~Somewhere in an Alley in Velstrea District 3: Southwall~

Heavy footsteps thundered through a quiet and dimly lit alleyway. It was evening and the sun had just set.

“Get your ass back here! You can’t keep runnin’ forever!” The loud shout of a man in a brown and gold suit rang through the alley as he ran. Following behind him were two other men in gray and black suits.

These guys won’t quit! I seriously don’t want to waste my time on them!

A brown-haired boy with blue eyes and wearing a school uniform sprinted ahead of them. Lucen Rivers, a high school senior. He sharply turned at corners in an attempt to lose the three men. They, of course, would not let up, following right behind him.

Just how desperate are these guys?! If I keep running, they have to stop eventually, right?! Just gotta–

Time, at that moment, felt like it froze for Lucen. It was that moment that he saw something –or someone unreal. Someone… surely a part of his imagination. It was like witnessing fireworks for the first time as a child.

Who the…

Standing about 30 feet away from him, on top of some stairs, was a girl. Her hair, a long, shining white with the right half of her bangs being black. Her skin, pale and her lips were coated with jet-black lipstick. Her right eye was pure black while her left eye was red with an intricate design that looked similar to that of a star. Below her left eye was a black ornate vine-like, woven pattern marking that stopped right above her cheekbone.

“Stop running, you bastard!” Knocked out of the trance he was in, Lucen ran past the girl and turned another corner into a seemingly open space. Continuing further, he would eventually realize that he has, in fact, ran into a…

“Dead end…”

Lucen, having reached said dead end, stopped in his tracks, now cornered by the three men in suits chasing him.

“What’s wrong pretty boy? Ya lost?”

“Alright alright. You got me.” Lucen defeatedly sighed and threw his hands up in the air, visibly surrendering. “You all look like very… reasonable older gentlemen. Surely, you’ll let a young whippersnapper like me go, right? Right…?”

The man in the brown suit smirked. “Sure sure, of course we’ll let you go… Over his dead body!” he pointed to the man in a grey suit behind him.

“Hey, why mine?”

“Because your ugly ass is the most disposable of us three.”

“Anyways, I say it’s high time we teach this cocky little twat a lesson for ruinin’ things, huh? He thinks he can just talk a lot of crap and just run off? You two stay back, I always get the first lick.”

The man in the brown suit cracked his knuckles as he began walking towards Lucen.

“Wait wait! Stop! I’m not ready yet!”

“Too late! My fist is already in swingin’ motion!”

The man cocked his fist back and his fist swung towards Lucen’s face, missing narrowly as Lucen leaned back just enough to feel the breeze from the fists motion. Lucen shifted his waist and pivoted his foot, driving a sharp left hook to his liver, causing him to stumble before grabbing his shoulders, pulling him down, and driving his right knee into his gut.

“GURGH!"

T-The hell?! This bastard's speed and strength is– Before the man could finish that thought, Lucen brought his left knee up and threw a quick side kick at his abdomen but the man caught it.

“Gotcha now!”

Lucen turned his left foot up, jumped over his left leg with his right and using that momentum, connected with a jumping side kick right on the mans mouth, sending him flying back and landing hard on the ground next to his other cronies, who looked absolutely shocked.

“OOMPH!”

The man sat up, wiping the blood trickling down his mouth. “Ugh… What was that? No normal guy should be this strong.”

“...”

“What are you two dumbasses just standing there for?! Get him!”

Approaching Lucen, the man in the black suit threw a wild haymaker at him but Lucen blocked it by getting his elbow up. Immediately, Lucen hit him with a fast elbow and then pushed him away, knocking him to the ground. The man in the gray suit, from the side, attempted to catch Lucen off guard with a kick that Lucen barely ducked. Following through, Lucen swept his leg and knocked him to the ground. He then cocked his fist back to go for the finishing blow.

“Good nigh- Huh?” Noticing the absolutely terrified look on the face of the man, Lucen stopped for a bit. He noticed that he wasn’t looking at him but the fist he had loaded up. Lucen turned his attention to his fist.

“What the…? M-My– MY HAND! IT’S… IT’S ON FIRE?!”