The chain came in the half-beat when the king's weight tied up his shield arm, out of the shield-wall's blind side, runes burning down every link. Steel could not reach the Villain past their king, so the commander had stopped asking steel to.
Quinlan saw it late, and met it in the air anyway. The black saber struck blacksteel with a *CRACK!* that stung his palm to the elbow. The blow left a pale scratch on one link.
Blacksteel forged under the mountain did not open to a single strike, even his, and there was no time for a second: the weighted end wrapped his sword-side shoulder, cinched, and bit.
Synchra's plates dimmed wherever the grounded links touched, her light draining into the floor.
"Now!" the commander roared. "Kill him now!"
Axes came down from every side, and he fought inside the chain the whole time, wrenching the king up to block high, the saber deflecting low on a pinned arm's worth of reach.
