Ethan's civilian knit sweater was shredding into bloodied ribbons, his arms covered in a tight, lattice network of clean shallow lacerations. He narrowed his eyes, his pupils tracking the empty, vibrating space of the corridor.
Himari's entire combat framework depends on absolute stealth and frictionless acceleration, Ethan calculated, his internal processing unit shifting into high gear. Predicting her directional frames while she's in a state of stealth, is impossible under these conditions. I need a localized environmental counter. I have to find a way...
A sudden, high-frequency distortion blurred to his left. Ethan turned on a dime, launching a heavy pre-emptive strike into the empty air. Himari vanished from the trajectory, materializing instantly behind his center of gravity with her primary dagger drawn for a downward spinal plunge. Anticipating the drop, Ethan dropped his spine beneath the blade, anchoring his weight to execute a violent, low-profile back-kick directly into her midsection.
The heavy blow hit her core, forcing her to skid across the polished floorboards, completely disrupting her smooth, continuous tracking. Sensing the stagger frame, Ethan vaulted over the distance, driving a catastrophic ground-pound punch directly at her coordinate.
"Too slow," her ghostly voice echoed from behind his ear.
Ethan didn't reset; he entered a state of deliberate, blind hyper-aggression, hammering and cracking every square inch of the floorboards wherever her silhouette blurred.
"It is entirely useless," Himari taunted, her voice echoing fluidly from the shadows as she easily skipped outside his destructive radius. "Your physical output is undeniable, but your nervous system simply lacks the latency to match my speed."
Before the final word could trail off, her boot whipped through the dust cloud, driving a vicious linear kick straight toward Ethan's liver. Ethan brought his left knee up dynamically, absorbing the impact against his outer patella. Himari vanished instantly, resetting her stealth to materialize behind his blind spot once more.
Ethan didn't wait for her to strike. He launched himself into the air, executing a tight, inverted backward flip mid-flight to bring a heavy, crushing fist down onto Himari's precise coordinate.
Himari accelerated away smoothly, a confident, mocking smile playing on her lips as she watched the floor beneath Ethan's fist shatter into a massive crater.
"You cannot defeat me," she stated, her tone dripping with the absolute, unshakeable arrogance of an old-world ninja clan. "The only way to counter my stealth is to match my speed—and that what you can't do."
Ethan slowly withdrew his fist from the pulverized concrete, a cold, unbothered smile pulling at the corner of his lips.
Everything is in place now, Ethan thought.
"What are you smiling at?" Himari challenged, drawing her secondary blade. "Come on. Show me your absolute power."
Ethan offered a slow, deliberate nod. "As you wish."
He burst forward, throwing a massive, linear right straight. Himari smirked, easily tilting her torso to let the punch clear her shoulder, preparing to utilize her high-speed counter-rotations—but as her boots pressed into the floor, her eyes widened in sudden, absolute realization.
The floor beneath her didn't hold. The entire foundation of the hallway had been converted into a chaotic, unstable sea of loose gravel, unstable concrete fragments, and hollow sub-flooring by Ethan's deliberate, "blind" misses. Her traction vanished completely; her friction-less acceleration could not execute on broken ground.
He wasn't trying to hit me at all... Himari's brain reeled in horror. He was terraforming this place to neutralize my stealth.
Before she could adjust her center of gravity, Ethan materialized directly inside her personal space. His right fist caved forward, delivering a full-extension, concrete-pulverizing straight punch directly into her sternum. The sheer, unadulterated kinetic force of the impact launched Himari airborne, her body smashing upward through three consecutive concrete ceiling decks.
Himari crashed onto the upper executive floor, her arms trembling violently as she tried to force her broken posture back into a guard.
Despite the agonizing internal damage, she forced a bloody smile. This floor's foundation is intact... I can use my stealth.
CRASH.
The marble floor directly beneath her boots exploded violently upward. Ethan's massive, guntleted hand shot through the debris like a demon rising from the underworld, clamping onto her ankle with a vice-like grip.
What? How is he doing all this...? She thought.
With a brutal downward yank, Ethan dragged her back down through the breach, slamming her bodily into the ruined concrete of the lower deck. Refusing to let her momentum die, Himari coiled her core and snapped her free leg upward, driving a heavy heel into Ethan's forearm to force a release. She rolled across the debris, scrambling to her feet.
"No more running," Ethan's voice cut through the dust behind her. Before she could move, his fingers clamped around her shoulder like iron clamps.
Desperate, Himari drew her emergency concealed dagger, executing a blinding, cross-sectional slash directly at his carotid artery. Ethan tilted his neck back by a fraction of a millimeter, letting the silver edge graze his collar before driving a devastating knee straight into her exposed abdomen.
Himari coughed up a thick spray of crimson. Before her brain could process the hit, Ethan's free left hand wound back and delivered a brutal, short-range body blow to her stomach with such immense, concussive torque that her body flew through thirteen consecutive concrete walls, launching entirely out of the building's shattered glass exterior.
She soared through the night air, coughing blood, but her deep-ingrained survival instincts overrode the shock. She executed a controlled mid-air roll, stabilizing her trajectory to land perfectly on her boots in the asphalt plaza outside.