The shield was a heartbeat from contact. Kori could feel the air shift in front of it, the displacement wave already pressing against her back, the alloy disc spinning toward them with absurd precision. Lay’s arms remained where they were - one wrapped around Kori’s back, the other holding the knife angled across Kori’s neck. Her body did not tense for impact. Her grip did not adjust. Her gaze did not leave the approaching disc.
Only her left foot moved.
A soft click came from inside her boot. The sound was mechanical, the kind of small metallic noise that came from a release mechanism finding its catch - and then her leg swung upward, smooth and fast, the heel rising in a controlled arc that brought it level with the incoming shield. The motion was almost casual. Lay raised her leg the way another person might raise their foot to swat a fly.
Kori, pressed against Lay’s shoulder, caught a glimpse of what emerged from the boot.
It snapped out of the heel - a blade, thin and curved, locking into place along the underside of the foot like an extension of the leg itself. The metal was dark, the edge faintly luminescent in the rooftop’s frost light, the shape suggesting a forward-angled spike that mirrored the design of Lay’s swords in miniature. The whole assembly engaged in less than a quarter of a second.
The shield hit.
Across the rooftop, the impact rolled with a deep, resonant crash. Lay’s heel-blade met the spinning shield edge-on, the alloy of Osamu’s shield turning along the contact line as Lay’s leg redirected its momentum sideways. The shield deflected with a screaming arc of metal-on-metal, the curved disc spinning off toward the northern parapet, and the ground beneath them shook.
Kori felt the rooftop kick upward against her boots. The frost ring she had been producing the entire evening shattered outward in a wide circular wave, the pale blue crystal fragmenting into a halo of glittering particles that hung in the cold air for a moment before scattering. The alloy roofing beneath Lay’s standing foot fractured - long, deep cracks splintering outward from the contact point, the structural sublayer giving way under the redirected force of Osamu’s throw.
Lay had not braced. She had simply put her leg up in an almost casual block. The blade retracted into the boot with the same quiet click that had released it. Lay lowered her foot with the same unhurried motion.
Then she lifted the knife from the back of Kori’s neck.
"Welp," she said, her voice still warm against Kori’s ear. "Time’s up on ya questions, I think. You alright, darling?"
She also loosened her arm, essentially freeing Kori from the forceful embrace.
Kori pulled back. Her hand grabbed own knife from Lay’s already-extended hand; she pulled it free of Lay’s grip, the familiar chain whipping back into her palm, and Lay let it go without resistance. Kori stepped backward across the cracked alloy, both knives now in her hands again, the cold gathering once more at her boots as her stance reset.
Lay watched her recover. The lazy smile was back, as she took another sip from the slushie she had picked up.
"Just so you know," Lay said. She tilted the canteen toward her mouth and took a long, satisfied sip. "If you hadn’t made me this delicious slushie - and I mean really delicious - that shield would have ended up straight in your teeth."
She winked.
Then she made the great mistake of finishing her sentence.
Osamu came over the lip of the roof at the exact moment Lay’s voice trailed off. He moved quickly, full-speed sprinting towards the two women, his shield already recovered from where it had skidded to a stop, one hand gripping the alloy disc, already about to release it in another strike. He didn’t speak or slow down at all. His boots hit the alloy four metres from Lay’s position, and the next step carried him into striking range with the disc already swinging.
The shield’s face caught Lay across the side.
It was the first clean strike anyone had landed on her all night. Lay’s body left the rooftop in a long, flat arc that launched her across the gap between buildings - into the side of the neighbouring tower with a sound that travelled back to Kori’s position a full second after the impact. Brick and reinforced alloy gave way where Lay’s body met the wall. Dust burst outward.
Lay slid down the building’s face for two stories before her feet caught a window ledge and stopped the fall.
Osamu walked to the parapet.
"You’re slow."
Kori finished resetting her stance. She wiped a smear of blood from her shoulder, looked at the building across, and then at Osamu standing at the edge with his shield still raised.
"She wasn’t doing anything."
"Alteea was really alerted by her-"
"She was asking for a slushie."
Osamu turned his head. He looked at Kori. His expression did not change.
"...A slushie."
"It’s a... Well, long story."
"Was that-" Osamu said slowly, "she just used her leg to redirect a shield I threw at terminal velocity?"
"Yes."
"That means she should be almost as powerful as us, Phalanx."
"Yes, she’s as strong as us."
"And you were not fighting her."
"We were kind of taking a break. I was asking questions, that kind of stuff"
Osamu’s eyes moved across the rooftop. The shattered frost. The blood. The cuts on Kori’s shoulder, hip, and shin. The deep crack splitting the alloy where Lay’s heel had absorbed the shield’s impact.
"Mhm," was his only reaction to all of this.
Across the alley, Lay pulled herself up onto the ledge and stood up. She looked back at the two of them, brushed brick dust off her shoulder with the back of her hand, and tilted her head.
"That was really rude," she shouted across the gap. Her voice was clear in the cold air. "You couldn’t have waited until I finished my sentence?"
Osamu ran two steps and jumped, landing on the neighbouring rooftop, two meters from the ledge Lay was standing on.
But he wasn’t holding the shield – right before jumping, he threw it, hoping to catch Lay off-guard and distract her with his own jump.
Lay vaulted off the ledge in the moment before the shield arrived, the curved Damascus blades sliding free from the harnesses at her back in a single instant motion, her body twisting through the air to land on a nearby pipe in a low, ready stance.
The fight began again, and this time it was two Phalanx against one woman.