Similar smoke and dust spreads above the ceiling, dispersing amongst the grid of beds composing the barracks, being blown away naturally from the center where lays a few beds who’ve lost their hovering capabilities though the very center doesn’t lie on any of them but instead the hard metallic wooden floor: that being the Artificer who groans from the kick.

The once perfect grid of beds, while majorly still standing, have been wrecked in many different areas as there now lies whole patches of open spots where beds once resided, as they now do on the floor in fallen stacks.

There’s a clear trail left behind from the Artificer’s fall as denoted by a stack concentrated in a line, a heightened trail that is stood on by a boot with glowing blue heels under a long black cape that waves calmly.

Above the Artificer, standing over the heap of carnage is the Knight, his glowing cape waving, his arms at his side, his gaze forward with only one eye exposed as the other is hidden by his blonde hair. Though his focus isn’t on the opponent he had beaten just moments ago, but rather towards the center of the room where the hole is, where he can best hear audio from the floor beneath.

At this point the two battles had largely distanced from the breach in the ground, and thus the cry that just came from below and the subsequent boom weren’t entirely clear, though they at least managed to reach the barracks given a lack of sound upstairs. There was just enough clarity to vaguely hear those words.

Still facing the hole, the Knight interprets what was heard, softly murmuring to himself first in contemplation: “Wait…’her’...?”

At last the Knight turns away from the breach to face the end of the bed trail, that being the bullet that caused it: the Artificer who continues to lay on the floor as recovery has yet to be complete.

While trying to do so, the Knight maintains his position but speaks directly to her for the first time in a tone of perplexion: “Are you…a woman?”

On the floor and grappling to gain focus, the Artificer groans and slowly begins to sit up, placing the golden metal clawed hand on the faceless head as human instinct to check for pain. Facing up to the speaker of the odd question, the Artificer’s head tilts. Before responding, a round of contemplation begins on trying to seek the meaning behind this seemingly trivial question. The immediate concern is that perhaps the Knight miraculously began to approach the realization that the Artificer was the same person as the hostage they had, as while they had never met face to face, there’s a solid chance some attributes were shared. However if that was the case, this single question itself would be of little service to that investigation, for it was a question that had little effort in narrowing down suspects. Perhaps it was the first question in a series, though if it was clear there was an active interrogation occurring, action could be taken to resist. While an answer didn’t need to be provided necessarily, the sheer irrelevance of the question made it pointless to avoid. Beyond that concern, there wasn’t any other real possibility worth worrying about, any attempt to discern a specific identity would require further questioning beyond gender alone, and if that were to happen she could then make resistance, yet for now this first question was harmless.

After that examination, the Artificer’s head nods before a response is provided though one still apprehensive: “Yes…why?”

Whereas it was expected for there to be additional questioning to pry deeper into the Artificer’s identity, oddly enough the answer to this one vague question alone ignites a sudden response from the Knight, who grabs his temples with both hands in an exaggerated terror, stumbling back as he exclaims: “Oh shit!”

Now further perplexed by the tilt to the other side of the head, the Artificer truly doesn’t understand the weight to that question at all, as it certainly shouldn’t have been enough to bring conclusion to the investigation. All she can do in this perplexed state is slowly ask, “...Huh?”

Atop the pile of beds as debris of the intense battle, the Knight raises his head as he seems intensely regretful, explaining as if trying to vindicate himself: “When I saw you and that other girl, I asked Mary to fight her because I just assumed you were some guy. Dammit you both were? I couldn’t even tell.”

He then lowers his head, fixating his gaze on the Artificer before beginning to walk down the heap, extending his hand forward as he asks in a voice strangely hospitable, with warm tones almost meant to be intimately inviting: “Are you injured? Do you need aid?”

Instinctively the Artificer slides back and aims her right arm up, which transforms into the conal cannon pointing straight at the Knight who stops in place and throws both hands in the air innocently as the golden cyborg questions apprehensively, “Hey hey, is this some kind of trick?! What are you talking about, you were the one just fighting me!”

