[North Road — Eastern Island — Day 74 — 3:52 PM]
Jessica had been documenting since the first strike.
Not in her notebook — in her head.
What she had mentally documented over the last eight minutes:
The angel could absorb direct physical strikes without visible damage. Seraph’s first two cuts had changed that — F2’s edge with accumulated energy did penetrate. The Gods’ plane pulse worked better in a radius than directed against F2 because F2 converted directed energy into fuel.
And the Entropy Jessica had applied to the wings at the start of the fight — the tenths of degradation at the edge of the second left wing that the angel had ignored as irrelevant.
Were they still there?
Jessica looked at the angel’s wings.
The edge of the second left wing had a different texture from the rest. Not visible to the naked eye — visible to someone looking with F6 active in reading mode.
They were still there.
The tenths of degradation accumulated over eight minutes.
Not reversible.
Jessica activated F6.
---
[F6 — Entropy — full Fragment mode — activated]
F6’s full Fragment mode didn’t change Jessica’s appearance the way Seraph’s or Raven’s did.
No scythe. No armor. No dramatic visual transformation.
What changed was what surrounded Jessica.
The air within a two‑meter radius around her acquired a different quality — not directly visible but present for anyone who breathed it, the sensation that the air had been there longer than it had been, that time within that radius functioned slightly differently from time in the rest of the space.
Jessica’s eyes — completely black, without iris, without visible white — with the specific depth of something that looked at everything as if it had already seen its end.
The notebook in her left hand.
The pen in her right.
Not because she was going to note things down now — because the notebook and the pen were part of what Jessica was with F6 at maximum, the same way the scythe was part of Seraph.
"Second left wing," said Jessica quietly, to herself. "Outer edge. The tenths from the first contact are still present."
She oriented F6 toward that point.
---
Not toward the angel in general.
Toward the specific point where the initial degradation had started — the edge of the second left wing where Entropy had found the first point of least resistance on the repressor’s surface.
The logic was simple:
A material that has already started to degrade is easier to degrade at the same point than intact one. Degradation creates discontinuity in the structure. Discontinuity is exactly where Entropy works most efficiently.
F6 at maximum oriented toward that discontinuity didn’t produce the same effect as F6 at maximum oriented toward intact surface.
The degradation of the second left wing’s edge went from tenths to whole points in the first fifteen seconds.
---
The angel felt it.
Not immediately — F6 wasn’t the kind of power that produced impact pain. It was the kind that produced the progressive sensation that something that should work a certain way was working worse.
Ten seconds.
Twenty.
At second twenty‑two, the angel turned toward Jessica.
Seraph took advantage of the turn.
F2’s scythe with the accumulated energy of the entire fight reached the angel’s right side — the same side as the second cut, the same point where the surface had already given way once.
[Angel — fourth cut — right side — on previous wound]
The fourth cut on a previous wound penetrated deeper than the third.
The impossible‑colored blood in greater quantity.
The angel absorbed the cut and turned back toward Seraph — not ignoring Jessica, processing both threats simultaneously, the repressor updating its parameters to include two high‑priority targets.
---
"It’s adapting to both," said Kira from the flank. Predator’s Sense mapping the angel’s patterns in real time. "Its movements are starting to anticipate both Seraph and Jessica."
"I see it," said Seraph.
"How long before anticipation is enough to dodge the cuts?"
"I don’t know." Seraph direct. "F2 needs the strike to land to absorb the energy. If the angel starts dodging the cuts, F2 stops accumulating."
Jessica from the left flank, without raising her eyes from the second wing’s edge:
"Degradation is at fifteen percent of the edge. At this rate — five minutes for the discontinuity to be large enough to affect the wing’s mobility."
"Five minutes?" said Raven from behind — F3 with one hundred four reconstituted units, still far below the peak but functional.
"On the second left wing specifically." Jessica. "If the angel doesn’t cover the point."
"Can it cover it?"
"It can position itself so F6 has no direct angle to the edge." Jessica. "But covering it requires orienting the wings in a way that reduces overall mobility."
"Will it?"
"Not yet." Jessica watching the angel’s movements. "It still doesn’t consider the wing’s degradation as a greater tactical priority than Seraph’s cuts."
"When will it?"
"When the degradation starts affecting movement." Jessica. "In approximately two minutes."
---
Seraph attacking in the interval.
The angel adapting — more economical movements, less exposure of the right side where the two cuts on the same point had created the point of least resistance, more attention to F2’s channel in Seraph’s hand than to Seraph’s body.
