The numbness in Nail's left arm wasn't a simple sting.
It was a dead, heavy thing, a limb of cold stone hanging from his shoulder.
The lightning bolt's kiss had temporarily severed the connection between his will and his flesh.
He tried to flex his fingers.
Nothing.
Ember's systems registered the target's compromised motor function instantly.
A flicker on her helmet display:
Left primary limb: non-responsive.
Neuromuscular feedback disrupted.
She didn't celebrate.
She simply ceased being passive.
One second she was a statue of crimson alloy ten paces away.
The next, she was a blur cutting across the dusty earth, closing the distance with a hydraulic surge that was more machine lunge than human charge.
The fight had changed.
The testing phase was over.
The suit's logic was clear: identify weakness, apply maximum pressure, and at the end, eliminate.
Everyone realized too late.
Rook, from his perch, saw the shift a fraction before the others.
The armor's movement profile wasn't the efficient, reactive pivoting from before.
This was proactive.
Aggressive.
Predatory.
His finger tightened on the trigger, but the angle was wrong—Nail was in the line of fire, stumbling back.
He could only watch, a curse dying in his throat.
Mags, circling to Nail's right, had been tracking the rhythm—the pause after a blow, the slight reset before the next advance.
This was a new rhythm.
A faster, brutal tempo.
By the time her brain registered charge, Ember was already halfway to Nail.
Her shotgun came up, but it was a reaction, not an action.
She was a beat behind.
Nail saw the crimson streak coming.
The fear was a cold rock in his gut, but beneath it, something hotter burned.
The white glow on his brass knuckles didn't fade.
If anything, it pulsed brighter, fed by a raw, stubborn defiance.
This was their ground.
Their home.
He'd watched a man's head become mist.
He'd felt the tremor in his own hands.
But he was still standing.
And he'd be damned if he went down without swinging.
His left arm was dead weight.
So he planted his feet, turned his right side toward the blur, and braced.
Ember's punch wasn't a wild haymaker.
It was a piston-driven lance, straight and true, aimed for the center of his mass.
But Nail had been studying her.
Her speed was terrifying, but it wasn't magic.
It had a tell—a slight dip of the shoulder, a compression in the suit's stance before it unleashed.
He saw it now.
He didn't try to block.
With a grunt of effort, he threw his weight into the numbness, using his dead left side as a counterbalance to wrench his living body into a desperate, swaying dodge.
It was ugly.
It was off-balance.
The unfamiliar dead weight of his own arm nearly toppled him.
But he moved just enough.
The armored fist hissed through the air where his ribs had been, close enough for him to feel the displaced wind, cold and metallic.
Half a beat later.
Mags didn't try for a killing shot.
There was no time, and the armor was too tough.
Instinct took over.
As Ember's punching arm extended past Nail, leaving that polished crimson flank exposed for a microsecond, Mags fired.
BOOM.
The scattergun barked, not aimed at the core, but at the suit's elbow joint.
A spray of frost-coated shrapnel and concussive force, to buy Nail a second to recover.
But Ember was learning, too.
The suit's sensors had tracked Mags's position, her weapon's angle.
The straight punch had been the obvious move.
The real move was already in motion.
As her right arm shot past Nail, her left arm was already coming up from beneath, palm open.
It wasn't a wild swing.
It was a precise, almost casual gesture, aimed directly at Mags.
In the center of the armored palm, the air shimmered and a simple glyph—Rank 1–Restraint Bolt—snapped into existence.
The same pale blue energy, meant to bind and paralyze, that grazed Nail earlier.
Mags saw it.
The sneak attack hidden behind the main show.
Her eyes went wide.
She was committed to the dive away from her own shot, her weight going left.
"Watch out!"
Vey saw it all from his perspective—the feint, the trap, the glyph forming.
He wasn't close enough to do anything but yell.
Mags didn't think.
She abandoned all technique.
She threw herself sideways into a ragged, sprawling dive, hitting the frozen ground hard and rolling.
The pale blue bolt of energy lanced through the space her chest had occupied a moment before, striking the shattered wall behind her with a sizzling crack that left a web of glowing, binding energy across the concrete.
She came up gasping, heart hammering against her ribs, the cold of the earth seeping through her clothes.
Silence, for a heartbeat.
Broken only by the hum of the suit and Nail's ragged breathing.
Ember slowly retracted her arms, settling back into a ready stance.
The helmet turned slightly, regarding Nail, then Mags, then scanning for Vey and the others.
