Ocham watched carefully down from a chapel's roof to the street where Shikra and Rufous searched for him. He felt like collapsing as his body tried to recover from the battery and resupply mana. While his body told him to stop, his mind knew that wouldn't be an option, or else he would forfeit his life for good.

"Should we kill those two?" La Loupe asked with intrigue.

"The better question is if we can," Ocham corrected.

Bam squinted his round, black eyes. "What's so hard about them? I almost got them with the flashbang."

"You really know nothing, do you?" Ocham shook his head.

"Who?" The two looked at each other.

"Those are Talon agents. Think of them being copies of me."

"Oh really?" La Loupe's lips curled up. The thrill of a fight he caught a whiff of became almost too irresistible. "Then we better get rid of them now before any more show up."

"As much as I would like to, it's too risky."

"Risky? That's our whole career!" Bam shouted in anticipation.

"Shut your mouth! They might find us!" Ocham gripped his lips shut.

"But you know, this could work as a test," Bam said from a small gap between his lips. "If we can't beat guys like that, someday we might get squashed by them."

Ocham released his grip. "While I can't say I agree, we might be able to buy some time if they haven't told the other agents."

"You seem like a guy with an idea," Bam looked over at him.

"We need to be careful, but if we work together..." Ocham's eyes dragged to La Loupe. "Where did he go?"

Bam looked down to the streets. "There." He pointed at the lower rooftops.

"That guy!" Ocham clicked his tongue. "We need to go after him. He's going to get himself killed."

Though he burst into action with the sheer force of will, Ocham's legs could not keep up with him. He slipped in his steps and fell off the roof. That was if Bam had not caught him.

"You're still pretty roughed up," Bam said as he pulled him back. "Let us handle it. I and that whisker-frog can beat those no problem."

With his legs still shaking and the pain starting to settle in after the adrenaline ran out, Ocham had to begrudgingly agree. He watched as Bam sneakily dropped off without a sound. His slender and lightweight body maneuvered around swiftly and in deathly silence. He met up with La Loupe, who had to keep wiping drool from the ends of his mouth.

"How are we going to do this?" Bam asked.

The friendly question was met with an intense glare.

"You keep out of this. These are mine."

"...I will give some backup."

The two agents watched their surroundings fully alarmed. While Shikra maintained her calm complexion, Rufous could hardly keep his head from snapping off.

"What are we going to do, Shikra?" Rufous said, eating through his fingernails.

"I said I'm thinking!" She yelled the words back into his mouth. Watching him quiver like an injured puppy calmed her down with disappointment. "We need to be on guard. They couldn't have gotten that far."

Even with some quick first aid, Shikra's wound bled drops of blood to the ground.

"Are you alright?" Rufous noticed the stains. "D-did the assailant give you that wound?"

"I said to not mind about it, but yes. Something cut me just as that bomb went off."

"Wouldn't that mean that there is more than one enemy?"

"Possibly." Shikra had to agree.

"Who are these people?"

"No idea who would want to save such a rat."

"Can't you find them with your spell?"

"I can't reveal it just like that."

"But couldn't you sense if they started running away? I mean, a normal civilian wouldn't start running away from it, right?"

Shikra turned her head to Rufous with a blank face.

"...Yes, I suppose so." She nodded.

With her mind clear, Shikra removed her fair gloves, cracked her fingers, and drew a short breath.

"Vibratio Forte Brava!" She chanted and clapped her hands.

A blastwave burst outwards, following the sound of the crisp, perfectly executed clap. The wave lifted dust from the streets, vibrated glass windows, and forced anyone around to plug their ears. The sound traveled through the whole city block until fading into the sound of the weather sirens. The eery silence that followed with general confusion filled the square where the two agents stood. Finally, Rufous gathered enough courage to pull out his fingers from his ears.

"H-how was it? Did you find them?"

"I know this is a lot to ask, but try to look normal. They are stalking us."

