Mio
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The notification vanished.
Shizuka stopped breathing.
Her chest went still. Something inside her had switched off the parts that didn't matter.
Then the floor exploded.
[Twin Glacial Spear]
Ice erupted from the concrete—already there, already solid. A crystalline pike thick as Mio's arm punched through the table, through the chair, through her stomach and out her back.
She didn't feel it at first. The impact. The reinforced glass shattering around her. The observation window she'd been sitting beside now a jagged frame as the spear carried her through it—out of the small room, into the arena beyond.
[-942 HP]
[HP: 478/1,420]
The padded wall caught her. She slid down, leaving a red smear. The spear still in her, pinning nothing now, just cold iron through her gut.
Blood in her mouth. The spear was cold—so cold it burned, ice fusing to flesh where it entered and exited.
Green light flooded through her. Reservoir draining to pay for it. Wound knitting closed around the ice still inside.
The second spear came from above.
Same angle. Through the healing tissue, through the barely-closed wound, ripping everything open again. This one pinned her to the arena floor.
Come on come on come on—
She healed again. The ice shattered. Both spears. Rolling onto her side, gasping—Loss
Above her, the observation room gaped open. Shattered glass. Shredded frame.
Shizuka stepped through the gap. Dropped three meters to the arena floor. Landed without sound.
Still watching. Hands folded in front of her.
The cold gathered again.
No way to outrun this.
The spears were already forming—pressure in the air, the way the cold gathered beneath her feet.
So she ran toward them.
Ice erupted. Already moving—not away, into the trajectory, then down. Sliding on the frost-slicked floor, feeling the first spear tear through the air above her head, close enough to shear off strands of hair.
The second spear punched through her shoulder. She let it. Used the impact to spin, arm coming up, finger extended—
[Spark]
The green-white flicker left her fingertip. Fast. Accurate. Center mass.
It crossed half the distance.
Then it slowed. Like hitting water. Like hitting nothing. The bolt's momentum bled away, tumbling, falling, clattering against the frozen floor three meters short.
[Absolute Zero Field]
Shizuka tilted her head. Her pale eyes sharpened.
"Yenling used to do that." Her voice was soft. "Run toward it."
A smile touched her lips.
"I like that."
The spear in Mio's shoulder shattered. She hit the ground. Rolled. Came up on one knee, blood freezing on her skin before it could drip. Healed.
Three meters. Anything she threw would die before it reached.
Spark was useless. Rupture needed a bloom—and nothing was dying except Mio.
Think.
The bolt was still there.
Lying on the frozen floor where it had fallen. Still intact. Just halted in velocity.
Ice erupted where she'd been. She dove. One spear missed. One didn't—grazing her ribs, spinning her into the wall hard enough to crack plaster. Another heal before she hit the ground.
[Reservoir: 2,550/125,000]
One Spark's worth gone. No bloom to refill it.
Focus.
The field didn't block. It slowed. Bled momentum until there was nothing left.
Fast things stopped.
What about slow things?
"Still calculating." Shizuka's smile widened. "I can see it. The angles."
She tilted her head.
"Keep going."
The cold gathered.
Mio circled. Staying at the edge of that three-meter radius, feeling where the air turned sharp.
Ice erupted where she'd been. She juked left.
Her hand came up. Fired.
Watched the bolt cross the distance. Watched it slow. Watched it fall.
Two and a half meters this time. Closer.
"Oh," Shizuka breathed. "You figured it out."
The edge was weaker than the center. Momentum bled slower. If she could get inside—
The field would fight her too. Slow her down. Make every step a war against physics draining out of her body.
But she could push through it. The bolt couldn't.
And then what? Eleven strength. Twelve agility. Shizuka would crush her before she could raise her hand.
Unless she was already raising it.
Unless the bolt was already forming.
Unless she walked in slow—and fired slower.
The cold gathered again.
Mio stopped running.
Shizuka went still.
Mio walked forward.
The field hit her at two and a half meters. Every step a war against physics bleeding out of her body.
The first spear took her through the thigh. She stumbled. Kept walking. Healed.
The second spear missed. Shizuka had aimed where Mio should have dodged.
Two meters. Lifting her arm felt like lifting concrete. The field didn't care about intent. It drained momentum from everything—her blood, her breath, her heartbeat slowing toward stillness.
"Oh." Shizuka was standing now.
Her laugh was quiet, almost private. "You're broken."
Mio walked. Slow. Deliberate. Not by choice anymore—the field made every movement deliberate. Blood freezing on her legs, ice cracking with each step, eyes on Shizuka's face.
One and a half meters. The pressure doubled. Tripled. Her joints ached from pushing against nothing.
Both spears hit. Chest and stomach. Ribs cracked. Something ruptured inside.
She tried to heal.
[HP: 31/1,420]
Warmth flooded through her. A hundred from the tank, multiplied by the passive. The wounds knitting, not enough, but better.
