Warning: Battles and violence (like we know in the canon).

The warehouse door creaked behind them. Elena and Guido reacted and ducked, then took a running start and ran to the nearby pillars to take cover from the burst of gunfire that was suddenly directed at them.

Subordinates, they had heard them. This was not right, Elena thought. Had something happened to her friends?

"Elena," Guido called her. "Can I ask you a favor?"

"In the middle of this situation?"

"Exactly for being in this situation," Guido answered nervously. "We need to get these weapons out of here. We can't let these men have all of them; with the ones they stole, they are already too dangerous."

Or, in other words, we need to fight them, beat them, and then get out with everything and special weapons. Nothing complicated.

Elena sighed and loaded the gun. Without moving, she aimed it at the silhouette of one of the men. Her legs shook for a few moments, but she tried to relax by inhaling and exhaling sharply.

'Aim calmly,' G had told her. 'You have a lethal instrument. Don't let desperation get the better of you.'

Elena focused, clenched the pistol in her hands...

And began to fire.

The first man could only scream as he felt the bullet graze his arm. The second let go of his gun as the shot hit him in the hand. The volley of bullets from the mafia's side resumed, and Elena, while taking cover, tried to take aim. Although firing without aiming would serve as a distraction, she was afraid that doing so might kill someone.

One. Two. Three. Four.

Elena searched through her clothes for more ammunition when the gun emptied while Guido watched her, almost dumbfounded.

"You're doing pretty good."

"I was taught by the best," Elena smiled. "I'll cover you; you try to gather the weapons."

G fired again. The flames expanded in front of him, creating a kind of barrier but the ability of the daggers to multiply was greater because even in the air, several of them were made, managing to surround the barrier and reach him. G stepped back, dodging some of them; however, others multiplied again and almost hitting him.

Damn it, how was he supposed to do that?

"Cozzato, now!" G shouted. Cozzato, hiding behind a tree (they had had to backtrack to the point of returning to the first entrance, near the forest), reacted and used his powers again.

Gravity advanced. The leader of the Lontanni only cocked his head to one side before the force fell on him. His expression, rather than worried, seemed to say, 'The same thing again?'.

Undeterred, the man dropped one of the daggers. From the force on the area, it even seemed to break a little, but even as it lay on the ground, the dagger began to multiply. Weak at first, but as it left the area from where Cozzato's powers were exerted, the speed of multiplication was so great that, in just a few seconds, the daggers had reached where G was standing, who had to back up again.

Gravity could stop a person, but not a flame. Therein lay the secret.

Cozzato, nearby, had to stop using his powers when the daggers came dangerously close to him. Amid a snarl, the boy ran back to another tree for shelter.

The man's laughter was heard. "Oh, come on. Stop playing hide-and-seek."

G growled as he reached a tree close to where Cozzato was standing, who just looked at him in frustration.

"Forgive me; my powers are useless against him," Cozzato sounded angry with himself. "And he's still able to multiply his weapon as if it were air."

"There's something strange about the way he does it," G commented. He tore part of his shirt, and with the fabric, created a makeshift tourniquet on his right arm, which had a large wound near the shoulder. He had to thank Giotto for teaching him how to do that. "It looked as if the dagger had come out from under his sleeve. Once a dagger comes out of there, that's when it starts to multiply."

His mind began to think of a thousand possibilities. If there was one thing that characterized G, it was quick thinking. And this was not going to be the exception.

Could it be that...?

"Cozzato. How much energy do you still have?"

The leader of the Lontanni felt the earth move beneath his feet.

Thinking it was again the other boy's strange gravity power, he prepared to launch an attack; however, something totally different happened.

From the ground, chunks of earth rose. Underneath him, a part broke off, making him jump to get back to solid ground. The earth continued to shake, and the man saw how he was suddenly surrounded by pieces of land that seemed to be floating around him. Seconds later, he could see how a figure moved among them, and-

He could barely dodge a direct shot from the red flames that shattered part of the ground at his feet. As a reflex action, he threw a wave of daggers towards that direction. Part of them embedded themselves in the floating rocks, but the figure moved fast enough to hide behind another.

Then another shot.

"Ha!" Matteo Lontanni stepped back with a mocking smile. "You want to use them as a shield? Nonsense, I can still hit you; your feet must touch the ground!" And without wasting any time, he made a circle of daggers appear around him, which he soon threw towards the blind spots of that improvised barrier of earth and stone: towards the ground, towards the space between them.

