Impossible. Even thought she saw it with her own eyes, Ayda refused to believe in the validity of this moment. It simply made no sense whatsoever. No version of reality or logical thinking could rationalize this moment, and yet she stood face-to-face with it. Her heart sank and mind raced, a million thoughts running through her head. She was a tornado of emotion, angry, anxious, and afraid all at once. More than anything else, however, what she felt was dread.

"No," she breathed, slowly shaking her head. "It can't be. What... what are you doing here?"

"Waiting for you, of course," replied Tahoe in his disturbingly familiar New Zealand accent.

"But, how?" Ayda demanded. "How did you even know I'd be here?" She could not keep despair from entering her voice. At her question, Tahoe only laughed, a low and gritty sound like sandpaper on tree bark.

"You must think you're so clever," he mocked. "Or, maybe you just think I'm stupid?"

He allowed the question to hang in the air, waiting for an answer. Ayda could form none of the infinite, tumultuous thoughts running through her head into coherent words. At a lack for a response, Tahoe continued his little monologue.

"I had the delivery van disassembled the moment my driver said someone may have messed with it. We found your little tracking device and I let deliveries continue as normal because, sooner or later, they would lead you here."

"And you've, what, been waiting for me the whole time?" Of all the questions Ayda could think to ask, why that one? There were a million better options. Why was that what came out of her mouth?

"I think of it like a mini-vacation," Tahoe confirmed. "It's nice to get away from the office once in a while."

"And you're men outside? You were willing to just let them die?" Ayda purposely let disgust creep into her voice.

"Their orders were to lead you through the hole in the side of the house. Clearly, they didn't do a very good job." By his tone, he felt nothing for his fallen underlings; a remorseless enabler.

"Is this even a meth lab, then?" Now that was a question Ayda should have been asking, instead of wasting time on the how and why.

"But of course," Tahoe nodded. "You'd have no reason to stick around if it wasn't. These drugs are rather important to my fledgling empire, and I won't let you jeopardize them." He pointed with the tip of a sword, as if that were supposed to intimidate her.

"Good," Ayda replied, "because I came looking for a fight."

The battle stance she assumed, here, was different than normal. She held her staff off to her right side just above the hip, top end pointed at the center of Tahoe's chest. Her advantage in this fight was reach, and a thrusting posture allowed her to freely abuse it.

Tahoe stayed in the same position with his sword also pointed toward the opposition. He did not lack for motion, however. The skin on his face changed. Liquid metal overtook it, very much like boiling mercury flowing downhill. It over took every exposed inch of his expression until not an ounce of flesh was left, replaced by solid steel.

This was his superpower, the thing which allowed him to rival Ayda, to withstand her attacks. A wave of dread washed over the girl. Standing before her was the first person to beat her since entering the States, the man responsible for the long scar on her back. She could still feel the way his cold metal ran through her flesh. Beads of sweat gathered on her brow. She took a ragged breath in, and then out.

Just like their first encounter, Ayda was amazed by Tahoe's ferocity. There was no jockeying for position, nor sizing up of the competition. He charged straight into combat with little care for tactics or his own personal safety. Ayda attempted to assume a defensive posture—to raise her staff over her head—but the weapon collided with the walls on either side at an awkward angle.

She fought with the thing, but it was no use. She couldn't maneuver efficiently in such a tight space, and Tahoe was getting closer. In a last ditch effort, Ayda widened her grip at held the staff as high up as possible. It hit the ceiling, but also protected her. Tahoe slammed down with both swords, a strike with such raw power it forced Ayda to take a step back or else topple over.

The two stood there for a moment trying to gain leverage, but Tahoe was not interested in binding with the girl. He disengaged and started a flurry of vertical attacks, spinning around for slashes one after the other, a lacerating windmill of death. Ayda was barely able to block them. In such tight quarters, she resorted to batting each away with the top of her own implement. In the end, Tahoe ended up striking five times.

Ayda had to fight back. She was losing momentum. Tahoe left no opening after his attacks, but it didn't matter. The teenager just had to get points on the board. She jabbed forward three times, each at a different height and accompanied by a blast. They were solid attacks, easily enough to take out any normal combatant, but Tahoe blocked them as if they were nothing. Her blasts had literally zero effect.

Tahoe countered with a similar technique, using both his weapons to stab rapidly all over the place. Ayda deflected all of them. She thrust low at his ankles. He stepped back, out of the way. The girl used the accompanying blast to kick her point off the floor and accelerate it into a vicious uppercut. Tahoe barely manged to avoid it. He threw a neutered sidekick—which Ayda blocked—then followed up immediately with a lateral face slash.