[HP: 459/1,420]
One meter.
Shizuka backed up. The cold intensified—frost crawling up Mio's arms, her breath crystallizing before it left her lips.
"You'll freeze." But her eyes were bright. Hungry.
Her hand rose. Slow. The bolt forming at her fingertip, green-white light pooling, not firing. Building.
The field pressed against the bolt like water, slowing everything, bleeding momentum before it could begin.
So she didn't give it momentum.
She let go.
The projectile drifted. Lazy. A falling leaf. Crossing the inches between her fingertip and Shizuka's chest at a speed a child could outrun.
Six inches.
Four.
Two. Close enough to touch. Close enough for tissue contact.
Everything stopped.
[Absolute Zero]
Not the field. The real thing. The ability that made Shizuka Level 67, a champion of Stasis.
Mio hung suspended. Every molecule frozen in place. Blood stopped mid-vein. Heart stopped mid-beat. Lungs stopped mid-breath. The warmth draining out of her so fast she couldn't shiver, couldn't think, couldn't—
The bolt floated in front of Shizuka's heart. One inch away. Frozen in space and time alongside everything else.
Except it wasn't.
Green-white veins spread from its tip. Slow. So slow. Creeping through the frozen air like roots through soil, like capillaries reaching for warmth.
Even in absolute stillness, the bolt grew. Half an inch now. Less than a finger's width from contact.
Shizuka watched it come.
Her eyes were wide. Not with fear.
Wonder.
"There you are." Her voice dropped. Talking to the Blight, not Mio. "The thing that doesn't stop."
The ice cracked.
Mio collapsed. Gasping. Shaking. Her body remembering how to move, how to breathe, the cold receding like a tide.
The bolt clattered to the floor. Harmless.
The cold was inside her now. Seven stacks of something that wanted her still. Her joints seizing, thoughts slowing, the freeze spreading inward—eight stacks, nine, the world going white at the edges—
"Ah." Shizuka knelt beside her. "That's mine."
Warmth.
Shizuka's hands pressed against Mio's chest. Not healing—just heat. Controlled. Precise. The cold retreating from the point of contact, thawing outward.
"I forget sometimes." Her voice was light. The tone of someone who'd forgotten to water a plant. "What cold does to other people."
Mio lay there. Breathing. The warmth spreading through her like tea after a winter walk.
"You would have landed it."
Mio couldn't speak. Her jaw was still thawing.
Shizuka leaned closer. Her fingers found Mio's wrist, circling it loosely, checking pulse or just holding. The touch lingered.
"Eight months." Her voice dropped. "Since anyone made me move."
[ENGINE: DUEL COMPLETE]
[Winner: Shizuka]
[Record: 6-1]
Six wins. One loss.
Something flickered across Shizuka's face. There and gone.
She offered her hand.
Mio took it. Let herself be pulled upright. Her legs weren't steady. Shizuka's grip was.
"Welcome to the Bureau, Mio."
Her smile was different now.
"Is that what this was?" Mio's throat was raw, frost from her breath still visible. "A welcome?"
"That was me being gentle." Shizuka squeezed her hand. Didn't let go. "You're mine now, little sprout."
"Hayashi."
A healer in Bureau whites crouched beside them, pressed two fingers to Mio's wrist.
[Greater Mend]
Golden light, soft at the edges—nothing like Mio's green-white. Painless. External. The wounds knitting in sequence, HP climbing until her body remembered what full felt like.
[HP: 1,420/1,420]
"Not even a thank you?" He shot a look at Shizuka, then Mio who was still buckling on her knees. Like she was in any condition to.
"Dismissed."
He shrugged, wandered off.
Shizuka's hand was still in hers. Cold. But not unpleasant.
[Reservoir: 2,250/125,000]
Maybe this was—
"Shizuka-san. Done already?"
A voice. Singing it more than saying it.
The bystanders shifted. Bodies clearing space before Mio even registered why. Through that gap, walking with patience that didn't match her frame, a girl. Young. Mio's age, maybe younger.
The same presence that had stood in her apartment kitchen. Giggled about popping her heart like a grape. Called her a baby deer learning to walk.
Mori.
Shizuka's hand tightened on Mio's. Just for a moment.
"You're early," Shizuka said.
"I was watching." Mori stopped at the edge of the frozen floor. Looked at the damage. The shattered spears. The blood puddles still steaming on the ice. "Nice trick with the bolt. Wouldn't work twice."
She cracked her knuckles.
One fight's worth of heals. Maybe two.
Mori shrugged off her suit jacket. Folded it once, twice. Set it on an equipment rack like she was hanging it in a closet. Pulled her auburn hair back into a lazy ponytail.
The plain white button-up pulled tight across her shoulders as she rolled them, one at a time.
Methodical.
Her hazel eyes never left Mio. Double eyelashes.
Pretty, if you didn't know what she could do.
"Me next."
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