The pieces of earth moved, trembled, and seemed to change position. Matteo watched what was happening with some nervousness, and at that...

"Is it necessary to touch the ground? Really?"

He was barely able to dodge the next shot, which instead of shattering the ground, spread like wildfire all over the grass, burning and eroding. But it was impossible; the attack was coming from-

"What's happening?" he heard the same voice before, from behind him, another torrent of flames was about to hit him in the arm.

He rolled on the ground and looked up.

There, on top of one of the floating pieces of earth, G pointed his gun at him.

The man didn't take long to react, and while G was firing with more diluted flames to burn the surroundings again, he made a series of daggers appear that countered the attack—flames against flames.

Matteo made a few daggers that remained in the air to multiply and directed them towards G, who dropped from where he stood just as all the other pieces of earth began to shake and move. Some went down, some went up.

Their gravity was changing.

'Are you sure? I can't throw them at him or anything like that. The only thing I can do is change their gravity to make them lighter or heavier.'

'That's enough. Can you do that constantly?'

'Huh?'

G fell right on top of another rock and fired again. His intention was to hit his enemy in the arm, to destroy the clothes to find out what he was hiding between his sleeves.

Of course, it wasn't that easy. Having understood what was going on, the leader of the Lontanni didn't take long to create more of his weapons and direct them not only at where G was but at the whole area near him. G jumped from one piece of earth to another when they began to shake and move again.

Thus, it seemed to be a battle of attrition and speed. Cozzato had to keep the earth constantly shifting, while G had to move fast enough to stay in the makeshift ring. And so it was: G fired, and Matteo managed to dodge while launching his own attack.

Red flames covered the whole area while sounds of gunfire and cracking rock could be heard. The night was filled with red and purple.

"Cozzato, now!" G screamed.

Matteo felt the gravity in the area where he was standing increase, and unable to help himself, he fell to his knees. Angrily, he turned to look past the crumbling chunks of earth so he could see the other boy who was interfering, charged his powers, and at that moment-

G shot from above him.

Not caring about the hard impact he would have against the ground, G had jumped as high as he could from the piece of earth he was on, aimed at his enemy's arm, and fired soft flames at him at the precise moment the man activated his ability.

The red flames destroyed the cloth and would have burned part of the skin had it not been for the purple flames surrounding the instrument hidden there, which prevented it.

Before falling to the ground in a hard blow, G saw it: held in place by solid leather ties, the leader of the Lontanni had a dagger strapped to his arm, previously hidden by his clothing. From that dagger was where the purple flames came from.

It was, in other words, the original weapon from which the copies came out. It was why Matteo could make more daggers even than those he threw: he just copied the copies, and when they were lost, he simply resorted back to the original, who allowed him not only to create more but was the source of the power of it all, the weapon that contained the flames that could make the chain effect of multiplication.

There it was. That was the secret. They had to destroy the original weapon to end it all.

G rolled on the ground and saw several sharp objects launched at him before he could move. If it weren't for Cozzato lowering the gravity of one of the rocks to cover him, he would surely have ended up dead from the number of daggers that had come out of nowhere.

They had really made him angry, huh?

The piece of rock Cozzato used to cover him cracked. G tried to take the opportunity to aim again, but at that moment, several daggers shot out at him. One of them, the fastest, ended up embedding itself in his gun and breaking part of the mechanism he had created to support the flames.

No, no.

G opened his eyes in fear and stepped back again, dodging the wave of attacks.

Matteo was no longer smiling. He was looking at him with clear murderous intent.

"It's no use that you know the secret if you don't have a way to shoot, is it?"

His gun. With that fundamental part in such a state, G only had a chance to fire a single concentrated shot before...

Matteo approached and again summoned dozens of daggers that were thrown at him automatically. G reflexively closed his eyes.

Then the earth shook again.

All the floating rocks and earth collapsed simultaneously, raising a significant layer of dust that left both opponents unable to see for a few seconds.

"G, get as far away as you can." G turned to the right, seeing how Cozzato stood in front of him. G shuddered as he recognized the same aura and look of Giotto when he was full of determination. "Find something firm to hold on to, and don't let go."

"Cozzato? Even if you try to destroy the weapon with your gravity, he can create more copies and attack you before it's possible. No-"

"Nobody said I was going to try to destroy it myself," Cozzato mentioned. "I trust you can aim well even from a long distance. I'll take care of all the daggers that come up. You break the original one."

Elena let herself fall to the ground. All around her, there were several unconscious men. At least, they were now safe.

"I'm out of bullets, so you better have some saved up." Elena said.