Keeping his hands up as a sign of no harm, the Knight takes one step back and assures in the same gentle voice, “No no, I’m not trying to deceive you, please you must understand: I would never try to harm a fair woman. I honestly never imagined, I was curious what kind of suit you have anyways, it’s unlike anything I’ve seen. Or perhaps you’re an Exhuman like Mary.”

Shaking her head down on the ground, the Artificer is now vastly more bewildered by the direction of the conversation, as the tonal shift is so drastic it’s difficult to comprehend what the objectives are with the opponent.

That bewilderment is reflected in the voice, that tone bleeding through the synthetic accent: “What are you-, are you hoping to gather intel off me? Of course I won’t tell you that.”

Shaking his head after the other misinterpretation, the Knight lowers his hands down to his side elaborating further, “I’m not trying to get intel off you, I don’t intend to hurt you. I’m deeply apologetic for what I’ve done to you, I truly did not know. If it helps you trust me, I’ll admit I’m not an Exhuman. I’m just a man under this suit here, this suit has all the power.”

As he makes motions with his hands, opening and closing them and tugging at his cape he explains, “With this suit I’m strong, one of the strongest Sea Hats here. I mean I have fought a lot without it, I’ve even taken Emperors down but with this suit, well, I’m part of the King’s top crew.”

His voice tapers into an oddly meditative, solemn tone as he reflects with a lowered head, “When I first got this suit I rejected it, for a long time I didn’t need it and I was enough with my own strength. But I guess eventually you have to evolve or die.”

He then quickly raises his head, same as his tone to one forcefully more upbeat as he rounds out, “Anyways, with this suit I’m nearly unmatched, I could wipe the floor with Rezzo if I wanted to I’m sure.”

He then swipes at his cape, letting it rise and fall slowly while childishly bragging, “And look how sweet this is, I mean the old tuxedo was a clean wear-up but this is real power. At first I thought it was a little self indulgent but hey, power can be seen, that’s what it means to have status in the Rim!”

All the sudden the Knight shakes his head again with the waving of his hands awkwardly in the realization of his own monologue, truly concluding it with: “Anyways ahah see, I’m not trying to hide anything from you, you can trust me. I don’t want to hurt you, really, if I knew who you were from the start I’d never have laid my hands on you.”

“See, it’s that,” moots the electric voice of the prior combatant, bringing the Knight’s attention down as he lowers his hands.

Still on the ground the Artificer’s conal cannon is active, the grates passively glowing, ready to fire a barrage on the instant of danger. Even then, the Artificer can’t help herself to pose with her befuddlement laid out explicitly, “Why are you saying that, you don’t know me, I’m not a pirate, I’m not your ally, I came here to help bring down your organization. I am your enemy, so why would you regret fighting me? Nothing changed, there’s no new information you have that should change my relation to you. If you truly refuse to fight, then I’ll save my friend and resume our search, it saves me time and expense anyways. But I don’t understand your sudden refusal. It’s senseless.”

Finally comprehending the point of misconception, the Knight realizes with an, “Oh!” before nodding his head and clapping his hands together before bringing them to his side, believing to be on the same wavelength where he then professes, “You don’t understand my hospitality towards you now, that must be it? It’s simple, I refuse to do harm to a woman, it’s just that. I won’t land a strike, I won’t seek to do damage. I will never use my power to hurt a woman, it’s a vow I’ve maintained my entire life and I aim to maintain it till the end.”

At last the motivation behind the massive tonal shift is exposed, and the Artificer lowers her cannon arm seemingly in acceptance of the intent explained.

That would be a lie however, as truthfully the Artificer is utterly baffled as told by her following question in a raised voice clearly overwhelmed by the absurdity of the statement: “So what, if I just got up, knocked out your friend under us, and went on to find and defeat your captain, you’d let that happen? My ally is fighting your comrade below us, and we’ve fought much of your army to reach this point. If this is some show of surrender, I won’t complain, even if your reasoning is…strange.”

