Kusa, Einosuke realized, was amazing. Both the scared, desperate girl he first met on the train and the angry, irritable young woman who nearly tore his head off just a few minutes earlier were gone. In their place was a fierce, confident warrior who radiated power.

Simply put, he was in awe.

Before this morning, he thought this was the kind of fighting he was capable of – the kind Otomo, his four-time opponent in Okaruta’s Mage-Trials, must have been capable of, too. He realized now how much Otomo had been holding back. Einosuke’s lack of experience, and his arrogance, shamed him even more than the loss had.

He wondered, though: if Kusa could fight like this all along, why hadn’t she defended herself when these creeps first came after her? Why the cat and mouse game? Why did she need his help even for a moment, when she was capable of this kind of power?

In that instant, Boss swung a fist, encapsulated in the transparent, blue outline of a huge axe-blade, towards the girl. Kusa dodged nimbly to the side and Boss, carried by the momentum of his forward rush and the missed attack, headed towards the crowd. The people in his path watched him, eyes shining with excitement; a few gasps and the yammering of commentary went up, but no one took themselves out of harm’s way.

And then Kusa was there, putting herself between the boss and the bystanders, sweeping a leg towards his knee, forcing him to leap aside—and away from the crowd—or risk having a joint shattered.

She was protecting us, Einosuke realized. She didn’t want to fight them because somebody would get hurt. He swallowed. And she came back to save me.

His eyes swept the crowd, seeing the faces of men and women, young and old, with no idea of the danger they were really in. Magic was real, sure, but who actually walked around with thirdtech? Who knew how to access the mana that surged through all of our bodies? And among those that did, who would be casting spells in the middle of a crowd in broad daylight in downtown Tokyo?

To most Japanese people, magic was like guns had been for decades after the war: they knew the things existed, but they were so far outside of the average person’s experience that they might as well have been made up for TV and movies. These people could be killed at any second by a stray blow or an errant blast of energy, but all they could do was stand and stare in fascination at this cool, exotic sight, snapping pictures and taking videos with their phones, hoping to rack up shares and up-votes on social media accounts.

A sudden, intense surge of light drew Einosuke’s eye to the other side of the area. The man with the slicked-back hair had retreated to the edge of the “battlefield” and was chanting something under his breath. The sequence was much longer than others the fighters were using and the magical energy he was drawing on seemed proportionately greater from the way the dark-red, almost bloody, color of his mana flared brightly.

Kusa leapt backwards, powerful muscles in her legs carrying her out of the path of a roundhouse punch Boss threw with a wild abandon that seemed uncharacteristic of the way he’d been fighting. Einosuke might not have been as experienced in magic as the others, but from his self-training, he knew the way the human body worked. It was clear to him that Boss was nearing exhaustion. His attacks were getting wilder by the second. This had to end soon, one way or another.

In the same moment Kusa’s feet left the ground, Slick finished whatever spell he was casting and lunged forward, moving with the speed and power of raging waters freed from a dam. The words “Rising Eagle!” flew from his lips as the power of the darkly-glowing upper-cut carried him out and up on a diagonal ascent, attempting to intercept the path of Kusa’s jump.

Too far into the jump and too far from landing, there was no way for Kusa to change directions and avoid the blow. Instead, she twisted like a cat in mid-air. Slick’s energized fist struck her thigh, making a meaty-sounding thwack! Einosuke grimaced in empathy.

The girl didn’t cry out. Off-balance from the blow, she landed awkwardly, wind-milling her arms for a moment to keep her feet, then crouching down, body bent low and forward in a defensive position. From the way Kusa moved, it was clear to Einosuke that the attack did some damage. If it was obvious to him, it’d be obvious to her attackers, too. The two men threw a look at each other and then moved forward as one.

“You ready to finish this, Kusa-chan?” The familiarity of the term sounded vulgar from Slick’s mouth. His lips curled up in the beginning of a grin, but he winced then brought up one large hand, rubbing the back of it against his mouth. It came away smeared with blood. He spat on the ground and muttered something beneath his breath.

Kusa’s eyes blazed. “Any time,” she said casually, as if they were simply having a chat in a quiet café somewhere, not battling in the street.

The boss said nothing. His face twisted in fury, sweat poured from his high forehead. There was a look in his eyes that bordered on a kind of madness. Those eyes met Kusa’s. For a moment, she felt pinned in place by the weight of that gaze.

But only a moment.

Without warning, she barked something unintelligible and leapt forward in a somersault kick aimed at Slick’s mid-section. With equal and admirable speed, the man fell back on his haunches, his lips moving rapidly, then brought his hands up and fired off a dark-red blast of energy.

