger. His footwork and timing were sloppy, courtesy of fatigue and unfamiliarity with the physics of swinging around.

The adversary maestros continued their pursuit. Each time they caught up to him, Soji yanked himself away. Until one maestro, a particularly burly boy, anticipated his escape and caught the bandage midair. He pulled Soji towards him and planted a metal-coated fist into his face. He staggered back before Sandy rushed at him and kicked the back of his head. The other maestros followed suit in a violent onslaught while Angelo stood and watched.

“If they kill him, it’s just as good…right?”

As the temperature of Soji’s skin rose involuntarily, a blur of black and silver descended from the canopy, machete in hand. Before he could even land, Kuro slashed at Sandy’s weasley face, eliciting a yowl that was quickly silenced with a punch. The other maestros stepped away, astonished by the sudden appearance of a boy with brilliant atma, oozing bloodlust. Soji struggled to stand, but managed to prop himself up, resting against Kuro’s back.

“Taking it easy?” Kuro asked.

“I almost…I almost went too far with that masked guy. If there are this many…” Soji replied, “I don’t want to kill them.” Smoke arose from his healing cuts and bruises. Slowly, but surely, his stamina started to replenish itself.

“I get it,” Kuro nodded, “even just now, I had to contain myself.”

~

“Listen up,” Miguel said. Tamara, Money, Monika, and Doc waited in a large white SUV for the trio. In just a few hours, they’d be on a jet to New Eden.

“The pit isn’t just a danger to your physical wellbeing,” he said, “it cultivates brutality. It ingrains in your mind, the directive to go for the kill. And I know that’s not who you boys are. You’ll struggle. I tried to warn you. That place’s gifts are not without cost.”

~

“Miguel was right,” Soji finally stood on his own weight as their competitors looked on with hungry and cautious eyes.

“Yeah…what do you wanna do?” Just for good measure, Kuro wishfully pulled on his perpetually sheathed blade. Nothing. He sighed.

Suddenly, the ground shook, alerting all the gathered participants of something enormous approaching. Wood cracked, and trees split apart as an announcement of its presence. THOOM. THOOM. THOOM. Finally, the creature emerged; a blackened, twenty foot tall banyan tree with legs. Several vines hung from its canopy, two of which held Dione, and Penny.

“We found the Rank 3!” Penny yelled. Dione simply laughed as she swung back and forth with the tree bloom’s momentum.

“Na wa o,” Soji rested his hands on his head.

“Agreed. This just went from bad to worse,” Kuro admitted. They, like the maestros around them, readied themselves.

“Can we free ourselves now?” Dione asked her sister.

“Go for it!” Penny slapped her hand against a branch and was sucked into its shadow. She sprang out of Soji’s shadow, startling him, while Dione increased her weight, snapping the thin tentacles of her leafy captive. She proceeded to float down as the bloom continued towards the gathering of maestros.

Nobody expected a human-octopus hybrid, standing at half the height of the tree bloom, to come barrelling out of the woods and strike it with earth-rumbling force. The mysterious creature unleashed a barrage of punches that shook the ground and splintered its target. Eventually, the tree’s iridescent blue core was exposed.

“What the hell is that?” Soji whispered.

“The octopus? Or the glowy thing?” Dione asked. The answer seemed obvious.

“It’s going for the Rank 3’s core…why?” Kuro pondered.

“It kinda looks like that girl!”

“Destroying a plant-based Rank 3 is a little different. Those types need to be burned, or have their cores destroyed. They keep coming back otherwise,” she explained.

“I can burn it,” Soji volunteered.

“You really wanna go in there?” Penny asked. A shower of plant matter sprayed the onlookers. The creature palmed the tree’s exposed core and flooded it with atma, shattering it. As the tree underwent a rapid decay, the octopus started shrinking and ran off into the woods. All the participants stood shocked. That even maestros were bewildered was a testament to the bizarre nature of this spectacle. All that occurred in under three minutes.

“DA NA NA NA NAAAA!” The announcer’s voice sliced through the tension.

“Surprise, surprise,” he said, “it appears that Penny Otta of team four has taken the victory via elimination of blooms!”

“What?” Angelo scrunched his eyebrows.

“No, no, no! This was my chance!” He was tempted to rush Soji now, while everyone was still trying to comprehend what just happened.

“Please note, that violence before or after a round is prohibited,” the announcer seemingly anticipated, “I’m talking to you, Rose girls!” The trees sank into the ground, blinding the participants who’d grown used to the forest’s scant lighting. They found themselves back in an open field, the only difference being that there was only one, smaller, rectangle. The other contestants could be seen in the distance, wary of the sudden change to their environment.

Kuro could see Monika being held up by David over a kneeling Niko. Mild irritation made his finger twitch before he was overcome by relief that she was okay.

“Now, if you all will stay where you are, attendants will come and tend to your wounds, and assess you for fitness to continue. Congratulations on surviving Round Two of the Orchestra.”