Speed

Natia played her cards first, initiating the first blow towards the mysterious man by activating her ignition booster at full capacity. She stormed at lightspeed towards the man, supposedly catching him off guard after colliding her shoulder into his armored torso. Natia and the man soared towards the bronze Virgo Factory and penetrated right through its weakened foundation, colliding into the side of a vat of molten lava. The force of their collision caused lava to expand and explode on the spot, melting the insides of the factory's upper level. Natia and the man exited through the opposite side of the factory, falling directly near a sandy terrain's battlefield.

Natia recovered and found her target missing once more from the invisibility technique. Her neural interface was unable to pick up on the target's sighting, so she expended some mental energy to enhance her hearing abilities. With it, Natia could hear the amplified version of the birds and crickets chirping, dust and pebbles colliding with one another, and even the faintest of breathing. However, this was still not enough. Natia performed a full rotation to check her surroundings for the mysterious man's sightings, but he was not present. The expenditure of her energy was slowly waning by the second, and she was losing grasp of the situation.

The mysterious man's metallic staff abruptly struck Natia in the side of her armored head, sending her soaring towards a massive eroded boulder. The invisible staff reappeared the moment it came into contact with Natia's head. After colliding with the boulder, Natia struggled to get herself back up and witnessed dust emitting in front of her with the footsteps of the invisible mysterious man approaching her slowly.

"You lack the resolve to even land a single blow on me," The man's echoing whispers only added to her fear of being defeated by such an arrogant and egotistical individual whose belief in universal destruction was his only calling. The cloaking feature on his armored nanosuit began streaking through, revealing his position as he grabbed Natia's throat again to choke her. "You can die knowing that you couldn't even touch me."

"Natia!" Ryo called from a distance, charging into combat with his ignition booster. With his cybernetic tomahawk, Ryo dove towards the mysterious man to slash down his back while he was simply distracted. However, with his quick enhanced senses, the man blasted Ryo backward with his mag booster to send him away once more.

Natia broke free from his seizing grasp by utilizing her mag booster to recover her daggers. She slashed through his armored gauntlets and managed to kick herself back towards another boulder to recover. She dove in once more and attempted to strike the man, but she found herself caught once more from his extended spear, striking her directly in the stomach. The man swerved through the air after hitting Natia with an unknown chemical inherently injected into his nanosuit to increase movement speed capabilities. He grabbed Natia's throat and slammed her down into the rubble.

Natia then witnessed the man utilize his spear to stab the air behind him as Ryo charged back at him at full force to catch him off guard. The mysterious man's expertise at commanding his neural interface was so advanced that he could sense his enemies without even needing to look at them. The spear struck Ryo's golden nanosuit, stunning him from advancing any further. The mysterious man then used his spear to trip Ryo's legs as he spun around with a roundhouse kick to his helmet visor to send him flying back towards the rocks once more.

Even with two skilled fighters combatting the mysterious man, it was still not enough. Natia's increasing frustrations grew as she felt utterly useless when competing against him with her honed combat abilities. Before she could even move, the mysterious man spun around and charged up a lethal blow with his left hand, infusing an unknown chemical into his mag booster.

"Stay still and die!" The man shouted. Cerulean energy expanded in his mag booster as he punched the ground underneath Natia, summoning a circular flaming cerulean cage that began heating up Natia's nanosuit into extreme temperatures. An inferno of azure flaming tendrils began seizing Natia's limbs, forcing her down without any chance of escape as it scalded her back. The man lifted his spear up, preparing to end Natia's life with a piercing strike to the neck.

However, Ryo's tomahawk struck the mysterious man's hands, sending his spear flying away from his grasp. To retaliate, the man vanished with his cloaking device as Ryo leaped out once more on the battlefield. He rushed to assist Natia who desperately attempted to escape, but it was futile.

"Natia, hang on!" Ryo shouted as he rushed towards her.

"Behind… you…" Natia feebly spoke as the azure flames began to sting her back as it attempted to melt through her nanosuit's protective casing.

Ryo unexpectedly shifted his gaze behind him to witness the invisible mysterious man reappear before his eyes and strike him in the cheek with a single punch. As Ryo fell to the ground, he attempted to counter with a blow of his own, but the man was much too fast for him from his enhanced senses. The man caught Ryo's fist and retaliated with another blow, shooting Ryo towards an abandoned tractor that shattered into pieces once he collided with it.

"Mind you, this is only a warm-up," The man's cocky attitude began to take control of the situation. "What's the matter, boy? Have you had enough?"

