Neopolitan: Beyond Ever After (The Girl From Another World) - Part 1

by Calavera de Comala

After being unable to ascend, Neo ends up stuck in Zenith, a world that is going around destroying other planets. Being forced to deal with a mysterious organization called The Zodiac, she will face an insane odyssey that tests the limits of her imagination. But perhaps, she will be able to finally find new friends and a purpose of her own to surpass the big adversities ahead.

12. The Park of Fireflies

The Park of Fireflies

"Max, the rain is subsiding." Galatea said with her usual deadpan voice, awakening me from an improvised siesta in my hotel room.

It was around 7 p.m. when I decided to rest a bit, after another day of investigations around Bright Island and heavy rain making progress difficult.

We had not achieved significant advances on the Beryl/Neopolitan side of things, but at least we had found out that there was another person involved in this case who could give us a lead to her.

The blue-haired gorilla.

It turned out that Beryl had met with her the same day she said farewell to Debbie. Beryl and this mysterious girl had been involved in acts of vandalism in Shiny Game Center, which resulted in one of its walls getting blown up.

Galatea and I decided to eat at Bianchi's during midday, giving ourselves another excuse to ask the owner for more information about the mysterious couple, but all Bianchi could provide us were a bunch of names that didn't deliver any results on the interweb, and phone numbers that didn't answer my calls.

"Any new weird cases to report involving short females, before heading out to scout?" I said to Galatea, after covering a yawn with one hand.

I glanced over at the big map of Bright Island I had taped into one of the walls, which pointed out which were the alleyways, streets, and other zones around Principal Park's area where Neopolitan could shapeshift without being detected by surveillance systems Galatea had access to. Thankfully, there weren't many places that offered her a blind spot.

"During the hour you were sleeping, 7 cases that satisfy the criteria you gave me were uploaded to the database of Bright Island's police department." Since Galatea was a gynoid that didn't need to rest, I told her to sit at the chair next to my bed and keep an eye out for any suspicious activities or crimes that could involve Neopolitan under disguise. "I will send a summary of the case files to your holodial."

"Gracias, Tea." Because I had slept dressed in my trousers, vest, and shirt, I only put my shoes on to grab the charging holodial at the room's desk.

"A teenager stole a bunch of clothes from a department store. Another one stole her father's car to escape from him. A woman got into a fight with a guard in another store. A third girl boarded a train without paying for a ticket. A rebellious teen is suspected of poisoning her teacher. Another woman didn't pay for her coffee orders..." I sat on the desk, analyzing if one of these cases could involve Neopolitan.

"I don't believe a terrorist like Neopolitan would ever think of committing such trivial acts of felony..." I said doubtful to my investigation partner, checking the videos attached to the summary.

"Momento! The one that didn't pay for a train ticket at Copper Suburb. Did she use an umbrella to hook herself to a moving wagon?" I showed my holodial playing the video to Tea.

"That recent case is being updated live by the local police department. Videos of the girl hanging to the train are going viral right now on social media." Galatea informed me of the ruckus being caused by this odd case.

I knew that Bright Island was filled with people of all kinds, but I could tell that this girl was doing something out of the ordinary even by this crazy city's standards.

"She arrived at Bright Island around 20 minutes ago, according to this video's timestamp. Tea, can you please collect all the footage that recorded this girl and check where she headed after leaving the train station?" I opened my social media accounts on the holodial while giving Tea a new task.

"Understood." Tea nodded, her red eyes beginning to shine. Possibly a sign that she was relying on more processing power than usual.

After some minutes of silence and checking all the videos I could find of the umbrella girl, Tea gave me a reply.

"Max, I lost track of her on the upper west side of Bright Island. The surveillance systems in that area have been turned off." Tea expressed some slight irritation with her reply.

Not again!

Something was going on in that area. Probably something bad. I quickly stepped up and looked at the map to confirm my hunch.

"Lumini Tower is there. I better give Bianchi's a call..." Dialing the business's number on my holodial, I waited for someone to pick up the phone. "The line is dead! My call isn't eve-"

A small temblor interrupted my panicked thoughts. Tea and I looked around the room, as the windows were affected by the vibrations of unknown origin. In less than 8 seconds, the mysterious trembling stopped.

Tea headed to the window, and I tried to discern what she was looking at. Despite the rainclouds still covering most of the moonlight, smoke was somewhat visible from the direction at which Lumini Tower was located, on the other side of Principal Park.

"Tea, I think I know where to find Neopolitan."

•

Tea and I headed to the block in which Lumini Tower was located (or at least, I hoped it was still located) on the well-illuminated box truck in which Ehekatl and my other bounty hunter equipment were stored.

"This is taking long. Even if the rain already stopped, the traffic in this city is still slow." I complained about our luck, as I changed into my gear in the back of the truck and Roberto's chauffeur drove the vehicle.

"Tea, we will head there with Ehekatl." I put on my mask and turned on its voice distortion function.

"Max, there are new developments to report from the police radio communications I intercepted." Tea informed me, as I sat on Ehekatl and turned on its engine.

In preparation for a battle, this time I had attached the sidecar to my vehicle, which was loaded with missiles and weapons. Tea could sit behind me, as we headed to Lumini Tower.

"Tell me about them." Not expecting good news, I still decided to learn about the terrible situation.

"Condor Tower collapsed. A unit tried to arrest a girl with an umbrella at the site, but it was attacked by a suspect identified as a male spider Faunus." Tea informed impassively.

I was glad that my suspicions about Lumini Tower collapsing were wrong, but something she said worried me.

"You said a spider Faunus?" Tea silently nodded to my question.

"Maldición! Roberto and his rumors were right!" I expressed my frustration.

This was worse than I expected. Neopolitan wasn't longer our only concern if the Faunus was who I suspected. His semblance was particularly dangerous in an island with such a high population density.

"Police units at the former construction site are engaging in combat with the dangerous suspect but are incapable of apprehending him. 8 casualties have been confirmed among their forces. The female suspect was last seen running to the streets west of Principal Park." If what Tea said was accurate, this meant Neopolitan was taking advantage of the chaos to escape from the authorities.

"Max, I can get to Lumini Tower's block in less than 2 minutes. I will head there to provide backup. I suggest you focus on tracking the female suspect." Despite making space for Tea to sit behind me, she refused to get on Ehekatl.

"Dividing our forces isn't a wise move, Tea." I tried to object, but she headed by herself to the doors of the truck's container.

"The longer one of us takes to the former construction site, the more causalities there will be." Tea made clear her intentions, waiting for me to give the order to open the doors so that she could fly ahead.

"… If it's Araknim, then he may be more dangerous than Neopolitan. He's killing cops for nourishment... But the female suspect may be carrying a dangerous bioweapon." After hesitating and thinking about our predicament for some seconds, I signaled Roberto's chauffeur to open the container's doors.

"Tea, go ahead. Provide the necessary backup to avoid more casualties, but do not push yourself if it turns out to be Araknim. I will catch up with you." After the doors opened, Tea turned on the propulsors in her 'boots' and flew out at a very high speed, while I drove out of the box with Ehekatl in anti-gravity mode.

To avoid the traffic and hitting vehicles, using my AAIS bracelet I boosted the gravity crystals in Ehekatl so that it flew 5 meters above the ground. I planned to fly over Principal Park just like Tea who was heading straight to Lumini's Tower block.

Just when I was crossing the park, a commotion in a nearby street caught my attention. An armored policeman, who had crashed into the doors of Shiny Game Center, was getting attacked by its staff. I slowed down Ehekatl to take a better look at the scene.

"You can say... He went through the door... Never mind, was the policeman chasing someone?" I tried to find if there was a potential suspect nearby when I saw some streets ahead a brunette girl on roller skates throwing money up in the air so that the crowd got in the way of more policemen.

"Is that short girl..." Wanting to confirm my suspicions, I flew Ehekatl in the direction of the alleyway the girl entered.

It wasn't just any random alleyway. It was one that Tea and I confirmed lacked any kind of surveillance system. An ideal place to use a semblance without being seen.

From a distance, I was able to tell that the girl's body was getting engulfed by a mass of pink shining crystals. The color of the suspect's aura. There was no mistake about it.

By jumping on Ehekatl's seat and with the help of my anti-gravity boots, I launched myself into the air. I commanded my vehicle to park on the rooftop of the 5-story building that made up the left side of the alleyway and shot a small grappling claw connected via aura to the AAIS bracelet on my right arm. The claw was able to grip the column of a water tower located on top of the building on the right side of the alleyway.

"Neopolitan!" I swung toward the girl and landed in front of her, then I ordered my claw to detach itself from the water tower and return to my right gauntlet.

She is... Very short.

But there was no mistake, her height coincided with the police lady's that I saw yesterday. Plus, she was also as 'tall' as Beryl and Neopolitan. The Ryuutairiku-styled umbrella in her right hand made her more suspicious. At least I was sure that she was the girl that traveled between Copper Suburb and Bright Island by hanging onto a train.

Not mentioning a word, the girl stepped back in shock. She dispelled the pink aura shards surrounding her body, but it was too late. As she blinked, one of her blue eyes turned white, although the other one remained blue.

"You are wearing a contact lens over your right eye." Both of us knew why.

It was to conceal her right pink eye in case she was left without aura. The girl started to shake in fear, confirming my deduction.

I was beginning to feel like the bad guy. It had been a while since I arrested or fought a woman, but the law was the law, and she was a mass-murdering bioterrorist that I needed to detain. It didn't matter how cute she looked.

…

But we stood looking at each other for the next seconds in complete silence. Neither she nor I made a move against each other. All she did was keep staring at different parts of my attire. While I saw her left eye return to a blue color once she relaxed a little.

The purpose of my Calavera battle attire was to intimidate criminals but had never met someone who was this shocked by my looks. Perhaps I scared her more than I needed to.

…

Ignoring all the noise produced by sirens, vehicles, and armored forces moving outside of the alleyway, we stared at each other for more seconds. It had been a minute since I landed in front of her.

"Not going to say anything in your defense?" I decided to finally break the awkward silence between us. "Then, I will arre-"

Out of nowhere, the short girl's attitude changed. She furiously tried to hit me with her closed umbrella. The dark alleyway was almost 2.5 meters wide, so it allowed me to dodge sideways her downward strike.

"I knew it, you are Neo-" Taking advantage of her roller skates, the girl tried to spin on the ground to kick me in the feet and make me lose my balance, but I jumped in time to dodge her second strike.

For the next minute, she kept trying to attack me, while I dodged her moves or parried them with my gauntlets and shin guards.

She knew how to fight. Her reflexes and moves her good, but she lacked speed and force behind her attacks.

She again tried to strike me vertically with her umbrella, but I blocked the attack with Chimalli, the shield on my left arm, timing correctly a purple aura boost to make her skate back 3 meters. For an instant, I saw her pink aura flicker despite not getting hit. A sign that the girl was exhausted and had few aura reserves left.

"You are too tired to fight." Ignoring my comment, she jumped into the wall to my right. Once the girl got close enough, she jumped off the wall and spun in the air to deliver a kick to my face, but I blocked it with my right gauntlet.

Timing correctly another aura boost to intercept her kick, I made her lose balance and fall back. She rolled back a couple of meters to make some distance between us and soften her landing, but I prepared a strike with my left hand aimed at her face.

Her eyes widened with fear, but when my hand was only 30 centimeters away from connecting to her face, the umbrella's canopy opened and stopped my strike.

My hesitation had cost me. If I had not pulled my punch, I would have launched it with enough speed to land a hit on her.

Idiota, what was I thinking? She's a criminal. Hit her without hesitation, Max.

I tried to land fast boxing punches on her, but she avoided entirely a confrontation by elegantly flipping backward.

Before I resumed my series of attacks, a pain in the chest called my attention. My heart was starting to beat faster, and the rhythm of my breathing was becoming irregular.

There's something wrong with my body. Why am I getting tired so soon?

The girl began to pant, while her aura flickered again.

Blaming my premature exhaustion on my mirror neurons imitating her irregular breathing, with quick steps I closed the distance between us and used uppercuts to strike her from below.

Neopolitan timing correctly my strikes dodged in a girlish manner each of my punches in the correct direction. She moved to my left to dodge my right uppercut, and to my right to dodge my left one. I switched to hooks adjusted to her height, but she sweetly skated backward each time I tried to connect a hit.

Enhancing a jab with my aura, I launched a fast strike to her face, but she opened her umbrella's canopy again and used the force of my hit to spin several times with the help of her rolling skates, making the distance between us. Once she stopped spinning, she placed the umbrella over her right shoulder and bowed to me while extending diagonally her left arm. She briefly reminded me of an ice skater.

The pain in my chest and breathing got worse.

It's the pressure! The pressure of capturing her fast is getting to me. I need to relax. Focus, Max. Do not let negative feelings get in the way, otherwise, it will reawaken and go out of control again.

The stress of capturing Neopolitan was getting to me. I needed to keep calm and lower my anxiety. I had to see this as just another typical mission and end it as efficiently as possible.

