The bedazzled sky stares down at us, its white eyes sparkling against the dark background. Sye and I sit on the floor of the training room, trading possible rest in for a concrete strategy as I try to shake off the previous encounter.

“We can get past team Chrome with brute force, and Aku serves little trouble now that there's two of us. For Amelia, all I have to do is hide behind you while you shrink the bullets. Once close enough, I come out from behind you and strike Amelia right on her temple, hopefully knocking her out. If that doesn’t work, then I keep hitting her until it does. Make sense?” I explain.

“There’s a major hole in this plan, Mofu,” Sye says.

“Which is…?”

“Because I’m your spirit, the amount of power I can use is capped at your absolute limit, and yours is pretty high, so I can use a decent amount of my full power. The farther you push your absolute limit, the higher the cap is on my power. With where you’re at now, I can’t use my Modulation technique,” Sye nervously informs. Speech retreats from my throat, my brain only being able to force out confused grunts and groans before finally giving up all together, opting for a depressed sigh. My face becomes absorbed into my palm, a fierce headache brewing in the back of my head. Sye squirms in passiveness, a stark contrast to her personality in The Overside.“But don’t worry, I still have all my physical abilities and skills. I can still run just as fast as when I was alive, a-and I still have all the pressure points in the human body memorized!” Sye’s attempt at consolation only deepens my frustration, sending her scrambling for words she can’t seem to find.

“Ok Sye, I should’ve asked this earlier, but what exactly can you do?” I ask.

“Um, right now I can…,” Sye starts, racking her brain for any skill to list. “I can liquidize and solidify objects!”

“Elaborate now,” I command, refueled with ideas.

“Well, something would have to either be touching me or extremely close to me, but I could turn a solid to liquid, a liquid to gas and vice versa. Take metal for example. If I’m holding a metal pole, I could turn it into a liquid, then a gas, then back to a liquid, and reform it into whatever solid I want,” Sye explains.

“Which means you can melt bullets into a liquid, right?” I ask enthusiastically.

“Well, if I had enough time to react to the bullet and see where on my body it was going to hit, theoretically. But with how fast firearms shoot, that's like asking a sloth to catch an asteroid with dissolving panties,” Sye explains.

“Fucking crazy analogy, but I hear what you’re saying.” I pace back and forth, trying to Frankenstein the previous plan. “So there isn't any way you could make time slow enough to be able to react to the bullets and liquidize them, correct?”

“Not unless I can use Modulation.”

“And improving your reaction time that drastically overnight is just comical, so what else is there?”

“Can you acquire things in previous matches, and if you can, do they get taken away from you before your next match begins?” Sye questions.

“Bruno and Olympia never said you couldn’t keep items you get in battle, why?”

“Then let's bring containers into the fight, fill them up with metal from the other matches, and I can use the liquid to form a projectile and send it through Amelia’s head before she even gets a chance to attack!”

“And if there is a ban on acquiring items in a battle?”

“You’re a Toryufu Faun hybrid, right?”

“Don’t even say it.”

“Why? Olympia told me nobody can die in The Mesa. It’s not like you’d be putting anyone’s life at risk.”

“Both Toryufu’s and Faun’s are barbaric enough on their own when they get even a drop of blood. The both of them mixed together getting any blood whatsoever is out of the question.”

“Toryufu use their sharp canine teeth to flirt with their mates. Faun’s have been known to catch falling people with their antlers, and have protected people they’ve become affectionate towards from predators.”

“Hungry Toryufu have massacred cities. Faun have trampled villages, trapped miners in caves, and cannibalize on their young. And even if it was safe for me to drink blood, do spirits even bleed?”

“When in The Horizon, your physical realm, spirits are held to the rules of it. We can bleed, break bones, have emotional outbursts, the whole nine yards. When in Blood Craze, Toryufu’s skin becomes much tougher and their teeth and tail grow. When a Faun is in Blood Craze, its senses are drastically improved and its antlers grow. In order to access your full potential, you’re going to have to enter Blood Craze to allow your body to fully develop. On top of that, the more you enter Blood Craze the easier it gets to collect yourself when in it, allowing you to do some incredible things. And to top it off, that's Plan B, Mofu. It’s not something we’re going to do off the bat, you’re only going to enter Blood Craze if they take away the containers filled with liquid metal we’ll collect in the earlier battles, so relax.” I take a deep breath, Sye’s explanation proving to be too good for a comeback. As I close my eyes, my refusal to enter a blind state of aggression again forces only 1 thought into my head. It’s only cheating if you get caught.