FULL GEAR — CHAPTER 14: "violence"
Gears exist in many types and variations. For the purpose of classification, they are divided into three primary categories: Inner Gears, Outer Gears, and Unique Gears.
Inner Gears are the most structurally integrated type. They operate directly through the user's body and Terran Energy system rather than through external constructs. Within the Inner classification there are five recognized sub-types. Transformation Gears alter the user's physical form, causing the body to become something fundamentally different. Enhancement Gears amplify existing biological traits such as strength, speed, durability, or sensory ability. Nullification Gears suppress or cancel external effects and hostile powers. Tethered Gears generate objects or constructs that remain directly bound to the user. Absorption Gears siphon and convert external energy into usable Terran Energy for the wielder.
Heavy Metal, the Gear belonging to Hilda Tanya, is a particularly notable example within the Transformation subtype of Inner Gears.
Its activation is immediate. There is no buildup period and no visible staging phase. The transformation occurs the instant Hilda triggers the Gear. Heavy Metal functions as a genuine transmutation process. Terran Energy directly restructures the molecular composition of Hilda's physical body. Her skin, muscle tissue, and skeletal structure are converted into an ultra-dense metallic substance with a chrome-like surface. The resulting material exceeds the hardness and tensile strength of any documented alloy found on Terra. This is not an external defense layer. It is not armor placed over her body. The metal is her body itself.
Every component that forms Hilda's external physical structure undergoes this conversion. Her skin, her musculature, and her skeletal frame all become the metallic material. However, her internal organs remain unchanged and continue to function in their normal biological state.Despite the name, Heavy Metal does not significantly increase Hilda's body weight. The transformation does not make her heavier in any meaningful operational sense. The name of the Gear originates from a different factor.
The true threat of Heavy Metal lies in the durability of the material produced by the transformation. The metal appears functionally impervious to damage. Known weapons, impacts, and energy attacks fail to meaningfully affect it.
In practical combat terms, this means Hilda Tanya becomes effectively indestructible for as long as the Heavy Metal transformation remains active.
At this moment, Berkin Dudley found himself on the unfortunate receiving end of that indestructible girl's violent outburst.
Hilda Tanya herself is a particularly interesting girl. Despite what the events of this battle might suggest, she is not naturally a violent person. She does not actually enjoy hurting others, and in most situations she would rather leave things alone than risk seriously injuring someone.
What Hilda Tanya does enjoy, however, is fighting.
She approaches fighting with the same intense, youthful enthusiasm that a very young person might bring to a sport like basketball or soccer. The activity excites her. The challenge energizes her. Hilda does not enjoy violence itself. She enjoys the act of fighting. The two simply happen to overlap.
Fortunately, she believes she has found a solution to this problem. At least in her own mind, it works perfectly well.
Her reasoning is simple.
SHE CAN BEAT UP BAD PEOPLE
in Hilda Tanya mind bad people file under
people that hurt other people for no reason
people that annoy her
Dudley happens to fill both options
"Let's talk about that."
Was the exact last thing Dudley heard before a shot to the middle of his face exploded; it was akin to being hit by a weapon rather than a person. Dudley covered his face in pain, his nose having both a burning and ringing sensation all at once.
The feeling of pain was only suppressed by a new feeling; his vision got blurry and he started seeing multiples of the same things at once. Before he could recollect his thoughts, the only thing he saw was a continued smile as more blows rained down on him.
(The hell was that?! She hit me before in that metal form and it didn't hurt as much. Has she been holding back this whole time?!)
Dudley could only think for a few more moments before a sharp pain erupted in his side in the form of a kick, the end of Hilda's shoe penetrating deeply into his side directly onto the ribs. As Dudley backed up, the blows stopped for a moment and his sense of place and vision was finally returning to him. The silence was broken by an almost extremely sweet voice coming from the girl who was just beating on him.
"Awwww, you tuckered out?"
The question was filtered through a veil of smugness and confidence so intense it was almost visible. Hilda was looking rather fulfilled at the moment despite any injuries she may have suffered. Dudley took a good look at her, his veins visible and his anger pulsing from his body. Hilda's skin was a clean chrome grey, with the only parts of her body that weren't shining being her blue eyes and brown hair.
In Dudley's mind, nothing had changed; she was still the little cocky brat to be put in her place. The problem was that Dudley's body wasn't agreeing, and certainly not with the pain he was in.
" you must think you're tough or something huh?"
Dudley's voice had venom in it, " That you're just amazing super star of a fighter huh bitch?"
Hilda blinked twice, keeping her ever so innocent smile
" well... yes ...yes I do think that "
the smile grew wider
Dudley charged.
It wasn't technique. It wasn't strategy. It was the pure forward momentum of a man who had run out of options and decided that more force was the answer because more force had always been the answer.
Hilda sidestepped.
