Ruth charged across the second floor of the mall, following Rico's pointing finger. Apart from her mask -- which was still planted on Rico's face -- the rest of her Skeletal Set had manifested, coating her body.

Red sparks spread across the floor with each footstep, her great speed carrying her across the room in the span of a single breath. The crowds were still packing the floor, but her reflexes were such that she could weave through them without much difficulty.

The direction Rico had pointed towards was that of the toilets -- the women's bathroom, specifically. She paused outside the door, turning to look back over her shoulder. Skipper had charged her with making sure Rico made it back safe: she couldn't very well just leave him behind.

She needn't have worried, though. Although he wasn't quite as agile as her, he'd still managed to make his way through the crowd unscathed. Sweat was pouring from his forehead, and his face was red from exertion, but that made sense -- unlike her, he'd had to take the stairs.

That didn't mean she could go easy on him, though. They didn't have infinite time here.

"Hurry!" she began to roar, only to pause as some vague, indefinable sense on the edge of her consciousness warned her:

Danger.

She ducked -- and a second later, something like a black tendril erupted through the wall behind her, it's lightning-fast swipe obliterating the space her skull had just occupied. It retracted -- presumably for another swipe -- but Ruth didn't give it the chance. She dodged backwards in advance, her metal boots kicking up sparks as she skidded along the floor.

Rico started to say something, but stopped as Ruth reached his position. Her eyes narrowed, she continued to stare right at the ruined wall. In this situation, she couldn't afford a careless moment.

The crowd had parted around them, the sudden noise and destruction causing some to stop and look, others to quicken their pace.

Serena wouldn't have attacked like that -- and if she had, the attack would have been simpler. This must have been the work of someone else. Dragan had said he'd gotten the feeling that someone else was in the hospital, so was this them? There wasn't time to consider it. She had other concerns.

When would the enemy's next attack come? What form would it take? Through the hole in the wall, Ruth could only see darkness -- the enemy must have destroyed the lights in the bathroom. A good move.

"Did you see it?" she growled, her voice low, still not looking at Rico as she addressed him. "The attack?"

"Yeah…"

"I didn't get a good look. Describe it to me." Ruth's claws whistled through the air as she adjusted their position, ready to repel any strikes that might come.

When Rico spoke, his voice seemed curiously drained. "It was a centipede, a big centipede…" he muttered. "It… kind of looked like…"

"Like what?"

Rather than replying, Rico simply stepped forward again, ignoring Ruth's attempt to pull him back behind her. His fists were clenched as he gulped, looking at the hole in the wall.

"Keiko!" he called out, voice wavering. "Is that you?!"

Who the hell is Keiko? Ruth could have strangled him. Why was he exposing their position like it was nothing?!

For a moment, there was silence, save for the scattered muttering of the crowds behind them. Then, barely audible, there was a sigh from within that dark hole.

"I didn't realize it was you, Rico," a young woman's voice said. "I really wish it wasn't."

The door to the toilets, adjacent to the shattered wall, swung open -- finally falling off its hinges from the pressure as the woman stepped out.

She was young, maybe a year older than Rico, with dark hair tied back in a ponytail and a single red eye glaring at Ruth. The other was concealed behind a black eyepatch with a red centipede embroidered on it. The black kimono she wore, utterly devoid of colour, brushed against the dusty floor as she stepped forward.

That centipede thing was with her, too, coiled around her waist like a sash, its upper body curled over her shoulder.

Ruth remained in her combat-ready position, body low to the ground. "Who's that?" she hissed, but Rico did not answer.

He continued to address the other woman. "What's going on, Keiko?" he asked. "You're supposed to be looking after your dad. When I asked you if you were coming, that's what you told me."

This person -- Keiko, apparently -- ignored the question. "How did you know it was me?" she asked, looking away.

"Cerevisia isn't easy to miss," Rico replied, glancing down at the floor. "I'd recognise that ugly thing from a mile away."

"Ugly?" Keiko raised an eyebrow. "How cruel of you."

Rico's face hardened. "Why are you talking like that?"

"Like what?"

"Like a bad videograph villain. How cruel of you? What are you talking about?" Rico waved his arms wildly as he talked. "And answer the question! What the hell are you doing here?! Why did you lie?!" He paled, just a tad. "You didn't… you don't have something to do with all this, do you?"

Keiko's head snapped back to look at Rico. "Of course not!" she snapped, her voice considerably more genuine.

"Then what are you doing here?!"

"That's…" she glanced away again. "I have my own reasons for that."

"You're doing it again!" Rico cried, frustration building up in his voice. "What does that even --"

Enough of this.

