Hoshimi's back hit the cold brick, the rough surface scraping against his spine through the thin fabric of his jacket. His chest heaved. His lungs burned.
"Shit."
Kira was somewhere behind him. He'd pushed her into a doorway, told her to stay low, to hold the gas until he gave the signal. She'd nodded, her face pale, her eyes too wide, but she'd listened.
Neila had taken position at the alley's mouth, her small frame blocking the entrance, her blue eyes fixed on the street beyond. Her hands were raised, fingers curled, ready to snap at the first sign of movement.
"She's coming," Neila said. Her voice was flat. "I can feel her mana signature. It's... strange. Like it's flickering. In and out. In and out."
"Flickering?"
"Like a lightbulb about to die. Rather strange if you ask me, she's like you, barely suppressing your mana. Like trying to shove a watermelon in a ." She glanced back at him, her expression unreadable. "Whatever she's doing. That speed of hers probably isn't free."
Jiyeon appeared at the alley's entrance.
She simply walked into view, her gray eyes fixed on Neila with that same unsettling stillness, that same absolute calm. Her dark hair had escaped its ponytail completely now, falling around her face in wild strands. Her clothes were dusted with ash from the explosions, and there was a thin cut on her cheek that she didn't seem to notice.
She wasn't holding a weapon.
"Move," Jiyeon said. Her voice was soft. Almost gentle.
"Nah bitch."
Neila snapped her fingers.
The sound that erupted from her hand wasn't a blast. It was a needle, a focused point of compressed air and mana that crossed the distance between them in a fraction of a heartbeat, aimed at Jiyeon's throat, at the soft tissue where her windpipe ran close to the surface.
Jiyeon moved.
One moment she was standing at the alley's entrance, the next she was three feet to the left, the sonic needle passing through empty air where her throat had been. There was no movement between those two positions. She was simply there, and then she was here, and the space between didn't exist.
Neila's eyes widened.
Jiyeon's hand closed around her throat.
Not hard. Not yet. Just there, her fingers wrapping around Neila's windpipe. Neila's hands came up, her fingers already curling for another snap, but Jiyeon's grip tightened, just slightly, just enough to make her freeze.
"Sound magic," Jiyeon said. "The Shaw family technique. But sound travels through air. And air..." She tilted her head. "Air takes time to move."
She squeezed.
Neila's face went red. Her hands clawed at Jiyeon's wrist, her nails drawing blood that Jiyeon didn't seem to feel. Her blue eyes were wide with the desperate search for an opening.
Hoshimi vanished.
His body dissolved into nothing, his mana signature suppressing to a faint whisper, his presence becoming absence. The alley was suddenly empty except for Jiyeon and her captive, and even that felt temporary, felt like the moment before something broke.
Jiyeon's gray eyes swept the space where he'd been.
Her grip on Neila's throat loosened, just slightly, just enough for Neila to gasp in a thin thread of air. Jiyeon's head turned, tracking something Hoshimi couldn't perceive, her nostrils flaring, her eyes narrowing.
"Leaving your friend?" she murmured.
She threw Neila into the brick wall, blood dripped down her forehead.
Neila dropped to her knees, gasping, her hands pressed against her throat. Her face was still red, but her eyes were clear, tracking Jiyeon's movements.
Bang.
[He didn't run away and abandon her?]
She had barely managed to dodge the bullet, but it had taken a chunk out of her shoulder.
A crimson trickled down what was once her shoulder, but what was left of it was a hole that had been punched through by a bullet.
Jiyeon reached into her coat.
Her hand emerged holding a small cloth bag.
White powder spilled into the air, fine and light, catching the gray afternoon light as it dispersed. Flour. She was throwing flour into the air, creating a cloud of particles that hung suspended in the still alley, a fine mist of white that coated everything it touched.
The cloud spread.
The flour settled on everything, the cracked pavement, the brick walls, the rusted doorways. And on him. A fine white dusting that clung to his invisible form, outlining his shoulders, his arms, the curve of his skull.
Jiyeon's eyes found him instantly.
She crossed the distance between them in the space between heartbeats. Her palm struck toward his chest, the force behind it enough to crack stone, to shatter bone, to stop a heart.
Hoshimi twisted.
The strike passed close enough to ruffle his hair, close enough that he felt the wind of its passage against his cheek. He dropped low, his leg sweeping toward her ankles in a move that should have taken her feet out from under her.
The flour cloud exploded outward as he dove through it, his body displacing the particles in a violent burst. Jiyeon's head snapped toward the disturbance, her gray eyes tracking the void, her body already shifting into that impossible, instantaneous motion.
She caught his wrist.
Her grip was iron. Unbreakable. Her gray eyes fixed on his invisible face with an expression that might have been curiosity or might have been disappointment.
She threw him.
He hit the brick wall with enough force to crack the mortar. Pain exploded through his back, his shoulders, his skull. His invisibility flickered, once, twice, then held. The flour on his clothes scattered outward from the impact, creating a fresh cloud that momentarily obscured his position.
He used it. Rolled sideways, found his feet, moved. The flour settled again, outlining his form against the gray afternoon.
He looked around, trying to find something to use.
[A roller shutter]
Faster.
Hoshimi slid across the ground, his hands gripped against the edge of the shutter, his fingers dug into the steel as he yanked it off of the frame.
He disappeared once more.
Jiyeon's eyes widened.
[He's using a large surface to cover himself, a surface that isn't coated by the powder. The file said he could only make himself invisible, not anything he touches.]
She noticed at the very last second.
Right before the roller shutter hit her square in the chin.
Hoshimi jumped into the air, kicking the shutter further into her chin, drawing blood from her lips as she was thrown straight into a brick wall.
The roller shutter hit the ground with a deafening clatter, its steel frame bent and warped from the impact. Dust and flour swirled together in the narrow alley, a choking cloud of white and gray that caught the thin afternoon light and scattered it into nothing.
Hoshimi didn't wait.
His body dissolved into absence, his mana signature compressing to a whisper, his presence becoming void. The flour that had settled on his shoulders during the initial exchange scattered outward as he moved, a brief, telltale disturbance in the cloud.
Jiyeon's head snapped toward the movement.
She was already rising from the crater her body had made in the brick wall, her movements fluid despite the blood streaming from her split lip and the dark bruise already forming along her jaw.
[Well that's stupid. Did I get the wrong info?]
She held her injured arm.
"Vitae Core."
The missing flesh seemed to restitch itself back together.
The second bag of flour exploded outward from underneath her foot.
This time, the cloud was larger, thicker, filling the alley with a choking white mist that clung to everything. Hoshimi felt it settle on his skin, felt the fine powder coating his arms, his chest, his face. He held his breath. Held still.
Hoshimi pressed his back against the cold brick, his chest heaving, his lungs burning. The flour clung to his invisible form like a second skin, outlining his shoulders, his arms, the curve of his skull. He could feel it in his hair, on his eyelashes, in the creases of his gloves.
Jiyeon's gray eyes found him.
She moved.
Hoshimi threw himself sideways, felt the wind of her passage ruffle his hair, felt the brick wall behind him crack as her palm struck it instead of his chest. The impact sent a shower of dust and debris into the air, more particles, more chaos, more things for him to hide in.
He rolled, came up running, his feet silent on the grimy ground. The flour cloud swirled around him, revealing his passage in great sweeping arcs of displacement.
She was already there.
Her hand closed on his shoulder. Her fingers wrapping around the joint until it shattered.
"Found you," she breathed.