"What's gone wrong?" Jay asked as soon as Corinne perched onto the railing of their terrace.

The hawk sat still for a second as her face bulged, eyes shrank, and beak began to fold in on itself. Within seconds, a miniature version of Corinne's head poked out from her hawk body. Loose feathers fell from her cropped short hair as she tried, and failed, to scratch her ear with her wing.

"Nothing's wrong… things are just different," she replied in a voice notably higher than when she was human-sized.

"What's that supposed to mean?" asked Marko. He'd finally decided to ditch his lackadaisical attitude and spoke to Corinne while glancing down at the streets behind her.

"There's more people than we thought," she began, "There's at least five gladiators with the twins, plus a bunch of Directorate soldiers. Jack doesn't know why but he thinks it's to do with the transportation of the sawing device in four days, not tonight's mission."

"Is he sure?" said Jay.

Corinne shrugged her wings. "I don't know, we didn't get much time to talk. He said the plan's still on, I'll just keep a closer watch over you than I normally would."

Jay squinted as he stared at Corinne's expression.

"Are you serious? You're telling us that our target has at minimum double, and maybe even triple, the amount of people guarding him and we're still going ahead with it! Are you sure about this?"

Corinne nodded, her head bobbing forward with her avian body. "Most of the extra numbers are still at the bar. Yandiel's travelling back with Caldus the Quick and Tara Cinderborn, along with a couple of other guards. Luckily those were the two gladiators we prepared for."

Yeah… 'cause I'm feeling really fucking lucky right now.

That's only twice the amount of gladiators I was preparing to fight…

"I don't know Corinne," said Jay. "It seems like they're prepared for us, or at least prepared for something."

Marko clasped his hand over Jay's shoulder and leaned towards him and Corinne. He had a smile on his face, one that Jay knew meant nothing sensible would come out of his mouth.

"Man, what ever happened to Bar Fight Billy? We can take Caldus and Tara no problem. Are you scared or something?"

Really… now?

"I'm not scared, Marko I'm just wary. Two gladiators we can handle, maybe even three. But the point is that we don't know what we're fighting. It might look like there's only a few people with Yandiel, but we were already wrong about the amount of gladiators looking after the twins, who's to say we're not wrong about this too?"

Marko drew one of his daggers before twirling it over his knuckles. "If only you put this much thought in before every fight, Jay. Maybe then we wouldn't have been stuck in the Ugly Duck for hours while you chatted to Bassar!"

"That was different and you know it, Marko."

"Maybe it was, Jay. Maybe it wasn't."

Marko gave Jay a grave stare. The young gladiator looked far wearier than just a few minutes ago, as if his grim resolve etched lines across his face.

"But you took a gamble that night and bet on yourself. It paid off. I'm not saying we need to act recklessly. I just think we need to trust ourselves to complete the mission. I'm not about to go running back to Samira just to tell her that we gave up on the mission because not everything went perfectly. We have a job to do here, Jay. Unless you think we're going to die out there, we've got to try and do it."

Jay met Marko's eyes, for someone who admitted he didn't want to be a gladiator, he sure wanted to complete this mission.

But he also had a point.

Jay joined Limitless Ascent so that he could fight and test himself against stronger opposition. Was he really about to refuse a fight just because he couldn't control every variable?

"Fine, let's do it," said Jay. "Corinne, are you staying with us?"

The half-hawk half-woman shook her head. "No. As I said, the majority of the twins' men are still at the Crossed Oars. I'll keep watch over the bar and stay in contact with Jack. If the situation changes, I'll warn you straight away."

Corinne nodded at both Jay and Marko before her beak grew back and feathers erupted from her skin. She flew off without another word

Jay forced out a breath, calming himself as Ping pressed into his back. He spotted a flicker of movement to his side as Marko pointed towards the streets below them.

"There they are," he said.

Jay focused Eye of the storm, following Marko's finger and hyper-focusing on the group of people it led towards. Sure enough, he spotted Yandiel Arrandoz front and centre, flanked by Caldus the Quick and Tara Cinderborn, and trailed by four more. Each of them wore identical grey mokos similar to the ones Kestrel had been handed at the start of their mission.

"No time to waste," said Jay, "let's get in position."

—

As he prepared for their ambush, a part of Jay dreaded the prospect of fighting Caldus the Quick.

Another part of him relished it, but he didn't usually listen to that part when making strategic decisions. Almost dying due to the Berserker's Bite had not only taught him that lesson, but drilled it firmly into his brain.

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Jay hadn't worried too much about fighting the D grader back when they were planning the assault. Caldus required open space to fully utilise both his weapon and his Harmony. All Jay and Marko needed was for him to walk into a narrow street for one second and they'd have a clear avenue to completing their mission.

Walking as a pair, Caldus and Yandiel were somewhat likely to walk down an alleyway; as a group of seven potentially awaiting an ambush… Jay didn't get his hopes up.

"What's our main priority?" asked Marko. Although he was the one who convinced Jay to start the mission, Marko didn't have Jay's strategic mindset or experience. He took a step back and heeded Jay's commands once the ambush was on. "Killing Yandiel, his goons, or the gladiators?"

It was a fair question.

While the obvious answer was their target Yandiel, eliminating two enemy gladiators had a chance to tip the scales of battle in Limitless Ascent's favour further than their initial objective would.

But was it worth it to focus on them first? Sure they were potentially the most valuable targets, but they were also the strongest. Jay had a decent chance to eliminate one of the gladiators within seconds if he had the element of surprise.

But was decent good enough?

If he targeted Yandiel first, Jay would almost certainly kill him. He'd complete the mission instantly and everything else would just be a bonus.

