Ye Mo looked down at his left palm. The newly appeared metallic pattern was still moving. Unlike its earlier erratic twitching, it slowly extended outward, like a fine thread crawling out from beneath his skin. He neither touched it nor spoke, only stared.
This thing picked a bad time to show up.
He had just finished a fight, and his body was still hot, sweat running down his neck. Normally, he should have rested a while, but he knew he could not stop. The last time he fused abilities, he had failed to address an abnormal reaction promptly and nearly ended up punched into a wall by Emma Frost during combat, unable to get out. Now another pattern had appeared, which meant his body had not fully adapted.
He closed his eyes and sank his attention inward.
Not to look at his muscles or bones, but to listen. To the electrical currents in his nerves, the rhythm of his cells dividing, the friction between metal and flesh as it permeated his body. He normally could not sense these things, but once he quieted down, he could perceive their existence.
At first, there was nothing.
Then he found the problem. Every time he tried to control his metallization, his nervous system faltered. The signals cut out for a second, and his movements stalled. Yet when he thought of nothing and simply followed his breathing, that disruption disappeared instead.
It was not that his ability was unstable. He had been trying too hard to control it.
He opened his eyes and turned toward Emma Frost, who stood three paces away.
"Don't read me from here on."
Emma Frost frowned. "What did you say?"
"Don't use Telepathy." Ye Mo raised his left hand. "I'm going to try something new. If you get inside my head again, we'll both be in trouble."
Emma Frost stared at him for several seconds. "Are you sure? We were working together perfectly well."
"That's exactly why we need to break it." Ye Mo walked to the console and pressed the start button. "I've been relying on you to anticipate my movements, and you've gotten used to waiting for my signals. But in a real fight, who can guarantee the other person can keep up?"
An alarm sounded, and the simulated battlefield activated again.
Drones rose into the air, mechanical hounds unlocked on the ground, and elevated sniper positions lit up red. The first wave attacked immediately.
Without waiting for Emma Frost to react, Ye Mo charged out.
He no longer calculated angles or deliberately planned the sequence. Instead, he let every movement follow his heartbeat. Inhale-block. Exhale-Wall Phasing. Inhale again-lunge. Metallization was no longer a separate skill. It happened as naturally as breathing.
A mechanical hound lunged to bite his arm. He did not dodge. His right arm hardened instantly, taking the blow head-on, and he smashed its head apart with a backhand punch. Gunfire rang out behind him immediately afterward. A bullet struck his shoulder blade, and that section of his back metallized, deflecting the bullet. At the same time, he planted his foot and activated Regenerative Phasing, plunging underground before emerging in the enemy's blind spot to counterattack.
His movements flowed better than before.
But there were still problems.
The pattern in his left palm suddenly heated up, making him half a beat late switching to Wall Phasing. A drone seized the opportunity to dive, and an electric round exploded beside his ear. He rolled sideways to evade the follow-up attacks, but his knee scraped against the floor, leaving a bloody scrape.
"Have you lost your mind?" Emma Frost's voice came from above. "You won't let me read you, and you can't even keep up yourself!"
"I'm finding the rhythm." Ye Mo stood and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. "It's not what you think."
"You nearly got hit three times just now!"
"But I also landed seven effective counterattacks." He caught his breath. "I used to fight carefully because I was afraid of mistakes. Now I'm not. If I make a mistake, so be it. I'll fix it afterward. As long as I keep going, I'll find the right path eventually."
Emma Frost said nothing.
She knew he was telling the truth. In that last minute, his attack frequency had increased by forty percent, with almost no pauses between combinations. Though he made a few more mistakes, his momentum was completely different.
"Again." Ye Mo flexed his wrists. "This time, don't take the initiative to support me either. Let's see if we can coordinate like we did before without relying on 'reading.'"
Emma Frost fell silent for two seconds, then nodded.
The second round began.
They advanced side by side, but neither spoke or exchanged a glance. Ye Mo continued using his breathing to keep time, every step landing on a heartbeat. Emma Frost listened to the surrounding sounds instead, using the alarm's ticking as a metronome.
