“How did she get so far ahead of us on those little legs?” asked Rose.

“She’s motivated,” I replied, rounding the last set of stairs on the mall’s second floor.

“Hiro!” Yukiko’s plaintive cry came from below. Rose and I exchanged a quick glance before increasing our pace.

The way Yukiko had shrieked, I feared Takehara had managed to get himself killed. I wasn’t too far off. He was still on his feet, though he used his sword as a makeshift cane. He bore numerous light wounds that turned his uniform’s jacket red from the waist down. None of them were life threatening on their own, but they added up. Hiro could barely keep his eyes open.

Brother Ratte, on the other hand, seemed in good spirits. He bore a few gashes, but he didn’t seem overly bothered. He was also wreathed in red, though that came from Yukiko’s Gravity Shift taking hold of him.

“I’ve got him,” said Rose, running over and supporting Hiro. She was taken aback by the blood, but she kept her grip.

“I couldn’t handle him,” said Hiro in a dejected tone. “I’d get a bead on him, and then he was gone.”

Ratte’s smug grin made me ill at ease. “You picked a strange time to learn to smile,” I said. “Seems to me you’re outnumbered and trapped.”

“You would be right, if we had told you everything,” said Ratte.

Paul stumbled from the hallway where he had left Mariko. He was a bit battered, but not enough to account for his apparent exhaustion.

“Maus got away,” said Paul. “Someone else needs to catch him; I’m almost to Wizard’s Desolation.”

“We’ll get him next,” said Hiro.

“Do you hear that, Ratte?” I crowed. “You’ve been abandoned by both of your partners in crime. Maggie also fled the scene.” I wished Yukiko hadn’t cut the fight short, since I didn’t intend to let any of these Holy Brothers escape the Nagoya Tower alive. I didn’t think any of them would put up with me executing a helpless prisoner. I’d have to wait for my chance.

My wish was granted sooner than I’d have expected. Yukiko bit her lip as she redoubled her efforts. “Something’s wrong,” she said. “I can’t keep ahold of him.”

I risked a glance through my Mimic Sight, the shock of what I saw snapping me out of it completely. “He isn’t there! It’s an energy construct!”

“I was wondering when you would figure it out,” said Ratte. “I was worried you would use your Mimic Sight ages ago.”

“Then who was I fighting?” asked Hiro, raising a skeptical eyebrow at me.

“Hell if I know,” I said, scanning the area, already readying a Svalinn’s Mercy for the inevitable attack. I didn’t use my Mimic Sight again; I couldn’t risk getting stuck staring at my navel.

The false Ratte stepped forward, still wreathed in the harmless red of Yukiko’s Gravity Shift.

“You face Holy Brother Ratte,” he replied. “Brother Maus and I agreed we needed an insurance policy once your little friends were involved. So, I stepped away and used my affinity to create a duplicate while you went to collect the sniper.”

Yukiko gave up the struggle. “Then you’re Torvald Boberg. Your affinity lets you create a solid energy duplicate.”

Hiro nodded. “Yeah, what’s it called, Ghostly Twin?”

“That’s right.” Ratte frowned. “How did you hear about me?”

“You served with Mr. Maki in England,” said Yukiko. “He said you were the best scout in the Wizard Corps.”

“I suppose there’s no harm in you knowing my name,” Ratte said, his phantom’s injuries vanishing all at once. “You have been judged demonkin, and I will carry out judgement upon you.”

Rose let Hiro go, runes dancing around her own hands. “Stay sharp; he can’t project the duplicate far. He’s still in the mall.”

Bloody Hell, were Mariko and I the only ones who tuned out during Mr. Maki’s war stories?

Paul sighed. “You guys get stories? All Mrs. Perera does is bitch about her husband.”

“I don’t think you need to worry about that anymore,” I said. “Draw your sword.”

“I will try to make it quick.” Ratte assumed a fighting pose before vanishing completely. An instant later, Rose cried out in shock as his sword raked her back. Her enchanted uniform held, but the unexpected impact sent her sprawling.

“Fireball!” Yukiko’s spell was an instant too late, as he twisted around the shot.

“Watch out!” Hiro managed to block the slash from Ratte’s blade, as well as the attack from behind when Ratte’s doppelganger teleported again.

Paul shook my shoulder as he drew his own blade. “What are you doing, Mags?”

“Not drawing attention to myself, Wilson,” I replied. “Cover me.”

“Cover you?” demanded Paul, but I was already in my own little world.

I had missed Mr. Maki’s stories about his friends. Had I been wrong to think he was being self-aggrandizing, when he was really highlighting our future brothers in arms and what to expect from them?

It seemed unlikely; it must have been a side effect of the old blowhard stroking his own ego.

Still, Yukiko’s description of Torvald had been as the best scout in the corps. Even if he couldn’t project the double too far, that told me could still see and hear through it. If I were in his position, I would be as hidden as I could be; I doubted he could focus well enough to control two bodies at once. He also hadn’t teleported right into the theater and executed the girls, which meant he was likely still on our floor.

