It all happened in slow motion. Blue sparks swirled around Tops’ hat and coat. Tori leapt, launching herself into a flying kick that kept getting higher, then jabbed her foot down, changing direction in mid-air.

  Her boot was inches from Roy’s head when glass shattered behind him. Shards peppered his back, and a steel bolt knocked Tori’s kick off course. Her leg sailed over his neck, but the rest of her crashed into him, knocking him down.

  He sprang back to his feet using pure leg power, not wanting to touch the shattered glass. Tori was up faster, already twirling around to face him.

  Roy feinted with his sword and stepped back as she countered, trying to get a better idea of what her theme was and what it could do beyond making his heart race whenever she looked at him. She was fast—faster than him. Acrobatics and speed. Strength? If she had that too, that first kick could have taken his head off.

  Bastion reloaded and fired at Tops, but the thief flicked his coat aside with another burst of sparks and reappeared beneath it, dodging the bolt at the last second.

  Roy focused on Tori again, feeling a jolt up his spine as they made eye contact. She leaned forward with one leg behind her. Her costume audibly stretched as she sank into position. He readied his sword for her attack, but what she did next threw him off his game.

  She winked. “Not sure you can keep up with me, big guy,” she said, in an oddly sultry voice.

  What? People didn’t flirt while trying to kill you. Except in the movies.

  Tori charged, fists pumping at her sides, and leapt again. This time he dodged it, slashing his blade to the side for a quick resonance boost and letting her fly past the place he’d been standing.

  He ducked back through the broken window into the video store and turned to face her and Tops.

  “That dodge was the first magic I’ve seen you do,” said Tops. “ Very act one. You’re closer to the start of it all than I am. Watch this.” Tops whipped off his hat, revealing messy ash-blond hair, and threw it.

  The hat spun, throwing off sparks like a wheeling firework. At first, Roy thought it was a weapon, that the flames would intensify or blades would extend from the brim. Instead, it landed on top of his backpack, still sitting by the empty window. At first, the hat simply sat there, cocked at an angle. Then more sparks shot out in a high plume. Roy’s backpack vanished, and the hat wobbled like a spinning top before landing on the floor.

  “Roy, the movies!” Bastion shouted.

  Roy lunged for the hat, but Tops flexed his fingers in a beckoning gesture and it zipped back to him, landing neatly atop his head.

  That calling card must have given Tops a lot of juice to let him pull off something like that.

  Bastion took another shot, missing as Tops did another coat swish. Roy sprinted outside, ready to knock the hat off his head, but Tori appeared in his path and drove a fist into his chest. The blow felt like a hammer smashing his ribs.

  That’s a yes for strength, then.

  “Aww, you weren’t paying any attention to me.” That tone again. Mock pouting.

  Roy staggered back to his feet. More butterflies. Tops was sprinting toward the Kino Kingdom tower, while Tori guarded the windows—poised, perfect, unstoppable.

  “Go for the thief,” Roy told Bastion. “If he’s running, he doesn’t have much stopping power. Get that coat off him somehow, but don’t kill him. We need him to use his magic to get our stuff back out of his hat.”

  Tori stretched her arms wide, striking a dramatic pose. “And why would I let you do that?”

  She lunged. Bastion dodged past her and ran after Tops. Roy confronted her head-on, but he couldn’t move his sword fast enough, and ended up meeting her fist with his gauntlet. Something cracked in his wrist, and it fell limp, too weak to bear the weight of his hand.

  Wincing from the pain, he strafed, trying to find a way past her.

  “Leaving? But we were just getting to know each other.” She sped up as she said it, moving into his path with a resonance-boosted quick-step, then dropped low and swept his legs out from under him.

  Roy crashed to the floor, closer to the store’s exit now, but there was no outrunning her. Getting back to his feet, he decided to try something different.

  This is going to hurt. He charged without a weapon in hand, shoulder-first.

  “Can’t stay away from me, huh?” Wham. She launched him airborne again, but this time he was flying out of the store. He was especially pleased to not go through the one intact window.

  Twisting around, he managed to land on his feet. He stumbled through a puddle of the juggernaut gator’s blood, trying not to slip. He needed to get closer to the Kino Kingdom battlements. The extra resonance they’d provide would let him ignore the pain in his hand so he could keep fighting.

  On the way, Roy spotted the Castle Maul and made a futile attempt to lift it from the pile of gator entrails. Even without a shattered wrist, he still couldn't have moved it.

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  The whole time he was looking around, waiting for an attack that never came. Tori held back. It seemed she didn’t want to step through the gator guts.

  Why? An acrobatic theme like hers should prevent slipping. It had to be something else.

  Tops appeared on the Kino Kingdom roof and shouted down. “I don’t actually want to hurt you guys. I only want the disc.” Disc, singular. The note mentioned a MacGuffin. That was it then.

  He raised his voice louder. “Tori, only hit them until they stop moving. Wait—that still sounds like I’m saying to kill them. Only hit them until they stop fighting back, then we’re out of here.”

  “We’re not letting you get away with our loot,” Bastion had taken cover behind the Revus Bandit to reload his crossbow. “Even if you do make it out of here, we’ll come after you. We’ll chase you around the whole damn state if we have to.”

  Boom. The bolt fired, with a flash from a muzzle that wasn’t there. The thief threw his coat again, but this time Bastion aimed to the right of where he was standing. The bolt struck his coat, knocking it back with concussive force, up and across the roof before Tops could reappear.

