Chương 95: 94: Casino

Cassa took another sip of her wine, warmth spreading through her chest.

"What's it like?" she asked.

"Being an operative?" Pyramid laughed.

"It's like being a god among insects," he said.

"The trainee halls are cramped. The Stepper barracks are better, but still ordinary. The operative wing..." He spread his arms to the lavish room around them.

"This is where we live. The finest food, the best wine, the most beautiful company. Every pleasure you can imagine... and a few you can't." He leaned in, lowering his voice.

"Would you two like to see it?" The girls exchanged excited glances.

"Really?" Cassa breathed.

"We've never been inside the operative quarters."

"You're with me," Pyramid said with a dismissive wave.

"That means every door opens." He gestured toward their glasses.

"Finish those. I've got proper wine upstairs. Imported from the surface. Nothing served in the trainee halls compares." Their hands found their glasses almost immediately. Ninuy smiled shyly.

"Is it true you have a retreat-on-sight order? A Stepper said enemies run when they hear your name." Pyramid's smile turned sly.

"I wasn't going to boast... but yes." Cassa blinked.

"There's actually a list?"

"Of course." He swirled his wine.

"The Syndicate records everything. When an operative becomes dangerous enough, a standing order is issued. If I appear during an operation, withdrawal is recommended. Better to preserve soldiers than waste them against someone they can't beat." He reclined with a satisfied smile.

"It's rather flattering, knowing your name alone changes a battlefield."

"I can't imagine that," Ninuy giggled.

"Someone giving up just because they saw you."

"It must feel... incredible," Cassa added.

"It isn't power," Pyramid corrected smoothly.

"It's presence. Power is what you do. Presence is what you are." He tapped his chest.

"That's cultivated." The girls nodded, completely captivated. Ten metres away, a Stepper in full magpie armour stood motionless against the wall. His visor concealed every expression, hands clasped behind his back. Pyramid's bodyguard. Among the Steppers, the assignment was considered a quiet punishment for anyone who displeased the wrong superior. The irony never escaped him. A man who claimed to hunt Abominations alone required an escort to cross his own recreation wing.

A man who owed his rank to his mother rather than merit. A man who had quietly spread his own retreat-on-sight rumour through his bodyguards, hoping repetition would eventually become truth. The Stepper remained silent. Watching. Waiting. Pyramid's gaze drifted toward him for the briefest instant. Irritation flickered across his face before the smile returned.

"Now," he said, his tone almost intimate, "finish your drinks. I have something special to show you."... At a nearby poker table, a wiry operative with salt-and-pepper hair swept another mountain of chips toward himself and chuckled.

"That's three hands in a row, gentlemen. Perhaps we should try a game that requires a little less luck." His opponent, a broad-shouldered dark-skinned man with a thick scar running across his throat and a heavy brow, grunted as he shoved his remaining chips into the pot.

"Deal again." The wiry operative's grin widened.

"Your funeral." A burst of laughter rose from the roulette table nearby as a young woman in an emerald gown threw her arms around her companion.

"I won! I actually won!"

"You always win," he sighed, smiling despite himself.

"You're getting expensive."... Near the entrance, clusters of trainees lingered by the ornate doors, whispering excitedly as they admired the operatives scattered throughout the recreation wing.

"That's Operative Voss," one girl whispered.

"The one who cleared the European Sector last year. They say he's terrifying."

"He looks bored."

"That's because he's seen everything." Another trainee pointed discreetly.

"And that's Operative Markov. Silver hair. Highest confirmed kill count of any operative under forty."

"Under forty? She looks twenty-five."

"She's forty-three. The serum does that." A trainee boy in grey pushed through the crowd, eyes fixed on a man relaxing near the bar.

"That's Operative Theron. I heard he's taking new Steppers next month. If I score high enough, maybe I'll get assigned to his squad."

"You'd be lucky," another boy replied.

"Best survival rate in the Syndicate. Only fifteen percent casualties last year."

"That's still fifteen percent."

