The inside of the warehouse was a set piece.

Of course, that was superficially true for every building in the village—indeed, the entire village was nothing more than part of a segment set piece, in a constructed reality that was itself a meta-set piece associated with a Layer of the grand Infinite Dungeon. But the inside of the warehouse was more obviously, more deliberately a set piece.

If the village were a play, and every building a scene—no, if the village were an amusement park, then this warehouse would be one specific, deliberately constructed artificial experience with just enough naturalistic detail to feel organic and sustain the suspension of disbelief. And so:

The first thing that Nathan did when he stepped into the warehouse proper was reflexively parry an attack.

Saucer had taken the form of a pair of bracers, for reasons the out-of-his-depth man could not hope to guess. As a result, Nathan’s parry, which he instinctively expected to perform with a sword, was comedic—somehow, by happenstance and by Saucer’s sudden redistribution of weight, he was thrown off-balance. His feet slipped out from under him as he stepped onto a sheaf of papers and he pratfalled, arms windmilling, deflecting the descending sword into the wall.

His ass slammed into the hardwood floor and he immediately rolled to the right, trying to take stock.

Papers, wood floor, man with sword, small office space, desk, doors—desk.

Nathan snap-rolled to the other side, kipping up in a move that had no business working outside of a bad martial arts movie and kicking the desk into the path of his sword-wielding doppelganger. He followed up by hurling the first thing that came to hand, noticing only after he’d thrown it that it was a heavy desk weight which also served as a nameplate labeled “Your True Name” which had been on the desk, and launched himself in its wake as the next attack came in.

His opponent, whom he had instantly dubbed with the risible moniker of “nega!Nathan” and whom we, dear Reader, will be referring to as Alex for unimportant reasons, had reacted swiftly to the desk being kicked in his direction. Launching himself straight up, he landed on the edge of the desk mid-flight and kicked off, heading straight for Nathan and parrying the nameplate with his sword. The force of it, combined with the sheer number of things he was juggling, delayed him long enough for Nathan to close, and Alex dropped his sword and swung.

Nathan parried, bruisingly—on Nathan’s part. Arm catching the fist awkwardly, he barely deflected the punch. He brought his knee up to feint at Alex’s gut, only to be ignored; he used the knee instead to block a kick, staggering back in pain as the distraction of the changeup had him eat a solid punch into his thoroughly tensed abdominal muscles.

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Alex tried to follow up on it, with Nathan being unable to retreat due to the close quarters of the office. Three punches and two kicks flew almost as fast as the original few but with significantly more force, and Nathan’s patience suddenly ran out.

“Fuck this,” he snarled, stepping forwards into Alex’s reach in the middle of his opponent’s sequence. “And fuck you!” He blocked one more punch, this time managing to catch it on his Saucer-armored part of his forearm. “Fuck all of you!”

Alex smirked at him, almost perfectly masking a burgeoning nervousness. “Didn’t think we were into—”

“Nope!” Nathan punched away an attempt from Alex to grapple during the moment of quipping and closed in further, shoulder-checking to send his opponent stumbling and getting his bracer across Alex’s throat. “I’m tired! I! Want! A! Break!”

A pair of hands flailed at Nathan’s wrists and hands as he stepped behind Alex, linking his hands and compressing the doppelganger’s throat. He ground his arm into it, pulling a foot back and dropping into a lunge in which he lifted Alex off the ground, putting all of his arm and hand strength into the choke, which was a distorted and incompetent variant of a “figure four” choke.

The doppelganger struggled, striking backwards with an elbow and landing a hit on Nathan’s stomach. In response, Nathan rose, snarling wordlessly, and threw his own body at the floor, Alex’s leading the way; and with one hand shifting to grasp the other forearm instead of the other hand, his choke improved even as his opponent’s head slammed into the desk.

“I’ve been fighting,” he said with a sudden coldness, “for what feels like hours.” Leaning back, he intensified his pressure on the doppelganger’s throat, ignoring the hand that twisted around itself to dig fingernails into the arm that wasn’t protected by Saucer’s bracer form. “Hours. And you know what?”

He wrenched to the side, feeling the ruination he was inflicting on a neck identical to his own, feeling the welter of emotions welling up despite his best efforts to throttle it and despite whatever trauma suppression superpowers he might have.

With a sickening crack, the body beneath him went slack.

He let go of the choke, panting.

“I don’t know which is worse,” he said softly. “Being so fucking done with it… or how unhorrified I am about it all.”

He stood up, brushing his hands off. His eyes rested on the blood welling out of his upper arm where the doppelganger had clawed him at the end, and he wordlessly shifted Saucer over to cover it. The almost overwhelming emotions he’d felt a few moments earlier were already fading, fading so thoroughly he couldn’t clearly remember what they were like, much less inhabit them. Instead, there was an impatient and implacable coldness filling what felt like a void in his chest.

He picked the sword his opponent had been using off the ground and walked towards the door to the main warehouse area, the one set into the transparent wall that was like, but also unlike, glass. He spared a moment only to glare at the sword and shift Saucer wordlessly down to his other hand, crushing the blade into a cylinder with a snarl so strongly absent that it nearly manifested into the world through metaphysical intent.

Eyes burning with ice, he opened the door as the band struck up a tune.