As the light faded, Tak'Nasi sighed with disappointment, a crowd of converted clones starting to form on the edge of the trio's awareness. Tak'Nasi couldn't contain her disappointment, "This is truly the best you have to offer? A decent gun and some armor plates? A flower shield and energy petals? And an impressive but ultimately fruitless display of swordsmanship?"

Anisa spoke firmly, "You haven't done more than annoy us up until now. We are at a stalemate." She knew that as impressive as the cannons and talents she had shown with these nanites were, there was no chance she could keep that up forever. Her team wasn't even winded. Still, something about this seemed off.

Tak'Nasi agreed, "Very true. I have not made any progress on slaying or even disabling you. But your combat data has been useful not only in confirming the durability of my new nano machines, but also in helping me to recognize the stagnant pool of information I'm pulling from. Once I have properly assimilated you all, I will be far more capable of dealing with strange occurrences like this." With a wave of her hand, a series of turrets formed from the dust. Between them, combat drones began to rise up as well. "I promise this will hurt, but you will live. I need your minds." As she began to smirk from her blind, watching the clueless targets, Tak'Nasi began to lower her hand to signal the attack. Before she could she was jostled as someone kicked her in the back of the head. She turned in confusion to see Katsi who tried to punch her a few more times. The nano machines on her helped to mitigate the damage, but the absurdity of this girl being able to sneak up on her at all was amusing. What did she feel she could do that these other warriors hadn't? Her other surrogates that had been chasing her had lost sight of her for only a moment and yet she was able to find herself here. Tak'Nasi, not wanting to give the girl any more information than she needed to, asked, "Did you really believe you could hurt me while unarmed?"

Katsi shrugged, "It was worth a shot. Good thing I've been packing these." The girl pulled out a pure white glowing stone with an odd device on it that Tak'Nasi hadn't seen before and stuck it to Tak'Nasi's shoulder before running off. Tak'Nasi had the nanites consume it to figure it out and was surprised that it had apparently been some kind of detonator attached to a crystal of pure hope. This must have been the girl who harvested that Crossflow that Hepta and Shi saw. The crystal was incorporated into her current outfit, giving her a new surge of power. This girl was going to be fun.

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Narine, Zwei, and Anisa were doing their best to survive but under the current onslaught that was difficult. Every time Anisa felt she had found an opening in the ongoing turret fire, she found a combat drone lashing out with hands and kicks, perfectly bent to avoid the fire she could barely slip through. Every strike would throw off her rhythm and her body parts into the powerful fire from the turrets. Narine found herself getting surrounded, every turn with her shield leading to a perfect opening to be flanked and knocked around by both turrets and drones alike. Even the scattered petals did little to create new obstacles for the attacks. Zwei, while swift enough to avoid the threats and her sword guiding her body as a blade through the attacks, she was unable to find any openings to strike back and could do little but retreat endlessly without rest. Even the moonlight could not pierce these formations.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

As they began to feel the impact of the assault, a familiar voice echoed out, "Hey, guys! I survived!" The fire stopped for a moment, as if inviting Katsi in. Everyone felt it. This wasn't an accident. They each took this as an opening to clear an area for Katsi, but they could tell this was a trap. From the look in her eye, it seemed like she was oblivious. Cheery and happy. Confident but unaware of how one sided this had become. Katsi jumped over some of the drones and landed with them. "Okay, so I have a plan, but I need you guys to trust me."

Anisa sighed, "Sis, I don't know what you have planned but it had better be a killshot. Anything less than a silver bullet won't cut it here."

Katsi sighed, "Yeah, silver bullet isn't a bad analogy for it." She waited. She waited because she knew it was coming. Why let an unarmored civilian in if you weren't going to use them. Least of all if she absorbed those girls from the tournament. Come on...

One of the clones approached the group, a smile on her face. No crystal. That's fine. It should still work. The clone smiled the most saccharine smile she could, confident of her completion and victory. "Now that I have all of you in one location, I wish to offer you all a chance." Before she could finish speaking, nanites had to move quickly to make a barrier between her and the warriors. A wall that quickly moved to engulf and restrain the three fighters, who continued to struggle against the material. "You three have made your decisions for now. I will play with you all once I'm done." She offered her hand, "You, girl. You are a rather cunning and resourceful one. That must also mean that you are aware of your situation. I am thousands and growing. The largest reserve of information and personalities to ever be formed. Generations from across the cosmos. Think of what your mind could do with all those resources."

Katsi smiled, thankful this was going better than she expected. She knew she couldn't trust Tak'Nasi. She knew this was a trick to unperson her and take her into the mass. She knew this wasn't the one she had marked and she didn't know if her plan would work. Still, she did what anyone in her situation would. She reached out for the woman's hand. Her gesture was repaid with a massive nanite spike through her chest. Shock overtook her face and her arms gripped the spike out of reflex.

"I knew you couldn't resist a treasure trove like this. It's too bad. You had so much potential, but there can only be one mind as brilliant as mine." she ran her hand along Katsi's cheek, "You never stood a chance." She threw Katsi into some nearby debris, burying her in the rubble.

Anisa's heart stopped, her mind reeling from watching her sister's execution. The disrespect to her corpse. The insult to her intelligence. But more than that. She had lost someone again. Someone else had died because of her. She was supposed to be keeping her safe. Looking out for her. She remembered her cousins. Her own kin. Bloodied and battered for simply making her sister cry. She felt her heart crying and with it. The black accents on her armor seemed to almost start pulling in light as she processed this. Tak'Nasi laughed, "Oh, dear. I appear to have broken you. I wonder what new information I can gather from this."

She was so drawn in by this sudden surge that Tak'Nasi didn't notice it at first. A quiet thing as she invested herself into her research. The equivalent of not realizing you have been shot until the adrenaline wore off. It was her own mistake. One made in her eagerness to harvest these anomalies. A silver bullet right in the heart of her power.