Mia raged at the dreadnought standing thirty feet from her. "Fight me. Fight me!" Her boil swelled in the strenuous exertion of her hosthood; over the years she occasionally felt, in these multi-host fights, that one day she would continue to kill and kill and kill and kill and kill until the entire world was dead.

  The dreadnought laughed. "You think you must forcibly take your rightful blood? No. You have done well. Come to me, and I will gift you another piece of that which nests within me."

  Mia almost went to him, yet she was wary. "Why? Why are you giving it to me? You give me advice, you- you get into philosophical discussions with me, yet you kill thousands of people for- for what? What are you after?!"

  "What answer could I give that would prevent you from accepting the next fragment?"

  "You aren't answering me."

  "If no answer would turn you away, then my response is superfluous."

  "Then I refuse! If you want to give it to me, then do it forcibly. I-I have enough of Worldwide's ability that I'm fine not accepting whatever t-the fuck you have planned for me with it. Or w-whatever the fuck you did with my genetics so I could actually host it!"

  He spoke with some frustration. "...you are cautious. Not an undesirable trait in your profession. Then, so again: FTL."

  In the next instant he was at her back and she whirled in time for his fist to slam into her right arm and shatter every bone in it; before he could strike again, Mia blasted herself away and back with a geyser of water, landing with a stagger beside the corner of another building, stumbling and gasping. At her right and behind the corner where his sight could reach, she lit a spot of wall alight, then trapped its smoke in a tumor of ice.

  "FTL."

  All sound disappeared from the area; she had no time to turn but melted the ice and unleashed the smoke within, blocking a blast of electricity intended for her; she turned to hear his pained laugh from within his prison of electrified smoke and backed rapidly away again, until the smoke cleared, and out of it he stepped towards her with little marks of damage. Again she felt the aura seep deeper into herself and rupture open the pores of her mind, her consciousness instinctually bucking away such control yet still exerting heavily on her senses.

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  For a moment her sight stilled, then resumed, revealing he was no longer ahead of her; he was at her back again; his grip shot around her left arm and then ripped her arm clear off from her, and she staggered with a scream of agony as her amputation gushed blood in heavy spurts. A flash of blue fire cauterized what was left of her arm and burnt her face, and the sudden color & temperature & damage sent her into a panic; she sprayed blue flame wildly about the avenue, disintegrating anything that it touched and leaving not even a single ash left. All sound disappeared from the area and she turned again in time just for a flash of blue flame to disintegrate half the fingers off his hand as it shot into her heart, murmuring hastily: "Hollow vessel in the form of man, heed the will-"

  - Mizuchi burst out of a flood of blood on her back, then suddenly stilled as the molecules around it lowered into a temperature of no movement at all, then swelled again into a pair of fangs slashing rapidly at her back; Mia fell back and onto the ground, bleeding heavily from all wounds and barely moving. Rayaka was there and standing over her, shouting at the edge of her hearing that he had gotten her for Ryumi and that Worldwide would be returned once more.

  As Mia's senses quivered in & out of herself, the dreadnought turned to Rayaka with the bodily architecture of that misanthropic hatred that he had spoken to Mia of earlier.

  Rayaka's eyes dimmed into submission as the dreadnought approached him, then were suddenly yanked him into consciousness; he wished Rayaka fully aware for what was about to occur.

  The dreadnought slammed Rayaka to the ground, then picked him up by one leg. He smashed Rayaka's body against the ground again and again and again, and again and again and again Rayaka's body crunched sickeningly against the concrete. His spine shattered and bones erupted out from his flesh in bits of skeletal pieces, then were hammered back into himself by another series of heavy smashes. The dreadnought dropped him and Rayaka laid there, paralyzed and unmoving; Mizuchi burst weakly out of Rayaka's broken neck, then was halted mid-attack, cowed into unwilling servitude once more and unable to move.

  Slowly, the dreadnought wrapped his hand around Mizuchi's forcibly subservient head. He rose Rayaka into awareness again as he grabbed Mizuchi by its maw, pulling, ripping its full form out of Rayaka akin to a bird pulling out a string of flesh; his grip tightened, crushing, squeezing, until Mizuchi's head collapsed like a crunched orange of flesh & blood and he tossed the mangled serpent aside.

  As Rayaka's breath left him below, the dreadnought's two hands grabbed Rayaka by his two legs, hung him upside-down, and as a man might snap a wishbone, tore his body in two. He discarded Rayaka's grisly halves over his shoulders, and he crouched over Mia. Mia heard him say a date she did not remember until after he was gone, his hands digging into his own chest and peeling it open to reveal his four beating hearts, ripping one out and shoving it down her throat enough that she did not need to swallow as her wounds healed and the swirling mist disappeared from her head when she was back at Aimee's side.