...

After staring again at each other in silence for 10 seconds approximately, I came up with a tactic to arrest her, but I needed to make the girl lower her guard.

I made a feint with my legs, letting the suspect take the initiative. As she roller-skated to close the 5-meter gap between us, she kicked something in the ground. It was a bucket next to a pile of garbage. The contents of the bucket flew towards my helmet's visor. Pieces of paper and a banana peel obstructed my view for a second.

What a dirty trick, but maybe this is what I needed.

The girl's umbrella landed on my head, then on my neck. Thinking that the attack was over, the umbrella hit me next in the stomach, groin, and knees. Even if she had enhanced her strikes with aura, the protection I wore and my aura absorbed most of the damage, but I pretended to be in absolute pain and fell to my knees.

Taking advantage of this, the girl proceeded to skate quickly out of the alleyway, turning her back to me.

"Got you, chaneque!" I activated the magnetic mechanism in Chimalli and directed its force of attraction to the roller skates the girl was wearing.

Just when she was about to reach the end of the alleyway, Chimalli started to pull her back to me. With despair, the girl looked back and tried to skate away. As a last-ditch effort, she tried to enhance her foot movements with aura, but all her body did was flicker again.

Showing signs of fatigue, her frantic moves slowed down. I shot my grappling claw at her denim jacket and pulled her faster in my direction, restraining her from behind.

She fought for another minute, while I tried to put handcuffs on her.

"Stop it! You are only making things worse!" Multiple times she kicked and punched me, but due to fatigue and her low aura reserves, the suspect couldn't give herself the luxury of hitting me with strong strikes.

I had a hunch that she was experiencing the usual side effects of relying on an aura boost, such as physical exhaustion. She possibly had pushed herself a lot tonight before I caught her.

"I will not hurt you! I'm only going to arrest you!" The girl bit my arms and hands several times.

"Niña latosa!" Raised as a gentleman, I decided to not hit back at an exhausted opponent and prioritized putting the handcuffs on her wrists. Letting myself be hit in the helmet by the umbrella in her right hand, I restrained her right arm.

She also tried to kick my body to jump away from me, but I wrapped my right arm around the skating girl's torso to catch her.

"Give up, already! You will only hurt yourself!" The girl turned back her head to look at me.

She was teary-eyed and her chin was trembling, causing her mouth to open a bit. The pain in my chest intensified.

"Do not give me that pity look. I will not fall for that." I avoided her gaze, as I scolded her. "You shouldn't have killed all those persons back in Sally Island."

After groaning with internal anger, she hit me in the visor with the back of her head. Considering that I felt pain from that attack, that probably meant that she also hurt herself, even if we both were wearing helmets.

"Hija de la..." But I ignored the pain, swiftly grabbing the handcuffs and her left wrist to finally detain her. Both of her arms were now handcuffed behind her back.

"You are definitely the opposite of a nice girl." I said to her with frustration.

As I allowed her feet to touch the ground again, she answered back with an angry pout. Ignoring her silent protests, I wrapped her torso with my left arm this time.

"Let's go up." I shot my grappling claw and used it to elevate us to the rooftop on which Ehekatl was parked.

•

"Tea, how are things on your end? I caught the umbrella girl. Judging by her semblance and aura's color, she seems to be Neopolitan." I spoke to my gynoid partner through the comm device in my helmet.

The Doktor made me the favor of connecting it to one of Tea's communication channels.

"Your suspicions were correct. The dangerous suspect is Araknim. I'm following his tracks to capture him and avoid more casualties." Through my helmet, I received pictures that Tea took with the cameras in her eyes of Araknim surrounded by wounded (or deceased) policemen.

"It was him!? Tea, wai-" A sudden movement prevented me from finishing the new command. It was the umbrella girl trying to get away from my arm.

I closed the communication channel to speak with the girl in peace.

"Stop trying to run away!" Doing my best not to hurt her, I grabbed one of her arms and directed her to Ehekatl. For good measure, I contacted my investigation partner again.

"The sooner I'm done with her arrest, the sooner we can deal together with Araknim." I placed the umbrella next to Ehekatl and sat the girl on its seat to immobilize her feet with leg cuffs, but she kicked fast in all directions using the wind dust installed on her roller skates.

"You are incredibly tenacious, chaneque." I admitted with a mix of irritation and admiration, finally managing to catch her ankles and put leg cuffs on them.

Seeing her restrained on Ehekatl's seat made me feel like I had captured a mischievous doll that had run away from a toy store. All I needed was a ribbon or wrapping paper, and I could give her as a present to Carla.

"Un momento... Where's my bracelet?" Noticing that my left wrist felt lighter and more flexible, I looked at my arm to confirm that the AAIS bracelet that helped me drive Ehekatl was gone.

A glance at the female suspect solved the enigma.

"You stole it while I was handcuffing you." The girl feigned ignorance and turned away her gaze, whistling and looking far into the distance.

"This is what I get for being polite." I complained before looking at her body from different angles... To search for my bracelet, of course.

Not being able to find it at first glance, I decided to change my approach.

"I don't want to undress you. We either do this the hard way or the easy way." The girl continued looking away, blushing with an irritated look.

"Is it on that backpack?" As my hand was about to reach it, the girl threw to the ground my AAIS bracelet. But I stood in silence after picking it up.

"... This is a fake. You were planning on stealing my ride." I said irked, crushing the aura construct made of pink shards with my left hand.

The girl looked surprised at me. I figured out her ruse by taking note that the replica bracelet lacked some singular scratches that the original one received during previous battles. An oversight that was likely to be blamed on the lack of time to create a more accurate replica.

"Hand me the real bracelet, please." This time more relaxed, I gestured for her to deliver my property with the right hand.

The girl clicked her tongue, again not bothering to look at me. But a slight movement of her eyes betrayed her. I turned to look at the object she saw for an instant.

"It was so obvious." Disappointed in myself for not realizing it sooner, I grabbed the umbrella and opened it. My bracelet dropped, along the girl's jaw.

"Anyone clever can see through your tricks." The girl rolled her eyes with annoyance hearing my taunt.

"Your sleight of hand is impressive, I admit." My statement didn't improve her mood.

"I will deliver you to the nearest police department. There you will be processed and questioned about Sally Island's tragedy and your bioweapons." As I sternly explained to her the situation, she began to move her lips to form syllables with a concerned look in her eyes.

After a couple of tries, I was able to guess correctly the word she was trying to tell me.

"Innocent? You claim innocence!?" The suspect rapidly nodded to my question multiple times.

"Sure, and I'm an alien from another world." I ignored her trickery, putting on my left bracelet.

My remark for some reason made her awkwardly smile and wince at the same time, tilting her head.

After verifying that she wasn't carrying a dangerous device in her backpack and while I was securing her umbrella to the bike, I casually noticed the girl looking with wonder at something. A tiny, vivid yellow light flew slowly in her direction.

"A firefly. Never seen one before?" The restrained girl sitting on my bike shook her head, as the insect flew closer. Without thinking too hard about it, I casually continued talking with her.

"Well, it is rare to see them in very populated cities, but the park near-" Its light suddenly changed to red.

[The tragic collapse of a suspension bridge in a city of U.N.N.M.]

"LOOK OUT!" A recent disaster's memory took over my brain. I jumped between the girl and the insect, activating the hard light shield of Chimalli.

A blinding light followed by an explosion was visible on the other side of my dust shield. The 'firefly' had exploded with the same intensity as a dust grenade or 2 kilograms of dynamite. The loud noise and shockwave broke even the windows of neighboring buildings.

"I knew it." I said with anger.

Turning my head to look at the girl, I confirmed that she was okay, but confusion and shock dominated her face. The rooftop portion below the center of the explosion had been damaged enough for us to see the interior of the building's last floor.

"Aw, crap. I was so close." Distorted robotic voices surrounded us. Despite its glitch effect, I could tell that the speaker had a hoarse and deep voice.

"That was low. Show up yourself, cobarde!" I shouted to the air, deactivating my shield to save up aura and hard light dust.

A forced laugh filled the air as dozens of yellow lights flying around or placed over the rooftop turned on. All of them were 'fireflies' comparable to fire dust grenades.

"Silver Moth." I spoke the name of the elite bounty hunter who tried to blow us up.

"Bingo! You recognize my modus operandi." The speaking fireflies flying in circles moved closer to us. The mocking voice of their master was all we could perceive of him.

"How couldn't I? That recent tragedy reeked of you." While I spoke, the confused girl had recovered from her shock and was gesturing for me to remove her restraints.

I ignored her request, mostly to focus on the enemy's bombs.

"What an honor that the Calavera from Comala has heard of me." My critique was taken as a compliment by the crazy hunter.

"Nearly 50 persons died in the collapse of that bridge. All those victims, just to get rid of one criminal with a bounty." I scorned the enemy.

"Don't lecture me, Calavera!" Three of the fireflies got closer to our faces, their lights turning red, as their creator's furious voice came out of them. I could see better the metallic bodies of the insects. Their small jaws opened menacingly, as they released a hissing sound. "You know the guild's rules. The bounty is always the top priority. The higher the amount, the more justifiable the means. Why do you think I am still free?"

"And what about no stealing the bounty of another hunter? How convenient that you forgot that." I shrugged while making sure that the suspect remained close to me and didn't approach the explosive insects.

"That rule only applies when the target has been well secured by the hunter. Do not think you can deceive me." All the fireflies on the rooftop changed to the color red, indicating that they could explode at any moment. "You haven't broken her aura yet."

"Silver Moth, it's already flickering. The blast of your fireflies could kill her. Reminder there's no bounty for her dead. I haven't even confirmed if she's Neopolitan." Hearing my words, she closed her eyes and shook her head to deny being the infamous terrorist.

Of course, I knew that she was lying to save herself, while I was lying to save us both.

"I will take the risk. If I'm the one to break Neopolitan's aura, then the bounty and honor of capturing her is mine, by the guild's rules and International Zenithean Code." I hated what he said, but it was right.

"And I already made sure that she's Neopolitan. I saw her fight with Araknim and how she brought down Condor Tower." At least I knew now who destroyed the defective building.

Add that one to the list of Neopolitan's crimes.

"Why didn't you attempt to arrest her back then?" I approached Neopolitan by slowly walking backward.

"Just go away, Calavera, and leave the girl behind." All the fireflies began to make hissing noises, closing the distance with us. They weren't even 3 meters away from our faces.

"Were you scared of Araknim? Or of Neopolitan?" I switched the mode of my right bracelet to start supplying aura to the suspect's AAIS bracelet.

"You are an opportunist that wanted to take her down at her weakest." While I was annoying the mad bomber to keep him distracted, our bracelets started vibrating.

"I won't repeat myself! This is the last chance I will give you to leave uninjured!" Due to my proximity to Neopolitan, the fireflies were hesitating to get closer or not, despite their controller threatening me.

After directing her my aura with hand movements under my jorongo, I felt a link activating between our bracelets. Neopolitan had pushed the button on her bracelet to accept my energy. I decided to transfer some of my aura reserves to her so that she could tank more than one explosion, in case I screwed up.

"Por cierto, I take offense that you consider stealing the girl from me easier than stealing her from Araknim, since..." Neopolitan knew that I had a plan. She decided to hop to my left side. "I'm the one who put him behind bars one year ago."

"Calavera!" Silver Moth became enraged due to his intimidation tactics not working.

"Not like I would ever deliver her to you alive." I wrapped Neopolitan with my jorongo and left arm, taking out a dust grenade with the other one.

"What!?" The fireflies flew away some meters to open some distance, under the impression that I was using The Trillion-Bounty Girl as a hostage.

"I rather kill us both than let another bounty hunter take the credit for her capture." I raised the arm holding the dust grenade. "Goodbye, Silver Moth."

"Wai-" Not bothering to hear his protest, I activated the device.

Timing the explosion of the light dust grenade in my hand with the catalyst smoke charges released by Ehekatl via remote control, I created the illusion that I blew us up with a big blinding explosion.

For a moment, it became impossible to see what was going on in the rooftop, unless one had special detection systems, such as Tea's. But Silver Moth likely took seconds figuring out which special visor he required to confirm our deaths, from wherever he was watching us. And that was assuming that the light explosion had not hurt his eyes.

At the same time, I had turned off all the visors in my helmet to protect my eyes and used my jorongo to cover Neopolitan's. Since I counted the steps while taunting the rival hunter, I blindly jumped with her into the building through the hole the first firefly had left behind. Ironically, it was Silver Moth himself who had created for us an escape route.

Inside the building, I could hear the sirens of police cars and fire trucks approaching the place. I turned on again my helmet's visor and switched the mode of my right AAIS bracelet to remove the suspect-

"Where are your restraints?" Grinning, Neopolitan swiftly handed the cuffs to me with her free right hand. "How did you- Ah, forget it! Let's run!"

We had landed in the storage room of a closed business. After grabbing Neopolitan's hand to avoid her escaping, I broke the door that led to the hallway.

