“Here you are, m’lady.” The grubby vampire grinned, handing over the sack as though it held nothing more valuable than potatoes.

Karma took a hold, careful to avoid contact with the man’s fist, and went to take it from him, surprised when his grip didn’t relent at her attempt.

“The, uh, matter of payment?” He asked, sounding like the most innocent thing in the world as his yellowed teeth stared at her from beneath his parted, cracked lips. She forced down her revulsion at the sight of decay evident in his mouth, snapping her fingers to call over the assistant she’d temporarily hired in place of Pyrhic.

The boy took seconds longer than she would have, adding yet another entry to the list of annoyances Karma was forced to overlook.

Taking the wrapped stack of stars, she presented them to the smuggler.

“All we agreed upon,” she said. “Take it, and don’t tell me what you do with it.”

The man snatched the money slightly too fast for Karma’s liking, running his fingers down the surface of the coins as if to check their authenticity by touch alone. A moment later, his grin widened and he released his grip on the sack.

“Pleasure doin’ business wif ya, Princess.” The man grinned, turning to scurry away without another word. Karma gripped him by the shoulder, resisting the urge to wince at the doubtlessly unhygienic contact as she spoke.

“I’d ask that you remain present while I check the contents.” She explained.

The man seemed to attempt to move once more, and at a flash of irritation Karma allowed a trickle of magic to strengthen her fingers, digging them harder into his shoulder until a gasp escaped him and his collarbone seemed to strain under the pressure.

“O-of course, m’lady.” The man mumbled hurriedly, turning as Karma released her grip. Not fully taking her eyes from him, she opened the sack and peered inside.

It was, as he had promised, filled with arcstock crystals. Each as long as her fist, and slightly wider than its thumb. Yet the smuggler’s reaction had left her suspicious.

Reaching into herself and touching the ever-eager reservoir of her magic, Karma funnelled it to the surface, pouring it into her Eye of Analysis. A moment later the world changed around her. Now a mere construct, made from a trillion natural principals all woven into and around one another.

The bag in her hands was not merely a dark brown, it was a composite of red, yellow and black. And these colours did not produce the final product incidentally, it was because each of them absorbed strikingly different wavelengths of light, producing entirely distinct visual effects when observed by a-

She paused, then seized her senses with a mental hand. Karma wasn’t here to analyse the colouration of a bag, she was here to examine its contents. Not for the first time, she cursed her strain’s distracting side-effects.

As she shook the sack slightly, carefully taking count of each individual crystal as she saw it, she found her suspicions confirmed. Raising her head, Karma affixed the smuggler with a glare, allowing every scrap of her distaste and disgust at the man to seep through into the expression.

“It seems you’re short a few.”

It was hard to see through all the grime, but she was quite sure the man’s skin paled. Shakily and, fortunate for her, wordlessly, he reached into a pocket and withdrew a handful of additional crystals. A quick mental tally confirmed for Karma that with those in the sack, they totalled the amount she’d paid for.

Taking the crystals, Karma plastered on her sweetest smile.

“It was a pleasure doing business with you,” she beamed. “And if you ever try to cheat me again, I’ll have one of my Kin cut you in half.”

The man’s exit was not unlike a rat’s, and Karma allowed herself a satisfied smile as she watched him hurry back out through the alley. Turning, she followed him out after a few moments. Upon coming out into the main street, she wasn’t surprised to see he was gone from sight.

It mattered not, she had what she’d come for.

Her bodyguards came into step behind her as she walked, her new assistant a pace to their side. The trip to the waiting carriage was a swift one, and yet what little Karma saw of the destitute area still made her heart sink.

The interior of her hired cab was a welcome alternative to the disrepaired brickwork and filth-ridden road. She almost felt guilty spreading the district’s dirt with the soles of her shoes.

Climbing in next to her, Karma’s temporary assistant pulled out his notebook and began flicking through it. Pyrhic could have done as much in a third of the time, minus the notebook, and she found herself feeling unjustly angry towards the boy.

“I believe you have nothing else scheduled for today, lady Alabaster.” He informed her, checking and rechecking the parchment seemingly with every other syllable. Karma acknowledged his words with a nod, then turned away from him and began to think.

She’d set up a lot of tasks for herself, even disregarding the investigation into Tamaias’ death. In the light of that, Unity Eden was likely beyond her reach. Her window to press the attack, to turn public impression against him and make the boy into a festering wound in the Unixian Alliance, had long since passed.

That was an issue, but it wasn’t the only one. Gem had been more badly affected by her battle than Karma had begun to guess, and Unison had allowed not so much as a scrap of useful information to fall from his lips in the brief time Karma had been able to interrogate him.

She hoped that was because he had no useful information, with her preoccupation it wouldn’t be hard for the other organisers to keep anything he revealed to themselves. Karma doubted that, she'd had a good look at the man with her strain during his interrogation and was quite sure he hadn’t been hiding anything. Nonetheless, there was always a risk.

