[Earlier that morning…]

Sam

"Listen, Sam. One last thing before you go."

"Yeah?"

Will sat on a chair in their room, facing her, while Sam fiddled with her clothes. He had an odd, slightly constipated look on his face as he watched her get ready. Like it was bringing him pain to not be able to go with her. She wasn't yet familiar enough with his emotions to tell if that was true or not. He was carrying so many pains already, it was hard to parse them.

"Semblance users," he said, "are not to be taken lightly. They are extremely dangerous—especially if you know nothing about your opponent's semblance. You'll only have vague inference to work with, and likely a limited amount of time to learn the rules of the opposing semblance before it kills you. This is why I want you to play it as safe as possible over at the mines. You understand that, don't you?"

"Received and acknowledged, good sir," Sam replied, tightening her belt.

"Okay, good." He took a slow breath in, then let it out in a sigh. "All that said, semblance users do have one particular weakness you can exploit."

"Yeah?"

"While semblances themselves are often powerful enough to finish a fight on their own, the user is forced to make themselves vulnerable while casting it. Semblances all require an additional ceremonial gesture or action to trigger that will force an opponent out of their usual fighting stance, and I've gathered that they typically take several seconds to fully activate.

"Add on the fact that semblance users tend to cultivate an unhealthy overconfidence in their ability—that it's the be-all and end-all—and…" He shrugged one shoulder. "Well, the best way to deal with a semblance user is by finishing them quickly, before they think to use it. But failing that, you'll have a good window during the few moments when they're fully focused on casting the ability. Understood?"

"Understood."

"Tell me what you promised."

Sam rolled her eyes inside her tunic while wriggling into it, leaving Will's stretched-out one discarded on the floor. "I prooomise I wooon't fight him alooone."

"Gooooood," Will replied, raising his eyebrows significantly over the rim of his shades.

* * *

[Present…]

The moment Gorebag began belting out his semblance, Sam launched into one final leap that carried her right into him. She caught him around the neck and let her momentum carry her around as she swung, like a monkey on a tree trunk, to land on his back. Cinching both arms tight around his throat, she got him in a rear naked choke that cut off his speech with a strangled squawk.

Leaning into the man's ear, she whispered triumphantly:

"Hero Technique: Fuck You, Fight Me."

[Note: Also not an actual ability.]

Gorebag strained furiously against her hold. First he reached over his shoulder to pluck her off, but could only scrape his broken hand uselessly over her shirtsleeve. Finding that approach ineffective, he instead tried to contort his neck to take the pressure off his windpipe and carotid, but he couldn't very well dislocate his own spine, and he was unable to drive his chin down to displace her forearm, so that too was a bust. Flexing the overinflated muscles in his neck and shoulders helped him out a little, but it wouldn't be enough. She squeezed tighter. He gurgled and growled, straining to stay conscious. A few seconds longer, and he'd be done.

Realizing that he needed to do something, Gorebag tipped forward and got one foot under him, then the other, carrying Sam's entire weight like a backpack. He stood poised on the balls of his feet, wavering. About to fall backward to crush her underneath him, she realized.

Sam switched gears, immediately transitioning out of her RNC to grab onto each side of his neck, sinking her fingers into the flesh of his bulging trapezius muscles with all the strength she had in order to secure a bit of extra grip, then kicked off his back with her one good leg. While her opponent was still spluttering for air, unsure what was going on, she'd poised herself in a handstand on top of his shoulders, legs thrust high. He gaped up at her face, and she grinned right back down at him.

"Check this shit out."

Tipping her weight toward his front, she forced Gorebag off balance as she plunged to the ground while keeping her grip on his shoulders. Her injured left leg jolted badly on impact, but she ignored it. Using their generated momentum, she squatted low and transitioned one hand to Gorebag's chest, then, with a great effort…

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…rolled his weight onto her and hoisted him clean into the air, flailing and howling and impotent. Even with Immovable turned off, he was almost too heavy for her to handle. But handle him she did. Carrying the entirety of that huge muscled meatball on her shoulders made her feel a bit like that one Greek fellow holding up the planet or whatever.

Her bad leg splintered further under the tremendous weight. A broken bone pipe breached the skin above her knee with a squirt of blood. She whimpered with the pain, but refused to let up.

Not unexpectedly, Gorebag gathered enough focus to activate Immovable in an effort to get her to drop him. Of course, she was happy to oblige, once more transitioning her grip. She sprawled her stance wide and let her opponent fall between her legs, all that redoubled weight turned against him as he landed right on his neck, head snapped sideways. She went on her butt right alongside him as she completed the piledriver, laughing through the pain at the wonderful absurdity of what she'd just accomplished.

Gorebag fell flat like a log with a dull boom, all that glistening naked flesh shuddering with the impact. He only stayed still for a few seconds, though, before he started wriggling, contorting his limbs to get them underneath him again.

