Chapter 200: Into the Press-World
The press began to roll. The world tore itself inside out.
A roar of grinding metal and ripping newsprint swallowed Lusiana, Luis, Antonella, and Taitusi whole. The Grand Trial Arena vanished, replaced by a cacophony of industrial violence and the thick, acrid smell of hot ink and ozone. They landed hard on vibrating metal grating, the reinforced harnesses already strapped across their chests and backs feeling suddenly, profoundly real.
Around them, the Ashamed Article dimension churned with relentless motion. Conveyor belts groaned under the weight of blank article plates, sliding over pits of glossy black ink that bubbled like tar. Towering printing mechanisms slammed down with percussive force, launching finished plates from iron mouths. Crane hooks swung on rusted chains, and entire red cutting stations shuddered along rails before vanishing into canyon walls made of compressed, folded newspaper.
“Five attached plates results in elimination,” Antoinette’s voice echoed, disembodied and calm, through the metallic din. “The duel lanes are now separate.”
The floor beneath them shuddered and split. Lusiana and Luis were thrown onto one narrow, moving bridge of interlocking plates. Thirty feet away, on a parallel lane, Antonella and Taitusi skidded across a similar surface. The gap between them was a sheer drop into ink-dark nothingness.
Lusiana didn’t wait. She lunged for the nearest conveyor, her fingers closing around the handle of a heavy, hexagonal article plate. She swung it in a wide, brutal arc, not just as a weapon, but as a moving wall to herd Luis toward the edge. “Let’s see how you talk your way out of this!”
Luis danced back, his laugh a tight, forced sound. “Always so direct, Lusiana! It’s a weakness.” He snatched a plate of his own but didn’t charge. Instead, he pivoted and hurled it like a discus toward a passing crane hook. The metal clanged, and the hook swung violently into Lusiana’s path. “Strategy requires using the environment!”
She didn’t slow down. She smashed through the swinging hook with her shoulder, the impact jarring up her spine. “Hiding behind machinery still counts as fear, Luis!” she shouted, advancing again.
On the parallel lane, Antonella moved with a predator’s calculated patience. She watched the rhythm of the stamping presses, timed the gap, and darted in to snatch a plate. “Taitusi! The edge is right behind you. Move left. Now.”
Taitusi, backpedaling, glanced over his shoulder at the ink pit. “I officially hate journalism!” he yelped, his foot slipping on a slick metal seam. He flailed, grabbed a hanging chain with one hand, and kicked out wildly with his foot. His boot connected with a loose plate skittering toward him, sending it clattering away from Antonella’s grasp. “See? Useful panic!”
Antonella was already on him, her plate aimed for the locking port on his harness’s side. “Stop joking and focus!” The clamp snapped shut a millimeter from the port, biting onto the railing instead as Taitusi twisted his torso with desperate, eel-like grace.
A deep, seismic groan shook the entire dimension. The two press-bridges, moving on separate tracks, suddenly collided with a screech of bending metal. The impact sent everyone staggering.
Luis used the moment of distraction. As Lusiana fought for balance, he darted in, slammed his article plate against the port on her left hip, and shoved. The mechanism locked with a definitive, heavy CLUNK. The weight was immediate, a sudden drag on her left side.
“One,” Luis panted, a slick smile on his face. “A headline begins with a single word.”
Lusiana’s eyes blazed. Instead of recoiling, she used the momentum of her weighted side, spinning into him and driving him backward into a shuddering stack of blank, metal headline blocks. The impact knocked the breath from him. She brought her own plate down toward his back harness. He bucked, and the clamp glanced off, scoring the metal but not locking.
“You talk too much for a headline,” she grunted, pressing her weight against him.
On the merged section of grating, Antonella saw her chance. The collision had knocked Taitusi toward a red cutting station that was grinding along its rail, its circular blade whirring. She cornered him against its safety rail. “Nowhere to swing, Taitusi. Attach or be attached.”
“Option C!” he shouted, and in a move of pure, terrified improvisation, he grabbed the moving station’s railing itself. It jerked him sideways, dragging his feet off the platform. He hung for a second, then scrambled onto the station as it carried him away from her. “I meant to do that!” he screamed, clinging to the rail as the blade shrieked inches from his back.
High above, projected against a sky of shifting, inky clouds, Irena’s name glowed with the safe, steady light of exemption. Opposite it, Prince Kelmen’s personal sigil—a coiled, elegant serpent—hung like a watching eye.
“The lanes will reconfigure in thirty seconds,” Antoinette’s voice announced, cool and informative. “Stability is not guaranteed. Secure your footing.”