Feeling the familiar anxiety that always accompanied her thoughts turning to things beyond her control, Karma pushed the matter to one side, focusing instead on less mentally taxing areas of thought.

With the remaining few hours of her day suddenly open to use as she pleased, the only remaining question for her was what exactly it was that would please her to do with it. Karma didn’t need to think long to produce two possibilities, each with their own unique magnetism and issues.

She found herself pondering the issue still, even as the buildings outside the carriage seemed to increase in quality and sanitation as the vehicle carried her closer and closer to the city’s centre. And yet still, she failed to find an answer.

Karma was not an indecisive person, and she never had been. She was used to settling on a course of action swiftly, then following it without a second’s delay. And yet something about that knack had seemingly left her for the moment. It was unspeakably frustrating.

Her best course of action was obvious. Confront the Demigod, Ra, and demand to know why exactly he’d been so relaxed in the meeting about Tamaias’ death that he’d literally slept through it. The information such an investigation would bring was surely something Karma couldn’t do without. Nothing feared death like an Immortal after all.

And yet her thoughts continuously strayed to Gem. She'd just been attacked, and then moved to entirely new quarters in an already unfamiliar building. Karma certainly felt a stab of sympathy for the girl, but that wasn’t where her thoughts stopped. Something was urging her to visit, to comfort the child.

Slowly, she realised that that something was a genuine want.

The two choices raged against one another. Karma’s mind served as their battleground, and her rationalisations their munitions. As the cab rounded a corner, revealing the distant body of the Crux before straightening out and heading directly for it, she finally reached a decision.

It wasn’t one that filled her with any measure of confidence.

***

Finding out she would continue to share a living space with the Gemini had not been a pleasant surprise. Astra could keenly remember her prior experience doing so, and the indulgent use of choice words between them was still fresh in her memory.

Despite the great reluctance with which she had accepted the room, all of her apprehension had evaporated upon her discovery that it was located barely half a corridor from a large, abandoned gymnasium.

Astra didn’t dislike other people, she considered herself to be quite sociable, it was just that sometimes she needed to be alone. Nothing but her own thoughts to converse with, nothing but her own heartbeat to listen.

The room’s equipment, she quickly learned, did not measure up to the standards of that which was located more closely to the contestant’s main quarters.

Punch bags of multiple sizes were strung up, though a quick examination of their texture revealed burlap in place of sturdier leather. A similar difference was visible in the weights, each one providing no less resistance than those she was used to, yet bearing an oceanic gap in the craftsmanship. Carefully welded iron plates were nowhere to be seen, replaced instead by blocks of stone, seemingly attached to the bar by no more than rope twine.

With a start, Astra realised how spoiled she’d become in her short time at the Crux. Relatively low-quality though they were, a year or even month ago she’d still have killed for half the range of equipment laid out before her now.

Feeling the grin sprout across her face anew, she removed her petticoat, placed it over a stand and began putting her muscles to work.

Though her hands and wrists had been wrapped, she started slowly on the punching bag. Her own strength could and would damage her body, if she didn’t give it time to adjust. A painful lesson she’d learned early on in her first days of training.

The slab of fabric barely shifted at first, Astra’s strikes landing with no more force than a child’s. She bit down the frustration that came from using such little strength, focusing instead on the sensation of her hands, the warmth seeping into her joints as they adjusted and prepared for further strain.

Once she was sure they were past the early fragility of an abrupt start, she pushed them slightly further. With great satisfaction, she noticed the bag begin to swing back, recoiling visibly from each of her blows. Yet still she held back.

As she worked the target, beating out a rhythm against it like a drum, she felt her mind beginning to drift. Fading back from her, disconnecting from body in the way she’d grown so accustomed to. Clearing her head of all distractions, until nothing but a dim awareness of her physical sensations remained to siphon her attention.

Perhaps inevitably, her unshackled mind began to drift towards Xeno.

Astra hadn’t meant to push the girl into the background, to make her feel irrelevant and useless. It meant nothing, of course, as she had done just that. They all had.

Is it that important to you all that you have me to play nurse when you all get hurt?

Eclipse, how had she managed to hold her tongue for so long if that was how she’d thought they saw her? Just thinking about it made Astra want to leave the gym, rush back to their quarters and clear things up.

The urge was a misguided one, however. If there was anything Xeno needed, it was space. Astra doubted the girl would be ready to speak again, after how the last group conversation had gone. Even hours later.

Suddenly aware of her body having finished warming up, Astra redoubled her assault on the sack. A dull thud accompanied each blow, feeling out of place to her after growing accustomed to the slapping of leather. It mattered little. All Astra cared about was that the exercise served to drown her thoughts.

She pummelled her target with all of her might, projecting onto it every scrap of irritation she’d felt since coming to Bermuda, leaving nothing behind.

It was the sack’s fault she’d sidelined Xeno and repaid the girl’s kindness with indifference. The sack’s fault that stupid Immortal had attacked just when Crow had finally been about to tell her the truth after the better part of a year.