But what had both Akira and Samira told him: 'Bet on yourself'.

Jay wasn't really trying to complete this mission, he cared far more about growing stronger over the next month than anything to do with Limitless Ascent. He didn't gain anything from assassinating their target.

And he didn't gain anything from playing it safe.

Sorry Marko, you made your bed now lay in it.

"We'll target the gladiators first. I'll take Caldus, you take Tara Cinderborn. The first twenty seconds will be an all-out attack. Yandiel and the Directorate guards will likely be too shocked to respond so we'll likely have even odds. After the opening salvo, there's three scenarios, here's the plan for each of them:

"Scenario A, we both kill our opponents. If this happens there's not much need for a plan, we kill Yandiel first, before cleaning up all his guards and hiding the bodies. Afterwards, we go into hiding on some rooftop and wait for Corinne to find us. This probably won't happen but a man can dream, eh?"

Marko nodded and matched Jay's smile, however Jay could tell he was already internalising the plan and building on it himself.

"Scenario B, only one of us kills our opponent. This is more likely to happen than scenario one. I don't know how long the Directorate guards will take to respond but I wager we'll still have some time, even if one of us gets it done in the nineteenth second. At twenty, we both rush the remaining gladiator, even if it means taking a hit from the guards. The two of us should be too much for whoever remains. Plan two ends just like plan one. We hide and wait for Corinne."

"Got it, but neither of those are likely to happen, are they?"

"Whatever happened to your confidence, Marko? All jokes aside, scenario C is indeed the most likely by far. If neither of us kills or cripples our opponent within twenty seconds or so we immediately rush Yandiel and then his bodyguards. They aren't huge threats, but they could kill us if we were distracted while fighting the gladiators. In an extended fight, we don't want them around. Plus, killing Yandiel is the mission's goal, after all."

"So we just ignore the gladiators? That doesn't seem smart."

"It's not smart, which is exactly why it is. The gladiators won't expect us to abandon them, if we're sudden enough, we'll have several seconds before they can react.

"If we're synchronised enough, that's ample time to kill Yandiel and the rest of his guards. Once they're out of the way, it's a simple two versus two. We've trained with each other a lot over the past few days, I think we'll have the best chance of winning if we stick together. What do you think?"

Marko barely needed a second to mull over Jay's words.

"Together. Let me guess, scenario C ends by hiding the bodies and waiting on a rooftop for Corinne to find us?"

"It's almost like you read my mind, Marko."

Jay looked low as he checked Yandiel's position. The oncoming group were unsurprisingly walking along the widest, most illuminated route back to Yandiel's; Jay didn't think they'd be turning off any time soon.

"This spot won't work," said Jay. He'd rather hopefully positioned them in an offshoot that led to the quickest–but also shadiest–route back to Yandiel's house. There was a chance that the group would feel safe in their numbers and walk it, but it seemed they'd left that chance alone.

"Let's go to spot four, Marko. It's not ideal, but it's probably the best we're gonna get."

—

Electricity, is sudden.

While the storm sage spoke about lightning's suddenness as its defining characteristic, Jay reckoned the quality extended to its cousin electricity too. He'd never seen electricity prepare to act. Nearly every electrical device he'd ever used worked as soon as he turned it on.

Suddenness aligned with himself too. He'd struggled to reconcile the speed of electricity with the crawling serenity that came whenever he used Eye of the storm, but suddenness could bridge the gap. Jay's reality wasn't quick whenever he thought using Eye of the storm, but his actions immediately after most definitely were.

If suddenness couldn't help him use the essence of electricity within Eye of the storm, could it at least accelerate the speed at which he used it immediately after ending the technique?

Jay let the thoughts of his Harmony race within his mind. He doubted he'd make a breakthrough here, but he only had twenty seconds to set the tone for the upcoming ambush and had to make every one of them count. If electricity's suddenness won him an extra half second, or even just a tenth, it could change the entire course of the battle.

Tendrils of nausea squeezed Jay's stomach, pressing into the churning bile within and forcing it upwards. Jay held firm and pushed his queasiness back. This wasn't a fight he was entering, but an execution.

Jay's lifetime of fighting would certainly help him here, but now he had a job to do besides defeat the man before him. That understanding quelled his stomach and with it his oldest pre-fight ritual.

He ignored the other questions that came along with an assassin's duty.

Jay crouched as he traversed the Navaras rooftops, careful to keep himself out of sight. He took each step gently, spreading his weight evenly over the tiles. Although lurking through the city at night wasn't quite like Jay's experience prowling through the Emergent Bloom, his skills transferred over nicely. As he skulked towards spot four, Jay was confident he remained unseen.

Spot four wasn't the ideal arena for fighting either of the two gladiators protecting Yandiel Arrandoz, but it was one of the only spots Jay had liked that countered both opponents.

More importantly, it was the site Yandiel and his troupe were walking towards.

Marko grabbed Jay's wrist and nodded.

He was ready.

Although they'd remained unseen and unheard so far, walking along the rooftops and leaping into an ambush were completely different situations. There was a decent chance Jay and Marko would be spotted when they jumped down to the alley below. Although it would only mean an extra second to react, Jay couldn't afford to give his opponents any more advantages than they already had.

However, that was already factored into his plan. And Marko was the perfect partner if Jay wanted to move small distances in silence. Teleporting a metre or so sideways was nothing to the gladiator, and although it became harder with Jay tagging along, Marko reckoned he'd recover before he hit the ground anyway.

Jay closed his eyes and listened.

Step.

He couldn't see his targets, but their footsteps told him exactly where they were.

Step.

They edged closer, unaware that each footfall hammered another nail into their coffins.

Step.

Now!

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