The first person to eat a tomato must have been fearless beyond measure. Red things in nature usually meant poison, and yet someone took that gamble.

  Human advancement had never progressed any other way. It was a tradition Kelly upheld by mapping magic, by dissecting runes, by attempting to tear the fabric of time itself.

  This was the tradition she was explaining to Ren in the sealed-off private battle hall. He was curious and intrigued, especially by her claims of possessing a temporal mutation and her looping. By her story that she had fought him and forced him to employ a weapon augment in battle.

  She described the weapon to him in detail. A Magnetically-Driven Hypervelocity Lance integrated into the user’s calves. It combined railgun and coilgun principles to deliver a focused, hypervelocity strike. On impact, it vaporized the target, formed a plasma jet, and drove momentum deep, and produced massive force with minimal noise, energy working in a vacuum. She mentioned how he could precisely tune its power, ranging up to a small-meteor-level localized impact. And how he’d used it to hit her with several very annoying, internal organ rupturing blasts.

  Kelly confirmed it all as Ren asked questions. As fantastical as it all sounded, she confirmed every point.

  Ren closed the file with a soft, definitive click and looked at her, his expression unreadable.

  “Your present EQ is 8.6,” he said. “That’s too low to even make me take a step.”

  He leaned back; the chair groaned faintly beneath him. “You expect me to believe a time loop?” A pause. “Your file has missing years. From your childhood. That’s suspicious.”

  His gaze didn’t waver. “But this story of yours—” he gave a short, humorless breath, “—it’s so stupid a sleeper agent would never use it. Are you really that desperate to gain favour in the organization?”

  He shook his head slowly. “Foolish. Nonsensical.”

  Outside, the world was ending, sirens and distant collapse barely bleeding through the walls. Ren didn’t even glance toward the muted sound.

  “Even with the insane apocalypse happening out there,” he said, “this story is simply ridiculous.”

  Kelly got irritated. “Hey. What gives? Yesterday we were besties. Now you’re looking at me like I’ve got two heads. It’s totally true. I know for a fact you’ve seen something like it before.”

  “Such a loud and rude tone to take with your superior,” the old veteran asked. He was mildly amused. A growing schadenfreude was evident at her frustration. “For a woman caught in a time loop shouldn’t you have better manners?”

  Kelly responded by referencing the past loop. She reminded him that he had told her a bunch of top secret stuff and then they had fought. She listed it all. The public explanation for mutants was false. The real cause was humanity’s exploitation of quantum-tuned atmospheric gases from the Tüin war. The AI’s use of them, the corporate experiments. The breach that let something look back. Portals. Extradimensional entities. Him being there for the first mutant, the first ‘god’ at a stabilized portal, the first temporal mutant scanned twenty-one years ago. The scans showing a mind in multiple places at once. His belief based on that direct experience.

  Ren listened, then nodded once, his expression unreadable.

  “That’s quite the inventory of secrets,” Ren said. “Either you’ve memorized a very long list, or you’ve been rummaging in places well above your clearance.” A hint of humor crept into his voice, a faint smile tugging his lips. “Impressive. But a well-stocked warehouse of secrets is still not proof of time travel.”

  Kelly decided talking wasn’t going to work this loop. Seeing as he was already there, she might as well show him she was telling the truth.

  “Ok that’s it—I’m going lethal,” she said. With a thought, her shovel unfolded, its shape unfurling like a chrome flower, until it snapped into the shape of a long, segmented chainblade. Its surfaced rippled like living metal, the Nickel-Titanium alloy rearranging internally, runes shifting within to cause plasma and lightning to race along its edge, infusing the weapon with enough voltage to charge the very air.

  Kelly set her weight to her leading leg, her weapon charged, the very air tasting like static. “So if you don’t get serious, you’ll lose a few fingers. Or get a new haircut.”

  “Die, maybe.”

  That last part was pretty optimistic, but Kelly said it anyway.

  The old veteran simply folded his arms behind his back. He adopted no stance. He might as well have been waiting for a bus. He was beckoning her to make the attempt, refusing to move or even set his feet. “Come then,” he said. The words were flat, a challenge.

