‘Speaker… I need…’

  “I know, we’re trying to reconfigure in here! We didn’t know we were going to need these constructs again!”

  ‘Please… hurry…’

  Seth couldn’t move. Every fiber of his being was screaming at him to run, to just run as fast as it could. But nothing moved, nothing worked. His muscles trembled in place, his legs refused to shift, he couldn’t form a full breath even if he tried. Even his thoughts couldn’t dare rise in tenor. All that was himself was stifle, stopped in place by fear so instinctual it nearly demanded he just give up and run straight into its jaws just to end this. But even that was brought low and hollow. Because even instinct didn’t want to set off the bomb that was just dropped onto the arena floor.

  Like the air had suddenly turned to stone, no one else dared to even try and breathe. The curt suspense had fallen in on itself and this near total fear now ruled the stands. The recruits on the protected bench tried to brace but even they were powerless against the aura that this thing gave off. Only managing a desperately slow convergence around David as he quietly broke down at the sight.

  Of her.

  Heroes not in the know inched up to ready themselves, reflexes burned into their psyches, ever ready flares of demanded action and learned fear driving them back into hell. But they were just as quickly stood down by those who understood. Because in the end no one wanted to make a sound. To set off the living pile of claws, teeth, and dynamite that stood softly sobbing in the center of the arena.

  But of course Para was not beholden to this.

  “Fear not ladies and gentlemen-”

  “RRRRRAAAAAGGGHHHHHH!!!!”

  The sobbing evaporated like flash paper soaked in nitrous, half a ton of meat and muscle reflexively lunging at the sound of his voice. The audience recoiled and devolved into wanton screaming, that suffocating air ripped in twain. A stampede trying to make a break for the nearest mile of out of the way. But this cascade of callus display stopped dead, as the chain around her neck snapped to taut. And snapped her neck.

  The monster was caught short of her blast toward the podium, clotheslined and not allowed to leave the prison that was now that center. Over buffed bulk falling limp and back as the weight tethered to her rumbled deep below the arena. A scrambling reboot horrifically reaffirming that healing back, clawing off the sand and struggled against her collar. Scraping flesh and metal for naught. Something finally found that could resist. Or she was just too weak after so long.

  “Like I said! Fear not! For today’s first challenge is not a public execution, nor some cruel blood sport!”

  “RRAAAAAGHRrrrrrrr!!!”

  “But, you now understand. This is the truest test we can administer!”

  The laceroid lunged again toward Para, yanking at the chain that recessed into the floor, heavy weights shifting and gonging against the floor keeping it down. Till even she couldn’t deny that there was nothing she could do. But growl like a chainsaw left on high.

  “Tinman’s challenge today is a simple one!”

  And Seth wanted nothing more than to beat her to the punch. To tear Para’s tongue out and end this god damn blind obliteration of everything he’d tried to maintain till now. The metal over his hands begging for mercy as he fought just to keep quiet. His bones wanting reprieve, but the tension in his limbs wouldn’t allow it. And his soul was burning, wishing for death just to never relive this. But he couldn’t look away, he couldn’t turn away, he couldn’t stop from going back. Couldn’t stop seeing those eyes.

  All around him.

  “He must stay within the central fighting circle for 5 minutes! Must withstand and avoid the onslaughts of Sorrow as best he… and his powersuit can! Only then can he truly be known, truly be called a hero worthy to stand among us!”

  ‘You fucking son of a BITCH!!!’

  “But he can’t be expected to be perfect! No one is! But mistakes still have a cost! Every time he leaves the circle, 2 minutes will be deducted from his total, forcing him to stay in longer! If he is knocked out too much, the match is forfeit! If he is knocked unconscious the match is forfeit! If Sorrow proves to be too much and is close to killing him, the match is forfeit! And to be sure that no one is hurt should that worst arise… We have the Elite’s own Aegis providing shielding for today’s fights!”

