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Goro glanced back over his shoulder, pulse pounding in his throat so furiously it nearly drowned out his ragged breathing. The air was thin this high up, and he bent his knees at the edge of the skyscraper roof, bracing against the wind whipping his coat open and cutting through him like frigid knives. He heard heavy footsteps pounding up the stairwell. He was dead if they caught him. His hands were slick and soaked with the blood of his first kill. He couldn't be caught. He would not end here.
How will I know I'm ready?
You won't. That's all it is, Goro. A leap of faith.
His mother's words.
The skyline glittered gold and white and red and black, glass spires mirrors reflecting himself and Tokyo out into infinity with the moon looming large. He drew a lungful of that ice cold air, and his heart petered into a steady beat, adrenaline deliciously soaking from his blood into powerful muscles.
"Hey, you! Stop right there!"
His hands clenched into fists at his sides, he took two steps back, and, for the first time in his life, Goro flew without looking back.
He lept into space, and he flew. Suspended for an eternal moment, the world hung above him, gold and white and red and black and so wide it spilled chills down his freezing body. Flying, he felt right. He tumbled through the air, twisting head over heels, gravity reasserting itself as he righted himself into a headfirst dive toward the pavement. His heart caught fire, the spark of fear and wild, insane joy catching on his stained clothes and chasing the chills with blue fire.
I am thou. Thou art I.
His eyes blew wide, the world narrowing into himself and the one on fire, rushing beside him in his reflection.
We have heeded your resolve. Call upon our names!
He could do this. He was meant to do this.
Show the strength of thy will and shatter this world! Divine loathsome truth and exact thine own justice!
"ROBIN HOOD!"
The name tore from his throat and burst from his mouth without thought, stolen by the wind as the flames resolved in his reflection into a slim-fit suit, midnight black, streaked white, and cinched around his waist with a black leather belt and gold buckle. Metal encased his head, cutting the howl of rushing air in his ears short and curling back behind his head in short, sharp horns. A half-mask, matte black, trimmed in gold, and stinging cold, shielded his eyes, blue glass in one eye slit and red in the other tinting his gaze and gifting him a framed view of the street he was seconds from slamming into. Instinct searing thought from his brain, he threw an arm to the side and a gilded bow materialized in his palm, so hot against the frigid wind that it nearly burned him through his thin gloves.
Twisting in the air, he loosed an arrow at an angle up at that flawless mirror, an arrow in the reflection rushing to meet itself. The rope trailing it ran slack through his fingers, smooth and fine like spidersilk and arcing, flying like Goro through the air. He was not alone. The arrows met, and the mirror shattered. Shards of glass fell around Goro, scattering photonic echoes of himself in his wind, and he felt alive like every neuron blazed with that blue fire. The line drew taught.
"Come, Loki!"
A metallic slope materialized under his feet, the momentary friction giving him the millisecond of leverage he needed to launch himself laterally away from the building with his full strength. A figure all angles wielding a massive red sword dissipated in blue embers behind him as suddenly as it had appeared. Swinging wide, he arced out away from the skyscraper and cleared the corner by inches, trailing his fingers over cool glass before releasing the line at the peak of the low arc. He hurtled forward into the dead-end alley faster than he'd ever moved.
Loki met him in a rush of blue flames, and Goro used the blazing sword's upward tilt to launch himself up and into the wall right foot first. Just before he hit the brick wall, he kicked off and up, hit the left wall at the perfect angle, and kicked off again. Trusting his redirected momentum to carry him up and over the dead end, he drew his legs up into his chest and cleared the concrete lip, tucking and rolling as he hit the roof.
Goro collapsed into a tangle of exhausted limbs, strange uniform vanishing as suddenly as it had appeared and leaving him in the same soiled clothes he'd lept from the roof in. But he knew that they were there: Robin Hood and Loki. They would answer his call.
This was only the beginning.