The message was clear.
She was no longer just reacting to their attacks.
She was programming her own.
And she was just getting started.
***
Several years prior, before Ember met Blaze.
The Crimson Velvet District is a fever dream where pleasure and crime didn't just coexist—they were the same substance, distilled into neon light and whispered promises.
It was the city's id, polished and put on display.
If you craved a sensation so sharp it bordered on pain, or an oblivion so deep it felt like death, you came here.
It catered to every shade of the seven deadly sins, not as vices, but as premium services.
The air itself tasted of expensive perfume, cheap smoke, and the metallic tang of desperation.
Its existence was an open secret, maintained by a silent, greasy machinery of corruption.
Government officials enjoyed discreet, untraceable deposits into their accounts, their morality conveniently fogging over like their breath in the district's chill.
Major corporations held silent shares, laundering influence and ambition through its velvet-draped halls.
It was a neutral zone, a pressure valve, and a profit center all in one.
But one name held a quiet, undisputed crown: WhiteRoot Corp.
The pharmaceutical giant presented a pristine face to the world—innovators in wellness, pioneers in cognitive therapy.
In the Crimson Velvet, their signature was something else.
They were the silent architects of the district's bloodstream, the undisputed kings of the underground pharmacopoeia.
Their compounds—clean, potent, and devastatingly addictive—were the currency of true indulgence.
It was the worst-kept secret in a district built on them.
By day, a thick industrial smog choked the Junkyard sky, turning the sun into a dirty copper coin.
But as night fell, the smog thinned, yielding to a different kind of pollution.
In the back alleys of the district, hidden from the main thoroughfares, neon signs stuttered to life.
Electric pinks, sickly greens, and deep, arterial reds painted the dripping walls, advertising experiences no legitimate sign ever could.
The sounds that leaked from these alleys were usually a predictable symphony—drunken laughter, synth-pop music from behind closed doors, the low murmur of deals being struck.
Tonight, the sound was different.
It was a raw, wet, meaty sound.
A repetitive thud followed by a choked gurgle.
Not pleasure.
Not even anger.
It was the sound of something being broken, down to its most basic components.
The source was a narrow service alley behind The Gilded Cage.
The establishment was a cabaret club on the surface, all glitter and sequins and winking lights.
To the truly initiated, it was a catalog.
Every performer, every server, every smiling face had a price for something more private, more specific.
It was a place where people were rented, not hired.
And Ember worked its back door.
She wasn't a performer.
She was a guarantee.
A wall of silent, grim muscle employed to ensure the merchandise didn't get damaged by overzealous clients, and that the clients didn't renegotiate terms after the fact.
It was a brutal, simple job.
The worst part wasn't the violence.
It was knowing what—who—she was protecting inside.
The door to the staff room creaked open.
Inside, the air was thick with the smell of antiseptic, sweat, and stage makeup.
Under a single, flickering bulb, a woman sat on a stained stool, dabbing at a split lip with a cloth.
Ellie.
Ember's older sister.
Her stage makeup was smeared, one eye beginning to swell.
The sequined dress she wore looked cheap and sad under the harsh light.
She didn't look up as Ember entered, her focus on cleaning the small wound.
"...You have new bruises again," Ellie said, her voice quiet, tired.
Her eyes flicked to Ember's knuckles, which were raw and swollen, and to a fresh, darkening welt on her sister's jawline.
Ember leaned against the doorframe, the adrenaline of the alley still humming in her veins.
She looked at Ellie's battered face, then down at her own bruised hands.
A familiar, cold hollow opened up in her chest.
"This is part of the job," Ember replied, her voice flat.
It wasn't a complaint.
It wasn't pride.
It was just a fact, as simple and unchangeable as the neon glow bleeding through the room's single dirty window.
The job was to hit, and be hit.
To stand between the world outside and the person in this room.
The bruises were just the receipt.
The numbness wasn't something Ember had chosen.
A throbbing in the knuckles meant she'd landed a solid hit.
It was feedback, not suffering.
To feel it, to let it twist your face or steal your breath—that was a luxury.
That was weakness.
A window for the next blow to come through.
She wore her indifference like armor in front of Ellie.
A shrug at a new cut, a dismissive grunt at a fresh bruise.
Part of the job.
She couldn't afford to let her sister see it matter.
Ellie had enough to carry.
But the respect Ember held for her was a quiet, sacred thing, a foundation stone buried so deep nothing could shake it.
It was built from memories that were sharper than any of her fist fights.