Natia gritted and ground her teeth to conjure enough strength to activate her nanosuit's transformation, which was the Sixth Sense: Shining Flame Restitution. However, with the amount of surging fiery pain beginning to burn through her nanosuit, she found it excruciatingly difficult to concentrate her neural uplink to expend her energy.

Ryo on the other hand had enough. His breathing slowed down enormously after realizing how weak he had become in combat. There was one technique he could have utilized, which was his extensive training and fighting style during his days in the Yakuza. Combined with his new strategy of tackling the enemy with his hatred for how he kidnapped Sumire and Naoto, Ryo ascended into new levels of strength after determining the worth of their sacrifice. Naoto's friendship and the accumulation of Sumire's love and joy towards Ryo for the past nine years would have amounted to nothing if he had given in to defeat.

The mysterious man strolled towards Ryo's fallen position, only to find his tomahawk launched directly towards him. With a swift dodge, the man evaded the throw and ceased his movement. "Getting upset, are we?" The man asked. "I'm truly disappointed. None of this would have happened if you fools had just minded your own business. Yet you remained, all for what? To protect this foul world from its evil?"

Ryo's position was shrouded from the constant debris and sandy dust accumulating throughout his crash site. The man retracted his fallen spear with his mag booster and infused his cerulean flames across his weapon to enhance its power. He spun it around once more before striking the ground, waiting for Ryo in a fractious manner. Sparks and azure cinders began surging and radiating out from his spear. "Are you napping? Because I could have sworn we were fighting. Or are you going to let your precious girlfriend die on the sidelines as you idly lay waiting!"

In a matter of a millisecond, Ryo demonstrated the best of his ability through his ignition booster by soaring towards the mysterious man with his shoulder by charging at him with brute force. Without a weapon, the man believed he could easily win. Natia remained to attempt to concentrate her power to activate her sixth sense ability, but could not hold it any longer. Eventually, the pent-up rage and pride stored in her heart caused her to transform and absorb the cerulean flames into her suit, forcing her to sacrifice nearly all of her energy in the process. She was released from captivity, but she could barely move.

"Now that's more like it!" The mysterious man ferociously cheered as he clashed with Ryo. However, the man noticed something was completely off about Ryo's fighting stance and style. He utilized a brawler-type fighting stance to quickly weave and swerve around all of the man's cerulean spear strikes and focused on strategic blows instead. Before the man could perform a horizontal slice with his spear, Ryo ducked underneath him and performed a devastating uppercut combined with the stopping power of his mag booster to enhance his punch. The man fell back and recovered easily by bouncing off of his spear.

Ryo took massively deep breaths as he remembered his training in the Yakuza. For years, he utilized a strategic brawler-type fighting style that exploited weaknesses while combining speeds to strike his target. While his assailant had no apparent weaknesses, Ryo could sense only one that he continuously worked towards; he noticed that the man's cloaking device was only temporary, and the excess energy that fueled his abilities came from the electric green soaked chemicals surging through his armored nanosuit. He deduced that if he penetrated a piece of the armor by striking it multiple times, he could break one of the sources where they injected chemicals that provided his enemy with an energy source.

After examining his strategy, his target suddenly vanished. Ryo, instead of remaining on the ground, used his ignition booster to take flight into the skies.

"What?" The man muttered to himself. "Impossible. How did he know that I can't fly with my cloak? Did he already figure out the sources of my energy?"

"You're going to have to stop doing that," Ryo taunted, encouraging his enemy to retract his cloaking device to meet him in combat. "Otherwise we'll never get this done."

"You wretch." The man insulted as he uncloaked himself. He grasped his spear tightly after infusing it with cerulean flames once more, leaping into the air with his ignition booster. He collided with Ryo once more and managed to maneuver through parts of Ryo's strategic brawler style by striking him in the shoulder to keep him off balance. The man seized the back of Ryo's nanosuit and attempted to toss him back into the ground.

Ryo summoned his fallen tomahawk with his mag booster and sent it soaring towards his target's helmet visor. It struck the front of his head and ricocheted off into Ryo's grasp. With a deceptive attack, Ryo jabbed outwards towards one of the man's golden armor plates attempting to strike it. Knowing his opponent, the man reared his spear to block it. Ryo feigned his punch, weaved around him, and jabbed his tomahawk's sharpened edge into the man's armored torso. The tomahawk's edge pierced and cracked through a portion of it. Ryo punched the back of the tomahawk to add existing pressure and force into the tomahawk's blade, but the man dragged Ryo in and performed a headbutt to stun him.