  Where before he’d been incredulous, now a very open smirk settled on his face. He was amused.

  And so it started.

  Kelly attacked him with all of her boons.

  Her magic traits, her hacks, her augments, her runes, her weapons. And one magic-boosting title.

  Mana Vacuum.

  The Mana Vacuum Title wasn’t as immediately powerful as Death’s Foe, but it sucked the world’s ambient mana into her body like a voracious storm. That mana fueled every single magical effect she had running. It fed her muscles. Fuelled her augments. It supercharged her Aberration of Mana Trait, which just meant the mana came in faster. Mana rushed into her, refusing to stop, compressing inside her, pressing in, growing denser with each second, crushed until it became something denser—purer, constantly absorbing and compressing more—a dense volatility inside her, growing.

  Through her Mana Conduit trait, Kelly could feel every shift of the mana in the hall, and could feel the striking difference between it, and the hyper-dense surge inside her. It didn’t stop. Each second it grew thicker and denser as more was absorbed, compressing, slowly growing stronger over time.

  Her Troll-Marrowed trait got a boost. Her bones gained even more durability and density than titanium. Her Primordial Blood surged, hitting her system with the heat of a triple espresso. Kelly’s body gained more energy, adapted to magic just a little more, filled with potential. Her Lesser-Lycanthrope trait grew even stronger. Where before the changes were subtle, now her face held wolf eyes. They were almond-shaped, glowing amber, with an intense, watchful focus. Her senses overloaded. Her claws were like sharp knives. Her teeth extended, sharp enough to bite into metal. Her Lesser-Mimic title caused her mimic skin to expand past her wrist, stopping just beyond it. This was further boosted by her [Absorb] runes, creating a cascade of surging energy.

  The surge felt like the universe had finally approved her expense report.

  And the fact remained that Ren was still so far ahead of her. Her sound-cracking chain blade strikes, her sonic-speed projectiles, her gravity spikes—all of it failed to change his expression. Or cause him to move his feet. He shifted his weight with a casual ease that made her overwhelming offense look scheduled. The gap between them was a canyon. Her world-ending onslaught was a minor inconvenience. A child, waving a stick at a mountain.

  The entire spectacle played out like a mandatory training video he was starring in.

  Her chainblade’s scream died as Ren’s palm slapped its flat side, redirecting its momentum deep into the floor with a spark-showering grind. The sonic-speed ball bearings she fired from her shadow cracked against the dense, matte-grey plating of his forearm guard, chipping the finish but failing to penetrate.

  He hadn’t moved his feet.

  “Your footwork is not bad,” Ren said, his voice a low rumble under the whine of fading machinery. “For a beginner. Your combat timing is acceptable. It resembles a battle veteran’s.” He let the compliment hang, then finished. “A dead one.”

  Kelly paused, looking pissed. Then an array of shields sprung into existence around her, tens of them, suspended in mid air. Each of them hurled in his direction.

  Kelly blinked out from behind a hexagonal shield, reappearing three meters left, the chainblade in one hand and a pistol in the other. She fired three times. He tilted his head, letting the rounds sigh past his ear.

  “You promised you could trade with me. That you could survive my blows,” he reminded her, folding his arms. The gesture was relaxed, confident. “So far, I see a woman using ineffectual tactics. A fascinating array of mutations, but ineffectual nonetheless.”

  “Hey, I’m not even using my best Title,” Kelly said, her breath steadying. She hadn’t used any of them but one. Mana Vacuum churned inside her, a vortex of compressed power, constantly growing. She needed the juice. Multiple skips. Things he wouldn’t see coming. The Daughter of War title sat ready, another heavy switch she wouldn’t flip. Cranking that gravity and attraction effect would turn the building into a beacon for every leviathan and unspoken horror in the grid. Even the smaller, less dangerous but equally annoying creatures. The lesson wasn’t worth the stampede. Not here, anyway.

  “You look like you’re using everything you have,” Ren stated.

  “I’m getting warmed up,” she corrected. “I’m not lazy, I’m just in energy-saving mode.”

