Our Sectional Champion once was quoted as saying to never let a good distraction go to waste. Admittedly, some mic barely picked it up while he was trying to dodge a press conference almost ten years ago at his own decennial celebration. The quote’s done the rounds in the history books since then. But the point always stays the same. Some chances only come once. Some are easy to miss. And some turn an entire industrial shipping dock in the Vents into a graveyard rave of smoke, flashing lights, and gunshot thunderclaps.

Lethal ammunition, not stunning rounds, spits hot brass across the decking. Superheated flashes ignite the darkness for split seconds as chaos erupts. Syndicate Gunslingers spray at anything that moves in the fog, even their own imagination. Hitting air, metal, and allies in equal measure. Sapphire-colored taser rounds shriek through the mist. Panicked shouts set the battle’s beat. Chain lightning punctures the fog like thunderheads, flashing slideshow silhouettes of the gunslinger’s erratic movement. Bullets chew the shadows to pieces, never finding their mark.

There’s an old saying about dubious enemies of certified enemies, and when the later just announced their full-auto intentions of killing a possible lead, I don’t stop to think further than that.

My feet tense. “Get what you need. I’m going in.”

Jolie’s nails claw for my shoulder as she tries and fails to stop me. I lunge into the mist. Senses sweeping, aura flourishing. Rivers of white flame flash past my skin as I cut loose. A single beat of my heart creates enough of an outgust to sweep aside the nearest fog like a broom. Four Dynasty warriors whirl to face me with shock scrawled across their faces. Weapons still lowered, instincts slow, not even considering an enemy could come from behind their own lines. They were prepared to end a one girl wrecking ball. I tear through them.

Whiplashing energy blows long hair in front of my face as I snap onto the nearest target, a ki fighter who I caught in the middle of a drawn-out ritual to summon her own aura. Her eyes widen as her kinetic sense brushes into mine, suddenly realizing the gulf of power that separates us. And they stay wide, irises rolling back as her unconscious body hits the floor behind me. I’m into her and through her and done, already onto the next Dynasty enforcer, hips swiveling, a showstopping roundhouse kick chambered and fired. The man’s body bends around my leg the frame before he’s catapulted into the hangar wall at ragdoll velocity.

There’s a world of separation between professional fighters and the rest of humanity. The average university fighter has studied the art of combat for their entire life, made themselves a celebrity in their hometown, and drilled against the next generation of pros for four grueling years. Their mastery over their classes would stun any casual user, even a syndicate criminal.

I’m not an average university student.

I fight people like Ajax for a living. I don’t stun the Dynasty warriors. I blind them.

Raw ki coalesces in my palm as I finish my kick, perfectly attenuated to a nonlethal level. I’ve spent two decades getting acquainted with my limits. A twist and blast uses the kickback of the kinetic burst to suddenly reverse my momentum and fling me into the third warrior. Superheated lead hisses past my shoulder as he swings his chaingun back around. Too slow.

I smash into him without even looking. Bump him with a shoulder blade to knock him off balance, spin and jump to drill a knockout knee into his head, launching him straight into the whirlwind elbow that hammers him into the hangar floor. Metal splinters and snaps underfoot. I whirl and swing my feet down to slam to a stop in front of the last mercenary of the group.

He had just barely enough time to face me, still catching up to the zigzag bolt of destruction that wiped out his allies in two seconds flat. My roiling aura burns reflected in the whites of his eyes. A half-formed spear of water waits uncertain in his half-raised hand. I gather a swirling ball of kinetic energy within my palm and toss it up and down like a ball as we stare off, daring him to make the first move. High explosives from a misfired rocket turn a quarter of the hangar to slag nearby. Hot orange light blooms over my left side, casting the room in magmatic hues. Shrapnel rains down. My aura melts it into slag before it can draw within five meters.

A jet-engine shriek builds as I keep siphoning more ki into the ball. I toss it again and cock my head to the side.

“Your choice.”

