JUNE 18th, 2014.

As soon as he woke up, Kat immediately brought Seth to Liam’s office.

She had a different ambiance to her than what she presented the day before, acting much more serious and direct. As she twisted the knob and opened the door, Seth could see Liam and Yasu inside. Yasu was leaning against the left wall with his back pressed against it, showing a look that screamed ‘I don’t want to be here’. Liam, on the other hand, stood beside the right side of his desk while reading through a medium-sized book, flipping through the pages and searching for something in particular.

“Good morning, Seth,” he says, not looking up from his book. “I hope you slept well. There’s a long day ahead of you.”

He continues to flip through the book until he clicks his lips together, disappointed. Closing it with a slight slam and setting it down on his desk as he pulls out his chair, he sits down on it and sets his arms on the table.

“I heard back from the Administration… they want to see what you’re capable of.”

“This is a shitty idea, Liam.” Kat pipes in, crossing her arms with a stern frown on her face. “If he synchronizes here…”

“I know. But this isn’t an order we can just ignore, either. Not this time.”

Seth steps forward, staring at Liam with a confused and weary look in his eyes..

“Is this some kind of test?”

Liam looks down at his hands, still resting on the desk as he cups one with the other.

“Yes, you could call it that…”

Interrupting him, Yasu leans forward and begins walking up to the desk before slamming his palm on the top of it.

“Tell the rookie the truth, Liam.”

Liam remained silent for a moment before looking up at Seth with a sympathetic and guilty appearance… something was wrong, but Seth didn’t know what.

“Kat will be fighting you in an attempt to bring Yggdrasil out, however…” he begins to say, keeping eye contact with Seth despite his obvious inner turmoil, “...synchronizations only happen under dire circumstances, when the signer is put under extreme stress. To push you to that point, she’s going to try and kill you.”

…What? Kill me? Her?

Seth stares blank-faced at the statement, and at Liam who had just delivered it. Doubting the truth of what he said, Seth glances over at Kat, who has her left arm at her side and is holding it with her other hand, looking away.

I get it now. This is just her job. It’s not like she has a choice… I know how that feels, at least.

Seth glances back at Liam, who still has that same guilty look spread across his lips.

“If I synchronize with him… what then?” Seth asks, pointing his index finger at himself.

“Well,” Liam replies, “we’ll record the data we need and then have Miyuki stop you.”

Miyuki…? Who?

Noticing the confusion on Seth’s face, Liam takes on a proud smile, raising his index finger in the air toward the ceiling.

“Miyuki is a legend among the members of TWR. Even within her ranks, she’s infamous. Once, she was offered a position in the Administration, but denied it to stay here instead. Her ability as a signer is rivaled by only a few, and her physical prowess is absurd.”

That really doesn’t tell me a lot about her. Are you her fan, or something?

“...Would she be able to—”

“Without fail,” Liam cuts Seth off, glaring at him with another confident look. His eyebrows squint down, almost as if he’s challenging Seth before he continues. “And I almost forgot... as long as neither of you get turned into mincemeat, the nurses will heal your wounds.”

Liam taps his finger on the desk, falling into a repetitive rhythm.

“Yasu will spectate you. As soon as Seth synchronizes, he’ll call in Miyuki. Kat, until he does, you’ll have to fend him off. Is that clear, both of you?”

Kat scoffs, reluctantly nodding her head.

“Yeah. As day.”

“Can’t say I like it, but…” Seth closes his eyes, putting his right hand under his chin. “...If it’ll get me a stable job and a place to stay, I’ll do it.”

“Good,” Liam begins to say, appreciating the intensity behind Seth’s pupils, “resolve like that is what we need. I’ll see the both of you after you’re finished… I have faith that you’ll live to see another day.”

Seth looks away, exhibiting a slight frown as those words hang on his mind for a little longer than Liam had intended them to.

Well, even if I died… I would.

Yasu grunts in annoyance, then glares at the two of them, motioning for them to follow him with his left arm as he walks toward the door.

“Come on. Let’s go.”

. . . . .

Yasu leads Seth and Kat into an elevator, descending a few floors underneath the building, even further than the main section. The elevator was oddly spacious as if it was built with construction equipment and supplies in mind. It was shabby and very dull looking, with large metal panels covering the walls outside of the controls and the greenish-white fluorescent lights that illuminated the inside from the ceiling. According to the panel, there seemed to be a few floors under the one they were going to stop at, but Seth couldn’t make out any of the worn numbers from where he stood. Arriving at the floor, the doors opened to reveal a very large arena with panels across every wall, containing lights underneath them that lit up the entire space. Directly ahead were bulletproof windows protecting an overhead spectating room, complete with chairs and an announcement system. There were various monitors and computers inside, and many, many cameras scattered throughout the area that weren’t visible to the naked eye.

Woah… this is... crazy. What am I even looking at? How much would it cost to build all this?

As the three of them stepped out of the elevator, Seth and Kat naturally approached the center while Yasu waved his hand behind him, heading toward a reinforced door with a fingerprint scanner off to the side, not bothering to look behind him.

