The Balance Grid settled with a last sigh, tiles locking into a flat plane. Kori hopped down as if she'd simply stepped off a stair, silver bob swinging.
Raizen couldn't stop staring at her left eye - now covered by her hair. The glimpse he'd caught a moment ago was still hanging in his head like frost.
Mina's voice drifted from the booth above.
"Heart rate, around five hundred beats per minute. Nice recovery curve!"
Raizen decided to confront her head on.
"Your eye. That… Isn't human."
"Ohh! So that's why you were staring!" Kori laughed.
"Huh?"
"I thought you were charmed by my beauty!"
"I'm just trying to breathe, thanks... But... What even is that!?"
Her grin broke through anyway. "Oh, the eye? It's called a Chasmis."
"Chasmis?"
"You don't buy it. You don't train into it. It opens when something breaks you so much that the spirit has to grow a new edge."
"What does that even mean?" Hikari asked, quietly.
"They say the eyes are the gateway to the soul. When the soul brutally changes shape, the eye follows."
Both listened, quietly.
"Default package..." Kori went on, counting on her fingers, "your muscles fire cleaner, your timing sharpens, your world slows down. You finish reading the story in people's shoulders before their hands even get to throw the punch."
"Unfair!" Hikari protested.
"That's the baseline. But man, it's tiring! That explains the heart rate, too..."
"That's it?"
"Not even close. The rest? Abilities? It pretty much depends on who you are and how you fight."
"How is that even possible!?"
She stretched her back. Frost bloomed in her hand, a clean white breath rushing over skin.
Then, a thin blade of ice slid out from the air itself and perched between her fingers like a glass feather.
Mina's mic popped. "Please no more frozen daggers inside the grid, Kori. We talked about this…"
Kori rolled her eyes and let the ice evaporate into a sparkle.
"Mine does ice. It's surprisingly useful for convincing bastards to calm down."
Raizen's grip tightened on the bottle. Hikari touched the tile with her shoe as if testing whether the frost had left any chill behind.
"Come on" Kori clapped. "Stop looking so dead! Field trip!"
"Haa... Field trip?"
Kori didn't bother to answer Raizen's question. She just started walking.
They moved down a long white corridor, past rooms that thudded, hummed or echoed with quiet, efficient violence. A reaction room pulsed with lights all over, teaching hands to move without thought, from pure reflex.
A grappling bay reset its mats like a living thing. In one lab, a metal vehicle hurled itself down a test track and braked hard enough to make Raizen's teeth ache just watching.
In another, hundreds, if not thousands of locks. Complex ones. Two individuals were trying to crack them, with no luck.
They were nearly past a wide doorway when Hikari suddenly stopped.
On the other side, a matte-black motorcycle sat mounted on a rig, wheels held just over a track... But the track wasn't a track at all - more panels and rollers that could change angle and texture in the blink of an eye.
A curved screen wrapped around almost the whole room, dark for now. The rig itself swiveled a degree, like it was impatient to move.
Hikari took a step toward it, almost unconsciously.
"What… is that?"
Kori followed her look and grinned. "Bike rig. Teaches balance, speed, control. You break your fear here, not your neck on the tunnels."
She smiled. At the room above. "Mina, sim?"
The screen blinked to life - an underground road winding along a cavern wall, thin rails and rusted pipes like ribs, glowing marks flashing as checkpoints. The bike rig buzzed awake, tilting forward a breath, asking to be ridden.
Hikari didn't smile too often. She did now, small and entirely real. "Can... I?"
Kori's amusement softened a fraction. "Yes. Boots on the pegs. Grip with your knees and legs, not your hands. Eyes where you want to go, not where you are. And when you think you're leaning enough… Lean even more."
Hikari swung a leg over. The bike dipped, the rig catching smoothly.
"Beginner assist is on" Mina said. "No over-rotation. Throttle curve softened, impact minimal."
Raizen stayed by the door, turned on a bench, watching. He felt like a knot of contradictions - tired to the bone, wired in the head, and something else tugging in his chest he didn't have a name for.
The track rushed up the wrap-around screen. Hikari abruptly accelerated, slamming into a virtual barricade and the rig jolted - softly, by design. She laughed out loud, surprised at herself, cheeks flushed.
The world moved. The rig tilted forward, softly imitating impact. Rewinding, she overcorrected the first turn - too cautious - then too bold on the second.
