Natsuko had to hold on.

  She had to hold on. She had to hold on. She had to hold on.

  And that was starting to become hard.

  Her vision was soaked crimson from her own blood and every inch of her body throbbed with icy pain. She had long since lost her bottle and Taiyouken and all she could manage now was to try in vain to block or deflect the blows raining from Boulanger’s fists. Each had enough force she could feel it in her bones. But she didn’t go down. Not even when he clocked her with a right hook that left her with a tooth rattling around her mouth. Sucking in, she spat it at him.

  Boulanger glanced at the stain it left on his robes. “Cute. But I’m getting tired of this.”

  His hand shot to her ponytail and he lifted her onto her toes by it.

  “You’re done, Natsu. You can’t even beat one of us, let alone eight. So I’m going to ask you one more time to admit you deserve to die in the mud with my boot on your face, and if you say yes, I’ll kill you quickly along with your friends. If you don’t, I’ll cut your limbs off and I’ll make you watch what I do to the rest of them. If they’re not already dead, that is.”

  They weren’t. At least not most of them. During the two weird slowdowns, Natsuko had time to check the Use-Rankings. Harald and his team were gone. Same for Astrid and Vladim. But Sofiane, Kane, Daisy, Pechorin, and Shuixing were still alive, and so long as they were still alive, she could keep fighting. Even if all that meant was getting her ass beaten.

  “How about this…” Natsuko said, her words slurring as he danced in her vision. What she offered him, though somewhat undramatic due to being unable to raise her right arm above her waist, was a middle finger. He answered her with a punch that turned the world dark.

  Natsuko!

  Yeah, that was her name. It was nice to hear it not woven into a string of insults and obscenities.

  Natsuko!

  There it was again. Louder this time. Was she yelling at herself? It didn’t seem like something she would do. Really, she didn’t want to do anything. Whatever dark place Boulanger had sent her was, though not quite comfortable, better than what awaited her back in Po-Lin.

  Natsuko, I know you can hear me. Pay attention.

  Shuixing. That was who that was. Was she imagining it?

  “Shui, are we there yet?” Natsuko asked the void.

  No. But we won’t get there if we can’t beat back the Xian. Boulanger is dragging you back to the others and as soon as he kills you three he’s going to blow up what’s left of Verm?genburgh. Zhidao just gave them permission to do so.

  “I’m sorry, Shui. I can’t fight them. They’re too strong.”

  You can. Pechorin already took out three Xian.

  This nearly shocked Natsuko awake, but she willfully allowed herself to remain in the dark and ignore the pain and light trying to creep back into her little unconscious world.

  “How the hell did he do that!? I can’t dimension-jump them, and they kick my ass one-on-one let alone when they outnumber me.”

  I don’t know Pechorin did it, but I think you can win. I know you can, Natsu. Just think.

  “Can you at least give me a hint, Shui? Half my bones are broken, so I don’t have a lot of room for mistakes at this point.”

  Forget about combat. What has led you forward and what has kept you back? Think about that.

  It took Natsuko a moment to realize the last thought hadn’t come from Shuixing. Her friend was already gone and she was alone in the dark, though the awful world outside her mind was spreading tendrils into her safe, quiet place and slowly dragging her back into the pain. She needed an answer to her question and she needed it fast.

  “What led me forward?” she wondered.

  Love of adventuring? Need for money? Competition? Rivalry? Curiosity? A sense of purpose? Alcohol? Alcohol was probably the most accurate answer, but it felt more like it belonged in the ‘kept her back’ bin. So what was it? She supposed the best place to start was her triumphs. What had gone right? There was being on top when she first began adventuring, there was helping Verm?genburgh not get destroyed by a wyvern, finally beating the Scytheworm, catching and defeating Hemiola, becoming rank #1 again… though, as she thought about it, maybe that last one wasn’t really a high point after all. Her other achievements felt good, but that one filled her with anxiety.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  And then there was Pechorin.

  Pechorin.

  Somehow his name felt like a key to whatever she needed to know. Was it the guns? Did she need ranged FDJ to beat them? It was possible to trick the Xian into going into the air and then launch them into the ground, she knew that. But somehow that wasn’t it. Especially since she had no such weapon at the moment.

  Then she remembered Pechorin’s lips pressed to hers. His arms around her. His legs planted on either side as he leaned down to meet her smaller form. She remembered the sparks and the sudden and deep feeling of rightness when they came together. And she realized what tied that experience to all the other moments that felt good to her: She had accomplished them with others.

