Halgrove burned in pieces, whole blocks lighting up one after another like a fuse working its way down a street. People ran without direction, without belongings, some of them barefoot, faster than any evacuation drill could have trained them for.
A home's second floor caved into its first without warning. A market stall went up bright orange, flame outlasting the awning it used to sit under.
The things doing it moved like they'd rehearsed the choreography. Black-plated figures, faceless behind a single horizontal slit standing in for eyes, advanced through the wreckage in a formation too even to be panic and too patient to be a mob.
They didn't run. They didn't need to.
At their head walked Nyxara, unhurried, the only calm thing left standing for three blocks. Beside her, something moved on four legs built along the lines of a lion but wrong in every proportion that mattered, twenty feet of muscle under a mane that wasn't hair at all, a slow-turning ring of blades circling its neck and shoulders, a scorpion tail arched high behind it, a stinger at its tip pulsing with a faint, hungry light.
Then four figures cut in from the west, and the smoke stopped being scenery and started stinging his own throat.
He'd caught the smoke from a distance, a smear climbing into a sky that had no business looking this wrong over a place this small. Up close it was worse, buildings he didn't recognize burning right next to ones that still had laundry strung out to dry.
Suddenly, one of the black-plated things turned toward them the second they cleared the last intact wall, and Hikaru's whole body went still before he'd decided anything.
"Okay, what is that." He didn't take his eyes off it. "Zaria. What am I looking at."
"Husk." She didn't slow down either. "Sable Legion infantry, vat-grown, not people who signed up for anything. Hit the seam where the helmet meets the collar, one good shot drops it. They won't run from you and they won't feel it either. The only real danger's the numbers."
"Great. So it's disposable, and there's a lot of it."
"That's the idea, yeah." Senna was already moving into position. "Whoever builds these wasn't worried about losing any of them."
Zaria didn't wait for an opening. "You. Stop this. Now."
Her voice cut clean across the wreckage, loud enough that both of them actually turned.
Nyxara's attention landed on the team like she'd already expected it. "Star Maidens." She paused. "I expected you sooner."
Recognition hit Hikaru half a second before he placed why.
I know her.
"You." His jaw tightened. "You're the one who came after me. On Earth."
Nyxara's eyes moved over him once, slow, like she was updating a file only she could see. "The fourth starseed." She paused, like she was filing the fact away somewhere permanent. "You've joined the Star Maidens." She paused again. "Troublesome."
Zaria didn't lower her guard. "What are you doing here, Nyxara."
"Executing orders." Nyxara didn't offer anything past that. "As always."
"Whose."
"You already know whose." She paused. "You know I don't discuss the particulars beyond that."
"You never do." Zaria's stance didn't shift. "Whatever it is, we're stopping it. Same as every other time."
Beside her, the creature's mane spun up a notch, the ring of blades ticking faster, grinding audibly against each other. "MISTRESS NYXARA." Its voice hit the whole street at once. "WHY TRADE WORDS WITH THESE INSECTS? LET IUBA VOLVENS SIMPLY REMOVE THEM AND SPARE US ALL THE CONVERSATION."
"Insects?" Hikaru's voice came out sharper than he meant it to. "Who the hell even are you."
The creature's head swung toward him, delighted at the opening. "I AM IUBA VOLVENS, THE SPINNING MANE, THE REVOLVING FURY, HERALD OF LORD DRAMATOS'S EMPIRE, AND..."
Hikaru talked right over the rest of it. "Cool résumé. Nobody asked."
"THIS CHILD MOCKS THE SPINNING MANE?"
"I'm nineteen. And your mane looks like a bad haircut, not gonna lie."
"THIS IS A CROWN OF BLADES, FORGED IN THE FIRES OF DRAMATOS'S WRATH."
"Sure it is. Bet it still needs conditioner."
"SILENCE! I AM THE REVOLVING FURY! I AM THE ETERNAL..."
Nyxara didn't let him finish. "Enough." She hadn't raised her voice at all, and it cut through him faster than shouting back would have. Two fingers pressed against her temple. "Volume down. My ears aren't built for that register."
The mane's spin dropped instantly, sheepish. "...Apologies, Mistress Nyxara."
Zaria didn't let the moment sit. "Whatever this is, we're ending it today." Her eyes cut to the rest of them without leaving Nyxara for more than a second. "Everyone ready?"
"Ready." Senna was already reaching for her belt pouch.
"Obviously~" Lyra was already grinning.
"Yeah." Hikaru rolled his shoulders. "Let's go."
Zaria pressed her Key home first, flame swallowing her whole in one instant motion, crimson and black racing across the armor, gold trim sealing the seams shut. "Red Star Maiden."
Senna drew the Seija Key from its pouch instead of wearing it loaded, in no rush despite everything happening around her. She pressed it home.
"Starseed, awaken."
A thrum went out first, quiet, then ripples of light spread across her cuff like water finding its own level. Cold followed, glacier blue shot through with threads of silver, spiraling into a slow cyclone of frost around her. The temperature actually dropped. Frost feathered the ground near her boots, and her breath came out closer to glass than mist.
Huh. So that's what calm looks like when it's got teeth.
"Blue Star Maiden." No flourish to it, and it still somehow landed like one.