"Let's jump through that… Window..." Neopolitan and I looked at each other with discomfort, after I paused my statement.

To defenestrate ourselves?

Somehow, I sensed that we had the same thought at that precise moment.

Taking the lead, I ran with Neo to the window at the end of the hallway and used my armored body to break through it. With the assistance of my left bracelet, I had placed right on time Ehekatl in our falling trajectory for us to land on its seat. I accelerated and continued boosting its gravity crystals to escape in the direction of Principal Park.

If we managed to cross it, then we would be only a couple of blocks away from the nearest police station.

But I perceived something off as we were flying over the park. Even if the smoke on the rooftop had not entirely cleared up, the fireflies should have been moving to some degree by now.

"Neopolitan, brace your-" I didn't finish my warning before a strong hit out of nowhere knocked us and Ehekatl down. We fell into the crown of a 15-meter oak tree, while the bike and the girl's umbrella landed on an empty meadow.

I failed to grasp what just happened. I was on alert looking for anything that could attack us while we were riding the bike, but I didn't see anything.

"Are you alright?" She made a 'more or less' hand gesture while readjusting her helmet and rubbing her left arm.

If I hadn't shared with her some aura, she would have been knocked out by the impact. Whatever hit us it moved at a speed faster than a bullet.

While I was looking for the enemy or the source of that last attack, Neopolitan began to do hand signals with excitement.

"Ay, no." And the truth that I didn't want to recognize delivered another strong hit to me.

...

Neopolitan was mute for real. She didn't want to be handcuffed, because it was the only way she could communicate with me.

"Sorry, I do not know sign language." I admitted embarrassed. The girl crossed her arms and rolled her eyes.

The kind of expression Carla and my mother did when they were disappointed in me. Must be a universal trait among all women.

Neopolitan then pointed with her index figure to her chest and then to her head.

"You got an idea?" Neopolitan nodded with a smile.

That was an easy one. Don't pat yourself on the back yet, Max.

Neopolitan then joined her hands and flapped them, as if they were wings. She then pointed to her eyes and shook her head.

"Silver Moth is invisible to the naked eye." She gave me a thumbs-up for guessing correctly on the first try again. "If he counts with invisibility equipment, that explains why we didn't see what hit us."

I needed to be on alert and turn on my thermal visor whenever the enemy relied on suspicious attacks.

She made more gestures. It was beginning to feel like we were playing charades. Neopolitan happily pointed with her right index finger to herself and with her left one to me. Making a circular motion, her right index figure now pointed to me and her left one to herself.

"You and me? I'm lost." She held her palms up, telling me to wait. Seconds later, we both were engulfed in her pink crystal shards.

Neopolitan had taken advantage of our aura interlink to use her semblance on me without the need for physical contact. Once the shards dispersed, I saw in Neopolitan's place... Myself.

Mik Calavera.

Before I could inquire, I felt a strange constrictive sensation surrounding my body. My aura field had been covered by something... Pink.

Transparent crystals with a slight pinkish hue.

I tried moving my arms in front of my standard visor, but they were invisible despite still being there. Next, I became aware of a small pair of arms, placed lower than my invisible ones. The slim, girlish limbs had white skin and were wearing brown leather gloves.

"Am I..." Then, I looked at my torso. A young brunette's head and the rest of her body were being projected by my aura field. It felt like I was wearing a special hologram suit that displayed the current fake identity of Neopolitan, the roller-skating brunette.

"This is..." I turned to look back at Neopolitan, as she anxiously moved the fingers of her clasped hands, waiting for me to complete my assessment of her semblance. "Amazing!"

Her body relaxed, seeming relieved by my response.

[If you meet her, do not let your guard down. She will use every trick in the book or method available to evade justice. Do not attempt to communicate, sympathize, or reason with her.]

But I realized that without thinking about it, I had complimented the bioterrorist's semblance. I had let my feelings cloud my judgment for a moment. Even if another bounty hunter was my current biggest threat, I couldn't let myself be fooled by the apprehended mass murderer. It didn't matter how Neopolitan looked or that she was mute. This was probably all an act to gain my trust and escape the moment I lowered my guard.

You are a bounty hunter, the embodiment of law, order, and justice. Do not sympathize with her. She's an evil enemy. An irredeemable criminal. Focus on the mission, Max- No, Mik Calavera.

"I understand your plan, and I think I have a tool that will make it work even better." I pulled a colibri with a wire attached to it out of my leg bag.

Neopolitan, disguised as me, seemed to stare at it with curiosity. I put it in the palm of her hand so that she could take a closer look at the bird-shaped device. Using my right AAIS bracelet, which I was previously using to recharge hers, I sent aura to the colibri for it to fly around her.

Taking her by surprise, the 'bird' tied her body quickly, so that she couldn't move her arms and legs. Forcing the colibri to pull with more force the steel wire, it proceeded to tie her to the trunk of the tree, being careful to not break her Mik Calavera disguise.

"You want me to be your decoy? Bien, but you will stay here. I don't need fighting partners, especially one that is likely to become a liability." While I prepared to jump, disguised Neopolitan tried to kick and move her arms to escape, but the wire was well secured to the oak. "We will pretend that Neopolitan tricked Calavera, left him tied to a tree, and stole his bike."

"And don't worry, I will take the fight away from this place. Try not to move, to call less attention." Not minding the very rude gestures she made with her fingers, I jumped down.

•

I saw in the distance a swarm of yellow fireflies approaching the park. They were probably being used to survey the area in search of the Trillion-Bounty Girl.

"Tea, where are you? I tied Neopolitan to a tree in Principal Park, she's now disguised as me. Silver Moth, an elite bounty hunter, tried to snatch her away from me using lethal means." I reopened the communication channel with my investigation partner.

"I will send you the coordinates so that you can pick Neopolitan up and take her to a police station, while I distract the mad bomber." After being done sending my location to Tea, I hurried to the bike. Several of the 'fireflies' detected my presence and started to fly in my direction.

"I am currently unable to lend assistance. Once I subdue the violent suspect, I will fly there." I heard pure chaos on the other side of the communication channel. The screams of many persons, gunshots, and Araknim's maniacal laugh contrasted with Tea's calm voice.

Our predicament was worse than I expected.

Both of us now were busy dealing with out-of-control bounty hunters, instead of prioritizing together Neopolitan's arrest. Neither Tea nor I could take the girl to a police department. I wasn't even sure if the gynoid could defeat The Desert Spider without having to rely on blowing herself up with a nuclear explosion.

"Tea, if you cannot defeat Araknim, do not self-destruct. It's an order. I will deal with Silver Moth and Neopolitan, and then head there." I began to run as fast as I could to the meadow in front of the oak we fell into and used my bracelet to call Ehekatl. Luckily, the hit had not damaged its engine or any other vital system.

I jumped into its seat and sped up, but a swarm of red fireflies was already chasing after me and hundreds of other ones were flying over the walls and exits of Principal Park. Even if it was past 8 p.m., there were still handfuls of civilians dispersed across the park with an approximate area of 3.5 square kilometers.

Some of them glanced as I flew past them. They weren't aware that each of the fireflies in the park was a remote-controlled explosive device. Many innocent civilians were staring at the 'shiny insects' with awe or taking pictures and videos of them.

Silver Moth had pretty much turned a huge chunk of Principal Park into a landmine field without anyone else noticing it.

"Do not think about escaping, Neopolitan. Light Show consists of several thousand of my precious creations. Under my command, I can blow them all up at once. And I don't mean only the fireflies in this park, but also the ones in the surrounding streets." Silver Moth said through the devices giving me chase.

He had cut off the exits and was using every bystander in this part of the island as a hostage. Okay, our predicament was way worse than I expected.

It didn't make sense that he could control at once this many fireflies equipped with dust explosives. There was no possible way a single individual could manipulate hundreds of these devices via AAIS bracelets. According to databases of The Hunter's Guild and testimonies of colleagues who had met Silver Moth, he was only one person. Not a group of many hunters. There had to be more to Light Show than it appeared at first glance.

"It must be a semblance, which means he is close. Probably spying on me while invisible." Turning on my thermal visor, I began to search across the park for any suspicious shape that could be him.

As I continued flying to the north, 10 meters above the ground, I took out Ometecuhtli, one of my purple handguns, and started shooting straight up into the air. The bystanders began to panic and ran out of the park.

Flying over a small pond with no one present, I shot down one of the red fireflies behind me, triggering an explosion to alert everyone about the presence of explosives.

"Again, worried for civilians? Do you think you can play heroine after what you did in Sally Island, hypocrite?" Confused by the former question from the fireflies behind me, I continued searching for any suspicious source of heat in the area.

After turning my head around, I caught a glimpse of a mysterious being flying from a Migdal-styled castle near the pond to the rooftop of a museum with Beaux-Arts architecture.

"Silver Moth, The Terror in the Skies." Shooting another red firefly to make it explode over a big reservoir, I used the smoke it generated as a cover to perform a U-turn with my bike and fly towards the Museum of Art, located on the eastern edge of the park.

I managed to avoid the swarm as I sped up to reach the garden bar portion of the roof on which the figure had landed.

"No, this must be a mistake." The invisible figure said, as I jumped off Ehekatl and took out the cup hilt of my espada ropera, activating its enhanced hard-light crystals to manifest an 80 centimeters-long thin blade. "There's no way you can see-"

I enhanced my stab movement with aura to hit the mysterious figure. Even if it tried to dodge my attack, it had miscalculated where the tip of the blade was aiming for. My stab landed on the enemy's chest, making its invisibility equipment malfunction.

The figure screamed and flew 6 meters away, before landing again on the rooftop's garden. I turned off my thermal visor, as my opponent's invisibility suit glitched and its crimson aura flickered a bit.

"This doesn't make sense! Your semblance shouldn't allow you to see invisible enemies!" The angry owner of the robotic, hoarse voice turned off his invisibility system.

Silver Moth at last showed himself.

He was a man 2.10 meters tall wearing a special armored tactical suit. Most of its armor plates were of color silver. Underneath the few unprotected portions of his body, he was wearing white trousers and a jacket of the same color. His face was fully covered by a helmet shaped like the head of a mouth that had two big, glowing red eyes and a couple of 'hairy' black antennae, which I almost confused for big horns. While most of the helmet covering his face was silver-colored, some of its highlights were black. Around his neck, he had a very fluffy (or hairy?) white collar, probably inspired by his animal motif.

Like Tea, the guy didn't have feet. Below his knees, he was wearing black stilts that were shaped like the legs of a moth, with sharp teeth that could be used to cut opponents while kicking. On his back, he had a retracted pair of white hairy wings, with an estimated length of 2 meters. The wings seemed to be organic, so this indicated that he was a Faunus. Between his two wings, I managed to see briefly a jetpack with glowing purple and pale green lines, shaped like a silver bullet pointing downwards.

He was certainly... Unusual, to say the least.

"Looks like our little game of hide-and-seek is over. But you know, it's usually the hunter that chases the bounty. Not the other way around, Neopolitan." Silver Moth calmed himself, flapping very quickly for an instant his wings without taking off.

"A-" I shut my mouth before it was too late.

I could not talk, otherwise, it would break the illusion that I was Neopolitan. Since I wasn't sure if he knew that The Trillion-Bounty Girl was mute, I needed to play it safe. Besides, her semblance likely didn't alter the sound of one's voice, which meant even more reasons to remain silent.

But I needed to reply in some form that was in character to fool him. Remembering Beryl's viral videos and my brief meeting with Neopolitan, I chose to:

A) Bow elegantly to him.

B) Make a rude gesture with my fingers.

C) Do an awesome gymnastic backflip.

D) Give him a cute curtsy.

E) All of the above.

As much as I wanted to pick B, it probably wasn't wise to piss off someone that had planted explosives all over the park, so I went with option A.

"What a clumsy bow." The insect hunter criticized with disdain my body movements.

Should have picked B.

"But you deserve some praise. You decided to stop running away from me. And better yet, you tricked that idiot Calavera." Silver Moth started taking shots at me while releasing small laughs, not being aware that I wasn't his target.

Hijo de la... I will make you regret your words.

"Always knew that he was the kind of dumbass that would let himself be charmed by a girl's looks." I began to grip harder the hilt of my sword, Espectro.

I may break my 'no kill' rule tonight.

"Olvidados are so incompetent. Always taking siestas and losing wars." I was greeting my teeth by now.

Focus... On... The... Mission... Repress... Feelings.

"And bragging about their food, when it was us who perfected their tacos by frying the-" I didn't let him finish the most insulting statement of them all.

Never mess with Olvido's food!

I used aura to enhance the gravity and wind shards in my boots, Ilhuicatl, to jump at him 10 times faster than the speed of sound.

Sensing my hostility, he turned on two 1-meter long, hard-light blades shaped like stingers that came out from his gauntlets. Again, he tried to stop my diagonal downward slash, but he miscalculated the direction of Espectro. I landed two slashes on his body, to finish with a sword thrust that hit his stomach.