Ruth pushed past Rico, her teeth bared, her claws sharp. She pointed those spikes in the direction of Keiko, the look on her face intolerant of any more nonsense.

"I'm not here to talk," she growled. "Where's my friend?"

The kimono made it hard to notice, but Keiko adjusted her footing just slightly. The exposed body of the centipede thing swayed in the air, its mouthparts idly clicking.

"If she really was your friend," Keiko scoffed. "I'd…"

The air turned cold.

Whatever words had been about to leave Keiko's mouth were stopped in their tracks by Ruth's burning glare. If looks could kill, Keiko would have been reduced to a blast shadow by those eyes.

"Hey?" Ruth said, her voice the very edge of a knife. "Word of advice. I'd think about the next thing you say very carefully. Not everything looks good on a gravestone."

When Keiko opened her mouth again, she did so much more carefully.

"If she's your friend," she said slowly. "I don't understand why you won't let her do what she wants to do."

"What?" Ruth continued to glare. "Charge right into danger and get herself killed?"

"Nobody suggested that."

"What, then? And why do you even care?"

Keiko shifted her footing again. "The person she wants to kill is the person I want to kill. Our interests are aligned. That's all."

Rico tried to push past Ruth again, but her firm and immovable arm acted as a barrier to keep him in place. A warning spark of red Aether coiled down her hair.

"Keiko," Rico said insistently. "Do you mean -- do you mean the person who…?"

Keiko's glare wasn't nearly as intense as Ruth's, but it sufficed to firmly shut Rico's mouth.

"We needn't talk about that now," the young woman said tersely. "Both of you should just --"

"To hell with it…" muttered Ruth, heavy lids falling over her eyes as she readied herself. "I don't really care why you're doing this, you know. All I need to know is that you're messing with my friend. You can stop, or I can make you stop. Now: where is she?"

Keiko didn't reply, simply continuing to stare Ruth down. The centipede rising over her shoulder hissed, green venom dripping onto the tiled floor below. Some kind of poison?

A cold weight settled over Ruth's heart. There was no way Serena would just sit still with all this going on outside. And why had these two been hiding in the toilets, of all places?

"The sewers," Ruth growled, baring her claws. "You had another escape route, didn't you?!"

"I'd ask you not to follow us," Keiko said simply. "But I doubt you'd listen -- thus, I'll make it mandatory."

The tiles cracked beneath her feet. Before so much as another word could leave Ruth's lips, the conflict had begun.

Red Aether, maybe just a shade distinct from Ruth's, snapped around Keiko -- her centipede writhing in the air as it choked and spluttered. Ruth charged in, claws scraping against the ground, but her speed was insufficient. Before she could so much as reach the enemy, the centipede reared up -- belching forth a miasma of vivid red gas.

Ruth didn't have to be told what poison looked like. She swapped out her Skeletal boots for their Noblesse counterpart, slamming them against the ground and using the resultant rebound to cancel out her momentum and send herself flying backwards.

She landed next to Rico, who still hadn't moved a muscle.

Ruth wasn't one-hundred percent sure of how gas worked, but she'd expected the poison payload to rise up into the air, giving her an opportunity to slip through. Instead, though, it was staying put -- forming a kind of wall between Ruth and the bathrooms. She couldn't even see Keiko anymore through the bloody haze. No doubt the girl had already started running for it.

"You know her, right?" Ruth snapped, glancing at Rico.

"Uh, yeah," Rico nodded frantically. "She's my cousin, but…"

"Doesn't matter." Ruth jerked her head towards the wall of smoke. "What's this stuff? If I breathe it in, how bad is it? Can it get in through my skin?"

"I don't know."

Ruth growled. "I thought you said you knew her!"

"No, seriously!" Rico hurriedly explained. "That thing, that centipede she has -- it's called Cerevisia -- it makes poison inside itself. Any kind of poison Keiko wants -- hallucinogens, whatever, but they're always unique. There's no way of telling how this one works until it's actually got you."

"Shit," Ruth clicked her tongue. Was there a way to bypass this? If she went back upstairs, could she get into the bathrooms by smashing through the floor? Could she afford to waste that time?

An idea came to her. Maybe stupid, but there was only one way to find that out.

"Your ability," she said. "You said it lets you make bacteria do stuff? Is that right?"

Rico paled fractionally. "That's… that's right. Tiny Garden, it's called."

"That bacteria stuff is in the air too, right? Can't you mess with it to have it clean up that poison?"

He shook his head. "I need to touch something to mess with the bacteria on it. I don't have the kind of power to do it from range."

So he could do it if he had more power, then? Well, it seemed they hadn't run out of luck, after all.

"Don't panic," Ruth said brusquely, turning around to face him.

"Huh?"

