Dragan Hadrien was starting to get used to this 'not existing' business.

For a second, he was surrounded by utter nothingness, an empty void stretching on in every direction. The sights he'd seen before entering Gemini World were smeared across his vision like a bad watercolor. Muted panic spread throughout a body that didn't exist as lungs that didn't exist incorrectly believed they needed air -- which, of course, did not exist here.

Dragan had timed this. It took him about one second to cross one meter in Gemini World. That slight direction was all he needed.

He dived back into reality. Gemini World was released, and his feet touched down on the lamppost he'd decided was his target. He almost fell off the thing, what with the small space available for his feet, but with some strategic waving of his arms he managed to maintain his balance. He crouched down, eyes scanning over the crowds moving in and out of the monorail station below.

As expected, no sign of Bruno or Serena. Even if they were here, they weren't so incompetent that they'd be spotted this easily.

Boom. Boom.

Still, Gemini World was a pretty effective method of travel once you got used to it. Gravity was no object, so he could pass over buildings to take the quickest route to his destination.

Boom. Boom.

Plus, the fact that Dragan didn't exist while he was moving pretty much made him immune to sneak attacks while he was inside Gemini World. As a lover of the famous back-strike, Dragan understood only too well what a great advantage that was.

Boom. Boom.

Dragan's eyelid twitched. The best thing about Gemini World, he had to say, was that it was quiet.

Boom. Boom.

Unlike some people.

Skipper landed on the building next to Dragan with the last blast of sound from his hands, falling into a roll -- and standing up just as quickly, brushing the dust from his long coat. The older man grinned victoriously at Dragan, as though he'd managed some great feat with that embarrassing display.

"Both made it in one piece," he winked. "Not doing so bad, yeah?"

"Mm-hmm," Dragan replied, deciding it wasn't worth the headache. He returned his gaze to the crowd below, some of whom were now looking up to see what those noises had been.

He ignored the ones who were looking, focusing instead on the pedestrians who were still moving without a care. As they were now, Bruno and Serena would be most likely to continue after their target without bothering with any distractions. Plus, they could be disguised: Dragan focused on facial features rather than hair or clothing in an effort to see through that.

Nothing. If they were here, they were hidden beyond his ability to see.

He glanced back at Skipper, shaking his head. The older man clicked his tongue.

"Damn," he muttered. "Damn, damn, damn. This tram coming up is the last one for a while, right?"

Dragan nodded. "Power is prioritized for different districts at different times to conserve energy -- this district is going into night mode soon, so the trams will stop for a few hours."

"So if Miss del Sed wants to get out of here in a hurry, she's got no choice but to get on this next one. Seems to me like what we've gotta do is obvious, right?"

Dragan hated to admit it, but Skipper had reached the conclusion before he had. Sighing, he nodded again. "We board the tram too, and search for them before we reach the next stop."

"Correctamundo!" Skipper snapped his fingers. "That's what I like about ya, kid. Sharp as a tick."

Rico groped uncertainly at the mask covering his face, trying to adjust it to make it just a bit more comfortable. The thing was made to fit a face that wasn't his, so his nose was always awkwardly pressed against the metal. Every time he tried to breathe through his nose, twinges of pain rang out.

Nothing -- the mask wouldn't budge.

"Don't mess with it," Ruth snapped, pulling him along by the arm as they made their way through the mall. "You'll draw attention."

The building they'd found themselves in was six stories tall, each floor looking down over the others from elevated balconies, rows of storefronts offering just about any material comfort you could think of. Shopping hours were just about wrapping up, so the majority of the people in the complex were now heading for the monorail station atop the building to start their journey home. Even so, Rico couldn't help but feel paranoid -- looking over his shoulder every couple of minutes just in case they were being followed.

Ruth suddenly stopped, and Rico almost bumped into her back, his shoes squealing as they slid against the polished floor.

"What's wrong?" he asked, worried. "Why are we stopping?"

Ruth muttered something unintelligible through Rico's mask and hood, her eyes fixed down towards the ground.

He flipped his hood off to free his ears. "What?"

Ruth repeated it -- loud enough that several people near them turned to look. "This is dumb as shit!"

"What is?"

