Chapter 55 - Junko ShirogetsuHollow NightThe wind. It tore through everything—the walls, the ground, even my skin. The kind of force that made breathing feel like drowning.

  A whole shopping mall turned into a tornado’s pyground, and I was smack in the middle of it.

  Zephyr was beyond desperate now, spinning into a frenzy, whipping up this typhoon to keep me off it. Destruction everywhere, and the only thing keeping me grounded was my board and the crackling charge beneath my skin.

  Electricity hummed through my body, tracing sharp paths along my arms and legs, crackling off my weapon and into the storm like a live wire. I could feel it sizzling in the air around me, merging with the typhoon’s wild winds, making the hairs on my arms stand on end.

  But Zephyr wasn’t just strong—it was smart. It wasn’t pnning to let me get anywhere close unless I came up with something.

  The brute force approach wasn’t working; it was using the storm to keep me out of range, letting the wind do the heavy lifting while it conserved its energy.

  And me? I was running on scraps.

  There has to be a way, I thought, gripping the hilt of my Odachi tightly. The sword was practically buzzing with the electrical charge I’d poured into it, silvered edges glowing with crackling sparks that leaped from the bde like lightning bolts.

  Think, Junko. Come on. You’ve handled worse, right?

  A sharp gust nearly knocked my board out of my grasp, and I stumbled, barely catching myself before smming into a support pilr. I winced, pain shooting through my side as I hit the ground and rolled back to my feet. The storm wasn’t letting up—it was building. Zephyr was turning this pce into a full-on hurricane.

  But as I struggled back onto my board, something caught my eye.

  Amid the swirling mess, I could make out the outline of Zephyr’s body, flickering in and out of the storm. There was something off about the way it moved. The winds were whipping around it, but there—right in the center—it was still, like it wasn’t inside the storm. It was the storm.

  That’s it, I realized, eyes narrowing. It’s not just controlling the storm. It’s being forced to hide inside it.

  The winds were Zephyr’s cover, but they also seemed to be its body—a defense mechanism that made it impossible to hit. But I had something Zephyr didn’t: electricity. If wind was intangible, electricity wasn’t. And if I could reach the storm’s core, I could disrupt its very flow. It was like a circuit, and I had the power to overload it.

  I crouched low, breathing through the sting of the wind cutting my face, and focused. I let my EXS surge, electricity flooding through my limbs, lighting up the edges of my body like a neon sign. The Odachi crackled to life in my grip, silver and blue sparks dancing up and down its long bde. I wasn’t going to fight the storm anymore.

  I was going to conduct it.

  I pushed off hard, skating through the gale-force winds as the charge from my sword sent electricity shooting through the air. The wind screamed around me, but I could feel the current—the raw power Zephyr had summoned. And now, I was moving with it, not against it.

  Zephyr screeched, its winds becoming more erratic, the storm surging as it realized what I was doing. It tried to throw me off, whipping up debris and tossing furniture in my path, but I was already there, electricity arcing off me and bsting through the air. I dodged, weaving through the chaos like a live wire. I could feel the storm bending around me, the winds tingling with the charge in the air.

  The storm screamed, but I was faster.

  Alright, Zephyr. Let’s see how you like this.

  I unched myself into the air, flipping my board mid-jump, my eyes locked on the flickering center of the storm. My power surged, electricity crackling through the air like a bolt of lightning. I wasn’t just reacting anymore—I was part of the storm. The faster I moved, the more the electricity built up, the hum of raw power filling my veins.

  And there—at the heart of the chaos—I saw Zephyr’s form. Flickering, distorted, but solid. For the first time, I could feel it.

  This is it! I thought, gritting my teeth as I raised the Odachi high above my head. My whole body was charged, every muscle tingling with energy. I could feel the power surging through me, crackling at the edges of my skin.

  I twisted mid-air, bringing the bde down hard, lightning arcing off it like a thundercp. The moment my sword made contact with Zephyr’s form, the electricity exploded outward, an intense burst of power surging through the storm.

  Zephyr shrieked, not just in rage—but in pain.

  The storm colpsed, winds exploding outward in a massive shockwave as Zephyr’s body crumbled. I hit the ground hard, skidding across the shattered floor, but I was already pushing myself up, eyes scanning the wreckage.

