Magician

Klein froze for a moment. "What?"

"Watch the direction he vanishes in. A spark appears where he's going to reappear before he shows himself." Leon moved closer to Klein and pointed somewhere. "There's about half a second between the two."

He had spent so many years fighting his way through different worlds that figuring out a simple pattern like that was a piece of cake.

Klein said nothing, but he was clearly watching.

Another round of gunfire erupted. The Clown vanished from the roof on the left, and a glimmer of light flashed on the roof to the right first... Klein saw it.

He didn't hesitate. He turned his gun toward the spark in advance.

Bang!

The moment the Clown appeared on the roof, the bullet was already upon him. But the comical figure seemed to sense it coming. He abruptly ducked and broke from a run into a roll.

Watching his ghostlike movements, Leon thought the shot had missed again, only for the figure to suddenly freeze.

The next instant, a splash of red bloomed on his body.

That hit him? Leon shot Klein a stunned look.

The Clown gave them an equally astonished look. Enduring the pain, he continued charging at his target, who was sliding across the rooftops and using the difference in sight lines behind them to evade him.

Ever heard of leave-it-to-fate marksmanship...? Klein resisted the urge to look at Leon, the corner of his mouth twitching as he pulled the trigger again.

The figure hastily twisted sideways. The bullet grazed his shoulder, tearing a gash in his tailcoat.

Royale seized the chance and fired repeatedly. Gunshots rang out in quick succession beneath the night sky, muzzle flashes lighting up their surroundings.

The Clown's figure finally began to look somewhat disheveled, and his acrobat-like composure finally began to crack.

Just as Leon thought his opponent was about to charge up a big move, giving him a chance to try to secure the kill-

A deep, magnetic voice rang out in the distant night sky:

"Ah, fear's threat, and crimson hope!

One thing at least is certain: this life flies by.

One thing is certain, and the rest is lies,

The flower that once has bloomed forever dies..."

The chanting echoed through the night, accompanied by a gunshot from the darkness.

The magic contained in the "poem" nearly made Klein lose his tense combat readiness.

Fortunately, he was no longer the rookie he had been at the start. He quickly stabilized his Spirit Vision and entered a state of half-meditation to resist the "poem's" effects.

But hearing the familiar verse, he couldn't help breathing a sigh of relief.

That was Leonard's voice, which meant the captain and the others were back!

Buoyed by that thought, Klein took aim again, ready to attack the moment Leonard's control effect took hold.

But the Clown in the tailcoat merely went blank for an instant before quickly recovering. He abruptly pulled a long strip of paper from his pocket.

Snap! With a sharp flick of his right hand, he "shook" the strip into a long whip burning with black flames and lashed it at the bullets he hadn't had time to dodge.

Two sparks from clashing metal flashed and vanished in the darkness, and the Clown leaped onto another roof.

Leon saw the Clown raise a hand and pick at his ear, then look at them with his fixed, comical smile.

Then he let out a shrill laugh, like chalk scraping across a blackboard. He fell backward and disappeared over the other side of the roof.

Footsteps rapidly receded.

The faint gunshots that followed meant the captain and the others had already gone after him.

Royale immediately rushed out the door as well. When Klein raised his leg to follow, she said without looking back, "Klein, you and the newcomer stay here. Someone has to guard Rozanne."

Before Klein could answer, she disappeared into the night.

Klein stopped and cautiously walked over to the front desk. Only after confirming that Rozanne had merely passed out did he lower his gun and lean against the wreckage of the desk, gasping for breath.

Only then did he realize his palms were covered in sweat.

He turned to Leon and opened his mouth, wanting to say something.

Something like "How did you figure that out?" or "Who exactly are you?"

But in the end, all he said was, "Thanks."

Leon smiled faintly. "First-rate professional skills, you know."

"Too bad Leonard's ability didn't work on him." Klein walked over to Rozanne and tried to move her somewhere safe.

"He must have plugged his ears beforehand. That means he knows about you and made quite a few preparations." Leon went over to lend a hand, and together they carried Rozanne into the lounge behind the partition.

"Is he the Clown the captain mentioned, the one who unexpectedly escaped yesterday?"

"Yes. We spotted him right at the start. The captain was going to force him into the warehouse to scout the way, but Riel suddenly underwent a change, so we had to give up chasing him for the time being."

This time, Klein explained what had happened in as much detail as possible. "That Clown is a member of a secret organization, the Secret Order."

