A hand sprang from the back of the container.

Kenzei crouched down and brought his foot down on the attacker's knee. The sound of cracking bones echoed through the alley.

The hooded man's eyes widened. Kenzei rose like a snake as the man collapsed.

Kenzei struck at his throat with outstretched fingers, crushing his windpipe.

His mouth opened with a faint scream.

The man fell to the ground with a thud. His blue eyes went blank.

Kenzei aimed his silencer at the man's head.

He covered my eyes.

The next thing I knew, we were back in the maze of the ghost town.

A man, gun in hand, emerged from a shop and stood back to us.

Kenzei slipped behind a low wall, tense as a bow.

There was a crackling sound, like a radio going off.

“Delta Team. Building B12 is clear. Over”

Intercom noise.

“Commandement. Join Gamma team in building A13, we haven't heard from them in a while. Over”

If building A13 is the tobacco shop we just passed, they wouldn't find anyone alive there.

But it will put them on our trail.

“Did you hear that ? Diamond formation and we're off ”

The sound of boots hitting the pavement.

Three ? No, four.

They walked away.

Kenzei waited a few more seconds, his chest rising and falling rapidly. He wiped the sweat dripping down his forehead with his forearm, his lips pressed together.

He met my gaze and his mouth broke into a reassuring smile.

He was good, very good. Far better than anything I could have imagined.

But he was in his early eighties, and carrying both my weight and his was proving difficult. He was taking more frequent breaks, walking slower than he had in the beginning...

I had faith in my father's decision, but I wasn't sure we'd make it to the port.

I could tell him about the chakra.

I could tell him that I could walk much faster than he could. I could tell him that all

I had to do was shunshin a few times and we'd be out of the city.

I could tell him.

I could.

But it was only because Touya didn't know about it that I was still alive.

So I closed my mouth and offered him an almost liquid ice cube.

He lowered his mask and put it in his mouth, gratitude visible on his face.

And then we were off again.

Kenzei moved slowly, trying to save his strength. He was sweating heavily, but his grip on his gun was firm.

He entered a narrow stone alley.

The walls were so high that he couldn't even see the roofs.

The cries of seagulls assaulted me. We were close.

Kenzei hurried on, impatient.

His gun still firmly in his hand, he approached the end of our street.

Two hooded men, walking side by side, entered the perpendicular street. The one on the right - the closest - turned his head toward us.

In a second, Kenzei was on top of him, plunging his knife into his jugular vein. The second stepped back and pointed the barrel of his gun at us.

He screamed.

“They are-”

Kenzei, his hand glowing green, sliced the weapon in two. The smoking barrel fell to the ground.

The man pulled a knife from his pocket and took two steps in our direction.

“Come he-”

Kenzei shot him in the head.

The man's eyes rolled back into their sockets. Blood gushed from his forehead, staining his face like a fountain. A spurt of brains hit the wall behind him.

The man collapsed, his heavy body sliding against the stones. He left a bloody trail.

Kenzei didn't cover his eyes. He didn't have the time.

He turned right and ran at full speed.

My head throbbed against his chest.

My eyes were glued to the corpse with the exploded skull. A mixture of piss and excrement stained his pants.

Last time, their charred bodies had been so disfigured that there hadn't been a human thing left in them. None of them had looked up to the sky, none of them had had time to defecate, none of them-

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“Over there !”

The moving shadows of a group of men were cast on the walls of the alley.

Kenzei turned left and they disappeared from my view.

A shadow blocked out the sun. I looked up and caught the image of a leg landing on a roof.

A bullet exploded his ankle.

Kenzei lowered his gun.

There was an outcry of anger and pain.

“Down ! Section C4 !”

I ran two fingers over my cheek.

Blood, warm and sticky, had splashed on me.

My eyes went back to the three men who had just rounded the corner of our alley.

The radio on one of them was crackling.

Kenzei spun around, pulling me closer to him.

