Boro couldn't let that suffocating pressure build.
With a guttural, planet-shaking roar, the giant cadet threw his massive, heavily armored bulk forward. He didn't bother trying to clear his fused rotary cannon; he became the weapon. Boro slammed violently into Kael like a runaway freight train.
The impact was deafening. It didn't just push the boy; it drove him straight through the reinforced ferro-crete wall of the adjacent Ares security bank. Concrete shattered in a massive spray of grey shrapnel. Twisted steel rebar shrieked as it tore apart. A plume of pulverized dust and debris swallowed them both as the building's facade collapsed completely inward, burying the black-masked entity beneath tons of jagged, unyielding rubble.
It lasted for exactly one second.
Before the dust could even begin to settle, a concussive shockwave blew the epicenter of the rubble apart.
Kael exploded forward.
He didn't just run; he erased the distance between them. Boro barely had time to raise his scarred forearms before Kael was completely inside his guard. The black-masked boy unleashed a terrifyingly rapid barrage of jabs directly into Boro's abdomen. The impacts didn't sound like flesh hitting flesh; they sounded like a piledriver systematically striking an anvil.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
Boro's reinforced chest plate buckled. The giant's massive frame visibly folded inward with every blinding strike, the wind violently expelled from his lungs. Boro gritted his teeth, attempting to swing a heavy, desperate haymaker in retaliation, but he was swinging at a phantom. Kael was simply too fast, moving with an overwhelming, frictionless fluidity that his former teammate couldn't even track.
Without breaking the rhythm of his flurry, Kael hopped slightly upward, shifting his angle of attack in mid-air. He dropped his shoulder and delivered one devastating, hyper-pressurized uppercut directly under Boro's jaw. The kinetic force was apocalyptic. It launched the three-hundred-pound giant entirely off his feet, sending him hurtling backward through the smog.
But Kael wasn't finished.
The instant after the uppercut connected, Kael blurred forward, catching up to the flying giant before gravity could even reclaim him. Kael reached out and clamped his black, featureless hand directly over Boro's face.
Without slowing down a fraction of a second, Kael drove Boro horizontally downward, and ran. He dashed across the ruined intersection at his absolute maximum speed, violently dragging Boro's head and upper back through the unyielding street.
The terrain tore apart beneath them. Asphalt peeled back like wet paper. Scavenged star-metal barricades and shattered concrete blocks exploded outward as Kael plowed Boro straight through the debris field. A horrific rooster-tail of sparks, pulverized stone, and smoke trailed behind them. The sheer friction and kinetic trauma were ripping Boro's remaining armor to shreds, turning the indestructible tank of Squad 5 into a ragged, helpless passenger.
"Squad! Coordinate!"
Instructor Jax's roar cut through the sheer disbelief. He knew immediately that Kael could not be fought one-on-one; the boy was a walking death sentence. The micro-hydraulics in Jax's heavy chrome arms whirred to maximum output as hidden panels along his forearms slid open. Jet boosters ignited with a blinding blue flare.
Jax rocketed off the asphalt, ascending into the smoke-choked sky to track Kael's trajectory. "Do not engage him alone! Force him into a crossfire!"
Toben and Deja didn't hesitate. Deja locked the telescopic handle of her thermal axe, sprinting across the ruined street. Toben, wiping a fresh trail of blood from his nose, snatched a fallen Ares pulse-blade from the ground and sprinted after her, desperately following his instructor's shadow.
At the far edge of the plaza, Kael finally skidded to a halt, casually tossing Boro's massive body aside.
Boro hit a shattered support pillar and crumpled into the rubble. He was a mess. His indestructible armor was violently peeled back, exposing deep, heavy bleeding across his chest and arms. Several ribs were visibly caved in. His eyes rolled back, drifting dangerously in and out of consciousness. The giant let out a wet, rattling wheeze, utterly paralyzed by the overwhelming, singular dominance of a boy they used to call a friend.
But Kael's attention lingered on Boro's ruined state for a fraction of a second too long.
Toben saw the micro-opening. The terrified, analytical cadet didn't freeze. He rushed in from Kael's blind spot, his heart hammering wildly against his ribs, and thrust the scavenged pulse-blade forward, aiming the humming, high-frequency edge directly at the back of Kael's neck.
Kael didn't even turn his head.
He simply raised his hand backward and caught the humming plasma blade in his bare palm.
The weapon stopped dead. The plasma sparked and hissed against the black, symbiotic carapace covering Kael's hand, but it didn't even leave a scorch mark. It was completely, utterly effortless.
Kael slowly turned his head. The glowing white eyes of the mask locked onto Toben's terrified face. The black mass around Kael's throat rippled, and when he spoke, his voice was a chilling, distorted synthesis of the boy he was and the nightmare he had become.