He flew back 5 meters into the sky, not descending this time.

"What the hell!? I should have intercepted the sword in your hand!" Silver Moth was furious and confused, flapping his wings so fast, that it was impossible to see them without an aura-enhanced vision.

I only worked out what was giving him so much trouble.

Neopolitan's projection was holding Espectro in her right girlish hand, but that wasn't the real one. The tangible weapon that was doing real damage to him was being held by my right arm. Thanks to her semblance, my real arms and weapons were invisible, while the enemy focused on stopping the attacks of the visible, but fake Neopolitan's arms. And the best part was that the fake arms mimicked with precision my movements and weapons.

I cursed how useful her semblance was, no wonder she was giving the entire world so much trouble. But right now, her powers were working to my advantage. For great justice!

"Whatever trick you are using won't save you from this!" Raising slightly his arms to aim at me, the inferior part of his gauntlets started to glow with a very pale green.

Switching my helmet's mode to night vision, I was able to detect the enemy spraying a liquid, which evaporated quickly when combined with the wind dust stored within his gauntlets.

Realizing his horrifying plan, I sealed off any opening of my helmet and reinforced the aura field surrounding my body. Silver Moth followed his new strategy by launching himself at me and swinging his 1-meter blades to hit me.

I managed to parry his first ambush. After flying some meters up in the air, he repeated the process, launching himself at me again. He continued swinging his blades and spreading the evaporated liquid each time he charged at me. The Faunus repeated the process more times with near high-hypersonic speeds, while I continued to either dodge or parry his swings.

Adapting to his speed and attack patterns after almost a minute, I managed to land a couple of slashes on his body every time he missed a swing at me.

"Why is it not having any effect!? Your body should be showing signs of symptoms!" The mad bomber protested, flying some meters up into the air after receiving a stab in his left shoulder during another failed charge.

"There's no way you are immune to sarin gas!" And he casually admitted using a banned weapon of mass destruction against me. "The amount you breathed should be enough to screw up your neuromuscular junctions and make your body rigid."

He wasn't exaggerating.

Sarin gas was a volatile nerve agent that could cause muscle malfunction with only being breathed. While exposure to sarin gas through my skin wasn't a concern, due to my combat attire and aura field, it could have still affected me via breathing. He was aiming to either asphyxiate me or make me feel nauseous, but thanks to my helmet and suit counting with an airtight mode, my lungs and diaphragm had been spared from any damage.

A bounty hunter relying on sarin gas in a public space to capture a bioterrorist was offensive to common sense and human decency. Along with the use of nuclear weapons, in theory, lethal chemical weapons were banned under the International Zenithean code and by The Hunters' Guild, but now and then certain bounty hunters relied on such methods to immobilize or kill their targets.

"You must be using your shards to obstruct the passage of sarin gas into your body." Silver Moth released an audible sigh of disappointment, still flying 7 meters above the museum's rooftop. "I wanted to end this fight quickly before others arrived here to steal my prize, but I suppose going with something flashier is unavoidable."

You are who wanted to steal the girl from me in the first place! You don't have any right to complain about others doing the same to you!

That is what I wanted to tell him, but I couldn't break my character.

In mid-air, Silver Moth crossed his legs and arms to crouch, his body shining with a crimson aura. Shrieking to the skies, he widely extended his limbs again. His accumulated red energy released a visible shockwave that spread across the entire rooftop's garden bar. Several small red lights lit up all over the place.

"Good thing I had preemptively planted my companions in this garden." The flying hunter mocked me, as his aura activated the fireflies that had been waiting for his master's command.

"It's a shame to blow up this section of the museum, but I'm sure that Bright Island's authorities will understand that it's a small price to pay for the sake of capturing you." As he was about to fly away and snap his fingers, probably to trigger hundreds of explosions at once, I jumped into the air and used my right bracelet to close the distance between us.

Earlier during the fight, anticipating that he was going to try flying away from me, I had shot at one of his armored thighs with my grappling claw. Because Neopolitan's disguise concealed my gauntlets, he probably wasn't aware that I had done that. And neither did he know that I kept performing my jumps using Ilhuicatl's gravity and wind crystals.

"Since when you can fly without constructs!?" In less than one second, I had been able to jump high and close enough to his body, charging Espectro with all the accumulated energy in my kinetic armor, Tepeyollotl.

Not answering his stupefied question, I slashed the moth with my sword and shot him down into one of the baseball fields, located in a big lawn area in the center of the park. His attempt to stop my sword's slice had been futile again.

I landed on the muddy field to continue fighting him. The few people left in the park were already running to the closest exits, which meant that I had one less thing to worry about.

"This isn't how you fought Araknim at all. Your fighting style changed completely." Silver Moth stood up, calling around 120 fireflies to set up a barrier between us.

At least my fighting style doesn't consist of throwing dynamite and sarin gas everywhere.

"Unless..." Shrieking and flapping his wings, the hunter flew 2 meters above the ground while performing an aura boost.

The gusts he produced with his aura were so strong, that mud began to spread all over the field. Without losing sight of the enemy, I did my best to hold my position and used my arms to cover- Oh, mierda.

Mud fell over my aura field, even on the body portions that had been turned invisible by Neopolitan's semblance. I could see the shape of my real arms without the need for a thermal visor, and so did my enemy.

"The shape of that aura field doesn't fit Neopolitan. That oversized pointy sombrero could only belong to you, Calavera!" With joy, Silver Moth unveiled my tactic.

"The sword in your real hand was the weapon attacking me, not the one in her projected arms." The rival hunter was also now capable of perceiving Espectro. "If it weren't for her troublesome semblance, I wouldn't have taken this long to uncover your trick."

"I suppose there's no use in keeping silence anymore." I decided to start talking since my cover had been blown.

"But why, why did you decide to fight in her place? Why are you cooperating with the bounty target, and where is she?" Fireflies that weren't part of the barrier, continued flying and searching for the girl across the park.

"Do not misunderstand my actions, Silver Moth. I am simply fighting you to prioritize her survival, along with everyone else's. The use of sarin gas further convinced me that this was the right decision." The only good thing about his aura boost was that it had removed any remains of his chemical weapon from my body.

"As for her current location, all you need to know is that she's been firmly secured. I will deliver her to the authorities. Alive." I raised my sword for intimidation, scolding him for his modus operandi. "Your cruel methods cannot accomplish this mission without casualties."

"Arrogant and naïve. You must be so young, considering your childish ideals. I don't know how Olvidados do things in their backward land, but in the real world of bounty hunters, capturing the target at any cost is the top priority. As long as you get the job done and properly secure the target, any method is fair." Silver Moth's aura field became visible. A crimson shine covered his body.

"My fireflies haven't detected a police officer or soldier detaining anyone in the park and its surroundings, which means... She's still here, right?" I refused to confirm his suspicions.

I didn't like where this conversation was going, and the fireflies of his barrier turning red wasn't a good sign.

"Then, I still have a chance to capture Neopolitan myself! If somebody asks questions about your death, I will pin the blame on her!" He excitedly announced his dark intentions and commanded 10 of his fireflies to fly at me.

In an instant, they closed the 7-meter distance, moving at hypersonic speeds. I went for Omecihuatl with my left hand, and not taking chances, I quickly shot down with an aura-enhanced dust bullet one of the fireflies. Reactivating Chimalli's hard-light shield in time, I covered myself from the series of explosions that followed my shot.

The chain reaction blew up the 10 approaching fireflies, but even with the protection of my shield I lost my balance and was blown away due to the proximity of the explosion and its shockwave. After being sent flying 5 meters, I landed on my feet, only to notice behind the explosion's smoke that Silver Moth was gone.

"Light Show is my weapon of choice. With it, I can attack using many different formations, such as this one." The mad bomber talked through his remaining 110 red fireflies while hiding somewhere in the park.

I was about to shoot again one of the red fireflies to trigger another chain of explosions but the 110 'insects' dispersed to form a shape resembling a dome with a radius of 5 meters to trap me.

"This amount is enough to blow up a dozen houses." The enemy had the courtesy of informing me how powerful was the formation he was planning to attack me with.

"Out of curiosity, if I give you Neopolitan on a silver plate, will you let me live?" I asked the crazy moth to see if he would consider having mercy on me.

"Too late, Calavera. I will find her myself." Hearing his reply, I didn't waste a moment and boosted my purple aura by 100% to create strong winds to keep his fireflies at bay.

"That alone won't work, you need more force to repel them." The insects mocked my efforts as they approached me slowly, closing the 5-meter distance. "Good riddance."

Hearing his obnoxious voice got me fired up. I concentrated my aura on Chimalli at full tilt and punched the ground with my left hand. The fireflies took advantage of my aura no longer producing gusts to fly in my direction.

When they were a single meter from reaching me, the hundred red fireflies were hit by a strong purple shockwave unleashed by my attack to the ground, which moved them 15 meters away from my location. The equivalent of 220 kilograms of dynamite exploded around me.

If it weren't for my special suit, I probably would have suffered some ear and lung damage. The blasts had detonated close enough to destroy only the aura shards that disguised me as Neo.

"What happened!? I didn't order them to scatter before exploding!" Waiting for the smoke of the explosions to clear up, I heard Silver Moth's astonished voice, unable to analyze what had gone wrong with his formation.

"An attractive tactic." I walked out from the cloud of smoke, using my sombrero to disperse it along my way.

"Calavera, you are alive! How!?" I saw one yellow firefly in front of me. The mad bomber was using it to talk without showing himself. "What kind of semblance you possess!?"

"Semblance? Don't have one. Those things are overrated." I replied casually, using Espectro to cut down the insect before it turned red.

I didn't do it out of anger though, but to confirm that if I attacked a firefly while it shined yellow, then this one wouldn't explode. Only when shining red, Silver Moth's creations were explosive.

"I don't believe you. You couldn't have countered The Snow Globe formation without relying on a semblance. It was powerful enough to kill multiple level 2 Grimm." While he tried to grasp how I fought back his move, I looked around with my thermal visor for any shape that resembled the moth hunter.

Not seeing any suspicious figure nearby, I searched for the new source of his voice, which came from... Above the baseball fields.

With the thermal imaging mode, I was able to estimate that over a thousand yellow fireflies were gathering approximately 25 meters up in the air. They were forming a big square that covered the entire great lawn in which I was standing.

"To force me into using The Rain formation. Absurd!" All the insects spoke in unison, expressing their controller's frustration. "But this arrangement would give even level 3 Grimm trouble."

"Ey, calm down. You don't want to leave all the kids in this city without baseball fields. Don't you? Even I know that baseball is UNNM's national sport." I attempted to cease the hostilities with a joke. If all those fireflies detonated at once, the lawn and its baseball fields would get destroyed for sure.

"I prefer football." Despite his annoyed voice, hearing this gave me some hope.

"Me too! Think there's a football field around here. How about you get to be the goalkeeper and I kick the ball?" At last, I shared something in common with the deadly adversary.

"That's soccer, idiot!" I got insulted over a thousand times by Silver Moth and his swarm.

"Aren't soccer and football the sa-" As I tried to damage control the situation and understand how I slipped up, around 20 yellow fireflies descended in a line arrangement.

On this occasion, shooting at them wasn't going to work because I could tell that the enemy was planning to turn them red once they got very close to me. By boosting once again Ilhuicatl's dust shards, I moved at hypersonic speeds to escape from the fireflies, which turned red when they reached or were about to, the ground. I fled fast enough from the first wave he sent against me, but the baseball field I used to stand on was now ruined by all the blasts from the explosions.

"You should call this formation Bat a Thousand instead." I commented, using my sombrero to disperse the smoke and one small aura boost to get rid of the mud on my body.

"..." After seconds of silence, all the fireflies in the sky released furious hissing sounds. A new wave of fireflies fell into the new baseball field I was at.

"You are jealous because I came up with a better name!" I ran with my aura-boosted boots to escape from over 20 explosions, but as I was fleeing to the next baseball field, I saw fireflies crashing down ahead of me.

I was cornered by fireflies exploding behind and in front of me. Just when the exploding insects were about to rain down on my body, I got pulled by a strong force to the right. Both line formations of red fireflies crashed against each other, as I slowed down and leaned on a baseball backstop.

I had shot earlier my grappling claw at it, after escaping from the first baseball field, anticipating a ploy from the moth Faunus. By retracting the aura link connecting my body and grappling claw, I was able to 'fly' away from danger.

If I had poor taste in humor, I would have said 'Safe', but infuriating more the opponent via witty remarks probably wasn't the intelligent choice.

"Utterly unbelievable. Using this many resources against only one enemy is a waste, but I got to find Neopolitan before anyone else." The approximately one thousand fireflies began to make weird noises in unison with their wings.

"Espera, Silver Moth. Are you seriously thinking of-" I was cut off by Bat a Thousand descending at hypersonic speeds to crash into the great lawn with all the baseball fields.

