A few minutes earlier.

  "Where are you going? The fireworks aren't over," Kirishima said. He was leaning back on his elbows, looking up at Robinn as she stood up. She began walking away from the patch of grass the class had claimed as their own, her silhouette cutting a sharp line against the flickering sky.

  She glanced down. Her expression was tired, lacking any of the soft warmth one might expect at a summer festival. Her face was barely illuminated by the rhythmic pulses of light from above, the flashes of neon green and white cast long, flickering shadows across her features. "I need some water. I'll be back in a bit."

  Mina and Tetsutetsu, sitting nearby, looked back at her briefly. Tetsutetsu threw up a thumbs up with one hand while his other held the plastic bag containing the nameless goldfish she'd won earlier. His attention was already drifting back to the explosive display, his eyes reflecting the glitter of the pyrotechnics.

  Kirishima hesitated for a second, his throat suddenly feeling dry and tight. He stood up after her. "Yeah, me too... I guess," he blurted out. He followed her up the hill and toward the rows of brightly lit stalls, pausing briefly to wipe his pants to get the damp grass and dirt off the fabric. Robinn briefly glanced at him and nodded, but she didn't slow her pace. Her stride was purposeful and efficient, even in a crowd.

  He caught up with her as they reached the warm, orange glow of the lantern light. He walked by her side as the noisy cheers of the clearing began to fade behind them, replaced by the rhythmic clatter of wooden sandals on pavement and the distant, muffled thud of fireworks.

  "You seemed anxious down there. Everything okay?" Kirishima asked her. He kept his voice low, trying to stay beneath the booming echoes that rumbled in the chest of everyone at the festival.

  Robinn didn't look at him. Her gaze stayed locked straight ahead, navigating the gaps in the crowd with a predator’s precision. "I don't like fireworks," she said simply. The words felt heavy, sinking into the humid air. In her mind, she wasn't at a festival. She was back in a sterile hospital room, watching the colors bleed through a glass window while the rhythmic beep of a heart monitor provided a secondary, much more terrifying tempo. The flashes always seemed to startle her mother, and to a young Robinn, those explosions had felt like a countdown she was powerless to stop.

  Kirishima blinked, surprised by the bluntness. "And why’s that?"

  "I dunno," she lied. It was a quick, flat deflection. She reached into her pocket and grabbed her phone, checking the time with a flick of her thumb before shoving it back into the fabric of her hoodie.

  "You shouldn't force yourself to watch the fireworks if you don't like them, you know?" He doubted his own words as they came out. The advice felt thin and a bit too obvious, but he finished the sentence anyway, hoping to bridge the widening gap between them.

  She gave him a sharp look. Her features twisted with a flash of mild anger that broke through her usual stoicism. Without missing a beat, she snapped at him. "Why are you so curious all of a sudden? Just stay quiet."

  Kirishima took the hint. He fell into a respectful, if slightly stung, silence and turned his attention to the stalls and the people around them. He’d clearly hit a sore spot. Still, seeing the other kids looking starstruck at the sky did ease his mind a bit. The silence between them grew thick and uncomfortable, 'deadly' sort of quiet that stretched out as they navigated through the dense, sweltering heart of the festival.

  After a bit longer of a walk, they reached a drink stall draped in vibrant blue and white banners. They stopped in front of it, standing just behind a family with two toddlers who were busy shaking their ramune bottles to hear the glass marbles clink against the sides. The air was sweltering here, thick with the smell of sweet syrup and the heavy, humid press of the crowd.

  He looked at her as they finally reached the front of the line. Her features hadn't softened, but her eyes looked calmer, reflecting the blue of the stall’s banners. As he looked into them, time seemed to slow down. He saw her pupils narrow. Her expression changed in a fraction of a second, shifting into an intense, panicked stare at the stall.

  Her neck began shifting into metal the same instant. The silver sheen bloomed across her skin, just in time to block a sharp blade that slammed into her throat. It hit with a horrible, ear-piercing screeching sound, sending a spray of bright orange sparks into the air. Robinn collapsed backwards as the blade shattered against her reinforced flesh. She fell onto her back, the entire sequence of events having unfolded in less than a heartbeat.

  The edge of the festival grounds felt even lonelier during the fireworks.

  Under the trees, it was just Kaminari, the dark shapes of trunks stretching upward, and a couple making out on a bench nearby. That, more than anything, felt like a personal insult. He kept his head down as he walked, hands in his pockets, moving without direction or intention. He hadn’t even realized how far he’d gone until the noise of the crowd dulled and the lantern light thinned.

  He stopped.

  Then his legs gave out.

  Kaminari collapsed beside a tree, the rough bark pressing into his shoulder as the damp grass soaked through his pants. The fireworks were still loud even out here, the sound rolling through his chest, disorienting and relentless. His breathing hitched. His eyes burned. By the time the tears came, he was too exhausted to do anything about them.

  Too tired to scream, he whispered instead.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "Why me?.."

  He wiped at his face again and again, but it didn’t help. His heart felt like it was trying to tear itself apart, too many emotions crashing together at once. He was already wiped out, already running on nothing, and he wasn’t strong enough to fight it now.

  The void he’d been carrying all night finally filled, but not with relief. With everything else. Hurt. Jealousy. Embarrassment. That sick, hollow feeling in his gut.

  All he wanted, suddenly and desperately, was to call his mom and ask her to come pick him up. He fumbled his phone out of his pocket but didn’t lift it, just let it hang limply at his side, screen dark against his palm.

  Everything he’d done today felt like a waste.

  He felt used by his friends, and the thought made him angry at himself more than them. He hated even considering it. They wouldn’t do that. They couldn’t. It had to be a horrible turn of fate instead.

  Seeing Jirou like that.

