He planned the trajectory of the final hit... Himari thought, her chest heaving in agony. He used the layout to force the confrontation into the open.
Ethan looked down at her from the gaping, high-rise structural wound of the building before stepping off the ledge. He plummeted through the dark, executed a clean mid-air flip to absorb the kinetic energy, and landed flawlessly on the asphalt mere inches from her position.
Himari was gasping for air, her fingers tightening around her remaining steel.
Ethan remained completely composed, his breath steady. "Finn is a good friend of mine," he said calmly, his voice slicing through the ringing silence of the night. "A regular civilian being entangled with an old-world ninja like you is a guaranteed death sentence. I won't let his life get ruined."
"I possess more than enough to protect his life myself!" Himari screamed back, her pride flaring as she dropped into her clan's lethal vanguard stance.
Ethan clenched his fists, blurring forward into a dead sprint. Himari charged to meet him, her daggers carving a desperate line through the air.
With a flash of silver, her blade pierced cleanly through Ethan's right fist. Ethan didn't even blink; utilizing the momentary stall in her tracking, he drove his left fist forward like a sledgehammer, slamming it squarely into her jaw and sending her body launching backward across the parking lot until she crashed hard onto the roof of a parked sedan, caving the metal in.
Ethan looked down at his right hand, his expression flat as he pulled her embedded dagger out of his knuckles.
Suddenly, a rapid-fire volley of shuriken whistled through the dark plaza. Ethan reacted with high-speed precision, using the captured dagger to deflect the flying steel with sharp, metallic clangs.
Midway through the projectile stream, Himari materialized invisibly, swinging a hidden knife in a tight horizontal arc. The edge sliced cleanly across Ethan's forearm, but Ethan's reflexes were already locked onto her coordinates; his own dagger whipped back in a vicious counter-slash, cutting deep into her right wrist.
Both fighters leaped backward, creating distance before instantly lunging into another close-quarters exchange. The night air filled with the continuous, rhythmic screech of colliding steel as they traded hyper-precise dagger forms. In terms of pure knife-fighting proficiency, their tiers were perfectly mirrored.
Their primary blades met in a grinding deadlock, the metal throwing off hot sparks between their faces. Utilizing his raw physical leverage, Ethan drove his free left hand straight into her abdomen—striking the exact, localized spot he had already compromised twice inside the facility.
Simultaneously, Himari's eyes flashed with a dark venom. She snapped her leg upward, a spring-loaded, custom titanium blade instantly snapping out from the toe of her tactical shoe, burying itself deep into Ethan's core.
Both operators broke the deadlock, staggering backward across the asphalt, their breaths ragged as they both clapped their gloved hands over their heavily bleeding midsections.
This guy is an absolute monster, Himari thought, her vision swimming as her heart hammered in panic. If I drag this fight any longer… I am going to die here.
She's a true shadow asset, Ethan calculated, his jaw clenched against the sharp pain in his gut. Her technical execution is flawless.
CREAK.
The reinforced main doors of the Third Branch building slowly swung open, a heavy, suffocating killing intent bleeding out into the open plaza.
Ethan and Himari both snapped their heads toward the threshold. The moment Himari's eyes locked onto the figure stepping into the moonlight, her pupils contracted into pinpricks, and her entire body began to tremble violently.
"Ms... Ms. Akira Shinomiya..." she murmured, her voice laced with an uncharacteristic, primitive fear.
Akira walked quietly onto the asphalt, her tailored suit dripping with the fresh blood of the upper-deck executives. Her crimson eyes scanned the ruined plaza before locking onto the black-haired ninja.
"Himari... look at the absolute, disorganized mess you've allowed yourself to become. You cannot even manage to neutralize a single civilian target without compromising your forms."
Who is this woman? Ethan analyzed, his posture freezing as his tactical instincts screamed at him to retreat.
Ethan maintained his cold composition as Akira's gaze drifted over to meet his. Her eyes were two perfect, predatory pools of deep crimson.
Those red eyes... Ethan's chest tightened as a vivid, dark memory from his mins flashed into his mind's eye. It's the exact same visual signature. The Leader of the Shadow Syndicate... the man with the featureless white mask and the bleeding red eyes.
Ethan took a single blink.
In that microsecond frame, Akira Shinomiya vanished from the entrance.
Before his eyelids could even finish opening, she was suddenly standing directly beside Himari's broken form on the crushed vehicle.
Ethan's heart skipped a beat, a cold sweat breaking out across his forehead. When did she move? How could she cover such distance in a second.
Akira didn't look at Ethan; her cold gaze remained fixed on Himari. "Who is this anomaly?"
"Someone... he is a highly dangerous rogue asset actively targeting the Loop's infrastructure," Himari reported, bowing her head in complete submission.