The angel’s fifth attack reached F2’s channel directly — its fist not at Seraph’s body but at the wrist holding the scythe, the same tactic it had used against Alex in the fight’s first minute.
Seraph rotated her wrist.
The fist found her forearm instead of her wrist — not F2’s activation channel, the bone.
[Seraph HP: 198,400 → 171,200]
The forearm with the impact’s damage. The scythe held.
And the strike’s energy absorbed by F2 through the forearm contact — not as efficiently as through the torso but present.
Seraph responded with the edge diagonally toward the angel’s left shoulder — a new point, without a previous wound, the first time F2 had attacked that angle.
The angel partially anticipated it.
The cut arrived but not at the shoulder — at the collarbone, more superficial than Seraph had aimed for.
[Angel — fifth cut — collarbone — superficial]
Superficial but present.
Five total cuts on the angel.
---
"Adaptation confirmed," said Kira. "It anticipated the fifth cut’s angle."
"I saw," said Seraph.
"How long before it anticipates all angles?"
Seraph evaluated.
Without saying it aloud — the answer was uncomfortable.
Not long.
The repressor had the ability to process patterns in real time that bearers needed training sessions to develop. Seraph had been in this fight for minutes. The angel had been learning to read Seraph for the same amount of time.
The window for cuts was closing.
---
Jessica noticed that the second left wing’s edge degradation had reached twenty‑two percent when the angel made the first position adjustment that confirmed it had detected the threat.
All four wings rotating slightly — not dramatically, millimeters at the base, enough to reduce the direct angle to the degraded edge.
"It detected it," said Jessica.
"Did it cover it?" said Raven.
"It reduced the angle." Jessica evaluating the new geometry. "Didn’t eliminate it completely. There’s an alternative angle but it requires me to move."
"Can you move?"
"Yes." Jessica beginning to change position without urgency — F6 at maximum required concentration but not immobility. "Give me twenty seconds."
The angel oriented a pulse toward Jessica.
Not the full pulse it had used to clear Army of Bones — smaller, more precise, directed at the point where F6 was most concentrated.
The pulse arrived.
Jessica received it.
[Jessica HP: 175,000 → 128,400]
Forty‑six thousand damage from one pulse.
Jessica didn’t fall — she stepped back four paces, recovered her balance, kept F6 active.
"It works in both directions," said Jessica. Her voice with its usual clinical interest even though forty‑six thousand damage had just hit her. "The angel can also direct the pulse. New data."
"Are you okay?" said Emily from Alex’s position.
"Less HP than thirty seconds ago." Jessica repositioning. "F6 is still active."
The pen in her right hand.
The notebook in her left.
She reached the alternative angle for the wing’s degraded edge.
And oriented F6 again.
---
Two minutes later, the angel’s second left wing edge had lost thirty‑one percent of its structural integrity.
Not visible to the naked eye.
Visible when the angel tried to use all four wings for the lateral sweep it had used before — the movement that came easily from the fight’s start.
The sweep arrived.
But the left wing completed the arc at a slightly different angle than the repressor had calculated — the discontinuity at the edge affecting the surface’s rigidity, the sweep deviating two degrees from the optimal trajectory.
Two degrees.
For Raven’s F3 units that the sweep was targeting — enough for twenty‑two of the one hundred four that Raven had reconstituted to survive the sweep that would normally have eliminated the entire area.
Twenty‑two.
Out of one hundred four.
"The wing is affecting its movements," said Raven.
"Yes," said Jessica. The satisfaction in her voice — not of a person enjoying another’s pain but of someone who had verified a hypothesis. "Thirty‑one percent discontinuity produces a two‑degree deviation in the arc. At sixty‑two percent, the deviation should be enough to affect the pulse’s speed as well."
"How long to reach sixty‑two?" said Seraph.
"At this rate — eight minutes."
"And if the angel covers the wing completely before then?"
"Covering it completely requires folding all four wings." Jessica. "Folding all four wings eliminates aerial mobility and reduces the pulse’s radius by seventy percent." A pause. "The angel isn’t going to fold all four wings."
"Why not?"
"Because we’re still the lesser threat." Jessica looking at the repressor. "The angel still considers it can handle F6 and F2 simultaneously without sacrificing mobility." A pause. "It’s probably right."
"Then we need it to stop being right," said Seraph.
"Yes." Jessica with her pen still for a moment. "For that, we need F7."
The team looked at Alex.
Alex with his eyes closed, his left hand active, F7 open, searching through the previous cycle’s memory while Emily held Purifying Light in healing mode on his right wrist.
Searching.
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