"Fool!" The man shouted as he struck the tomahawk off of him. But before he could bounce back, Ryo charged forward at near lightspeed once more and infused his fist with his mag booster's energy once more to deliver a brute punch towards his chest to shatter his golden armored plates. One of the chemical injectors revealed itself, and Ryo seized it with his bare hands and crushed it immediately. The man shoved Ryo back after noticing one of his energy sources had failed themselves, worrying him about his stamina loss. He gazed back up and noticed Ryo still assuming his combat position with his fists raised at him. "How? How do you still have the stamina to fight? How are you still standing?

In nearly the blink of an eye, Ryo rampaged towards the man and struck another one of his armored plates off after his distracted attitude caught him off guard. However, the man reared his spear around and struck Ryo in the back of the head, stunning him and shooting him towards the ground. Ryo quickly recovered and watched as the man soared back down to the ground with his leaked chemical energy source failing him.

"I'm going to make sure you die such a painful death," The man threatened, jabbing his spear into the dirt. With his neural uplink, the man ejected all of his armored plates off to reveal his chemical injectors serving as his energy sources. The man reared his arms forward and activated all of his injectors, pumping more energy into his skin to drastically increase his speed to the maximum. "Come on, come on! I'm too fast for you now, wretch!" He threatened as he vanished from Ryo's sight with his spear.

The man began running laps around Ryo's peripheral area to confuse his neural interface. This is for Sumire and Naoto, he thought, yearning to rescue them and end the battle as fast as possible. Ryo expended his energy to enhance his ignition booster to keep up with his speed as closely as he could, delivering a flurry of punches and kicks to the mysterious man as he fought back. They exchanged rapid blows that even Natia could not make out with her fatigued sight, and they traveled distant into the air to battle more.

The man used his ignition booster to enhance the blow of his kick, striking Ryo directly in the stomach. Yet to retaliate, Ryo grasped his leg tight and pulled him close to strike him in the face once more. The man began infusing the cerulean flames into his fists as he counterattacked, hoping to strike parts of Ryo's nanosuit. He was successful in breaking portions of Ryo's suit with his attacks, which sent Ryo's nanosuit into massive mayhem after it began to malfunction. The two exchanged more multiple blows, including a powerful kick that sent the mysterious man soaring through the air.

"S-shit…" Ryo's stamina was about to wane with his nanosuit's malfunctioning process. His neural interface was glitching out and turning dark in some areas of his vision. He retracted his helmet visor to peer through the skies normally. His heart rate pulsated rapidly as he could sense his arms and legs becoming fatigued from expending too much energy. His shins nearly reduced into sludge as he struggled to maintain his ignition booster in the air.

The mysterious man, on the other hand, prepared to inject his body with more chemicals to enhance his senses, speed, and stamina. Ryo knew that if he had pulled off this tactic once more, he would lose the battle and potentially die without even having the opportunity to rescue his beloved sister and friend. He had no strength to continue fighting, nor did he have the stamina to move. Perhaps this was the end, he believed.

"I've had it enough with you," The man verbally insulted once more before conducting the injection process. "You certainly are one marvelous opponent. Such a tremendous fighting spirit that I've never witnessed before. But it must all end, right here, and right now. Aries shall fall, and Lucia shall-"

Before he could finish his monologue, Ryo summoned the last of his able strength to pierce through the skies at extreme speeds. He couldn't let his sister's efforts fall without another word exchanged between them. He wanted to see her joyful smile and how she would commend his bravery and fighting spirit to tackle his first case. He loved his sister so much, and this dramatic feeling took control of his stamina. Instead of striking the mysterious man, Ryo turned his entire body into a crushing shell that clamped down on all of the man's injection sites with his brute force. Ryo's arm, leg, and chest began crushing the injectors with the last remnants of his fighting strength.

"No! What are you doing!?" The man cried, removing his helmet visor. His pupils retracted and shortened themselves as he indefinitely struggled to shove Ryo aside to complete his injection process.

However, Ryo continued the pressure. His entire face began to perk up in redness. Wrinkles formed across his forehead and cheeks as he summoned the last of his strength to potentially last through an entire lifetime of restriction to defeat his enemy. He couldn't risk his sister's death. Not yet! In his final efforts, Ryo released the pinnacle of his full energy, expending all of his strength into his neural uplink, and shouted at the top of his lungs to shatter all of the mysterious man's energy injections at once. Green ooze and shards of broken metal alloy leaked out of the man's nanosuit, forcing Ryo to descend as soon as his stamina was entirely engulfed by the culmination of his full strength.

