"Where did those pesky youngsters go?", thought the blacksmith; "I was out for a hunt, but now they have started a chase."
"This is going to be fun"
***
"Hey, how is this car flying?", asked Seonghwah who was starting to feel a little queasy as the wobbled a little in the turbulent sea air.
"Roll down the windows and see for yourself.", said Xinyue; trying to focus on driving the car.
"How? I might literally be blown away by this wind!"
"SO! Just read some books. Put some music on. Contemplate life. I don't care!", said Xinyue who was now completely exasperated by the continuous questions from Seonghwah, whom she had termed as "Q and A machine" in her mind.
***
The blacksmith pressed a button near the handle of her bike and a shield like structure unfurled the lower half of the front part of her bike, forming a conical shield in the front of her bike. She was nearing the boardwalk from which the two escapees had flown off. She smiled. It was not a very pleasant sight; her cruel eyes glinted at the prospect of catching new prey, her ghostly white and unusually sharp canines seemed protrude out of her strangely and contrastingly soft and pink lips.
Her bike's wheels slipped off the boardwalk and thats when the wheels turned from vertical to horizontal and started to spin so fast that they worked like the rotors of a helicopter. She shifted her weight a bit, just to stabilise her flight and then pumped her handles and sped off as the light from the streetlamp left her dark and smooth skin.
She spend off into the night to catch her prey, she felt like a lion running after deer. But little did she know that, even a lion is not safe near elephants.
***
"Hey, uh Xinyue? are you also seeing that shadow behind us?"
Xinyue looked at the rear view mirror and her eyes widened, she pressed a little blue button behind the steering wheel.
"Wear your second seat belt, its on your door. You'll need it."
Seonghwah did a he was told. He could see from Xinyue's expression that something was really wrong. He noticed that the gear box had extended beyond its normal limit and had revealed 8 new gears. Xinyue used her leg to move the rod to the newly
Fourteenth gear and said something very unexpected, "Seonghwah, turn on the heater. I think your powers come from sweat."
"What? GROSS!", Seonghwah asked as he suddenly saw the face of their chaser revealed in the moonlight. He turned up the heater of the car as he was told. Within a few seconds he started to sweat and the burning sensation started in his armpits and his palms.
"Yeah, I think you are right.", said Seonghwah. His voice was very weak from a sudden, unexplainable fear. The fear of prey in front of a predator.
After another few seconds, the burning was unbearable; he was starting to think that Xinyue had been right. His powers might come from sweat. He suddenly looked at the side mirror and saw that the woman was right at their tail. Then he saw another thing, a sentence written on the mirror:
Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.
He suddenly had a thought. He rolled down the windows and extended his hand outwards. He spotted a small, purplish-black crystal on his hand. It was no heavier than a gram, but Seonghwah recognised it. It was Nitrogen triiodide.
He moved the crystal forward to his fingertip very carefully, he flicked his finger and let it fly in the air. For a scary moment, nothing happened. But then it detonated. Right near the handles of the blacksmith's bike. The explosion was huge; it looked as if a big firecracker had blasted off by itself in the sky. The blacksmith's bike went off balance and started to plummet towards the vast ocean underneath but behind the thick curtain of the deep purple smoke that the blast had produced. Seonghwah waited for the splash of their pursuer falling into the ocean, but no sound came up. He figured it was because of the sound of the wind whooshing in his ears. He might've been correct, but he didn't know the actual strength of the blacksmith.
Seonghwah rolled up the windows after drying his sweat in the wind and turning up the cooling inside the car to maximum. The next moment he looked down, he started to see the neon lights of Japan underneath the car. They increased their speed and then started to go over a more rural area of the country. Seonghwah had his face almost glued to the windows when the car came to a sudden decline in height and went into some woods. Xinyue landed on the dirt road.
"We go on foot from here.", she said.
"Okay."
They started to walk towards the majestic view of mount Fujiyama, towering above Japan in all of its majesty. Seonghwah started to fell hopeful and a little curious about his new teammates. This might be fun!