He releases the spear and runs. Water scatters the deck and evaporates in the heat of my aura. I let him get ten, maybe fifteen feet before coaxing the energy down to a reprimanding level and zinging him with a casual beam. Fog plumes where he falls. My head is already swinging back to the battlefield, red hair rippling behind like a dragon’s tail. Eyes sweeping the mist and chaos in search of the shark hiding within the undercity shoal. My kinetic sense expands in search of that bloodlust emanating from the boy with black hair and golden eyes. Nothing comes back across the entirety of the hangar. Like his soul just vanished the moment combat erupted.

Another wind elemental finally gets to work in Dynasty’s favor, clearing away the worst of the smoke. A trio of syndicate enforcers, all mistaking each other for the gunslinger who made the mist, suddenly whirl to face Jolie as she sprints into the docks entirely alone. My sister skids to a stop with her blade drawn. I’m already gathering the ki to leap to her side. Then I see the telltale shadow racing out ahead of her and change my destination to the midst of what fog clouds remain.

Ajax, when he strikes, is not as flashy as I am. His way is that of deadly efficiency. His choice of engagement gives him all the surprise he needs to slash the calves of two enforcers before they realize what’s happening. Hoarse shouts pierce the air. The third receives the honor of seeing Ajax whirl out of the mist and being utterly dismantled by jaw-dropping precision. It’s over in a second. Like watching a surgeon dissect an insect. I resist a shiver at the sight. He’s been getting even better.

I hold back just long enough to see Ajax guide Jolie towards the shipping container and take overwatch. We exchange a mutual nod. Or, I do. He just flips his hands up and shakes his head at the danger I just dragged us into. The moment they’re sheltered by the lee side of the container doors, I redouble my aura and surge into the fog at full, heart-churning power.

A fist as big as my head thunders straight past my nose as I reenter the carnage. Sensing it coming frames away, I whip back and raise my hands in a quick defense as a giant of a man charges out of the mist. His next punch is even more powerful, trying to splash my brains across the floor. I sidestep and grin at the challenge. Wave him forward with two fingers, getting grim amusement back.

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There’s a certain respect shared between us martial artists in the moment before I slash a hand into his elbow joint as it crosses into my reach and pop the joint like a cork. He roars in pain as his arm goes limp. I destroy him like chain-lightning. Twisting away from a half-destroyed ladder that tumbles out of the fog, I drive a shoulder into his chest, ejecting the air from his lungs and physically launching him from the ground. Ki surges into my feet as I leap. Snap kick to the head. Drop to a breakdance low and reap his legs with a scything sweep. End with a ki-powered wolf knuckle that blows him away like cannonfire.

I wince as I feel and hear the crunch my finale makes, but I don’t have time to regret it. All my hair suddenly stands on end at once as a new threat immediately locks onto my arrival. One lightning-hued body circles out of sight like a shark. Then it dives.

I sense more than see the bolt of handheld thunder that plunges for my back. She’s fast. I’m faster. Twenty years of trained reflexes bat the airboard girl’s hand to the side, giving me a glimpse of lips curved in a grin and eyes wild with excitement. She follows through by trying to headbutt me. I parry and wrench her hands downwards, trapping her at intimate range.

“Not bad,” I say, blowing a loose strand of her hair away from my eyes. “For a Venter.”

In the mosh pit light, face slashed by weeping cuts and mottled by a growing bruise, she’s stunning. All the smog and grime in the world can’t conceal her self-assured smirk, those eyebrows curved in daring. And a revolver in her left hand jammed into my gut.

“Dodge.” She winks.

Elemental thunder swirls down her arm and into the gun as her hand snaps into firing position. Her fingers tighten and the revolver kicks, releasing a supercharged projectile that leaps across the dock like a caged lion. Stealing all the oxygen as it goes. Heat races down my spine as I twist away from the bullet, rotating past her to drive an open palm into the chest of the human silhouette that threw a ladder at me earlier. Kinetic energy rips the man across the deck in a black smoketrail, leaving him to sleep off the injury in a pile of debris. Two daggers flash past from an entirely different direction to score my side. I hiss in a breath and whirl to catch the incoming knifefighter with a whiplash kick that bats her stumbling off course.