He shot each of them with a coolness that stunned me. His precision was surgical.

Kenzei spun on his feet again. Without stopping to run, he tossed his empty bullet to the side and loaded a new one into his Glock.

Kenzei jumped into a new street.

A volley of bullets tore holes in the wall a hair's breadth from our heads.

Kenzei fired at our attacker and turned around. The shooter forced us to turn left into a dead end.

“This way !”

Kenzei bent his legs and jumped over to the rooftops.

His shoes crunched on the tiles like chalk on a blackboard.

The four nearby snipers turned their heads toward us. Kenzei shot two of them.

He jumped onto the adjacent roof and ran away at full speed.

A bullet ricocheted off the CRS shield reinforced by his Quirk.

A veritable army of men climbed onto the rooftops.

All of them pointed their guns at us. My chakra crackled on my skin.

“Kenzei !”

He jumped from the end of a building, his feet raised to provide a smaller target.

The wind rattled his jacket at the back. The sun burned the back of my neck.

The air whistled around us.

Bricks exploded into shrapnel. Chunks of sandstone and cement flew in all ways.

A shower of bullets hit the augmented shield.Kenzei groaned under the pressure.

He forced me to lower my head.

Kenzei fell.

The remaining bullets flew over our heads. They pierced the painted wall in front of us.

Kenzei landed heavily and rolled to break his fall. His left hand covered my head and the arm holding his gun was wrapped around my body.

He held me so tight I could hear his heart beating against my skull.

My left leg moved accidentally. Kenzei hissed.

His thigh was bleeding.

“How are you ?”

“Don't-”

There was a terrible explosion.

A mushroom of black and red smoke rose into the sky about three hundred meters away. The scorching wind brought a smell of sulfur and burning.

A high-pitched, closer sound echoed. I pulled the phone out of my pocket.

The call had just been cut off.

Worry overwhelmed me.

Suddenly the ground shook.

Around the corner, garbage cans toppled over. Garbage bags ripped open on the pavement, rotting fish and greenish cheese slid down.

Pieces of tiles fell from the roofs, shattering like glass when they hit the floor.

Kenzei pulled me under an alcove carved in the wall.

There was a scream of terror.

A man fell a few meters away from us.Sharp pieces of brick fell on him like rain.

His left arm was flattened under his body, the shoulder torn apart on impact.There was a growing pool of blood around his head.

For some reason, he wasn't wearing a balaclava. His cracked lips moved in a last whisper. His eyes lifted to the sky. He froze.

“Let's not stand still”

With one hand on his bloody thigh, Kenzei lifted me back on him. He entrusted me with his gun while he wiped his bloody glasses.

My eyes went back to the body. There was no need to shoot him.

“I'm going to need your help, Shoto, okay? I'll take care of getting us out of here, and you watch our backs”

Cracks spread across the shaking ground. Even though Kenzei was carrying me, I could still feel the dizzying heat.

“I don't know how to shoot”

Kenzei wiped his brow. His eyes were glassy.

“You don't have to shoot well, you just have to shoot enough to scare them”

Despite the fact that he was pissing blood in a dark alley with a child he could have abandoned long ago to save his own skin, Kenzei found a way to smile.

I couldn't understand him.

"Are you ready?"

I fumbled in the inside pocket of my jacket. The cell phone was still there.

“Yes”

Kenzei put his hands under my legs and pressed me against his chest. I wrapped my left arm around his neck and aimed the gun at his back.

“We're gonna go very fast" he said "Hold on tight”

Green and black light surrounded his legs. He burst out of the alley so fast that I stopped and blinked stupidly.

My hair flew around my face. The icy wind cooled my clammy skin.

I blinked, amplifying my vision as much as I could with my chakra to lessen my tunnel vision.

Bullets bounced off the enhanced shield.

Kenzei forked.

I could hear them running across the rooftops.I raised my weapon, sticking my skin to Kenzei's clothes for extra stability.A head emerged from behind a low wall.