Not far. Just enough. His charge carried him past her and into the wall, his shoulder cracking the plaster, and before he could recover her elbow found the back of his head with a sharp downward strike that drove his face into the wall instead.
He pushed off immediately, spinning, throwing a wild hook—
Hilda ducked under it and drove her fist into his ribs. The chrome knuckles hit like a hammer on stone. Dudley felt something shift in his side that he didn't want to think about too carefully.
"You're doing that thing again," Hilda said pleasantly.
"What thing—"
"The charging thing." She circled him slowly, unhurried, hands loose at her sides. "You do it when you're frustrated. You did it four times already. I've been counting."
Dudley's jaw tightened.
"Shut your mouth."
"Five." She held up a chrome finger. "That was number five. The 'shut your mouth.' You say it right before you charge."
He charged.
She wasn't there when he arrived. She'd moved left, smooth and easy, and his momentum carried him forward again into nothing. Her foot connected with the back of his knee on the way past, buckling his leg, and he went down on one knee hard enough to crack the tile beneath him.
He was up in an instant. Turning. Throwing.
Hilda blocked it with her forearm, the impact ringing up through his wrist like he'd punched a fire hydrant, and countered with a straight right to his jaw that snapped his head back.
He tasted blood. Again. Still. The inside of his mouth felt like a construction site.
(She's not even trying,) Dudley thought, rage building behind his eyes like pressure behind a dam. (She's just standing there letting me come to her. Like I'm a joke. Like this whole thing is a—)
Hilda flicked him in the forehead.
An actual flick. Index finger off her thumb, chrome fingernail clicking against his skull like she was checking a melon for ripeness.
"Hello?" she said. "You still in there?"
Something in Dudley's chest went incandescent.
He threw a combination that would have demolished a wall — right, left, right, right, body shot, uppercut — the full sequence, everything he had, his Gear pumping kinetic amplification through every single strike.
Hilda blocked the first three, slipped the fourth, took the body shot on her forearm, and the uppercut missed entirely because she wasn't standing where she'd been when he started the sequence.
She was behind him.
Her chrome palm connected with the back of his head in a light, almost casual push.
He stumbled forward.
"Good effort," she said. "Lots of energy. I'll give you that."
Dudley stopped moving.
He stood with his back to her, breathing hard, his hands clenched at his sides, blood dripping from his chin onto the corridor floor in a slow irregular rhythm.
His mind was working.
Not rage. Not instinct. Actual thought, the part of him that existed underneath the anger and the muscle and the twenty years of problems solved by being the biggest thing in the room.
She's faster than him. Stronger than him right now. His Gear is useless against chrome. Direct attacks aren't working. Aggression isn't working. Talking isn't working.
But she's following him.
That was the thing. Every time he moved she came with him. Every time he retreated she advanced. She was comfortable, confident, completely in control — and completely focused on him. On the fight directly in front of her.
She wasn't thinking about the building.
He was.
Six years in Precinct 14. Six years of every maintenance issue, every infrastructure complaint, every work order he'd signed off on because Grey didn't want to deal with the paperwork.
He knew this building better than anyone alive.
Dudley exhaled slowly. Rolled his neck. Turned around to face her.
Hilda was watching him with her head tilted slightly, the smile still present, reading the shift in his energy with those sharp blue eyes.
"You good?" she asked. Almost genuinely curious.
"Yeah," Dudley said.
He turned and walked away from her down the corridor.
Not retreating. Not running. Just walking. Deliberately. Like he had somewhere specific to be.
Hilda followed, because of course she did.
He pushed through a maintenance door at the end of the hall. Down a short flight of stairs. Another door, this one unlabeled, the paint around the handle worn dark from years of use.
He pushed it open and stepped inside.
The heat hit like a wall.
The boiler room was enormous relative to the rest of the basement — ceiling twice the height of the corridor outside, pipes running in every direction like the veins of something industrial and alive. The boilers themselves stood along the far wall, massive steel cylinders humming with contained pressure, their surfaces radiating heat in visible waves. The air was thick and close and hot enough that breathing it felt like an effort. Every metal surface in the room was warm to the touch. Some of them were significantly warmer than that.
Dudley walked to the center of the room and turned around.
Hilda stepped through the doorway behind him, chrome gleaming under the orange-tinted emergency lighting, and stopped.
She looked around.
Looked at the pipes. The boilers. The heat shimmer rising off every surface.
Looked at Dudley.
His expression had changed. The rage was still there but something had been layered over it. Calculation. The particular look of a man who had just remembered he was smarter than he'd been acting.
He cracked his knuckles.
"Heat transfer," Dudley said simply. "You remember your physics?"
Metal conducts heat — and Dudley knew it.
