The unseen Hand, decides the game

Citlali ran.

The screaming static of future sight and the wrongness of Alice’s presence chased her farther than any physical threat. She did not stop until the oppressive layer in the air finally thinned and ordinary resort noise replaced it — conversation, music from a distant bar, the ordinary splash of guests in safe water. Only then did she slow, lungs burning, and force herself to blend into the nearest cluster of regular vacationers. Several of them were already staring back the way she had come, murmuring about the earlier water explosion that had briefly climbed into the sky.

She stood among them panting, trying to steady her breathing and the residual chaos still flickering behind her eyes.

A figure brushed past her left side, close enough to nudge her shoulder. The contact was light, almost polite. Citlali turned automatically, the beginning of an apology already forming—

Cold water traced a thin line down the side of her neck and between her breasts.

She looked down. The seal above her chest had darkened in a neat, decisive streak.

By the time she lifted her head again the figure had already melted into the moving crowd. Only a single flicker of a purple tail remained visible for a fraction of a second before that, too, disappeared among the ordinary guests.

Inside the still-altered stretch of coast, Cloud Retainer continued to rise.

The meditative seat held. The compressed-air shell around her thickened with every breath, a growing sphere of crushing density that had begun to pull seawater upward from the false and true surfaces alike. Sheets of water spiraled into the construct, packing tighter and tighter, turning the shield into something far more dangerous than defense. The adeptus was no longer merely protecting herself. She was loading another localized catastrophe — enough stored pressure and mass to erase the entire immediate area and everything in it, illusion or not, the moment she decided the witch had finished playing.

The swirling compressed shell around Cloud Retainer changed without warning.

One moment it was still densifying air and drawn-up seawater. The next it locked into perfect, transparent solidity — a seamless glass sphere that dropped the instant it finished forming. The meditative posture shattered. Cloud Retainer’s limbs hit the inner curve as the oversized ball plunged into the shallows with a heavy, comic splash, trapping her exactly like a hamster in an exercise wheel.

Alice’s laugh rang clear and delighted from every direction at once, as if the witch were sitting right beside her inside the glass.

“Okay, okay — maybe a tiny bit more than pure illusion if you’re going to load a whole disaster like that.”

The glass lasted only long enough for the point to land.

It popped with the soft, anticlimactic sound of a soap bubble. The ocean that had been held back by the construct rushed inward in a single cold surge. Cloud Retainer felt the water hit her limbs and for a brief, professional heartbeat she calculated the next option: another compressed-air detonation large enough to shove the local sea aside, reset the field, and continue. She could do it. The power was still there.

She let the calculation go with a quiet, private chuckle.

There was no longer any point.

Her hand sank in open concession as the water closed over the seal. The crane adeptus who had been prepared to erase a section of coastline simply accepted the loss, already curious what the cheerfully cheating witch would decide to do with the rest of the island now that the strongest immediate opposition had been reduced to one more soaked elimination.

Alice reached down with both hands and pulled Cloud Retainer up from the shallows as if the entire exchange had been nothing more than an especially fun round of tag. Her smile was bright, open, and completely sincere.

“That was great! Really, one of the better ones.”

Cloud Retainer accepted the help without comment, water still streaming from her sleeves. She had calculated the high probability of this exact ending the moment the witch stopped pretending to hold back. Knowing the outcome in advance did not completely remove the small, sharp sting of having the seal marked anyway. She gave Alice a short, formal nod of concession and walked off toward the drier sand, already discarding the match from her immediate concerns.

Alice turned in a full circle, scanning for any remaining movement from the groups that had withdrawn before she fully entered the field. Nothing useful presented itself.

Something far more interesting did.

A short distance away, half-hidden among the wet rocks, a crab sat in plain view. Its shell carried a vivid gold cresting that should not have existed on this side of the sea — a pattern she recognized at once as vanishingly rare even in its proper range. Alice’s attention snapped to it with pure, undiluted focus. Whatever strategic thoughts she had been entertaining evaporated. Her water pistol droped and forgotten as if it never existed. She scampered over, scooped the creature up in both hands, and held it aloft like a priceless relic, already turning it to examine every ridge and color.

“Oh, you’re gorgeous— look at that crest—”

A faint, almost polite electro arc flickered across the crab’s shell.

The animal reacted on pure stimulus and squirted a sharp, accurate jet of water straight into Alice’s chest. The cold stream hit the water-sensitive paper dead center and soaked it through in a single pulse.

Alice blinked down at the darkened seal, then at the crab still held happily in her hands.

(https://im.ge/i/QM4Eu60)
(artist: mrservus)

“…Huh.”

She accepted the elimination with a small, surprised laugh, far more interested in the new temporary toy than in the loss. The match ranking no longer mattered; the crab did. She brought it closer to her face, still smiling, and addressed it in the exact tone one might use with a clever child.

“You’re supposed to live in Inazuma, you know. You are a long way from home little one.”

The crab offered no answer, but the quiet, precise nature of the trap left an elegant reminder that she was not the only one who could cheat.