"Hey, hey!" Natia, who had watched Ryo collapse on the sands, regained control of her body after resting. She sprinted over to him and slid by his side, shaking his shoulders. "Get up! Get the fuck up, right now, damn it!" She panicked.

Ryo was unresponsive, frail, and defeated. The complete malfunction of his nanosuit rendered him unable to regain stamina as his neural uplink was completely void. In the meantime, the mysterious man's suit was rendered useless after his chemical injectors were shattered completely due to intense pressure. The man's nanosuit collapsed along with his stamina.

"Goddamn it!" The man mumbled to himself. He retracted his right arm to his side and grabbed an 8-bit themed grenade in his pouch. He tossed it underneath him, detonating an expansive field of vibrant violet and scarlet neon-hued clouds of mist. The combination of colors shrouded Natia's view as the mysterious man sprinted off as fast as he could, escaping the scene.

"You son of a bitch!" Natia cried, rushing towards her target. "You coward! Come back here!"

Natia attempted to chase after him, but there were more pressing matters at hand. Lucia Melody's organization had kidnapped Sumire and Naoto, and their lives were at complete stake as time passed. Natia, realizing that her strength was much too weak to move on, kneeled beside Ryo to deactivate his nanosuit. She removed her nanosuit and placed it on Ryo's chest to activate it. Seconds passed, and the nanosuit's neural uplink reinvigorated Ryo's body and stamina.

"Are you okay?" Natia asked, worried about her comrade's health. "Come on, talk!"

Ryo's eyes opened after his stamina rejuvenated. He leaned back up and examined his surroundings. "No. Where is he? Did he get away?" Ryo asked.

"He did," Natia stated, gazing away in shame. "Fucking hell. I'm so weak and disappointed in myself. I was so useless, and once again, you managed to show yourself off as always..."

"There's no time to talk about that," Ryo disregarded, knowing that Natia was getting too ahead of herself. "We have to save Sumire and Naoto right now," He activated Natia's earpiece and phoned in Nana from Sunlight. "Nana, patch me through someone who knows Sumire and Naoto's location. Can you track them down?"

"Eee-eee!" Nana's muffled voice rang through Natia's barely functioning earpiece. "They're seven miles away from you in the Maister Art Gallery in the Libra District! I am patching the coordinates to your interface now, Ryo Nakai! Sumire managed to escape, eee-eee! Please go! Status shows Sumire is in danger!"

"Shit," Ryo said as he removed himself from communications and witnessed the coordinates to the gallery pop up on his visor. He pressed his hand against Natia's shoulder and noticed her moderate injuries, ranging from scratches, light bruises, and burn marks. "You're hurt. Can you come with me?"

Natia shook her head. "I won't be of much use without a suit, dumbass," She stated. "Just go and save them. I gave you my suit for a reason."

"But, what about-"

"I know how much they mean to you," Natia explained with a stern expression. Ryo could sense that her heart was sympathetic and compassionate for thinking about the others and their condition, especially Ryo's. Her eyes trailed off in embarrassment after expressing such muddy and undeniable emotions. "Sumire, especially... means a lot to me as well. So are you gonna keep talking to me, or are you gonna move?" She flared up in anger to masquerade her soft side.

Ryo held his ground firmly for several seconds, nodding at Natia in respect. Even if she blamed herself for failing to fight properly against someone as dangerous as the chemically enhanced mysterious man, her pride and egotistical attitude never absorbed her mind from compassion. He pulled off a rare smile of confidence and proudness at her before equipping his helmet visor. Natia's eyes gleamed in immediate interest after watching him smile for the first time.

"Thank you," Ryo said. "You should head back to-"

"I know what to do," Natia interrupted, holding her arm tightly to fight the pain of her wounds. "Just go already."

Without another word, Ryo expended his energy to fire up his ignition booster to maximum power, blasting through the skies towards the Meister Art Gallery. Natia remained to kneel on the sands safe from harm as she rested her injuries. She laid her head back in the sands and glanced up at the stars once more. The twinkling miniature lights reminded her of Ryo, as its marvelous beauty would be shrouded by the day, but it would always exist in the night. She compared the stars to his commitment and heart, filled with the bonds of his sister and his comrades.

She touched her chest and wondered if she could ever be just like him. Not strong physically, but internally. She remembered his vow before they were attacked, and she wanted to receive his guidance as soon as she could. Yet doing so would open up uncomfortable possibilities, but they were possibilities and risks that she was willing to make and take.

You're really something, aren't you, Nakai...