"I still have a few," Guido commented. "I hope I don't need them, though."

He had placed all the weapons in a bag that, to tell the truth, looked too heavy to Elena's eyes. How was he going to move with that?

"People from my family will come to help me at some distance from the forest, and-"

"You're not telling me to walk you there, are you?"

"Do you really want to leave me?"

Elena looked at him with a frown. Guido smiled at her. They both knew she was too curious to leave him like that.

Matteo coughed and tried to focus on his surroundings. Although the dust was thick, he could see a figure running and moving away from him. Angrily, he pointed in that direction, and just at that moment, the dust suddenly began to move strangely. The air was becoming a gust of wind going in one direction only.

A distraction. Matteo had no time for that; he had to finish Giovanni. He could recognize that it was him who had moved; the flames on his face were unmistakable. He was going to kill him before whatever was making the atmosphere change was finished.

Matteo charged his flames. The gust of wind was starting to get stronger. In frustration, he created daggers and threw them to his left. It didn't matter if there weren't many; he could duplicate them even in the air and-

He stifled a scream.

As best he could, he grabbed onto the pieces of statue and stone that remained around him. His weapons began to fly in the opposite direction, no matter how much energy he expended to keep them going. No matter how much they multiplied. Something was pulling them, no. It was swallowing them up. Not understanding what was happening, he turned to his right.

There, he saw it: it was some kind of black hole.

Cozzato had his arms raised, and above them, there was what seemed to be a kind of whirlpool that began to swallow everything. The more time passed, the more force it had, and the more it started to pull things in.

Cozzato felt that his heart was beating too fast. With small attempts he had made on his own, he had managed to somehow control that whirlwind that swallowed everything and to make it of a specific power so that it would not be so lethal. He kept himself out of danger by increasing the gravity on himself while he gathered more gravity at a specific point that soon turned into a hole that began to absorb everything. Now, it was just a kind of hole that sucked small things and dragged the big ones; however, the time in which he could control it and keep it that way was little.

Though little, it served to stop the constant onslaught of the Lontanni leader and, amid that force, give G a chance.

"G!"

Matteo turned to his left. From there, also already being pulled, G pointed a gun at him.

One chance. There was only one chance.

Even if Matteo had wanted to move, being so close to that strange hole prevented him from doing anything more than trying to cling to the ground with everything he had. So, it was easy for G to focus and fire.

His pistol cracked in his hands, but the shot made it out. As focused and direct as if it were an arrow, straight into the enemy's wrist.

The dagger that Matteo had clutched in his arm broke in half.

At that moment, before losing control, Cozzato suddenly undid all the gravity he had gathered at the point where the hole had been created.

The force disappeared, and everyone fell to the ground.

The wall a few meters away was utterly broken. Pieces of stone came out all over the place, and the dust of the now shattered site made it hard to see.

It looked like they were playing cat and mouse, Giotto thought. It was a ridiculous thing to do. Rinaldo himself was not taking the battle seriously. Not anymore.

Giotto staggered. Things were not right.

'Concentrate,' he said to himself. 'Concentrate. Find the right moment.'

Rinaldo approached him calmly, while Giotto tried to control his agitated breathing. "If you apologize for doing all this, I might consider forgiving you," Rinaldo commented, "You might be a good addition to the family. Besides-"

A second later, the energy in the air seemed to change. Outside it sounded as if several things were breaking while screams chorused. Giotto knew that feeling. It was...

Cozzato.

Rinaldo reacted with that too. The smile he had was erased, and instead, an icy expression took its place. The man charged the flail and swung it at him. Giotto barely dodged it so that, moments later, the weapon lit up with its characteristic green glow: the spear-like lightning attack. Giotto focused on predicting the direction they would take; however, the flame behaved differently this time.

Instead of launching a few solidified bolts of lightning, it dissolved and spread throughout the hallway. For a moment, everything was green and electric. Giotto widened his eyes, seeing how he was surrounded. And seconds later, the lightning did its work.

Rinaldo had electrified the long corridor, and with no way out, all the lightning bolts were directed towards Giotto.

Giotto's body trembled. His mind was blank for a few seconds. He fell to the ground. The flame in his head began to get smaller, to diminish and to stop glowing so brightly.

"Problems?" Camillo, who had been watching everything from a safe distance, approached. He did so cautiously, as there were still traces of flames around the place, and one or two small lightning bolts were still emerging from the floor and walls.