  “Ah. My mistake.” Ren’s smirk remained. He unfolded his arms, letting them hang loose at his sides. “Then let me help you switch gears.”

  He moved.

  Kelly used her causality breaking abilities, her sporadic occasional pseudo invulnerability that occasionally causes her to simply reject all forms of breaking, occasionally allowing her to simply tank blows that would turn anyone else to fine mist, an impossible feat. Her critical hits that occasionally multiply her blows tenfold activated. Her tripling her speed, her doubling her every specialization—strength, cognition, resilience, speed in a split second, her near instant regeneration, a fear aura, her ability to just resist inertia, her resisting damage from flames, her fists glowing molten with shunted heat as she douses them in explosions pulled from her shadow dimension—all of it was in use. She redirected or very rarely, completely reversed the inertia of his attacks through deflection, although her limbs snapped or occasionally obliterated in the process before regenerating. Her split millisecond gravity spikes hammered the space around her beyond even that of multiple suns.

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  He instantly adapted and wrecked her, his eyebrows raised at her peculiar feats.

  The power of the old veteran was simply too ridiculous. Even worse than hers. Sort of. Only in that it was being used against her. And more than the power, the real threat and danger was the expertise—an ancient centenarian veteran from many wars. He knew tricks Kelly hadn’t even conceptualised.

  It was a relatively new experience, to be the one playing catch up for once. Kelly was used to the world spinning on a much slower axis than her thoughts. But not here. Not with the old monster. The only other time she’d felt this way was years back—whenever she’d tinkered with Jennie.

  Kelly snapped her fingers. A gravity spike hammered the space she occupied, the weight of two suns crashing down in a split second. The old man was already leaning back after a strike, the force distortion tugging uselessly at his jacket.

  “Okay,” she gasped, regeneration stitching a gash across her stomach shut. She held up a finger. “Time out. If you’re going to bring wartime experience, I might as well go all out.” She adjusted her grip on the chainblade in one hand and the gun in the other.

  Kelly went all in.

  This loop, she’d increased the number of runes in her weapon tenfold. It had taken a few tries to get it right without the material shattering and needing a full repair. She’d tested the design on dummy material first, a sensible step, before committing it to her rare alloy. Now, her transforming weapon could contain ten times the mana and was ten times as durable as before. It could withstand the repeated stress of reaching Mach speeds in whipblade mode. It was now as hard as one of the more stubborn metals you’d find in a building’s foundation. It could handle a meteoric impact.

  The mana sense from her mana attunement trait, combined with the tech in her lenses, allowed her to visibly see, feel, and sense the flow of mana. In her altered vision, her weapon was a concentrated riot of light and purpose.

  She was preparing to shunt her entire body forward through time into his blind spot. Then, she would time-skip only the movement of her arms, in quick succession, to break the sound barrier and unleash a storm of attacks faster than eyes should be able to follow. The theory was solid: the sonic booms from each attack should disrupt the air and hit him hard enough for at least one strike to land.

  In a single second, Kelly would unleash a dozen attacks. Each would crack the sound barrier. Each impact would be a stuttering frame that affected just her arms. The booms would overlap and coalesce into one titanic impact.

  It was still an incredibly draining ability. It took everything out of her. First-aid and healing vials taken from her workplace fixed the physical damage—the microfractures, the muscle tears—but they didn’t do much for the total drain she felt in whatever counted for her soul or her magic. But the more she experimented, the less devastating the recovery felt. Yesterday, she could only manage a single full-body teleport. Today, she was going to try one major shift and several minor ones in quick succession.

  Kelly connected to time. She reached into the local timestream. Her perception shifted. She isolated the necessary threads—the mana, the strange energy from her soul—and poured it all into a single, titanic attack. She was going to compress the timeline in just her arms, like pinching multiple threads together.

  And as all of it coalesced, as the blazing edge of her runic weapon tore through space towards the old veteran, Ren Sato, the ghost of many wars, Kelly spoke a warning. The words came with some difficulty. “You might want to dodge this.”