"W-where?" Rufous searched frantically.

"What did I just say?!"

"R-right!" Froze his head still.

"One of them is on the roof of the cathedral on our left. A human, resting down. Most likely the convict. Another is right next to us on the rooftop of a store on our right. An avian zou."

"What about the third?" Rufous said, desperately fighting his instinct to look over to those spots.

"You might not like it."

"What, where is he?" Rufous' eyes turned into a blur.

"That is the problem. I could not locate anyone suspicious. Perhaps he hid among a crowd."

"What are we going to do?"

"There are a few scattered around the block."

"R-Right. I will depend on you for that."

"Prepare yourself. Watch the sky for those birds. I will look for movement on the ground."

"Understood," Rufous nodded and took his hands out, holding them close to one another.

Shikra watched carefully under her mask. The decorated boulevard leading out of the academy was long and open with only a few trees and statues between the ends. The square they were in the middle of had only a few ways to approach them. One was the nearby roofs of the cathedral and some public buildings and another was the corners and gaps between those buildings. Few if any cars passed by as most citizens had already gone inside and the only sounds were the alarms and the distant, rustling sound of moving sand over the dome above.

A small shadow appeared, zooming toward them. Rufous took notice and looked above. It was another bird, an owl gliding silently toward him.

"Another bird!" He yelled.

"Can you handle it?" Shikra said without breaking her concentration.

"Y-yes! I think."

Rufous lifted his arm open. "Stack The Deck!"

With the chant, three playing cards appeared in the open hand with an elaborate, blue design and the spell's name written out in A STYLISH FONT. With a glance and a swift move of his other hand, he picked one of the three and turned it around. On the other side was a realistic picture of a desert sand-colored gun with a silencer and the text "Joe&Co 9 AM SERIES" written below. With the card now revealed, it sparkled away, forming the pictured gun in Rufous' nervous hand.

He shot at the owl three times, with the final one finally landing. As the bullet penetrated through it, the conjured companion vanished into nothingness, yet with something left over. A small object dropped to the ground and rolled towards Rufous.

"What's that?" He tried to take a closer look.

Unfortunately for him, it was all too familiar of an object—a hand grenade with its pin missing.

"A grenade!" Rufous declared, taking cover.

"What?" Shikra turned her head.

"I got it!" He dropped his gun and posed his fingers toward the explosive. By forming a picture frame with his fingers and fitting the thing in it, all he had to was activate the spell.

"I recognize that! It's a surplus MK 7 fragmentation grenade!" He described.

The grenade disintegrated and subsequently, a card of it appeared in Rufous' hand, which he put among the two other cards.

"I got it!" He turned with a smile under his round mask.

That smile loosened as he noticed someone looming behind Shikra.

"Wha-" He tried to reach for his gun.

"I know, Rufous," Shikra said calmly. "I wanted him to get close."

She only needed two fingers. A single snap was enough to blast La Loupe away. He flew through the glass panel straight into a nearby shop.

"A greedy moss swine feeds its demise, and the foolish ones walk straight into the abattoir." Shikra clicked her tongue.

Rising from the rubble with only a cough and minor bleeding, La Loupe smiled from ear to ear. "Oh ho ho, we have a poet."

"I suppose you are not going to yield, but I will still give you the chance."

"You are correct, Miss Poet. I hope you weren't planning on becoming a singer, though. "

"I have no time for your blabbering. Die." Shikra clapped her hands toward him.

A wave of pressure blasted the small storefront to the opposite wall until everything inside was crushed into a paste.

"What are you doing?" Rufous noticed the destruction after getting his pistol from the ground.

"Acceptable collateral damage," Shikra answered without a glance.

"But this is Paradis!"

"Would you rather have these terrorists going about?" She snapped.

Before Rufous could answer, a trail of blood flowed out of Shikra's mouth. Though seeming like an illusion at first, her horrified reaction told otherwise.