  The winds had died down, the debris settling. Zephyr was gone, with only a milky white sphere traipsing up and down in its memory.

  I took a deep breath, soon interrupted by a fit of heaving coughs erupting from my chest. The air crackling faintly around me as the st remnants of electricity dissipated from my body. My body and bde were still humming with the charge, but I could feel the exhaustion creeping in. That st strike had taken everything I had.

  But I wasn’t quite out of the woods yet.

  In the distance, I heard a rumbling noise, but not from where I’d previously left Arthur. This time, it came from lower down, almost level with the ground floor of the mall where I was currently stood.

  My eyes darted to the far end of the shattered mall and I sighed, picking up the white orb my defeated rival had left behind.

  No rest for the beautiful, as they say.

  I really didn’t like that sound.

  It was heavy, rumbling, but too deliberate to be just another piece of debris falling from the mall’s wreckage. Something else was happening, and it wasn’t Arthur.

  For a split second, I thought about ignoring it. I wasn’t really in the mood to deal with some random disaster, not after I’d just sent Zephyr packing. But something gnawed at the back of my mind, something nagging.

  I gnced back toward the floor where Arthur was fighting.

  "He’ll be fine," I muttered to myself. Arthur could handle whatever mess he’d gotten into—he always did. And if not, he would find a way. Right now, there was something closer, something that felt… personal. I couldn’t shake the feeling pulling me toward the noise.

  With a deep breath, I shifted my odachi over my shoulder and started toward the sound. The air still crackled with the remnants of Zephyr’s typhoon, the aftermath of the storm strewn across the mall in broken gss, bent metal, and toppled store dispys. I had to navigate around the wreckage, hopping over broken escators and colpsed walls, but my gut kept leading me forward.

  As I stepped outside the mall’s shattered entrance, the Hollow Night greeted me with its eerie calm. That strange mixture of darkness and twilight stretching out in every direction. No time to get distracted, though. I kept moving, scaling the crumbling structure of the mall’s outer wall with ease, my legs still buzzing with the leftover charge from the fight – and the exhirating sensation that the power-up I’d absorbed had unlocked something new within me.

  When I rounded the corner, I finally saw what had made that rumble.

  I stopped short, my breath catching in my throat.

  On the ground, id out cold like discarded dolls, were Mizuko and Ryota.

  “What the...?”

  My pulse quickened. Mizuko, with parts of her body wrapped in ice-slick armor that cracked in pces, steam still rising from the patches of ice that hadn’t melted away. And Nakamura... his stupid orange trench coat torn, gauntlets scorched. Both of them unmoving, and neither of them looked like they were getting up anytime soon.

  And standing over them, hammer in hand, was Hoshino.

  My stomach twisted, a chill creeping up my spine despite the fact that my EXS still buzzed under my skin.

  "What the hell just happened here?" My voice felt smaller than I wanted it to be. There was this sinking feeling in my gut, a sick sort of dread, especially seeing Mizuko like that—vulnerable, hurt.

  I couldn't remember the st time I'd seen her look so... human.

  Hoshino jumped and span toward me, her expression surprised but still sharp—like she might’ve been expecting me.

  "You," I hissed, stepping forward, a surge of electricity sparking around my bde.

  The second I moved, my mind started racing. I knew Hoshino. She wasn’t the kind of person to just attack without reason. But Mizuko? Nakamura? Both of them down, and only her standing? My heart pounded in my chest, the electricity sparking across my bde growing wilder with every breath. She’d hurt them. She’d hurt Mizuko.

  I could feel the anger bubbling up inside me, the heat mixing with the leftover adrenaline from the fight with Zephyr. Everything in me screamed to charge, to go after Hoshino and make her pay for what she did.

  "Junko, don’t." Hoshino’s voice was calm, way too calm for the storm that was brewing inside me. If anything, she looked relieved to see me. "This isn’t what it looks like."

  I narrowed my eyes. “Then expin it to me. Why the hell is my sister on the ground?”

  I wanted to trust her—Hoshino had always been one for logical, level-headed reasoning.

  But standing here, with Mizuko id out like that, and Ryota... I couldn’t stop the anger bubbling up inside me.

  Hoshino sighed, lowering the hammer just a little. “I wasn’t out to hurt anybody, okay? There was a misunderstanding – she thought I was after you and Arthur - so she attacked me first, and then—”

  I cut her off.

