My head was smashed against a thick glass wall, Cennet’s spider-like fingers held fast like a vice grip to my temples. My hands shot up in reflex and squeezed futilely on his wrists. The blow was so distracting it was like I forgot I could actually fight back. Despite how intense and heavy a pain the back of my head endured, it died off in a few seconds; Vasc’s work most likely. However, that feeling like the sides of my head were sinking in didn’t change. If this continued, my skull would probably crack from his grip alone.

I bit down on my lips to jolt myself into action, then activated Grav and brought my feet up toward his face. He switched arms in a flash, grabbing me by the neck before I could react and flung me aside like a ragdoll. I finally put the headgear on, affording myself much more versatility. “Your struggle to live is so unsightly,” he said, walking forward, “yet it relieves me,” tightening his leather gloves. “Clench your teeth,” I was warned, but I put a shielder up instead.

He grabbed the top of the energy shield and forcefully brought it down. What the hell?! The ease at which he proved my beloved defence obsolete was unsettling but I didn’t have the time to gripe about it so I put the next one up in hopes that I’d somehow induce my creative juices to stitch together some sort of stratagem. But I didn’t.

With his other hand, he touched the top of my second shield, and pulled himself upward. And with some gymnast-like elasticity, he swung around those shields effortlessly and planted both his feet in a half-powered dropkick of sorts. I knew it was half-assed because of the limited space he had to work with, but the way my body flung made it feel like a vehicle had just ran me over. He wasted no time, not even waiting until I hit the floor. His feet stamped down onto a shielder whilst I was still riding the kinetic waves that smashed me into a nearby workbench.

My motion finally stabilised, my eyes regained focus after those highspeed movements. I had no Z-21, I had no grenades, just my Grav and one somewhat trusty­ shielder, against an enemy whose potential nor current strength I could even see. It didn’t take much for me to realise my skeletal integrity had been compromised. Two or three ribs, maybe? I thought, figuring they were broken by the force I collided with. The odds of surviving this was becoming increasingly bleak, but I’d made my mind up long ago that the thorny path, was the only path.

I put my legs up as best I could and placed my boosters on full blast, which served to increase the pain of the injury I was just dealt. However, to Cennet, it drowned out the sound of every single booster on TK. My android tackled him from the side, driving him straight through the lab’s concrete wall and out into the streets.

I stood up, hobbling over to where the Z-21 was, grabbing both the sword and my grenade pouch. In just about a minute my bones had already reformed, almost painlessly. The numbing agent of whatever he injected me with was superb, and only lasted for the required time. Its potency made me even more wary of him. I slipped my goggles on and flew out afterward, simply looking for wherever the commotion was. The TK was horribly outgunned in the city. It could fire off its cannons, but Cennet’s inhumane agility and extremely close proximity made it difficult.

If I had any hopes of winning this, I’d definitely have to make coordinated attacks with TK, but to utilise that teamplay it’d have to use its cannons at a far range. The thought of casualties occurring whilst we both hashed out our bitter differences made me pitch the idea of moving our squabble elsewhere to him. Especially since people nowadays would rather risk their lives and record such events instead of simply running away.

He remained quiet, and simply pulled his phone out, tapping on the screen for a while, then tossing it to me. A video-call was on, and on the screen, was Anna’s sister, Marissa, horribly unaware that there were TS – god knows how many – surrounding her house.

“I already killed your parents. No matter who I kill now, it won’t make you suffer as much. So, you have my word that I won’t unnecessarily kill anyone you love again, hopefully,” he said, removing his jacket and tie, “but that’s only if you fight me right here, right now. I don’t have time to tolerate your fake compassion for others.”