Lyra's went next, and it announced itself before it even finished forming, a soft chime ringing out half a second ahead of the light. Gold and rose-pink wrapped outward, plates layering over each other like petals catching the last daylight, a phoenix crest settling into place. Wings unfolded from her shoulders last, wide, feathered in something closer to solid starlight than metal.
"Pink Star Maiden~!" She struck a pose nobody had asked for, wings flaring for it, clearly delighted with herself.
Hikaru's came last, gold light and done, familiar enough by now that his own body barely registered the shift anymore. "...Gold Star Maiden." Flat, half-swallowed by the noise around them.
The four of them fell into rough formation without anyone calling for it, and for one beat, nobody said anything.
Then Lyra broke it. "That roll call needed way more oomph out of you, Gold. You barely said your own name."
Hikaru's face went red under the helmet, not that anyone could actually see it. "It's my first roll call, alright? Shut it."
Nyxara didn't so much as raise a hand. "Proceed."
The Husks moved as one animal instead of a dozen separate anything, and the fight opened all at once.
Zaria planted her feet and didn't move them again for a long stretch after that. The Dragonscale Broadsword came down in heavy, full-body arcs, fire trailing off the edge and catching Husks that hadn't even been in the swing's direct path.
She didn't dodge. She didn't need to.
Three went down in one motion, then two more from the flame alone.
Senna used Phase Step, and a Husk's raised pike swept through empty air where she'd stood half a second earlier. She'd already reappeared behind a cluster of three, War Fan spinning out ahead of her, three more down before the blade even finished its arc.
Phase Step was Senna's ability, and it wasn't speed. It was a short-range displacement, the space between one point and the next collapsing rather than being crossed, no ground actually traveled in between at all.
Lyra used Wing Blade, dropping from above in one clean pass, and a whole line of Husks went down together before she'd even finished climbing back into the air.
Wing Blade was Lyra's ability, and it wasn't a weapon bolted onto flight after the fact. The crescent blades mounted along her forearms activated the instant she hit full speed, turning every pass into a cut without any separate motion needed to aim or swing.
The wings underneath the light show weren't decorative either, full flight built directly into the armor itself, not a burst of speed dressed up to look like one.
Hikaru fought the only way he knew how, no set technique to any of it, just reading the nearest opening and closing it before the Husk in front of him finished deciding anything.
A straight punch folded one chest plate inward. The next came at him before the first had finished falling, and he met that one too, instinct doing the work his brain hadn't caught up to yet.
They came in fast and wrong the whole time, all of them moving on the same half-beat like puppets sharing one set of strings, no fear in any of it, nothing that flinched or hesitated or broke when it should have.
Hit the seam at the collar and one dropped clean. Hit anywhere else and it kept coming like the last shot had never landed at all.
Mid-swing, Hikaru caught movement at the edge of the field. Nyxara and Iuba Volvens were peeling off, moving away from the fight entirely, toward the far side of Halgrove.
They're leaving.
"Hey." He didn't stop hitting Husks while he said it. "Nyxara and the cat thing are bailing."
Zaria's head snapped toward the movement. "Don't."
"They're getting away."
"That's not a reason to chase them alone." Her blade caught another Husk mid-swing without her losing the thread of the sentence. "We finish this, then we go together."
"There's no time for together." He was already breaking formation.
"Hikaru." Senna's voice came out sharper than he'd heard it get. "Don't."
He didn't answer that one. His boots were already moving.
"HIKARU." Zaria again, louder, her voice cracking at the edges, a sound he'd never heard out of her before. "Get back here!"
He kept running.
Behind him, their voices kept coming, overlapping now, Lyra's pitched higher, Senna's gone flat and urgent, Zaria's just angry, none of it quite reaching him anymore over his own heartbeat and the distance already opening up between them.
He caught up to them on a stretch of cleared ground, wreckage thinning into open dirt, and stopped himself hard enough that his boots skidded.
"Hey!" He planted his feet. "We're not done."
Both of them turned at once, with no urgency at all, like they'd been expecting him rather than running from anyone.
Nyxara's gaze swept over him once, assessing. "The Gold Star Maiden came here alone." She tilted her head slightly. "I haven't decided yet whether that makes you brave or simply reckless."
"It's neither." Hikaru rolled his shoulders, a grin climbing onto his face. "I can take both of you down at the same time and save everyone the trouble of a longer fight."
Iuba Volvens's mane picked up speed immediately, offended by the very idea. It rose onto its hind legs, forelegs spreading wide. "SUCH ARROGANCE, FROM SOMETHING SO SMALL. IUBA VOLVENS WILL ENJOY GRINDING THAT CONFIDENCE INTO THE DIRT."
"Tch. You practice that line in a mirror?" Hikaru cracked his knuckles. "Or is name-dropping your own crown of blades supposed to scare me?"
"YOU WILL REGRET THAT MOUTH." Its scorpion tail arched high overhead, the stinger's glow climbing brighter. "IUBA VOLVENS SHALL CARVE HUMILITY INTO YOU PERSONALLY."
"Cool. Bring it, then." Hikaru dropped into a stance, unbothered, despite the two of them squaring off against him alone.
Iuba Volvens's mane spun up into a full shriek, its haunches dropping low, weight coiling into its back legs.
"LET THE SPINNING MANE SHOW YOU WHAT REAL POWER LOOKS LIKE."
It lunged.