"Looking for 'em like this, just walking around like a bunch of idiots! We're Aether-users, right?! Let's do something crazy!"

"Like… like what?!" Things really were moving too fast -- Rico felt like his mind was a flopping fish.

Ruth bounded over to the balcony, planting her hands on the railing as she peered down at the floors below.

"If Dragan was here," she muttered. "He'd start talking to himself, then badmouth Skipper for a while, then come up with a clever idea. It can't be that hard."

"Well…" Rico ventured. "Maybe this place has security cameras? Maybe we can break into the security room and look through them?"

Ruth vigorously shook her head. "Nah. Nah, nah, nah. That'll take too long." A grin slowly spread across her face. "I got a better plan. You know what an Aether ping is?"

"Of course. But if they're trying to hide themselves, they'll just be cloaking, right? There's no point."

Ruth pushed herself away from the balcony. "Normally, yeah -- but even if you're sure the Aether ping didn't spot you, what are ya gonna do right after it passes by, just in case?"

Rico shrugged. "Uh… I guess I'd be surprised?"

"You'd get ready to fight, just in case, right?! At least for a second. Then you'd catch yourself and put your cloak back on."

"So what? That still doesn't help us actually find them."

"But it does! It does, though!" Ruth cried excitedly, catching a few confused glances from passersby. "Normally it wouldn't, since you can't do an Aether ping again straight away after doing one! But there's two of us here, right? I can do an Aether ping, and then you can do one like a second later!"

That made sense, but… "Won't that tell them where we are, too?"

"Yeah, so? They're running away from us, so they're not gonna come attack us or anything."

"But with the Hunter Game, what if people are already after us? We'd be exposing our position!"

Ruth stopped moving, staring back at Rico. The blank expression on her face was utterly pitiless. "Yeah, but that doesn't matter. If that happens, I'll just beat them. I'm strong like that."

These people were crazy.

Before Rico could so much as utter another word of protest, however, Ruth had already stepped away. She planted her hands against the wall and squeezed her eyes shut, her red Aether rumbling rigidly around her. It was like a tensed coil, ready to spring into life. Aether ready to rush out and create a ping.

"You ready?" she muttered, sparks escaping from her lips.

Of course not. "Sure," he said, trying to ignore the myriad trembling of his hands.

She didn't need any more confirmation than that. Her Aether rushed out from around her like the blooming of a flower, it's opacity fading away the further it went from her body. Rico felt his body tense as the pulse passed over him, his own sickly Aether flaring involuntarily.

He could no longer see it, but he knew the ping would be passing through the walls and floors, running it's proverbial fingers over every inch of space within its range.

"Now you," Ruth grunted -- and with a start, Rico remembered his role.

His own Aether burst out from his body with such force that he stumbled and almost fell, the ping following after Ruth's just about three seconds behind.

He'd been tutored in using Aether pings, so the method itself was nothing new to him, but the sensation was certainly surprising. It was like he was reaching out with a singular, amorphous limb -- running his hands over all the world. He could only really get a sense of general physical shapes, not really anything specific, but…

There.

Just the slightest tendril of Aether, just for a moment, and right on the edge of his perception. He snapped his head to look at Ruth, spittle flying from his mouth as he spoke quickly: he didn't want his memory to fade in the least, after all.

"Right below us, two floors down!"

Ruth leapt off the balcony before so much as another word could leave his lips.

"Stator for your thoughts?"

Dragan glanced up at Skipper as the two of them stepped into the monorail station. The place was packed with people waiting for the last tram, the masses heading home from work or a night of play. Suits and ties next to miniskirts and jackets.

"How do you mean?" Dragan asked, leaning against the side of the ticket machine.

They had a good view of the terminal from here -- if Serena tried to get on the tram when it arrived, he'd spot her for sure.

"Well," Skipper cracked his neck. "It's been a hell of a night, yeah? A whole lot has happened. All this, along with Fix getting framed…"

"Ha!" Dragan scoffed. "Like I give a shit about that asshole."

"You told a member of the biggest crime family in the Supremacy that you'd prove him innocent, man."

That was his fault. He'd set himself up for that.

"It's… complicated," Dragan muttered, softly thumping his head against the machine behind him. "I don't wanna talk about it."