  The air finally popped free, like a soft bubble against its own waned surface tension. That suffocating aura made thin by better reminiscence, letting Seth out of this compounding fear, affording him a glance over to the podium. Because there through the view screen she was, there she finally was. His angel come to spare him the dark… With a look of knowing guilt bound into resignation to watch helplessly. It was already too late for her to save him again.

  And he’d been right, the rest of the Elite were here in that front row beside Para, ready to observe and end this malicious test should it fail even to stay as such. But only she was off her feet. Erdwut, Ziyou, Techno, Maglev, and Hothead all sitting in silence. In stoicism expected of them, in smug readiness to be that end, in ready anxiety to act and be known. But Seth could feel their hate clear as the day that waned away outside. Not even they were immune to this fear. And not even they wanted to spare him this hell resurgent.

  Aegis slowly broke the stained ire, bent down at the knee high lip bordering the stands, hands spreading out over the side. A ceiling of translucent orange flaring out from her hands to cap the arena off. A small wall falling around the protected bench housing the defensively frozen trainees. Looks of shared terror at their proximity to such a monster finally eased under this invulnerable glow. But they did not relinquish their brace over David. Too strong a need to keep him safe bearing its teeth.

  Seth reflexively relaxed as that orange light suffused through to him, poured in through that empty socket and across that view screen, mounting a feeling of safety even he couldn't deny. But immediately regret in its abrupt half-life, as untensing muscle and metal whirred. As a glare slammed onto him that he knew by pure pressure alone. As Sorrow lunged like predator to prey!

  The weight around her neck smashing against its container, sand getting shot up in entire floor plates. Without even a thought he'd thrown himself back, stopped just short of the line that was his challenge, heel hung over it like an unconscious sign of weakness. He couldn't lose sight again. He wouldn’t lose sight again.

  “Seth… We have confirmed it!”

  Speaker chose now of all fucking times!

  “What data we could pull from our scanners. It… it is her… It’s your mother!”

  A scant modicum of the fear smothering over him faded. Memories flying fast and hollow at him, dropping it more to kindred sorrow at seeing the truth of what had happened to her. That charred animal chewing against invulnerable energy too prominent. The blurred away face of who she was too maddening. As it tried to shift and resolve into this beast choking itself to try and rip him apart. To eraser her in totality and replace who she was even in memory.

  But he couldn’t show his turmoil, couldn’t react beyond the bounds of the fearful zeitgeist. All he could do was stare down the thing his mother had become. Burn in, that this wasn’t her. It was something else. Something controlling her. He could see all the things he saw before in her eyes. All the vain sorrow she had been locked into, all the pain she was feeling on constant blast. He… He could also see the threading that held her together! The density almost too much to take in. His powered senses strained just looking at her with any ounce of focus. Barely able to make sense of any of it.

  It was madness, raucous, a cacophony of blasted tones and ripped up melody. Disjointed memories, chewed apart experiences, broken open id for glut of ego. All of it roiling, foaming, and forming around a single solid piece. One single emotion to drive it all to any purpose, to any function. To make life out of this broken machine. A single soul to guide that which had none.

  ‘She’s… She’s still in there!’

  His mind raced at the hell she had suffered all this time, was still suffering. Just the half lived aftertaste was enough to bring him low, but her being now lived stewing perpetual. Bound, gagged, and soaked to the-

  The being.

  The threading.

  The Garkah!

  The Ark!!

  ‘Get Concoctor up here now! We need a conscious crossover! We need to get her out of there!!’

  “W-wait we do not have that kind of tech prepared… we-”

  ‘JUST FUCKING DO SOMETHING!!!’

  Seth couldn’t stand it. The thought of his mother suffering one more minute locked in that body. Being locked away like a rabid animal eaten out of its own skin. But…

  But he was out of time.

  “The fighters are ready!!”

  Para reasserted himself over everyone’s emotions and massed dismay.

  “The field is set!!!”