A moment of thought is taken for the Knight, lowering his head before then shaking it, raising it, and raising his hand up to then preface, “I’m not surrendering, and I do have a duty to protect my captain and Mary. Even now I wish she didn’t have to get her hands dirty fighting but…the most I can do is be there to protect her if need be. I’ll stop you from completing your mission, but I won’t hurt you. I won’t hurt a woman, simple as that.”

Below the floor during this time, the woman in the black heels steps inside the wide open shower room through the doorway, the room which borrows similar aesthetics as the rest of the bathroom though with its purpose distinguished by the many shower heads sticking out of the walls, a technology seen as fairly outdated yet clearly used here, all of them paired with a silver panel embedded in the wall below at a reasonable height to reach like an elevator call panel.

Below one of those showerheads and even the panel lies the only person inside the room other than the one entering, that being the Vanguard in the white hoodie, sitting against the wall with her head low and limbs limp. Her face is covered by her long hair, and she shows no reaction to the entrance despite every step being pronounced due to the nature of the heel and the otherwise quiet environment.

In front of the Vanguard’s defeated body approaches the Rogue, who despite being dressed with more exposure to potential vital points on her torso, appears victorious. Understandably so as none of her skin wears any visible damage, no cuts or bruises, and she even lacks fatigue as her fiery eyes are wide awake. While her hair is disheveled, it’s unkempt by design, not a sign of being battered but instead having a carefree nature.

As she approaches her opponent whom she bested and removed the defenses of, she smirks while taunting, “I won’t lie, at the start there you did sort of give the impression that you were going to be trickier to deal with, and to be fair if I didn’t have the powers I did I probably would’ve been taken out in your first hit. But still…I was kind of hoping for more…I mean I was told you guys drove through like the entirety of our pirate group somehow so I was expecting to basically be fighting gods but…how did you even do it?”

That question is directed to the Vanguard whose face can only be seen through the slight gaps between her long hair strands, that face being battered and ashamed, a frown visible with eyes open only enough to verify her consciousness but not enough to confirm any drive within them. She doesn’t move either despite the enemy closing in on her, as in this moment she should be at her most active, especially now that she is far more vulnerable and should be focusing on remaining nimble. Yet here she is, just sitting there limp, a somber face hidden behind her hair, just taking the taunts without reaction.

Reaching the other end of the shower room, the Rogue comes to a stop a few feet in front of the Vanguard, staring down at her with her hands by her side. She has a relaxed stance, acknowledging the defeated state of the opponent, and so she just stares from above judgmentally. The room has decent lighting, enough that the natural luminescence of the gems attached to the belt around her hips aren’t as relatively bright, though their glow is still observable.

For a few seconds the Rogue just stares down at the Vanguard, and yet those seconds feel excruciatingly long given the utter silence, silence that only makes the shame stronger as though the whole environment was judging the Vanguard’s pathetic display.

In that silence, the Rogue’s expression again shifts to that former curiosity as she leans back with scrunched eyebrows and places her right hand underneath her chin to massage it while clearly pondering.

At long last her eyes widen alive as her mouth opens in astonishment, lowering her hand subtly as the revelation alas dawns on her while she speaks in shock: “Wait, I remember now! You’re Kokei, right? You gotta be! Yeah yeah, Ekitai mentioned you a good number of times, you’re like his best-best and stuff! Pink hair, kind of short though to be fair everyone’s kind of short to him, yeah it’s all coming together!”

That realization finally sparks a reaction in the Vanguard, not one to move her body as her head remains low though she asks in a murmur, “You…knew Ekitai-?”

Nodding her head, the Rogue gleefully confirms in a voice casual as though talking with a friend, “Yeah of course, we used to be pirate buddies, he was in our crew before if you can believe it! I mean…it was way smaller back when he was around, but still, he was an O-G Sea Hat! Our gunslingin’ Ekitai! It’s so crazy you’re here, I didn’t think I'd ever see anything related to him ever, not after he vanished all those years ago. Actually wait yeah, have you seen him in the past couple years? I know he said you two are sort of on and off so it’s fine if not, I get it!”

