Scale and Anatoly jumped across rooftops one after the other. Scale didn’t talk. She was deep in thought. Her eyes weren’t focused and she kept gncing back towards her sister’s apartment. Her right hand tightened and she closed her eyes for a brief moment. This didn’t go unnoticed by Anatoly.

  “Nervous?” He asked.

  “No,” said Scale.

  “It’s hard to set them free.”

  Scale looked at the tall man with a sideways gnce. She puffed up her cheeks and stuck out her tongue at him. “I’m not setting them free. I’m just making them think I am.”

  “Isn’t that the same thing?”

  Scale didn’t reply. She just shook her head. “Let’s move faster.” She blinked forward in a fsh of light. The wind rippled behind her. An afterimage of her body did a front flip and raised two birds to the big bird behind her before it vanished.

  “Monstrous,” Anatoly whispered to himself. He shook his head in much the same way as Scale did earlier. He leaned forward and his body disappeared, his speed tripling but still not coming close to keeping up with the small girl’s effortless trapeze.

  Alyssa could sense them coming. Her hands started to shake. She looked at Sarah and pleaded with her eyes.

  “No can do,” said Sarah with a frown. She pointed at the window. The cityscape that they had watched so many times together was now gone. “The entire building is now in a gate.” Sarah held up her hand and a small puff of bck mana fizzled from her fingers. “The space around us is sealed tight. There’s only one option and you know it.” Sarah’s small face twisted into a resigned grin. She grabbed her wife’s hand and squeezed.

  “This is fucked,” said Alyssa. “I’m going to start smashing pipes.” She looked at her father who, miraculously, hadn’t stopped ranting in his silent box. “I guess we don’t have to worry about him. I don’t think that barrier can break.”

  “That’s the spirit.” Sarah started to stretch. She leaned to the left with her hands on her knees and then to the right. She rolled her neck in a circle and bounced on the balls of her feet. Alyssa didn’t reply and just walked into the kitchen. Loud cnging noises soon came from the other room followed by the whooshing sound of flowing water.

  “Even sucked into a gate, our building’s plumbing works. This is nonsense.” Alyssa walked back into the dining room. The water on the floor reacted to her very presence. Her mana started to boil beneath her skin.

  “You know,” said Sarah, her voice chiming like a bell, “There’s a water tank on the second highest floor that powers the sprinklers.”

  “I don’t need that much.”

  “I think you do.”

  “Sarah, this is—”

  “A test.”

  “... Yeah.” Alyssa nodded. She closed her eyes and clenched her teeth. “That bitch got scared after what happened at the school. Now—”

  “Now she wants to make sure we can stand on our own.” Sarah ughed.

  A pulse rippled through the building. The floor cracked. The windows burst.

  “Though I don’t really agree with her methods.”

  “Same.”

  The lights shattered one by one. Dust and gss filled the room. In the darkness a pair of eyes opened, reflecting yellow light. A second pair followed. Then a third. A fourth…

  Seventeen hunters dressed in bck showed up to kill their target.

  Blue mana filled every inch of Alyssa’s body. Her spine tingled. Wings of water sprouted from her back. The pipes in between floors burst one by one. The mana followed a specific path. A halo of white light blended into her soul—a gift that she finally made her own.

  “Where the sky ends—” Her steady voice activated the magic howling under her skin. The water compressed. It narrowed and narrowed until the knife-edge of pressurized liquid was molecule thin. It happened in an instant.

  One of the men in bck rushed forward like a phantom, his steps shattering the floor behind him. He weaved left and then right. Alyssa couldn’t keep up with him, but—

  She didn’t need to.

  “ —It meets the water.” Her spell finished. The tide roared. The man leaped forward. Alyssa fell backwards and swung her free hand in an upward arc toward her assaint. The water followed. A blue river dyed with white rapids crossed the vault of heaven. Time seemed to stop. The sixteen remaining attackers paused. Sarah paused. A thin red line traced its way diagonally across the apartment building. The top half of the entire structure began to slide, severed like a neck under a guillotine. The jumping man fared no better. He didn’t even know he died until he saw his own legs folding behind him.

  Sarah smiled in the afterglow of Alyssa’s spell. They were still surrounded. They were still being underestimated. “Did they only send one team?” Her mana surged. Her eyes fshed red in the bck room.

  “One down,” said Alyssa, wiping blood from her face. Sarah pulled her to her feet. “Sixteen more to go.”

  Scale stood on the open pin and closed her eyes. The howling wind caressed her, fpping every loose piece of clothing. Above the sky a thin beam of water and light cut the clouds in an arc.

  “Heh,” Scale ughed. Through the [Contract] she could see everything. She could feel everything.

  Anatoly arrived, his brow soaked with sweat. His breathing was heavy. He looked upon his opponent and then gnced down at his watch.

  “Are you ready?” Scale’s voice startled Anatoly. He looked up to see her blue eyes staring at him with dark interest, as if she were looking at an ugly fish in an aquarium.

  “Yes.” No sooner had the word left his lips he started to move. Once more he found himself positioned at an awkward angle staring at Scale’s extended fist. A bst of compressed air roared behind him. The pressure-wave coming off of her hand alone was enough to kill him. He could only dodge; he could not risk trying to block.