  The observation balconies had opened when their battle began. The vice-captain watched with a shocked, disbelieving face full of awe. They slammed shut now, a metal protective sheet blocking the hall from spectators, sealing them off from the fallout.

  The attack was different from anything she had ever tried before. Each blow from her fists would be infused with a trickle of enhanced time, causing them to move impossibly fast, but just the arms. Each blow would break the sound barrier and generate a sonic boom. A sonic boom generated a single millisecond of force in all directions. Kelly knew from experience a single one was equivalent to an explosion’s blast wave—not the explosion itself, but the shockwave. It was a concussive event with enough force to shatter windows and rumble old buildings. She’d heard stories of speed specialists, speedsters, using them offensively, usually in quick succession. Kelly was planning to throw twelve punches in a fraction of a second. When she’d tested it in her cleared-out lab, the act had drained her about as much as a single full-body teleport.

  She would have used her chainblade, but the last time she tried, she had almost fallen unconscious from the drain. The explosion from the sonic boom would compound, blast out in all directions, and assault her as well. Twelve was the limit. It was the safe level at which she could launch the attack without having her body obliterated. One of her fists, her mimic skin primed, her material bank ready to shift into an [Explosion] mana crystal. That would trigger in a continuous stream through the impacts, stuttering twelve times. It meant she wouldn’t escape this completely unscathed.

  It was going to be on a much grander scale than the attack she had made before. She instinctively felt that anything less would not even touch him.

  In the last loop, she hadn’t known what she was doing. The trait had been fresh, new. Her familiarity with the new sense it gave her had been too low. All of her traits had been. Now, they were each buffed by a grade. That meant her body was strong enough to channel all of the energy she could into the attack—far more than last time. Back then, her trait had been new and unknown, a pebble in the stream of time.

  Now, she had tested it extensively and had an idea of what she was doing. She was no longer a pebble resisting the current.

  She was a rock. Unmoving.

  She fired the gun, a steady pattern to herd him. She threw a grenade from her shadow. He knocked it into the air with a precise slap. It exploded above him, covering the space in smoke and debris. He evaded the falling wreckage without looking, a casual step taking him clear.

  She time-skipped into his blind spot. Her movement was a stutter of skipped frames. She unleashed twelve attacks with her fist, its skin a dense [Explosion] runed mana crystal. Each fist moved at Mach speed. She threw all twelve in half a second. Each attack overlapped with the next, a storm of compressed instants and converging force.

  A massive explosion rocked the room.

  The surrounding floor turned to rubble. Cracks spread through a room designed to withstand heavy artillery. The protective metal sheets sealing the balconies cracked. The dust was instantly swept away by the blast. The entire ground where he stood caved in completely. They both sank into a crater in the reinforced floor.

  She had used her bare fist. She hadn't reinforced it with her Mythril Fist title. The attack was still devastating. It was capable of obliterating multiple individuals in a blast of pure explosive force in all directions.

  Kelly had switched to her Fortress of Flame title as she'd swung. Her body still tingled with numbed pain.

  Before her, Ren Sato stood. He was unharmed. He held her fist where he'd casually caught it. Steam shunted off his arms and shoulders. Light flared in his augments as his nanotech reformed. He held a soft smirk.

  "Passable," he said. "That frame-skipping, teleporting thing was unique. Doesn't look like the work of a relic, or deadtech." He gave a considering hum. "Well. I suppose this is not bad. If barely. I guess if I was feeling lazy, that attack could make me use my weapon augment. But only because I don't want to ruin my clothes stopping it."

  "Do you believe me now?" Kelly asked, her breath returning.

  "Yeah. Knew you were telling the truth." He released her fist. "I was keeping an eye on your fight with the vice-captain. Had an employee on the balcony on a video call. I've seen a time mutation before. Yours is the second. The most powerful one. Beyond what should even be possible by any stretch.”

  He paused for a moment. “So much it doesn't even make sense. Your age makes it even more believable. Think I knew a relative of yours." He studied her. "I was wondering when you'd finally decide to use your time-jumping teleport ability."

  "It’s called a timeskip," Kelly corrected. "And I was adopted. Both my parents died. I have no family."