Ayda disengaged and faded back, coming to rest against a door jam behind her. Here she paused for a moment to consider her options. She was quite limited in this hallway, and while Tahoe was as well, his weapons fit the situation much better. Something had to be done to at least attempt an acquisition of advantage.

Tahoe came forward. He sliced at her neck with a movement of mostly elbow and wrist, a motion he barely had enough room to complete. Ayda slipped out of the way, and into the room behind her. She expected the man to immediately follow, but he did not. His weapon had become lodged in the old wood. He wrestled with it, desperately trying to remove the thing. He was off-balance, open.

Ayda seized the moment, leveling a full-force push kick into his hip. Without his strength fully centered to keep him grounded, the ensuing explosion tossed Tahoe not just into the rotten wood behind him, but through it entirely. The metal man crashed through in a dazzling display of dust and splinters. Ayda followed without a moment's hesitation, even before the smoke settled.

They ended up in the dining room, a mostly wide open square space. When Ayda arrived her opponent was just getting up from the pulverized remains of a long, rectangular table. The teenager charged in and accelerated her staff straight down. At the last possible moment, Tahoe got to his feet and stepped out of the way, but could not avoid the shockwave. He braced against the impact, sliding backward as chairs and debris flew around the room.

While he regained his balance, Ayda pushed the offensive. With an upward sweep, she launched a mostly intact chair at Tahoe. The man hunched at the impact, but it seemed to have little palpable effect on him. He began to walk. Ayda threw another chair. This time Tahoe did not react at all. The furniture splintered against his chest. The only sign of damage was a rip in his shirt, which revealed only cold metal below. Ayda stepped to her left and tossed a third and final projectile, with exactly the same result. Tahoe reached her. She prepared to fight.

Tahoe struck diagonally downward twice in an X pattern, one sword and then the other. Ayda blocked both, taking a step back each time. Her back hit the wall, but she did not retaliate. This clearly took Tahoe off-guard, as he paused for a second as if gearing up for her counter. He gladly accepted the lack thereof, however. He came down diagonally again with both blades. This time, Ayda slinked out of the way. Without a flaw, the girl ducked right under his arm. The blade met only aged wood.

The man went to extract it, but found he could not. His weapons lodged themsleves firmly into the wall, biting only deeper with each pull. It was an exact repeat of last time. Also, like last time, Ayda capitalized on the moment. She whapped Tahoe on the kidney. The accompanying burst separated him from the weapons, but also dislodged them from the wood. they went flying out into the hall somewhere. Ayda paid it little mind. She'd accomplished her goal of disarming the foe, which was all that really mattered.

Aware of his sudden and complete disarmament, Tahoe popped away from the wall. Ayda pushed her advantage even further. She stepped forward, spun around and twirled her staff to build momentum. Tahoe planted his feet. Ayda channeled all her strength into the staff. It glowed an even brighter purple than usual, almost blinding in its brilliance. With everything she could muster, she struck at Tahoe's head. He put a metal forearm up to intercept the blow.

A deafening blast filled the room. The entire house shook. Chairs and rubble inside the dining room slammed against the walls and broke through the windows. Somewhere upstairs glass broke. A calamitous clatter fell somewhere on the far side of the house as part of the ceiling collapsed. Cracks formed in the walls while boards within audibly shattered. All this, from the shockwave Ayda imparted through Tahoe and into the structure below him. The only immovable objects were he and Ayda. The latter bared down with all her might. The former stood stalwart and still, completely unaffected by the attack.

Unaffected. He took no damage, showed no sign of wear and tear. While not quite her absolute strongest, that was one of the most powerful attacks Ayda could manage under normal circumstances. And yet, Tahoe didn't even flinch. All that effort, all that energy, and it meant nothing. Ayda's heart fell to the ground. Her mind went blank. She didn't know what to do.

Tahoe took advantage of the girl's momentary petrification to kick her in the knee. Ayda's leg bent at an awkward angle and she took a step back. Instinct overrode everything else. She lashed out with a lateral slice, but Tahoe ducked under. Ayda transitioned smoothly into a downward chop. Tahoe rose and blocked with crossed forearms, deflecting both the blast and the object itself. The girl recoiled, fighting the redirected momentum. At almost the same time, Tahoe slammed an overhead punch into her jaw. Ayda wasn't anywhere near fast enough to avoid the blow. She reeled back, off-balance but not down and out.

