He hated seeing her this way.

In a moment of clarity, right before the storm, Yoroi knew exactly what it was about Kalyani that bothered him so much. He'd seen it before but it had never been so apparent, so obvious to him. As he watched her break her barrier, draw down her hand, fill with power--all in slow motion near-death-experience bullshit--he finally got it. There was something in the way she moved, something in how her face lit up in that blue biotic glow, [i]something[/i] about the purse of her lips that radiated a joy he would never know and a pleasure he would never feel.

[i]Like Mozart and Salieri[/i], he thought stupidly, remembering a movie he'd watched one night as a child with his parents. Two composers, one of them achieving so easily the beauty the other had struggled so hard to perfect. One natural, one forced.

Whatever God of Biotics might be out there fucking [i]loved[/i] Kalyani Madan in a way it would never love Nagamura Yoroi, no matter how badly he wanted it.

He watched the matting erupt in blue columns, spikes of energy that rippled the air and left little pockets of empty behind them from all the matter they'd displaced. This, he realized, was the difference--it was like realizing there was a third dimension he could move in, that the world wasn't straight back-and-forth. A shockwave, a literal wave of coruscating energy that rippled from [i]below[/i]. How was he supposed to block that? He hadn't expected his own strike to do nothing, and in the wake of it his barrier was weaker than ever. Had she planned it this way? Did she know what would happen?

It was all he could do to mount a proper defense. To his credit, he met it head on without hesitation--both hands curled, snapping into fists that flared his barrier to life, but too little, too late. He caught the initial impact on his forearms, braced against it, but when he tried to contain the roll from [i]trois[/i] to [i]quatre[/i] he just....couldn't.

The drive into his diaphragm was a truck, a speeding car. Impact at God-only-knew how many Newtons of force, straight up into his ribs and sternum. It was enough to lift him into the air by more feet than a few, his guard still up and his teeth still grit in concentration, but when he tried to stick the landing all that impact hit his shattered ribs and he collapsed to his knees like a rag doll. Had they kept the mats red so it was harder to see the blood? It wasn't working--his was bright against the leather, a spatter through grit teeth as he tried not to be sick.

He couldn't breath. [i]He couldn't [b]breathe[/b].[/i] His lizard brain was panicking, wanting to gasp, to pant, to suck wind no matter how much it burned, but the measured breath he drew in and that disgusting little groan he managed on the tail end was all he'd allow himself. She'd beaten him and he knew it--no way he was putting up a fight after that--but he'd be damned if he couldn't at least look the bitch in the eye.

It wasn't a smile. It wasn't pride. But he'd made her try--he'd seen what it looked like to be at the top. He just wished it hadn't looked the way he always wanted it to.