  “It’s strange!” Scale sounded excited. Her eyes bounced in her head. A gentle blush filled her cheeks. “I’m clearly much faster, yet you can still dodge.”

  “Yes,” said Anatoly. He ducked as a hooking punch almost scalped him. The menace radiating from that strike made his heart almost stop. Another punch. Another dodge. Another punch. Another dodge.

  Every single time Anatoly only managed to escape the scythe of the reaper by the skin of his teeth. He had to use everything. All of his years of study in the art of war were spent honing his talents. He could control every single muscle, every ligament, and every meridian within the walking corpse he called a body.

  “It started about ten years ago, on a mission in India,” said Anatoly, reading his foe’s expression and desperately hoping a monologue might buy him even a few minutes of respite.

  “Ah.” Scale tilted her head but her expression wasn’t a negative one. She smiled. “I don’t think you need to tell the story.” She nodded.

  “Are you sure?” Anatoly had the world’s greatest poker face. His burning ambition was tempered by his fear. Despite his fear, though, his eyes burned with yellow fire.

  “I’m sure.” Scale rushed forward, this time a little bit faster than the st. Despite her ramping up she still couldn’t nd a hit. “Ah. How much do I have to use before I can touch you?” She felt giddy. She watched her opponent checking his watch again. She wanted to ugh.

  “Alright,” said Scale. She crouched and put her left leg forward. She lowered her stance and curled her right hand behind her back, as if it were holding a sword’s handle. “Let’s see if you can dodge something a little more interesting.” Scale’s ugh sounded like a chime in the wind. Cws popped from her fingertips like knives. The rotation of her mana increased. It followed a new path. “I learned this one from a mercenary.”

  She stepped forward. The swirling white mana wreathed her body in the shape of a samurai drawing his bde. The mana surged forward, vanishing into a straight line. The colors of the world disappeared, leaving only bck and white for a single instance. Scale reappeared behind her opponent, skidding to a stop, her cwed hand stretched forward across her body. Behind her, Anatoly coughed and a spurt of blood burst from his right hip.

  “Ah, shallow.” Scale turned towards her enemy with a blooming smile.

  “Hrrrr,” Anatoly growled through grit teeth, but oddly his face seemed to be smiling. “You are magnificent.”

  “No,” said Scale. “You are the impressive one. You have such meticulous control over every facet of your being. It’s like your soul is the composer and your body is the orchestra.”

  “So you still don’t want the story?”

  “Ah.” Scale sighed. “I don’t really care about how you learned this.” She shook her head. “I’m just impressed.”

  “You’re impressed?” Anatoly scoffed. “I feel like an ant standing in front of a freight train.”

  “And yet that ant managed to make the driver pull the brake.” Scale stepped forward. “I’ve never seen anyone who can handle mana as intricately as you can.” Her blue eyes sparkled like jewels.

  “This ant wants more than to just intrigue the engineer.”

  “Fun choice of words. Now, let’s stop stalling for time.” She stepped forward again. Scale lowered her head and raised her back leg. She pivoted on her foreleg and aimed a kick at the Russian's neck.

  Anatoly moved as if he had precognition. He couldn’t keep up with Scale’s speed, but she cked the finesse of a trained fighter. After all, why would someone born with a missile uncher in their hands care about the techniques of smaller caliber weapons? It was a minor weakness… But it was still a weakness. He stepped into the kick. He ducked and rolled onto his left foot, pnting it firmly as the kick broke air overhead. Thunder roared and his eardrums burst but he pushed on. His left fist balled up tight.

  Anatoly knew he was probably going to die, but some things mattered more to him than his life. He wanted, desperately so, to punch this arrogant god. He wanted to be the man remembered for nding a blow against the divine. He roared and golden light bloomed from his knuckles. From his pnted foot power flowed. That power followed to his hips next. Those hips rotated in perfect time, sending the energy upwards yet again, tying into the rotation of his shoulders. His heart sounded like a war drum in his chest. A sonic boom echoed from his fist as it connected with the jaw of the dragon.

  And then the world went dark. His consciousness was cut off.

  Scale looked at the colpsed Anatoly and frowned. “Come on, it was just getting fun.” She nudged his side with her foot. He was foaming at the mouth. The recoil from his own attack had undone him.

  “Goddammit.” Scale sat down. She poured healing magic into the fallen enemy but he didn’t seem like he was going to wake up anytime soon. He was in some kind of shock. Scale looked at the city in the distance and sighed. It was too early to go back.

  “Guess I really am nervous.” She kicked a rock, folding it into the shape of a chair. She sat and leaned backwards, looking up at the sky. “I can’t always be around.” She didn’t know why she was talking or even who she was talking to. The only person who was around to listen was currently unconscious. “And Lyss has been zy. She hadn’t digested the mana I gave her until now. It’s been months.” She sighed. When she closed her eyes she saw Harper’s limp body again. Her fists clenched. “This is a good opportunity. Sarah and Lyss need to get stronger.”

  "Everyone needs to get stronger."

  The Judge could see more than most. She opened the [System] and sighed.

  On the [System] screen, Scale watched a countdown timer slowly tick down.