I took aim and fired - one, two, three. No one rose.

To the left, a swarm of people dressed in black emerged from a house.

I fired into the crowd.

One fell to the ground. The others threw themselves aside.

“Almost there," Kenzei gritted through clenched teeth.

The alleys narrowed.Shadows moved from rooftop to rooftop.

I fired into the air.

Soon, the trigger shot into empty space.There were no more bullets.

I reached for Kenzei's holster, ready to draw my knives.

Kenzei interrupted me.

“Don't make me lose my balance”

His skin had turned an ashen gray. Even his sweat was icy.

Without stopping, Kenzei pulled a set of six cutlasses from the inside pocket of his suit and handed them to me. They were small blades about the size of my fingers.

The smell of salt rose to my nose. The cries of the seagulls became shrill.

My eyes were glued to the rooftops. One of them jumped.

My knives pierced his Achilles heel and femoral artery. A spray of blood stained the walls.

My eyes surveyed the area.

I could clearly hear the change in terrain as Kenzei's shoes hit the wooden pontoon.

I straightened up slightly, letting him support my feet.

A group of men, armed to the teeth, burst out of an adjacent alley.

I injected chakra into my empty gun and threw it with all my might.

The weapon hit one of the mercenaries in the head. He stumbled, his eyes rolling back into their sockets.He fell backwards, crashing into the guns of his comrades.

Kenzei was no longer running, he was jumping.

With each huge leap, he dug holes in the wooden planks of the docks.

An armada of hooded men arrived on the rooftops.I threw my knives without thinking, determined to stop them.

One of them fell from the building with a knife in his throat.

A battalion of armed men burst from my left. I forgot about the snipers on the rooftops to slow down the new arrivals.

Just then, another swarm of mercenaries came out of the city we'd come from.

My heart pounded in my chest.

I was out of knives.

“Kenzei !”

A bullet missed my head by a hair's breadth. Kenzei opened a sliding door. I hid my head in my arms and strengthened myself with chakra”

Someone screamed.

“Don't let them ins-”

The door slammed behind us.

A swarm of bullets pierced the wooden door.

Kenzei put me down and dropped a cabinet full of tools in front of me, blocking the exit.

I exhaled loudly, my eyes surveying the interior of the boathouse. The place looked more like a barn with its two high windows. And the boats were fishermen's boats.

I turned my attention back to the barricaded door. They had stopped shooting.

Kenzei was already at the side of a small motorboat, trying to connect two wires. I rushed to his side.

He took a moment to check on me, smiling softly.

Sweat beaded his forehead. He pushed back his glasses with his fingertips.

“See ? We made it”

I nodded as he leaned forward and adjusted the mask around my face.

“Good, now you-”

There was a thud.

Kenzei's eyes were still on mine as he collapsed to the ground.

There was a hole in his head. Distractedly, I touched my forehead, my eyes never leaving his.

His blood was on my forehead, and I felt something hot on my lips.

How... ?

“Get down!" someone shouted, "I said get down, hands on your head !”

Kenzei’s mouth went slack. His eyes went to the wooden frame.

The two windows upstairs.

“Get down !”

The bullet was lodged between his eyebrows.

Dark blood rolled down his nose, sliding down to his cornea.It looked like a blood tear.

“Get down or we'll shoot !”

I looked at them.There were many of them.Far too many. All their guns aimed at me.

I felt empty.

A fly swirled above Kenzei. It landed on his glassy eye.

“Get down !”

The fly crossed his eyelashes.

It stopped at the tear of blood.

It drank.

His hand was like a bundle of bricks on my neck.

They moved forward.

It was like I wasn't myself anymore. As if I was just a spectator of my own body. Of my-

Of my own will.

He opened the door.

My left hand twitched.

“Get down !”

The heat was rising. Chakra crackled on my skin.

Flashes of lightning made my hair flutter.

If I die, you die with me.

“You will all die with me”