Apparently when returning the vans, Lia had rented a car, and had retained it all week, unconcerned with the ridiculous cost of the thing. This was a girl to whom money was absolutely meaningless.

She was driving, and Karu sat in the back. I was afforded the coveted shotgun seat, and AEGIS filled out the party. Chiho expressed no interest in either being jammed in the car, nor in watching 'two jocks beat each other to death'. Tem was not invited, both because nobody liked her, and because odds of her attempting to destroy the planet if Karu ever successfully hit me were high.

Presumably, she would be sitting beside the road invisibly the entire time we were gone like a pining dog. I found it difficult to care, for entirely separate reasons than my current problems.

I didn't want to fight Karu, but going along with it seemed like the less trouble. The fact that she was unarmed and flightless, yet wanted to fight anyway confused me. I still had my powers, and she was effectively just an ordinary human at this point.

As I had that thought, I realized I hadn't thought of Karu as an ordinary human in a long time, which was a weird thought. In terms of capabilities, she'd always seemed much more of an Exhuman-level threat than the ordinary people I could kill by accident. And then I very nearly started when I realized that without her guns and flight, I could possibly kill her the same way.

My thoughts were broken when Karu spoke from behind me. "So, Ashton," she began, entirely too casually. "I heard...ehm, well, so to speak."

I didn't reply. Lia expressed my thoughts perfectly with a brief 'huh?'

"What I meant was...it...certainly wasn't very long before...ah. You understand."

"Do you?" Lia asked me sideways. I don't think she expected an answer, and so I didn't give her one. She continued as though I had. "Yeah, I don't understand either."

I heard the visor turning over and over in Karu's hands. "You seemed quite eager to jump into Saga's arms, is all I mean."

"You dumped him," Lia responded. This was becoming an odd three-way, two-person conversation, not that I minded. Saved me from having to make excuses to Karu.

"I had...I understand that. I am just given to understand…" I stole a peek in the side mirror and saw Karu extremely red, talking very rapidly and incoherently towards the window. AEGIS next to her looked like she was trying to sit as far away as humanly possible.

"...a mourning period, or the like, so to speak…"

"Are you serious?" Lia asked, her brow knitting as she stared at the road. Wait, when did she learn to drive, much less get a license? "You ended it, if you're going to throw out random relationship phrases, maybe you should look up 'rebound girl'."

"I am familiar with the concept," Karu said with more haught than I thought her position warranted. "I had just thought...given our rather exceptional intimacy...it would...be a reasonable conclusion...that perhaps I meant more to Athan than a simple rebound would indicate…"

"Or maybe," Lia said, her voice acid, "he was so devastated by your sudden, cruel betrayal that he was blinded by the hole in his being, and sought solace wherever he could find it." She glanced in the mirror at Karu's agonized form. "More so the better if the rebound girl was one loathed by the one who had hurt him so."

"Guys, knock it off," AEGIS said sounding bored.

There was another minute of nothing but the sound of the tires on the road.

"I just thought I meant more to you," Karu sniped.

"But not enough to not dump him?"

"Enough, children. Of everyone here, discounting Athan, I can kick all of your asses right now. So unless you'd like me to start demonstrating that talent, kindly shut the hell up, both of you."

"Hey, I'm driving--"

"And this car doesn't run on lip. Be civil or be silent."

Apparently being civil was too much to ask of them, since the rest of the car ride passed in quiet. It was a treasured little insight to see Karu being so unsuccessfully jealous, and I only wished that I could glean any amount of happiness from it. I tried to etch the memory into my brain for if things ever went back to normal for me.

Finally we arrived at precisely nowhere. Only a half hour drive and we were at the edge of a sheltering copse of woods with a clearing in the middle which would serve as an arena away from prying eyes. AEGIS had picked the place out from satellite data, though managing to complain through the entire process. Something she repeated now, even after we'd wasted the time coming out here.

"I can't believe you'd want to fight an injured--"

I slammed the door behind me, and Karu seemed to accept that as an invitation to also walk out on AEGIS' last-ditch tirade. She smiled pleasantly at me while AEGIS emerged as well, looking disproportionately crushed at being simply ignored.

Again, I just couldn't care. I'd beat Karu, get this over with, and go back to my bed.

We squared off, fifteen feet or so away. The maximum range of my powers was around eighteen feet, but being far apart gave Karu an even more distinct disadvantage of more distance to close before she could do anything. At this range, I knew the first thing she'd do would be to back out of range and attempt to sneak in where she could. Had we started only a few feet apart, she might have gone right for me, but I'd simply stood passive and let her determine the conditions of engagement.