Despite running with my aura-boosted boots, I knew that this time I wasn't going to escape on time from such a big formation blowing up this whole area of the park. An explosion equal to 2.2 tons of dynamite was going to soon fall on me.

With only 10 meters left for Light Show to touch the ground, a high-hypersonic shadow came out from the nearby woods. It was Ehekatl. I had called my ride with my AAIS left bracelet. Using Chimalli's magnetic properties, I was able to grab easily my bike and fly very fast out of that area as the fireflies turned red and crashed into the lawn.

A sudden bright that illuminated a chunk of the park was followed by a loud explosion that made even the trees and ground in the distance shake. Its shockwave spread across Principal Park before making it to the exits and hitting sidewalks, buildings, cars, and bystanders in the surrounding areas. Fortunately, by the time the shockwave exited the park, it wasn't strong enough to cause fatal damage, but many windows, signs, and lights broke, causing panic among everyone.

The sounds of screams, sirens and alarms reached my ears, once I deactivated the noise-canceling mode of my helmet. The lawn and its baseball fields had been reduced to a large amount of small smoking craters, along any tree and the oval sidewalk that surrounded it. While the nearby castle and museum had luckily been spared from any significant structural damage, their windows and lamps had been broken.

•

"Maybe Grand Slam was the better name for that formation." I managed to avoid serious damage by flying to the big reservoir located north of the great lawn.

I switched between visors to continue confirming the damage to the park and the lack of casualties. As much as I wanted to check on Neopolitan, I knew that if I went to search for her the mad bomber was going to follow me around. I could only hope that she was still fine in her current location, close to the southern edge of the park.

"Colibri, your turn." I pulled out another bird-shaped bomb and connected it to my right AAIS bracelet, making it fly to a small island in the middle of the 100-acre reservoir.

One good thing had come out of this disaster.

Colibri crashed into something and exploded, destroying a reinforced glass panel that had been covered by droplets of water. I switched to my thermal visor to detect the shape of a 2-meter figure producing heat behind the broken glass.

"Crap!" Silver Moth flew 5 meters up after his hiding place had been destroyed.

"By combining glass with your invisibility system, you became undetectable to my visors. You even went through the trouble of preparing a glass panel that could endure shockwaves. But your blast gave away your position because you failed to consider the water splashed by it." I elevated Ehekatl to match his flying position and aimed Ometecuhtli at him. "Or maybe you did consider that possibility but didn't expect that I would survive The Rain."

"You are harder to kill than a level 3 Grimm, cowboy." With a threatening tone, Silver Moth raised his arms and flying altitude.

"Charro, to be more precise." I preferred to be called this.

The sounds of sirens, alarms, and police mobilization still could reach us here.

"Just give up already, that explosion did enough damage to get you into trouble with this island's authorities. Using Neopolitan as an excuse won't work anymore." I tried to keep my aim on him, but a strange red pulse that came out of the Faunus's body and a wave of mysterious crying noises gave me a bad vibe.

A bright orange beam from a close tree reached my right arm and hurt my aura defenses. Sensing danger, I backed away with Ehekatl in time to dodge seven more beams aimed at my former position. After a second, the beams of unknown origin disappeared, but my arm hurt despite my aura field not being broken by the attack.

"Your aura is strong, but it won't resist many shots like that one." Silver Moth mocked me while I was rubbing my arm and looking for any wounds.

He had used a super-heated ray to hurt me. An attack hot enough to melt even steel beams.

"Let me present my babies. I call them The Hornet Squad." Eight shiny, yellow 'insects' came out from the woods surrounding the reservoir.

Flying at hypersonic speeds, they positioned themselves around Silver Moth to form a vertical ring. Each of them had a body of 35 centimeters in length, not counting the span of their flapping winds. As their name suggested, they resembled hornet insects.

"It was thanks to the sting of hornets that I realized the dangers that acetylcholine could pose to the human body, which eventually led me to research sarin gas." The moth bragged with his arms crossed.

"Controlling this many flying devices without any visible strain. You aren't using AAIS technology." Making sure that my arm didn't have any serious injury, I focused on the enemy. "You possess a telekinetic semblance."

"Psychokinesis, to be more precise." He was the one to correct me this time. The 'ring' surrounding him began to spin.

"Eusociality allows me to transform part of my aura field into psychokinetic energy to permeate physical objects and move them with my mind. I can even reshape them to my whims." Silver Moth effortlessly changed the angle of the spinning ring while explaining.

"But it doesn't work on persons with a strong aura or objects connected to an AAIS user. Otherwise, you would have already taken control of my body or bike" Using common sense, I pointed out the weakness of his semblance.

"... It unfortunately has its shortcomings." Silver Moth admitted with reluctance. "But it's powerful enough to control The Colony, which allows me to defeat anyone from a great distance."

Even his big arsenal of insect-shaped weapons had a cool name.

"Let's see how good that bike of yours is at dogfights." With 12 meters between us, Silver Moth made the vertical ring of 'hornets' face me again, commanding 4 of his insect replicas to shoot.

Beams that traveled at near-lightning speeds came out of their 'stings', but I was able to dodge them while riding Ehekatl thanks to sensing ahead of time their shots. After dodging the 4 bright orange beams, I took out Omecihuatl and Ometecuhtli to shoot back at the moth bomber, but his remaining hornets destroyed my projectiles when they were around 6 meters away from the target.

His other 4 hornets were done recharging and changed flying positions to shoot me again. I activated Ehekatl's hard-light shield before the beams reached me, but my bike's user interface informed me that the crystals used to produce it overheated and needed time to cool down.

This was bad.

The hornets took only one second to recharge between attacks and their beams took another full second to dissipate. While the hornets struggled to change their flying angles and positions when their beams were in action, that disadvantage was minimal when one considered that their beams could intercept aura-boosted, high-hypersonic projectiles.

"Your hard-light crystals must also be highly refined ones. Most would have exploded by now." Silver Moth sounded surprised, and it made sense.

If it wasn't for Roberto and Dr. Rot, my equipment wouldn't have counted with enhanced dust shards that possessed better endurance and performance than the average crystals. Ehekatl's catalyst system also helped to improve their output of power.

But I was more impressed by the power of his hornets. Receiving 4 of their shots had been enough to render my bike's hard-light shield for now.

Silver Moth flew some meters back and changed the formation of his hornets to form a rhombus in front of him. He ordered the 4 hornets in the figure's edges to shoot. I avoided the initial shots by flying sideways, but the other 4 predicted my escape route. 2 rays landed on Ehekatl's reinforced bodywork, while the other 2 were stopped by Chimalli's hard-light shield.

Still, the hard-light crystals in Chimalli also overheated, while the bike suffered superficial damage despite counting with extra protection from my aura field.

"The temperature of those beams must be absurdly high to make me rely on my helmet's lens shades." Which explained why the rival hunter also used a helmet. No doubt he also was wearing now lens shades to protect his eyes from his attacks.

I continued accelerating in the air to avoid the next wave of deadly beams.

"6000 Baron degrees. Enough to produce plasma and comparable to the Sun's surface." Silver Moth casually informed me, while trying to kill me.

"QUÉ CARAJO!?" This ridiculous insect was pretty much attacking me with arc welding equipment.

"I must thank Byron for advising me on how to improve them. Before they couldn't even reach 4K Baron temperatures. And their recharge took more time." The Faunus began to fly all over the reservoir, constantly changing the formation of his hornets before firing again.

I wondered how Byron would react if he knew that the bounty hunters he assisted were fighting each other, instead of delivering Neopolitan to Bright Island's authorities. As much as I wanted to satisfy his request, Silver Moth's murder attempts on me weren't helping.

Since I couldn't come up with a countertactic, I flew away from the moth and its hornets, doing my best to keep the fight within the park to avoid casualties. I could see from up here police cars, armored vehicles, and firetrucks parking next to the edges of Principal Park, but they limited themselves to helping civilians instead of daring to stop our fight.

I didn't blame them.

Whenever the hornets' beams missed me, they left burn marks on the ground, evaporated the reservoir's water, cut down trees, or landed on buildings hundreds of meters away. I could see from afar the facades of the latter being destroyed or suffering structural damage. Helping with evacuations was still a very valuable and noble contribution.

Not even I could tank multiple shots of those ultra-dangerous devices. His hornets were powerful enough to deal lethal damage to even level-3 Grimm. The only design flaw I could point out was that their stingers shined bright orange for a fraction of a second before shooting their beams, which made it easy to dodge them. But outside of that, I couldn't find a weakness to exploit, due to their fast-recharging times.

"Silver Moth, you are taking things too far!" I shouted while limiting myself to dodging with Ehekatl his rays. If I kept shooting at him, that likely would have made him more aggressive.

"Then, hand me the girl and forfeit your rights to the bounty!" The mad bomber kept shooting, while I dodged his beams by flying up and down, closer and farther, or sideways.

"Neopolitan..." I almost made the mistake of looking with concern in her direction.

Even if she was in the southern part of the park, one of these beams could reach her location before weakening enough to become nonlethal. I had not provided her enough aura to resist getting hit with one or two plasma beams.

My chest and throat were beginning to burn, probably due to the constant exposure to the hornet's rays. I needed to come up with a plan.

Concentrate, Calavera. Everyone is counting on you.

…

[Your hard-light crystals must also be highly refined ones.]

… Also. Those beams are bright orange. Their temperatures are close to that of electric arc welding equipment, which means...

Hoping that my hunch was right, I flew to the northern section of the park.

"It's too late to escape!" A wild Silver Moth and his hornets went after me, as I predicted.

After we flew away from the reservoir, with an altitude of 14 meters, I made Ehekatl's sidecar tilt behind me, for it to aim at the flying insects. Thanks to Ehekatl's rear-view mirrors, I was able to dodge the hornets' attacks whenever their stingers turned orange, but I was running out of park space to fly over.

"Enjoy the fireworks!" I shot multiple waves of missiles stored in the sidecar.

They flew toward the enemy at hypersonic speeds, which were not fast enough for them to reach Silver Moth before they were destroyed by the hornets' beams, wings, or the blades in his arms and legs. Gray smoke accumulated around the insects.

"That's it? Your missiles didn't do shi-" My enemy was engulfed by a fiery explosion equivalent to 80 kilograms of dynamite, the exact moment his hornets tried to fire once more.

His stinging insects used refined dust crystals to charge their beams, and not just any type of dust. The bright orange one. A special combination of fire and electricity dust. Two of the most explosive crystals.

By cutting and shooting down Ehekatl's missiles, which contained catalyst smoke, Silver Moth had dug his own grave. If he had not kept shooting, the spark necessary for the explosion wouldn't have been produced.

…

"No, that wasn't enough." I accelerated in the direction of the dispersing smoke with a high-hypersonic speed to charge at something shining red. I hit it with Ehekatl and exited the smoke.

My bike had rammed into Silver Moth's torso.

"Thought you were the glass-cannon type." I said genuinely surprised by my opponent.

"CALAVERAAA!" The Faunus's body continued shining red, receiving constant damage from Ehekatl.

I decided to fly with the enemy back to the center of the park to avoid injuring the bystanders and authorities witnessing our fight from its edges. We were flying over the reservoir when a bunch of fireflies crashed into both of us and Ehekatl. Probably ones that had been planted in the museum or at other parts of the park I was flying toward, which made it easier to catch up with us.

"Are you cra-" Silver Moth didn't let me finish my panicked question when we exploded along the fireflies.

Surrounded by fire and pain, my senses were reduced to a mess. All I could perceive was the enemy falling with me, until we landed on something that felt like glass and broke through it.

•

After an indiscernible amount of time, I stood up. My vision was blurry, my body hurt, and a bleeping sound filled my ears. Barely able to remember what I was supposed to be doing, I searched for Silver-

An intense light and pain cut through my stomach. Ironically, the agony inflicted by it made me recover my senses faster. My aura field, despite taking huge hits, fortunately was still up. I jumped back with my arms in a defensive boxing stance and analyzed quickly the situation.

Looking around I grasped what had happened. Silver Moth and I had fallen inside the museum from earlier. In front of me, laid the seven-bay façade of a two-story, old building with a pediment on its stop.

"Why is there a whole building inside a museum? What's going on?" My questions were met with two highly pressurized slices that I dodged jumping sideways.

"We fell on the Angelhard Court, philistine!" The attacks had come from a furious Silver Moth, who had turned on the hard-light blades from his gauntlets.

"Philistine!? You shattered most of its glass panels and almost blew up a huge portion of it!" I took out Espectro, while rebuking the moth.

I looked down to see the cream-colored floor tiles below me. Above me, there was a big glass ceiling. Many of its glass panels had been likely broken by our fall and the shockwave from Grand Slam. Good thing that it was the day of the week that the museum closed the earliest. I had in mind visiting it with Tea once I was done with my mission.

At my right, there were two levels with exhibits and at my left, there were three levels, of which the lowest one was a cafeteria and the other two were for exhibits. Beyond the three levels to my left, Principal Park was visible thanks to glass panels, which also allowed me to appreciate the rainclouds dispersing and letting the moonlight illuminate the museum's interiors.