Skipper winced. "I get that, kiddo, I really do -- but it seems to me like it's kinda starting to become relevant."

Dragan glared up at him. "What's relevant is you vanishing when we needed you. While we were running around the city, and Bruno and Serena were nearly being killed, what were you doing? You still haven't told us."

A sigh escaped Skipper's lips, and he plunged his hands into the pockets of his coat uncomfortably. "You don't forget about this stuff, huh?"

"Nope. Spill the beans."

"How about this?" Skipper smirked, raising an eyebrow. "I talk, then you talk. I tell you what I was up to and you tell me what the deal is with Fix."

There was a moment's hesitation before Dragan nodded, biting his lip. "Fine. You first."

Skipper stepped over, leaning against the side of the ticket machine next to Dragan. The two of them looked out at the crowds as Skipper spoke.

"Turns out," he began, crossing his arms. "This little nightmare we're in the middle of might be more of a sequel than a main event."

"How so?"

"I went snooping around in Carla Oliphant's office while you were talking to her in the morgue. She's been looking into an incident that happened about a year ago -- one of the branches of the Clan got hit all at once, absurd amounts of money stolen, family members killed. The head of that branch got sent off to some snowball, but they still haven't figured out who was behind the whole thing."

Dragan nodded slowly. "I see what you're thinking."

"Right? A ridiculous amount of cash gets stolen, and then this Hunter Game starts offering ridiculous amounts of cash to take out the Oliphants? Doesn't take a genius."

"So some enemy of the Oliphant has a long game going on," Dragan sighed, running his face over his hands. "And we're caught in the middle."

"Looks like it." Skipper glanced down at him. "Your turn."

Dragan sucked in air through his teeth, squeezing his eyes shut. That inky blackness behind his eyelids reminded him more than a little of Crestpoole's smog.

He had promised, after all…

"Fix was a loan shark back on Crestpoole," Dragan began, getting the story out as fast as he could. "He was small-time back then, with just a small crew. I did some work for him -- my m… my family owed him some money, so that was in part to help pay it off. Some stuff happened, and he ended up looking after me for a while."

Skipper raised an eyebrow. "Some stuff happened?"

"Yeah. Some stuff happened."

"Look --"

"Hey, asshole!"

Their conversation was interrupted as a sweaty, frustrated-looking man stepped in front of them, jabbing a chunky finger into Skipper's chest. His handlebar mustache quivered in indignation as he glared.

"Can I, uh, help ya, buddy?" Skipper chuckled, looking down at the finger poking him.

"Ya think this is a bench?!" the man waved his hand at the ticket machine. "What the hell are ya doing?! People are trying to get home and you're here chattin' up a storm!"

Dragan glanced at the rows of available ticket machines, raising an eyebrow. "Ignore him, Skipper."

The man jabbed his finger again, harder. "Yeah," he snarled. "Go ahead, Skipper, ignore me. People used to have manners, you know. The Cradle used to be a good place until youse assholes came around. I --"

He didn't finish his sentence.

The man's chest exploded outwards as a segmented blade impaled him from behind, plowing right through his body and catching Skipper in the side as he jumped away. As the blade was pulled out of the man's body, it sliced upwards, cutting him nearly in half as he tumbled dead to the ground.

Like some kind of serpent, the blade whirled through the air as it retracted, each segment snapping back into place in the hands of its owner. Someone in the crowd screamed, and the mass of people began to surge outwards to escape the chaos, revealing the man standing across from them.

A man in a fur coat, with bleached blond hair slicked back.

Dragan gulped. He'd never met this person before, but that face had been on the news more than a few times. One of the most skilled bounty hunters in the Supremacy's underworld. Eli Masadora: the King of Killers. He grinned wildly at the two of them, blade slung over his shoulder as he took a step forward.

Skipper didn't waste a second. With one hand still nursing the cut on his side, he lifted the other -- and fired off a Heartbeat Shotgun.

Pop.

The sound was more like a firecracker than the usual explosion, and accomplished little more than blowing the opponent's hair back a little. Masadora's grin widened, his crazed eyes fixed on Dragan and Skipper.

"I get to kill two Aether-users at once!" he laughed, not a spark of Aether appearing around him as he prepared to attack again. "Imagine my blimmin' luck!"