We stood there for a few awkward moments.

"Do I say 'go' or something?" asked Lia.

I was about to reply when I realized Karu was gone. I blinked and looked around stupidly, my lack of concern making me slow, when I found her approaching on my side, running low and fast. Instead of facing her, I summoned a wall of blades in her way to push her back, but through the fence I built, something flew at me, ignited by contact with my swords.

Two handfuls of long, dry grass and roots, it seemed? I watched them burn and fall and then explode into hundreds of tendrils of smoke as they impacted my shield.

And then something kicked me in the face very, very hard. I only barely recognized the pain and the sensation of being flat on my back. She'd used the root ball of the grass to make sure it could fly through my swords with enough force and integrity, but picked grass because it would explode and burn spectacularly, turning my own shield as a smokescreen.

My blades whirled above me as I laid there, piecing this together, contemplating my failure, keeping her off of me. So, my surprise, or rather, what should have been surprise was complete when I felt her belly-crawl on top of me, the blades probably burning her back from proximity, but if it bothered her, not a hint of it showed under her visor. She made a compact swing and drove an elbow into my throat.

I choked and rolled instinctively, driving my blades into the earth where I'd just been, and she rolled the other way to avoid them. Pain was definitely something I could still feel, feeling even more fresh and hot and agonizing in contrast to all the deadness I'd been experiencing instead recently. I clutched at my neck, not entirely sure if my windpipe was crushed or not, because breath wasn't coming through.

I was on all threes, choking and coughing, trying to keep a bead on Karu with my 'sixth sense' and keep my swords between us, but she was moving unpredictably, hurling whatever she could get into my shield, and whenever it flared, I briefly lost 'sight' of her in the crackling electric surge. After my shield ate a rock and I was scattered with a hail of burning gravel, I realized she was gone again.

Instinctively, I balled up, raising both of my arms to protect my head and neck, but this time she just stomped on my broken wrist, and I screamed, losing whatever breath I had left through my torn throat. As though on their own, my swords cut through her, catching her and sending her falling and twitching and screaming to the ground herself.

I couldn't focus on anything except trying to inhale. My blades hung useless above me, I couldn't see well enough with any of my senses to tell where she was. My arm just burned, swelling again and bleeding. Bleeding. I looked down with dim horror at the red shards sticking through my skin, my own bone.

For the second time in a moment, I wasted breath screaming. This time in horror, which I very much felt.

I saw her rising again, still shuddering, burns across one arm and shoulder, which hung limply under her, but whatever damage I'd done to her felt superficial and only added to the horror of her approaching me again undaunted. Those red horizontal slits were focused on me with an inhuman intensity, and though she was gasping for breath and lurching towards me, I felt terror welling up inside me like I had never before.

She'd stomped my broken arm hard enough to splinter bone through my skin. She wasn't holding back, and when she got to me, she was going to kill me. Nobody had ever taken me apart like this, except Mage, and she could see the fucking future. Without her gear, armed with rocks and grasses, Karu was somehow a million times more dangerous than any other time we'd fought. The nothing in me churned and became fear. The need to run from this monster, put as much distance between us as I could became overwhelming as my brain shut down and instinct kicked in.

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In that moment, it wasn't Karu fighting me anymore, but some unstoppable force. Something alien and inhuman and incomprehensible. Glowing red and evil. I scuttled backwards and threw grasses and rocks at her while she stalked forward, shuffling gangly like a monster with three legs, none of them designed for walking. Death crawling towards me.

"Get...GET AWAY!" I screamed. My swords lashed out, but she didn't flinch, and they passed by her uselessly.

"SURRENDER!" she screamed hoarsely, like a banshee. I vaguely saw AEGIS and Lia running towards us from the woods. They were so far, and the monster was so close. Rocks kept exploding off my shield and showering me, making me flinch with every blast, as the monster closed in on me, shuffling step by shuffling step.

"Oh...oh God please..don't kill me!" I rolled over and scrambled, turning my back to her to put as much distance between us as I could. I put weight on one of my hands and it crumpled under me, making me pitch forward into the dirt and paralyzing me from the pain. Upside down, blocked by my legs, I could see her still advancing, her dark face split by a grin of white teeth.

I felt a foot on my back. "SURRENDER!" she barked again.

