Chương 20: >>>NOTICE<<<

Random scene from A girl called BUTTER series, it's going to come later, possibly in book 2; The gentle hiss of the espresso machine was a familiar mantra for Vithon. Behind the counter of A Sip of Obsidian, every movement was economical, precise - a different kind of warfare fought with ground coffee and steamed milk. Beneath the calm, though, his mind remained a fortress assessing its defenses. A disturbance tugged at his instincts. A place where sound simply ceased to exist.

His hands never stopped polishing the portafilter, but his blue eyes lifted. Something clung to the ceiling. A slim figure wrapped in iridescent blue-green feathers shimmered against the rafters. A single unblinking blue lens stared down through a smooth avian mask. A spy. Sparrow. Their eyes met. The figure vanished. It wasn't invisibility. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. It was impossibility. One moment it existed.

The next, reality behaved as though it never had. The dead spot disappeared with it. The café carried on, oblivious. Vithon calmly set the portafilter aside and walked into the alley behind the shop, drawing a flat square scanner from his pocket. The display erupted with urban interference, yet beneath the noise lingered a faint trail of ozone and chilled metal leading deeper into Florence's backstreets. Halfway down a narrow alley, his instincts screamed. He turned.

Sparrow stood motionless in the shadows, the single blue lens fixed on him. He exploded forward. One leap carried him nearly fifty feet, fingers reaching to seize her. She was already moving. A small sphere struck the cobblestones with a soft puff. Darkness swallowed the alley. It wasn't an explosion. Synthetic smoke flooded the passage, devouring sight and sound alike. Blind, Vithon lunged toward her last position. He jumped straight into the kick already swinging for his jaw.

At the final instant he felt the displaced air and snapped his head aside. Her boot skimmed past his chin. Twisting with his own momentum, he reached for her leg. His hands caught nothing. She'd already used the recoil to launch herself backward. A faint scrape echoed above as she flowed onto the brick wall, scaling it with the effortless speed of a gecko before disappearing over the roofline. Vithon pursued immediately, ricocheting between walls, pipes, and ledges until he reached the rooftops.

She was already distant. Her feathered suit unfolded into shimmering membranes stretching from wrist to hip, turning her into a gliding silhouette that rode the evening wind. The square device in his hand unfolded with crisp mechanical clicks into a sleek energy pistol. He aimed. A hand settled gently around his wrist. No footsteps. No breath. No warning. His arm lowered as though guided by an old friend. He turned. Magpie-One stood beside him.

His darker iridescent suit radiated silent menace, the single blue lens glowing with cold intelligence. One arm rested casually across Vithon's shoulder. It felt as though it had always been there. The message was unmistakable. The chase, the spy, and the gun... They had all been distractions. The real threat had been standing beside him the entire time. The casual weight of Magpie-One's arm became the trigger. Vithon exploded into motion. A piston-driven punch shot toward the ribs - a feint.

He already knew the dodge would be a subtle shift left, exposing the liver. His other hand, the energy pistol, fired into that predicted space. ZZZAP! The beam tore through empty air. Magpie-One hadn't dodged. He simply wasn't there anymore. Vithon turned just as a rhinoceros charged him, muscles rippling beneath a hide of pixelated light, horns lowered. He slipped left instinctively. A punch materialized exactly where he moved. THOOM-CRUNCH.

It smashed into his face, snapping his head back in a blinding burst of white. By the time his vision steadied, both the rhinoceros and his attacker had vanished. A flock of falcons plunged from the sky, talons reaching for his eyes. He fired upward. A feint. The speed was impossible. They weren't real. The instant his attention shifted, another punch erupted from his blind side. This time he caught it. His hand clamped around a solid wrist, sensing the displaced air an instant before impact.

Twisting sharply, he hurled the unseen body into the rooftop with a vicious judo throw and emptied six shots into the crater. The impact struck. The body didn't. He was already gone.