The glass courtyard we had fallen into was big enough to display several large-scale sculptures... Mostly of naked people.

"Had you forfeited your rights to the bounty and given up on her, this wouldn't have happened!" Using his wings for an extra speed boost, Silver Moth launched at me to attack me with his blade stilts. I blocked his kicks with Espectro to begin my plan.

"If this is about the trillion, then you can have it. But I will make sure to deliver Neopolitan alive to the authorities." I tried to dissuade the Faunus from continuing to fight me, as he switched between his arms and legs to strike me.

"You think it's that simple? It's not just about the money. I need to be the one that captures her. If not, I won't be properly compensated." The mad bomber flew up before descending quickly in my direction, putting all his weight and force in his arm blades to slash me with them.

"Not just about the money?" But I intercepted his fall and blades with Espectro. The floor tiles beneath me broke, as I directed part of his attack's force to the ground.

"You are so blind, Calavera. You don't know how the world really works... Unlike him." Flying away to make distance, the rival hunter's body began to glow red.

Concentrating his energy into one of his arm blades, he unleashed with it a slice charged with psychokinetic energy that I intercepted with Espectro.

"Him?" While I did manage to stop his slice, the clash of our forces sent me flying some meters.

"I want to be on the winner's side. The next bounty hunter to join their ranks." Silver Moth again turned his aura into crimson psychokinetic energy in mid-air, this time firing at me a spherical, 1-meter blast with high-hypersonic speed. "This is why I need to prove to them my value. That I won't stop at anything to achieve this mission!"

"What are you talking about!?" I tried stopping his psychokinetic sphere with my sword but gave up after measuring its power and swiftly stepped aside to let it continue flying toward the cafeteria and through the glass panels that led to the park.

"If you want to know more, you will have to defeat me." Silver Moth used the energy produced by his semblance to charge the blades in his arms. He raised both over his head and descended quickly at me while spinning.

The moth hunter had turned himself into a crimson drill that I tried to intercept with a stab of my sword. The clash of our blades unleashed gusts across the courtyard and further broke its ground. Despite having my aura boosted by 100%, I decided to lose the clash and move aside, but the moment Silver Moth crashed against the ground, he released all over the place his psychokinetic energy. The blast sent me flying almost 4 meters before I landed on my feet.

I was wrong, Silver Moth didn't turn into a drill, but rather into a missile. I had to watch better for his psychokinetic-enhanced moves.

"What's the matter, Calavera? You failed to stop my last attacks." Silver Moth flew to position himself slightly higher than the floor of the third level on the left side of the court and from there he began to charge his body with more crimson energy.

He had a higher aura level than I expected, and the ability to turn mental energy into kinetic one was a troublesome one. I tried shooting him with hypersonic bullets multiple times, not bothering to give them an extra boost with aura, but as I expected he dodged them easily by flying sideways.

"My turn." As he flapped his wings, many black spheres with crimson shiny edges and a diameter of 1 meter manifested in from of him.

On his command, they began to rain down on the courtyard I was standing on. Each of them broke through the already shattered floor and left holes behind with a diameter of their size and a depth of 3 meters. Moving at high-hypersonic spheres, I was able to dodge them, but many of the sculptures and their pedestals were destroyed by his psychokinetic shots, along with some of the support columns and the wall behind me. I grazed some of them with Espectro's blade, partially to calculate that they were dangerous enough to better dodge at all costs, instead of trying to stop them.

After approximately 20 shots, Silver Moth finally stopped his series of attacks, while I slowed down next to one of the few remaining sculptures. As I was taking deep breaths, its damaged pedestal broke down.

Out of instinct, I deactivated my sword and moved quickly a couple of steps to catch in time the falling life-size, marble sculpture of a… Beautiful naked lady.

"I swear this isn't what it looks like, I just saved her because I am a man who appreciates art in its many forms." I nervously said while Silver Moth looked awkwardly with silence at how I bridal carried her.

Lowering the lady to the ground with care, I glanced at the broken pedestal to read her name: Fragiline.

Her sculptor had a twisted sense of humor.

"Anyway, where were we?" I turned on Espectro's blade again, positioning myself in one of the broken courtyard's edges, opposite to Silver Moth's.

"I'm going to enjoy breaking you down!" An angered Silver Moth raised his arms with its stinger blades to perform again the drill-missile technique.

Exactly what I was waiting for.

As the drill approached me, I did a forward stabbing motion with Espectro for our blades to clash once more. However, this time I didn't step aside and decided to take on his attack. The collision of the two high-hypersonic moves resulted in shockwaves and gusts that cracked furthermore my surroundings.

Things looked even at first until the tip of my blade broke through his blades and landed on the moth's helmet. The impact was so strong it sent the screaming insect flying through the broken glass panels and out of Angelhard Court, back into the green areas of Principal Park.

Normally, I would have lost the clash against that technique of his, but thanks to all the saved kinetic energy in Tepeyollotl, which I had collected from his previous attacks, I was able to make my stab powerful enough to surpass him for a second. Even if the source of his crimson power was aura and mental energy, Silver Moth turning it into kinetic one, meant that I could use his semblance against him.

I stepped out of the mostly destroyed glass court, not before tipping my sombrero to bid farewell to Fragiline.

"You got a lot of explaining to do, Silver Moth." I said with an imposing tone to the mad bomber, who was busy recovering on the ground.

We were next to the great lawn that the Faunus had destroyed earlier with his Bat a Thousand formation. I could hear the approaching engines of Stratus Sentinels, police helicopters, and low-altitude planes.

"This isn't over yet, Calavera!" Silver Moth forced himself to stand up, opening his wings and displaying the big black dots on them, which resembled monstrous eyes.

The left side of his helmet had cracked due to the impact of my last attack. Its big red eye was no longer glowing.

"Unauthorized bombing of busy public spaces is not allowed." Two automated Stratus Sentinels spoke in unison, waking in our direction with heavy steps and light machine guns in their hands. "You are under arrest. Resistance will be met with the use of lethal force."

Both mechs pointed their weapons at Silver Moth and me. I raised my hands and put them behind my head, hoping that they would help me deal with the mad bomber and bioterrorist.

"Took you long. Officers, you can arrest us both, but there's something you got to know. I managed to capture Neo-" A shout interrupted my conversation with the mechs.

"DON'T GET IN MY WAY!" Extremely furious, Silver Moth using his aura boost fired a crimson shockwave and gusts at his surroundings.

Before the Stratus Sentinels could shoot him down, an invisible force instantly compacted them into two spheres of steel, with a radius of half a meter.

I had forgotten that Silver Moth's Eusociality was particularly more effective against physical objects that lacked an aura. Against him, Stratus Sentinels were pretty much useless scraps of junk.

The enraged Faunus engulfed his entire body with an intense aura field that expanded into the shape of a sphere with a radius of 2.5 meters, disintegrating the ground beneath him as he flapped his wings to fly in the direction of another 6 Stratus Sentinels running in our direction.

"I can still capture her myself! Once I find Neopolitan and break her aura, I will claim my reward!" With his psychokinetic semblance, the wild insect shot 5 times faster than sound the two spheres that used to be striking mechs to destroy another pair that were firing at him.

From afar, the infuriated bounty hunter looked like a big, crimson glowing firefly that burned with such intensity, that it was able to tear through the bodies of Sentinels and disintegrate their bullets.

I calculated that he was flying 12 times faster than sound, so I called Ehekatl to keep up in the air with its high-hypersonic speed. My bike fortunately didn't take long to arrive, since it had fallen over some bushes nearby of the entrance to Angelhard Court. I detached its sidecar via AAIS to lose some weight, before accelerating.

After Silver Moth was done destroying the Stratus Sentinels, he directed his attention to police forces flying on helicopters and low-altitude planes that fired at him with their rifles and machine guns to no avail. The berserk moth flew towards a helicopter with an altitude of 22 meters, probably to crash into it with his pulverizing, spherical aura field. Just when he had some meters left to catch up with the helicopter, I rammed into him with Ehekatl and its hard-light shield activated. Its dust shards had cooled down enough.

Sensing that the opponent had boosted his aura by 200% compared to his initial level, I did the same. At this state, we both had an attacking speed comparable to Araknim's. The police forces began to fly away once they realized that their current vehicles and weapons weren't powerful and fast enough to keep up with both of us.

"If only you had not gotten in my way, I would have blown her up the moment she stepped on this park!" Silver Moth and I continued flying over different sections of Principal Park, ramming and charging against each other.

"What difference does it make who captures her!? Stopping her terrorist acts and protecting everyone is all that matters!" I scolded the wild moth, while we crashed into each other.

Ehekatl's hard-light crystals were beginning to overheat again. I wasn't going to be able to keep up fighting him through this method much longer.

As we were flying over the central portion of the park, the Faunus crashed and disintegrated a pavilion located near the Midgal-style castle of the park. His psychokinetic field was powerful enough for him not to take damage every time he crashed into something.

For the next seconds, we flew all over the park and its nearby streets, doing our best to keep the fight within this part of the city. In my case, to reduce as much as possible the potential number of injured civilians, since Principal Park had been fully evacuated by now... Except for Neopolitan. In his case, because he knew that the bioterrorist girl was still somewhere in the park.

Police forces did their best to increase the perimeter around the park and help citizens move farther from this area. It would likely take a couple of minutes for special units with better equipment to arrive.

Flying approximately 30 meters over the ground, I moved to the southern section of the park before performing a U-turn, while Silver Moth flew to the northern section before doing the same.

I boosted my bike and its frontal hard-light shield with my aura at maximum level, accelerating to 15 times the speed of sound. Silver Moth did the same to boost the power of his spherical aura field, accelerating to keep up with my speed.

Without hesitation, we crashed head-on over the center of the park, creating a huge aura-boosted shockwave that reached the park and close buildings. Thousands of leaves and even water from the nearby reservoir and ponds were sent flying away by the force of our confrontation.

We both repelled each other to our respective half of the park. I barely landed safely south of the destroyed great lawn as Ehekatl's shield and reinforced bodywork broke apart. Silver Moth, with the help of his wings, landed over the reservoir as part of his helmet broke.

Before I could resume my attack several thousands of yellow lights turned on across the entire park and close by avenues. All the fireflies began to fly in the direction of the crimson-shining sphere over the reservoir.

Silver Moth was up to something again. And whatever it was, I sensed that it was something extremely bad.

•

"Can we call it a day?" I casually talked to the moth Faunus, flying slowly to his position with my damaged bike.

"Considering all the chaos we generated, I wouldn't be surprised if the army shows up. Just let them handle Neopolitan's arrest." Swarms and swarms of yellow fireflies kept making it to the reservoir.

With the help of the computer in my helmet, I detected over 160 thousand sources of light spread around the area. And their numbers kept increasing.

I could see Silver Moth with his cracked helmet inside of his crimson, spherical aura field, flying 7 meters above the water. His psychokinetic energy, despite not touching the surface of the reservoir, was strong enough to produce ripples across it.

"How were you able to make so many of these anyway?" I asked while looking at more fireflies arriving at the reservoir.

The number of fireflies was getting close to half a million. Enough to produce an explosion equivalent to 1 million kilograms or 1 thousand metric tons of dynamite. And their numbers were still increasing.

"Automated assembly lines." Silver Moth bothered replying with a calm, yet arrogant tone.

"You are burning tons of money away." Politely, I attempted to start a casual conversation with him.

"Neopolitan's bounty will make up for that." His voice carried a dangerous resolution. It appeared that he was going to proceed fighting with whatever Light Show formation was in his mind.

"This obsession with capturing Neopolitan has gone too far. Why don't we just handle her to the authorities together?" I parked Ehekatl on the reservoir's edge and stepped off.

"Calavera, this is a test. A challenge given to me by them." He was again saying cryptic statements with a menacing tone.

"Them?" I curiously asked for more information, not because I believed his delusions or whatever twisted perception of reality he had, but rather to see if I could dissuade him from keeping on with this senseless fight.

"I will not grant you the same privilege I was handed. I've earned the right to not live in ignorance through my achievements as a bounty hunter. If you want to learn the truth, then you will have to take me down." Silver Moth began rising to the skies, further elevating his altitude as some of the fireflies flew around his spherical field.

"Behold, my magnum opus, The Sun!" Even if he was far away from me, I could hear his thrilled voice through the thousands of fireflies that made up his newest arrangement and the ones still flying all over the park near ground level.

The moth and his surrounding crimson sphere were close to 75 meters above the reservoir's surface, while hundreds of thousands of fireflies arranged themselves into a sphere formation with a radius of 25 meters. The park and nearby avenues were illuminated by the artificial yellow 'sunlight' of Silver Moth's formation.

The police forces in the air and mass media helicopters began to make some distance or fly away from the park, sensing the danger that was about to be unleashed. I even detected in the distance people looking through the windows of skyscrapers next to the park the light spectacle.

