The Last Tick

"Secondary Form: Akimbo Amplified."

A man in black suddenly leaped from the smog, carrying two blue energized blades. He slashed in their direction.

"Shit—!" The three of them ducked. Spinning in a rotation of slashes, the man in black soared directly overhead. The scalps of their heads were nearly trimmed off.

"A contender?!" Ian fell back. "Who are you?!"

The man in black regathered his stance, readying his dual swords for another attack. Ian noticed this, and immediately spoke a word to take control of the man.

"Freez—!"

—Shank!

Ian's speech was brutally interrupted by a sword that impaled the wall to his left. The near-death experience stole his focus, and he wasn't able to finish his command.

"Ian!" Gian-Luca yelled. Ian looked back forwards. Approaching him at a high speed, the man in black raised his remaining sword and swung downwards.

Clang!

"I've got you!" Gian-Luca deflected the attack just in time. Flames from the Lacertator's impact dispersed in all directions, creating a cyclonal mirage to stray the man's focus. Realizing the distraction he'd formed, Gian-Luca immediately launched forwards.

{ ACTIVATED }

The man's green eye switched to blue in an instant.

"What—?" With inhuman reaction speed, the man in black formed a counterattack to Gian-Luca's approach.

Slam!

Gian-Luca's face was kicked in. He was launched backwards into the wall where Ian stood. "Urgh—!"

"You okay?!" Ian helped him up. Gian-Luca took deep breaths from his mouth.

"I think he broke my nose…"

Ian looked back in the direction of the man in black, who stood with his blades unsheathed and his eye bright blue.

"Tertiary Form: Razor Revolution."

His blades unleashed its serrated dual ends and he began to spin them like razors.

"Shit! What do we do? Where's Veronica?" Ian looked around. He noticed that she completely lacked from the scene.

"Veronica?!?"

~

Elsewhere, on a higher floor, Veronica was making leaps of faith and climbing to greater heights.

"Urg!" Her hands blistered. Through the holes that the man in black had broken through, Veronica was climbing with aim to make it to the top. "If the stairs aren't available, then I'll just have to make do with this!"

Every floor she climbed through, she jumped to the edge of the next with complete faith in her flexibility. It was this flexibility that allowed her to squeeze herself through the tight holes that led to each floor higher.

"If that man came breaking through all these floors, he must've started from somewhere high up, right?" Veronica grabbed a ledge and swung herself over. She was now entering the ninth floor. "Was that a contender? Or perhaps, a defender…?" It was this thought that provoked Veronica to begin climbing in the first place. "He didn't look like an Angel, but why else would he be inside the building the Angels were guarding….? If he came from up there, then he must be protecting something up there…" Veronica had placed all her bets on the chance that the bomb was on the floor he'd dropped from.

"This is the only guess I have left to pursue. If I'm not right, then we're all going to die here…" She pulled herself up, straining all her strength into this motion. "I can't let this be the end of the Sins!"

Veronica finally reached the tenth and final floor. Seeing that no hole was in its ceiling, she could tell that this is where the man had begun his breakthrough fall from.

"Where is it?" Veronica checked her device. Just one minute remained. She scurried and began searching immediately. She slammed every room's door open, taking a quick glimpse in each to see or hear for the bomb. It was the fourth room that she'd opened, that she finally heard an unusual noise.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Taking a peek at her device, just 8 seconds remained.

"—!!!" Alarmed by the time remaining, she dove for the spot she could hear the bomb. Digging past a shallow pile of debris, she took hold of a small blue cube with a single button on its side.

{ 00:00:05 }

She reached for the button, but fumbled her grip with panic overtaking the moment.

{ 00:00:03 }

She dove immediately after it again, extending her arm forwards as she caught the bomb before it hit the ground.

{ 00:00:01 }

She pressed the button.