"You were always trembling in the back, Toben," Kael said, the words dripping with cold, piercing disappointment. "You're too weak to be out here."
The insult hit Toben like a physical blow, cutting straight through his armor, but his survival instincts overrode his hurt. The moment he felt the unyielding, impossible density of Kael's grip on the weapon, Toben let go. He didn't hesitate for a single second. He immediately disengaged, throwing himself backward and frantically dashing away to create distance.
Kael's glowing eyes narrowed. The symbiote rippled across his legs as he prepared to instantly close the gap and punish the retreat.
He never got the chance.
"Heads down!" Jax bellowed from directly overhead.
Still airborne, sustained by the roaring boosters in his metal arms, the instructor leveled his cybernetics toward the plaza. The thick plating on his shoulders and forearms shifted, revealing multiple micro-missile compartments. A blinding volley of high-explosive ordnance erupted from his arms, screaming down toward Kael's position.
The barrage slammed into the asphalt in a staggered, overwhelming rhythm. The explosions violently interrupted Kael's pursuit, consuming the boy in a localized hurricane of expanding fire, concussive shockwaves, and pulverized concrete.
Using the wall of fire and smoke as cover, Toben rushed right back in.
He didn't aim to strike; he aimed to distract. The cadet rapidly closed the distance, weaving through the chaotic battlefield with practiced, desperate agility. He slid beneath a flying chunk of concrete, deflected a piece of flaming rebar with a discarded riot shield, and danced around the edges of the crater, forcing Kael to constantly track his erratic movements. The teamwork between Jax's aerial suppression and Toben's ground-level distraction felt incredibly natural, a seamless execution of POND doctrine.
But Kael wasn't interested in the distraction.
From the center of the smoke, the black-masked boy ignored Toben entirely. The concrete shattered beneath his feet as Kael lunged vertically upward, launching himself like a surface-to-air missile directly toward Jax, intending to rip the aerial threat out of the sky.
He was incredibly fast, a dark blur cutting through the smog. But he was completely focused on the instructor.
Before Kael could reach Jax's altitude, Deja arrived.
She had used Toben's distraction to scale the ruins of a collapsed transit rail. As Kael rocketed upward, Deja threw herself off the ledge, falling directly into his flight path. Her heavy-ion thermal axe was fully ignited, glowing with blinding, purple superheated plasma.
With a feral, exhausting scream, Deja swung the massive weapon with every ounce of kinetic force her augmented muscles could generate.
The strike connected cleanly with Kael's midsection in mid-air.
The impact was deafening. The sheer momentum and superheated force of the blow halted Kael's ascent instantly. The kinetic transfer blasted the boy sideways out of the sky. Kael became a dark projectile, crashing violently through the fourth-story ferro-glass window of an abandoned Ares office building.
He didn't stop there. The momentum carried him straight through the interior walls, out the other side, and directly into the adjacent skyscraper. Massive destruction followed his trajectory. Reinforced concrete bowed and shattered. Steel beams snapped like dry twigs. Entire floors buckled as Kael's body was driven through multiple structures before finally coming to a halt deep inside a collapsing office block.
Jax wasted absolutely no time.
He saw Kael buried within the groaning, unstable architecture. The instructor's chrome arms whirred, venting superheated steam as every remaining weapons compartment snapped open.
He didn't hold a single shell back. Jax launched an overwhelming, saturation bombardment.
Every remaining missile, every high-explosive charge in his cybernetic arsenal, shrieked out of his arms in a continuous, blinding stream. They slammed into the already compromised structures containing Kael.
The world turned white.
Explosion after explosion chained together in a deafening, planet-shattering crescendo. The shockwaves blew out windows for blocks. The targeted buildings didn't just collapse; they were structurally pulverized. The entire block folded in on itself, disappearing entirely beneath a towering mountain of smoke, dust, twisted steel, and roaring fire.
And then, silence.
The deafening roar of the bombardment faded, replaced only by the crackle of burning debris and the distant, haunting sirens of the dying city. A thick, choking layer of smoke filled the battlefield.
Jax cut his boosters, dropping heavily onto the cracked asphalt beside Toben and Deja. His chrome arms were glowing red-hot, his micro-hydraulics hissing from complete depletion. Deja leaned heavily on the handle of her deactivated axe, her chest heaving as she stared into the massive, smoking crater of collapsed skyscrapers. Toben was beside her, his hands trembling violently as he gripped his empty holster.
Nobody moved. The heroes just stared at the towering mountain of destruction, waiting for a sign. A shifting rock. A glowing white eye.
Nothing happened. The dust continued to drift over the total devastation.
Jax slowly lowered his smoking arms, the unlit match still clamped fiercely between his teeth. He let out a long, ragged exhale.
"It's over," Jax said quietly.