Violet's transformation sent ripples of energy across the chamber, her mere presence causing hairline fractures to spread through the reinforced walls. Her gaze—those twin orbs of blinding white light—fixed on Steel with unmistakable intent.
"I will kill you, you bastard," she uttered, her voice echoing with harmonics that shouldn't have been possible from human vocal cords. Each word reverberated through the chamber like the toll of a bell, carrying weight and power that made the very air tremble.
Surge Mode—a powerful technique among exploiters. A dangerous, adrenaline-fueled state that shattered the safety limiters in the human body, pushing physical and special abilities far beyond their natural thresholds. The power came at a devastating cost, burning through the user's life force like a star going supernova. It couldn't be sustained for more than minutes, perhaps seconds depending on the intensity of its use. But those seconds could redefine reality itself.
Steel recovered from his initial shock, mercury eyes narrowing with calculation. A cruel smile twisted his metallic features as he raised both arms above his head. The liquid metal of his forearms coalesced and expanded, forming a massive greatsword that dwarfed Violet's entire body. The blade hummed with malevolent energy, its edge gleaming with a promise of oblivion.
"Let's see what your Surge Mode can withstand," Steel hissed, bringing the monumental weapon down with apocalyptic force.
The blade sliced through the air with a sound like reality tearing—a perfect, killing arc aimed to cleave Violet in half. Anyone else would have been atomized by the sheer kinetic energy of the strike.
But Violet was no longer bound by the limitations of flesh and bone.
Her right hand shot up with preternatural speed, fingers splayed. The descending greatsword connected with her palm—and stopped. The impact generated a shockwave that obliterated the remaining windows and sent debris flying in all directions, yet Violet hadn't moved a millimeter. Her feet had created perfect imprints in the metal floor beneath her, the surrounding area cratered from the transferred force.
White energy crackled around her fingers as they closed around the massive blade. The metal groaned, then screamed as crystalline fractures spread across its surface like frost on a window.
"Impossible," Steel whispered.
With a single flex of her fingers, Violet shattered the greatsword. The explosion of metal fragments ricocheted throughout the chamber like shrapnel from a bomb, embedding in walls and ceiling. Before the fragments had even finished falling, Violet vanished from Steel's sight.
She reappeared directly before him, her movement so rapid it appeared like teleportation. Her right fist, trailing ribbons of white energy, connected with Steel's chest in a perfect strike. The impact resonated with a sound like thunder compressed into a single, deafening note.
Steel's metallic body compressed around her fist, then explosively decompressed as the kinetic energy transferred through his frame. Fractures appeared across his once-perfect exterior, mercury blood seeping from a thousand hairline cracks. The shockwave that accompanied the blow created a perfect sphere of displaced air that expanded outward, disintegrating nearby support columns and ripping chunks from the walls.
The force sent Steel hurtling backward with such velocity that his body broke the sound barrier, creating a sonic boom that shook the entire structure. He crashed through the reinforced wall at the chamber's edge, then through five more beyond it, leaving perfect Steel-shaped holes in his wake.
Before the dust could settle, Violet appeared at the end of his trajectory, moving faster than human perception could track. Her left hand closed around Steel's throat, lifting him effortlessly despite his immense weight.
"That was for James," she whispered.
Her next strike targeted his midsection—a perfectly executed uppercut that connected with cataclysmic force. The impact lifted Steel off his feet and sent him rocketing upward, crashing through the ceiling of the tower. His metallic body punctured the ceiling like a bullet through paper, disappearing beyond sight.
Violet crouched, then launched herself upward, following his trajectory. She ascended through the hole Steel's body had created, a comet of white energy trailing behind her. The tower shuddered and groaned around them, structural integrity compromised by the ferocity of their battle.
Above the tower, Steel managed to halt his uncontrolled ascent, his liquid metal form stabilizing as he created the wings on his back. They were large, spanning six meters from tip to tip, their edges honed to razor sharpness. He hovered in the space above the tower, mercury blood dripping from his wounds.
Violet emerged from the hole in the ceiling, her white aura illuminating the cavernous space. She landed with impossible grace, the ceiling cratering beneath her feet as she absorbed the momentum of her ascent.
"Is this truly the extent of a god's power?" she taunted, her voice cold and precise.
Steel's expression contorted with rage. He thrust both arms forward, fingers splayed wide. A barrage of metal projectiles—thousands of razor-sharp rods, each one capable of piercing reinforced steel—materialized around him and launched toward Violet in a lethal storm.
The air between them became a silver blur of impossible density, a wall of certain death approaching at supersonic speed. The rods struck with such force and frequency that they generated continuous thunder, obliterating everything in their path.