“Stability?” Taitusi yelled from his perilous ride on the cutting station. “What part of this looks stable to you?” The station jerked to a halt, nearly throwing him into the blade.
Lusiana shoved Luis away, breathing hard. The single plate on her harness felt like an anchor. She glared at him, then at the chaotic, thrumming world around them. “This is faster than they said,” she called across to the other lane, where Antonella was eyeing Taitusi’s retreat.
“Heavier, too,” Antonella called back, hefting a new plate. “The descriptions never cover the noise. Or the smell.”
Luis straightened his harness, his smile tighter now. “It’s a press, darling. It’s designed to apply pressure.” He eyed a new plate clattering down a chute. “Let’s see what the next edition holds.”
=====
The Ashamed Article Dimension, Elarion Trial Space — the first duel lane inside the moving press-world, a collapsing industrial corridor of conveyor belts, swinging crane hooks, ink pits, rotating platforms, red cutting stations, and tower-sized machines firing heavy Article Plates into the battlefield. During the first round of Team East Trial 9, as the duel between Lusiana and Luis reaches its final phase.
During the first round of Team East Trial 9, as the duel between Lusiana and Luis reaches its final phase.
Luis moved like the politician he was, exploiting openings she created with her rage. He let her charge, then sidestepped, slapping a second plate onto her right shoulder with a clean, efficient motion. The clunk echoed in her bones. “Two,” he announced, already backing away toward a cluster of hanging chains. “The narrative is building, Lusiana. Can you feel it?”
The asymmetry of the weight was immediate, making her stance feel crooked, her movements sluggish. She gritted her teeth, refusing to acknowledge the drag. “Your narrative ends with you in the ink,” she shot back, her voice low and rough.
He didn’t let up. He used the chaos, the shuddering floor, the distraction of a screaming press-tower firing a fresh volley of plates. As she fought to rebalance, he closed in fast, not with brute force but with precise, almost clinical pressure. The third plate locked onto the central port of her chest harness.
The impact staggered her. Her left shoulder dipped noticeably lower than her right.
“Three.” Luis was breathing hard now, sweat cutting clean lines through the ink-smears on his face. He smiled, a thin, triumphant line. “Force without control is just noise, darling. You’re just making a lot of very loud, very predictable noise.”
A deep, shearing groan came from above. A section of riveted plating tore loose from a towering press, a metal headline the size of a doorframe, plummeting straight toward them both. Luis’s eyes flicked up, calculating his dodge.
Lusiana didn’t dodge. She snarled, grabbed a loose article plate from a passing conveyor belt with both hands, and swung it like a massive bat. She met the falling headline in mid-air with a concussive, deafening CRASH. The impact vibrated up her arms, blindingly painful, but the larger piece careened away, smashing into a bank of machinery.
Shrapnel and shredded paper drifted down around them.
Antoinette’s voice sliced through the settling din. “Plate count update. Lusiana: three. Luis: two.”
Luis blinked, his smile gone, replaced by genuine, startled assessment. He hadn’t expected that. He recovered quickly, his mind visibly racing. “Sentimental,” he said, brushing paper from his sleeve. “Protecting me? Old habits.”
“I was protecting my win,” she growled, hefting the dented plate in her hand. “You don’t get to be taken out by a random accident. I’m taking you out.”
The lane shuddered again, a massive gear engaging somewhere deep below. The section of grating they stood on suddenly tilted, becoming a steep, slippery slope toward a newly revealed red cutting station grinding along a rail. Luis saw his chance. He let himself slide, controlling his descent with graceful, terrifying calm.
“Come on then!” he shouted up at her, baiting her. “Or are you too weighted down to finish this?”
She lurched after him, the three plates on her harness making every step a deliberate, heavy commitment. The slope fed onto a narrow, trembling bridge that crossed a seething pit of black ink. Luis was already at the midpoint, turning to face her, another plate ready in his hand.
“You never could resist a direct challenge,” he called, his voice echoing in the cavernous space. “It was always your most charming flaw.”
She charged, the bridge swaying violently. He feinted left, then spun right, trying to slip behind her as she passed. His arm snaked around, aiming the plate for an open port on her back. She felt the cold metal brush her harness.
Instead of twisting away, she slammed her weighted body sideways into the bridge’s flimsy railing. The entire structure groaned. Luis’s clamp snapped shut on the railing’s metal support where her port had been a second before.
“Damn it!” he cursed, the word sharp and utterly sincere, all polished charm vaporized in a flash of pure frustration.