  He hadn’t known she and Momo were a thing. Even though it had been right in front of him the whole time, his own feelings must have blinded him.

  Robinn’s back hit the ground with a solid, jarring thud that vibrated through her spine. The air was driven from her lungs in a sharp wheeze, leaving her gasping against the humid heat of the pavement.

  She scrambled to get back up, her hands scraping against the stone. Metal surged across her skin, spreading fast and uneven as her focus fractured. She had barely noticed the blade at all, and had barely blocked it. It had torn straight through the blue fabric of the stall in front of her, punching clean through a heavy industrial refrigerator. The interior lights of the cooler flickered weakly, casting a dying, rhythmic pulse over the spilled ramune bottles before the unit finally went dark. The blade retracted with a wet, sliding sound.

  The thing was long and twisted, jagged rather than clean, and looked impossibly sharp in the flickering lantern light. It moved with a sickening, liquid speed, extending and withdrawing like it had no physical limit.

  Robinn barely had time to register the mechanical horror of it before she looked at Kirishima.

  He was frozen. His eyes were wide, reflecting the chaos, but his limbs were leaden. The shock of the sudden transition from a festival to a death-trap had jammed his gears.

  The refrigerator screeched as it was sliced apart. Three more of the metal blades ripped through the appliance in quick succession, turning the heavy metal box into a pile of jagged scrap. Robinn turned back just in time to see the next flurry coming. She braced herself, planting her feet as the transformation finished crawling down her legs, anchoring her to the earth like a statue.

  The blades slammed into her raised arms.

  Sparks burst outward. Jagged chunks of metal from the blades tore free and hissed through the air as they shattered against her reinforced forearms. The impact rattled through her frame, a bone-deep vibration that threatened to buckle her knees, but her transformed muscles held with the unyielding rigidity of an anvil.

  A woman screamed.

  The sound snapped Kirishima out of it. It was a high, thin sound that cut through the booming fireworks above.

  His head jerked toward Robinn just as several blades passed within an arm’s length of him. They were close enough for him to feel the displacement of the air, a cold wind following the steel, but they didn’t angle toward him. They were focused on Robinn. The screaming woman was the worker. Shrapnel from the shattered refrigerator had torn into her arm. Dark blood began spotting the fabric of her apron as she staggered back, clutching her limb.

  Kirishima tried to move but his body felt impossibly heavy, locked in place by the sheer absurdity of the attack.

  She screamed again.

  That was what finally broke the spell.

  His body moved on instinct, not decision. Kirishima vaulted the counter and hardened his skin mid-leap, his flesh turning to jagged, unyielding rock. He crashed his arm down into the extending blades as they surged out of the ruined refrigerator like silver snakes. The impact shattered them and the fragments clattered to the ground as the relentless motion finally faltered.

  More screams rose around them, spreading through the crowd like a wildfire. Somewhere nearby, a kid was crying, a panicked, rhythmic wail.

  Kirishima barely heard it.

  He jumped in front of the injured worker, spreading his stance just as another cluster of blades tore through the stall fabric. They slammed into his chest with terrifying force, the impact sounding like a hammer hitting a stone. The blades drove him backward. He dug his heels into the stone path, his teeth clenched so hard he thought they might crack as he fought to hold his ground against the onslaught.

  "Kirishima!" Robinn shouted from behind him. "The worker lady ran off, get out of the way!"

  As if on cue, his legs gave out under the sustained pressure.

  The blades shoved him back, crashing him through the remains of the wooden counter. He skidded across the stone, wood splinters flying, and landed hard on his ass beside Robinn. The extensions shot past overhead, buried deep into the framework of the stall behind them with a series of heavy thuds.

  "What the hell is that?!" he gasped. His breath came in panicked, shallow bursts. He didn’t dare take his eyes off the writhing metal to look at her.

  Robinn’s breathing was just as rough, her chest heaving as she fought the fatigue of the rapid transformation. "I don't know."

  The blades that had struck Kirishima began to move again, but this time they pulled backward with a rasping sound. At the same moment, the ruined stall toppled forward. The heavy wood and fabric collapsed away to reveal the full shape of the nightmare.

  Dozens of the same jagged blades were stabbed into the ground in a towering, warped tree shape. They all connected messily to a figure perched at the top. The man was bound in dark, restrictive clothing, and the extensions jutted outward directly from his mouth.

  "Fuck..." Robinn whispered as recognition hit.

  Her body faded back to normal, the silver receding as she turned. She grabbed Kirishima by the wrist and yanked him forward with a strength that brooked no argument. "We need to move!"

  She didn’t slow as they ran. They scrambled over a pile of overturned chairs and shattered crates, the sweet scent of spilled festival syrup mixing with the metallic tang of blood. They vaulted a low stone fence, the impact jarring their joints, and crouched on the other side. They pressed their backs to the cool stone just as a cluster of blades crashed into the spot they had been standing moments before, pulverizing the pavement.

  Kirishima followed without thinking, his heart hammering against his ribs. Only once they were momentarily out of sight did he manage to suck in a real breath.

  "What do we do?!"

  Robinn ignored the question. She peeked over the edge of the fence, her eyes sharp, cold, and entirely focused. "How many civilians were there?" she asked without looking at him. Her voice was flat and clinical.

  He thought fast, the sound of metal scraping against stone and stalls collapsing echoing around them in the dark. "The workers… a few others, and a family, I think." He said hoping he was right.

  She crouched back down and looked at him. The expression was one he recognized instantly. It was the same one she’d worn back at the U.S.J.

  "We’re the only ones here who can take a hit," she said quickly. "Don't fight. Just block and make sure everyone gets away from that thing."

  Metal began creeping across her skin again as she spoke, the silver light reflecting in her dark eyes.

  "Don't die."