As another blast shook their seats, Jon and Alyssa shot to their feet. The new girl was already knees-bent in an attacking stance with a mop, anticipating the next blast to make a hole in the wall and for enemies to rush through. “You!” Alyssa pointed at her. “Under the stage!”

“But” —

“No complaints!”

The new girl grimaced, but soon let go of the mop and dashed for a service door under one of the side stairs leading up to the stage. Once she’d gotten in and bolted all three locks shut, Alyssa and Jon faced each other. Jon showed his wrist and the bracelet of jade beads on them. “They didn’t light,” he said.

“So it’s coming from somewhere outside.” There was another blast. “Shall we check?”

They rushed up the aisle. Alyssa already had a pair of pistols leading the way in front of her, and Jon had one of his own in one hand, and a dagger in the other.

Alyssa peeked around the archway, scanning the lobby. There was another explosion. Aside from the dust shaking all the way from the tall ceiling, they didn’t seem to be targeting the facade of the theater. She gestured for Jon to follow, and they rushed to the far wall, hugging the windows.

They peeked through the cracks and witnessed a massacre. The plaza at the foot of the grand stairs leading up to the theater’s doors, normally filled with street vendors and busy-bodies, was now only filled with mangled bodies and crying boys covered in white and gray ash. There were those people wounded and missing a leg.

It was clear that this was an attack targeted at the Theater, but the nature of it peeved both Jon and Alyssa. There were no identifiable perpetrators, and really, whoever it was must’ve slipped out of the area long ago — or they might still be around, waiting for them to take the bait and come out into the open.

Alyssa looked to Jon. “What do we do?”

Jon sharpened his eyes, picking out the people in the crowd, picking out the people watching from the windows, looking in places where he thought the enemy would be watching. The city guard and other first responders started arriving on the scene. There was too much chaos to find them, now.

A crow flew through one of the broken windows near the ceiling, cawing, drawing their attention. Alyssa’s guns flew to aim at it, but when she saw it, she immediately knew who owned it.

The crow landed near Jon. It dropped off a capsule from its beak, then flew away, back through whence it came. Jon picked up the capsule, recognizing it as a message carrier. He popped off the cap and unfurled the message hidden within.

— “I won’t stop until you kill me, or I kill you. Have fun!” —

“What’d the bastard say?” Alyssa said.

“You know him?”

“Her. If what’s in that message goes along the lines of, ‘Haha, you can’t stop me. Fuck you,’ then yes, I know her.” Alyssa smacked the floor with her fist four times, groaning in madness and frustration. She noticed Jon watching her. “Sorry,” she said. “There’s a couple of reasons why this place is falling apart, you see, and she’s one of them. Can’t say I’m surprised she took the House’s offer on this one. I bet you she’s even working for free” —

There was another explosion, this one much louder, like twicefold thunder. The shockwave broke whatever was left of the theater’s front windows, and Jon and Alyssa got knocked to the ground. Their ears rang, and they had trouble breathing for a moment. “Kinesia, you insane fuck!” Alyssa swore.

Jon got to his feet. Several of the planks barricading the window frames had been blown off, and he got to see what had happened. The plaza was entirely gone, along with the first responders.

He helped Alyssa to her feet. “Tell me what you know.”

“That’s just her way of saying hello,” she said. “Her name’s Kinesia Gaelwood. 100 or so years old.”

“What?”

“She’s an elf. She’s also insane. Last time I had a proper conversation with her, she said she wanted to spend her whole life on explosion magic. I didn’t think she’d meant it literally.”

There was another explosion, but a little weaker...quieter. “It’s getting farther,” Jon said. He peeked through the windows again, and saw a new dust plume, obscuring the bell tower of the cathedral. “She’s heading for the cathedral.”

“Huh?” The noise that escaped Alyssa’s mouth was filled to the brim with confoundedness. “The Order? She’s going to” — she threw her arms into the air and pulled at her own hair, shaking her head. She looked up, sighing before speaking again. “Laws inter Templar. If there’s a direct attack on either temple, one is obligated to come to the defense of the other. We need to hunt her down now.”

Alyssa took a step, but Jon stopped her in her tracks. “That means the Order is on their way here.”

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She shook her head like a witch going nuts. “Oh goody, everyone I hate is going to be in one place...”

They took a minute to open a nearby weapons cache and load up, then they left through the front. They descended the steps side-by-side in full view of the public. Following behind Alyssa was a small floating arsenal of enough pistols, rifles, and hand cannons to attack and take over the city’s castle. Jon, on the other hand, was content with a long rifle and a few pistols in his holsters.

They skirted around the crater that used to be the plaza, rushing down the main avenue, following the drumming of explosions that slowly crawled towards the cathedral.

The road in front of them exploded, maiming several civilians caught in the blast. “Damn it! She’s mined the main roads, too!” Alyssa swore.

They switched to the alleys, running under a slow rain of ash. “What explosives does she use?” Jon asked. He had some experience with avoiding and defusing physical explosives, but those had mechanical or electronic triggers.

Alyssa replied, speaking between breaths, “Do you remember what the trappers rigged backstage?”

