Hinata stepped back from the blast radius and counted. Four hundred and twelve. The ice crater smoked in front of her, twice as wide as she'd meant it to be. She whispered 'next time' into the wind and raised her hand again. A figure walked out of the smoke. They held a phone in one hand, its orange frame warped and glass cracked into a spider web. The metal had melted and rehardened in waves. Hinata's breath caught. She'd been alone out here for days. The stranger stopped at the crater's edge and looked at the phone, then at her. "Six hundred and twelve," they said. "I've been counting too."

Hinata lowered her hand. The stranger stood at the crater's edge, phone melted in their grip, eyes fixed on her face. They'd counted every blast. Every failure. The wind pulled at her coat and she realized she hadn't spoken to another person in weeks. The radio on her belt crackled before she could respond. Static, then a voice cutting through: evacuation failing, creature downtown, spreading with every strike against it. They needed someone who could hit it once, hard enough to end it before it multiplied beyond control. The stranger watched her face as she listened. Behind them, the ruined apartment building she'd destroyed three days ago stood like a monument to what happened when she didn't hold back. Six stories reduced to crumbling stone and shattered windows from a single miscalculation. The voice on the radio kept talking, kept asking, and Hinata looked at the smoking crater at her feet. She'd come here because ice was the only thing she could afford to hurt. But Ichiban City was full of people who couldn't survive her mistakes. The stranger stepped back from the crater's edge. "They're asking for the thing you're afraid of," they said. Hinata pressed the radio to answer and felt her hand shake. This wasn't control. This was just aiming her failure at something that deserved it. She took the job anyway.

Hinata arrived at the evacuation perimeter on foot, her breath still sharp from the run. The stranger had followed her the entire way from the arctic crater, silent except for the rhythm of their footsteps behind her. The perimeter was marked by shipping containers stacked three high, forming a wall between the downtown chaos and the rest of the city. The stranger walked past her without a word, heading straight for a pole-mounted set of binoculars positioned at the barrier's edge. They adjusted the lenses with practiced precision, then stepped back. "Look," they said. Hinata pressed her eyes to the metal and the creature came into focus six blocks away. It moved on too many legs, its body shifting and reforming as it crawled between buildings. The stranger pulled a notebook from their coat and flipped it open, pages covered in sketches and timestamps. "It doesn't multiply randomly," they said, tapping a diagram. "Only when struck with dispersed energy. Blunt force, fire, electrical attacks—anything that spreads across its surface triggers the split. But a single point of impact, concentrated enough, goes straight through without activating the response." Hinata's hands went cold. They'd been studying it. Counting its divisions the same way they'd counted her blasts. The stranger closed the notebook and met her eyes. "Your magic fires without warning. You said so yourself three days ago when you put a hole through that apartment building. If you miss the center mass by even a meter, you'll hit it dispersed and turn one creature into twenty." The truth settled in her chest like ice. They weren't here to help. They were here to see if she'd fail again, and this time the whole city would watch.

Hinata stepped back from the binoculars and reached into her jacket. The polaroid was still there, edges soft from years of handling. She pulled it out and held it flat against her palm. The little girl in the photo smiled up at her, holding a doll with jointed limbs that bent in impossible directions. Her sister had loved that doll. Hinata had found it in the rubble three days after the building came down, one arm twisted backward, the other folded sideways. She'd been practicing her first spell three blocks away when it happened. No warning. No signal. Just the instructor's voice telling her the evacuation zone hadn't reached far enough. The stranger's notebook was still open, filled with diagrams and timestamps. They were waiting for her to make the same mistake again. Hinata folded the polaroid and put it back in her pocket. Then she walked to the edge of the perimeter and looked at the creature without the binoculars. It was massive, its body shifting like colored gel poured into a shape that couldn't hold it. One of its limbs bent backward, then forward, then sideways—exactly like the doll's broken joints. Her hands were shaking, but not from fear. She'd spent ten years trying to control magic that gave no warning because she couldn't bear to hurt anyone else. But this time, the target wasn't a person. It was the thing that moved like her worst memory. She turned to the stranger and held out her hand. "Give me the notebook," she said. The stranger hesitated, then passed it over. Hinata flipped through the pages, scanning the diagrams and notes about impact points and dispersal patterns. There—a sketch showing the creature's center mass, marked with a small circle. The stranger had already done the math. She closed the notebook and handed it back. "I'm not going to miss," she said. "But I need you to clear the perimeter. If I'm wrong, I don't want anyone close enough to see it." The stranger stared at her, then nodded and walked toward the radio station at the far end of the barrier. Hinata stayed at the edge, watching the creature move between the buildings. For the first time in ten years, she wasn't practicing for a future version of herself. She was aiming for right now.