Memories from a very young age, from a time before the numbness.
Of watching Ellie, barely more than a child herself, put on a cheap, bright smile that never reached her eyes.
Of seeing her leave their one-room coffin in clothes that were too tight, too short, meant for a different kind of looking.
Ellie never said what she did.
She called it networking or hostessing.
But the extra credits that appeared, the slightly better food on their rickety table, the way Ellie would sometimes scrub her skin raw in their tiny sink until it was pink and trembling… Ember had understood, piece by terrible piece.
Her sister wasn't just selling her time.
She was selling the only thing their world had deemed valuable: herself.
Ellie had sold her body, piece by piece and night by night, to elevate their survival from a desperate scramble to a precarious ledge.
She had bought Ember's childhood, such as it was, with that currency.
So when Ember, standing guard in the shadowy alcove of The Gilded Cage's VIP lounge, saw the client—a bloated man in a silk suit, his face flushed with WhiteRoot euphorics—raise his hand not in a gesture, but in a closed fist, her data-driven world shattered.
She saw the trajectory.
She saw the fear flash in Ellie's eyes, the instinctive flinch she tried to hide behind her professional smile.
The numbness evaporated.
In its place, a rage so pure and white-hot it was silent.
It flooded the hollow places the pain had vacated, a volcanic pressure behind her eyes, in her throat, in the suddenly trembling muscles of her arms.
The man's fist connected with Ellie's cheekbone with a sickening smack. Ellie stumbled back, the smile finally gone, replaced by stunned hurt.
The client grinned, a sloppy, chemical-fueled expression. "C'mon, sweetheart. Don't be so—"
He didn't finish.
Ember was already moving.
Not with the efficient, measured steps of the bouncer intervening.
This was something feral.
The distance between the alcove and the man vanished.
Her own fist, knuckles already scarred and hard, didn't aim to dissuade or subdue.
It carried the weight of every credit Ellie had ever earned in that terrible way, every fake smile, every silent night of shame.
It carried the memory of a little girl watching her big sister walk out the door, and understanding, too young, the price of the food in her bowl.
The punch landed with a finality that echoed in the plush, sound-dampened room.
A wet, crunching end to the man's sentence, and to something much bigger.
In that moment, watching him crumple, a slick satisfaction hotter than any rage washed through Ember.
She didn't see the other patrons freeze, their glasses halfway to their lips.
She didn't register the sudden, dead silence that fell over the VIP lounge, broken only by the thud of the man's body hitting the thick carpet and Ellie's sharp, frightened gasp.
She had acted on a law deeper than the Crimson Velvet's rules.
The law of the gutter rat: you protect your own.
But the Velvet had its own laws, written in contracts and enforced by people who wore cleaner suits and carried quieter weapons.
As she stood over the unconscious client, the adrenaline singing a victorious, deafening hymn in her ears, Ember didn't realize.
She had just signed a contract in blood she hadn't meant to spill.
She had drawn a line, yes—but not between her sister and danger.
She had drawn a target on both of their backs.
She didn't know that feeling was the most dangerous thing she'd ever felt.
That it was the first, gentle click of a lock turning, the first step on a path that would lead far away from dirty back alleys and bruised knuckles, into a different kind of cage entirely.
That wasn't the end of the fight.
It was the start of the nightmare.
***
This takes me back.
The four-part press of the Talons—Nail's desperate herding, Mags's spoiling fire, Rook's patient scope, and the addition of Vey and his squad—was a familiar dance.
Chaotic, yes.
More coordinated than the usual Junkyard brawl.
But the core truth was the same: many against one.
She'd known that feeling her whole life.
The alley behind the Gilded Cage was rarely a fair fight.
A flicker of something almost like… appreciation?
No, that was too soft.
Acknowledgment.
A thin, professional respect for the scrappy, stubborn pattern they'd woven against her.
Being able to fight back against overwhelming numbers was not new to her.
But having the power to not just fight back, but to control the tide?
To stand in the center of the storm and bend its violence to her will?
That was a new sensation.
A nice addition.
The memory it summoned, however, was not.
It was a different kind of running.
Not the controlled, hydraulic dashes of the Aegis-frame, but a frantic, breathless sprint through rain-slicked Crimson Velvet alleys, her hand clamped around Ellie's wrist, pulling her along.
The neon lights had been blinding strobes, the laughter from the clubs a cruel soundtrack.
And behind them, the quiet, relentless pursuit of 'those' bastards.
Not to brawl.
