The corridor spat them out onto a raised platform, and Hikaru followed the others down a short ramp before his brain caught up with where his feet were taking him. Raelindra led without looking back once, like she knew he'd follow. He did.
The doors sealed behind them with a soft hiss, and the room swallowed the sound whole.
Grid panels stretched wall to wall across the floor, hundreds of them, each one humming faint and blue like it was waiting to be told what to become. Combat dummies stood locked in their charging alcoves along one wall, and the ceiling vaulted up into shadow high enough that Hikaru couldn't find where it ended. The air smelled wrong in a way he couldn't place at first, ozone and something rubbery underneath it, nothing like the sweat and chalk dust of every gym he'd ever trained in.
He kept his face flat and let his eyes do the actual work, tracking the grid lines, the alcoves, the way light pooled and vanished depending on which panel it touched. Whatever this place was, it wasn't for show.
Okay. This is insane. This is actually insane.
He didn't let any of that reach his mouth.
"What is this place?"
Lyra spun a slow circle in place, arms out like she wanted to hug the whole room. "Training simulator! It does everything, like actual everything, we did glaciers in here last month, and jungles, and this one time an entire ocean floor, don't ask about the ocean floor."
"Hard-light environments." Maci already had her scanner out, thumb dragging across the readout faster than her mouth could keep up with it. "Variable gravity, threat emulation up to, I think Class-nine now, might be higher, they upgraded the array. It can build pretty much any hazard profile in the archive. Biome, gravity well, whatever. Within safety tolerances. Mostly."
"Mostly."
"It's cleared for the next two hours." Raelindra's voice cut through before Hikaru could ask what mostly meant. "That should be enough."
Zaria crossed to the far side of the room without waiting for him, boots silent on the grid panels, putting the whole width of the simulator between them before she finally turned to face him. The scales at her temples stayed even, none of the darkening he'd learned meant she was gearing up for something real.
"Last chance." Her voice didn't rise, didn't need to, it carried fine across the empty floor. "Walk away now, nobody logs it against you. Say you changed your mind, say the room made you nervous, I don't care what excuse you use. Just say it before I draw my blade."
He rolled his neck, the same stretch he'd done before every fight since he was twelve. "Not really my style."
"That wasn't a joke."
"Neither was I."
The scales at her temples flickered, gone before he could read what it meant, and her hand found the hilt at her hip instead.
"Your funeral, Tatsumi."
"Good luck." Senna's mouth curved, easy and unbothered, like she already knew how this ended. "You're going to need it."
Lyra bounced once on her toes.
"Yeah, seriously, good luck!"
The brightness in her voice cracked, just for a second, something else showing underneath it.
"Zaria's, um. Really strong. Like, actually strong."
"He knows." Senna's tone didn't shift at all. "Everyone keeps telling him."
Maci was halfway to the control room, tail swishing, Raelindra a step behind her with that same unhurried pace that somehow still outwalked everyone. Senna and Lyra peeled off after them, leaving Hikaru alone on the grid floor with sixty feet of empty air between him and Zaria.
Through the observation glass, Raelindra's voice carried clean over the comms.
"Begin the simulation, Tindal."
"On it."
Maci's fingers moved fast across the console, and somewhere under the floor the whole room seemed to inhale.
The grid panels didn't fade so much as unravel, each one collapsing inward like a dying star winking out, and cracked volcanic rock yawned open in every direction. Fissures split the blackened crust, dull orange fire glowing beneath. Heat haze smeared the horizon into shimmer and sulfur, and the smell hit him a breath later, ash and brimstone thick enough to taste.
Dry heat slapped across his skin, fully real despite the tech behind it. Sweat prickled along his forearms. His boots sank half an inch into stone that gave like real heat had softened it.
Okay. This place doesn't mess around.
Raelindra's voice cut through the comms, flat and certain.
"Simulation active. You may both begin."
Zaria didn't wait for the words to finish landing. She raised her left arm, light catching the slim cuff clasped there, a circular slot set into its face with a garnet-red key already nested inside, its rim jagged like something broken off a bigger stone.
"Starseed, awaken!"
She pressed the key into the slot, and fire crawled up her arm, chasing shape into her body until crimson and black armor sealed shut around her, plate by plate, gold trim closing over each seam.
The helmet came last, a snout instead of a visor, a predator's grin etched into the jaw.
Six feet of dinosaur-shaped fury stood where Zaria had been a second ago, heat rolling off her in waves that bent the air between them.
She's strong...
He'd sparred with his old masters, fought more people than he could count back home, taken hits that put grown men flat on the mat. None of that had ever felt like this, pressure pressing down on his chest before she'd even moved, worse than anything a dojo had thrown at him.
He pulled the kumihimo cord from his wrist and dragged his hair back into a rough ponytail, one tug, no ceremony to it.
He fit the key into the Triastra Driver's socket.
"Henshin!"
Gold light spiraled around him, armor locking into place plate by plate faster than a breath, and then it was done, the Golden Dragon standing where he'd been a second ago.
"Try to keep up, Gold."
Zaria closed the gap before he'd even settled into his stance, faster than anything he'd sparred against back home. He got the Spiral Lance up on reflex, catching her claws across the shaft, and the force behind it threw him backward anyway, boots skidding across the crater floor before he hit the ground hard.
Across the distance, she hadn't moved out of her follow-through, shoulders loose, weight barely shifted, like the hit had cost her nothing at all.
She pressed the advantage without slowing down, one claw strike chasing the last close enough that he barely got the Lance up between them. The first raked across the shaft, and the shove behind it staggered him two steps. Her boot swept low next, catching his ankle, and he went down hard on one knee. A third strike came in high before he'd finished rising, claws aimed at his throat, and he threw himself sideways, catching only a glancing edge of it against his shoulder plate.
Ground he didn't want to give kept disappearing under his boots anyway, blocking what he could, eating the rest.
Is she actually this strong? Or is this just a different weight class?
His heel caught a slab of loose rock mid-retreat, and before he'd decided anything, he slammed the Lance's butt into it. The stone buckled under the impact, a shockwave rolling out from where he stood, and it caught Zaria mid-stride, knocking her back a full step.
She blinked, further away now than she'd been a second ago. He just stood there, equally thrown.
...Did I just do that?
He planted the Lance again, deliberately this time, and drove the same motion into the stone. The same shockwave answered, spreading out from the shaft in a ring around him.
He stopped retreating and planted the Lance, driving a pulse at her feet. It caught her mid-step and dropped her to one knee. He closed the gap and drove a two-handed thrust through her open guard, and it connected, knocking her back a full step.
She recovered fast. Claws came around for the counter. He answered with a second pulse, low, catching her ankle and sending her sideways.
For the first time all fight, he wasn't giving ground.
In the control room, the fight played out across a wall of monitors, heat distortion smearing every angle the cameras tried to hold steady.
Maci's tail had gone still, both hands braced on the console edge.
"Wait. Is that... is that his ability?" Maci leaned closer to the console, tail gone still. "Some kind of shockwave thing? No, wait, seismic pulses. He's making seismic pulses." Her tail flicked once, sharp. "That's incredible."
"He's holding his own." Senna's arms stayed crossed, but there was less lean to her stance than there had been ten minutes ago. "Didn't expect that, honestly."
Lyra bounced in place, both hands pressed to the glass. "He's doing so good! Zaria's actually having to try!"
Raelindra hadn't moved from the center console, eyes on the readout scrolling beside the feed rather than the feed itself.
"It won't be enough."
The room quieted around her.
"He's not pacing himself." She didn't raise her voice. She never needed to. "He'll burn through everything he has before this is over, and he doesn't seem to care."
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