---
Blaze moved first.
Five-hundred percent output.
Condensed chrome inferno wrapped tight around him like a burning armor core. The heat alone distorted Orbit's gravity field.
Blaze vanished forward.
The collision sounded like a star cracking.
Flame punched into gravity.
Orbit skidded back three meters.
Boots carving trenches through fractured concrete.
For a second—
Just a second—
Blaze had him.
Then Orbit adjusted.
The gravity field thinned.
Not increased.
Reduced.
Blaze's next strike met nothing.
Orbit disappeared.
Low gravity.
High-speed mobility.
He reappeared behind Blaze instantly.
Gravity compressed into his fist.
Short-range amplification.
He punched.
The impact detonated like a localized singularity.
Blaze's flames shattered outward.
The pact-fire flickered violently.
Orbit followed with a gravity spike to the spine—
Blaze dropped.
Unconscious before he hit the ground.
The flames extinguished.
The pact ended.
Orbit rolled his shoulder once.
"Adaptation complete."
Then—
Air split.
Ghoul arrived.
Mach 8.
128-frame displacement.
Orbit swung Gambit.
Missed.
Afterimages layered around him.
Sixteen strikes.
Thirty-two.
Sixty-four.
One hundred twenty-eight.
Orbit's armor dented under synchronized impact.
Ghoul blurred forward—
A direct collision.
They tore through the shattered structure and into the open Arctic wasteland beyond.
Snow vaporized from shockwaves alone.
Orbit increased gravity suddenly.
Ghoul's movement stuttered—
For a fraction.
That was enough.
Orbit's elbow caught him mid-phase.
Ghoul was launched across ice and rock.
He dug trenches hundreds of meters long before stabilizing.
Orbit stepped forward.
"You are fast."
He raised gravity sharply—
The Arctic ice beneath them fractured outward in a massive radial collapse.
Ghoul vanished again—
But this time—
Corpse entered.
Blood rose from the battlefield.
Blaze's. Orbit's. Even Corpse's own.
It condensed mid-air.
Piercing Blood.
Compressed into a high-velocity beam.
It shot forward like a railgun.
Orbit turned—
Too late.
The blood projectile tore through his chest.
Clean.
Not explosive.
Precise.
Orbit was launched skyward.
Silence followed.
For half a second—
Then—
Red energy pulsed.
Reverse Chrome Technique.
The wound sealed mid-air.
Orbit stabilized himself with gravity beneath his feet.
Hovering.
Breathing steady.
"Effective."
Below him—
Corpse's blood spread outward across the fractured ice.
It didn't fall.
It formed.
Wings.
Solidified crimson constructs extending from his back.
Veined. Structured. Dense.
He lifted into the air.
Maximum output.
The blood around him began to glow.
Red.
Then brighter.
Crimson shifting toward magenta.
Burning Blood.
The temperature spiked violently.
Orbit narrowed his eyes.
The blood ignited.
Explosive Blood.
Corpse launched forward like a missile.
The glowing mass struck Orbit directly—
A detonation ripped across the sky.
Magenta light swallowed the battlefield.
Orbit's upper armor disintegrated.
Half his face burned away under the blast—
But before the smoke cleared—
Gravity condensed.
Not wide.
Not large.
Focused.
Grava Blast.
A dense sphere of gravitational force erupted point-blank.
Ghoul, arriving for follow-up, was smashed downward into the ice below.
The shockwave carved a crater hundreds of meters wide.
Corpse staggered mid-air.
Breathing ragged.
Orbit hovered opposite him.
Half his face restored by RCT.
Skin re-forming.
Eyes calm.
"Impressive output."
Corpse didn't respond.
He extended both hands.
Every remaining drop of blood in the battlefield rose.
Spiraling.
Layering.
Condensing.
Orbit recognized the shift.
"Final play."
Corpse's blood detonated outward in a controlled sphere—
A maximum-output implosion attack.
Orbit didn't dodge.
He raised Gambit.
The hammer head absorbed the entire explosion.
Every ounce.
The hum reached a deafening pitch.
Orbit's cursed energy flared wildly.
Nearly all of it condensed into Gambit.
"Then let's end this."
He launched upward—
Using gravity recoil.
The sky cracked from acceleration.
He came down like a falling asteroid.
Gambit overhead.
Fully charged.
Corpse formed a layered spherical shield of solidified blood around himself—
Layer one.
Layer two.
Layer three.
Impact.
The Arctic continent ruptured.
Ice shelves split.
Shockwaves tore across kilometers of frozen land.
The shield shattered.
Corpse's wings disintegrated.
He fell from the sky—
Unconscious before he struck the ice.
Orbit landed.
Breathing heavier now.
Gambit's glow dimming.
Nearly all of his cursed energy expended in that final strike.
The Arctic below them was no longer flat.
It was broken.
Carved.
Destroyed.
Ghoul lay embedded in a distant crater.
Blaze unmoving in the ruins.
Corpse collapsed on fractured ice.
Orbit stood alone.
Wind howled across the shattered land.
He adjusted his grip on Gambit.
"House," he said quietly,
"always wins."
---