A speed-type who glided across the fields. The blur that was Vera knicked and cut at him, giving Aio no room to breathe. Aio couldn’t deduce how she was able to move like that.

  He attempted to dodge another sequence of Johrei vines protruding from her Lotus blade. One of the blades struck his chest, though his shield held up, defending him.

  Calli, deflecting an array of attacks herself, tried to reach into the pocket space, but was denied her action as a tendril of Johrei cut through where her hand would have reached into, had she not reacted last moment to pull back.

  “Shit,” she said. “You’re not going to get away with this,” she said, teeth gritted. Aio didn’t notice it earlier, but the bags under Calli’s eyes, accompanied by the ferocity in her expression, was something he’d never seen from her before. She had never looked more worse for wear in her life than she did now, and yet her charge towards Vera remained steadfast.

  Aio aimed another arrow at Vera, who looked in his direction. She smiled, all whilst moving out of range of Calli’s extended blade slash.

  Deciding against wasting resources, Aio pulled down his bow, splitting it back into two blades instead, before charging in.

  The pair clashed against Vera’s Lotus Blade in a torrent of clashing spectacle. Aio, now armed with two blades, deflected the surrounding vines gracefully, before Vera herself closed in on him.

  This time, Aio needed some ingenuity – he knew he couldn’t beat her head on like this. He let shown his bloodied shoulder – the one she had stabbed earlier – as bait. Though Vera didn’t fall for it, carefully halting her feint and ducking as Aio’s other arm swung around at her head, what Vera didn’t realize was that this swing of Aio’s was also a feint.

  Taking the bait and aiming for Aio’s right arm – something he banked on, noticing her subtle sadistic tendencies to aim for non-fatal points even after that show of aggression earlier – he allowed his arm to be hit. The shielding held, and yet strangely, it broke, as if the impact of Vera’s attack was enough to pierce the shield.

  Aio grunted in agonizing pain. The expanded version of her blade pierced multiple points of his arm, and accumulated poison began taking its effect, darkening Aio’s vision. He was having trouble focusing.

  Just as Vera was about to pull out her blade, she realized her blade was stuck. Eyes widening, she saw the reason. The shielding around Aio’s arm never vanished. He deliberately released it, pretending his shield was broken, and did something Vera had never seen a hunter attempt before – he attempted to reactivate the Johrei shielding, which locked around her blade and his arm, holding it in place.

  Though she might have been able to pull free given enough strength and the slipshod hold of this improvised Johrei shards usage, which wrapped loosely around her weapon, that momentary lapse gave her just enough pause for Calli to come in from behind.

  She had no choice but to let go of her weapon, but couldn’t avoid Calli’s swing completely, which shattered the shielding on the side of her with force, and nicked her stomach, causing a gash which bled profusely.

  Vera was livid, no longer watching the pair with that icy stare, which now radiated fury.

  “I figured it out,” Calli said. That gliding of yours. You aren’t purely a speed user. Speed alone doesn’t explain those strange movements of yours. Despite all its talk against the worship of Enthipids as deities and the absolute stance the Clan of Tributes have against taking any action which may induce the Voices of Madness, you are in fact, a Supplementor. One who carries the ability to store and release inertia in your movement.”

  Vera, anger seething, said nothing. She needed to find a way to get her weapon back, but Calli was standing between her and the now teetering Aio, who was having trouble maintaining his balance, as the poison began to take its effect on him.

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  Maybe there’s a way out of this, she thought.

  The Golden Order’s weaponization of Enthipids amongst Inners was a tightly guarded secret, seldom considered by most due to the Clan’s redirection of public attention to the notion of hunter groups existing amongst the Clan. By trading one secret for another, the Clan have successfully misdirected attention towards more trivial matters, something the Clan was exceptionally good at doing. Each of the Golden Order members were not only Supplementors or Augmentors, they also carried weapons which held Enthipid cores as well, and the Lotus Blade was no exception.