  Seth snapped back at across technology and pure hollowed spite, flashing a glare that could burn steel as his suit’s remaining eye lit up, an afforded condemnation before returning to the monster his mother had become.

  “Now!!!”

  A screen flipped open over the stands and counted up five minutes. As Para raised his arm to the sound of chains rattling out of their coil. To the sound of toxic anticipation, of a weight loosed to drop to its lowest depths. To the air becoming quagmire despite every precaution, to this almighty bomb being truly set alight. To all eyes unable to watch and unable to look away as that arm came down, unable to feel the shock of the foundations. Only the terror of this most terrible of starting bells. As that bomb exploded for all it held back.

  “FIGHT!!!”

  To that crushing aura shattering. As Sorrow shot away! Unhindered, uninhibited, unable to stop. Careening like a missile made of claws and teeth, maw wide and daggers splayed. A finally resolving perception catching up with the seriously needed speed! But Seth couldn’t bring himself to add to his mother's pain, and all that fear had to build up somewhere. So his only choice left.

  Dodge!!

  A sidestepped to the right, staying locked on her as claws real and wanting scored the air itself. And as she reached the true end of her chain with another violent taut crash. She was torn off her feet, her own momentum turned traitor, and flinging her back to the snap of one too many vertebrae to not feel it by proxy. The weight tied around her neck springing up to beat the foundations again. Echoing her self-destructive strength in the scramble back upright. Bones reforming before the reverb could dissipate. Sizzling all the shatter away. So away she could continue.

  Charging from the ground, claws tearing through the sand with total abandon. Seth backpedaled around the edge of the arena, the weight on the chain could slow Sorrow’s movements, but only just. And he couldn’t fight her, not like this. And especially not without a plan, because he didn’t know how much she could have left after all these years. So pulled up his guard and hardened, focusing everything into his arms and keeping distance. All just to buy time for something! Anything!

  She found purchase and finally pulled away from the ground, a claw swiping across his guard and screaming sparks to life. Her strength was on par with the simulations, if not completely beyond it, but Seth was stronger now too. So his metal refused to give. She swiped again and again, outer aluminum layers spalling their faintest loss and screeching for all to hear. Still metal did not yield. But her claws did plenty. Whatever made them up scathing to nubs by sheer, and regrowing in sizzling refusal to stay gone. Denying his hope to spar her more expenditure, to spar her the fate of all those burst to dust. So still Seth kept moving back. Plate metal feet danced along the circle's edge, hardened guard reduced to reactionary single arm blocks to force back what may and find any opening. But the rabid animal before him was having none of it.

  A hard left raked deeper, pushing Seth’s left away and refuting its reaction. Another swipe already coming narrow. Sorrow’s claw eclipsed the desperate opposing guard. Swallowing it whole. As she kept twisting in the assault, wrestling him off his feet, slamming him onto the ground in a beating whip. Back to sand and front to death, and gel layer thanked for denying concussion but damned for not preventing the whiplash.

  That allowed her to rear back, free claw pointed straight at his head, bringing it down under another wailing roar to remix history. Only to crash hard into intercepting left, armored fingers interlocked with tearing claws. Clashing in sparking rain as tension nearly snapping his elbow clean out, but stopped himself from being cut open again!

  Seth clamped down on her claw, keeping it in place. As swift twisting yanked away her rebuke, his grappled right reversed and grappling her right in kind. A forceful kick out of a shin, an all or nothing curl, and Sorrow was pulled over off her feet and flung back to her center.

  Rolled haphazard over chain slack, claws bashing it about but only collecting more rolls as she franticly clawed for purchase. Seth righted himself and pressed the advantage, scooping up what extra was left and rushing after. Her tumble stopping neck deep heavy links, wrapped two layers deep and on her back. She pulled and clawed to be free of it like a feral beast, but it held as it should, so Seth piled more atop her. A desperate scramble carrying him over, trying to keep the chain tight and containing. He pressed down on a bend, staking it into the ground with his own claws. Sorrow struggling in vain, her flailing only adding to her containment as he slammed onto her chest and pressed all the weight at his disposal. At elbow and knee point as she kicked for ground, tried to force leverage at talon point.

