Chapter 204: This Class Doesn’t Have A Gender

Chapter 204: Chapter 204: This Class Doesn’t Have A Gender

The drive to the guild passed in silence.

For once, the silence helped.

Giselle kept her eyes on the air lanes and asked nothing.

The resemblance to Gianna was almost painful: the same controlled profile, the same refusal to fill space with unnecessary words when she was deciding how much rope to give me.

Thinking the name alone pulled something tight under my ribs.

’Gia...’

[You’re only moping because you haven’t fucked her properly yet.]

’Can you be — I don’t know — considerate for five minutes?’

[I am being considerate.]

[Why do you think I haven’t simply taken over your body?]

’Because you can’t.’

I tried the direct route.

’System. Deactivate Pillow Talk.’

[Deactivation of Pillow Talk — In Progress...]

[Failed.]

[You’re so childish.]

’I’m childish? How does it feel to sexually assault people through my body? And aren’t you supposed to be a woman?’

[I don’t have a fixed gender. I have the shape and the memories of one.]

[That has never stopped me from fucking women. You get hard for women. The arrangement works in both directions.]

’Tell me what the hell you actually are.’

[I would. You wouldn’t understand yet. We take it slow.]

’We are not taking anything.’

[We are. First you train. Then you fuck her.]

[I will help you have sex with everyone you want, Revien. Even the men, if your tastes ever expand.]

’No. Fuck, no. Stop talking.’

My face must have cycled through a dozen expressions in under a minute.

Giselle finally turned, hand already rising to slap the distraction out of me.

My own hand moved before conscious thought caught up and closed around her wrist.

’Stop operating my body on your own.’

[You really are terrible at reading people.]

[She is not Gianna.]

I kept hold of her wrist and met her eyes.

"You should stop doing that."

"Then you should stop spacing out in my car. What is happening?"

The vehicle settled onto the private pad of the guild’s training wing before I had to invent another half-answer.

I stepped out first.

Giselle didn’t wait.

She walked ahead, coat already half-off, the set of her shoulders announcing that the grace period had ended.

The private hall sealed behind us with a heavy hydraulic hush.

Giselle snapped her fingers once.

Locks engaged.

The ambient lighting brightened to clean combat white.

She shrugged the remaining coat off and let it fall, leaving the sleeveless top and the dark fitted pants.

Pale marks from the previous night were still visible along her throat and collarbones.

She raised one hand, and red chains, my chains, copied and made her own, spilled from her palm in a ready coil.

"You’re too eager to kill me."

"I don’t like standing still when someone is hiding answers that affect both of us."

She attacked without further warning.

The first chain snapped toward my left ankle.

I Fracture-Stepped clear, reappeared three metres left, and answered with a low sweep of my own.

She vaulted it, twisted in the air, and sent a second length looping for my throat.

I caught the link on a hastily formed guard chain and let the tension drag us into close range.

We hit the mat hard.

Giselle’s knee drove toward my ribs.

I blocked with a forearm, felt the impact travel up to my shoulder, and rolled us so she landed beneath me.

Her chains were already reforming, wrapping my wrists before I could pin her.

She heaved, used the binding as leverage, and reversed the position in a single explosive motion.

My back slammed into the floor.

A fresh chain tip kissed the skin under my jaw.

"Still malfunctioning?" she asked, breathing steady.

"Working on it."

I dissolved my bindings, reformed them behind her, and yanked.

She was forced to release the throat chain or lose balance.

The second of freedom was enough.

I swept her supporting leg, followed her down, and planted a palm against her sternum hard enough to keep her there.

Both of us were already marked: a shallow cut on my cheek from a grazing link, a darkening bruise on her upper arm where my grip had closed too hard.

She smiled, small and sharp.

"Again."

We reset.

The next exchange lasted longer.

She varied the angles, mixing short binding bursts with longer whipping strikes that forced me to keep Fracture Step active.

I answered by changing the density of the chains mid-motion: thinner and faster for deflection, heavier and slower when I wanted to lock a limb.

Every time she adapted, I shifted the pattern again.

Sweat began to track down her temple.

A line of blood appeared at the corner of my mouth where a rebound link had caught me.

On the fifth clash, she overcommitted to a high binding net.

I stepped inside it, caught both of her wrists, and used her own momentum to put her back against the mirrored wall.

My forearm rested across her collarbones.

Her chains hung slack from both our hands, still linked, still humming.

For a moment the only sound was breathing and the low electrical buzz of the hall’s containment field.

"Why do you always use chains?" I asked.

"You’ve copied other tricks. The telekinetic edge, the barrier scrap, the way you fold space for a half-second step. Why keep coming back to these?"

Giselle’s red eyes stayed on mine.

Up close, the earlier suspicion had not faded.

It had only narrowed into something more precise.

"Because every time you use them, you do something new. Gold edge. Different tension curves. I want to know how. I want to know what you really are."

The voice in my head stirred, interested.

[Embrace her.]

I ignored it and eased the pressure of my forearm without fully stepping back.

"It’s... complicated."

"Then uncomplicate it. We have a locked room, no cameras, and nine days before the academy puts us under permanent observation. Start talking, or we keep going until one of us can’t."

She flexed her fingers.

The chains still connecting our wrists tightened in quiet warning.

[Revien... Don’t ignore me.]

My chains moved automatically.