Einosuke Sakurai ran through the darkened space, his legs pumping, his breath coming hard. Hemmed in by stacks of wooden crates piled high to his left and right, he raced down the length of the wooden alley, his feet pounding the concrete. The sound of his soft-soled shoes slap-slap-slapping echoed back to him in the narrow confines. His breathing turned from the easy, oxygenating breaths he practiced to heaving gasps several minutes ago. It felt like his chest would explode. His legs still had strength, though. He was getting too good at running away.

The huge, open-design building looked to be a warehouse of some sort. Containers of every size, of materials ranging from cardboard and wood to corrugated steel, filled up the bulk of the space. Boxes and crates were arranged to form pathways, leaving space to move around the area. Everything was covered in a heavy coating of dust, metal surfaces showing patches of rust from long disuse. The place seemed abandoned. So what was Einosuke doing there? He had asked himself that more than once, though he knew the answer very well.

Einosuke came to the end of the path he was on, turned left around a corner – the only direction there was to go except back. He chanced a look over his shoulder, his eyes wide and wild, fearful of what he might see, praying he’d see nothing at all. He needed a plan and to come up with one, he needed time to think, a moment to breathe. This all started very badly, but maybe it didn’t have to end that way. A drop of sweat rolled down his forehead and past the corner of his eye, stinging. He ignored it.

The coast seemed clear. The faint glow from dim lights, hanging nine or ten meters overhead in the cavernous space, showed nothing behind him, nothing ahead of him but more shipping containers and some rusty shelving units. Einosuke paused, eyes squinting in the low light as he peered down the pathway. He strained his ears, but the only sounds were his own frantically beating heart and heavy breathing. Satisfied, he pressed his hips against a metal support beam, leaned forward and took a deep, steady breath, filling his lungs to capacity, willing the oxygen to seep into his blood and let him regain some strength and calm. His heart was racing so fast it hurt and it felt like sweat was gushing from every pore in his body.

Behind and to the right of the young man, at about the level of his shoulder, there was a gap between the support beam he leaned against and a tower of crates labeled with the name of an auto-parts manufacturer. It was just about the perfect height to peer into, without having to either stretch or stoop, if Einosuke had been looking there, instead of the more obvious places all around him. If he had looked there before stopping to rest, all he’d have seen was darkness. Now, though, if Einosuke had eyes in the back of his head, he might see the sudden glow that appeared in that space, as if another pair of eyes was catching the warehouse’s faint light.

Einosuke Sakurai didn’t see that gap, wasn’t aware it even existed, but still something pricked at the base of his skull – some instinct for danger. He stopped breathing, trying to will his still-hammering heart to be quiet, and listened. From right behind him, just about at shoulder level, a rough, good-natured voice said, “Caught your breath yet, kid?”

“Hunh? Otomo!?” Einosuke cried and leapt away from the support beam, pushing off of it with his hip, scrambling to put distance between himself and that voice as he realized his mistake. He managed to gain a meter or so before the edge of his foot caught on some imperfection in the concrete floor. He stumbled forward and lost his balance. “Shit!”

The fall might have saved him.

A burly man of medium height, head shaved like a monk, barefoot and wearing black- and white-striped demo pants and a tight-fitting nylon vest, burst from his hiding place. Magical energy practically pouring off his body, tiny, glowing arcane symbols whirling like a dervish around his swiftly moving hands, he smashed the wooden crate concealing him to pieces, scattering its contents in the process. Energy swirled faster, throwing off a glow from the metallic band encircling his left forearm, as he took two quick, light-footed steps and launched himself into a flying kick.

Already on his way towards the stone-hard floor, Einosuke twisted his body, managing to land on his shoulder instead of his face. He flailed for a moment and then planted his butt on the floor just as Otomo’s foot—glowing with the same pink-tinted energy that emanated from the bracer on his arm—sailed inches over his head.

“Shitshitshit!” Einosuke cried, arms flying up to cover his head. He caught himself, though, and instead of just cowering in place, jumped to his feet.

Don’t panic. You’ve wasted too much time already, he thought as he squeezed his eyes shut and placed his right hand on the high-tech bracer covering half of his own left arm between wrist and elbow. It wasn’t necessary, the manaccelerator was already in contact with his skin, but it helped him focus, to keep the patterns and shapes in his mind’s eye as he spoke the incantation. His lips began to move as he mumbled something under his breath, the words too faint to be heard and unintelligible to most people even if they were spoken out loud.

The man called Otomo wasn’t going to give his opponent a chance to recover, though, and pressed the attack, roaring as he lunged forward, his right hand outthrust, the index and middle fingers extended like a blade, glowing with the same energy as his foot a moment before.

Einosuke was only dimly aware of the magically-reinforced fingers homing in on his right eye, but months of training took over and his head twitched to one side without conscious thought. The attack was only barely avoided, but his casting remained uninterrupted. Arcane symbols of Einosuke’s own began to appear around him, blinking into existence out of thin air, the tiny display on his manaccelerator blinking rapidly as energy poured through the device. Otomo’s left hand flashed in, so fast the air whistled around it, trying for a mirrored version of his last attack, but Einosuke’s head pulled to the opposite side, once again avoiding the strike by the barest margin.

Otomo grunted, “Not bad!” with apparently sincerely appreciation. His lips curled up into a savage grin. “But not good enough!” He whispered a stream of guttural-sounding syllables. His own manaccelerator began to glow brightly, arcane symbols streaming out of it to encircle his entire arm, then spreading across his body to envelop first his chest and then his right arm, as well. Within seconds, he renewed his attack, his fingers flashing out towards Einosuke, the strikes coming in such rapid-fire repetition that they seemed to create an impenetrable, deadly wall of magically-reinforced flesh.

Einosuke was un-phased, though, twisting and turning, dodging and ducking, each time only barely avoiding Otomo’s attack. Continuing to chant his own spell all the while, his voice grew louder with each line he spoke. Magical symbols practically choked the air around him now as he neared the end of the spell. Finally, he leapt backwards, putting another couple of meters between himself and his opponent, spreading his arms wide, his voice raised to a shout and his eyes blazing with energy...