Heavy Metal had neutralized Rupture completely, chrome dispersing the kinetic vibration before it could accumulate in flesh. It was a clean solution, an elegant one, and Hilda had been right to use it. But the same property that made her untouchable in a corridor made her a liability in a room like this. Chrome didn't discriminate between what it conducted. Vibration, electricity, temperature — metal took all of it equally, distributed it evenly, held it longer than flesh ever would.
Every superheated pipe in this room was radiating into the air. Every surface was a source. And Hilda, gleaming and chrome and confident in the doorway, was the single best conductor in the building. The longer she kept the Gear active in here, the more the room itself became her enemy. Dudley hadn't found a way to hit harder. He'd found a way to make the environment hit for him.
The heat was already working.
Hilda could feel it — not pain exactly, not yet, but a wrongness. The chrome conducting ambient temperature from every direction at once, the boiler room's radiating heat finding her metallic surface and spreading through it evenly, efficiently, the way heat always moved through good conductors. Her internal organs were fine. Biological, protected, unchanged by the transformation. But the metal shell around them was warming, and warming meant the air inside her was warming, and that was going to become a problem faster than she wanted to admit.
Dudley watched her figure it out.
He could see it in her eyes — the blue irises still sharp, still reading him, but something behind them running calculations. The smile hadn't left her face but it had tightened fractionally. Just enough.
He came at her.
Not charging this time. Measured. Controlled. He moved around her left side, forcing her to rotate, forcing her chrome body to sweep through more of the superheated air rather than standing still in it. Every time she pivoted to face him she was painting herself across the room's temperature. Every step he made her take was more conduction, more accumulation.
He threw a punch at her face.
She blocked it. Chrome forearm against his fist, the familiar sound of impact, but this time Dudley felt something different — the surface of her arm was warm. Noticeably warm. His knuckles registered it even through the pain of hitting metal.
Good.
He threw another combination, not trying to hurt her, just forcing movement. She blocked, slipped, countered with a straight right to his chest that cracked something — definitely cracked something, third rib probably, he filed that away — but he kept moving, kept circling, kept making her rotate and pivot and sweep her heat-conducting body through the thick boiler room air.
The smile was getting harder for her to maintain.
He could see it.
Hilda's mind was working fast.
(Okay. Okay. He's not fighting me, he's fighting the room. Every time I move I conduct more. Standing still is also bad because the ambient radiation doesn't care if I'm moving or not. Either way I'm a chrome heat sink in a furnace.)
She ran options.
Deactivate Heavy Metal — Rupture comes back online, she's back to her muscles turning to jelly. That's worse.
Get out of the boiler room — Dudley is between her and the door, and every time she moved toward it he repositioned. He'd thought of that already.
End it fast — she'd been trying. He was staying out of finishing range, keeping her at distance, making her chase while the room did his work.
Her eyes moved across the environment. The pipes. The boilers. The pressure valves along the wall releasing small jets of steam at irregular intervals. The condensation running down every cold surface, hot vapor meeting cooler patches of wall and turning to water.
The pipes ran directly above Dudley's head.
The pressure release valve on the nearest one was six inches from a junction point. Old building, old infrastructure. The valve housing was worn. The release direction was fixed — straight down at a forty five degree angle, designed to vent into the floor drainage channel.
Unless something redirected it.
Hilda moved toward the wall.
Dudley followed, adjusting his position, satisfied she was moving away from the door. He threw a punch at her shoulder to keep her off balance — she took it, chrome absorbing the impact, stumbling one step sideways — and she used the stumble to grab the pipe junction above her head.
She wrenched it.
The old housing gave with a groan of protesting metal. The release valve's direction shifted, the pipe junction rotating on its worn threading, and the next pressure release came out sideways instead of down.
A horizontal jet of superheated steam hit Dudley directly in the face.
He screamed.
Not from burns — the exposure was seconds, not enough to cause serious tissue damage — but from the shock and the heat and the way steam at that temperature turned breathing into agony for the three seconds it took him to lurch backward out of the jet's path.
His eyes were streaming. His face felt like sunburn and surprise simultaneously.
Hilda was already moving.
She crossed the distance between them in two steps, cocked her chrome fist back, and drove it into his forearm as he raised it to guard.
The sound was wrong.
Not the ring of metal on muscle she'd been producing all fight. This was lower. Denser. The specific sound of something structural failing under force it wasn't designed to absorb.
Dudley's arm bent slightly in a place arms weren't supposed to bend.
He made a sound that wasn't a word.
Hilda grabbed his collar.
And then something happened that Dudley's brain genuinely could not process.
The chrome disappeared.
Between one blink and the next, Hilda Tanya was just a girl again — normal skin, normal hair, the bruises and blood from earlier suddenly visible on her face, her eyes still locked on his with absolutely zero change in expression.
Dudley's mind grabbed onto the only explanation it had.
(She turned it off. She needs time to turn it back on. That first time in the corridor — she deactivated it to fight him clean, and it took her a while before she used it again. That's the window. That's the cost. Heavy Metal needs recovery time between—)
Hilda's skin turned to chrome.
