Chapter 93 – Boxing
Matt noticed it in her shoulders.
Not her face. Iris's face was calm. Too calm.
But her shoulders had dropped three centimeters, and her weight had shifted onto her back leg. Matt knew what that meant because he had watched it happen from the inside for years.
Matt moved before he could think.
One step to the side. Body turned. Knees loose. His right hand already open, already calling for Aurora.
Then he felt something press against his palm.
Metal.
Cold.
Matt glanced down for half a second.
Behind him, still sitting on the bed and still wrapped in the sheet, Noxx had one arm stretched out from beneath the fabric. Without getting up. Without making a sound. Without even looking where she was pointing it.
There was a blue pistol in her hand.
Moon.
Matt took her without hesitation.
'Good girl.'
"Good evening, Master!" Moon greeted him with far too much cheer for the situation.
Iris hadn't seen the exchange. She only looked at the pistol in Matt's hand, then at the sheet, then at Noxx's face.
And smiled.
"Relax," Iris said. "I didn't come to play with you today."
Matt didn't lower the gun.
"Today, I came to play with our new sister."
Noxx went perfectly still. Matt moved half a step, just enough to place himself between Iris and the bed.
"No."
"No?"
"No."
"Matt."
"Noxx has only existed on the outside for a few hours. She's still getting used to her body. She hasn't even spent a full day walking around without tripping over the rugs. I'm not letting you fight her."
Iris tilted her head.
Then she let out a short laugh.
"Are you protecting her?"
"Yes."
"…"
"Does that surprise you?"
"A little."
"It shouldn't."
Iris stepped forward.
"You never protected me."
Matt raised the pistol slightly.
"Unlike you," Matt replied in a deadpan voice, "Noxx isn't a pain in the ass."
Silence.
Iris laughed.
She laughed loudly. There wasn't a trace of humor in it. It came out of her throat like air escaping from something as it cracked apart.
"Ah."
"Iris."
"Ah, of course."
"Iris."
Iris took another step, and Eleonora's sheath began to move at her waist.
"You're an ungrateful bastard."
"Sure."
"An ungrateful fucking bastard."
"Uh-huh."
"Do you even know where your power comes from?" Iris raised her voice. "Do you know where everything you did in that cave, in the North, against the Queen came from? Me! I am the source of your power!"
"You were."
Iris stopped.
"…What?"
"You were," Matt repeated in the same voice as before. "When we were together. When we shared one body and one flow of blood. Back then, yes. The power was yours, and I was the one using it."
"…"
"Not anymore."
Matt raised the pistol a few degrees higher.
"Now we each have our own share. You have yours. I have mine. And with that share comes the responsibility of living your own life, which is exactly the part you never liked."
Iris clenched her teeth.
Inside her head, Eleonora whistled.
"Ooh."
'Shut up.'
"That had to hurt."
'Shut up, Eleonora.'
Iris breathed.
When she spoke again, her voice came out lower. Sharper. With something desperate underneath that she couldn't quite hide.
"I could have devoured you."
Matt didn't move.
"When we were fused. At any moment. During any of those years. I could have swallowed you whole and taken the body for myself, and no one in this kingdom would've said a single word to me. Because that's what we do, Matt. That's what we are. That's what's supposed to happen when you put royal blood inside a human."
"…"
"But I didn't."
Silence.
Matt laughed without the slightest hint of amusement.
"Of course you didn't."
Iris lifted her head.
"You didn't devour me because you never wanted a partner," Matt continued. "You wanted a slave."
Iris didn't answer. Matt tilted his head slightly.
"Is that why you were both so desperate to fuse us again? You and the Queen?"
"…"
Matt lowered his voice.
"The first time I came back, after all those years, when you showed up so happy to see me..."
Iris tightened her grip around Eleonora's hilt.
"Was that your brilliant plan?"
Iris moved.
SHING!
Eleonora came out of her sheath in a single motion, the black blade slicing through the air at Matt's neck.
Matt ducked and twisted his body. He threw his left arm back and shoved Noxx away.
Noxx tumbled out of the bed, sheet and all.
Matt raised Moon.
BANG!
The bullet struck Iris beneath her right shoulder, tore through her party gown, and came out through her back.
Iris didn't scream. She didn't even blink, because she couldn't have cared less.
Within two seconds, the edges of the wound were already beginning to close.
Iris raised Eleonora again.
And swung.
One slash. Horizontal. Wide.
CRACK!
The bed split into two clean halves, and the mattress burst open down the middle, sending white stuffing flying through the air.
Noxx, who had fallen right behind it, had to leap to her feet. The sheet got tangled around one of her ankles. Noxx kicked it away.
And she was left standing in the middle of the room in her underwear, her heart pounding in her throat.
