"Sir."

  Julian turned to the operator at his side in the control room. "What is it, Tanamura?"

  "," she said. "Reverse."

  "Who are they?"

  "Kano Clan… no, Akanaga Family. And these numbers—"

  "I see them." Julian watched as surveillance feeds appeared on the main screen. "More than their recorded number. So they've assimilated the Kirigami Family too. This must be the majority of their forces. No declaration of war, but I suppose Darius and Asayuki already announced as much. A frontal attack… how very straightforward."

  "What should we do, sir?"

  "Deploy the first task force," he said. "Suppress them. Numbers or not, this is nothing you have never been trained to handle."

  Feral youkai. Dissidents. Rogue mages and independent operators with a grudge against the Association. These were hardly uncommon. Julian wasn't concerned. And if it was on the Reverse, all the easier. That meant they had no concerns about civilians in the crossfire or cleaning up information leaks. He would keep a tab on it, but his main concern was that blinking red signal on the map.

  "What's the status of the location?" he asked.

  "Activation confirmed through Lynchpin resonance," said Tanamura. "Completion is projected to be within an hour before sunset."

  "Everything following the timeline. Good."

  Tinny radio chatter floated through the air. The Association's men fielded to meet the Akanaga Family at the doors of Binding Association Headquarters. The gray stormy clouds rolled overhead, billowing and warping with the powerful winds.

  Within seconds, the air at the base of HQ filled with spells flying back and forth, hails of bullets flying from the agents' guns, and shouting and yelling. Pieces of the asphalt were ripped up for cover or thrown as large heavy chunks. The advantage lay firmly with Julian's men—suppression had long since been thoroughly routed out and flowcharted in protocol. Losses were as expected. The chaos was under control.

  "The other families aren't here," he muttered under his breath. "Is this all you were willing to muster?"

  Just then, a vibration rippled through the building. Glasses of water rattled on the tables. A deep rolling boom rumbled out.

  Lightning struck from the gray clouds overhead, crashing down before the building. The Akanaga men turned and hastily dove aside in the nick of time as a large truck roared from the blast zone, tires screeching as it swerved precariously across the torn road.

  "Sir!" said Tanamura. "New hostiles detected! Who is that?"

  Camera feeds covered the screen, tracking the vehicle from all angles. Before they zoomed in, Julian already knew who he'd find inside.

  "Akira." Julian grabbed the nearby microphone and pulled it closer. "Security force, do you read me? Deploy effective immediately!"

  "Can you stop swerving?!" Akira swung wildly back and forth as the truck rocked.

  "Why don't you come here and drive through this minefield?!" Lazarus spun the wheel. Two wheels lifted clean off the ground, hovering dangerously close to tipping all the way over before slamming back down with a rough thud. "Should I run your men over instead? Jump straight into a pothole?!"

  Erina pushed through from the back seat, pointing. "Watch out!"

  CRASH!

  Bullets riddled the sides of the truck. The Association's agents dived aside as the vehicle barreled through their midst, and then the truck smashed clean through the glass front of the building in a clamorous spray of shards.

  The doors opened and all three occupants jumped out. Moments later, the truck smashed to an abrupt halt all at once against the far wall, crushing its front and spraying bits of metal everywhere to join the glass littering the floor.

  "Hold it right there!" The agents turned back to them, boots crunching through the glass as they brought their weapons to bear—

  Erina rolled into kneeling. With a swift motion of her arm, the entrance warped, brick and concrete growing like vines to seal it shut. Enough to deny the rest from turning back, but the ones who already ran in were still in the lobby with them.

  Akira pounded across the floor at speed, echoing gunshots riddling the floor with holes in her wake as the agents' aim lagged just a step behind. Just like that, she was in their midst, a blur of orange fabric and black-green venom.

  And just as fast, she was out. Lazarus ripped her weapon free of the truck wreckage, took aim, and opened fire. An unyielding spray of plasma like a minigun blew glowing holes into the walls and cut the rest down like a hot knife through butter.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  "Area secured!" she chirped. A grin on her face, Lazarus looked around. "Let's see, let's see. Aha! There you are!"

  She climbed onto the broken receptionist's desk and grabbed the security camera, pulling it over to look her right in the face. "Yoohoo! Julian, Darius, are you there? Special delivery! Comeuppance for wrecking my lab twice over! How attached are you to this building, by the way? I hope it's not too much—or maybe I do hope it is!"

  "Mom, what are you doing?" Erina sprouted a bush for cover and hunkered down. More agents in tactical gear stormed down the steps, their gunfire nearly drowning her out as bullets took bites out of her ceramic shield. "Reinforcements are here!"

  "I know, I know, just give me a second here!" Electricity coursed through her hands as Lazarus gripped the camera tighter. The lights flickered overhead, and then with a yell, the power cut out entirely.

  It turned back on in moments, but Lazarus' work was done. Covering herself with a hailfire of plasma, she made her way to join Erina behind cover.

  "I got a rough map of the building," said Lazarus. "Their central control room is around floor sixty—that's where all the wires in the place focus to."

  "Then what are we waiting for?" Akira yelled over from behind a pillar. "Let's get to it and stick a boot so far up their collective ass, I'll have to pull it back out through their mouth!"

  "Akira…?" Erina gagged. All the same, she tossed up a green orb and set her cloud to return fire. She felt about the same, minus the crudeness. "Engaging the enemy!"