I flung his phone back, an unusually calm air about me. “TK,” I mumbled, “level one artillery,” it flew up. Its two cannons emerged from its shoulders and began raining blasts down. Cennet simply smiled, and burst into a sprint right towards me, vaulting onto a parked car and leaping towards me. My shielder came up and negated his kick but the force made me stumble back a bit. A blast from above passed inches away from him, hitting the road. He sidestepped, dodging the second, and the third blasts with relative ease, but the minute I employed Z-21 his movements became much more conserved and concise as I would strike in whichever direction I thought he’d dodge to, but even then, his reflexes made it so Z-21 couldn’t even touch him. To escape another blast, he ran off, escaping the semi-rapid shots from above with a roll here and there and swung around a post to sprint back to me, zigzagging to make sure a hole wasn’t burned through him from TK. I put my shield up, took a lowered stance, and awaited him. He sprung upwards, into yet another dropkick, but doing it one step too late for me to suffer the full brunt of it; his legs wouldn’t be able to extend early enough. But, instead of meeting his expectations and blocking, I deactivated the shield and stepped aside, swinging down with my Z-21 where his body was sure to pass. I guess we both had different things planned than what our initial moves advertised. Z-21’s trajectory was calculated for his torso, I was resolved to kill, but I should’ve taken his legs instead. Aiming for his upper body only gave him enough time to kick my sword arm away. He capitalised on his momentum and grabbed onto my shoulder, bringing me down as he swung himself behind me and swiftly dislocating my shoulder then aimed to break the elbow joint, but a blast was incoming. I used Grav to push myself out of harm’s way and he simply jumped back.

He grunted in slight frustration as even more blasts rained down into the streets and bolted towards the building closest to TK, scaling it like a monkey but being careful to jump and latch onto other protrusions as a way of avoiding the cannons and climbing at the same time. I placed my hand on the ground and held my elbow steady, taking a deep breath before I popped the dangling arm back into the socket. The jolting pain made me yelp out, but Vasc’s numbing quickly came to the rescue after a few seconds. I flew up towards Cennet, swinging Z-21 with fervour I hadn’t even realised enveloped me but he jumped from the wall and latched onto TK’s foot, a blast grazing his stomach because he managed to jump with just enough spin applied to his body to avoid a full-on blast. I did the same, somewhat using the building’s wall as a means to quickly switch direction, but by the time I got there he’d already damaged a booster on the TK. They were both falling now because of Cennet’s weight and TK’s imbalance. This was an opportune moment that I didn’t let pass up so I flew towards the dangling man, making him pull himself up to seek refuge behind TK. The android placed a shield up to secure itself, which made me deactivate the UGO energy spanning along the sword’s blade and so the shield went down as a response. I used TK’s shoulder as a pivoting point–as Cennet did me–to curl myself around the android. The sword’s closeness forced out many options and he could only squeeze to get away from its edge, but that wasn’t enough; I slashed along his chest, deep enough to kill, but not deep enough to severe his body entirely. Whatever Vasc had in it would ensure he’d recover, if I let him…

He and I both rolled to negate most of the impact, making it less of a crash-landing. Despite all that movement, he wasn’t out of breath in the slightest, and neither was I. He ripped his torn shirt and waistcoat off and I couldn’t believe what I saw. I knew Vasc heals us, but… I drifted off in awe of how it did that. His blood, literally looked like it was stitching the cut and smoothening it out at an outrageously fast rate. It made me wonder “what the hell did he inject me with?” out loud.

“Vasc, short for vascular. It makes you a living tank and should you be hurt or injured in any way, it will repair you, even replace missing limbs, given enough time. Well, except for decapitation. Robotics are an amazing weapon, Ugo, but it will ultimately always fail compared to physiological advancement and human instinct.”

“Wait, so it wasn’t some failed test drug you injected?” I asked. TK mirrored my actions with a ceasefire without me even realising.

Cennet snickered, “Of course not. I don’t want you to die. You absolutely cannot die by anyone else’s hands but mine. Besides, I wouldn’t be able to fully push the limits of White if I gave you some trial version of Vasc, now would I? You and I both have the final thing coursing through every cell in our body.” He began walking forward again.

“What the hell’s White?”

“If Vasc is the shield, then White is the sword. Simple, right? Now, how about we kick this up a notch?” He took his glasses off and dashed towards me in newfound speed. My shielder arm began coming up and the blue energy hadn’t even properly formed yet before he changed directions in a flash, aiming for TK instead. He jumped over its shoulder, flipping upside down and breaking a cannon by yanking it out, then spun a kick towards the other cannon, defanging the TK in one fell swoop. Whatever chance I had of winning was just lost in an instant.