"Have you considered giving up on this whole bounty hunter business and dedicate instead to light shows?" I made a nice suggestion, although deep in my mind I was already preparing myself to resume our fight.

"It's more exciting to use Light Show to catch my prey." Pulses travelled across the giant yellow spear, while Silver Moth spoke through his creations. "The explosions. The fire. The shockwaves. The destruction. Nothing comes close to the thrill of detonating my companions against my victims!"

I sent Ehekatl instructions with my AAIS bracelet. In its current state, it wasn't going to be able to keep on with the fight.

"And once I catch Neopolitan, I will be granted access to innumerable resources and continue improving The Colony to turn it into a global network! There won't be a single place left to hide away from us!" The mad bomber announced his ambition.

"Forget my proposal. Maybe it's better if I deliver Neopolitan myself to the authorities. A trillion Krownas will only let to disaster in your hands." I said with regret and scratched my head without taking off the sombrero. Ehekatl's preparations were done.

"Solar Wind." Without any emotion, Silver Moth said the name of his new attack formation.

A big yellow 'whip', composed of hundreds of fireflies, emerged from the shining sphere and descended 10 times faster than sound to hit the surface of the reservoir and the edge on which I was standing.

But as Silver Moth was speaking, Ehekatl's engine had already removed its seat, handlebars, headlight, speedometer, and broken bodywork with the aid of gravity dust. As it turned sideways to activate its antigravity mode, I jumped in the section between the two wheels.

Ehekatl was done turning into a hoverboard.

Taking advantage of Ilhuicatl's gravity and lightning dust, I directed the magnetic forces produced by my boots to the hoverboard's central section, so that I could fly away at high-hypersonic speed without falling off.

Just as it was about to hit the ground, the ending portion of Solar Wind turned red. The formation hit the edge of the reservoir and made it explode with an intensity that spread a shockwave that reached the reservoir's waters and the nearby park areas. But by then, I was already 30 meters away from its impact zone with Chimalli's hard-light shield activated.

"You ditched parts of your motorcycle to turn it into an actual hoverboard!?" The 'sun' spoke incredulous.

"Is it that weird? I thought it was a pretty obvious, but cool idea. Compared to Light Show, Ehekatl's alternate mode doesn't seem that wild." I shrugged, as I surfed on the wind, leaving a space of 15 meters between the firefly cluster and me.

I needed to be more careful now. His semblance and aura combined are what allowed the dust inside of the fireflies to explode. Because Silver Moth had boosted his aura by 200%, each explosion of a firefly was now equivalent to 6 kilograms of dynamite.

"Lances." At the moth's command, several groups of hundreds of fireflies flew out of the sun in arrangements that resembled 10-meter-long, red lances.

I surfed away to evade 6 of them, but another group of 10 'lances' came out from a different portion of the sun, trying to predict the trajectory of my movements to hit me. Since I was surfing at 15 times the speed of sound, I was able to dodge them or escape from the lances through the gaps left between them.

The lances that didn't crash against the ground broke down into fireflies to fly back into the sun formation, while the ones that did reach it exploded and destroyed furthermore the park. Sometimes, when I managed to escape from a red lance, I shot at it with one of my guns to make all its fireflies explode before they turned yellow again or hit a building.

"Solar System." After 30 seconds, Silver Moth gave a new command to his fireflies. Rings started to come out of the big sphere at several different angles as if resembling the 7 orbits of planets revolving around a sun.

I now had to watch for yellow rings that rotated in different directions and angles. While the Faunus kept these new formations colored yellow, they were still troublesome enough to avoid while escaping from red lances that now and then were shot by the sun.

After some seconds, the segment of an 'orbital ring' got close enough to me and turned red, but I shot at it to start a chain reaction of explosions, reactivating Chimalli's shield to protect myself.

"24-Cell." The big sun started changing shape to become a collection of... Uno, dos... Cinco, seis, siete... Catorce, quince... Ah, of course.

24 octahedra. Calavera, you moron.

I now had to dodge the bars that composed the complex structure, while escaping from occasional groups of red fireflies that flew out of each octahedra. The whole formation started spinning and rotating to increase the difficulty.

"Disperse." After half a minute of being unable to hit me, the Faunus ordered his formation to break into the 24 octahedra that composed the shape.

Silver Moth remained in the central and biggest octahedron, while the other 23 of different sizes broke from it at several angles. The entire group continued spinning, with Silver Moth acting as its axis.

"NEEEEERD!" I shouted to my enemy while I continued surfing between the moving shapes.

At certain points, the 23-orbiting octahedra started flying closer and farther from the central one, trying to take me by surprise and crush me between them. But after 10 failed attempts, Silver Moth gave a new order to his fireflies.

"120-CELL!" Once the 23 octahedra rejoined the central one, they turned into an even more complex shape, that judging by his name (I didn't bother counting) consisted of 120 dodecahedra.

The number of structures this formation was made of was insane. I barely could see the Faunus in the center of the shape, because many of his fireflies got in the way. Playing it safe, I didn't bother going into the central sections of the structure and kept surfing in the external borders, since the spaces between dodecahedra were big enough to move safely there.

"DISPERSE!" The mad bomber shouted to make the 120-cell formation break into its over one hundred components.

Suddenly, I was surrounded from all sides by dodecahedra of several sizes, while Silver Moth remained once more in the central figure, but something was different this time.

There were so many shapes, the distance between the fireflies and me was small enough to hurt me if multiple dodecahedra turned red and detonated. Plus, dodging over 50 of these moving figures was too much for me.

"I've got you, Calavera!" Silver Moth and I could see each other now since most of the fireflies that used to form The Sun were now distributed across the 119 dodecahedra flying around us.

"Now you cannot escape from me!" Silver Moth began laughing through his insects while turning the dodecahedra closest to me color red.

"..." I kept my silence, as I slowed down Ehekatl and Silver Moth his moving formation.

"What's the matter, Calavera? Cat got your tongue?" Silver Moth joked.

"..." I came to a complete stop. I calculated that the distance between us was of 34 meters.

"Aren't you going to beg for your life?" Silver Moth inquired with a derisive tone. He probably was planning to blow me up, no matter the answer.

"... You never figured it out, don't you?" I asked the mad bomber with a calm voice.

"What? What do you mean?" Silver Moth's tone went from sounding happy to slightly annoyed.

"Back in the baseball fields." I turned the frontal wheel of Ehekatl in the enemy's direction.

"Is this some lame tactic to buy time while reinforcements arrive? Or are you trying to distract me? If so, it won't work. By-" I interrupted the Faunus.

"Snow Globe didn't glitch back then." I began boosting my aura so that my body was covered by a purple energy.

"... You used a sembla-" I interrupted once again my opponent, taking out Espectro's hilt.

"Told you already, I don't have a semblance." I turned on my sword's blade. "The biggest weakness of Light Show is something very simple."

"You are bluffing! Light Show doesn't have weaknesses!" Silver Moth began to lose his composure.

As much as he wanted to blow me up, his curiosity was beginning to take over his actions. He was for real struggling to understand what had gone wrong there.

"My creations are perfect! They cannot be countered by anything!" The moth grabbed his helmet in desperation. "... But something did go wrong with Snow Globe!"

"I told you aloud the weakness back then. After you asked what happened. Didn't you pay attention?" I kept playing with my opponent's mind.

"You didn't answer my..." Silver Moth froze in midair.

"Attractive..."

He finally said a word after a moment of silence.

"Exacto. I thought you had figured it out, but after you made The Sun formation, I realized you didn't." I began to accumulate portions of my aura boosted by 200% on Chimalli and Ehekatl.

"You are thinking of..." Silver Moth raised his arms in a defensive position, but it was too late.

Not giving him a chance to think of a countertactic, I accelerated with Ehekatl to the central dodecahedron in which he was located. Several red and yellow fireflies were in my way, but it didn't matter...

Because their bodies were made of magnetic metals.

I activated the purified gravity and lighting shards in Chimalli and Ehekatl to produce strong electromagnetic pulses. Gathering all the charges on my left arm, with the help of an AAIS bracelet and my armor, Chimalli fired a powerful magnetic shockwave around Ehekatl and my body to remove any metallic object that it came across.

Back in the baseball fields, I had used Chimalli's dust crystals, combined with a 100% aura boost and gray dust, to create a purple magnetic shockwave that trapped and pushed away Snow Globe's fireflies. Silver Moth mistook this for a semblance because when I performed an aura boost my body expelled also a purple light. Coincidentally, the effects of gravity dust and my aura shared similar shades of purple.

Some of the red fireflies and dodecahedrons began to explode, but it was too late. The spreading shockwave had already caught and moved them away from me so that the blast of their detonations didn't hurt me. From my perspective, it looked as if the purple shockwave produced by my equipment and aura boost had turned into a flypaper. Because the shockwave carried hundreds of red fireflies, their explosions caught thousands of other red and yellow fireflies.

A chain reaction of fireworks began all around me.

"CALAVERAAAAAH!" Eventually, Silver Moth and the central dodecahedron were reached by my shockwave and the series of explosions. His red spherical shield was broken by hundreds of blasts.

The Faunus desperately came out of the fire and began to push his fireflies out of the way to escape from his own collapsing formation, but I intercepted him with Ehekatl and used Espectro to land a powerful thrust on his silver backpack. Flying out of control, the mad bomber crashed at high speeds against the reservoir.

...

For a minute, silence and calm reigned.

I searched for signs of life, flying close to the reservoir's waters. Several helicopters, low-altitude planes, on-foot police forces, and Sentinels began again to arrive at Principal Park. The danger appeared to be over since around half of The Sun had been destroyed and the remaining fireflies were still glowing yellow.

"Tea, is everything okay on your end? I defeated Silver Moth, but I'm now busy searching for him over Principal Park's reservoir. Authorities are arriving, I will hand them Neopolitan." I opened the communication channels while looking for the moth in the waters.

While I waited for her to reply, police forces got closer to the edges of the reservoir. I waved my arms at them with a white handkerchief in my right hand to announce to them that I wasn't planning on attacking them. It was at that instant that a red light began to shine under the surface of the water.

"YOU WON'T STEAL HER AWAY FROM MEEE!" The reservoir erupted with a scream and a violent force, as a crimson orb came flying out of it.

Once more, Silver Moth had surrounded his body with psychokinetic energy. His backpack was gone, but he could still fly thanks to his semblance and flapping wings.

Many police officers shot at him, but their bullets were unable to pierce his spherical aura field.

"Go away, pesky flies!" Waving his hands, a strong psychokinetic force demolished multiple parts of the reservoir's edges and sent away flying many policemen. Stratus Sentinels close to the reservoir were crushed by the moth's psychokinetic powers after attempting to shoot him.

"Silver Moth, it's over! There's no reason to continue fighting!" I raised both of my arms with the white handkerchief still in my hand.

"I won't let anyone get my prize! I'm so close to capturing her!" The Faunus took off his broken helmet for his delusional and hostile voice to sound clearer.

The face of a middle-aged man with medium-length, spiky blond hair brushed to the sides came into view. He had green eyes, a blond beard, and some wrinkles on his face.

"If it weren't for Araknim and that stupid semblance of his, and then the policemen and you getting in my way, I WOULD HAVE MAKE HER AURA EXPLODE BY NOW!" The blond Faunus screamed with fury.

"Can we just relax? I don't think it's a big deal who captures her. Capturing the bioterrorist to avoid more casualties is what matters." I calmly spoke to him while approaching his sphere with Ehekatl.

After taking some deep breaths, the mad bomber began to laugh.

"Oh, that's right. This is my test." While the Faunus lost more his sense of reality, the yellow fireflies that composed The Sun and the ones near the reservoir began to fly away. "As always, I'm supposed to achieve my objective no matter the means! It's what they want from me!"

"Silver Moth..." I nervously got closer to the crimson sphere. "What are you planning?"

"Isn't it obvious, Calavera? I'm going to blow up Principal Park- No, this entire part of the island! With these many fireflies, at least one of them will get her, right?" Silver Moth was far too gone, his lunatic voice carried a happy, but menacing tone.

There were still around half a million fireflies left all over the park. With these many, he could produce at least a 3-kiloton explosion thanks to his boosted aura. If he spread them across the entire park and nearby zones, several thousands of people could be victims of their blasts.

I took out Espectro and used its blade to stab the psychokinetic sphere. It pierced its surface, but when there were 30 centimeters left for it to reach the moth's body, the mad bomber commenced boosting his aura. The psychokinetic energy making up the sphere expulsed the blade of my weapon and released intense gusts that splashed away more water from the reservoir.

"I'm going beyond my limit tonight! I will boost my aura to produce a red shockwave big enough to signal all my fireflies to blow up!" Silver Moth continued laughing.

Policemen fought the winds to get close to the reservoir and take a shot at the red sphere, but their weaponry was too weak for their bullets to not disintegrate the moment they touched the psychokinetic barrier. Armed forces flying above the reservoir used rifles and rocket launchers to fire at Silver Moth, but the piercing and explosive power of their shots didn't do much against him.