"Better than Operative Chen's squad. Fifty percent. She doesn't even bother learning your name before deployment." The dark-haired girl shook her head.

"I'd rather serve under Voss. He's cold, but he's fair. He remembers everyone who dies under his command."

"Fair?" her friend scoffed.

"He abandoned a Stepper on his last mission."

"She was already dead. He was being practical. They could resurrect her with a False-Twin." Closer to the doorway, another group craned their necks for a better view. Among them stood a familiar pair - the girl with the high ponytail and chipped black nail polish, and the broad-shouldered boy with the scar through his eyebrow. The girl leaned forward excitedly.

"Oh my God... is that Operative Markov? She's even prettier in person." The boy snorted.

"You're not supposed to say that. She could probably kill you with her little finger."

"I'd let her."

"You're hopeless." Their attention drifted across the room as elegantly dressed operatives mingled beneath the chandeliers, many shadowed by silent Stepper bodyguards in full magpie armour. The boy nudged her.

"Look. Pyramid's here again." She followed his gaze toward Pyramid Valmont and immediately groaned.

"Ugh. That guy."

"He's already got two trainees hanging on every word."

"Those poor girls." She folded her arms.

"They've got no idea what he's actually like."

"Neither do you, technically."

"I know enough." She rolled her eyes.

"He's a liar. Everyone knows it. The funny part is... he thinks nobody does." The boy laughed.

"You're just jealous."

"Of him? Please." She flicked her ponytail over one shoulder.

"I'd rather serve under Markov."

"Why?"

"At least she's killed the things she brags about." A lanky trainee a few metres away squinted toward Pyramid's booth and sighed dramatically.

"Man... that's my crush." He pointed at Cassa with a mournful expression. His friend burst out laughing.

"Holy hypergamy. Gotta be an Operative to bag a Stepper trainee nowadays." A third boy frowned.

"What the hell's hypergamy?" The second boy looked at him with complete seriousness.

"Intense gaming."

"Oh." The first boy nodded slowly.

"Makes sense." The second immediately snorted.

"I'm kidding." The confused trainee blinked.

"…So what is it?" His friend clapped him on the shoulder.

"Stay innocent, bro."... At the booth, Pyramid Valmont leaned back, his goatee twitching with a satisfied smile as Cassa and Ninuy listened intently. Their wine glasses were nearly empty. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. His Stepper bodyguard appeared silently at his shoulder and bent to whisper into his ear. For the briefest instant, irritation crossed Pyramid's sallow face. Then the smile returned.

"Rashida," he said with a dismissive wave.

"She and her Steppers will handle it. Just a minor disturbance somewhere in the lower corridors. Hardly worth my attention."

"Rashida?" Cassa asked.

"One of the operatives," Pyramid replied, speaking as though she were merely another subordinate.

"She deals with small problems. My Steppers are reserved for matters of consequence." The girls exchanged impressed glances. The bodyguard remained perfectly still behind him, saying nothing. Pyramid leaned closer, lowering his voice.

"Now... where were we? Ah, yes. My quarters. I believe I promised you both something special." BOOOOOM. The ceiling exploded. Conversation died instantly. A Stepper in full magpie armour crashed through the marble overhead and slammed into the floor hard enough to blast a crater into the polished stone. Sparks hissed across the fractured tiles as his suit sputtered and died. He didn't move. More Steppers dropped through the opening.

They spilled into the recreation wing in disciplined formation, magpie suits humming with Apis as they fired back through the hole they'd emerged from. BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! Silver rounds screamed upward, each projectile slowing at the exact instant it would have struck an ally before clinking harmlessly onto the marble floor. A girl kicked off their bullets.

She used them as stepping stones, her prosthetic leg glowing cobalt beneath black trousers as she launched herself through the air with impossible precision. Her body twisted effortlessly through the storm of gunfire, shimmering black bandages wrapped around her powerful arms and torso, thin pink lines pulsing beneath them like a heartbeat. She was barefoot. Her pale foot landed on a spinning bullet as lightly as though it were solid ground before she sprang to the next, toes flexing with perfect balance.