  Slowly her predicament seemed to dawn as the flailing ceased, an odd calm for a living bomb already exploding. Seth looked up from his huddled press, meeting her in those horridly nostalgic eyes, desperate to reach the one trapped behind them. But he only saw the same look that he’d gotten every time before. The tears were hers, but that hate was truly something else’s. And it wasn’t programmed in the slightest.

  Suddenly she squirmed, pushed the chain binding her taut over her chest, denying Seth's weighted press. All so she could rear back in full and open that maw wide. Teeth stained by dust and grime long past disregarded, now chomped down on the chain two widths deep, links nearly shorn open from just the impact. Seth could only watch as she crunched, welds cracking under the assault. Teeth slipping between and refuting even this managed resistance. So that, with a final press and yank, the chain shattered to scattering shards over his helmet. Telling him clear to once again fucking run!

  He immediately pushed off to regain position as she tore off the last of the bindings keeping her at bay. The fact that Para didn’t call the match as she rose up unhindered by her weight only added to Seth’s dismay.

  ‘Damnit Speaker, do we have anything?!’

  “We… we think we-”

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  “We are uncertain of its ability, but we have endeavored! All we need now is time and proximity… Physical contact!”

  Concoctor was fired up even if he wasn’t sure, but-

  ‘Good enough!!’

  “WAIT!! She will tear you apart if you try to get that close!!”

  ‘Only if I let her!’

  Seth stood his ground, back to the circle’s edge, front to true manifested death. Ruts and banks of sand having piled up around his feet. Sorrow staring at him with all of the wild overriding hate, all sorrowful glare left piecemeal yet ever continuous. She stamped a taloned foot down, sand pressing aside in more banks as she menacingly advanced on him. Making it clear. Showing him the way.

  ‘This is the only way.’

  Seth redirected his focus, the suit’s stores shifting lower, energizing and adding to his legs. He had to be fast, and he had to drive it lower. Below that heavy sand, below its shifting conveyance of form to what laid below it. As Sorrow drew close, loaded up for a truly unhindered lunge, Seth drooped low in kind, scooping a hand into that loosened sand that was churned about this central floor. All those displays and movements leaving plenty to work with. And now really feeling it, he was sure of his thoughts.

  But even this simple motion was all it took to set off the monster. Nothing left to keep her locked to this fighting circle’s circumference. Nothing to restrain what would tear this world and itself apart. Bursting forward as he wrought it all to his perception and his alone. Sand trailing between talons loosed with no stop or sense, maw hungering wide to swallow this world whole. But in that same moment of overdriven surety, Seth made that hunger her regret!

  Metal feet dug deep into the sand, pushed to the side, scraped against the solid metal floor below. And in that same screeching motion, he catapulted that hand full of sand straight into the over exposed maw seeking to take a chunk out. Spinning away and skidding across the hidden floor, leaving a sand clogged and blasted Sorrow to tumble away in his wake. He didn’t look back, there was no time for second guesses as he dropped both hands down and continued moving. More sand aerosolized by the handful, kicked up from the floor with every scrapping step and thrown over head at every chance.

  He could feel the floor below him, heavy steel plating so impacts wouldn’t tear right through it all. He could feel the sand, heavy and filled with conductive particles to work with the hardlight system. A medium to shape, and medium he could use and abuse and risk exposure in righteous desperation. As he screeched across the surface like a hellish ice rink, but also like his finger across a broken servo. Power flowing from metal foot to metal floor, magnetizing it to his will, but instead of sealing itself together. It would repel outward.

  That overwhelming glare doubled and Seth ducked low, dragged his left coming about. Narrowly avoiding the claw cleaving for his back. Sorrow was close behind, retaliation without hesitation with eyes strained and snout caked. Eternal tears create eternally wet sand. So how about another dose!? Another cloud of sand flung into Sorrow’s face for all the good it could do her.