Violet's hands became twin blurs of motion. She deflected the projectiles with surgical precision, her enhanced reflexes processing each rod's trajectory and countering it individually. Her palms and fingers moved faster than the eye could track, creating an impenetrable defense. Each deflection generated sparks and sent rods ricocheting in all directions, embedding in walls, ceiling, and floor with such force that the entire tower began to resemble a metallic pincushion.
Yet the sheer volume of Steel's assault proved overwhelming. A single rod, its trajectory altered by a previous deflection, slipped past Violet's defense and pierced her right shoulder, emerging from her back in a spray of blood.
Violet didn't flinch. Her eyes narrowed slightly—the only acknowledgment of pain—as she continued deflecting the onslaught with her left hand. White energy swirled around her wounded shoulder, the damaged tissue visibly knitting back together. Within seconds, her body rejected the foreign object, pushing the metal rod out as her flesh regenerated to perfect condition.
Steel's barrage faltered as he witnessed her instantaneous healing. "What manner of creature are you?" he hissed, genuine fear coloring his voice for the first time.
"I am what you created," Violet replied, her voice eerily calm. "When you killed those I love."
She vanished again, reappearing directly above Steel. Her descending axe kick struck the junction between his neck and shoulder with such devastating force that his entire metallic frame buckled. The impact sent him plummeting downward, crashing through every floor, all the way back to the first floor.
Steel pushed himself up, his perfect form now dented and torn in dozens of places. Mercury blood pooled beneath him as he struggled to maintain cohesion. His self-repair systems worked frantically, but the damage was too extensive to heal quickly.
Violet descended through the holes with controlled speed, and landed on the first floor. Her white aura pulsed with rhythmic intensity, like the beating of a heart.
Steel's eyes narrowed as he assessed his opponent. Close combat was clearly suicide against her enhanced strength and speed. He needed distance and a new strategy.
With a fluid motion, he slammed both palms against the ground. The entire floor transmuted instantaneously, the metal becoming liquid and responsive to his will. Hundreds of massive spikes erupted from the surface in a radiating pattern, each one as thick as a tree trunk and sharp enough to pierce reinforced armor. The forest of metal spears shot upward with explosive force, aimed at impaling Violet from every conceivable angle.
Violet's body twisted and contorted with impossible flexibility, evading the initial wave of spikes with balletic precision. She bounded between the metal protrusions, her movements fluid and purposeful as she closed the distance to Steel.
Seeing his strategy failing, Steel frantically accelerated his attack. The metal spikes began to branch and multiply, filling every available space with lethal points. The air itself became scarce as the first floor transformed into a solid mass of intersecting metal.
Violet's perfect evasion faltered as the density of spikes reached impossible levels. Several penetrated her defenses, piercing her torso, limbs, and one through her left cheek. Blood blossomed across her white clothing, staining the fabric crimson.
Yet each wound began healing the instant it was created. The spike through her face was pushed out as her tissues regenerated, the one through her abdomen ejected by her body's enhanced healing. She continued her advance, unstoppable despite the constant impalement and regeneration cycle that would have incapacitated any other being.
Steel, recognizing the futility of his approach, shifted tactics. His wings expanded dramatically as he launched himself upward with explosive force. He shot through the air like a silver bullet, breaking the sound barrier as he circled the tower at hypersonic speed.
His first pass caught Violet by surprise. Moving faster than even her enhanced senses could track, Steel's transformed arm—now a blade of impossible sharpness—sliced through her torso horizontally. The perfect cut separated her upper body from her legs in a spray of blood and viscera.
Steel didn't waste the advantage. He materialized behind her falling upper half, grasping her by the throat with crushing force. "Even Surge Mode can't save you now," he snarled, hurling her bifurcated body across the chamber with contemptuous strength.
Violet's severed torso slammed into the far wall with bone-crushing force, sliding down to crumple beside Michael's lifeless form. Her legs collapsed separately, blood pooling beneath both halves of her body.
Steel hovered above, watching with clinical detachment as he awaited the inevitable—the fading of her power, the final death throes of a being who had pushed beyond mortal limits.
But the white aura surrounding Violet didn't diminish. Instead, it intensified, becoming so bright that Steel had to shield his eyes. The severed halves of her body lifted into the air, suspended by pure energy. In a display that defied all biological understanding, tissue, muscle, and bone began to regrow and reconnect at exponential speed. Within seconds, Violet's body had completely reconstituted itself—clothes and all—as though the catastrophic injury had never occurred.
She settled gently back to the floor, her expression serene despite the apocalyptic power coursing through her veins.
"My turn," she whispered.
She moved with such speed that space itself couldn't properly render her motion. In a moment she was directly before Steel, unleashing a barrage of strikes too numerous to count. Each punch connected with precision and devastating force, compounding the damage exponentially.