"It's rude to interrupt people," La Loupe said from the roof of the store.

"He's still alive?"

Though La Loupe had no intention of telling it, he needed to do little more than pull himself with his string through the back door as soon as he sensed trouble.

Rufous' attention quickly turned back to Shikra as she struggled to stop the bleeding. His face went pale as she coughed something out on the cobblestone. Among the pool of blood was part of her tongue, still twisting around.

"While I could have gone for your fingers to stop your little tricks, I find it easier to stop you from telling my position to your friend over there. The last time I underestimated teamwork I almost died, you know."

Rufous shot furiously at him without a word. La Loupe dodged away with haste into the cover of the lifted edge of the roof.

"Whoops, you almost got me there! I know that model and ammo as well. Those anti-magic rounds would have gone straight through my Spiderweb."

The anti-magic rounds looked the same as most ordinary bullets, though with the metal having a slight tint on it. That was because the bullet was made out of a special alloy mixed in with Spatium to allow mana-conductivity with the heart of the bullet having a small, yet powerful mana-dispersing gem. As such a round would make contact with magic, it would reduce a spell into mana or if lodged into a body, disrupt magic flow until it would be removed.

La Loupe thought about the situation in his mind. "These two are good. So good. Especially that woman Her sound magic is just the worst opponent for me. I will enjoy devouring her."

His sick thoughts were cut short with a clunk. Something was thrown next to him. As it rolled by him, La Loupe realized his situation. It was the grenade from before.

"Merde," he let out.

An explosion filled the air with dust and crumbs of concrete. Shrapnel shot itself everywhere, lodging itself in the trees and sides of buildings, but thanks to their position, Rufous, and Shikra were safe.

Bam watched from cover through his birds flying above. "Don't die on me just yet, Loupe!" He looked over to the roof. "Huh?!"

What he was prepared to see was a shredded corpse, yet La Loupe was all in one piece, and most of all, still moving. By flying a little closer, he noticed why. La Loupe had managed to form a tightly knit cover of his string, shielding his body from the shrapnel. While he could push himself away from the grenade before the blast, the shrapnel still hit him, even if it did not penetrate. With his body slammed by a blastwave at short range and shot with hundreds of shrapnel, his body might have been kept intact, but his innards were not as lucky. Bones broken, organs burst, and his brain wrecked around, it was a miracle he was still alive and breathing.

Shikra took the chance and clapped again and listened closely. She quickly turned to Rufous.

"W- what is it?" He asked.

Shikra pointed at her heart.

"Right, you can't talk. What does that mean? Can you tell that he's still alive?"

She nodded. Though faint, she could still sense La Loupe's heartbeat.

"How is that possible? Did he have a ballistic west on?"

Shikra could only shrug. She pinched her fingers near her chest.

"You mean he's barely alive?"

Another nod. Her eyes moved to another rooftop. She pointed where she sensed Bam, thinking they should change targets.

"That's where the other one is? The one that summons birds. First the flashbang and then the grenade; could he bind objects into his conjurations or perhaps he turns them into birds?"

Shikra tapped at her wristwatch.

"R-right, no time." Rufous took hold of his pistol. "Only a few bullets left." He looked at his last two cards. "These have to make do."

Shikra sprang into an alleyway between the nearby buildings, signaling that she would support him. Rufous made a beeline toward Bam with his eyes set on the fire exit stairs leading up to the roof. He reached it in no time, leaving Bam with few options, which only decreased as Shikra cornered him from behind from another roof. With his survival instincts kicking in, Bam took his chances and rushed to jump off the edge. Rufous responded by opening fire, shooting his legs. Yelping in pain and squirming on the ground, Bam made a final desperate attempt. He pulled out another grenade from underneath his clothes. With his clawed finger on the pin, he took the last front, which did not last long. His disarmament came in two phases. First Rufous shot his last bullet at his hand, forcing him to drop the weapon. Next, Shikra stomped her foot, crushing Bam against the ground.