  She recoiled, a little eye and nose irritation was an acceptable attack to his conscience, wouldn’t risk eating away at her reserves. But it could only do so much. She flailed about, half blind and screeching. Seth took every opportunity and continued circling, but knew she was far from inhibited. Sight and smell plenty affected but hearing was still in play. And metal on metal skating wasn’t helping.

  Sand was building up in the air around the circle, dusty particles from every smash and flare and bombastic display heroically made upon it. Billowing thick enough to block sight in and out. It wouldn’t stay forever, but Seth needed that time and that cover.

  Yet despite these restrained frustrations, Sorrow stumbled short and stopped halfway. And scraping her eyes clear to heal back, blowing hard to empty her snout as blood sizzled away. Seth took this chance and finished his circuit, coming to an even stop at his starting point and eyeing a large pile that had been left in Sorrow's initial wake.

  With a resounding and challenging stomp, he stepped forward. Charge building up and focus rounding the whole of his creation. Flowing with his hum, his tone, his willful need. Sorrow stepped out opposite from the obscuring cloud tossed about, eyes burning with hate streaming dusty brown and black. Tension didn’t have time to manifest as both rushed forward in unison, both racing toward each other with every intention to finally finish this. But Seth stopped short, slid low and reeled back high. With an almighty right to close this curtain.

  As Sorrow lunged one final time, he slammed that fist down on that piled sand. Smashing through to the steel plate below and ringing it loud, clear, and harmonious to his being. Imparted the last of his need to turn this circle into a massive repulsive magnet, enough to blind and blot, and keep the sand up for the short minute he needed. As it beat like a drum to the rest of the world.

  The pile aerosolized with all its gathered brethren. A pillar and explosion of everything that could rise. An ambiguous crescendo of expressed force. This final blast of sand smacking Sorrow off her pounce and caused her to roll to the side. She was up and tearing at her eyes again, roaring in anger at the constant irritation and constant denying of her hunger. The sand cloud too thick to see through, suspended just barely. Leaking into his own sight and giving mutual this pain. But Seth didn’t need to hide from her.

  Stepping into her sight, he squared back up, staring back at eyes that seemed to know only pain and hate and nothing of what it took away. With a flick he extended the claws on his gauntlets, hardened them with everything he had. Sorrow splayed her own claws out, intent on tearing into him with everything she had. Frustration too much to keep tension, immediate charge the only answer allowed, talons slashing the ground under her, adding sparks to the cloud already falling.

  But before she could wrap her claws around him, Seth shot his own up to stop this madness. Claws locked together, force meeting force in sand clearing shock of colliding titans. His bones threatened to snap in half as her all pressed down, sliding Seth back a step but he could hold it. Sorrow became torrential. Hate, pain, anger, and sadness all bearing down without thought or care. Metal holding just barely against the onslaught promised, but he wasn’t going to rely on it. He had to rely on there being something, anything, left of his mother in there. And the only way to get to it was to meet it face to face.

  His forehead smacked an emergency release on the inside of the helmet, panels folding back as the heated air inside released. His shock white hair flowed away as he shot his head up, met Sorrow’s hateful gaze with his, met eyes shared across paternity and clung to with everything left of their beings. A vain hope that his gambit was worth it withering under that baleful stare caked in sand. Under growl so deep it racked his mind. Under the threat that at any moment she would just wrench and rear and bite his head off. Under… under what could only be felt…

  As recognition.

  Slow. Centimeter by centimeter. A shifting of that glare. That knot of hell permeating deep unraveling. Finding its thread dangling in reach, being pulled at in disbelief and struggled under strain. The claws interlinked lightening, an internal strife weakening. That expression contorting, maw finally closing shut, eyes locking straight at his. Blood shot grit and torn heal, twisting with more than just what was poured out. Recollection, memory, what had been taking finding root in the jumble. But it needed more, something drastic, something-

  His focus shot down through is suit, tossed latches and locks aside for one panel alone. Heat pressed air forcing it free to flutter pennant out. Red flowing, catching the roil and tension between. To be seen and known and to make what was uncertain irrefutable.