“You two get comfortable. I’ll yell at you when I’m ready.”

He presses his thumb against the scanner as it reads his print, unlocking the door with a pressurized clunk. Kat walks over to the far side of the arena and begins to stretch, loosening her body. As he watches her, he realizes…

Wait, I don’t have my Mazen on me… I dropped it during the fight with that Vain guy! What the hell what am I supposed to do against her before I synchronize?! Run away?!

Glancing over at Seth, Kat sees that he’s panicking, and immediately blames herself for it.

“Y’know… I don’t have anything against you,” she begins to say, stretching her arms out, “it’s just my job. So… no hard feelings.”

Seth looked over his shoulder at her, surprised to hear her talk, and snapped out of his epiphany for a moment.

“Yeah, I figured. I’d do the same, so I can’t complain.”

“TESTING! TESTING! ONE! TWO! THREE!”

A blaring, mind-numbingly loud voice slams itself through the speakers surrounding the arena and reverberates around the entire space as it pierces both Seth’s and Kat’s ears, making them think they’re about to start bleeding.

“TURN IT THE HELL DOWN!” Kat yells, still holding her ears closed with her hands.

“There. That better?” Yasu asks over the loudspeaker, sounding a little annoyed.

“Would’ve been nice if you hadn’t blown our eardrums out!” she retorts with another yell, lightly gritting her teeth.

Seth slowly removes his hands from his ears, looking over at Kat, and then at Yasu, who’s leaning over a table behind the bulletproof glass to talk into the installed microphone.

Somebody looks relaxed.

“Okay then…” Yasu begins to say while pulling out a cigarette, “You can start killing each other whenever.”

Seth cups his hands next to his mouth, yelling toward the windows.

“Aren’t you going to do a countdown?!”

Yasu chuckles to himself over the loudspeaker, amused.

“Rookie, does this look like a schoolyard to you? The faster you get your face kicked in, the faster I can stop babysitting. Come on, start fighting.”

“Man, a countdown is—” Seth begins to reply but…

“Gotcha.”

Kat cuts him off, starting to ominously walk toward him. He’d been mostly cautious around her, but even then, she never seemed like a threat.

This was absolutely not the case in front of him. Her eyes glare at him like she wants to rip his throat out, and her calm, efficient movement is only comparable to watching a serial killer stalk their next victim. Seth took a few steps behind him, too focused on the threatening atmosphere around her rather than his own location.

Never stopping her intense stare pointed directly at him, she halts her movement for a moment before lifting the heel of her right shoe and tapping it against the floor, just once. In less than a second, a thick gravestone erupts in front of her, resembling the ones she wore as gauntlets when she attacked Seth after his fight with Vain. Seth keeps stepping backward until his back is close to one of the side walls, limiting his movement.

Kat starts rushing at Seth at a break-neck pace, placing her right arm behind the grounded tombstone as it reforms around her arm, replicating one of the gauntlets she had before. She brings her shoulder back, along with the gauntlet, and throws a punch forward as Seth barely dodges out of the way, hitting the ground and tumbling off to the side. He wasn’t much of a fighter, normally. Whenever he had a problem that he had to solve with violence, he’d just use a gun.

That was the preferable way of handling things.

And yet, as he glanced up at the large crater in the wall that Kat’s graveyard gauntlet had left there, as she heavily breathed in and out, losing control of her emotions…

…He figured that even a gun wouldn’t help him in this situation.

“Come on…” she trailed off with a coarse, heavy breath like she was forcing herself. “...If you don’t dodge this, then... you really will die.”

She dislodged the gauntlet from the wall as rubble from the damaged panel scattered across the floor like pebbles. The light behind the panel had been mostly destroyed, but what was left of the functional bits flashed off and on violently.

Before Seth could even realize what his body was doing, the bottoms of his hi-tops slammed against the floor violently, making as much distance as they possibly could. His breathing was erratic and unpredictable. His heart rate had spiked, and adrenaline had started to kick in.

Hey, are you seeing this?! If you don’t synchronize with me, she’s going to kill us!

As soon as he finished that thought, a large gravestone flew over near his head, crashing against the floor a few meters in front of him.

His body froze up, as he looked over his right shoulder, just to be met with another gravestone in front of her as she was bringing her arm back behind her side, preparing to punch it at full force. Instinctively, Seth began running as fast as he could to the side of where she was aiming, staying out of her effective range.

She’s punching those gravestones like a cannon, what the hell?!  On the bright side, that means she’s slow turning and—

Another gravestone flies near Seth’s torso, crashing into the wall to his right side and just barely missing him. He stares at it as his body forces him to run even faster, circling around Kat.

Dammit, I can’t keep this up forever… her right arm is almost completely covered by that heavy gauntlet, if I get in close, then maybe…!

He starts reducing the radius of the circle surrounding her, as he tilts his body inward to slowly gain a positional advantage. Two more laps and several dodged gravestones later, he finally sees his opening as she hasn’t turned her body to meet his yet.

Now!

(Continued in Part Two, the word limit exists.)