Kusa dragged herself to her feet. Something clicked in her knee and there was a twinge in her lower back. Her jaw throbbed where she was struck and her head rang like she’d been beating it against a wall. She winced at the pain, waggled her jaw back and forth, making sure nothing was broken, and decided it wasn’t too bad. She’d be fine with some aspirin, a bath and some rest.

Her mind wasn’t on her own condition, though: her thoughts were on the spell that the boy cast to protect her. That kind of protective magic was rare and the strength of that particular shell was impressive. Boss wasn’t the smartest fighter, but he had a lot of raw power. To completely block his attack was something she would never have expected from a novice’s spell. Despite herself, she was becoming more interested in this kid.

Long seconds had passed, an eternity during a fight. Rest time was over.

Her attention was drawn to where the Boss threw punch after furious, ineffectual punch as Einosuke stepped lightly around or underneath each swing. The way Einosuke moved, it was obvious that he had some sort of training. He didn’t seem like a natural fighter, but he was in good shape and he had some decent moves.

Beneath her breath, Kusa mumbled something to herself as she considered.

*

Slick grinned, reopening the split in the corner of his lip. Fresh blood welled forth, but he ignored it. His boss’s best attack, the one he called Shattering Fury that used up all of his mana reserves at once, was deflected and dispersed by Kusa’s friend’s unexpected intervention.

The kid helped Kusa on the train, but aside from that had done nothing but slow her down and get himself held hostage—however briefly—and so both Slick and Boss dismissed the boy as a non-factor during the fight. That was a mistake, he supposed; it’d be a couple of hours before Boss would be able to use magic again. And now, with the other man reduced to wildly-swinging fists and screaming, it was up to Slick. That was fine – absorbed in watching what her friend could do, Kusa had apparently forgotten about him and left herself wide open.

Slick interlocked his fingers and charged, shouting, “Hammer Blow!” to trigger his spell. The dark-red outline of a massive sledgehammer enveloped his doubled-fists and hurtled towards Kusa in an attack that would shatter her bones and leave her a pulpy mess.

But it never connected.

At such close range, his aim couldn’t be anything less than perfect and the girl hadn’t moved, but his fists had simply swung right through her! Off-balance from the force of the attack, he stumbled right through the girl and had to scramble to keep his balance.

“Ha!” someone shouted as the “Kusa” before Slick turned transparent and began to fade from existence. The girl stepped up behind him, fists raised as if to pummel him, an almost gleeful look on her face. “Glamour Step gets ‘em every time!”

Instead of throwing punches, though, Kusa’s fists started to glow reddish-brown as three radiant-energy prongs formed between them, aimed downwards, as if she held some oddly-shaped bladed weapon in a two-fisted grip. Slick turned and threw up a hand to defend himself, but the timing was too close and the distance too short.

“Cerberus Strike!” the girl cried and plunged the glowing, triple-bladed weapon into him. There was an instant of sound, like the sizzling of meat on a grill, and then it disappeared, lost in Slick’s howl of pain. The big man collapsed into a heap, groaning and twitching. A faint curl of smoke crawled skyward from the still-smoldering hole in the back of his jacket.

“And stay down this time.” Kusa stepped over the semi-conscious thug, moving to help Einosuke, where he still dodged and wove around Boss’s flailing punches, but stopped in her tracks.

Whee-oo! Whee-oo! Whee-oo!

Police sirens. And not all that far off.

“Gaaah! Stand still, you god-damned coward!” Boss roared.

“Hey, kid!”

Einosuke’s head reflexively whipped around at the sound of the girl’s voice. In any other fight, it would have been a grave error, but he and his opponent had fallen into a sort of rhythm – swing, evade, repeat. His body was almost beginning to move on its own.

“The cops’re coming! Wrap it up!” Kusa made a twirling motion with one outstretched finger. Somewhere along the line, she’d reclaimed and slipped back into her sweatshirt.

Whee-oo! Whee-oo! Whee-oo!

The sirens grew louder, and that meant nearer. They were loud enough now that even Einosuke, occupied as he was, noticed them. His concentration broken, Einosuke slipped and failed to dodge one of Boss’s blows, catching it on an upraised forearm instead. It was like being hit with a brick. He sucked air through his teeth, gritting them against the pain.

“Little help here, maybe?” he shouted to Kusa.

Kusa raised her hands before her chest, palms up, wrists bent outwards, fingers splayed, and gave Einosuke a look that eloquently expressed her disdain for the situation.

Einosuke didn’t get it. The look he gave Kusa in return told her that plainly.

The girl shook her head. “He’s obviously got no mana left, so just kick his ass the old fashioned way!”

“Are you kidding? He’s still like a gorilla on steroids, he’s—“

The larger man took a shuffling step forward, legs spread wide to keep his huge, fatigued body steady and upright, and launched another ham-sized fist through the air. Einosuke stepped aside as realization dawned on him. His eyes lit up. He remembered how casually Boss had spoken of removing Einosuke’s head and flashed an uncharacteristically vengeful look at the older man.

Something crawled down Boss’s spine at the way the kid looked at him. He had no time to process it before something impacted him right between the legs with a muffled whump! Unbelievable pain tore through every nerve of his body between knees and belly and he doubled over, screaming—“Gyaaaaaaaaahhhh!”—before collapsing to the ground in a quivering heap.

“Nice! Now let’s haul!” Kusa cried.

The crowd around them parted on both two sides:

To the east, a pair of police cars, sirens blaring, red lights flashing, screeched to a halt and disgorged cops. A tall man in plain-clothes immediately began shouting orders, demanding the crowd move aside, disperse, let them through.

To the west, where onlookers, perhaps finally realizing that what they’d seen was not staged, was not part of some new action movie or TV show’s dramatic presentation, moved aside to allow Kusa and Einosuke free passage to escape.

The pair wasted no time taking advantage of the kind offer and bolted, leaving Slick and his boss, twitching and groaning respectively, to their fates.