The rear end drifted. The motor shivered, caught her, saved her from a wall.
Her hair flicked at her jawline as she leaned again.
The next corner she took cleaner. Then cleaner still. Kori jogged alongside, one hand hovering by the kill switch. But she never touched it. She didn't have to. There was something in Hikari's movements that seemed... Too perfect.
"That's it!" Kori said. "Breathe through the turn. Let the machine purr. Good."
"Lap time improving by nine percent" Mina reported, not being able to hide a smile.
Raizen's smile came without asking. He wasn't jealous. Not exactly. Watching her, he felt the old light inside him stubbornly refuse to go out.
Hikari's second lap was faster. The third was messy and joyful - too much throttle, a slide saved by pure instinct.
On the fourth, she threaded a tight "S" curve with a move she definitely couldn't have known, hips and shoulders in a line, eyes cutting ahead.
Kori slapped the tank twice, proud and smug. "You two are trouble" she said, but it sounded like approval.
They let the bike cool, fans whispering. Hikari dismounted, breath high, eyes shining in a way Raizen had never seen. Their eyes met, Hikari's shining as if she discovered something revolutionary.
"Did you see that?? I was... Free! It felt like... Like I was flying!"
"Yeah, yeah, you might be a fast learner, but you still have things to improve" Kori interrupted, looking at Raizen. "But you're not getting out of balance work."
Back in the Balance Room, the floor had become a sea of small platforms again, shifting in a pattern that wasn't a pattern unless your brain liked useless work.
"Basic first" Kori said. "Mina, give me mid-shuffle, no drop."
"Mid-shuffle" Mina echoed, fingers already sliding.
Raizen and Hikari stepped out together. This time Raizen didn't fight the floor. He let the motion tell him he was wrong and corrected without sulking about it. Hikari moved like she had springs in her bones.
"Light feet, Raizen! Them legs look like depressed pasta!" Kori laughed.
He adjusted, shaved the delay between read and step. Twice he almost went over and grinned at himself instead of getting angry. The third near-fall he turned into a jump that landed exactly where it should. Kori's grin widened.
"Oh look who's getting better! Again."
They ran it once more. Then once again with a harder difficulty and getting better. Hikari started to find her balance, hopping from one tile to another, as if she waltzed. Raizen started - just started - to feel it too.
"Enough" Kori finally decided.
Raizen dropped onto the edge, sweat stinging his cheek. Hikari sat beside him, their shoulders touching.
---
Across the Underworks, heat hammered the walls of Obi's smithy. Sparks exploded like tiny fireworks. Obi stood over the forge, face blackened with coal at the cheekbones.
"Come on, come on, don't embarrass me!" he muttered to the glowing billet on his anvil. He brought the hammer down in a hard, happy rhythm, with considerable force.
"One for glory, two for money, three for - wome - OW! These sparks really do bite! fine, three for honor."
He overheard a pair of regulars in the doorway, trading news.
"Pot's doubled this week" one said.
"Scrapper's Gauntlet's gonna be ugly!"
Obi's hammer paused mid-swing. He didn't look up, but his eyebrows were raised.
He looked at the metal shaped into a set of knuckles, clean and mean, notched to sit perfectly over his fingers.
"You two beauties need a name..." he made a satisfied face.
"Obiterator? Too much. Obijection? Meh."
He just sat there for a second, biting his tongue in pure concentration.
"Obi-Wand? No. Obi-Wan! I'm a genius...
The door knocked but didn't open. Granny Louissa's voice slipped in.
"Obi, you eating or pretending not to be hungry again?"
"Pretending!" he sang back, then softened. "I'll swing by later. Promise."
She didn't step inside. She just yelled at him from the other side of the room. "Keep your hands where they'll still be functionable in the morning!"
He blinked at the door, then back at the glowing steel. "That's… Weirdly specific, Granny."
He dried the knuckles on his apron, slid them on, and drove them into a sack of coal with a satisfying thock. Pain shot through his forearm. He winced, then smiled anyway. "Okay..." he told the air. "It's a conversation starter, alright?"
The two men had moved on, their gossip trailing into the hall. Obi set the knuckles on a cloth, stared at them a long second, and then at a big poster on the wall:
SCRAPPER'S GAUNTLET - NO RULES. NO LIMITS. WINNER TAKES IT ALL.
He blew out a breath through his teeth.
"World's loudest smith" he said to the anvil, "is going to be the loudest fighter, too."