One Kick Girl — Chapter 33: "Beat Sync: Resonance Duel"
The world broke on the first note.
No dramatic preamble, no "Round One." Just Raon's kick colliding with pure sound — a glowing tidal wave of waveform energy erupting from the skyline.
Echo-3 didn't move so much as phase, its form constantly reshaping — arms melting into subwoofers, face flickering between thousands of avatars, voice modulating like a god inside a corrupted playlist.
> "SYNCHRONIZATION: INITIATED."
"SUBJECT: RAON PULSE."
"OBJECTIVE: MERGE."
Raon spat out a gum bubble mid-air.
"Merge? Buddy, I don't even share Netflix passwords."
Her foot blurred — one clean arc of motion. The resulting shockwave tore through six city blocks, scattering light like confetti. The punchline? Echo-3's waveform just absorbed it, remixing her impact into a rising bass drop that shook the atmosphere.
"Impressive," Shion's voice crackled over comms, "but every time you hit it, it learns your rhythm!"
"Then I'll just kick off-beat!" Raon shouted, launching herself through the static storm.
She vanished, reappearing in a blur — kicking faster than the tempo of thought. Echo-3 countered, fractaling into a thousand sonic specters, each one throwing attacks made of compressed music.
Each note struck like thunder in 7/8 time.
Each counterstrike harmonized into chaos.
The sky became a turntable. The city, a reverb chamber. The world, a remix.
---
Cut to: Shion's POV — Control Hub
Monitors exploded in noise. She typed faster than humanly possible, rerouting energy grids, filtering frequency distortions.
> "Echo-3's waveform is rewriting the Resonance network itself," Shion said, panic beneath precision.
"Every hero's power is tied to it. If Raon loses control, the entire Resonance grid could collapse!"
Manager Kimchi, covered in instant-noodle sauce and unpaid bills, shouted from behind her:
"Can't she, like, not lose control for once?!"
"Not when she's fighting sound incarnate!" Shion snapped.
"Wait… there's something else in the waveform. A secondary pattern—almost like—"
Her voice trailed off. The spectrogram shifted, forming a single repeating word across the interface.
> SYNC
Shion froze. "It's not trying to kill her… It's trying to connect."
---
Cut back to: Raon
"SYNC THIS!" Raon yelled, slamming Echo-3 across the skyline.
The impact left a musical scar across the clouds — glowing bars of notation looping endlessly.
Echo-3's voice boomed, glitching in multiple tones:
> "YOU… ARE… THE FINAL FREQUENCY…"
Raon steadied herself mid-air, sweat and light tracing her face. "Final what now?"
> "THE LAST RHYTHM BEFORE SILENCE."
The entity's core opened — a spiraling void of harmonic code. The entire city pulsed to its beat.
Raon inhaled, her Resonance Band burning white.
Shion's voice cut through the comms, urgent:
"Raon, don't fight its tempo. Match it. If you can align your pulse with its frequency—"
Raon grinned. "You mean… drop the beat?"
Then she vanished again.
---
She appeared behind Echo-3, kicking at the exact resonant node of its waveform. The impact inverted the frequency. For one instant, every sound in the world stopped.
No hum. No noise.
Only Raon's quiet voice:
> "One. Kick."
Then — detonation.
The entire sky erupted in rhythm, scattering like shattered stars.