Her head still low, the Vanguard’s eyes slowly widen as her jaw lowers, for it has finally come to her why her best friend was so strangely apprehensive about this mission. He had only shown true concern for a few adventures, such as the one when exploring the underground city, but this one had the most resistance she’s ever witnessed. She hadn’t let herself dwell too deeply in it, she was concerned about Dana’s safety anyways and so she only made light teases, but now that vital information provided so casually slotted his behavior into perspective, and now it was clear why he so badly didn’t want to partake on this mission. She knew her friend wasn’t exactly fully upstanding to the law and sometimes played in messy territories, but even then she didn’t think he had once participated in this pirate war. She never read too deeply into his stories and shared rumors regarding pirates, as she always saw it as fantasy, tall tales he loved rambling about to have leisurely fun.

She winces at the knowledge of how uncomfortable she pushed her friend to become for this mission, from the beginning he was already anxious about odds nearly impossible and yet he was tasked to dismantle his own former group. While her view on pirates hadn’t changed even when knowing her friend’s former involvement with them, she could understand the difficulty he must be enduring to focus on the leader’s ambitious objective.

With this overload of information, she couldn’t even utter a verbal response back.

Met with no response after waiting for a few more seconds, the Rogue shakes her head and cheerily assures, “Ah it’s fine if you can’t talk right now, also by the way okay I feel bad saying this right now but I didn’t expect you to be so…young-looking. Like I’m sorry but you know Ekitai looks like a walking corpse, like we’re all getting a little bit of wear but like he could be the grandpa to my grandpa, and it seemed you two went way back so I sorta assumed you were the same but oh my god you’re so cute, I could just-,” as she leans forward and reaches both of her arms out in a curl as if priming for an embrace, though just before grabbing the Vanguard she stops herself and recoils back. Standing upright yet again, she places her hands behind her back and apologizes, “Heh sorry sorry I shouldn’t, you’re like a celebrity though, Ekitai used to talk about you so much! Heh, I really miss that old skelly.”

Taking a step back to give more space, the Rogue turns around and raises her head up, exhibiting her negligence towards someone she was just fighting earlier who is clearly still conscious, yet it’s clear she examines no threat from her enough that she isn’t even facing her.

She instead faces almost the whole other way, just staring at the adjacent wall of shower heads as she admits blithely, “Look Kokei, don’t take this the wrong way, your powers are actually really cool and I’d really love to see how they work and whatnot, but I don’t really know why you’re here. I take it you’re part of that invasion, I sort of figured it was another pirate group, now heh well I’m not as sure since Ekitai made it very clear you were the last person in the Superverse who’d turn to piracy. But either way pirate or not, you’re clearly not a fighter, and honestly I’m kinda surprised you made it this far, I guess that shield must’ve been carrying you a little. I guess maybe it’s a bit unfair for me to say this since I could probably kick most of the army’s butts, but I just didn’t see much initiation with you so I don’t know. They said ‘dead or alive’ but I really don’t want to kill you…hmm…I mean hey I could probably get you a spot in the crew, I mean hey my recommendation is basically gospel so nobody will give you shit if they know I wanted you in! I can see the potential in you, but you’re just…eh how do I put this lightly-,” as she places both of her flat hands together in front of her and points it forward, “-not very ambitious? And I mean that’s fine and sometimes it just takes some inspiration but like the secret is, even Exhumans are basically nothing without ambition. I mean to take it a step further, Exhuman powers don’t really give much of an edge out in the Rim when you’re fighting some people who are just absolutely wild, you really need an edge to thrive here and right now you’re not really even surviving.”

She tilts her head to the side, however not completely facing back at the Vanguard who still hasn’t moved herself who she suggests to, “You know?”

Up above the ceiling where the dust has since settled, the Knight remains standing on the pile of collapsed beds where he glances back over to the hole to wonder curiously, “Hm, it’s gotten pretty quiet there…I wonder if their fight’s wrapped up.”

All the sudden his body jolts in terror, and he turns towards the hole with the sudden awareness, “Oh shoot, I just left Mary on her own! Shoot I hope she’s not hurt, I need to check up on her, I really didn’t want to get separated for this exact reason but she just has a knack of running off!”