  Utilizing the ability to encompass entire battlefields in piercing Johrei, similar to that of a Lotus Flower, it was utilized by a troublesome Enthipid before its death whose ability allowed it to fight off entire army of hunters, which was the biggest obstacles to Elites at the time. Though humans may have been weaker individually, groups of them began to form, and militia groups backed by organized military efforts have pushed humanity’s reach further and further into the Enthipid’s territory, prompting evolutionary changes many had not anticipated at the time.

  With the disappearance of the original two Supreme Grade Enthipids, this new crop of adaptable Elites became a thorn in many hunter’s sides, prompting the Clan to form the Golden Order, regardless of what the council of the city precluded under its laws. Though the Clan may seem weakened on the outside politically, in reality, Auditor bribery, corruption, and the elimination of key individuals have allowed the Clan to get away with their actions below the radar for the last few decades.

  And I intend to keep it that way, she thought. Hunter Calliope, the most flexible fighter and dedicated support member for the Blackbirds – this is someone I need to deal with one on one. She could be a problem later on.

  Though her injury was shallow, it still seared at her side, and she calmed her breathing, ready for the next confrontation.

  Vera’s silence gave Calli all the information she needed. It seems Calli’s assumption hit the mark, but Vera wagered Calli didn’t know the extent of just how far her abilities reached.

  She dashed at Calli, portraying an air of recklessness in her approach to trick Calli into a state of surety, letting her believe that she’ll fight without regard to defense.

  Calli, unsure of what Vera was going to do, continued to stand between Vera and her weapon, and the injured Aio as well, readying her blade. However, Vera noticed she began reaching her hand up again. Vera knew Calli had the advantage at this distance, and was attempting…something – another ranged weapon maybe?

  Vera placed her hand into her sleeves, feet continuing to move. Kicking up droves of petals from the flowers beneath her steps, she pulled another set of three needles from the inside the hem of her sleeves, and tossed them at Calli. Calli, noticing the glint of the metal under the cavern lights, was ready this time, and parried the needles with her blade, all whilst beginning to pull out the next object from within her pocket-space.

  Vera, ready to dodge whatever was coming, kept charging, activating her Johrei ability just in case. Focusing her eyes on the strange ball which Calli pulled out, Vera almost failed to notice the blade that Calli threw at her, missing her by inches.

  Do all Blackbird members disregard their weapons like this? Vera wondered, thinking back to how Cyriak pulled the same stunt on her.

  Calli saw it then. The way Vera dodged the blade was uncannily fast. It was as if she immediately side-stepped her attack, without any regard to momentum. It really was inertia storage after all. This meant that Vera could potentially alter her direction whenever she pleased, and she had only done so subtly up till now to give Calli a false impression. By storing the inertia, she was able to force her directional movement to continue even after friction and physics would have stopped her normally, giving Calli the impression that Vera was gliding. Once enough was stored, she was freely able to manipulate direction and momentum as she pleased, giving her the ability to avoid attacks no other hunter could.

  Calli, needing time to think over her counter-strategy, plunged the smokescreen ball unto the ground, causing it to explode in a cloud of purple smoke. The coloring itself was purely aesthetic, but hopefully it gave Vera enough of a pause that she wouldn’t attempt to carelessly move in. Calli didn’t believe that Vera would act foolhardy even after Calli had pointed out her little parlor trick.

  Vera stopped, cursing under her breath. She wasn’t sure what this smoke was, and hesistated for the briefest of moments, realizing that if this had been poisonous, the Blackbirds would have been caught up in it too. They couldn’t have been that illogical, and so Vera resumed her movement, activating her Johrei to restart her acceleration immediately, as if she never stopped in the first place. Tossing needles into the smoke, which clanged against something, she verified that Calli was still in there and attempted to dart into the smoke to retrieve her weapon, feigning an attack.

  As she did so though, she heard a whirring sound and her eyes widened.

  A second later, a hail of bullets poured out from the smoke. Calli had her gatling gun armed and ready.