Timmy moved first.
His jacket boiled.
Buttons jumped. Seams bulged. Then the fabric split in little gaps and the bugs poured out—beetles, centipedes, fat-bodied moths, coin-eye moths, all tied to him by faint red psychic threads pulsing with his heartbeat.
"Psychic Muti: Red-Thread Brood," he breathed, happy.
They hit the swamp in a black sheet and rolled toward her like a living wave.
Lila's skin crawled.
Okay. Nope. Not thinking about that.
She planted her staff.
Aura snapped down her arms, bright baby-blue.
"Water Muti: Blue Dragon Smash!"
Swamp water ripped up around her boots and coiled into a lean dragon—horns, fangs, all made of churning mud and water. It lunged straight into the front of the swarm and detonated.
WHUMP.
Bugs went flying. Beetles smacked into roots. Moths splattered into the muck. A hundred little bodies hit the water and sank or thrashed.
The next hundred just climbed over them.
Timmy grinned. "They feed on aura, you know. You just turned the appetizers into main course."
Lila felt it—tiny tugs as soaked bugs drank at the edges of her water, sipping blue glow.
"Ew," she muttered. "Rude."
She jumped for high ground.
Boot to a half-sunk root. Root to a tilting stump. Fingers catching rough bark. She swung herself up into the branches, staff dragging behind. The swamp below seethed and clicked.
Timmy didn't stay on the ground either.
He snapped two fingers.
"Psychic Muti: Hive Screen."
Beetles swarmed under his boots, stacking into a thick plate. More bugs ran along trunks and branches, forming black rails and steps. Red threads tugged and tightened, holding the whole crawling structure together as he rode it up the nearest tree.
He hopped lightly to a branch across from her, just out of staff reach, balanced like it was dry stone instead of slick bark.
"High ground, huh?" he called. "Sure. Less mud when you fall."
Lila crouched, staff across her knees, heart going thud-thud-thud.
Don't look down.
Don't look at the bug carpet.
Just the boy.
He twitched two fingers.
A cone of coin-eye moths snapped toward her face like a thrown net. Wings buzzed, eyes flashing weird silver.
Lila stabbed her staff down toward the swamp instead of up.
"Water Muti: Soundproof Splash!"
A tall sheet of water burst from the murk and snapped into place between them, thin and scaled like a serpent's belly. The moths hit it with a wet pat and stuck, buzzing going muffled and low.
Front rows screamed, then cheered.
"She walled it!"
"Sound-girl? No, water—"
Lila peered over the top of her own water wall. "Sorry, can't hear you over all that failure."
The bugs didn't care.
They crawled.
Moths and beetles climbed the sheet, wings dragging tracks. The ones on the sides slid off, soaked but still coming, inching toward the warmth of her aura.
They want my power. Great.
She snapped the wall sideways.
Water collapsed, turning into a sideways wave that flushed the clingers off and swept them into deeper channels. Some floated. Most vanished under brown foam.
Her forearms burned. A few had latched before the wave hit, tiny jaws pinching. She slapped them off, red welts already puffing on her skin.
Timmy watched, amused.
"Nice," he said. "Let's see you keep that up."
He sent another line.
This time it wasn't a cone. It was a line of centipedes, launched off his heel.
They hit the base of her branch and went to work.
Chchchchch.
Wood splintered. Bark shredded. The whole limb shuddered under her feet.
"Oh, come on—"
It snapped.
She dropped with it.
Lila let herself fall for half a second, then speared her staff into a lower branch as it swung past. The shaft bit bark; her shoulder screamed. She flipped off the drag, rolled, and landed on the new branch in a half-crouch.
The bowl popped like a goal.
"Did you see that—"
"Royal Aqua parkour—"
"She almost ate it—"
Timmy's eyes narrowed, grin still there, just sharper.
"Good footwork," he said. "Try this, then."
His jacket seams shivered again. The red threads pulsed brighter.