  "Bullshit! You expect me to believe that? What, and Ryota just tripped and fell too?"

  My hand tightened on the hilt of my Odachi, and sparks crackled up the silvered bde. I could feel the charge building in my body, faster now, angrier. The electric energy coursing through me wanted out, wanted to strike.

  The charge crackled through me, lighting up my fingertips. I didn’t care what she had to say. She wasn’t getting another shot at Mizuko. Not if I could help it.

  Just as I readied myself to unch forward, a sharp ugh pierced the air—a ugh that didn’t belong to either of us.

  Both Hoshino and I froze.

  The temperature in the Hollow Night plummeted, the very air itself growing tense, as if something malignant was seeping in from the shadows.

  "Should we give you two a minute to sort this out, or..?"

  The voice was feminine, ced with venom and amusement, and it echoed from nowhere in particur. I blinked, scanning the street. Steadily, a shroud of darkness crept along the edges of my vision—long, flowing tendrils of shadow swirling toward us like a living mist.

  At that moment, I heard it—the familiar, distinct click of a sniper locking in.

  From above. High up, on a vantage point.

  "Shit." My heart sank.

  It was the sniper from earlier.

  Hoshino must’ve noticed it, too. She whirled her hammer in the air, summoning a glow around us just as a streak of energy—a sniper shot—bzed through the night sky.

  The beam of light collided with Hoshino’s surprise makeshift protective barrier in an explosion of sparks, scattering across the ground like shattered gss. Since when could she…? Didn’t matter.

  Without another word, Hoshino shifted, moving to Mizuko and Nakamura's side, her brow furrowed. She was tense now. The situation had changed. The air was too still, too quiet.

  And then—

  BAM!

  The street beneath us erupted as tendrils of solid shadow shot from the ground. One coiled around my leg, another struck at Hoshino, and I was yanked sideways as a figure darted from the shadows, twin daggers fshing with lethal intent.

  The assassin, its numble figure lithe and curved, moved like liquid darkness, sliding in and out of the environment like it belonged to them.

  "I was wondering when I’d get to see one of you kids again,” It purred, her form barely visible as she sshed through the air. “Pity about ‘old Windfall. I’m guessing you took care of him, huh? But, the game’s not over yet."

  I barely blocked her strike with my Odachi, the force pushing me back. My mind was in complete disarray. Not only was this Noise talking to us, there was something startlingly humanoid about its sleek body and long, silvery white hair.

  "W-Who are you?!” I demanded, the electricity in my body surging forward to meet her shadows.

  They ughed again, twirling in a dance of shadows, their daggers igniting with bck energy. Its eyes glinted with the thrill of the fight, but before I could counter, another shot rang out.

  BZZT! CRACK!

  Deadeye’s sniper shot grazed past my shoulder, narrowly missing me, but the heat from it singed my skin.

  This was bad. I reckoned I could just about handle whoever this dy-thing was in close quarters—but not with Deadeye up there firing at us from the rooftops.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Hoshino’s body lowering to the ground, her stance becoming more focused. She shimmered faintly with light, the hammer in her grip ready to strike.

  "Can’t you see I’m trying to protect them?" Hoshino muttered through gritted teeth.

  I gred at her, the shadows closing in on both of us, tendrils creeping toward Mizuko and Nakamura’s unconscious bodies.

  "And what, you expect me to trust you?" I growled back, dodging another swipe from a dagger. "You think I’m just gonna let you walk away?"

  "Trust me or not, we’re both screwed if we don’t take them down first,” Hoshino snapped, smashing her hammer against the ground. A burst of radiant light shot from the prism core, scattering the shadows for a moment. “Now stop talking and move.”

  The sniper fired again, the shot tearing through the air as I dodged and spun to avoid it, my thoughts racing. For once, Hoshino was right.

  I clenched my teeth, gncing at her with a fire of determination in my eyes.

  “Fine,” I muttered, sparking my bde to life once more, “But if you even think about double-crossing me, it’ll be the st thing you ever do.”

  Her lips curled into a smirk. “Whatever. Let’s just focus on surviving.”

  And with that, the shadows lunged at us again, but this time I - we - were ready.

  With Hoshino at my side, and perhaps the two deadliest Noise left to take down, we had to make this work.

  Whether I liked it or not.