"Oh God please," I whimpered. The foot lifted off of me and then planted into my side, sending me on my back. I couldn't believe the sky was still so blue on a day when demons walked the earth. An armored boot gingerly weighed on my neck.

"Surrender," said Karu above me, smiling at me with a wink as she lifted and peeked at me from under her visor.

"Sur-surender," I echoed, unable to form any other thought. She smiled cheerily, and then stepped off of me, as AEGIS arrived, her body smoldering and heat ripping in the air around her.

She took one look down at me, then one look at Karu, and then leapt into the air, lashing at Karu with one of her long, bare legs, kicking her full in the chest with a boom.

Karu went flying backwards, completely off-guard and landed in a heap. In an instant, AEGIS was on her, pinning her down and throwing punches which made the servos in her arms scream. Karu was hit twice before I was there, diving into AEGIS and knocking her off, my skin burning at her touch.

"Athan?" she said, recoiling from my touch, or maybe just trying not to burn me.

I didn't have a reply. I'd already lost consciousness from the impact.

When I came to, I was back in my bed again, and the number of bandages on me had multiplied. To my surprise, nobody was there but Tem, who sat visible on the floor next to the bed. On seeing me stir, she sat bolt upright like a meerkat, and then wrapped me in a painful hug, practically purring.

"Ow ow ow," I said. "Easy, Tem."

"Tell me who hurt you," she said, bloodily, purring gone.

"I fell," I sighed with a roll of my eyes.

"That's what they told me, too."

"Then it must be the truth." She seemed disappointed and then some, but reassured herself with a final painful squeeze before letting me go.

"Welcome back," I heard a voice from the hall, and saw Karu, looking, if possible, worse than me. She gave a grin that was missing some teeth and her visor was cracked. AEGIS had gone for the face. She didn't move to take off her visor, and I had the horrible realization that she might be trying to hide the worst of the damage from me.

"Karu, I'm sorry," I said. I felt a muted wave of guilt. And then another shockwave of guilt at my relief I felt anything still.

"I hope I made my point. Please consider this lesson hard-won."

My mind raced around a little bit, feeling very slow and tired and beaten-in. "Uh. Yeah. What lesson?"

She sighed at me like I was the most impossible creature who had ever lived. She limped forward. There was a bandage wrapped around her leg from the knee to the waist where I supposed I'd cut her. Despite this, she showed no weakness or restraint in grabbing me firmly and again, painfully by the shoulders and bringing her visor in line with my face.

"'I'm fine, just--' means 'I am not fine'. Do not pretend to be fit to think and fight if you are not. You will fight bravely and die foolishly."

She released me. "Knowing you personally as I do, I thought this lesson a critical one for you. Do you remember what I told you at Mage's funeral?"

I nodded. "You may sacrifice for your allies, but if you give too much, you'll have nothing left to contribute."

She nodded. "So long as every failure is a lesson, you will continue to grow. Do not waste the lives or defeats of you or yours." She smiled bitterly. "You do not get many of them in a lifetime."

I felt like this defeat was particularly unnecessary, but I guess Karu thought I needed that lesson more than I needed a functioning body.

It was a good lesson, though, no matter how my everything protested. Armed with nothing, she'd systematically destroyed me, taken advantage of my broken body, my slow reflexes, and my addled mind to make herself into a horror I couldn't begin to fathom. If she were anyone else, anyone with a weapon, any Exhuman, I would be dead instead of beaten right now, which I assumed, and truly hoped was the point.

I had even considered reporting for duty back with the XPCA to get out from under the girls. What a fucking mistake that might have been. I looked at Karu with her smashed-in face and the burns down one arm and her opposite leg. And this had cost her one of her two precious remaining fights, all just to teach me a lesson. Still, with her broken smile, you'd think despite all of that, she felt like the one who'd come out ahead in this deal. I didn't get it, but I appreciated it.

Then I noticed AEGIS leaning against the doorframe. Karu's visor was still on, so there was no way this had escaped her, but she hadn't reacted in any way.

"Karu," I asked. She turned her head like her hearing wasn't quite equal in her ears right now, which gave me another guilty twinge. "Are you okay with this?"

She frowned. "I am never a fan of beating you to the point of unconsciousness. There are serious physical risks of that level of abuse." I saw her glance down at Tem, who was bristling. "Speaking hypothetically, of course, since these wounds were all accrued in an accident…"

"I meant, using one of your fights with me just to teach me a lesson."