  "Why not just call it teleporting?"

  "Because it's not teleporting." Her words came in a rapid, focused stream. "I'm skipping forward in time. I can age things. I can rearrange things. I can alter things. Moving position is just one use. It's not even the best use. You can't teleport your fist. It would rip off. I'm literally skipping sections of myself forward in time. Parts of myself—the rest stays connected. It's like skipping forward on a video. Or pressing fast-forward to increase just my punch speed. It's temporal compression, not spatial relocation."

  He stared at her for a long moment. "Why haven't you learned any military combat arts? Close-quarters combat? Weapons training?"

  "Tomatoes," she said.

  "What?" He blinked. "What the hell does a tomato have to do with anything?"

  "Someone had to be the first to eat one. Red usually means poison. They did it anyway." She shrugged, the motion tight with residual adrenaline. "We had this conversation before. I want to dissect the apocalypse. Unfortunately, there are people and things capable of harming me permanently. I only encountered them recently. That's why I wanted to get stronger. Before, a gun and my sword were enough."

  He grumbled, the sound like grinding stone. "The youth these days. So lazy. You have enough time to become a master of anything on the planet. Literally anything. And you spend it focusing only on researching how to blow things up for your own amusement."

  "Not just for my amusement," Kelly said. "For my friend, too. Fun is just a bonus." She rolled her shoulder, testing the joint. "I’ve seen plenty of fighting as a kid.” The word ‘seen’ was doing a lot of heavy lifting. “I never had a need to learn from a pro until now. During the loops, I've beaten a lot of pros. Just not magic eldritch god-channeling ones."

  He nodded slowly. "Your file says you went missing over a decade ago. For years. As an orphan. One of many made by the massacres. If that's true."

  "It's true."

  "Impressive that you survived. That explains why your work ethic is decent. At least you're better than the fresh, spoiled, green-nosed brats from the academies in that regard. Or the echelon's kids who waste everything they have. Like the Wards. Or one of Han's kids." He spat the last name in disgust.

  "Adrian?" Kelly said. "Yeah, I told you I met him once. It was a very explosive encounter." She met his gaze. "And thanks. I know I'm a genius. I did it all by myself."

  The statement hung in the air. It was a lie. Without her Jellybean, without Jennie, she would still be a gas-rat slum kid with nothing and no one. She would be scavenging for clean air and food, trying to stay alive in some corner of the outskirts. She owed everything to her.

  He broke the silence. "What's your combat expertise? You've had to survive the apocalypse in the loops."

  "I kinda play it by ear. Mostly guns. My special molecular blade for anything bulletproof." She flexed her hand, the mimic skin receding. "I've had so many fights I've kind of learned what works and what doesn't. After the seventy-ninth time getting sliced and shot, you learn to tilt your head to the left and hide your comeback. By now, I kinda have a feel for what works before most fights even start. Only high levels, special gear, special weapons, or abilities give me any real trouble."

  "That's fine," he said. "The fact that you've survived to this point means you're teachable."

  "You'll really teach me?" she asked, the reckless energy surging back, her eyes alight with growing excitement. "What can you teach me? We have different augments. I don't really have weapon augments yet. I can’t wait to make some!"

  "Yes. I’ll teach you." He folded his arms again, the motion familiar. "Before we begin, I need to know the exact nature of your abilities. Everything you can do through your mutation and augments. Some element of the cocktail polluting the atmosphere was a key. It sunders the boundary between dimensions on a quantum level. Elements of the pathogens killing or mutating anyone who contacts them exist in more dimensions than one, we’ve discovered. The mutations themselves are extremely rare. Unpredictable. Knowing everything you can do will help me train you."

  She recalled the trigger. Higgs Cannons. Orbital strikes. Nukes. Magic Explosion. Standing unfortunately close to an unstable altered portal. Beneath an annoyingly passive, ten-foot floating maybe-god, definitely nudist, when it all happened.

  "It's not a mutation," she said. “I’m a baby time-god.”

  He shook his head. A slow, weary motion. “If you insist."