Sniper: Damn, the way they’re moving I can’t get a good shot at them. They’re getting close, though. And the closer they are, the less places there are to hide.

He gets Oscar in his sites, who has run a little bit ahead of the rest of the group.

He fires at Oscar. Rook grabs Oscar and pulls him back behind the wall, the bullet barely missing him.

Oscar: Oh, wow, that sniper never misses a chance, does he?

Sarah: This is pretty ridiculous, at the rate we’re going to avoid the sniper, by the time we reach Iricryo and Melanie it’s going to be too late to do any good.

Oscar: Right … so let’s split up! I’ll distract the sniper fire, and you guys go help them!

He rips the cast off his arm and stretches it to show that his arm is working again. He then jumps out and dashes in another direction.

Sarah: I better follow him, otherwise he’s going to die.

Sarah takes off after Oscar and Rook continues in the direction they were going.

Sniper: Oh, now this is interesting. He’s making a dash forward. What could he be thinking.

Sniper: Well, he won’t be thinking it much longer.

He fires at Oscar. Oscar holds his hands up, the bullet hits him in the palms of his glove of bounces off, forcing Oscar to fall backwards a few feet from the impact.

Sarah: Wow … that takes … some incredible reflexes …

Sarah: Oscar! Do you think you can block a few more shots like that?

Sarah: Good, then you keep the fire focused on you, and I’m going to close the distance to the tower.

He fires again, and once again Oscar raises his hands at the exact right position to reflect the bullet with his gloves, flying back a few more feet from the impact.

Kester is still admiring his job trapping Iricryo and Melanie. The bandage shreds continue to rise from their feet upwards, until almost their entire bodies are trapped in a bandage shell.

Kester: Now, these bandage will tear you to shreds! How about you first, the one with the big mouth!

Melanie: Whatever it takes to get you to shut up.

Kester: A big talker all the way to the end. I admire that.

He grabs an end of bandage around Melanie and tugs it. The bandages around her form blades and tighten around her, causing thousands of cuts across her body.

Kester laughs wildly, but stops suddenly when he notices Melanie is completely unaffected. She smacks him across the face with a clenched fist and he goes sprawling backwards across the ground.

Melanie: I’m a thief, you idiot. I make my living because I know how to avoid and survive traps.

Melanie: I tossed these needles the moments I got caught by your stupid bandages, breaking your bonds. After that I just let you believe I was getting caught, but really I was keeping your bandages from getting to close to actually harm or restrict me.

Kester: You think you’re so smart, you - huh…

Kester: What did you do, you bitch!?

Melanie: When I punched you, there was a needle sticking out of my fist.

Melanie: You’re now paralyzed. Game over.

Iricryo: Well that really isn’t fair, that’s twice you’ve beaten the enemy. I wanted to do it this time.

Iricryo: After I went through all that trouble, creating a duplicate of myself using my very expensive and rare Shadow Cloning Cap and pretending to be captured.

Melanie: Not like this victory really mattered, it didn’t take a genius to figure a way around his tactics. We definitely weren’t facing the brains of the operation.

Melanie: God damnit, you’re still talking.

Bandages start to come from his mouth, and his body bursts open into bandages. Melanie and Iricryo look on with wide eyes as the bandages reform and harden, forming Kester’s body.

Iricryo: Uh, Melanie…any idea what just happened.

Melanie: You still. You used your bandages to empty your body of the poison. Very simple.

Iricryo: The boss? But I thought you said you were the strongest.

Kester: The strongest…in terms of level. But there are a lot of aspects of this game besides level that can affect a battle. And so far, no matter how strong I become, I never seem to be able to beat our boss.

Melanie: How sad, all this power and no skill to use it.

Kester: I’m very skilled! But the boss…the way he fights is just no fair…it has been my dream since I first joined this group to be able to beat him so I could control the Spidersilks…

Kester: Maybe the experience I get for your kills will put me over the top? What do you think?

Oscar blocks another shot with his gloves. This time the force of impact sends him flying back against a wall.

Oscar: Ow, my hands really hurt…I hope Sarah hurries up.

Sniper: This has never happened before. I can’t believe I’m at a loss as to what do.

Sarah arrives near the base of his tower, looking straight upwards at the window sniper peers from.

Sarah: Well, I think we’ve had just about enough of you, Mr. Sniper.

A glow appears above her head. She waves her hands through the glow and begins to make symbols in the air.

Sarah: Illumination: Hurricane Press!

His entire room explodes in a gust of wind so powerful that the entire floor of the tower collapses off the building and goes plummeting to the ground. Sniper is seen jumping out of the window just in time.

The collapsed pieces of tower land close to Kester, almost crushing him.

Kester: Huh…what the hell…what’s going on!

Sniper lands, sniper rifle across his shoulder, just a few yards away from Sarah and  for the first time he is seen out of the shadows. He has short, messy-spiky blond hair. He has sharp, blue eyes, with very light eyebrows slightly tilted to give him the impression of a hawk. His eyes are always focused intently ahead of him. The rest of his body is small and sleek, and he wears a white coat with brown sleeves and red slacks. His sniper rifle is almost as wide as he is and around eight feet long. His Spidersilk necklace dangles off the barrel of his sniper rifle.

Sniper: Looks like I let one get to close. I’ll have to handle that.