  “Whuuu—” he yelped, flying away with his coat, vanishing from sight.

  Bastion made a break for the tower stairway, and Tori took off after him, carefully avoiding the circle of blood Roy was standing in.

  Roy thought about what he’d seen her theme do—flying at them faster than they could react, landing blows with supernatural strength. Nothing unusual for theme magic, but combined with the canned flirty lines and the overpowering attraction, it suggested something. The visuals of a ninety-pound woman being so strong relative to her larger opponents, and looking good while doing it.

  She didn’t look quite as good now though. The longer the fight went on, the more the heat marred her appearance. Sweat streamed down her face, carrying mascara with it, and her hair was starting to go frizzy in the humidity. Roy could feel the gears in his mind start turning again, partially freed from her mesmeric effect. She wasn’t running quite so fast anymore, either.

  She was still faster than anyone without a magical boost. Faster than Roy with the little bit of resonance he had right now. He needed to slow her down, and Roy’s mind had come unstuck just in time to work out how.

  Roy plunged both his hands into the gator-man’s torn stomach. It sent sharp stabs of pain through his left wrist, but he kept pushing until he was up to his elbows in viscera. Dropping to his knees, he leaned forward, trying to coat as much of himself as possible in blood. Then he grabbed onto something solid inside and pulled.

  As he stood, his body surged with strength from his bloodied costume, and gator innards ripped free easily. Intestines, bowels, the cloaca, and the fluids contained within, all were projected through the air.

  Gore sprayed Tori’s suit in a red-brown torrent, sticking wherever it landed, soaking her hair and dripping down her face.

  “Yeuuurgh!” The effect was instant. Tori skidded to a stop, tripping over herself from her abrupt change in speed.

  That confirmed Roy’s suspicions. Her entire theme was based on allure. This was a femme fatale.

  Bastion shouted from the roof. “Go for the face, Roy. Break her theme completely.”

  Roy looked down at Tori’s filth-covered form and hesitated. The spell was broken. Now, when he looked at her face, she was just like anyone else he’d pass in the street and not remember. Her scowl gave way to wide-eyed fear as Roy approached. He didn’t know if she had any extra durability when charged up with resonance, but she definitely didn’t now.

  He didn’t want to use disproportionate violence here. Without knowing her exact strength, he couldn’t know how dangerous her attacks had actually been. She hadn’t drawn the knives hanging at her belt; maybe Tops had been telling the truth about not wanting to hurt anyone.

  After only a moment’s indecision, he settled for a half-strength punch to her stomach and still felt pretty bad about it when she doubled over, groaning in pain.

  “Where’s Tops?” he asked Bastion.

  “Couldn’t find him. Maybe I shot his coat right off the roof and he reappeared on the ground somewhere. I can see a red speedboat over on the far side of the street. He might be running for that, if his legs aren’t broken.”

  A moment later, Tops reappeared on the opposite tower to prove Bastion wrong, though it seemed he’d lost his gold coat somewhere along the way.

  “Tori!” he shouted. “What did you guys do?”

  “Hey, you attacked us.” Bastion snapped back. “And she’ll be fine. Roy’s too chivalrous for his own good.” Bastion trained his crossbow on Tops. “From the way you keep running, I’d guess you’re not much of a fighter. So magic our stuff back out of your hat right now if you don’t want to get hurt.”

  Tops reached for his hat, but instead of removing it, he simply tilted it forward. Then he struck a dramatic pose, with one hand touching his sunglasses and the other angled up in the air.

  “You know what separates a thief and a phantom thief?” he said. “Surprises.”

  He leapt, tucking into a perfect roll, sending up a cloud of dust from ground that hadn’t had any dust on it to start with.

  When the dust cleared, a burning fuse hissed in his hand. Roy dropped prone, bracing for an explosion.

  Instead, white smoke billowed out of a small plastic canister, engulfing everything. Roy raised his hand and could barely see his own fingertips. A bitter chemical taste caught in his throat. Footsteps echoed all around, muffled and multiplied.

  Feeling around at random, he managed to grasp the handle of the Maul. Now that he couldn’t see it, he could move it, but his left wrist screamed in protest. Gritting his teeth, he settled for a one-handed grip and dragged it along.

  A silhouette slowly came into view. Roy strained to raise his hammer off the ground.

  The figure came closer. No top hat.

  “Roy, do not hit me with that thing.”

  “How’d you even get down here?” he asked, coughing out the words.

  “Rolling in smoke is a gunslinger thing. We need to move. Just walk in any direction.”

  They staggered through the smoke, keeping extremely close to not lose sight of each other. The heat inside the cloud was suffocating. Shadows flickered around phone booths and cars. Twice, they had to veer sharply to avoid colliding with them.

  At last, the haze thinned. Through the fading smoke, Tops and Tori were limping toward a speedboat.

  “Stop!” Roy shouted.

  “Never,” said Tops. “This is my destiny. You don’t know what it was like for me before. I can’t go back to that. I won’t.”

  “Destiny?” said Bastion. “This is just about loot. All you have to do is give us our damn discs back.”

  Tops turned and smiled. The kind of slow twisting smile that accompanied an awful idea. “How about I sell them to you instead?”

  Tori froze, eyes wide. Roy’s pulse hammered faster, and he was filled with a weird mixture of excitement and dread.

  Then it began: a tinny jingle, bright and off-key, winding its way through the smoke.

  And with it, a cartoon rabbit stepped out of the haze.