The whole swarm answered.
Bugs peeled off trunks, branches, water. Everything that wasn't pinned or drowned spun toward her, pulled into a rotating, tightening spiral in the air around his outstretched hand.
"Psychic Muti: Pulse Net."
The spiral snapped loose.
A black funnel of chitin and wings screamed toward her, wide enough to fill the lane between the trees.
Lila's throat tried to lock.
Nope.
She kicked off the branch.
Boot to hanging root. Root to a jut of stone. Stone to a higher root. Every touch left a wet blue print as her aura tagged the terrain.
The funnel chewed through where she'd been. Bark exploded. Leaves shredded. Bugs slammed into trunks and kept going, crawling, flying, all hunger.
She cut across a clearing where the swamp opened into a wide pool.
Half-sunk stone pillars jutted out—old arena fixtures drowned by the new set.
She stabbed her staff into the water mid-sprint and vaulted, landing on the closest pillar. Mud and water splashed high around the base.
The swarm hit the pool.
Water exploded as thousands of bodies punched into it. Some sank immediately. Others swam, climbing over each other, then up the pillar.
Timmy rode the crest.
He balanced on a moving disk of beetles as it bobbed to the surface, then surfed it forward like a gross living skateboard.
Lila stared. "...Okay, that's new."
He shrugged, arms open, still gliding. "You bring a dragon, I bring a board."
She didn't answer.
She slammed her staff down.
"Water Muti: Dragon Fang Drive!"
Water shot up the shaft, coiling into a tight spiral dragon that ripped forward, not at Timmy's chest but at the swamp right in front of his beetle board.
The impact popped the pool like a blister.
BOOM.
Mud and water geysered. The board blew apart. Beetles flailed. Centipedes spun end over end. Timmy dropped half a meter before another cluster swarmed under his boots to catch him, but it jolted him hard.
His stance broke.
There.
Lila leapt off the pillar, riding the backwash of her own dragon, sliding through spray.
Bugs thrashed between them, caught in churning water. The air was all wings and dirty mist.
Timmy's eyes sharpened, threads flaring bright.
"Eat her."
Everything within reach snapped toward her—anything with legs or wings launching out of the air, the mud, off stone, all mouths and hunger.
Lila grinned, a little wild.
"Water Muti: Soundproof Splash!"
This time the water didn't rise as a wall.
It burst into a ring around her in mid-air—a donut of rippling blue, scales shimmering. The bugs hit it from both sides and stuck, pressed into the surface like disgusting mosaic.
The roar of wings cut to a dull hum.
Lila twisted through the center of the ring, using the water as a pivot. Her body spun; the staff came around like a bat.
She didn't swing for his head.
The staff cracked across his wrist.
Timmy's hand spasmed. A chunk of his swarm dropped out of the air with him as his focus stuttered. Vials on his belt clinked hard together.
"Ghk—"
They passed each other in the air.
Lila landed on another stone stump, knees bending deep, staff catching her weight. Water sloshed away in waves. Bugs flopped and crawled in the puddles.
Timmy caught a thick root, teeth bared, wrist already swelling purple. A little blood tracked where her staff had split skin.
Up in the stands, the reaction rolled around the bowl.
"She tagged his casting arm!"
"Royal Aqua girl's nasty—"
"Bugs still coming though—look—"
They were.
Even shaken, the brood crawled back toward him, re-forming rails, steps, and a new half-circle screen at his back.
Lila's arms were welted and red. Timmy's fingers twitched every time he flexed them.
Both of them were panting.
Both of them were grinning now.
Okay, Lila thought, feeling swamp water answer every breath. You're not getting through me just talking about Rin.
Okay, Timmy thought, feeling his bugs pull at his aura. She's more than a healer. Good.
The swamp lights flickered over churning water and crawling chitin as Mercy Deck leaned in, waiting to see which of them would break and whats the next escalation looks like when it came.