Sarissa watched Miles fight, her blade still, her body poised but unmoving.
However, under the poised mask and body language, she was shaking in fear, anticipation, and...
Excitent?
She could have interfered. She should have, by all rational accounts. But sothing held her back. Sothing cold and calculated in the depths of her heart.
She needed to see.
Her grip tightened on the hilt of [Aria of the Lost] as her keen eyes followed Miles’ every movent. He was fast, but not faster than she had anticipated. His attacks were wild, driven by raw emotion rather than precision.
Power without control, drenched in a recklessness she had never witnessed before. Did that boy, Diego, an that much to him, that he could not even refrain from losing his cool before a nace such as Shinji?
But what she was truly looking for was sothing else.
The power she had seen in her previous turns. That overwhelming, devastating force of nature made her gut twist with unease and awe. The power that had forced her into a corner more tis than she could count.
She had killed him before. More than once.
And if he showed even the slightest sign of that power awakening again, she would not hesitate to bear that quest against him again.
Miles’ strikes were relentless, but Shinji moved like water, like darkness, slipping between attacks with infuriating ease. The bastard wasn’t even taking the fight seriously. His blade flickered like an afterimage, tapping against Miles’ scythe just enough to disrupt his balance, to throw off his rhythm.
And Miles, predictably, kept falling for it.
Had she been wrong this whole ti?
’Why is he not using that suit and hat, along with his mask?’ She asked Cheshire in her mind.
It had been less than a day, but she was used to adapting, so she simply accepted the new reality around her, adapting to the strange, but now comforting presence of the eerie cat in her inventory.
In her mories and thoughts.
’Because he knows that the power that cos from those is unstable, not entirely his yet.’ Cheshire purred, a strange sense of confidence emanating from him inside her mind.
’Hm...’ She narrowed her eyes, still watching, waiting.
Then, she saw it. The shift.
It was subtle, barely noticeable to anyone who wasn’t used to seeing it. But Sarissa had seen it before, many tis, in countless regressions. The slight pause before an attack, the way his breathing changed, the way his presence in the battle shifted from raw aggression to sothing... other. Like he was losing himself to sothing deeper, darker.
Sothing not entirely his own.
Her breath hitched for just a second. Just a second.
’Now,’ she thought. ’I have to end it now before it gets worse...’
She adjusted her grip, preparing to move. But then, sothing unexpected happened.
Miles stopped.
His entire body tensed, his scythe still raised, but unmoving.
His black coat flickered and shifted for the briefest of monts from the raven-black, long length of its current form, to the one she was so familiar and uncomfortable with.
Shorter, tainted in dark shades of red, as if it had been painted in blood. Even the top hat appeared for a single breath.
Then, however, with a voice devoid of all its previous fury, Miles said the words that made her fingers hesitate against her blade.
"Sarissa... Would you mind lending a hand?"
The battlefield seed to still around them, and Miles had fallen to his knees, his coat back to its pristine, inky blackness. The weight of his words hung between them like an unanswered question.
Sarissa’s heart pounded once against her ribs before she stilled it. She had seen him break before. She had seen him die before. But she had never, in any turn...
She had never seen him ask for help.
She only realized that she was gripping the hilt of her sword so tight that her knuckles went white, after she loosened it.
’Should I help him?’ Her heart beat like a war drum. She rarely second-guessed herself. She never hesitated. But this ti, she did.
’Should I help him?’ She reached out with her thoughts, speaking inwardly to the presence that had attached itself to her inventory.
The silence that followed surprised even the cat. She had never asked him for advice before. Not once. And yet, here she was.
’...You’re asking ?’ Cheshire’s voice echoed in her mind, laced with sothing unreadable. Amusent? Surprise? He chuckled lightly before answering. ’Yes. I would recomnd that you did so.’
’Even though his power is so unstable? So... Unpredictable?’
’Yes. Exactly because of that.’ Cheshire’s voice softened. ’Haven’t you seen it with your own eyes?’ She felt Cheshire stretching languidly within her. ’I trust him, and you should, too.’
Sarissa let out a slow, deep sigh, making up her mind. Her fingers loosened from the hilt of her blade, shifting instead to a proper combat stance.
Her eyes locked onto Shinji, and in an instant, all hesitation vanished.
"Take your ti, but don’t expect Shinji to be alive for long." She moved.
A surge of [Mad Fire] erupted around her blade as she closed the distance between them, her speed a blur of crimson and steel with the help of [Wonderland’s Inferno]. Shinji barely had ti to turn before she was upon him, their blades clashing in a violent spark of energy.
"So, now we have a proper contestant, huh?" Shinji smirked, stepping back just enough to dodge her next strike, but she pressed forward without hesitation. Unlike Miles, she did not waste energy.
Her attacks were precise, calculated, striking at the weakest points in his defense. She would not fall for his tricks.
Behind her, a flicker of blue light shimred at the edge of her vision.
Cheshire appeared beside Miles, his glowing yellow eyes narrowing slightly as he observed the young man still frozen in place, panting heavily on his knees.
"Long ti no see, my boy," Cheshire purred, his voice quieter, more deliberate than usual. "We have to talk..."
Miles exhaled slowly, a slight grin curling his lips upward under the mask, his grip on the scythe tightening.
"Yeah." Miles chuckled. "We definitely do, but not now."
"You sound... Confident." Cheshire owed, his brows shooting upward as his grin grew even wider. "Well then, I hope you have sothing up your sleeve, my boy... Because that thing right there... It ain’t human."
However, to Cheshire’s absolutely surprise, Miles simply let out a poised sigh, nodding ever so slightly as he watched Sarissa go all-out against Shinji.
"I know."
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