Rufous went in to finish the job. In the middle of his walk, he felt strange vibrations enter his ear. They filled his mind with a voice, or something resembling it.

"Do you have the cuffs?" It asked. It sounded a bit off, loosely forming into words like a collection of barely cohesive sounds.

His eyes turned to Shikra, who just jumped onto the same roof. "Was that you?"

"It occurred to me just now." She vibrated the air around her. "Good work out there."

"T-thanks," Rufous blushed.

"Now, the cuffs."

"Oh, right." Rufous took one of his cards and turned it.

A pair of magic-dispersing cuffs appeared, which Shikra quickly snatched away to put on Bam's hands at the end of his wings.

"You want to take them in?" Rufous asked.

"Death is too small a punishment."

"O-okay." He tried to keep his head clear with the disorienting sounds. "Whatever you er- say."

Shikra turned around. Her gaze fixated on the other roof.

"What is it?"

"He moved. Something isn't right. Those movements..."

She could sense La Loupe moving through the air, though barely. As soon as he stopped, he was already moving in another direction. He flew not with elegance but with a jerky motion like a kite being tugged around the sky. Shikra looked over to the square, yet her eyes could not keep up with it. The assassin was zooming from shadow to shadow, behind and around the buildings. Only by sensing the air around him could she catch a blur. The glimpses she caught of him as he took a moment to readjust upset her. What she sensed was a barely beating heart and the sound of bones grinding against each other in the approximate form of a man. Yet, even in a condition like that, his head was affixed to her, as if staring right into her soul.

"He is coming!"

Rufous was ready with his pistol. Yet, the horror was already upon him. Without any special senses, Rufous knew La Loupe was behind him. The sound of blood dripping to the ground and laborious breaths were easy to notice, but horrifying nonetheless. His hand gripped the trigger as he turned to face him. The trigger pulled to the back, yet nothing happened. Rufous looked in horror at his gun and realized he was all out of ammo. His eyes turned to his adversary. He was the first to get a good look at him if one could call it that. His mangled body was kept intact and moving by a layer of blood-soaked wires like a broken marionette.

"Dodge!"

As soon as Rufous got out of the way, Shikra clapped her hands, sending another blastwave in La Loupe's direction. Instead of dodging, however, the man stood tall. His body shook and jiggled as the wave passed him, his back bent back and arms flailing wildly, yet, he kept still. His legs were wrapped to the ground with wires as if sewn in place. The two watched in shock as the man shrugged off the attack and stepped forth with his knees shaking and crackling. He moved and twitched with unnatural motions with bones sticking out of him and joints bent over. Though he seemed thoughtless like the undead, his face told otherwise. His mouth licked the blood off his lips and his eyes watched intently without blinking. The once neatly groomed mustaches had turned into bristly shreds along with his suit, showing the scarred and blood-soaked body underneath. The man's willpower dominated over even his own body, until the last drop.

Rufous snapped out from watching the horrific display and pulled out one of his cards.

"Stack the Deck!" He chanted and turned it.

Yet, the card split in two. So did his fingers, even his mask, down to his face.

"H-how? I Warded myself."

A crack of a whip echoed around. Then another, one after another until the sounds and air became a blur. Each stripped Rufous of his clothes and skin, tearing into his flesh. What he had not considered was the mana density in La Loupe's Spiderweb and the output behind it. A small object needs much less energy to pierce through Ward than a large one. Second and most critical of all, Rufous was not putting his life on the line. Those who are ready to sacrifice anything may pay the price, but they also see the results.