"Matteo is outside. And I don't like at all that feeling that just came up," Rinaldo commented with a frown. He glanced sideways at Giotto, motionless on the floor. His flame was weak and about to be extinguished. "Let's kill this one and go help him."

Camillo smiled, watching as his boss approached the weak teenager. He would have liked him to suffer a little more, but it seemed they were needed to finish off other unwanted guests.

Rinaldo charged the flail with flames. Camillo understood that he wanted to finish him with a blow.

That was the end.

Rinaldo attacked with the flail, and at that moment, the air around became as cold as ice.

Ice. That's what happened.

Giotto parried the flail's attack with one of his hands, and moments later, the weapon began to freeze at an impressive speed. Rinaldo released it and stepped back in time for the ice to not spread to him not only through his weapon but through the floor itself.

The entire corridor began to be covered with ice so fast that the Reale leader had to jump back to avoid it to catch his legs. In that movement, he could see where it came from: the boy had one of his hands on the floor, and the ice was forming from there. The flame in his head was still flickering constantly, but now he understood that this wasn't weakness: it was instead the sign that the ice was going to appear.

He couldn't help but laugh. The boy had utterly fooled them.

"What the hell, I can't move, what-!"

Camillo had been caught in the middle of the attack: his legs frozen. And before he could even turn around, he felt a presence beside him. Angry, he wanted to use his flames to attack, but his fist was stopped.

Giotto looked at him for a few seconds before using his technique again. When people used flames, it was easier to do it, as if he was stealing their own energy. It was why he had managed to cover the corridor with ice so quickly; he had taken advantage of the remnants of the flame that Rinaldo himself had used to attack.

"No, no. My ring, he, he fre-"

Giotto stepped back, dodging a strong blow that was aimed at him, and that, by Camillo's bad luck, ended up impacting directly on his face, knocking him unconscious at once.

Undeterred, the leader of the Reale turned to look at Giotto with curiosity and...

Excitement?

"You still had a good trick hidden," Rinaldo said with a half-smile. "Did you let yourself get beaten so much for this?"

"I needed a good opportunity to take away the advantages you had." Rinaldo himself had given Giotto the perfect opportunity to act by engulfing the place in flames and attacking so directly with his weapon. Although certainly, Giotto would have liked to be less hurt.

Without his weapon, Rinaldo now only had the activation and strength that the yellow flame gave him. And while that still made him a formidable foe, fighting with his fists alone was something Giotto was experienced in. His training with Cozzato had been based on that. Even if Giotto's whole body ached, he could still go on. Energy came from will; and will was what he had plenty of.

Rinaldo advanced towards him, and Giotto did the same. Both with flames in their hands.

One flame against the other.

At that moment, they were back to the way they were in the beginning: one attacked, the other dodged and lashed out. Rinaldo was the first to lunge against him, throwing a punch that, when avoided, turned into a kick. Giotto moved to the right and jumped, gaining speed with it; he brought his hands together and punched forward. Rinaldo dodged, and the blow impacted against the frozen ground, but the ice didn't get a scratch.

What kind of ice was that? It couldn't be that it maintained the same way with the blows it was receiving from them.

Distracted by that fact, Rinaldo could not react in time to the next move of Giotto, who, still in the air, had turned to kick him. The leader of the Reale received the blow squarely and recoiled from the impact. He looked at him with fury, charged his flames in his hands, and ran towards him.

Too late, he saw how the flame on Giotto's forehead had begun to flicker. Which meant-

When his fist was stopped by a pair of hands that trembled but didn't let him go, he knew he had made a grave mistake.

Ice covered his fist and began to advance up his arm. In fear, Rinaldo kicked Giotto hard in the stomach, throwing him backward, and forcing him to let him go.

Half of his arm had been frozen. Rinaldo tried to use his flames to shatter the ice, but it remained the same no matter how hard he tried. He had to be kidding; if flames couldn't destroy that thing, then-

He couldn't dodge Giotto's next blow, which, just like Rinaldo's own blow that Camillo had received, ended up hitting him straight in the face and sent him crashing into the wall.

The roles had been reversed. The rhythm of the battle had changed entirely.

Giotto lunged again, and Rinaldo dodged the attack. Taking advantage of the proximity, he tried to turn around and kick him in the stomach. Anticipating his move, Giotto placed his hands in front of his body to block him.

Rinaldo ended up screaming in pain.

More than hurting his enemy, Rinaldo felt he had hurt himself. As if his leg had impacted against something hard and resistant, like...

Like the ice that surrounded them.