The man closed the distance with a quick jab-cross combo. Ayda blocked with her staff in much the same way she had in the hall, batting away each hit. Upon each defense, she felt herself grow more desperate. She attempted to check him with a short range swipe, little more than a ploy to break his momentum. Palm turned outward, Tahoe squarely caught the swing. The blast echoed with a strange hollow sound from inside his fist. With his free hand, Tahoe planted a trio of uppercuts into Ayda's stomach, each more devastating than the last. Ayda grunted at each impact. Air escaped her lungs. Tahoe released the staff. The girl stumbled back, gasping to catch her breath.

"Ayda!" The voice of Elliot suddenly shouted through her earpiece, but she ignored him entirely.

The teenager took a few deep inhales before rushing her opponent with a primal scream like a creature possessed. Exhausted arms made for sloppy work. Tahoe sidestepped the charge, allowing the girl to run past. He kicked her in the back as she did, more to add insult to injury than anything else. She put up her hands, barely stopping herself from smacking the wall.

"Ayda, stop! Please!" Again, Elliot begged. Again, he received no response.

Because it worked so well on the first attempt, Ayda came at her opponent a second time. On this occasion, Tahoe stood still. Ayda wound up for a big hit, and opened herself up for a perfect counter. Tahoe gave her a horrible backhand to the face before the strike could ring true. Ayda lifted off her feet, flew straight through the open door, and hit the opposite wall in the corridor. Stars swam in her vision as she fell forward to rest on her stomach. The girl did not get up, but simply laid there in a daze of defeat and pain. Tahoe laughed at her misery.

"I should've just done this in the first place," he mocked.

"Ayda, listen to me," Elliot said quickly through the earpiece. "You don't have to beat him. All you came here to do is blow up the meth lab."

"I can't," Ayda argued, caring not if Tahoe overheard. "Not with him in the way. He's just so much stronger than I am."

"I bet he's not faster." Elliot said after a moment's consideration.

Ayda's eyes flew open, wide with realization at his words. She thought back to their first encounter, how easily she got away from Tahoe. The girl looked up at her opponent from where she lay to see him approaching with pistol in hand. He pulled back the receiver to chamber a single round.

"I want you to know this isn't personal," Tahoe said, inspecting his piece. "I always hate killing people like us—the uniquely gifted—but I'll be damned if I let you destroy everything I've worked so hard to create, especially not when I'm so close to taking what's rightfully mine." He held the gun just inches from her head. This was the moment to act. Ayda ran out of time. It was now or never.

Tahoe pulled the trigger. Ayda pushed off the ground. A blast to the right propelled her in the opposite direction. She sailed just a few inches off the floor, catching herself on hands and knees about halfway down the hall. Tahoe's bullet met only wood. In the clear, Ayda rose to her feet. All of this, in a matter of split seconds.

No time to waste. Accelerating herself with blasts, in two long bounds Ayda cruised to the end of the corridor. Tahoe's head whipped from where his target once had been, to where she currently was. He raised his weapon and fired two shots in her direction, but Ayda whipped around the corner just before his bullets tore through the wall where she'd been. With an audible growl, Tahoe barreled after her.

The girl did not stop at the stairs to see if they went down as well as up. She could tell by the separation in the floor as she approached that they indeed did. Ayda gripped the bannister with one hand, holding on for dear life. Her body whipped around this anchor point. With a blast out behind, Ayda flung herself down the flight without ever touching the floorboards. A downward burst cushioned her impact with the concrete floor at the bottom. She landed with a bend of her knees, and immediately took off into the new area.

But it was not what she'd expected. At the bottom of the stairs, what Ayda found was not a normal basement, but instead an entire laboratory. Longer than it was wide, it extended far beyond the boundaries of the house atop it. There were beakers, test tubes, and all kinds of chemistry gear, but the most impressive pieces of equipment were the several huge brewing vats. They were grey coated steel, each one extending almost all the way to the floor above. They whined with electric machinery, the sound of liquid churning barely audible over it. They were each connected to other bits and baubles Ayda didn't really understand. She knew little about the process of making crystal, but this was a meth lab if she'd ever seen one.

Hard soled boots clambered down the stairs after her. Ayda returned to her senses. There was still danger afoot. She dashed into the room proper, entering the jungle of vats and tubes. From here, the objective was pretty much the same as when she'd started, reek as much havoc as possible. The presence of a powerful enemy didn't really change that.