Shikra watched in shock as Rufous dropped to the ground, his bleeding competing with La Loupe's. She had no words. Right in front of her eyes, the wires rearranged themselves, puncturing La Loupe's skin, and digging deep inside him. As if trying to fix him, they sewed the open wounds shut and repaired broken organs, leaving large stitches all over his body. They Entered the broken bones, tightening until they snapped back together. Replacing the snapped tendons, they moved his body surprisingly well as well as snapping the joins back in place. Though the result wasn't pretty, it stabilized his condition to some extent. Still, his face remained bleak and pale from the blood loss, which still did not stop him from smiling. With that grin, he shuffled closer to her.

She pulled her hands together for a clap. The blast pummeled La Loupe, squishing blood out of all his seams and orifices as his body slammed together under the pressure. Yet, he kept himself standing. Shikra prepared to clap again, yet her hands were tied. She could only watch as La Loupe approached her with a trail of blood following him. She used her foot to slam him down, yet it only made him crouch down. Soon enough, he was before her, and sparing not a moment, he lifted her by the neck. Struggling to breathe, Shikra used the little wiggle room she had to snap her fingers. Using every last bit of strength she concentrated the blasts around La Loupe's head. Blow after blow, La Loupe's head caved in, yet his grip remained. As Shikra's vision started to fade with her gasping breaths, she heard La Loupe mutter some words from his mangled maw as his bulged eyes still stared her down.

"Si belle, le coup de foudre (So beautiful, love at first sight)," His eyes lit up.

A bang echoed throughout the square. La Loupe looked down and found his chest bleeding. His strings tried to heal it, yet they couldn't. They dissolved just as they reached the spot. His head and eyes stretched to take a look behind him. Barely standing above the pool of his blood, Rufous wielded a fan of cards in one hand and a gun in another. With deep gouging scars running along his lean face and a rugged breath, his expression was stone cold.

"You could have killed me, but you didn't. Thanks to that, I could make use of Stack the Deck's secondary ability. Each time I sustain an attack, I draw a new random card. You whipped me enough to pull out my entire collection, and I'm not a collector that throws out doubles!"

Bullet by bullet, La Loupe's strings evaporated, breaking his stance. Without the support, his legs could not hold him up, dropping him to the ground.

"Kill him!" Shikra shouted into their ears.

With his whole body paralyzed by pain and some of his fingers missing, Rufous could barely bring himself to pull the trigger. The previous shots were more due to muscle spasms than his will, and the only thing stopping him from shooting indiscriminately was his other hand giving support.

"What are you waiting for? Do it!"

One last smile curved on La Loupe's lips. "Je ne regrette rien (I regret nothing)."

A choking silence hushed over the scene. Bam watched in horror, still processing what he witnessed. Someone new dropped to the roof. Ocham. He walked over to the bodies with a limp and a blank expression. They were dead within an instant. With a frozen expression of sudden shock stuck on their faces, Rufous and Shikra dropped dead. As the stilettos dissipated from their heads, leaving a large hole oozing blood, he was sure his attack had been effective.

"Ocham?" Bam gasped. "Can you get me out of these cuffs?" He rattled the things before him.

"Oh, you are still alive."

"Yeah, so let's get out of here before more cops show up!"

Ocham stayed silent with his cold eyes staring at him.

"...Ocham?"

"La Loupe is dead."

"So? Let's ditch that fool! We can make it out together, right?"

Ocham counted Bam's bulletholes in his mind and analyzed his injuries. The anti-magic rounds disabled his healing factor. He would not have been able to cast spells either in that condition.

"What are you waiting for?!"

"You should have listened." Ocham cast a blade in his hand.

"What? No, You don't need to do this!" bam shuffled desperately away from him. "We're friends, right?"

The words blew past his face like a cold breeze, something he was already used to.

"Here is the knife you wanted," He threw it in the air. "Three feet, one second."

Desperate cries echoed throughout the square, only to fall silent a moment later. Just as always, Ocham walked alone, with no one by his side. There was no time or reason to feel guilty. There was never a thought in his mind that he would let someone have his back. There never was and there never would be. With no further distractions and no one standing in his way, he could concentrate on his objective.