"Révolutionnaire Set," she whispered.

As Ruth moved, her Aether concentrated around her like a shell -- washing over her Skeletal Set and utterly replacing it. An ocean-blue tricorn appeared over her head, and a snow-white scarf wrapped around her chin. The bronze breastplate that manifested around her torso was engraved with complex geometrical patterns -- curves and circles that made one think of a solar system gone wild. Similar sections of armour appeared on her elbows and knees, covering the extravagant white fabric below.

The cape that billowed from her shoulders, however, was what really drew the eye. It was clear and coloured at the same time -- like someone had taken a stained glass window and converted it to fabric, the luminescent sheet waving in a non-existent wind.

As Ruth raised her arms in Rico's direction, an antique musket appeared in her grip -- the barrel stretching on until it almost became absurd, nearly two meters all by itself. Red Aether crackled down its length.

It was pointed right at Rico's face. Ruth's finger curled around the trigger.

His eyes were wide as saucers. "Wait!" he shouted.

She did not wait. She fired.

In this moment, to look at Dragan Hadrien was to look at a man flickering in and out of existence.

For one moment, he'd be in one spot -- in the next, he'd have crossed half the room. Each time the whipblade -- lashing around like a hurricane -- came close to touching Dragan, he would vanish again. It was like trying to swat a particularly annoying fly.

That didn't mean Dragan could relax, however.

Nausea welled up in his throat at the sensation of repeatedly using Gemini World. His limbs were beginning to shake. Static crawled in on the edges of his vision. This 'fight' had been going on for about one minute, and he was already reaching his physical limits.

He couldn't exactly stop, though.

With the speed the weapon was moving, he wasn't confident in his ability to dodge it -- and from the looks of what had happened to Skipper, it had some kind of ability to interfere with Aether. He wasn't sure how much exposure it took to take effect, either: was he safe even blocking it?

Besides…

As he blipped back into existence, Dragan got a glimpse of Skipper -- on the far end of the station, firing a heavy plasma pistol towards Eli Masadora. Each burning shot from the gun was intercepted by the thrashing whip-sword, but that didn't mean they were useless: if not for that covering fire, Dragan would have been cut down long ago.

This didn't make sense, though. What was Eli Masadora doing here, and why was he coming after them?

Dragan understood there was such a thing as coincidence, but he didn't buy that the most highly decorated bounty hunter in the Supremacy just happened to be around when this Hunter Game mess started. He had to have been given advanced notice. Did that mean he was directly in contact with the organizers?

Plus, even if he was here for the Hunter Game, Dragan and Skipper constituted the lowest level of targets. Dragan would have expected someone with Eli Masadora's skills to go straight for the Oliphants themselves. So why was he going after them, instead?

Thrush.

As he reappeared for a second, narrowly avoiding a swipe of the blade that would have taken his head off, Dragan caught a glimpse of the man at the centre of this tornado. A wild grin covered Masadora's face as he whipped the sword back and forth, air pressure broiling from the sheer speed of the strikes. It was hard to believe, but this man with nothing but a flexible weapon and skill was utterly dominating this space.

The expression on his face, and the ferocity of his attacks, confirmed Dragon's suspicions. There was a personal element to this. Somehow, Dragan and Skipper had offended this man's sensibilities.

It was easy to guess how. With the few words he'd spoken, Masadora had called the two of them out as Aether-users. Plus, he hadn't used so much as a spark of Aether since this whole thing started. Dragan couldn't imagine someone in Masadora's line of work would willingly deny himself an avenue of power, so the conclusion was obvious.

Eli Masadora was incapable of using Aether.

Dragan had heard about such cases when he'd first looked into this power, after all. The theory went that people unlocked their Aether by finding their Aether Core -- an emotion or state of mind that worked best to tap into the power. For some unlucky people, however, that Aether Core was something they were simply unable to reach. An irredeemable sadist with a Core of sympathy for his victims, or a lifelong optimist with a Core of bitter cynicism… some people just lost the Aetheral lottery.

It seemed that was the case for Eli Masadora, too. That, at least, gave him something to work with.

The dodging had pushed him to the limit. Time to move on to the attack.

This entire time, Dragan had been careful to disappear and reappear only on a horizontal plane -- blipping around Masadora's twister of slashes. Hopefully, that had convinced him that Dragan could only move horizontally when he disappeared. The opening Masadora had left above himself suggested that was the case.

Time to test it.

Dragan disappeared once more -- and a second later, he reappeared a couple of meters directly above Masadora. He fell, his feet pointed straight down, Aether infusing his entire body like he was some kind of human arrowhead.

He had no doubt that, if he hit a normal human like this, he'd break them like a twig.

He made contact.

Snap.