The grey world of Kamaten narrowed to a tunnel of force and intent. Marya moved, a shadow in tattered leather, and the mountain answered. Their blades met in a series of impacts that were less clangs and more deep, shuddering BOOMS, each one vibrating up through the rock of the Hitotsume's skull. She was not faster than him. She was not stronger. But she was becoming a perfect mirror.
She saw the micro-tremor in his left calf a heartbeat before he shifted his weight for a lunging thrust. She flowed to the side, Nisshoku's edge scraping a shower of sparks from Saigen's flank. She perceived the slight drop of his right shoulder before a horizontal cleave, ducking under the wind of its passage and stabbing at the gap in his armor at his hip. He twisted, her blade scoring a black line across the dense plating. She was water finding the cracks in the stone, patient, persistent.
A low growl built in Pier's chest. This was not the desperate, fear-driven opponent from before. This was something new, something that studied him. His violet eyes, chips of frozen gemstone, tracked her with a new, furious intensity. He increased the pace, his movements becoming less like tectonic shifts and more like avalanches—faster, more complex, a storm of foundation-shattering blows.
Marya met them. Her breath was steady, her focus absolute. She saw the two-step sequence of a feint into an overhead smash. She sidestepped the feint, braced, and crossed her arms, Nisshoku held horizontal, to block the smash. The impact drove her boots an inch into the compacted earth, but she held. A surge of confidence, hot and bright, flared in her chest. She pushed back, disengaging, and saw an opening. His recovery from the massive overhead was a fraction of a second slow.
She took it. She became a blur, aiming not for his armored body, but for the weapon itself—a disarming strike at his wrists, a move of elegant finality she had seen her father execute a hundred times in her mind.
She misjudged.
The "opening" was a trap. The slow recovery was a feint within a feint. As she committed, Pier's left hand, empty and faster than she had ever seen it move, shot forward. It didn't form a fist. It formed a flat palm. It caught her in the center of her chest, not with a punch, but with a shove that held the concentrated weight of his myth.
The air left her lungs in a painful gasp. The world upended. She was airborne, hurtling backward over the grey scree. The spinning gears, the fossilized eggs, the ashen sky—all became a streaking blur. Instinct and training took over. She twisted in mid-air, forcing her body into a roll. Her boots hit the ground, but the momentum was catastrophic. She skidded, gravel and pumice flying, carving a deep furrow for twenty feet before she collapsed to one knee, Nisshoku jammed into the earth to stop her slide.
Her chest burned. Her ribs screamed. She panted, sweat and grit stinging her eyes. She wiped her brow with the back of a trembling hand, the taste of copper fresh in her mouth.
From the settling dust where Pier stood, a laugh echoed. It wasn't cruel. It was… impressed. A teacher acknowledging a student's bold, failed attempt. "You are getting better! You almost had me… for half a second."
Before the heat of shame could rise, another sensation crackled over her skin. The hairs on her arms and neck stood on end. The air hummed with a wild, electric energy. Her golden eyes snapped to the side.
There, in a corona of arcing white lightning, stood Noon Scort Reveil. The Raiju, the Thunder Beast. The raw power made her own Haki shiver in response. Then the light collapsed, condensing back into his Ogre form. He stood amidst the fallen Robben brothers, crackling energy still snapping at his knuckles. He jerked his chin at her, his gaze sharp.
"You good?"
Marya swallowed, forcing air into her lungs. Her voice was rough. "Who's asking?"
A smirk touched Noon's lips, a flash of the revolutionary fire. "I'm Noon. I'm about to do a thing." He jerked his head toward Pier's distant, walking silhouette, a dark monolith against the grey. "Think you can keep him busy?"
Marya's eyes darted from the approaching Sovereign to the revolutionary. Her mind, still humming from the fight, from the future-sight, processed the request. And then, she didn't just think—she saw. A possible future flashed across her vision: Noon as a streak of light, not toward Pier, but toward the colossal screw of the Grand Chrono-Anchor. A distraction within a distraction. A gamble of monumental scale.
She blinked. The vision cleared. A slow, fierce smirk spread across her own face, mirroring his. "Yeah," she breathed, pushing herself to her feet, a new resolve hardening her bones. "I think I can keep him occupied."
Noon gave a single, sharp nod. "Good. I'll leave him to you, then." In a flash and a deafening crack, he was the Raiju once more, a living bolt of lightning that tore across the plateau, not toward Pier, but toward the island's heart.
Marya turned. Pier was walking toward her, his expression a storm of annoyed fury. He paused. His head tilted. A brilliant, silent strobe of light flashed on the far horizon, from the direction Noon had gone. For an instant, the silhouette it cast against the roiling clouds was not of a man or a beast, but of a vast, coiling dragon, wings of lightning spread wide.
In that frozen moment, Marya began to walk toward him. She did not run. She did not charge. She walked, each step deliberate, Nisshoku held low at her side. The afterimage of the lightning dragon hung in the sky behind her, framing her approach with a mythic, terrifying promise.
Pier's jaw flexed, a knot of muscle tightening. The cool conqueror was gone, stripped away by frustration and this brazen symbolism. His voice, when it came, was a roar that shook the grit from the ground.
"YOU THINK YOU HAVE WON?"
Marya didn't answer. She gripped the hilt of her sword, focusing her will, her pain, her newfound sight into the blade. The void within Nisshoku pulsed.
Pier lifted Saigen, the black iron gleaming dully. "COME, THEN! SHOW ME THE POWER OF THE DRACULE!"
Marya became a blur. Not of mist, but of pure, focused motion. She closed the distance. Saigen fell in a deadly arc. Nisshoku rose to meet it.
The clash was not a boom. It was a SCREAM of protesting metals and colliding wills. A shockwave of black and violet energy exploded outward, shattering every clock gear within fifty feet into clouds of rust. The silent circle of ruin spread around them.
In the heart of it, their blades locked, Marya looked up into the furious violet eyes of the Genbu. She held. For the first time, she did not give ground.
The real lesson was beginning.
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