To retrieve.
To erase.
That night, for all her alley-hardened strength, she had never felt so utterly, completely powerless.
Every trick, every dirty move, every ounce of her fury had been nothing against their calm, systematic advance.
They weren't fighting her.
They were cleaning up a spill.
The memory was a cold knife in the gut of her current power.
This suit, this incredible, million-credit weapon… it was an answer to a question she'd already failed.
A remedy for a defeat that had already been carved into her bones.
The crimson helmet turned slightly, the visor reflecting the frozen, tense faces of Nail and Mags as they regrouped.
Her systems hummed, primed for the next exchange, a symphony of potential violence at her fingertips.
Inside the shell, her lips barely moved, the words swallowed by the suit's dampeners and the roar of her own past.
"...But it is already too late getting this suit."
The murmur was flat, devoid of self-pity.
It was just a fact, as cold and heavy as the alloy around her.
The power was here now, a king's ransom of vengeance and control.
But the people she'd needed it to protect were already gone, swallowed by the same system that had now made her its fists.
She planted her feet, the servos whining softly.
The past was a locked room.
The present was a battlefield.
And on a battlefield, even a gift that came too late was still a weapon.
She intended to use it.
Vey's good eye was a pale, unblinking lens, tracking the crimson armor's every shift in weight, every minute adjustment of its helmet.
He was a patient man by trade; demolition was about waiting for the structural weakness to reveal itself, for the stress to find the fault line.
He'd been looking for an opening.
A repetition.
A tell in the suit's rhythm he could exploit with a well-placed charge.
What he hadn't expected was for the rhythm to change.
The suit's movements before had been reactive, efficient—a dancer leading a violent waltz, but still bound to her partners' steps.
Trading blows with Nail, deflecting Mags's fire, always centering itself between threats.
Now, it was initiating.
It was cutting angles, using its own attacks as feints, layering intentions.
It wasn't just fighting them; it was orchestrating them.
A dry, understanding click sounded in the back of Vey's throat. "So that's what my gut was telling me before."
He'd felt it earlier—a discordant note in the slaughter.
The sheer, overwhelming power of the suit, yet a strange restraint in its application.
It wasn't just playing with its food; it was following a different set of rules.
His gaze swept the yard, counting the warm bodies.
Nail, Mags, Rook (somewhere hidden), his own crew fanning out, the remaining Talons with conduits clustering near Echo…
"So she was forced to deal with more hands now, huh?" he murmured to himself, the words a low gravel-rumble.
The math was simple, brutal.
Before, it was three primary threats.
Now, it was a coordinated squad of unknown size and capability—his squad—added to the board.
Her previous, methodical dismantling of the Talons was no longer a viable strategy.
The variables had multiplied.
The calculation had changed because of their very existence.
Vey and his Demolition Crew weren't just another gang to swat aside.
They were a systemic threat.
A thinking, adaptable problem that used the environment itself as a weapon.
She must have run the numbers in that polished chrome skull of hers and realized the cold truth: continuing to fight with one hand tied by corporate restraint protocols, against this many thinking opponents, would not end in her victory.
It would end with her buried under coordinated, professional-grade violence.
Survival, for a weapon like her, meant escalation.
He saw it happen. Ember, with a sudden hydraulic burst, cut off Nail's lateral escape, using Mags's covering fire as a screen.
She had him cornered against the skeletal remains of a forklift. Nail braced, his one good fist coming up, the white glow defiant.
But Ember didn't throw a punch.
Her left palm snapped open.
The air above it shimmered, and a new glyph etched itself into reality—not the searing bolt of lightning or the binding restraint energy.
This one was simpler, a series of interlocking, angular lines that pulsed with a dull, leaden grey light.
Rank 1—Kinetic Shackles.
It wasn't an attack meant to damage.
It was a lockdown.
The glyph flared.
Invisible bands of solidified kinetic energy, like the ghosts of iron chains, materialized in the air around Nail.
They didn't strike him; they formed on him, snapping into place around his wrists, his ankles, his torso with a series of sharp, concussive thumps that drove the air from his lungs.
Nail grunted, his eyes widening in shock and fury.
He strained, the Mass Driver glyph on his knuckles flaring as he tried to muscle through it.
But the shackles held, their energy humming, rooting him to the spot.
He was trapped, a fly in amber of his own making.
Vey's jaw tightened.
There it was.
The adaptation.
She wasn't just trying to beat them anymore.
She was trying to control the battlefield.
One piece at a time.