He was tired. Exhausted. He hadn't had a clue just how quickly an intense grappling match could sap all the strength from your body. But now he knew. His movements were slow and sluggish, like those of a sleepwalker.

This is it.

Sam waited until Gorebag got on all fours, then dove on his head and put the back of his neck under her armpit as she snaked her arms around and locked them over his throat to form a guillotine—sprawled on her belly, chin resting on his shoulder. She squeezed tight, tight, tight, hissing sharp breaths of triumphs, and bellowed:

"HERO TECHNIQUE:

HEAVEN-CUTTING GUILLOTINE OF LIBERTY AND JUSTICE!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

[Note: It's just a normal guillotine choke. There's really nothing special about it.]

Gorebag's struggling weakened, then ceased; even before he went unconscious. He'd given up. The strength went out of his great big limbs, and he sagged onto his belly. Sam held the choke a little longer than was strictly necessary—mostly out of spite—then rolled free of her opponent. She hopped up on one leg and threw her arms high, making double peace signs.

"I win!"

* * *

Serene

Both sides went dead quiet as Sam rose victorious beside her fallen enemy. Serene knew she should be directing her attention toward the slavers at the end of the road, to try and tease out whatever foul play they had in mind now that their leader was out of commission, but she found that she was entirely unable to take her eyes off her friend. Like everyone else, she was transfixed; struck dumb.

She looked like she'd been hit by a speeding truck or two, her face beaten to a tenderized pulp. Even so, her grin was unblemished and radiant as ever; excellent white teeth washed blood-pink. Her hands were raised to make playful victory signs.

"I win!" Sam announced, shattering the silence with a voice that carried across the barren fields, echoing like thunder. It would have held a lot more authority if her busted nose didn't make her sound all congested and nasally. Turning laboriously to face the broken gates of the mining village, she let her arms fall and said: "You guys over there! Yeah, you! The emo ones in black! Let your prisoners go and surrender! Now!"

On its face, her demand was a fairly ridiculous one. Beat to shit from fighting and separated from the main militia forces by a good distance, Sam was clearly not in a position to back up any threats she made.

But, for whatever reason, after only a few moments of silent deliberation, they listened. The taskmasters threw their cruel weapons down—only a few at first, then steadily more until there was a great clattering of wood and metal landing in criss-crossing piles at their feet.

The why of it was anyone's guess. Maybe the fact that they had just seen Sam dismantle their supposedly unbeatable leader while making use of a tactic that by all means should have been several orders of magnitude too stupid to work. Maybe the fact that the militia had more than enough men to take the mine by force if it came to bloodshed, with reinforcements on the way. Maybe the taskmasters possessed some inherent sense of justice, and wished to honor the terms made before the duel—unlikely.

Or maybe, they were simply cowed into submission by the ineffable aura of command Sam was exuding. Even though Serene was well aware that the girl must be exhausted, her entire demeanor seemed to say that she'd face down an army without blinking.

The spell that hung over the militia broke as Jawara began issuing commands and her troops swept in to take control of the mining village. Serene and the rest of her group went to check on Sam.

"It seems you were right—somehow," Wesley said while they walked. Looking toward the glistening hillock of Gorebag's unconscious body, he slowly shook his head. "I don't know how she keeps doing this stuff."

"Neither do I," Serene replied. "But life is full of little mysteries, I suppose." She shrugged her rifle higher and hurried the last bit of the way in a half-jog, providing a shoulder for Sam to lean on when she was about to fall over.

"Did you see me fight?" Sam asked, beaming even though both her eyes were nearly swollen shut, her nose was flattened into her face, and she was nursing an oily grub of a fat lip.

Serene gave a soft snort that turned into a grunt of exertion from trying to hold up the bigger woman's weight. "I saw. You know your boyfriend is gonna kill me for this, right? I was supposed to be keeping you in line."

"Oh, he won't be that maaaaad," Sam replied with a bright laugh. She chewed on her bottom lip with a sharp canine, then hissed and left off as she caught a bloody split. "I'll just bat my eyelashes at him, maybe let him squeeze a tit, and he'll forget allll…" She trailed off, and her brilliant grin slipped a hair, a look of fear entering her expression that even Gorebag had not been able to inspire. "Oh, shit. No, you're right. He's really mad."

"You can tell because of your bond?"

"Uh, yeah. I'm pretty sure I'm getting my ass beat red tonight."

Serene nodded, satisfied. "Honestly? Serves you right, babe. As long as you're the one getting spanked instead of me, you won't see me shedding any tears."

"Don't worry." Sam's grin reasserted herself as she clenched a fist in front of her face, fresh blood squelching between her fingers. "I'll tank the damage for you guys."

"Generous," Wesley replied dully.

"Incredibly so," Serene added with a similar inflection.

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