The commotion didn’t help my focus one bit. Mimic Sight turned the world into inky blackness, lit only by the auras of the battling wizards. Looking at Rose as she cast spell after spell was like looking directly into the sun, and Yukiko wasn’t much dimmer. Hiro and Paul were running on fumes as thought fought blade to blade, neither daring to knock themselves out with a spell.

There! With the sheer amount of magic he was putting out to maintain his copy, Ratte was plain as day in his hidey-hole in the back of the creperie. He was more dangerous than I thought. To maintain the form for so long, he must have had magical reserves to rival Rose.

I let out a breath, preparing to gently return to the world of the living to report my findings.

Instead, the real world rushed up at me all at once, knocking the air from my lungs as I slammed sternum-first into the hard tile. “What gives?” I snarled, rolling to my feet to face my attacker.

My blood ran cold at the sight of Paul skewered clean through by Ratte. Paul’s fabricata enhanced uniform had been damaged by Tachibana’s Fireball before, and it had provided almost no resistance to Ratte’s sword.

“T-told you to move, Mags,” chuckled Paul as the false Ratte shoved him off of his blade.

“Paul?” My stomach clenched as he flopped to the ground like a sock puppet with no hand inside of it.

“He was brave,” said Ratte. “He put everything into defending your unworthy hide. Shame to see such grit wasted on a demonkin.”

Rose shrieked in horror as Hiro rushed in, sword swinging, while Yukiko used her Gravity Shift to gently pull Paul towards her. Was she going to try to heal him? It seemed like a lost cause; healing magic relies on the reserves of the healed, and Paul was near empty. Unless Yukiko had a miracle in her back pocket, Paul was… Paul was…

“Paul, why… why did you have to…” I wasn’t crying. No, demons don’t cry. No. It was allergies, it was dust, it was raining, it was…

Fine, I was crying. What of it? He’d saved me, even after I’d gotten him caught up in Maggie’s web. The whole attack had been my idea. It should have been me. There was no justice in it. I took it as more proof that Our Father Below rules this world, and not the Enemy.

Hiro fought bravely, but it was a doomed effort against an opponent who could vanish around any attack. It was all he could do to keep from getting hacked to bits.

My sorrow turned to rage. Red. Everything was red. The aura of Gravity Shift around Paul. The lifeblood seeping out of his chest. The gashes in Hiro’s suit.

I saw red, but I forced myself to stay back. I wanted to join Hiro, but I doubted Ratte could be hurt via his ghostly form. Perhaps the feedback of the duplicate would pain him, but it was time to cut the head off of that particular snake.

Ratte’s duplicate must have heard the energy crackling about my body. He spun about, his lone eye wide in shock. “What in God’s name is that?”

“This has nothing to do with Him,” I spat.

Hiro used the opening to remove the duplicate’s right hand an instant before Rose’s Magic Bolt punched right through his chest. He must have been carefully controlling the doppelganger earlier to give the appearance of wounds, since Ratte didn’t bleed a drop. Instead, it looked like somebody had taken an eraser to him.

I went back to my attack. Everything was red, and the magic gathering around my hands was the reddest of all. Bloody Lance was fueled by magical reserves and anger, and I had plenty of the latter. I couldn’t check my Mimic Sight to aim precisely, so I decided that the best kill was overkill. I had once launched a Fireball large enough to down Big Ben. Killing a rat hiding in its hole was child’s play.

“Bahadour!”

According to firsthand accounts of the Tower Attack, somewhere around one in the afternoon (the digital watches were all shut down, so there isn’t complete agreement in the records), a brilliant flash of red lit up the sky moments before all of the windows on the middle floors shattered at once, flinging a hail of glass in all directions. It was no less impressive from the inside, as the creperie was simply gone, along with most of the shop next to it.

The false Ratte’s form had been rebuilding itself, but it abruptly stopped. “No,” he whispered.

“Is that all you have to say for yourself?” demanded Hiro.

Ratte stumbled, his false body becoming paler. I thought I could just see Yukiko tending to Paul through his legs as he faded away.

“You’ll still lose,” he said. “Brother Maus is on his way to detonate the bomb.”

“Bomb?” squeaked Rose.

“That’s going to be a Hell of a trick, considering I have the detonator!” I said, holding up the fabricata remote in question.

Ratte grit his teeth, his soul fighting the losing battle to keep his revenant together. “What do you think will happen when he fires a Magic Bolt into it?”

“He’d blow himself up I the process!” I said.

“A small price to be paid.”

I’m sure my cheeks lost some color of their own as the ramifications hit me. “You lot are a bunch of fanatics!”

Brother Ratte’s mouth twisted into a serene smile. “I will take that as a compliment from you, demonkin. Humanity First.”

Brother Ratte vanished, and with him, our hopes of an easy victory.