Hiro loses Raven a few miles outside of Downtown, but it doesn't matter by this point; he goes straight to the plaza and then starts to orbit the rim of the amphitheater at high speed, a one-man picket fence. Raven makes his approach within a few seconds. Hiro breaks out of his orbit and heads straight for him, and they come together like a couple of medieval jousters. Hiro loses his left arm and Raven drops a leg. The limbs topple to the ground. Hiro drops his katana and uses his remaining arm to draw his one-handed sword—a better match for Raven's long knife anyway. He cuts Raven off just as he's about to plummet over the lip of the amphitheater and forces him aside; Raven's momentum takes him half a mile away in half a second. Hiro chases him down by following a series of educated guesses—he knows this territory like Raven knows the currents of the Aleutians—and then they are blasting through the narrow streets of the Metaverse's financial district, waving long knives at each other, slicing and dicing hundreds of pinstriped avatars who happen to get in their way.