  Every time she went off by herself she wound up unhappy. Being #1 with teammates who didn’t care about her didn’t feel nearly as good as the moments she spent watching Shuixing work or screwing with Sofiane, doing girly things with Daisy or poetry with Pechorin. Holding that in her mind, she realized all those stupid numbers that defined her existence didn’t matter. Not a lick. Not when she was sulking in The Devil’s Cut, not when she dominated the Use-Rankings, and not when the Xian were lording their overpowered numbers over her.

  It was no wonder Natsuko was getting her ass kicked, she realized. She had thought everything was riding on her. But it was the exact opposite. She needed everyone else.

  Her eyes opened to the bright sun. She was laying on her back with a weight on her chest. It took a few minutes of blinking back the delirium to identify this weight as Boulanger’s boot. He was holding her arm up taut and she felt heat on it. In his other hand was a familiar, porcelain white sword held to her arm. At some point Boulanger had recovered the sword he had disarmed her of: Taiyouken.

  “There she is! Wakey wakey!” Boulanger said, grinding his boot into a chest full of cracked ribs.

  Natsuko ignored the pain, focusing instead on her surroundings. The battlefield looked the same as before being knocked out cold with the addition of a furious-looking Windwalker now stalking up and down the field, glaring variously at Boulanger and her. Nearby, Kane and Sofiane were pressed into the snow-slush mud with Koyon and Ailing holding them down, weapons to their necks.

  “We’ve wasted enough time, just execute them,” Windwalker said.

  The heat from Taiyouken went away as Boulanger used it to gesture at Windwalker. “You don’t give orders to me, chucklefuck. I didn’t lose three Xian to some random dickhead.”

  Windwalker’s eyes bulged and his knuckles turned white around the FDJ rod in his hands. “We don’t have Shuixing yet! Who knows what they can do!? Kill these three and nuke the fucking town already!”

  Boulanger looked over at Ailing and Koyon. “Do we listen to this asshole?”

  The other two Xian shook their heads. He turned back to Windwalker and shrugged.

  “Bummer. Looks like I’m in charge, huh?”

  Windwalker spat on the ground and walked away. The other three—Petyr, Haalia, and Anastasia—were gone. Killed by Pechorin, Natsuko recalled Shui saying. Windwalker would likely have told them how it happened, no doubt the reason why Koyon and Ailing were no longer floating. Natsuko wondered where Pechorin was now. He wasn’t on the Use-Rankings, but that didn’t mean anything. Daisy was still on it, but there was no sign of her anywhere. If Natsuko’s plan was to somehow fight through her injuries with the help of her friends, it was going to be a little tricky with half of them absent.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the heat returning to her elbow. Taiyouken’s white flame flickered in her irises and her breath caught as she knew what came next.

  “One limb at a time, just like I promised,” Boulanger said, smiling with undisguised sadism. “And just so we’re clear, it’s too late to start begging and telling me you deserve to die now. I’ll give you another chance when you’re a stump.”

  Sofiane yelled something she couldn’t hear through the blood pounding in her ears. This earned him a kick to the back of his head from Ailing’s heel .

  We can only surprise them once, so move as soon as you see the first bubble.

  This was hardly much of a warning coming as it did in the exact moment Boulanger pulled the sword up like he was teeing a swing. Pleasant, fluffy tingles, beginning at the crown of Natsuko’s head, ran down like liquid gold through her body, easing every ache and pain as it went until the mass of agony that her body had become was infused with warm, buzzing energy. Bubbles from nowhere rained down from on high.

  In the split second it took a confused Boulanger to notice the bubbles, Natsuko’s limp hand stiffened in his grip and grasped his forearm. She yanked him forward into her head thrusting up into his jaw. The blow caught him off guard and forced him to drop Taiyouken. Natsuko snatched the sword as she rolled to her feet in time to parry an arrow from Windwalker’s bow.

  She realized only too late that the arrow was an ability. Right as her sword would have knocked the arrow out of its trajectory, it released an enormous whirlwind sending her flying into the air at a blistering speed. This would have been a minor inconvenience except that the ability’s other effect was that it put all of her abilities on instant cooldown. Including Black Fire.

  “Oh no. Shit, shit, shit!” Natsuko screamed, struggling to figure out if she had anything at all that would come off cooldown in time to save her from lethal fall damage.

  Right as she was realizing in horror that she had nothing to save herself with, Natsuko felt a hard thump in her that knocked the wind out of her. All of a sudden, she found she was moving forward again. To her right, down the length of the stone wing that stopped her descent, Daisy was flashing her finger guns.

  Statistics:

  Team Natsuko

  Team Harald