His aim quickly turned towards me. He sent a barrage of strikes at me, but I blocked them with the shielder, stumbling back from the sheer power in almost every blow he sent my way. After a while, he went for a wide and powerful kick, to probably throw me off balance so I removed the shield and dodged, leaving his side open after he missed and struck downward at him. But that was all just a feint, he turned back around effortlessly and caught Z-21 by simply shoving his fingers between the opening in the sword, stopping it and lunching a kick to me. I released Z-21 and flew back a few metres. “It’s not hard to figure out the edge of the sword is the real problem,” he commented, looking around the handle and finding the switch to manually turn it on. “Amazing, I must say,” he complimented, then rushed me with it. His physical prowess and the severing ability that sword possessed was a frightening marriage.

The first attack hit my shield, and he suddenly backed off, “Guess the only thing it can’t cut is that shield, huh?” He laughed and ran into me again, forcing me to put the shield up, but frankly, his speed and dexterity was hard to defend against without two shielders. Before I knew it, my forearm was gone with a swift cut and caught the minute it was cleaved off me. The pain was so intense I could hardly yell at first, but I eventually did, slumping to my knees in disbelief but very believable agony. “I guess this is a problem,” Cennet said, undoing the shielder from my crudely amputated arm and smashing it to bits under his foot. “Here,” he threw my arm back, “reattach it before you begin growing a new one, it’s a lot faster.”

In about a minute, it reconnected everything. Bone, muscle fibres, nerves, everything felt normal again. My mind was hitting highs and lows so quickly that it was paying less and less heed to the danger right in front of me. I had nothing now, just the grenades, which he would never fall for. He went into a running stance and burst forth again, and even though I tried my best to avoid it, he was much too quick. His uppercut sank so deep into my abdomen that he raised me off the ground. Blood immediately spurt out my mouth. A fist was then buried into my face mid-air, making me spin, then another one to the belly that felt like it ruptured some organs. He grabbed my shirt and slammed me into the ground, stamping down on my ankle with herculean strength. I was defeated, but he didn’t stop. The punches rained in after he mounted me, and I began blacking out the more his fists collided with my face. Vasc numbed it after a while, but my brain shook like it had hypothermia and I eventually passed out.

I was woken up by water to the face. I coughed because I inhaled some by mistake, getting up only to realise the situation hadn’t changed much. He just placed me under a hydrant and busted it so water would spray out and land on me. “I was wondering if to electrocute you with some wires up there,” he pointed to the powerlines above, “but I’m not yet sure if Vasc would protect your brain against something that strong. Anyway,” he looked at his phone, “I suppose we’ve made enough of a scene. If you’ll excuse me, I have business to attend to. Take care now, Ugo.”

A couple TS picked him up and flew off somewhere. I breathed a huge sigh of relief, that monster finally left me alone. That crippling fear again felt like it maimed me. It wasn’t a fear of myself like before, it wasn’t a fear of my bullies, no; not exactly a fear of dying either. It was, explicitly a fear of David Cennet and how easily he could make me walk the plank to a fate I couldn’t avoid. Frankly, his tactics were dirty, disgusting and degrading to most people. They were tactics I wasn’t willing to mimic. How could I involve the innocent and uninvolved? It was an inhumane act; however, one thing was certain and horribly clear after our fight–I was losing, badly.

What I thought would protect me simply couldn’t. Gabbing in the back of my head was a little voice telling me my entire frame of thinking had to change in order for me to survive Cennet. All these devices I had weren’t good enough. My passive-aggressiveness failed me, but also consolidated that my choices of war had narrowed.

“You’re okay,” I calmed down after I phoned Marissa and she answered.

“Course I am, I don’t have classes today after all!” she playfully replied.

“Check outside your windows, tell me if you see anything strange.”

“Nope. Hey, you alright, buddy?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I, uh, gotta go. Later.” I hung up. TK had fallen over yonder. I briskly picked up Z-21 and whatever scraps was left from my destroyed shielder. I flew back to my lab with TK to provide some balance.

I gave a long, absentminded look at Z-21. Beheading is the only way, huh?