Her fists became white comets, trailing energy as they hammered Steel's metallic body from every angle. The impacts came so rapidly they generated a continuous roar like a massive waterfall, each blow denting, cracking, or outright shattering portions of Steel's frame. Mercury blood erupted from hundreds of wounds as his self-repair systems failed to keep pace with the damage.
The final punch in her sequence connected with Steel's face, the impact so powerful it temporarily warped the fabric of space around her fist. The blow sent Steel crashing through the tower's primary support column and into the metallic tree behind his throne, nearly splitting both structures in half.
Steel's body, now barely recognizable as humanoid, slid down the damaged tree and slumped at its base. For the first time, genuine fear registered in his mercury eyes.
With desperate focus, he channeled his remaining power. The liquid metal of his body began to separate and reform, splitting into perfect replicas of himself. First one, then five, then twenty identical Steel clones surrounded Violet, each one mirroring the original's form and abilities.
"Kill her!" Steel commanded his duplicates.
The clones attacked in perfect coordination, approaching from all angles with weapons manifested from their liquid metal forms. Swords, axes, maces, spears—a symphony of death converging on a single target.
Violet stood perfectly still, her eyes closed as she sensed their approach. When the first clone came within striking distance, her eyes snapped open, blazing with renewed intensity.
What followed defied comprehension. Violet moved through the swarm of attackers like water flowing through cracks, her body a continuous blur of motion. Each movement was perfectly economical, each strike precisely calibrated to maximum effect.
A spinning kick decapitated three clones simultaneously. A palm strike completely disintegrated another. She caught a blade between her palms, then reversed its momentum to impale its wielder. Two more clones were destroyed when she redirected their attacks into each other.
In less than ten seconds—though it seemed to unfold in slow motion—all twenty duplicates had been reduced to pools of inert liquid metal. Not a single one had managed to land a blow.
The real Steel, recognizing the scale of the threat, gathered his remaining power for one final, desperate attack. His entire body transformed, becoming a living weapon of liquid metal shaped like a massive spear. He launched himself at Violet with such velocity that the air before him ignited from friction alone.
Violet met his charge head-on. Her right fist, trailing white energy like a comet's tail, connected with the point of Steel's transformed body. The collision generated a shockwave that demolished what remained of the chamber's structural integrity. Support columns crumbled, walls collapsed, and the ceiling began to cave in around them.
For a moment, they remained locked in perfect stasis—unstoppable force meeting immovable object. Then Violet's power prevailed. Steel's transformed body cracked, then shattered into thousands of mercury droplets that scattered across the ruined chamber.
The droplets attempted to reform, a final, desperate bid for survival. But Violet's next attack prevented reconstitution. She channeled her power into a concentrated blast of white energy that engulfed the scattered remains, preventing them from reuniting.
Steel's consciousness, fragmented but still aware, realized the extent of his defeat. His physical form was temporarily obliterated, though not permanently destroyed. Given time, he could reform—but that time would not be granted.
Violet stood triumphant amid the ruins, but awareness flickered in her eyes. The tremendous power of Surge Mode was taking its toll. She could feel her enhanced abilities beginning to fade, life force burning away with each passing second. She needed to end this quickly.
As she prepared to deliver the final blow, the scattered metal around her began to writhe with renewed purpose. Steel, though fragmented, was not defeated. The metal flooring, walls, even the debris from their battle—all of it responded to his desperate command.
With sickening speed, the metal beneath Violet coalesced into a massive spike of impossible sharpness. Before her fading reflexes could respond, the spike shot upward with devastating force, impaling her through the abdomen and lifting her off the ground.
A gasp of shock and pain escaped her lips as blood blossomed across her white clothing. The spike continued to grow, lifting her higher as its tip emerged from her back, slick with her lifeblood.
Steel's consciousness reformed partially, enough to create a head and torso from the liquid metal pooled nearby. He observed her impalement with cold satisfaction.
"Your Surge Mode is impressive," he acknowledged, voice distorted but recognizable. "But ultimately futile. No power comes without cost, and yours was too great to sustain."
Violet hung suspended on the massive spike, blood dripping steadily to the floor below. The white aura surrounding her flickered and dimmed as Surge Mode began to fade. Yet even in her agony, a smile touched her bloodied lips as she remembered Michael's motionless form.
"I guess... it's now your turn... Crimson Angel," she whispered, her voice weak but filled with unwavering conviction.
With the last reserves of her extraordinary power, Violet raised a trembling hand toward the direction of Michael's body. White energy gathered around her fingertips, coalescing into a final, desperate effort.
"ARISE, MY ANGEL!" she screamed, her voice carrying such power that the very foundations of the tower trembled in response.
The energy shot from her outstretched hand in a blinding beam, engulfing Michael's lifeless form in pure white light. As the radiance faded and Violet's consciousness began to slip away, the tower fell into momentary silence.
Then, within that perfect stillness, a single heartbeat echoed throughout the ruins.