The boss' armor changed. It didn't shift or change shape much, but it thinned.
The plates pulled inward until they were barely there at all. They faded into something like dark glass, almost see-through. The greaves shrank the same way, tracing his legs instead of covering them.
Only the helmet stayed solid. Black, whole, and unchanged.
I didn't understand why. I didn't know what it was supposed to mean. A challenge? Did he think that he would win even without any protection?
Without the armor, he looked more exposed than he ever had. I tried to tell myself it was deliberate. Everything he did usually was. But watching those plates fade until they barely existed felt like watching someone step out of cover in the middle of a firing line.
I wouldn't have done it, but what did I know?
The woman noticed and laughed sharply. "Ohhh," she said, dragging the sound out like a child spotting a sweet. "You're funny. You get smaller when it's serious. People usually try to make themselves bigger to ward off any danger. Wait, does that mean you like being in danger? We got something in common then."
She looked around the ground, and then bent over to scoop up some weapons.
Axes. Knives. Broken blades. Even just large chunks of masonry that had fallen from buildings long ago and nobody had bothered to clean them up. Anything she could get her hands on.
"Let's see… what do we have?" She threw a knife. "Sharp, sharp, sharp, and this one's heavy!"
They bounced off at first, each hit giving a solid thud, and then an ax slammed into the boss's chest and stuck.
The blade punched straight through the thin armor and bit into him, stopping only when the haft caught. A knife followed, then another.
"Oh! That one went in," she said, delighted. "Did you feel that? I bet you felt that."
She didn't stop and kept throwing everything she could find, laughing between breaths. "Catch this!"
The weapons were so fast that they screamed through the air and caught themselves sticking inside the boss' flesh.
Blood ran dark down his armor.
The woman stopped and clapped, bouncing on her feet. "You're still standing. Most people, armor or not, would have fallen over by now."
The boss reached up and pulled out whatever was stuck, letting it clatter to the ground.
She leaned forward, eyes shining. And then she vanished.
One blink she was there; the next she slammed into him like a cannonball. They hit the ground hard enough to crack stone.
She landed on top of him, and her fists came down fast and hard, aimed at his head. Each hit was like ringing a gong.
"You hear that? It's the sound of you breaking," she said.
It didn't seem like she was fighting to win. She was fighting to fight. Every sound he made, every weapon that struck, made her brighter and sharper, it seemed.
I'd seen cruel people before. I'd seen sadists. This was someone who needed resistance. She was someone who only knew that she existed when there was something trying to stop her. And it seemed that the boss was the only one capable of stopping her.
He caught her wrist mid-strike.
She grinned wider and twisted, bones popping as she bent her arm the wrong way just to slip free. "Don't grab that. I didn't give you permission."
He rolled, throwing her off.
She hit the ground, sprang back to her feet, and kicked him square in the chest.
He flew into the wall hard enough to shatter it.
She skipped closer, hands clasped behind her back. "Did that hurt?"
I never thought the boss would stay down, and he didn't.
Blood, far too much of it, dripped from under the helmet, pattering onto the stones.
Dark, wet streaks ran down armor that had never failed before. I'd never seen the boss injured. I didn't know how much punishment he could take. I'd always assumed there was a limit somewhere far beyond anything normal. I hoped that was still true.
The woman swayed side to side, watching him like a cat watching a string. "Still going. Oh, you're special."
She rushed him again.
They met in the middle of the street, blows exchanged too fast to follow. When he hit her, something cracked. She only laughed harder.
"That one was good!" she said, liking the blood dripping from her nose.
She slammed her head into his chest, then bit at his shoulder, teeth scraping uselessly on armor. He grabbed her by the throat and drove her into the ground hard enough to crater the street.
She wheezed, eyes bright. "That's it!"
She rolled, came up on one knee, and wiped blood from her mouth with the back of her hand, smearing it across her face like paint.
"I knew when Alice came to me that she'd have something good," she said happily, "but I didn't think it would be this good."
She tilted her head at the boss, her grin full of gaps and promise.
"Alright," she said. "Let's break you properly now."
They hit the street like living siege engines.
The boss grabbed her mid-charge and threw her. She smashed through a door, then a wall behind it, bricks bursting outward in a cloud of dust and splinters.
She came back out a heartbeat later.
She landed feet-first on his chest and drove him backward, stone exploding beneath them as they skidded down the street.
"This is GREAT!" she crowed, grabbing a broken beam as they passed and swinging it into his side.
He slammed her into the ground hard enough to leave a body-shaped dent.
She bounced once, then sprang up again, bleeding, eyes wild.
She scooped up debris as she moved. Bricks. Chunks of wood. A bent signpost.
"Catch!" she sang.
Each throw hit like a ballista bolt. One smashed into his stomach. Another hit his ribs and drove him sideways through a storefront window. Glass rained down like ice.
I moved again, farther back.
This was a fight that killed people just for standing nearby.
The street came apart around them. Walls cracked. Doors exploded. Stone shattered under impacts that should have flattened buildings, not to mention people. I kept shifting back, farther and farther.
If one of those hits struck me, I'd be pulverized into red mist.
The boss came back out of the building. Blood ran freely from beneath the helmet, soaking the thin armor.
She jumped on his back and did everything she could, biting him and scratching him, but none of it worked well.
Her grip was like iron as the boss jumped high into the night sky so that he and the moon became one for a second, then let himself fall on his back, landing on a nearby rooftop and letting her absorb all the impact.
The people left in the streets couldn't see them, but I could from my hiding spot.
The boss stood, and the woman stayed down for half a second.
I thought it was over, but I should have known better.
The next second, she stood up again.
She spat out a tooth. "Oops. You're really tough."
She ripped away what little cloth she had left, leaving herself in nothing but her underwear.
And in another instant, she was on him again.
Broken teeth, blood, and bare and torn skin, none of it slowed her down. She didn't care how much it would cost to win. Pain was just part of the process. Retreat wasn't an option because she never acknowledged that it existed.
For a moment, it felt less like a street fight and more like watching a boxing match.
The boss moved the way you'd expect. He kept a tight guard, elbows in, blocking what he couldn't avoid and slipping just enough to turn clean hits into glancing ones.
Every motion had purpose, drilled, restrained, conserving himself. But he was heavy. Just a fraction slower than her.
She was the opposite. Wild and off-rhythm, arms swinging from bad angles like she'd never learned how to fight properly. And it didn't matter.
She took hits that would have dropped anyone else, laughed through them, and kept coming, darting in and out, refusing to stay where the boss could control the pace.
It was like watching a disciplined fighter try to catch a pig in the mud.
When she caught a devastating hit with her face, she jumped back for a moment and pulled a knife from the wraps at her chest.
The woman drove it into the boss's side with as much strength as she could muster.
Her grip slipped, and her hand rode upward, cutting herself with the blade, but she achieved her goal. The knife stuck in the boss' side, and only a few drops of blood spilled from the wound.
When it went in, it wasn't dramatic. No clever angle. Just raw force driven through armor into flesh.
My fingers dug into the stone around me.
I thought it was over.