"Ever since it was founded, the organization's goal has been to find any relics of the Antigonus Family. The captain even said those relics might have come from the Secret Order in the first place, causing these incidents."

"Incidents?" Leon chuckled, his voice indistinct. "I don't think they were necessarily accidents."

"What did you say?" Klein hadn't heard him clearly.

"I said, now that the notebook has been sent away, he doesn't seem to have any reason to force his way into the Nighthawks' base. If there were something the Secret Order needed here, he couldn't have just attacked us from outside."

Leon spoke quickly, but his train of thought was unusually clear. "And as soon as the captain and the others appeared, he couldn't wait to leave. That doesn't make sense. It's like..."

"Like... his goal was to draw the captain and the others' attention." Following Leon's train of thought, Klein voiced a somewhat strange conclusion.

Everything had happened so suddenly that Klein hadn't had a chance to think at first, but once Leon said it, he immediately realized something was wrong.

Still, that explanation was a little far-fetched.

"If he wanted to cover for his accomplices while they seized the notebook, why didn't he just join the team going after it?"

"Don't forget the Nighthawks dispatched from other cities. The Secret Order shouldn't be so extravagant as to use the life of a member at least above Low Sequence as bait." Leon rubbed his face and looked out into the late night, where the wind was rising.

The wind howled through the doorway where the door had been torn away. The burning wood fragments had gone out, and the world fell silent once more.

Only Rozanne's steady breathing remained, along with the occasional hiss of the gas lamp burning inside.

Although this unknown Sequence's abilities seemed well suited to escape, Leon didn't think he could get away easily.

After all, the Clown was facing a Nighthawks squad led by a Sequence 7.

"Perhaps he has other abilities he hasn't shown yet." Klein's eyes suddenly lit up.

"Why do I get the feeling you're a little excited?" Leon asked curiously.

"If nothing unexpected happens, that Clown is on the advancement Pathway for my Sequence, the Seer. But the Nighthawks don't have the subsequent potion formulas." Klein instinctively wanted to hide information about himself, but after a moment's hesitation, he said it anyway.

"The Nighthawks' records on Beyonders say that the Sequence 7 of the Seer Pathway has mastered many spells that can be cast quickly, combining personal skill with supernatural power."

"I see. Anyone would be excited to see how powerful their advancement Pathway can be." Leon expressed his understanding, then continued along Klein's line of thought.

"From what we've seen, it's much the same as the records say: conjuring Air Bullets by hand, some kind of movement method that relies on flames, turning paper into a hard material-rather than a Clown, he feels more like a Magician to me."

"Seer, Clown, Magician... That's almost enough to put together a circus." Klein leaned against the window, his smile a little bitter.

Then he changed the subject. "Still, no matter what, we only have to wait for the captain to return, and it'll all be over. Even if that Clown escapes, there's no way he can come back.

He can't possibly make a person appear out of thin air like a real magician and bring himself back here, can he?"

If you hadn't said that, the chances would be even lower, Leon silently added in his heart.

Whoosh! A sudden gust of wind swept in through the window, stirring up trash in the street and making the gas flame indoors flicker.

Out of the corner of his eye, Leon glimpsed something fluttering outside the window.

A sheet of paper cut into the shape of a person was slowly drifting on the wind toward the window behind Klein.

His gaze suddenly froze.

The paper figure landed without a sound, meeting Klein's shadow on the windowpane. At that very instant, ripples spread through the air like waves on water.

Less than half a meter behind Klein, a man in a black tailcoat and a half-height silk top hat appeared.

Leon could even make out the fixed, comical smile on his face, now more mocking than ever.

A fist-sized orange fireball appeared out of thin air in the man's palm and hurtled toward the back of Klein's head at tremendous speed.

Klein's dormant intuition went mad with warnings at that moment, but it was too late. At that distance, a support-type Sequence like him had no chance to dodge.

The fireball tore through the air, and a wave of heat had already licked the back of Klein's neck...

A hand suddenly seized his arm and yanked him aside.

The force was astonishing. Klein was practically sent flying.

He staggered into the wall, the impact blurring his consciousness for an instant. Before he passed out, all he could see with the last of his vision was an afterimage.

It was Leon. He moved so fast he was almost impossible to make out.

He swung his cane in an intensely aggressive stance, sending it whistling through the air toward the face of the Clown right in front of him. The ruby atop the cane traced a dark red arc in the gaslight, like a blade drawn from its sheath.