  As they fought, Erina noted these men were a lot like the ones she fought outside the laboratory. They favored guns and modern equipment, going light on the fantastical side. Were firearms really that good against magic?

  Lazarus winced as a bullet clipped her arm while returning fire. Akira made to peek cover and ducked back swearing as a barrage of gunfire left her clone dead on the floor.

  Maybe there was a point to it, then. At the end of the day, guns were guns. They weren't flashy, but they got the job done.

  Erina set off a scan spell and took note of everyone's positions. With this, she could get several of them using her cloud, no personal line of sight needed. Her biggest scare was a grenade, but a cover of ceramic vines absorbed most of the blast, even if she still got pelted with ceramic shards.

  "First floor secured," Erina called out as she confirmed the last of them hit the floor. "Advancing."

  "Figures the elevators are down." Akira jabbed the button a few more times for good measure before breaking the panel with one irritated blow. "Life can't ever be easy, huh?"

  "Get back, you two!" Lazarus heaved her weapon and launched a blast at the stairwell, setting off an explosion in a cloud of dust. Gunshots rang out and bullet marks dotted the walls as they hastily backed into cover again. "There's more of them coming! When does it end?"

  "Move!" Erina rolled aside as a blast of energy shattered the ceramic bush they were hiding behind. A new cover sprung up in front of her, and then she took off, one bush sprouting after another so she and Lazarus could join Akira behind the sturdier pillar.

  "How many are we dealing with?" said Lazarus over the gunfire.

  Erina cast the scan spell again. "…At least twenty. No, there's more coming down the steps."

  "Cannon fodder or not—shit!" Akira sheltered her face in one arm as another blast on the other side of the pillar rocked the floor. "We're going nowhere fast at this rate!"

  A loud shattering noise at the entrance of the lobby behind them. Erina's heart sank—but rose just as fast when a huge chunk of pavement sailed past, scattering the agents pinning them.

  "Patriarch Akanaga!" Blue-tipped hair framing his face and a katana in hand, Shimizu charged into the lobby with the family at his heels.

  "Aoi!" she laughed. "Took you long enough to wrap up outside!"

  "Please leave this battle to us! These men aren't worth your time. You go ahead and do what you came here to do!"

  "Knew I could count on you. Leaving it to y'all, then!"

  "But Akira," said Erina over the renewed din of battle. "How do we break through?"

  "Simple, isn't it?" Akira led her and Lazarus away through the yakuza rushing past, leaving the fresh yells, crashes, and explosions in the lobby as they stepped back out of the building. Unconscious Association agents lay about on the asphalt, weapons broken, tossed aside, or looted. "If they're all in there, we just have to take a step back and come in where they're not looking."

  Lazarus craned her neck, gaze moving rapidly up the towering skyscraper. "You don't mean—"

  "Don't aim too high, now. This way!" Akira grinned and ran to the alley, jumping several floors up in one leap. Glass cracked under her feet as she kicked off higher to the adjacent building, and then back, wall jumping higher and higher until she smashed through the window some dozen stories up.

  That… just works? Erina pulled herself together and set the array of spell circles. "Mom, with me."

  Together, they jumped into the array and accelerated, air whistling by as they catapulted upwards. The air shifted drastically as they climbed, windows flicking by rapidly. Mana crackled, invisible yet perceptible. Something wasn't right.

  A chill went through Erina as the open air ripped open on the thirteenth floor's height. She aimed higher on purpose—better to overshoot than to fall short—but now they were headed right for that rift in space!

  Her mind flashed back to the first time she had pushed into the Reverse, that burning sensation as she lost focus and was caught halfway in, halfway out. As fast as it opened, the rift was closing even as they hurtled towards it, ready to cut them in half and spit their bisected bodies onto the busy streets of Tokyo—

  Erina's stomach dropped. It wasn't just a rush of adrenaline. Gravity intensified and smacked them down, parabolic arc turning into a harsh slap straight through the broken window and onto the twelfth floor to spill out at Akira's feet. Erina rolled over to see the portal blinking itself out of existence, as if it had never existed.

  "I just said don't aim too high," chided Akira. Static crackled around her arm as she lowered it. "This is Binding Association HQ. No way it'd be that easy to climb to the top. Fuckers got external defense out the wazoo. Only way up is through the belly of the beast."

  "Just now," said Erina, "that felt… familiar."

  "That wasn't an ordinary defense system." Lazarus got to her feet glaring at where the rift disappeared. "I've seen that before. That was Julian's work."

  Erina scrambled upright, katana flashing into her grip—

  "Easy! He's not here… probably." Lazarus flexed her gloved fingers. "If I had to guess, he's up on the top floors."

  "Their control room, no doubt," said Akira.

  "Mom," said Erina, "didn't you mention the control room is around floor sixty?"

  "I did," she said. "I'd like to say it was a trap prepared in advance, but I can't say for sure. For all we know, he's watching us this very second."

  Erina thought back to their encounter in the chaotic realm. He must've been unable to use his power to the fullest in there. That encounter was even luckier than she thought.

  "No time to kick back and chat," said Akira. "Did something about it or not, I'll guarantee you he saw that. Most of his goons are downstairs, but I'll bet you anything they're on their way back up right now. Let's move!"