Magic crystals, not unlike fire stone, lined the theater’s halls. There were different kinds of magic stones and different ways of processing them. It would suffice to say for now that there were certain kinds of magic stones which reacted to nearby disturbances. Using that as a trigger for a canister of flare-sand was trivial.

“Stop,” Jon said. They skidded on their feet, panting heavily. Another distant explosion reached their ears. Jon scanned the path before them: rubbish littered the sides, and the middle was suspiciously clear.

“You don’t think she also mined this route? Jon?” Alyssa said.

“I’m not taking the risk,” he replied. This was such a familiar setup to him that he’d rather climb up the ledges of the buildings on either side of them and travel across the roofs than take another step through here. Good thing he had Perfect Motion.

Alyssa watched him as he pulled himself up, somehow findinghandholds on the inches-wide window sills on the face of the apartment building. Wait, was he leaving her behind? “What? Hey! I’m not that strong!” she complained. “And I’m wearing a dress!”

Jon looked back down at her, then at the arsenal floating behind her, then back at her. “Make some stairs, then,” he said, finally making the last climb and disappearing over the edge of the roof.

Alyssa looked behind her, confused about what he was talking about. One look at her rifles with the word “stairs” in her mind, however, and she figured it out.

Truth be told, she’d considered this possibility a long time ago, but it just seemed so silly and utterly broken to use her guns as steps in mid-air, to the point that she’d dismissed it as something that Lady Ravena would have immediately pulled the plug on had she actually tried.

Now that she was at a much higher level... She willed a rifle to lay flat four inches above the ground. She put a foot on it — that’s half her weight — then stepped on with the other. It bobbed a little, but it was taking her weight! “I could’ve done this the whole time?!” Such was her befuddlement that she just had to shout it out loud.

[Took you long enough.]

Even the Lady Herself was mocking her! “Whatever!” She yelled in resignation, forming a staircase of rifles, recycling the ones behind her to form new steps in front.

When she reached the top, she was surprised to find Jon waiting for her. “I thought you’d moved ahead.”

“Better we go together,” he said. Although Alyssa knew he’d meant it with tactical considerations in mind, it reminded her of warmer times in their past. “Well? Let’s get going, then!” Alyssa said, hurrying him along.

While Jon jumped across the short gaps between apartment roofs, Alyssa elected to form narrow gangplank bridges with her rifles, giving her a catwalk to casually cross. Before they reached the next roof, she sent her rifles forward to make a bridge again, one which Jon decided to trust; jumping across roofs would tire him too much before he’d even gotten to the combat area.

They only had to cross another roof before they faced the final stretch of road between them and the cathedral. Alyssa froze up when she heard the echoes of a truly insane laugh.

There, walking down the road 50 meters away, were two elven ears poking out of either side of a swaying head of blonde hair, already with a strand of shining silver hair amidst the blonde. Over her was draped an earthy green poncho, a traditional garb of the Gaelish elves.

She raised her hand, and in it materialized a bolt of angrily contained flame and ash. She threw it at another storefront, blowing it up. The screams faded with the settling dust as people ran for their lives towards the cathedral. Only faith in Lumina could save them now.

“That’s her,” Alyssa said. They had a clear view over the other buildings, so Jon took aim at the source of the crazed laughter. “Wait,” Alyssa said, “you can’t take her out with just that. I’ve tried that.”

Jon looked to her for an explanation, but the explanation came from the city guards: thirty riflemen and their commander. “Take aim!” the blue-coated captain ordered, drawing out his words so all his rifles heard him. “Fire!”

Two ranks’ worth of rifle gunfire rained all over Kinesia, but each round ricocheted off her, turning into a diffused spray of explosive rounds that hit the various destroyed storefronts and carts beside and behind her.

“She’s insane, but not stupid,” Alyssa explained. “She’s got deflection magic on her all the time.”

Even ash couldn’t land on her, gently blown away as soon as they touched her shoulders. Kinesia tossed an explosive bolt at the rifle platoon, the blast cutting off their screams. None survived.

She started laughing again, her laugh regressing into a silent one. She bent over, clutching her stomach and trying to control herself.

“How do we get past it?” Jon asked.

“Her defense can’t deflect the same object twice. Theoretically, it can’t defend against a double ricochet, but it’s not like anyone in the world can actually” —

“Got it,” Jon said, taking aim once more.

“You can’t be serious,” Alyssa said. “She’ll notice us.”

“I’m waiting for a diversion,” Jon said. Kinesia blew up something else again with a laugh.

“She’s getting on my nerves,” Alyssa said, massaging her forehead. She threw her hand down. “Fine. I just need to keep her off you, right? I’ll do it myself.”

She took a rifle with two hands and jumped off the roof, hanging on for dear life while she slowed her descent with her Skill.

Her feet touched down. With Kinesia distracted by her own insanity, Alyssa saw fit to open fire with hand mortars to shake her up a bit. In one moment, there were funny pops, and in the next, grenades landed around Kinesia, exploding and obscuring her vision.

“Who the fuck?” Kinesia blew the dust away with magic, and when her eyes met Alyssa’s, she grinned. “Of course. It’s you. Why am I surprised?”