Tahoe made it to the bottom floor. He immediately fired several shots at her, but Ayda was a whirlwind of motion. She never stopped moving long enough to draw a bead on. Every footfall was followed by an explosion as she pushed off, rocketing herself toward another part of the room. Back and forth she went, bringing destruction with her all the while. Tahoe was good, but not that good. He had no hope of ever hitting such a nimble target.

Now, Ayda didn't even try going after the vats themselves. Experience with assumedly similar metal grades taught her just how strong it could be. Her powers would eventually break through it, but only after a lot of time and effort had been spent. Time and effort were not luxuries she could entertain, not with a madman taking potshots.

Instead, she targeted the soft spots. Hoses, connectors, anything thin and brittle enough to be broken with a single hit. She launched over to a vat, slicing away its tube as she went. Clear liquid and pungent gas leaked into the room. Ayda touched the floor just long enough to throw herself in another direction and repeat the process.

Tahoe ran into the center of the array. He spun this way and that, watching as his target zipped around him. He raised his weapon to take a shot, but only succeeded in poking a hole in a vat, and unintentionally furthering her agenda. That clearly wouldn't work. So, instead he sunk to predicting her movements. She skirted close to him and he reached out to grab her, but missed by a wide margin. No matter what he did, Tahoe couldn't get a hold of her.

The basement began to stink of chemicals. Ayda knew how toxic all of these gases could be on their own, and especially when mixed together. The first symptom, as with many cases of inhalation, was lightheadedness. She had to leave before it got to that point. If she could actually smell the gases, then that probably meant there was enough in the room, anyway. Right? Time to be gone.

Ayda severed a final tube, which made for almost all of them. She hit the ground and pivoted, kicking off back toward the stairs without missing a beat. Tahoe again began to shoot at her now that she was more or less coming right toward him. Surprisingly, even the leader of the gangsters wasn't smart enough to learn how useless bullets were against her. She nullified them on the move, barely an effort on her part.

The teenager blew by him, smacking a vat as she passed just for the fun of it. The metal deformed at the touch of her staff. Ayda dashed over to the stairs, Tahoe hot on her heels—or, at least, as close as he could manage. Ayda had to stop at the base of the steps, just long enough to reorient herself. Tahoe took a shot. Ayda blocked it with her palm and then leapt up the stairs.

In three solid bounds, she reached the summit. A quick turn started her back down the hall. She could see the exit, the light at the quite literal end of the tunnel through the open door. Her heart fluttered as she accelerated toward it. The finish line was in sight. She just had to reach it.

Somehow, miraculously, her jerrycan was still in the hall, more or less where she'd left it. She slowed to pick it up. As Ayda ran, she dumped gasoline out behind her. The trail was inconsistent, but did a decent enough job of topping off what was already there.

In a blink of an eye, she was outside the house. Here she finally paused, right around where she'd poured the first fuel track. She could see Tahoe charging down the hall. He raised his gun and began shooting, as if that would actually do anything. Holding her staff in one hand she blocked the projectiles. With her other, she reached into her pocket to retrieve a simple, green disposable lighter. She lit the flame, dropped the lighter onto the gas, and then bolted away from the house.

The fuel went up behind her, traveling at the speed of fire toward the rotten home. Ayda ran away on purple blasts, quick as she could. She reached the road and turned right in the direction of her motorcycle at the same time as Tahoe exited the building. She could see her vehicle in the distance. Reaching it would not be a problem, but she'd like to be far enough away from the fire which burned toward the home all the while.

She was close to her bike when the fire entered the house. All of the work she'd done in the basement paid off. The chemical soup released within the home immediately caught alight as soon as it made contact with the flame trail. Fire now clinging to the walls tracked through the hall and down the stairs, where it met the source.

Ayda mounted her motorcycle and kicked it to life. She revved and took off down the road, but only made it a few feet before it happened.

It was the loudest noise Ayda had ever heard as combustion and chemistry came together in one spectacular reaction. The house exploded. A voluminous ball of flame shot into the sky, blanketed by black smoke. Glass and splinters and metal flew in every which direction, propelled by the kinetic force of a chemical bomb. A visible shockwave rippled through the soft ground. Ayda could feel the heat even from where she stood.

Her ears rang. Concussive force clouded her judgment. For a second she forgot what she was doing, even though she stood clutching handlebars. As Ayda's hearing quickly returned, so did her perception of the moment. She just blew up an entire meth lab, and its owner likely still gave chase. She had to leave, right now. Ayda mounted her beast and kicked it to life. A peg of the throttle took her away from the scene, a smile on her face.