The airboard girl spins around laughing as she watches my opponent’s unconscious body crash into a nearby girder, then spares a glance at the others I’ve dropped. “Holy fuck, dude. What kind of steroids did your parents plug into your growth pod?”

“The kind that doesn’t quite know when to quit.”

Another laugh. She claps her hands together, re-flooding the chamber with fresh fog. Disappearing from sight for a brief moment. Her presence circles me with that familiar, arch-heeled swagger. All hips. One fingernail taps against my chest, dragging over my heart.

“How many left?” she asks.

“Five or six, depending on if you’re counting the ones I left near the door…” my voice trails off as I turn, peering deeper into the fog. She sidles against my back. “There was another. Not one of Dynasty’s. Dangerous.”

“Must have been the one who ran off. He went through an air duct on ground level right when the action started.”

“You could track him?”

“I made the mist, flyboy.” She chuckles darkly and sinks into a fighting stance behind me. “Fog is water, condensation. I can sense it like you sense my heartbeat.”

“Then you know we’re surrounded.”

“Of course. That annoying windbag they have is tracking all the hot air you’re blowing.”

I glance down to the cyclonic torrent of air and sparking flame blasting out from my feet, then shrug. “It’s about time they started.”

“Oh. You wanted to be found?”

“Figured you did too, going by that entrance of yours.”

“You’re not wrong.” Her hair starts rising in the current of my aura. “Ready for round three?”

We both glance over our shoulders simultaneously. She’s smirking just as wide, as ferally as I am. All fangs.

My hands clench into fists as I return to facing front. Five shadows move in the fog. Back to back with the gunslinger, I close on the shipping container, sending surges of aura outwards to bait the Dynasty fighters in. They’re not entirely stupid. I’m about to take the fight to them when an overwhelming sixth presence wanders right into their mist in perfect silence. He doesn’t even bother hiding his approach. The first pained scream makes the rest of the syndicate criminals freeze in place, leaving them flat-footed to the rapier that dismantles them one at a time.

It’s sad how quick Ajax makes it. His strikes are brutally economic, crippling a new target with every slash. Sometimes a leg, sometimes an ankle. Others an arm. It doesn’t matter where he selects. The end result is the same. Bodies drop. Blood splatters the ground surgical in arcs. And what syndicate criminals can still crawl pretend they can’t while he steps over them on a path right to me.

The gunslinger snaps her fingers and evaporates the last of the fog. Ajax’s stunning glow takes its place and lights up half the docks as he flicks the blood from his blade. Ozone and char drift over the battlefield. Groans of pain hang in the air. Across the hangar, a ten-meter section of molten catwalk collapses with a terrific crash of metal. We all wince in unison. I side-eye Ajax as he draws near. He’s the only one of us who went uninjured, or so I thought. He coughs into his hand and tries to hide the flecks of red that splatter against it.

“How’d you know where I was standing at the end?” I ask.

His golden braid shakes as he groans. “We just interrupted a gang war and that is what you choose to ask?”

“It was either that, or how many you took down.”

“You’re unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable.”

The gunslinger picks at her teeth with a piece of shrapnel while glancing between Ajax and I. “You two sure are friendly.”

“He’s-”

“-not my friend,” Ajax finishes. He runs a hand down his face and turns to examine her, more closely than I expected. “And neither are you. Those criminals knew who you were, which means you frequent their same circles. In other words, you,” he pushes the tip of his rapier against her chest, “are a criminal as well. So what was this? Some drug deal you were hoping to make a score off of?”

“Maybe,” she replies, cocksure smirk fixed in place despite her wounds. Her eyes dart over to meet mine. Dangerous in their intensity. “Are we just going to stand around here talking while those guys pick themselves up?”

“No.” My sister’s answer echoes from the other side of the shipping container. She jogs around the corner a moment later with her JOY in one hand and one of the indigo vials in another. Raw red skin splits her forehead from an impact rash. She shakes her head when I start towards her. Holds up the vial in answer.

“I am not getting shot at twice in one night,” Jolie growls. “Let’s blow this thing and get out of here.”