  As a dam suddenly slammed into place, the torrent of Sorrow broken to nothing by the rock of what it dared lock away. Claws failing to keep their press, the fight sapped and true feeling made channel in the tide. Internal strife keeping it locked away, but that dam would not hold for long. Seth needed one final push, one press of his own, one chance taken to get to that still locked away core. He pulled his hands free, ducked low, and slammed himself into that scaled over chest. Head held tight against with everything he had on muster. Throwing everything he had at breaking his own resonance down into hers. To squeeze tight and burrow in and yell the one thing she’d been waiting all this time to hear!

  ‘MOM!!!’

  The arena faded away, bodies falling in on themselves. That familiar, distant, simulated calm enforced upon. But mixed and foggy and strained to its extremes. The void of translation, of minds brought too close without abiding precaution. A tether, a focus drawn out and attached. Intermeshed complex by those who knew more than him. But despite the fog, despite the void, despite the chasm separating them in figurative literality.

  He could see her.

  Clear as day he could see her.

  Points of light mimicking overgrown brown hair, cloaking her in disheveled self-pity. Her own self-image translated and made real by slapdash damnation, her mind locked away and unable to care for itself. Unable to feel, to know, to do anything but cry like the day she was subsumed. But now…

  Now her darkness, her emptiness, her endless torment was cut off and forced back. And she was confused, looking out at where her cage used to hold her in, the same hazel eyes scanned around her freed mind. Until they met Seth’s and found their true feelings.

  ‘Mom!!’

  “S-Seth?!”

  Her face was hers, and hers alone. Not stolen by rampaging monstrosity, nor blurred by his stupid broken brain. It was fair to fault but roughened by work. A scratch across her cheek from a blown radiator, a stain in her eyebrow from a wiping tick soaking oil in one too many times. He could see it, remember it. Remember what she was in full, who she was in more than fractured emotions. Knew it pure.

  And would never forget again.

  He couldn’t help but try to run to her, to hug her, to feel like everything before was just another forgotten dream needing to be woken up from. That this was just that day rewinding, no meteoric Ark nor plague of malformation. But he couldn’t move further toward her. The translation could connect them, let them see, but not free them so haphazardly of the bounds of their minds. Of the bodies that allowed them this latitude miniscule. Seth felt the Garkah at his back, felt their hesitation and worry at their barely operable creation. Speaker stepping beside in trepidation keeping him less than poised. Threat holding back, knowing full well what his part in her suffering was.

  ‘We need to pull her out of there! Before that thing reasserts control! Tell me you have something!’

  Speaker looked concerned, but nodded.

  “Concoctor said it was feasible that she is like us, we need only tell her how to use her power or there will not be enough structure to even transfer.”

  His mother worked through the shock of her awakening, pulling her gaze over the once suppressed outflow of forms. Hesitant, but stepping up to the expanse that separated her from her son. Eyes falling on Threat with a knowing guilt, like she had seen what he had done and what had been done to him. A feeling that drove him low, in the face of another victim of his. She looked to Speaker, seeing one that seemed to help her son along through his hardship, but understanding he was guilty of much of it. Her feeling shared across that precarious tether like the collective she’d been passed over by.

  Finally she looked back at her son, looked back to Seth’s longing stare, seeing him as the little boy she tried futilely to protect from this. He held a hand out, felt the expanse widen against him, but sought to stretch out regardless through that more than demanded of tether. His resonance, his hum, his memories pushed along and given with purpose. So that she could see what had happened since that awful day, so that she could take to the power she’d been cursed to be smothered under. So she could know its purpose and feel as they do. And cross that bridge precarious.

  But it passed over into ambiguity, into heard but unknown. As her face shallowed in confusion soak.