She heard the fear underneath it. It fueled her.
The world upended. The entire lane rotated ninety degrees with a violent, metallic shriek. They were thrown from the bridge into a new chamber—a forest of swinging, rusted hooks and a blizzard of article plates being fired randomly from wall-mounted presses.
Luis scrambled to his feet first, grabbing a plate from the air. He tried to circle, to use the chaotic movement as cover. “You cannot win like this!” he yelled over the roar. “You keep fighting like the trial is a wall to break. It’s a system! You have to work within it!”
Lusiana caught his wrist an inch before the clamp could land on her ribs. Her fingers dug into his flesh. She looked straight into his wide, startled eyes. “Then stop standing where I want to break things.”
She used his own momentum against him, driving him backward. They crashed through a curtain of hanging chains made from linked, shredded newspaper. The dry, dusty taste of it filled her mouth. He was off-balance, flailing.One plate. She locked it onto the central port of his chest harness with a decisive slam. The weight jerked him.
“Lusiana: three. Luis: three,” Antoinette’s voice confirmed, impossibly calm.
He stumbled, trying to shove her away, his eyes darting toward a red cutting station moving past on a distant track. She didn’t let him go. Another plate, snatched from a hook. Another port on his shoulder.CLUNK.
“Luis: four,” Antoinette announced.
“Wait,” Luis gasped, the weight now visibly buckling his posture. His words came in a frantic, bargaining rush. “Lusiana, listen. This is for the final. I’m the stronger player for the team. You know that. Let me cut these off, we reset, we fight clean. For the East. For our chance!”
She said nothing. Her face was a mask of grim focus.
“Or is it just about us?” he tried, a desperate, ugly provocation. “Is this still about Suva? About you being too brittle to handle a little complexity?”
She remained silent, stalking him as he backpedaled toward the distant, receding hope of the cutting station.
A final, monumental press at the chamber’s end shuddered, its gears glowing red-hot. It fired a single, massive article plate directly down the center line between them. It was the last one.
Luis lunged for it, a final, reckless dive born of pure survival instinct.
Lusiana didn’t dive. She let the accumulated weight of the three plates on her own harness do the work. She leaned into the drag, becoming a battering ram of sheer, unbalanced momentum. She crashed into him just as his fingers brushed the plate’s handle, pinning him against the scorching hot side of the printing machine.
He struggled, but the four plates on his harness trapped him. With one final, brutal shove, she locked the fifth and final article plate onto the last open port of his harness.
The clamp sealed with a sound like a bone breaking.
All movement in their lane ceased. The grinding gears sighed to a halt. The flying plates hung suspended in the air.
Luis dropped to one knee, a guttural groan escaping him as the cumulative weight dragged him down. He couldn’t stand.
Antoinette’s voice was final. “Duel complete. Lusiana defeats Luis.”
Lusiana stepped back, her own body screaming with bruises and strain. She breathed in deep, ragged gulps of the hot, inky air. She looked down at him, at the man forced onto his knees by the literal weight of the headlines she had attached.
He looked up, his hair plastered with sweat, his fine clothes stained. The fury in his eyes was raw, unvarnished, and utterly powerless. The charm had burned away, leaving only the bitter ash of defeat. He had nothing polished left to say.
=====
The Ashamed Article Dimension, Elarion Trial Space — the second duel lane inside the industrial press-world, where conveyor belts twist above ink pits, red cutting stations slide across unstable rails, crane hooks swing through paper storms, and heavy Article Plates fire from rotating printing towers. Shortly after Lusiana defeats Luis, as the duel between Antonella and Taitusi reaches its final phase.
Shortly after Lusiana defeats Luis, as the duel between Antonella and Taitusi reaches its final phase.
A flicker of light pulsed high above the churning machinery. The projection updated, the glowing brackets shifting to declare the first result: LUSIANA ADVANCES. Taitusi, scrambling backward from a swinging hook, glanced up and saw it.
He let out a breathless, incredulous laugh that was mostly air. “Well, there it is,” he panted, ducking as a metal plate whizzed past his ear. “Apparently Team East is becoming a women-only disaster. Should I just surrender now and save the dignity?”
“Stop narrating your panic and start defending yourself,” Antonella shot back, her voice a flat blade cutting through the industrial roar. She didn’t charge. She advanced, a plate held low in each hand, her eyes tracking not just him but the shuddering rhythm of the entire lane.