They discovered a pattern: as long as their movements followed the same tempo, they could coordinate naturally even without knowing exactly what the other was about to do.
During one encirclement, three mechanical hounds lunged from different directions. Ye Mo metallized his left arm to block the frontal attack while lowering his body to phase through the ground. The instant he bent over, Emma Frost pivoted right and punched, sweeping away the enemy attacking from the side. They planted themselves back-to-back. Neither looked at the other, but their movements meshed perfectly.
"Interesting," Ye Mo said quietly.
"Did you think of this beforehand?" Emma Frost asked.
"It was a guess." He smiled. "When people fight together, they unconsciously synchronize their rhythms. Like walking. When two people walk side by side long enough, their footsteps automatically line up. I just turned it into a method."
The third wave arrived, doubling the enemy count and adding invisible units.
This time, they no longer merely reacted.
Ye Mo sensed the enemies' movement paths in advance, not through system prompts or Emma Frost's mind-reading, but by hearing the attack rhythm in the changing frequency of the alarm. He surged forward and knocked a drone flying. At the same time, the pattern in his left palm flashed, his entire arm metallized, and he swept it across to clear the area.
Emma Frost followed close behind, fully activating Diamond Form and taking the attacks head-on. During one burst of covering fire, she even repositioned half a second early, blocking a sniper round that would have struck Ye Mo in the back over his heart.
The battle drew to a close.
The last mechanical hound's core was kicked apart. The alarm stopped, and the lights returned to normal.
Ye Mo stood where he was, his clothes soaked with sweat, his chest rising and falling. He raised his left hand. The metallic pattern in his palm had stopped spreading and settled into a chain-shaped design, resting quietly beneath his skin.
It was no longer out of control.
Instead, it seemed to have become part of his body, warming slightly with each heartbeat, as though responding to his existence.
Emma Frost deactivated Diamond Form, took two steps toward him, and stopped. She neither touched him nor spoke, only looked at him.
They had not communicated once during that fight, yet they had been more in sync than ever. Not because she had read his mind, but because they had finally found the same rhythm.
"When we fight for real," Ye Mo said, "we might not even get to choose a rhythm like this."
"Then we'll find another," Emma Frost said. "As long as we're together, we'll keep up."
Ye Mo nodded.
He turned toward the console, ready to shut down the system. Just as his finger touched the button, he paused.
"What is it?" Emma Frost asked.
He did not answer. Instead, he brought up the data panel again and pulled up a replay of the fight. On-screen, the movement paths of every metallization, Wall Phasing maneuver, and block were marked with red lines. Those lines had initially been a chaotic mess, but during one segment-the moment they had defended back-to-back-all the paths suddenly formed a closed loop.
Like two gears finally meshing.
He stared at the screen for five seconds, then closed the interface.
"We're increasing the difficulty next session," he said.
"By how much?"
"Turn on the interference source."
Emma Frost frowned. "You mean... actual mutant energy fluctuations? That'll affect the system's stability."
"I know." Ye Mo took off his sweatshirt, revealing an upper body covered in scars and metallic patterns. "But sooner or later, we'll face real enemies. No one will set up a safe zone for us then."
Emma Frost looked at him without speaking for a long time.
Finally, she nodded. "All right. But I have one condition."
"Go ahead."
"Next time you suddenly cut the connection, give me a warning first."
Ye Mo smiled. "Then it wouldn't be surprise-attack training."
"Then don't blame me for hitting hard."
They met each other's eyes. Neither backed down.
The indicator on the distant console was still flashing, its green light pulsing slowly, as though waiting for the next round to begin. The smell of scorched metal lingered in the air. Several dents and scratches marked the floor, all traces left by the fight.
Ye Mo stood motionless, the pattern in his left palm giving off a gentle heat. He no longer tried to figure out what it was, nor did he worry about whether it would go out of control.
He knew that as long as he kept breathing, the rhythm would not break.
Emma Frost stood diagonally behind him, her fingertips lightly touching her temple. She was not trying to read his mind. She only wanted to remember how this moment felt.
Without words or anticipation, they could still fight side by side.
The training ground was quiet.
Only the sounds of their breathing intertwined.