"Ah." She moved to scratch her head and then flinched and held her bandaged arm instead. "Well, I suppose on one hand, this could be considered an unfortunate waste from a purely selfish perspective. Certainly there was nothing for me to learn from you in your current condition. However, I had the inkling that had I not interceded with this lesson at this time...you would do something very foolish, very soon, and your death would warrant my two remaining combats null by default, as it were…"

"So, better to get one later than none?"

"Better that my friend do not die, whatever the cost, I think," she said seriously.

"Right." It was hard to think of Karu as 'a friend' while her visor was still on. That usually meant we were either preparing for ass-kicking, or preparing to kick each other's asses...situations which put us in the realms of comrades and enemies, respectively.

"But," she said, seeming to perk up "there remains a silver lining, as it were. Today marks my first victory against you in open combat, and though it was almost a foregone conclusion from the start, I am still proud of this achievement, so it was not a total personal loss."

"Yeah, you were pretty brutal. You definitely earned it."

I guess I'd intended it as a compliment, but that didn't seem to be how she took it. She frowned and thought for a moment.

"Brutality is essential to getting one's opponent to perceive them as more than human. Or...less. If an enemy believes you will do whatever it takes to win, are capable of abandoning morality and even humanity--if you will pardon the term--in a fight, you will become something not understood in their eyes, and that which we do not understand, we fear. It is...not something to be proud of, and is certainly not a virtuous path to victory, but it is practical and useful."

"I don't know how you got through to me with fear when I was feeling all...numb and detached about everything else."

"Fear and anger are baser emotions which are difficult to suppress, even for one's mind. Even base creatures like insects enter states approximating fear and anger, though it is difficult to argue they are capable of anything resembling higher emotions. Even for one with mental troubles, even for a true sociopath who feels no emotions at all, fear and anger are still present."

"Where'd you learn all this stuff?"

She laughed. "You may have to be more specific. I have spent years in study, and as you hopefully are, I have endeavored to turn every loss into a lesson."

"You don't just learn human psychology from losing a fight, though."

"No, that is true. Psychology I studied extensively in training for the airborne. I believe I may have touched on this before, but relative to ground troops, with mixed armor and dedicated shieldbearers, airborne are offered no such protections from a direct attack. We rely almost entirely on mobility to remain unharmed, but mobility alone will serve one poorly. In order to remain truly evasive, airborne rely on psychological tricks to confuse and disorient our foes so that we can slip away and continue whatever our dedicated insertion objectives are."

"Are there many airborne who became hunters?"

"No, but that is likely because there are not many airborne in general. We are expensive to train, to maintain, and to employ, and results are often lacking. Candidates must have both specific physical attributes, and an intuitive grasp of the aforementioned psychology to be even marginally useful. Even by military standards, it is far from a 'safe' occupation, and the stresses of acting independently and G-forces are enough to make most hang up their wings when given the opportunity. I am certainly the exception."

"Well, I think you're pretty exceptional," I said with a weak smile.

She smiled back, flashing me her missing teeth again. "Say, if you are truly remorseful about my 'wasting' a combat encounter to teach you a lesson, I have an idea of some small recompense you may be able to offer."

"Sure. You've done so much for me already."

She smiled. "Please close your eyes."

I did. Almost as soon as I did, I felt very tired. My breathing was catching in my throat somewhat where she'd elbowed me, and while I realized she'd definitely held back on that blow...I'd be dead otherwise...she'd still elbowed me in the fucking windpipe.

Suddenly I felt something warm and soft on my lips. An easy, familiar sensation, Karu's kisses, which I realized in that moment I'd missed. As ever, she was forward and hungry, seeming to be trying to take a kiss from me rather than give one.

It was brief, and close-lipped, but as she parted, she exhaled and I felt her breath warm on my face, making me tingle and my wounds seem a little further away.

"Oh for fuck's sake," I heard AEGIS say, and opened my eyes to see Karu's visor sliding back onto her face as it moved away from mine. "Fuck no. Karu, get the hell out."

Karu gave a demure laugh but didn't argue as she left the room. AEGIS gave me one final glare which clearly read that I was not to get involved with that woman again, and then slammed the door. Her voice was audible in the hallway for quite a while as she screamed her head off, and I could pick out some choice profanities as well as words like 'exploitative' and 'opportunistic' before they moved out of earshot.

As for me, I was sure I had a lot to think about, but at the moment, just fell back into my pillow and into sleep, the dull ache of my new injuries across my body pushing me back into blackness.