He did both badly and brilliantly. A massive, blank headline plate tore free from a clamp above and sheared downward. Taitusi dropped into a slide, the metal slab whistling over his head so close it ruffled his hair. He came up kicking, his foot connecting with a loose article plate skittering on a conveyor. It flew up, and he caught it mid-spin, lunging forward in the same motion to slam it against Antonella’s side harness before she could fully turn.
The clamp locked with a solid chunk. The new weight immediately pulled at her balance.
“Antonella: three. Taitusi: three,” Antoinette’s calm voice echoed through the din.
“See?” Taitusi gasped, backpedaling again, a wild grin on his face. “Improvisation! It’s a skill!”
“It’s luck,” Antonella corrected, redistributing her weight with a slight shift of her hips. She didn’t try to remove the new plate. She just absorbed the imbalance and kept coming.
He survived by moving in chaotic, unpredictable bursts. He grabbed a swinging crane chain, letting it carry him over a bubbling ink pit before dropping onto a shuddering press-box. He bounced off it, rolled through a shallow trough of ink, and came up stained and sliding, just as a stamping mechanism slammed down where he’d been. He was a frantic, charming mess, and it was keeping him alive.
Antonella stopped chasing him blindly. She planted her feet on a stable-looking grate and just watched. Her chest rose and fell steadily. She listened to the grinding song of the moving red cutting stations as they slid on their rails, memorizing their tempo. More importantly, she watched him.
“You know, for a lawyer, you’re very quiet!” Taitusi called, dodging another projectile. “Usually you people bill by the word!”
She said nothing. She noticed the pattern. His shoulders would tense, his eyes would dart, and then he’d crack a joke. Then he’d move. The joke was his tell, the verbal wind-up before the physical release.
“I’m absolutely calm, by the way!” he shouted, wiping ink from his eye. “Totally in control here!”
The moment the words left his mouth, she moved left. He froze, his intended dodge to the left now blocked by her waiting form. A flicker of genuine confusion broke through his performative panic. She had predicted him.
“You talk too much,” she stated, her voice carrying a new, cold certainty.
She began to herd him, not with speed, but with positioning. She used the geometry of the collapsing lane, the closing path between a seething black ink pit and a wall of actively slamming presses. He was running out of room, his escape routes cut off by her anticipatory steps.
“Okay, not funny anymore,” he muttered, his smile strained. He looked for an out, his eyes landing on a hanging chain swinging just within reach over the ink pit. It was a risky leap, but his only clear path.
He coiled to jump. Antonella didn’t try to grab him. Instead, she threw the article plate in her hand not at him, but at the grinding rail of the nearest red cutting station. The metal jammed into the mechanism with a shriek of protest.
The chain, connected to the same system, jerked and went taut, its arc shortening violently. Taitusi was already in the air. His fingers grasped nothing. He crashed back onto the narrow platform, the wind knocked out of him.
Antonella was on him before he could rise. She drove a fourth plate onto the open port of his shoulder harness. The weight slammed him back down onto the grating.
Clunk.
“Taitusi: four,” Antoinette’s voice confirmed.
He gasped, staring up at her, the struggle plain on his face. He still tried to summon the ghost of his smile. “Did you practice being this terrifying,” he wheezed, “or did it come free with law school?”
She didn’t answer. She turned, snatched the final article plate from a conveyor belt rattling past, and hefted it. The machinery around them seemed to pulse in time with her breathing. “Evidence doesn’t care whether the defendant is funny,” she said, her gaze locked on him.
With a desperate groan, he tried one last escape. He rolled toward the red cutting station, its whirring blade his only chance to remove a plate and reset the count. The four plates on his harness dragged, throwing off his momentum. He stumbled, his balance lost.
Antonella moved in. She caught the back of his harness, used his own stumbling weight, and spun him hard into the riveted side of a silent printing tower. The impact jarred him still. Before he could rebound, she slammed the fifth and final plate onto the central port of his chest harness.
The final clamp sealed with a sound of absolute finality.
All motion in their lane ceased. The groaning belts stilled. The swinging hooks froze mid-arc. The only sound was Taitusi’s ragged breathing as he slumped backward against the tower, then slid down to sit on the grate, exhausted. A half-laugh, half-sob escaped him, followed by a look of pure, frustrated respect aimed up at her.
“Duel complete,” Antoinette’s voice declared across the sudden quiet. “Antonella defeats Taitusi.”
Antonella stepped back. She breathed hard, the ink smeared across her cheekbone like war paint. She didn’t look at Taitusi’s defeated form for long. Her eyes were already lifting, scanning the chaotic, frozen vista of the press-world, looking toward where the next fight awaited.