The transformation took less than a single second.
Dudley stared at her.
(That was— she just— it didn't need—)
He hadn't been wrong about the first deactivation. She had turned it off in the corridor, and she had taken time before turning it back on. That was real. That had happened.
What he'd gotten wrong was the reason.
Heavy Metal had no cooldown. No recovery period. No cost between deactivations. Hilda could turn it on and off the way other people blinked — by thinking about it, in the time it took to think about it, with no mechanical limitation whatsoever.
She'd deactivated it in the corridor because she'd made a tactical choice. Not because she'd had to.
And she'd just done it again — flicking it off for half a second, watching his face, watching him reach for the wrong conclusion — and turned it back on before his brain had finished forming the thought she'd wanted him to think.
Now he had a fractured arm and a bad theory.
Hilda pressed forward.
She threw a right hook and he raised the fractured arm to block automatically — screamed when the chrome connected with it — and she followed with a left cross to his jaw, a body shot to his ribs, another right to his jaw, the same jaw, again, and again, each strike landing with chrome weight that no amount of Rupture amplification could answer back.
"C'mon!" The word burst out of her with a brightness that was almost musical. "C'mon c'mon c'mon c'mon!"
She wasn't talking to him. She was talking to the fight. To the moment. Her eyes were wide and alive and she was grinning through the blood on her teeth and she hit him again because the hitting felt clean and right and she was so far inside this now that the room and the heat and everything else had narrowed down to just this — her fists, his guard, the satisfying impact of chrome meeting the increasingly inadequate defensive shell of a man who was simply running out of body to fight with.
"COME ON!"
Dudley's guard was falling apart.
His right arm was fractured and raising it cost him something that showed on his face every single time. His left arm was catching the volume she was throwing but his Gear meant nothing against chrome and the strikes were accumulating without dispersal, his body absorbing damage the normal way now, the old fashioned way, the way that bruised and broke and didn't stop hurting.
He backed up.
She followed.
He threw a desperate haymaker with his good arm, everything behind it, the last real offense he had left in him.
She slipped it and hit him in the ribs.
Something else cracked.
Dudley hit the boiler room wall.
His back against warm metal, arms barely up, Hilda in front of him throwing punches that he was blocking less and less effectively, his body finally submitting to the arithmetic of the fight.
And then something broke that wasn't a bone.
"I HATE THIS PLACE!"
The words came out raw and sudden, louder than the fight, louder than the boilers, Dudley's voice cracking on the last word in a way that had nothing to do with physical pain. His guard dropped slightly. His eyes were somewhere else.
"Six years! Six YEARS in this building! Moving Grey's boxes and filing his reports and fixing his PIPE JUNCTIONS—" his voice caught "—and this is what it is! This is what it was always going to be! Drug trials and holding cells and teenagers with badges coming in to ruin everything I—"
He stopped.
Breathing hard. Eyes red. Not from the steam anymore.
Hilda stood in front of him.
She looked at him for one moment — really looked, Not a dangerous man. Just a tired one who'd made every wrong choice available to him and ended up here, in a boiler room, losing to a seventeen year old girl, yelling about filing cabinets.
She pulled her right fist back.
"Next time," Hilda said pleasantly, "pick better friends."
The straight right hit him directly between the eyes.
Dudley went down and didn't get up.
Hilda grabbed Dudley by the collar.
He was deadweight — two hundred and eighty pounds of unconscious man, which under normal circumstances would have been a significant logistical problem. Under Heavy Metal it was just annoying. She dragged him across the boiler room floor with one hand, his boots leaving twin trails through the dust, his head lolling with the particular bonelessness of someone who had left the conversation entirely.
She kicked the door open.
Dragged him through it.
Up the short stairs, scraping him over each step with no particular care for comfort, into the main corridor where the fluorescent lights felt almost cool by comparison to what she'd just left. She found a section of wall with nothing behind it and dropped him there, his back against the plaster, his chin on his chest.
She looked at him for a second.
Then she sat down next to him.
Not standing over him. Not posing. Just sat, back against the same wall, legs stretched out in front of her, Heavy Metal deactivating on its own because she stopped thinking about it and her body just went back to being a body.
The bruises came back immediately. They'd been there the whole time, waiting. Her eye was swollen. Her lip was split. Her ribs felt like someone had rearranged them without asking. The accumulated damage of the whole fight landed on her all at once now that the adrenaline had somewhere to go.
She let her head fall back against the wall.
Stared at the ceiling.
Her breathing was loud in the empty corridor. In and out. Slow. Getting slower.
(Good fight,) she thought. (Actually a good fight.)
She closed her eyes.
Opened them.
Herro.
Dean.
"Ah— shit."
Hilda was on the move to find her teammates