He turned, and there he saw it. Taking advantage of the fact that he was still using the negative mode (that's what he had called the state in which he was able to use ice), Giotto had frozen part of his own flames in his hands, creating a kind of ice armor on the part opposite of his palm.

It was like seeing half of a pair of gloves made of ice.

"With this," Giotto mentioned. "It seems to me that we are finally on equal terms."

"What the hell are the others doing? Did I just see a hole start sucking everything out? And we're supposed to be far away, why-"

"I don't have answers, Guido. I don't have answers!" Elena shouted.

After managing to get out on the opposite side of the castle to where the battles were taking place, Elena and Guido hadn't stopped hearing rumble after rumble. Suddenly the ground shook, and there was this kind of whirlwind. And then the atmosphere had become incredibly cold and the air so thick that it was even hard to breathe.

Elena and Guido had not been the only ones to leave. Fearful of the fighting that was taking place, several subordinates had fled as well. Although some remained loyal.

Among them, there was that group following Elena and Guido for a long distance already. Tired of it, Elena stopped and turned towards them. She could see the silhouette of the small group leader; he was shouting and approaching where they were at a fast pace. The girl frowned and got into a defensive position. She needed to knock him out fast, or he might warn the others, and-

Guido grabbed her shoulder, calling her attention, and shook his head. His look begged her not to move and to trust him. Elena nodded and took a few steps back.

Guido sighed. He concentrated, and then his eyes lit up with an indigo glow, and from his hands, a kind of mist formed. Elena looked at him curiously and then looked at the man nearby, who blinked for a few moments as if he wanted to focus on something, and although he was a short distance, he simply walked without turning to look at them.

"There's no one around here!" he shouted to his companions as he ran towards them. "Search back; they must be close by!"

There, Elena understood.

"You... you have a flame," she commented in amazement. "And not just any flame is... it's that mental flame."

Giotto and G had told her about it. It allowed the user to interfere in some way with the senses of others, with their mind. When Elena heard about it, although it had seemed somewhat fanciful at first (even by flame standards), she found it rather extraordinary. It was a flame with a thousand utilities, unique.

And Guido had it.

"It's very weak. I hadn't occupied it until now because of that," Guido said, feeling his head start to hurt. "Miss Sepira says that there are people who would be able to create a living nightmare if they wanted to. Compared to them, I am nobody. In fact, I shouldn't even be able to use it. I can only do it because she released the waves in my body."

"Release the... waves?"

Before Guido could answer, a great rumbling sound from the castle they had left made them both turn around. Dust was rising to the skies rapidly, and the screams of people nearby could be heard.

Elena turned to look at Guido. And he just smiled at her before nodding.

"Go. Tell the others what I told you. And don't worry, I'm sure we'll see each other again. I mentioned that Miss Sepira had faith in you, didn't I? She's going to look for you when the time comes."

Elena frowned slightly. It would have been better for her to see Miss Sepira at once. She sighed, looked ahead, and before running, shouted at Guido a 'You better be right, or even that flame won't save you from my wrath!'

As he watched her fade into the night, Guido laughed.

"They look like interesting people," Guido turned back, and there, a few meters away, leaning against a tree, his sister was looking at the path Elena had taken with curiosity. "Doing all that being so few."

"What are you doing here? I thought we were going to meet later."

"That was the plan," a soft voice interrupted them. "But I'm afraid I couldn't hold on and had to come to see this grand finale."

"M-Miss Sepira?!"

Sepira smiled as she nonchalantly left a couple of unconscious bodies nearby— part of the men who had tried to escape. She would have wished to greet Elena, but she wouldn't have left if she did, which meant she wouldn't find out important things. And Sepira couldn't allow that.

"Their paths are connecting more and more. The future is near," Sepira commented. Nicoletta, at her side, cocked her head.

"The other members?" although she didn't quite understand why Sepira was doing all that or precisely what she was waiting for, Nicoletta understood that she saw something much bigger. Sepira saw a distant possibility that needed several conditions to be achieved. Something that depended on a specific group of people getting to know each other.

"If everything follows its course, two of them will soon see their path strongly interrupted. And the detour will have them closer," Sepira answered. "For now, the base is already created." She smiled. "The clam has already discovered its strength and has chosen to use it."

Physics in KHR works curiously. A black hole, although small, would have swallowed several things instantly, but it's shown to us with an incredibly smaller force than a real one. So, rather than a real one, it is more likely to be something similar, adapted to the person's powers using it: hence it's possible to create one without destroying half the world in the attempt and only absorbing the closest things.