A few spectators blinked in disbelief.

"She's... barefoot?"

"On bullets?"

"How are her feet still attached?"

"Forget that," another operative muttered.

"Who goes into battle barefoot?" White curls spilled from beneath a floppy rabbit-eared beanie. Tall - only two or three inches shy of six feet. Alabaster skin. Albino. Calm pink eyes swept across the room.... Butter took in the recreation wing in a single glance. Trainees. Operatives. Scientists. Civilians caught in the middle. None of them were prepared for a battlefield. She didn't want panic. Melody blazed. Her fists blurred through the air, striking the very concept of panic itself. It shattered.

The emotion simply... disappeared. People who should've been screaming instead found themselves watching the chaos with strange, detached calm. One operative stared.

"She's too beautiful," he murmured.

"Uncanny. That isn't human." His companion nodded.

"Look at her proportions. Her waist's barely wider than her head, and with hips like that? Nobody's built naturally like that. She's either some incredibly expensive android, a doll..."

"… or an Abomination," the first finished quietly. Butter blurred. She caught two Steppers as they materialised from blue mist, fingers clamping onto their armour before either could react. Her prosthetic leg snapped out. CLANG! A gadget ricocheted away a heartbeat before it could detonate against her chest. Another Stepper fired. BANG! BANG! She was already somewhere else. Aria unfolded in her hand. A seven-foot kangaroo erupted from its pages, crashing onto the marble with a ground-shaking— THOOOOOM.

Mustard-yellow fur covered its heavily muscled frame, crimson spirals winding around powerful limbs. It smelled faintly of fresh cake. Long rabbit-like ears stood upright above its head while its thick tail swept behind it with frightening balance. Jump. It sprang forward. One kick caught a Stepper in the ribs. THOOOOOM. The impact nearly overwhelmed the suit's dispersal systems, forcing the Apis core to burn through enormous reserves simply to survive. Jump's tail whipped sideways. WHUMP!

A hail of bullets ricocheted harmlessly away. Its ears flicked with uncanny precision, batting aside knives and gadgets while its feet bounded from table to wall to ceiling without wasting a single movement. People instinctively backed away.

"Jesus Christ... how strong is that thing?"

"Does she just keep disasters inside that book?"

"How do you even capture something like that?"

"It almost broke a Stepper suit with one kick."

"That thing's a low Abomination... strong enough to devastate nations." Butter and Jump tore through a dozen Steppers together. They rebounded from tables, sprinted across walls, vaulted over chandeliers and pillars with such impossible control that almost nothing in the recreation wing was damaged despite the violence.

Several Steppers answered in kind, running upside down across the ceiling while others flipped through the air, their bullets perfectly calculated to stop the instant they would miss, dropping harmlessly to the marble instead of punching through the floor. BANG! BANG! BANG! TINK. TINK. TINK. Butter cut straight through them. Then... She disappeared.... FWOOM- A Stepper folded beneath a single palm strike. -PAH. His soul blasted free. His Apis core shattered. The crowd gasped.

"That wasn't possible."

"How did she even surprise a Stepper?" someone blurted.

"Their suits predict, like, one and a half seconds ahead. He should've dodged long before she got there." A scientist with an enormous nose, thick round glasses and sweat beading across his brow furiously scribbled equations onto a hovering holographic pad.

"It isn't teleportation," he muttered. Nobody answered. He kept writing.

"She isn't travelling through space. She's removing herself from one point and inserting herself into another without any interval between them. Even teleportation requires intent, a trigger, a command - something that begins before the movement itself. Prediction systems read that anticipation." He looked up, eyes wide behind his lenses.

"Her movement has no anticipation. It's as unconscious as a heartbeat. There's nothing to predict until she has already arrived." Butter flipped gracefully over a sweeping blade. THUD. Her fist buried itself in the Stepper's abdomen. The Magpie suit instantly dimmed. Every light died. The armour simply... shut off. The Stepper collapsed.