The sack’s fault Astra hadn’t been able to bathe in the delicious energy of a good work-out for days, thanks to her stupid head injury.

And it was the sack’s fault that she’d managed to go her entire life convinced she was strong, that a little hard work would guarantee her placement at the top of the world, only to have that childish illusion shattered by someone no older than she was.

Another of her punches landed, perhaps the strongest thus far, and the shoddy frame onto which the bag had been fixed finally gave way. The rusted hook slid from the metal loop, leaving the mass of the equipment suspended by nothing and letting it drop to the ground under gravity’s pull.

It seemed to happen so very slowly to Astra, and yet by the time she realised what was going on, the bag already lay on its side. She paused for a moment, staring at it, then felt an alarming wave of exhaustion, her chest suddenly burning as, she realised, it had been for some time.

Time for a break then.

Making her way to one of the benches at the far wall, Astra found her legs shaky beneath her. She barely managed to grab a rack of weights to hold herself up before all balance was lost to her.

She closed her eyes, swimming vision making the world too disorienting to bear looking at, and winced as she waited for the sensation to disappear.

Another dizzy spell, one of many she’d had in the time since her last task. They had, she’d noted with no small amount of satisfaction, been growing steadily less common in recent days. And yet experiencing them at all never failed to ruin her mood.

Once she’d regained her bearings, Astra had to resist the urge to hurl the stand at the wall with all her magic and strength.

***

Not for the first time since coming to Bermuda, Crow really wished he’d been born just a little bit more socially adept.

Had he been gifted with Gem’s confidence, he would surely have found it a simple matter to initiate conversation with the girl. She was, after all, sitting only ten feet from him. Both of them were alone, and he had gotten to know her rather well already.

Of course, given that Gem had, in fact, been gifted with Gem’s confidence, he couldn’t help but wonder why it was she refused to use it as a means of starting the conversation for him.

Mentally flicking through the possible explanations, Crow realised that it was more likely than not related to her not knowing that he wanted to start a conversation in the first place. After a moment of consideration, he decided that that absolved her of blame.

Gem readjusted her position on the sofa’s cushion, grunting slightly as she moved, and reminded Crow of her presence. And the fact that, despite his exhaustive tactical considerations, he had yet to actually speak to her.

Feeling a stab of annoyance at himself for dawdling so, he decided to banish his head of all other thoughts and opened his mouth.

“I have pretty eyes,” he said.

Damn.

Staring at him, Gem arched a bemused eyebrow.

“Well, you most certainly do, but I’m not sure if I understand why you’re bringing it up all of a sudden?”

“I didn’t mean to say that,” Crow stammered out, mentally kicking himself for mutilating his words so egregiously. “I meant to say that you’re pretty.”

Gem nodded.

“You’re certainly observant today.”

“No,” he hurried, “that’s not all.”

“I should certainly hope not,” she grinned.

Ignoring her, Crow forced his voice to a state of steadiness as he spoke.

“And because you’re pretty, and powerful and all that, I’m wondering if maybe our friendship started mainly from my… strain.”

That wiped the smile from her face.

“Excuse you?” The girl asked, voice threaded with barbed wire. Crow scrambled to diffuse the sudden change.

“I wouldn’t blame you, I was just wondering-”

“Wondering if I was a completely superficial brat?” Gem interrupted, not bothering to hide the fury in her tone.

Feeling his face burn, Crow struggled to find the right way to respond. Much to his horror, every answer he could think of seemed wholly inappropriate, and before he could capture the illusive perfect response, Gem spoke again.

“What in God’s name brought this on?” She demanded.

The overwhelming urge to explain that Karma Alabaster had outright told him as much suddenly washed over Crow, and it was only his vivid recollection of the woman’s spine-liquefying stare that held his tongue. Instead, he replied with perhaps the smartest thing he’d said so far.

“Nevermind,” he answered. “You’re right, it was stupid of me, I just started wondering… no, it was ridiculous.”

Seeing the girl’s features ease up some, he felt a spark of relief burn for a second in his chest, realising it was his chance to completely put out the fires of conflict.

“I mean, Karma Alabaster’s probably the only one in the world almost as talented as you, and you’re probably one of the only people our age who isn't in love with her!”

Crow found himself wondering, just for a moment, if the old saying about scorned women and the Butchery was true. There was just enough space, between his glancing at the smolderingly wrathful expression flickering across Gem’s face and her speaking, for a great fear to be instilled within him.

“Get out,” the girl practically snarled. Her pale skin was so crimson it seemed awash with blood, the glinting ice of her eyes seemed to be melting as it was drowned in rapidly building tears.

He saw no more of her than that, turning away and moving to leave as she’d instructed. As much for fear of further humiliating the girl as providing the necessary spark to ignite her temper. Closing the door behind him, Crow found himself gripping the knob so tightly he thought it might dent.

How stupid could one man be?