The attack was too abrupt, the distance too short, but Kusa accomplished what she meant to: splitting the two men apart and putting her back on the side of the “ring” where Einosuke stood, rooted in place and feeling helpless. She spun on her heel, ready to dance away again and go back on the attack, but finally, the accumulated wear and tear from running, and then fighting, as well as the blow to her thigh from the attack Slick called “Rising Eagle,” took their toll. Her leg went out from under her and she stumbled, then fell.

She sprang back to her feet, but it was half an instant too late: Slick was already there. His huge, crashing fist lashed out, slamming into Kusa’s jaw with a hollow crack, throwing her head back and putting her down onto her knees. Einosuke did the same thing to Otomo earlier; the older man was furious at the breach of the Mage-Agents’ combat etiquette. It was obvious that there was no such rule in a street battle.

Einosuke’s eyes widened in fear and rising panic palpitated in his chest. He looked from Kusa and Slick to where the Boss stood, chest heaving. The disheveled, sweat- and water-soaked man bared his teeth and began to chant guttural syllables, low in his throat, but still audible. It was nothing Einosuke was familiar with, but there was a savageness to the sounds that anyone would have recognized. He brought his left arm up, stiffened at the elbow and held straight out, braced with his right hand beneath the forearm, as if it was some living cannon.

Crap, Einosuke thought.

“Crap!” he said aloud, adding, “Kusa, behind you!”

Kusa, numb and disoriented from the blow she’d taken, swayed back and forth, her head turning at the sound of Einosuke’s voice, but making no effort to save herself from whatever was coming.

Einosuke took a step forward, then stopped. Boss’s accumulated energy was bigger even than Kusa’s had been when she’d finally gotten serious about fighting. Einosuke wanted to help her; he sincerely wanted to do something to diffuse the situation, to pay back the girl who put herself in danger trying to save him. It didn’t matter that he was only in this situation because of her to begin with. That wasn’t the way Einosuke Sakurai thought. But what could he do? Those three had only been fighting for a few minutes, but what they showed him shattered what little faith he had in his own abilities. How could he be one of Okaruta Corporation’s Mage-Agents? How could he have had the gall to think he was ready to join the ranks of one of the finest groups of magic-users on the planet? He wasn’t even at the level of a common streetfighter.

Hot tears of anger and frustration welled up in his eyes. Useless! You’re useless! Einosuke screamed at himself, the words rattling around in his head.

The Boss’s lips peeled back from his teeth in a rictus grin. The energy racing around his manaccelerator crackled up and down the entire length of his body and then coalesced around his fist in an orb the size of a basketball.

He took two steps forward, forced open his fist and screamed, “Shattering Fury!”

The massive ball of energy rippled, the surface of it moving like something alive, then launched from his hand towards Kusa.

The girl, still punch-drunk and groggy, saw it, but could do nothing. Her eyes widened and a semblance of true consciousness crept back onto her face, carried on a wave of fear. Her arms flew up over her head, her body bent forward and—

“Glittering Barrier!”

Golden energy appeared from thin air, swarming like a cloud of shining insects for half an instant before coming together around Kusa, spreading out to swallow her up in a protective field that enveloped her like dawn racing across night-cloaked fields, chasing away the darkness, wrapping the land in the warm embrace of a new day. The spell closed over Kusa milliseconds before the dark-red energy from Boss’s attack splashed against it, scattering the spell’s force, sending fragments of the crimson energy careening off in a thousand directions before fading out of existence. Beneath its destructive onslaught, the barrier bent, wavered, and shattered, throwing up a midnight sky’s worth of glittering particles, but its job was done: Kusa was safe.

The girl, still hunched over, arms crossed protectively over her head, risked opening an eye. “Huh?”

Silence spread across the area and held for several impossibly-long seconds. Einosuke, mouth hanging open in surprise, looked from Kusa to his own manaccelerator-clad wrist. His lips mouthed words silently, then he tried again, aloud: “H-how did I…?”

Glittering Barrier was his own original spell, something he worked long and hard on, something he was very proud of. It wasn’t an attack, obviously, but it was an ace in the hole he was glad to have. It saved him from considerable pain and injury when fighting Otomo earlier and just now, he probably saved Kusa’s life. And he cast it without chanting. Not one word of the spell had passed his lips.

“D-damn it!” Voice raw with anger and irritation, Boss raged. “God damn you!”

Hours of exhaustion and frustration caught up with the man. There was no longer any semblance of the cool-headed politician-like figure left – only the thug remained, and he was furious. His face contorted into a mask of violence, Boss stomped across the tiny field of battle towards Einosuke. “Damn you! You little shit! You ruined my best shot!” His fists balled and then swung, first a left, then a right, both aimed at the point of Einosuke’s chin. The younger man dodged easily, swaying to one side, then the other, as he stepped backwards out of arm’s reach.

“Whoa, hold on!” Einosuke didn’t really want to fight, but realized it also wasn’t necessary. Boss was big and powerful, but running on fumes. His exhaustion—both physical and mental—was painfully obvious. Einosuke could simply evade – for now, at least.