"…How?"

"He still didn't predict that?"

"She's ridiculously strong!" The scientist barely looked up from his calculations.

"That isn't all." His stylus traced circles around Butter's shifting aura as crimson, cobalt and golden streams flowed from her body.

"Those colours... they're interfering with the Apis prediction engines themselves. They're conceptually persuading the systems to respond more slowly." A nearby engineer snorted.

"That's impossible. You'd need an entire world's worth of conceptual energy to influence Apis like that. Little magic tricks don't work. Apis is resistant to magic." The scientist slowly pushed his glasses back up his nose.

"She does." Silence.

"How do you think she destroyed that Stepper with one strike? Raw force alone couldn't have done it. The suit would've dispersed almost all of the impact before it reached him." He swallowed.

"She's at least a planetary-class magical being." Another scientist frowned.

"So you're saying her energy output could sustain Earth for a while?" The bespectacled scientist shook his head.

"No." He stared at Butter as she effortlessly weaved through another volley of attacks.

"I'm saying the output I'm witnessing right now could sustain humanity for centuries." Before anyone could process it... KRAAAASH! An operative crashed through the ceiling. His slingshot snapped. TWANG - WHIIISSH! A silver pellet screamed past Butter and punched clean through Jump's heart. Iridescent blood splashed across the marble.

"Operative Daniel got it in one shot!"

"Those pellets are insane!"

"Rumour says his girlfriend built them. Engineer, I think." Jump staggered, its luminous eyes flickering. Daniel was already moving. The feather-like plates of his suit vibrated violently. VRRRMMM! He launched forward, both feet crashing into Jump's torso. THOOOOM- KRAAAK! The giant kangaroo hurtled across the casino. A waiting squad of Steppers caught it mid-flight. Magnetic restraints and compact demolition charges clamped onto its body before detonating in sequence. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

They drove the beast into the marble floor as volleys of Apis rounds hammered into it from every direction. Butter spun. A silver pellet raced for her eye. TWANG - WHISSH! Her prosthetic leg intercepted it. CLANG! Sparks cascaded through the air. The pellet curved sharply...... snapping back towards her. Butter pivoted. Her fist sliced through empty space. THOOOM. A compressed shockwave collided with the projectile. The pellet disintegrated into glittering dust. Cadenza. Silence lingered for half a heartbeat.

"Did... did she just control air?" The scientist beside him stared without blinking.

"She shredded the pellet. That wasn't air. Those rounds ignore conventional durability. Destroying one outright requires matter to come apart at the atomic scale." His throat tightened.

"She just punched antimatter into existence with a shockwave..."

"Who is she?"

"She's keeping up with an Operative..." A trainee girl with a high black ponytail suddenly froze.

"... Wait."

"I know her." The broad-shouldered boy beside her stared.

"What?"

"That girl. She was lying in the corridor. I remember that body." Her voice faltered.

"But... she didn't have a head." The boy's face drained of colour.

"You're serious?"

"I saw the body." His breathing became shallow.

"How is she alive?"

"How is she-" A nearby scientist frowned.

"Isn't that the girl Thornburgh carried into the common hall? The trophy?"

"That can't be her," someone whispered.

"She died. I'd bet my career on it." Another voice broke the silence.

"Then who the hell is that lunatic?" Daniel clicked a device on his suit. Holograms flooded the recreation wing. Dozens of copies shimmered into existence around Butter, each carrying heavy weapons as they converged from every direction. She leapt. A hologram appeared behind her and drove a punch into her back. The force rippled harmlessly through Melody. She spun to counter- -thunk. A crossbow bolt, invisible until the instant of impact, punched through her heart. Blood blossomed across the air.

The real Daniel seized the opening.

"Now." BOOOOOOOM! Missiles converged from every direction. The explosions swallowed Butter and the hologram alike, reducing both to a storm of white and cream moths. Thousands of delicate wings spiralled through the recreation wing like a blizzard. People gasped.