  ‘Did that work? Did she-‘

  But Seth was cut short, as confusion found end in a blinding aura. As purpose failed to a more necessary end. He could feel an influx, power from outside. She was using it like she knew everything it could do. And all that its bounds had.

  “What’s she doing?!”

  Threat couldn’t hide it, couldn’t keep the collective from knowing and passing it on. A path that had been shared with all the rest of Seth’s knowledge.

  “She’s… destroying herself.”

  ‘WHAT!?!’

  But Seth could feel it. The hum of her newly realized threading, the surge of power outside her mind. She was tuning it, plying it, making it hers and hers alone. And matching it opposing to-

  ‘MOM!!!’

  But she only smiled, tears rolled down her face. Not the tears of that eternal sorrow’s return, but tears of happiness tracking back up to her son left bereft. She was free from the prison she had been locked in for so long. Finally able feel the world around her again, breathe for herself again, to know what warmth and cold and any other emotion other than sorrow felt like. But also…

  Also she got to see her son grow up and become something more than she ever could have imagined. Passing back along that tentative connection what words could only pale before.

  “It’s okay my little sparkplug. It’s okay.”

  Her voice was almost angelic, he could barely remember it before. That little nickname flashing all those times he hung over the side of whatever car she was working on. Watching her tune and play and smile at him. And hope… Hope that he would remember this… Would remember her. But hearing it now was too much to bear.

  “Don’t start crying. You already saved me as best you could.”

  ‘b-but…’

  She lowered her head, held her blinding self like even this body was nothing but another cage.

  “I can still feel her… The thing that locked me away. She’s a part of me, something neither I, nor anyone, can separate. She fed off me, my emotions, my memories, my pain… my sadness. Tried to fill a gap that she wasn’t even able to know she had. That’s all they ever were, all we became. Empty things trying to fill themselves with anything they could. But now…Now there will be nothing left for her to take.”

  Seth dropped to his knees, the weight too much to take the light burning his eyes.

  “I don’t feel sadness anymore, now that I know you’re safe. That you have friends who care about you. That are doing right by you. That you’re doing what you feel is right.”

  The aura around her recoiled the Garkah as it intensified but Seth refused to look away, his mother becoming little more than a blinding light across the expanse. Facsimile or reality, tears poured as he tried to find words to get her to stop.

  “Please don’t suffer because of me. You saved me, gave me the only way that could truly free me. You shouldn’t have to shoulder the burden of keeping me around. I died that day with everyone else. There’s no going back to what came before, only moving forward with what you have. And you have so much more than I could have ever hoped you would. So please don’t cry! You freed a trapped soul today. And finally ended her sorrow once and for all.”

  The aura finally blinded Seth completely, forcing him to shut his mind’s eyes and bear what was to come.

  “I will always be with you. Not as a monster that needs locking away, but as a mother who will always love you.”

  Seth fell back out of his head, the tether snapping as the light tore it apart. Back to the arena, the sand falling over. Back to the crushing weight of what he couldn’t prevent no matter how hard wanted to. And back to…

  To his mother hugging him…

  One last time.

  Bulky scaled arms that once threatened to tear him to ribbons now wrapped around his metal carapace, mirrored a hug he had pressed too tightly into. The warmth was almost unbearable, cascading through the suit like it wasn't there in the first place. Something he couldn’t help but fight as tears overflowed his eyes...

  As that pressure lightened.

  As scales softened, bulk faded, turning to dust under its own embrace and loosing its binds so long due to break. Disintegrating. Not like the laceroids before, not bursting at the seams as their beings failed to hold, but flaking away. No hungering remains sapping away in void, but atomic silence as it all ceased to sing. As the permanent smile on her softened maw blackened away. To fall to nothing but dust.