The Faunus's sphere grew, its swirling energy unleashing devastating winds. It ascended 16 meters above ground level and now had a diameter of 12 meters.

"I can see their faces! My fireflies are showing me every person that could be Neopolitan under disguise!" With euphoria and delusion, the mad bomber shouted.

"The staff at Shiny Game Center. The medical personnel and wounded persons at Lumini Tower. The families hiding at Bright Diner. The policemen holding the perimeter. The firefighters turning off the flames of my explosions."

Silver Moth grabbed his head with both hands. His eyes were shining with a deep crimson color.

"One of them must be her!"

I tried shooting aura-boosted bullets, going in with my shield activated, sending colibris, and crashing Ehekatl against the sphere with high-hypersonic speeds, but my bullets and I could not get close enough to break the insect's aura. My kinetic armor also wasn't useful for this situation, because the amount of energy he produced was too much for it to handle.

There's no way I can do this. I got nothing powerful enough to break through his spherical barrier.

Had the sphere been on ground level, I could have tried directing any excess of kinetic energy into the ground. Unfortunately, it was flying high enough to prevent me from relying on such a tactic.

… If only I could reawaken it. If only I could fully control it.

A black low-altitude plane, which reminded me of a strategic bomber shaped like a hawk with a wingspan of 24 meters, was the only flying vehicle that had not been flown away by the psychokinetic hurricane. It was 100 meters above the drying reservoir.

But reawakening it may unleash a bigger danger than the enemy ahead of me.

Taking advantage of Ehekatl's speed boosts, I flew into the sphere and used my gauntlets to absorb as much energy as Tepeyollotl and my body could handle. I began to feel an intense pain and burning sensation, but at least I was managing to break deeper into the barrier. There were still more than 15 meters left to reach Silver Moth. But if I blew up all my colibris next to him, maybe I could break his aura.

I cannot come up with another plan. This is the only way.

The constant damage I received from the rampaging crimson winds started draining my aura. I wasn't even sure if I was going to make it to the center of the sphere before my aura field broke. But I no longer cared. If sacrificing my life would increase the chances of saving everyone, then that was a small price I wouldn't mind paying. It was better than relying on the other dangerous alternative.

I will not let many persons die because of me a-

Something dropped with an amazing speed from the black low-altitude plane.

In less than a second, a blue flash cut effortlessly the crimson sphere in half and released abruptly a ridiculous amount of energy that splashed away the reservoir's remaining water and broke its ground.

I was blown away over 12 meters, despite using Chimalli's hard light shield. Detaching myself from Ehekatl, I landed on my feet. As I tried to stand up straight, my aura turned off and I collapsed with exhaustion into the reservoir's ground.

Drops of rain started to fall again... It was some of the water from what used to be the reservoir falling back into its place again.

Doing my best to look in front of me and crawl to where Silver Moth used to be, I spotted the somethi-

The someone who had broken the psychokinetic sphere.

I saw a beautiful, black-haired military lady... With long legs.

•

"Calavera, are you still alive?" My eyes opened again the moment a sweet female voice called my name.

I avoided losing consciousness. Curiosity won over my exhaustion.

Also, it was getting annoying that something sharp and metallic kept poking my helmet.

I stood up to look at my savior.

A girl with facial features from Ryuutairiku, the Dragon Continent, was looking at me with her mild blue eyes. She looked slightly taller than me and around my age.

The fair-skinned beauty was dressed in a dark blue, tactical cropped vest and shorts with a military camouflage pattern. Under her vest and shorts, she was wearing what looked like a black, combat-bodysuit without sleeves that reached her midthighs. Fingerless, black military gloves covered her limbs to forearm level. Her footwear consisted of shin-level, black military boots, and dark blue kneepads.

In her hand, she had a 2-meter guandao with a black pole and a golden cutting edge. The extremities of the weapon's pole were of a metallic dark blue. I think the military lady was poking with it my helmet earlier. She thrusted the weapon into the ground so that she could take out a dark blue beret from one of her pockets. Even with her beret on, her two small buns hanging on the back of her head were still visible.

From what I could notice of her bare skin sections, she had a kind of toned body. Her thighs especially looked like they could crush- It was better that I stopped looking at her long legs, she caught me staring too much at them.

"Always." The girl complained with irritation to no one in particular.

"Who are you? The army?" I asked tired, while standing up.

"International Zenithean Army, Emergency Service Unit. Lieutenant Wuneng, at your service." She gave me the usual military salute, palm facing down while making her voice sound stricter than before.

I saluted her back out of respect, although I wasn't sure if this was the correct thing to do. This was the first time I met an IZA soldier, not to mention one from Ryuutairiku.

Seeing that I still couldn't walk properly, the gorgeous military lady went for my messed-up sombrero on the ground nearby and handed it to me. I guessed it had been flown away by the intense winds that Silver Moth's last move generated. Its magnets had not been strong enough to keep them in my head while I was trying to reach him.

Remembering Silver Moth, I turned around to see his unconscious body some meters away from us. I was sure that I was going to die blowing up myself with him, but a blue flash broke his aura when I was only 5 meters away from him.

"Lieutenant, how did you stop-" My question was interrupted by the military beauty.

"That's classified information. Forget what you saw inside that wild aura field." She answered with a strict, but slightly menacing tone.

Since she was with the army, the lieutenant probably wasn't supposed to brag or talk about her semblance and weapons without permission. Because of how fast she dispatched Silver Moth, she possibly was a military ace who would rather keep her abilities a secret.

"Mik Calavera, we were sent an emergency message by... Her, telling us that you had restrained Neopolitan in this park. Is this correct?" Not dropping her military façade, she asked strictly.

I assumed she avoided saying Galatea's name, because of how secret her existence was supposed to be. While I had not ordered Galatea to send backup, I supposed it was unavoidable for the army to get involved in this battle, considering how much it spiraled out of control.

"Yeah... Even if it wasn't me who requested military backup, I owe you a lot. Muchas gracias, Lieutenant Wuneng." I took off my hat and bowed to express my gratitude to the traditional Ryuutairiku beauty.

She replied to my gesture with a small smile. If it weren't for her, I would have joined my family tree as:

Maximiliano Calavera. Blown up by a moth while chasing after an ice cream girl. Died at age 25.

"I WON'T LET YOU HAVE HER!" A desperate and furious scream surprised us. Silver Moth was crawling in our direction. "I will be the one to capture her, to claim my reward!"

The lieutenant picked up her massive weapon and pointed it at the Faunus. I decided to not take a fighting stance, since I wanted to convince him to give up.

"Silver Moth, I will let the lieutenant here handle Neopolitan's arrest. There's no reason to keep fighting over her bounty." I put my hand over the lieutenant's shoulder, gesturing to her with respect to lower her weapon.

Lieutenant Wuneng sensing the sincerity in my words put her guandao down.

"You think it's just about the trillion-bounty, Calavera!? How gullible can you be!?" The madman kept shouting at us. With his right hand, he pointed at the IZA lady.

"That woman right there is fooling you. It was IZA who promised me that if captured Neopolitan, they would allow me to join The Zo-" Silver Moth collapsed to the ground, unable to finish his statement.

He grabbed his chest in pain as he looked up to the skies. Foam came out from his mouth, as he struggled in agony.

The Faunus seemed to be suffering a heart attack. The lieutenant who had slightly raised her weapon, lowered it again when she noticed that I began to run towards the moth.

"He's having a cardiac arrest. Probably from pushing himself so much during the fight. We need to do something to save him." I explained to the military lady as she looked down to the ground.

"... I think, we got some defibrillators on Peng. I will send a request to drop them here." The lieutenant spoke with hesitation, taking out a military-custom holodial.

"It may be too late by then. Take this AAIS bracelet and lend me some aura." I handed my right bracelet to Wuneng, which she accepted with regret. Understanding my plan, she commenced sharing her aura with me.

Thanks to the aura reserves I received from her; I was able to activate the lightning dust in Chimalli. I set up its electric charges so that they could act as substitutes for defibrillators. Thanks to one of my helmet's visors and a special function in my gauntlets, I calculated the recommendable voltage to unleash on his chest. I shocked his chest multiple times.

But it was futile. After minutes of trying to restart his heartbeat, Silver Moth stopped giving life signs.

The lieutenant arrived with defibrillator equipment and tried a couple of times to resurrect him, only to confirm his death after some tries.

"He suffered a very strong cardiac arrest. His heart must have been irreversibly damaged from all the strain of the fight." I theorized with sadness his cause of death.

The lieutenant saw with unease and silence the corpse of the blond man.

...

"He was going to be executed anyway." A cold, arrogant voice came from one of the former reservoir's edges.

"Captain Irigami." The lieutenant stood up to deliver a salute to the military man who had arrived at the scene.

The imposing man, also slightly taller than me, looked in his late twenties. Like the lieutenant, he had some facial features that suggested that he was from Ryuutairiku. His eyes were yellow and through his smile, several white fangs were visible, suggesting that he was a Faunus. He had spiky and medium-length, glacier-gray hair and very slightly tanned skin.

He was dressed in an elegant and sleek, aurora black military uniform that lacked military camouflage patterns. His attire reminded me more of an old-fashioned police officer from Taiyou, The Sun Nation. Under his military jacket, he was wearing a white shirt and black tie. His golden arm badge had the initials of the army he served, plus the shapes of a fox surrounded by two cranes. On his black captain hat, he had a golden head badge with the same 'fox and two cranes' motif.

His footwear consisted of sleek boots of an intense black color that almost made it to his knees. A white side cape covered his left arm and made it to knee level. A black vine motif decorated the cape's edges. Shiny gray was used to highlight certain parts of his uniform, such as his buttons or sleeve ends.

I noticed that he was just wearing a white glove in his right hand, while the cape covered his bare left hand. Below his cape, there were also two black sheaths with swords, attached to the intense black belt on his waist.

Police officers who were recovering from being hit by Silver Moth's psychokinetic waves saluted him before he jumped off the reservoir's edge and skillfully landed without splashing mud or staining his uniform.

I imitated everyone else and gave him a military salute, despite not knowing who the hell he was.

"Calavera, don't regret the death of a rogue bounty hunter. The special unit assigned to you informed us that he was relying on lethal means to capture Neopolitan. A clear violation of what the authorities ordered, including IZA." The menacing captain said with scorn while walking towards me and looking at my deceased rival.

"Oh, mierda. I forgot, she hadn't answe-" As I was about to open my communication channel, something fell next to us from the skies with a loud thud.

It was a knocked-out Araknim.

The lieutenant and I flinched at the sight, while the captain looked disappointed at him. The spider Faunus had his mouth open, his chelicerae looked hurt, and his eyes had rolled back. For some reason, his body was fuming.

"The violent suspect has been subdued. Further casualties have been avoided, as ordered." Tea descended from the skies, while her platinum legs slowly lowered the intensity of the white flames she was using to fly.

"..." The three of us stared in silence at the unemotional gynoid. Because of my conflicting orders, she had unveiled her existence to everyone in the park.

"... Calavera, how about if you deliver us Neopolitan?" The captain ignored the knocked-out Faunus and the landing android.

While he gave me a cold and strict impression, I could sense some urgency in his attitude.

"Right. I shared the coordinates with her. She's tied to an oak there, hidden by its crown." I walked to Tea so that she could guide us to the place.

"As you commanded, I flew there before arriving here. Neopolitan escaped." Tea informed us with her characteristic deadpan voice.

"…" The entire place went silent again.

•

Chasing by foot a flying Tea, the captain, lieutenant, and I made it in less than a minute to the southern section of the park. We were standing below the oak in which Neopolitan was supposed to be, but she was nowhere to be seen.

The steel wire I had used to tie her had been cut.

"... Yeah, this was the tree. Tea did not commit a mistake." I confirmed our worst suspicions to the IZA members.

"KUSO!" Full of anger, Captain Irigami broke his cool façade and turned around quickly to face the direction opposite of the tree.

At the same time, I sense a mysterious air pressure and sound. The oak suddenly fell, making the ground shake. The lieutenant and I had to move out of its falling trajectory to avoid getting crushed by it.

"That stupid nadir keeps giving me so much trouble! Always escaping from me!" The captain shouted to the meadow in which Ehekatl had fallen earlier.

"Those two idiots were supposed to help us capture her, not make everything worse!" He covered his mouth with his right hand in a claw position while speaking.

By idiots, I assumed that he meant the two bounty hunters that went rogue.

"Calavera, did you put a tracking device on her!?" Despite his furious pressure, I shook my head without saying a word.

I counted with them, but they were on Ehekatl when we fell into the oak. If it weren't for the chasing fireflies, then I would have taken the extra precaution.

Irigami growled while the lieutenant looked with sadness to the moon.

...

"Lieutenant, order a lockdown. Maximum alert level." After being quiet for some seconds, the IZA captain coldly ordered Wuneng to throw into chaos the entire region.