He begins taking steps towards the hole in advancement to his ally now that the fight he was in seems to have reached its conclusion, though on his departure he’s stopped by the electric voice which reflects, “It’s feels strange…I’ve had colleagues who’ve mentioned how they’ve been treated differently for no reason…like when they were kids nobody thought they were capable of anything…but I never really understood it,” which brings the Knight to a stop and his head to a turn around.

That voice comes from the golden cyborg laying on the floor below the bed pile, her head still low, her cannon arm lying limp still in formation of the gun yet without any glow in the grates.

Memories of the city always at night trail in her mind, rectangular concrete blocks as buildings which were run and leapt across at sprinting speeds, as she continues in a near murmur, “I guess my dad used to try keeping me away from the outside world, he didn’t want me to go out there and fight, but it was because he just didn’t want his own sacrifice to go to waste and he wanted one of us to stay pure. But the world isn’t made for those who are pure, and even if he saw me as someone who needed to be protected, not everyone did. Nobody cared who you were, how old you were, all that mattered was you were someone with something that people wanted. If you were weak, people saw you as weak. If you were strong, people would believe it. It was a simple system, and sometimes the adults were just stronger because of age, but that just meant I had to push myself harder.”

Images of those colossal silver towers with seemingly no end between flying rivers always moving enter her mind as her golden face continues directed low while she recalls, “The world beyond my own was different, the sky was different, the buildings were different, and people were dressed differently. But they…really didn’t seem all that different. People were still selfish and vicious, they’d tear people apart to get what they want, and they’d only listen and respect those they saw as strong. And I guess some people were naturally stronger, so I just pushed myself to be stronger than them. But at some point people bested me, and I thought they just had to be stronger, yet for some reason they didn’t think I was weak. Instead they showed me a whole other dictionary of strength, that there were more sides of the world than what I thought.”

Gazing down at her limp cannon arm with a slight nudge of the head, she considers gently, “I’d be a liar to say I got everything I had myself, I’ve been handed so many opportunities that I thought I was a charity, that I was weak. I thought I was just being dragged along out of pity, but if that was the case, why would I be entrusted with things people held so dear? I didn’t really feel like I was getting stronger the way I always have tried, but over time people trusted me more regardless. And now…I don’t even know how I am who I’ve become. How am I who I am? How much of me was I always, and how much of me did I build myself? How much of myself is my nature and how much of myself did I force myself to become this way?”

Down below in the shower room, the Rogue continues to stand in front of the Vanguard, facing away casually with her hands again behind her back leisurely, waiting around as though bored even when right by her opponent.

While there’s no movement of the Vanguard’s body, for it remains limp against the wall with the head down, words are finally spoken though first soft and mellow, that being: “I know…I’m not like the others,” which alas calls the Rogue’s attention as she finally faces her again.

Staring at the floor with her face only visible through slits between her hair, the Vanguard confesses somberly, “It’s not just the shield that got me this far…it’s them…if I wasn’t with them I would’ve gotten nowhere but I don’t know if I can say the other way around. I always knew I was somehow behind them, even though I probably have so much more experience I’m still so vastly behind. My power looks like it’s only been developing for a few years. I only have like two moves maybe, technically a third one but I can’t even do it without immediately burning out so…it doesn’t really count. And when I’m fighting with them, I can only do those two things, but I see them on their own and it’s like they’re just making it up as they go, like they can do practically anything. And in a way some of them can…but it’s still…so much more than me.”

Between streams of pink hair each of which are thin strands yet all accumulate to long rivers, the Vanguard’s eyes subtly widen upon the epiphany that alas dawns on her, and while her face doesn’t move and she still speaks relatively mellow, there’s a hint of awareness as she determines, “That’s right…it’s adaptability. All of them…they’ll handle every situation differently, like they can mold themselves perfectly to fit every scenario. If something’s not working, they’ll try something else and eventually it works, and they’ve gotten so fast at it that I hardly notice that process. All these adventures we’ve gone on, they’ve all been so different, and in all of them I always figured they were just so good it didn’t matter but now I realize, they were just changing their methods so it never looked like they were out of place. Really if you compare what they can do to me though…this really isn’t fair at all…they can do so much and I just have the same few tricks.”

