His head separated from his body.
"Alain!"
It didn't fly. Didn't tumble. It simply ceased to be attached, dropping to the dirt with a wet, heavy thud that seemed to echo in the sudden silence. His body remained standing for one heartbeat, blood fountaining from the severed neck in a crimson spray that painted the brick wall behind him.
The head rolled.
It came to rest against a discarded cardboard box. A thin trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth, tracing a path through the grime on his cheek before dripping onto the dirt below.
Kira screamed.
"A-a-ahhHH!!!"
Hoshimi felt her mana spike, that volatile, dangerous energy that could kill everyone in this alley if she lost control. He pressed his hand against the back of her neck, grounding her, anchoring her.
"Breathe," he said.
"I can't-I can't-"
"You can."
She tried. Her breathing was ragged, irregular, but she tried, and that was enough for now. The mana spike eased, slightly, back from the edge of catastrophe.
The sword in Jiyeon's hand shivered.
A vibration traveled through the air, through the ground, through something deeper than either. The blade had been pushed beyond its limits. The speed of that strike, that impossible, instantaneous transition had exceeded what even a perfect tool could endure.
The cracks appeared slowly at first.
Hairline fractures spreading from the edge, crawling across the silver surface like frost on a window. The metal began to flake away, tiny shards catching the flickering light as they fell, glittering like snow in the strobing yellow.
The sword crumbled.
Jiyeon looked down at the empty hilt in her hand. Her expression didn't change, that same gray stillness, that same absolute calm. She simply opened her fingers and let the hilt fall, joining the fragments of blade and the spreading pool of the guard's blood on the grimy alley floor.
"Shame, I can't believe that they gave me such a fragile weapon."
"Run," Hoshimi said.
They ran.
The alley exploded into motion. Sam was shouting orders that no one listened to. The government escorts, what remained of them, were already reacting. Two of them stepped forward, positioning themselves between Jiyeon and the students, their weapons drawn, their faces set in expressions of grim determination.
Edward's metal legs clanked against the ground as he moved, his face still blank, his body responding to commands his mind seemed to have forgotten how to give.
Lucy drifted after them. Her remaining hand was raised, blood already beginning to pool in her palm, but her movements were slow, mechanical, like someone performing actions they'd memorized long ago and no longer understood the purpose of.
They burst out of the alley's far end into a wider street. The chaos here was worse, people running in every direction, cars abandoned in the middle of the road, smoke billowing from somewhere too close. The explosions had stopped, but the aftermath was worse than the event, a city tearing itself apart in panic.
Hoshimi glanced back. The crowd had swallowed them, he could see Edward's dark hair bobbing above the sea of bodies, could see Sam and the remaining agents trying to maintain formation.
"We can't stop."
Neila was at Hoshimi's side in three steps. "She's fast," she said, her voice tight. "I could barely see her move."
"I didn't see her move at all."
"Her sword shattered from a single swing, I doubt that you could do that with normal mana enhancement, probably not even Sophia could, it must be her technique, a mutation to do with speed."
"I figured."
The others were herding the group toward the alley's far end, toward the chaos of the street beyond.
Bodies pressed against them from every direction, a tide of terrified humanity flowing through the streets like water through a broken dam. The explosions continued, distant now, but still audible, a constant thunder that provided the bassline for the symphony of screams and sirens and shattering glass.
Kira's grip on his sleeve was the only constant. She clung to him like a drowning person clinging to driftwood, her face pale, her eyes wide, her breath coming in those short, controlled gasps that were the only thing keeping her mana contained.
"Don't let go," she gasped. "Please. Please don't let go."
"I won't."
He meant it.
Behind them, he could hear Neila's voice. "Left! No, your other left! Are you blind?"
She was tracking him. Not by sight, the crowd was too thick, the chaos too complete. But she could feel his mana signature now, that unique frequency.
Edward was somewhere behind her. His prosthetics made a distinctive sound against the pavement, a mechanical rhythm that was slower than it should be, more labored. He was struggling, his new legs weren't designed for running, for the unpredictable terrain of a stampede.
Lucy was gone.
Hoshimi couldn't see her, couldn't feel her mana signature, couldn't spare the attention to search.
[Her running speed is not as fast as her combat speed or else she would've caught me already, this means that her ability might be an active ability.]
The street opened into a wider avenue, and the crowd thinned slightly, enough to move, enough to breathe, enough to think. Hoshimi pulled Kira toward a side street, away from the main flow of bodies, toward the relative safety of narrower passages where they couldn't be surrounded.
A hand grabbed his collar.
Neila yanked him backward, her small frame somehow generating enough force to stop his momentum completely. Her blue eyes were blazing, her carefully arranged hair now escaping its ponytail in wild strands.
"Don't," she hissed. "Don't go that way."
"Fine." Hoshimi pulled Kira left, into a narrower street. Neila followed without question. The sounds of pursuit faded slightly, not gone, but muffled by the buildings pressing in on either side.
"We need to get off the street," Neila said. Her voice was steady, but her breathing was too fast. "She's herding us. Can't you feel it? Every time we try to break toward the main roads, something blocks us. She's pushing us where she wants us to go."
"I know."
"Then why are we—"
"Because fighting her in an open street is suicide." He pulled Kira into another alley, this one even narrower than the first, barely wide enough for a single person. "But running in a crowded place isn't advantageous for us either."
"And then what?"
He didn't answer. The alley opened into a small courtyard, a forgotten space between buildings, filled with trash and the skeletal remains of a long-dead tree. The sounds of the city were muffled here, distant, like something happening in another world.
"We need a place that doesn't give enough space for her to work with and enough people to block her way."
"So you're going to use the civilians as meatshields?"
"Yes."
Hoshimi stopped. Listened.
Nothing.
No pursuit. No presence. Just the distant wail of sirens and the thump of his own heart.
"She's gone for now," Kira whispered. "She's-she stopped following us."
"No." Hoshimi's eyes swept the rooftops. "She's trying to look for us, probably from a high vantage point."
Neila leaned against the dead tree, her chest heaving. "Great. Fantastic. So we have—what? Minutes?"
"Minutes."
"Wonderful." She closed her eyes. "I feel like a dirty little rat, we should get to a low place, somewhere that can hide from her."
"Hoshimi." Kira's voice was small. "Your sleeve."
He looked down. She was still holding it, had been holding it since they left the burger place, through the explosions and the alley and the chase. Her knuckles were white, her fingers cramped around the fabric like it was the only thing keeping her tethered to reality.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I can't-I can't let go. If I let go, I'll-"
"It's okay." He covered her hand with his. "You don't have to let go."
Neila watched them for a moment, her expression unreadable. Then she pushed off from the tree and began pacing the small courtyard, her eyes scanning the rooftops, the alley entrances, the windows above.
"I can track you now," she said. "Your mana signature. It's distinctive enough that I can pick it out from a distance. If we get separated, I can find you."
"Good."
"Not good. It means she might be able to track you too. If she's as good as she seems, she can do the same, after a while."
"We must limit our encounters to a bare minimum."
"And I'm betting that she has information on you as well, people like her are bound to look into your history."
"I got that taken care of."