  Seth recoiled as she finally fell apart, black flakes and dusty heaps raining to the ground. Between his unable hands. Staining them... Again! The magnetic field abound churned the heap, spreading it finer and finer, staining the sand for all to know. Till all that was left was a black smudge surrounding a heavy metal collar. Leaving Seth with nothing but the tears streaming down his dusted face, the scarf at his heart flapping in the draft. Till the sand lost its hold, giving him but one last moment. To say all he could ever say.

  “Goodbye mom…”

  He snapped the helmet closed, hiding himself away. Hiding away the blood dried to black and the pain brought to bear. He reached up and stuffed that red fluttering reminder away. Away from the sand let fall as his control released to dissipate to ground. To reveal what had transpired, even if it was only half the truth.

  He turned amid, downtrod the weight of exhaustion expected. The black upon him the red of blame. The gasps at the crime stifled by residual fear. The stands allowed to see that the monster terrorizing them was now naught but dust. While he, alone with the truth, stared dead at Para with all the disdain more than due. Blank gaze holding back from igniting, fists trembling in that dusty stain with all the will he had pressing to keep him from breaking across the floor and tearing a hole through his heart for a change!

  But Para was expecting that. Had expected something more violent in this outcome. Another Berta to show, another taste of Seth losing control. Some new terror to point at and decry. Instead all he got was a quiet end. An anticlimax to the one they’d kept locked away passed reason. The last piece of the Laceroid Crisis held like a fucking souvenir. And it was driving him livid now that it was freed of that torment.

  The Elite sitting to his left more mixed of opinion, but equal of surprise. Aegis relieved that Seth had made it through, falling into concern as the gravity of his actions came back to her. Samurai happy, proud almost in this, if not bearing darker in the overjoy of a nightmare banished. Technomancer dejected, the pad in his hand displaying readings he was getting from the fight, and seeming to have been blocked out by the sand. Maglev annoyed, dismissive of whatever had transpired. Yet there was a tremble every time he dared look back down. Hothead pissed, damn near jealous even. Ziyou impressed at least, though she that was more into the prospects than the outcome. And Erdwut… well he doesn’t show emotion much. But something more laid deep in his gaze. An intense hatred burning, yet not solely directed. A churn in the way he looked down on Seth that read like the aftermath of something worse, but only spared by something less inflaming. He wasn’t here by choice, but had a duty to fulfill.

  The whispers from the crowd began drawing Seth back wide, growing in volume as people started to question what had even happened. Did he seriously kill that thing? This had to be a trick. What the hell did he do? And all the while Para was growing too perturbed to keep quiet.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen!! Quiet please! …As I said before…! This was not meant to be a public execution!!”

  Para locked eyes with Seth unmoved by the assertions, unable to move by the sheer weight of the guilt pressing down. Yet still he couldn’t help feel the dust staining his hands.

  “This place is not meant for death!! Though there are few alternatives when facing a true laceroid loosed of it bounds, Sorrow was not yours to enact justice upon!! This was not yours to carry out!!”

  A twisting glare finally cleared his livid playwright tone. And yet enflamed near to spiral with so wrong an assertion.

  “And so easy it seemed to come despite it all. This is a troubling turn of events!”

  Till he finally calmed his dismay, a contemplative disquiet looking to turn this result around. Hardly knowing what he was daring to say.

  “Due to the wanton nature of this ‘win’, yet with the extraneous circumstances inherent, I must leave the decision of whether this is a legal victory up to deliberation! Whether this was enough to secure ‘Tinman’s’ graduation or worth outright censure!”

  Para swept a hand to the left, toward the Elite sitting next to his podium. Aegis looked up at him in surprise, looking back at the rest of her team. Seth couldn’t hear, but assumed this was more than preplanned.

  “Who better to say otherwise than those who have faced these beasts in their prime!”

  They all seemed to shift their demeanors at this announcement though, probably happy at the implication they get to curate more directly. But Para reasserted attention before any verdict could be ascertained.

  “But that will have to come with time! We have more graduates to challenge! Rest assured we will have a ruling! But until then, we must allow the fights to continue!”