A soft closed huff comes from the Vanguard like a stifled chuckle, and she shakes her head finally with some movement, her long hairs swaying like pendulums as she rubs her hand on her forehead. Her tone changes to be somewhat critical as she reverts against herself: “Wait no, what am I saying. I’m an Exhuman and most of them aren’t, why am I complaining about what I can do? No, it’s not raw abilities that makes me different from them, it’s creativity. Even if I swapped places with them, I’d probably still feel the same. You’re right, I do lack ambition, because if I don’t have ambition I’ll never push myself to adapt. Ekitai’s gone on all of these adventures with so much less than me, he’s faced death so many times and every time he just smiles and figures how to deal with it. But when I tried the same thing, I saw how chaotic the worlds were and I flaked. At some point doing the same trick didn’t work and I just figured that was as far as I could go and just stopped trying. I just settled for what was easy and never bothered trying again, and in all that time Ekitai was doing all this. I’m…probably still going to yell at him later for being a pirate but…the fact he was able to do that with just that scrap he calls a gun is…really incredible.”

Facing by the floor amongst the debris of the prior skirmish with her cannon in one hand and her claws in another, the Artificer begins to piece together in a voice that slowly becomes more certain, “I’ve always been focused on making myself stronger, whatever that means in whichever way. I just saw myself as a canvas, something I could build on, the person I wanted to be when I was a kid is definitely not who I am now and I don’t think I want to be that person, but I am who I want to be. If I want to hit harder, I’ll train my punches and give myself stronger fists. If I want to think smarter, I’ll push my mind to handle puzzles until I can wrap my head around it and make my own. If I want to be stronger, I’ll make it happen.”

Back down the Vanguard slips her hand to her side, though instead of leaving it limp she instead more intently grips the floor, a subtle act but one the Rogue’s eyebrow raises to as the beaten opponent decides, “I don’t think my raw power is going to get much stronger for a while, it’s been pretty consistent for a while now, maybe I’ve felt a bit freer lately but in the end raw power won’t make me truly better. I guess one thing about this place is that I can’t just ‘do anything,’ I got one power. I probably can’t do as much as some people no matter how hard I try, but I don’t need to be the best.”

At miniscule detail, individual golden scales begin to move like plates, sliding along one direction like a river, though at a greater scale these scales are the pieces of the golden conal cannon reverting into the hand which grows five sharp fingers, fingers that then grip the floor enough that it pierces the metal surface.

That hand connects to the wrist connected to the arm connected to the shoulder connected to the faceless head of the Artificer who raises that head up as she acknowledges, “There’s a good handful of labels you could define me with, some of them I was born with, some of them I made. But really, most of them shouldn’t matter to you. Only one really does.”

Slowly pushing herself off the ground though with her head still low, letting her hair obscure most of her face, the Vanguard resolves, “I need to be more adaptive, but to do that, I need to be more creative. But to be more creative, I need to be more ambitious. I should probably start a bit reasonable though, I’m not quite at the level of declaring war on all pirates, but I can start somewhere. I guess I can start with this….”

Slowly springing herself from the floor as her clawed hands let go, leaving marks in the ground, the Artificer keeps her upward gaze to stare up at the Knight standing on the bed heap above her, though despite the difference in height there’s no sign of insecurity she feels.

Fully standing back on her feet even without the shielding, the Vanguard rests her arms by her side as her shoulders begin to spark pink, and then her arms, and slowly her long hair strands begin to wave back and forth despite no visible forces to push.

At once, the Artificer bends her knees with tense claws as tentacles crawl out from behind her back and the Vanguard’s body sparks a great surge of pink electricity which forcefully parts her hair to the sides, revealing her flaring eyes on her face as her head raises.

Both the Artificer and Vanguard make their declarations respectively:

“I am your opponent.”

“I’ll defeat you.”