'…No.'
Noxx stretched out her hand.
'Sun!'
A red flash appeared in her palm and solidified into a second pistol, longer than Moon.
"Mistress," Sun greeted calmly.
'I need a charge!'
"Understood. Blood, please."
Noxx bit her thumb and pressed the blood against the weapon's feeding slot. Sun began to drink.
Slowly.
'Faster!'
"This is my maximum feeding speed, Mistress."
'It is not fast enough!'
On the other side of the room, Matt and Iris were already trading blows.
Iris advanced, and Matt retreated.
A diagonal slash. Matt leaned aside and fired.
BANG!
The bullet grazed Iris's arm.
An upward slash. Matt jumped backward, crashed into the desk, and fired again from there.
BANG!
Iris turned her shoulder, and the bullet buried itself in her side.
Iris didn't stop.
A downward slash. Matt rolled across the floor. Eleonora's blade split the desk down the middle, and the lamp's glass shade exploded against the wall.
CRASH!
Matt came out of his roll and fired from the floor.
BANG!
The bullet hit her leg.
Iris limped for half a step.
Then kept coming.
'Damn it.'
Matt understood the problem perfectly.
He could shoot her as many times as he wanted, but Iris had the purest blood in the kingdom after the Queen. Her wounds closed faster than he could open them.
He could maintain the distance all night, and it wouldn't accomplish a thing.
And the moment he stopped maintaining that distance, Eleonora would cut him in half.
Matt took another step back.
Then another.
At the edge of the room, with her back against the wall and the warm pistol in her hand, Noxx watched everything with Sun only half-charged and her breathing growing faster by the second.
Noxx clenched her teeth.
'I have to…'
Then something flashed through her mind.
Something from two hours ago.
"Look up boxing techniques."
Those were the words Matt had said to Kaela after defeating her.
Noxx blinked.
'…Boxing.'
Noxx had Matt's memories.
Not all of them. Not with the same clarity. But she had enough.
And somewhere among those memories were entire afternoons spent playing against the girls in the human world. Games where two figures moved around a ring and punched each other, where the winner wasn't the one who hit the hardest, but the one who moved better.
And there was a comic.
An old one.
About boxing.
Matt had read the entire thing in a week.
Noxx closed her eyes for half a second.
Then opened them.
'Stance. Left foot forward. Right foot back. Weight evenly distributed. Knees loose. Chin down. Guard up.'
Noxx moved.
She pushed away from the wall and ran straight at Iris, with the half-charged Sun in her right hand and her left arm raised in front of her face.
Matt saw her coming.
"Noxx!"
Iris saw her too.
And Iris's face lit up.
"Finally!"
Iris twisted toward her and swung Eleonora in a clean sideways slash at chest height.
The same slash that had cut a bed in half five seconds earlier.
Noxx didn't stop.
Noxx didn't dodge.
Noxx lowered her chin slightly, twisted her torso, and shot her left arm forward.
Not toward Iris.
Toward the blade.
Noxx's fist struck Eleonora's edge from the side.
At just the right angle.
With just the right amount of force.
At exactly the right spot behind the tip.
CLANG!
The blade was knocked off course.
Only slightly. Ten centimeters. Fifteen.
Enough.
The edge split Noxx's forearm open from elbow to wrist, but the slash veered upward and outward, missing her body and cutting nothing but air.
Iris's eyes widened.
'What…?'
Matt's eyes widened.
'What?'
Noxx was already inside her guard.
The momentum of her charge carried her right up against Iris's chest, her face less than a foot away, her left arm bleeding and hanging limp while her right arm was already rising.
Sun rose with it.
The muzzle pressed against Iris's temple.
Iris's eyes shifted toward the weapon.
Noxx fired.
BOOM!
It wasn't a gunshot.
It was a blast.
All the blood Sun had managed to drink erupted from the barrel at once in a beam of light that tore across the entire room, shattered the window, set the curtain on fire, and left a perfectly circular hole in the stone wall on the other side.
And halfway along that path, where Iris's head had been, nothing remained.
Iris's body stayed upright for half a second longer.
Then her knees gave out.
And she fell.
THUD!
Her party gown spread across the remains of the mattress. Eleonora bounced off the floor and landed on her side, perfectly still, without saying a single word.
Blood began to spread across the wooden floor.
Silence.
A strange, hollow silence, with the blast's ringing still buried deep inside their ears.
Noxx remained exactly where she was.
Her left arm split open from elbow to wrist, dripping blood.
Sun still raised.
Still smoking.
Her boxing stance still in place, because it hadn't occurred to her to drop it.
Noxx stared at the body on the floor with her eyes wide open.
'…I did it.'
Noxx didn't lower the gun.
'I beat Iris.'