"Holy shit... he blasted her into next week."

"Did you see that coordination?"

"Why'd she turn into moths?"

"Gene-user?"

"Spell caster?"

"She's way too gentle to be an Abomination." The swarm drifted through the room...... then disappeared. Only Daniel's holograms remained. Silence settled over the casino.

"Guess she's dead."

"Shame. She was gorgeous."

"Well, that was entertaining."

"Kudos to Operative Daniel." The last missile's smoke drifted lazily through the recreation wing. Silence. Daniel lowered his guard. His holograms remained scattered throughout the room, rifles trained on empty space as their projectors hummed softly.

"Target eliminated," one Stepper muttered. Another lowered his weapon.

"Looks like it." The tension broke. People released the breaths they'd been holding.

"Well…"

"I guess that's over."

"She never stood a chance against an Operative." Casino staff cautiously emerged from behind the bar, righting overturned chairs and sweeping shattered glass from the marble floor. A pair of Steppers dragged smoking debris aside while another deactivated an unexploded missile. Nervous chatter gradually replaced the silence.

"Told you Daniel would handle it."

"Bit excessive."

"Effective, though." Daniel exhaled through his nose.

"Too predictable." One of his holograms wandered across the room, helping move broken furniture back into place. Another stooped to inspect a crater before gesturing for staff to avoid it. A third casually waved a group of trainees away from the damaged section of floor. Nobody questioned it. After all… It was only another hologram. The projection walked between two Steppers. Neither spared it a glance. It passed a bartender carrying bottles. He simply walked around it. It drifted behind Daniel.

Still no one reacted. A scientist replayed combat footage through his contact lens. Pyramid brushed dust from his sleeve. Cassa finally unclenched her hands. The hologram suddenly did a backflip. Daniel frowned.

"… I don't remember programming-" The light around the figure rippled. Its outline thickened. Hard-light shimmer became flesh. White curls spilled beneath a black beanie with floppy rabbit ears. Pink eyes opened. The hologram had never existed. Butter had. She had disguised herself as one of Daniel's own projections, matching its movements so perfectly that even his suit had accepted her as genuine.

She had walked through the room in plain sight, even helping clean the aftermath of the battle while everyone relaxed around her. By the time anyone realised… She was already standing directly behind Daniel. Her palm was already descending.

"Too predictable? Predict this!" THOOOOOOOM! The shockwave blasted through the recreation wing. Daniel rocketed across the room, smashing through three poker tables before crashing into a marble pillar. Chips, cards and splintered wood erupted around him. Steppers snapped their weapons toward Butter. She was already somewhere else.

"... She was never there," someone whispered.

"Shapeshifting?"

"What kind of mimicry is that?"

"I saw something," an operative muttered.

"Right before the missiles hit-""Shut up. You didn't." A scientist adjusted his contact lens, replaying the exchange frame by frame. His eyes widened.

"No... no, that's impossible."

"What?"

"She planted a decoy." The recording slowed further.

"She switched places the instant the missiles launched. That wasn't magic alone. It was timing, misdirection and absurd movement speed. Daniel fired at a fake while she crossed the room before anyone realised she'd moved." Another scientist swallowed.

"So she could be..."

"... any of us." Someone nervously glanced around.

"She could be me." A woman beside him snorted.

"Definitely not. Why would she disguise herself as someone that ugly?" A few nervous laughs escaped despite the chaos.

"Have you seen her? She's ridiculously pretty."

"And built like she walked out of someone's dream." The murmurs spread through the room. From his private booth, Pyramid Ashcroft watched without blinking. Cassa and Ninuy clung tightly to his arms, their faces pale.

"I can't believe this," Cassa whispered.

"Who is she?" Pyramid's gold tooth caught the chandelier light as a slow smile spread across his face.

"Someone," he said smoothly, "who's about to learn her place." He rose with theatrical calm. His Stepper bodyguard immediately stepped forward. Pyramid raised a hand.

"Allow me."