January 4th, 2044
09:15 AM
Central Ward
Lunar District
Senior Inspector Asahi Takeyoshi
The splash of hot water striking his back was all that kept Takeyoshi awake. The last twenty-four hours were a blur in his mind; nothing more than a collage of images and sounds that bled into one another without rhyme or reason. He felt more like he was living in a lucid dream, vaguely cognizant of reality while slowly pulling away from it. He fell into and out of sleep in a vicious unpredictable cycle that neither coffee nor adrenaline could break. The only things he could recall were facts that he’d driven into his own head with a mental nail, forcing his brain to memorize them amid the tumult of his sleep deprived senses.
“Central Ward. Yōgai-shima Municipal Bank. Aizawa Etsu.”
“Horizon. Yōgai-shima Office of Civil Records. Ask for Hidari.”
“Solar District. Yōgai-shima Civil Police Headquarters. Speak with Captain Iida. Don’t leave without answers!”
“HQ. 8 AM. Morning briefing.”
The thought made Takeyoshi pause as he leaned against the wall of the shower. He let the faucet spray hot water over his head, into his hair, and down across his scalp, hoping the sensation would momentarily spur his beleaguered mind. He wracked his brain, trying to understand what the significance of that last mental note was.
“The morning briefing?” he asked himself, trying to work through his confusion. “Why did I make a note of that? I never bother with that shit anyway. Who was the last person to mention the morning briefing to me? It had to be Kodera; but why was it important. . .?”
A surge of alarm shot through Takeyoshi’s mind as his weary neurons finally fired. He twisted the knob and shut off the flow of water and pushed the tinted glass door of his shower open. He stepped out into the small bathroom and stumbled as he slid on the tile when he overstepped the bumpy non-slip step at the foot of the shower door.
“Ink!” Takeyoshi’s voice echoed off the walls of the tiny bathroom as he took hold of the nearby sink to steady himself. “Where are you?”
In response to his questioning, there came the sound of a buzzing noise, and Takeyoshi looked around for its source. From the hamper sitting in the corner near the bathroom door, the buzzing rang out, and a trail of green motes swirled up from among the dirty laundry. The Inspector hastened to the wicker hamper, and he dug both arms into its contents, dragging out his old shirt and underpants before throwing them aside.
Among the week-old undergarments, Takeyoshi found his Omen; a dark grey cellphone that was releasing soft sparkles of emerald light. As he lifted the device to his face, the Omen shined, and from the beams of green light formed a tiny figure. Suspended on four buzzing wings was a fairy with short dark hair, who was holding an ink brush in her left hand that was as tall as she was.
“You left me in there with your underwear!” the miniscule figure, no bigger than Takeyoshi’s hand, waved her brush at him in outrage.
“Sorry, Ink,” the Inspector sighed and gave the green projection a remorseful look. “I don’t know what I’m thinking anymore.”
“Is that supposed to be an apology?” the fairy demanded, puffing her cheeks out in anger.
“I’ll grovel all you want later,” Takeyoshi gave a placating gesture with his left hand. “But right now, I’ve got somewhere to be. What time is it?”
“It’s after nine,” Ink answered, though there was a slow caution in her words.
“Shit,” Takeyoshi shook his head, trying to gather his thoughts. “Then I’ve missed the briefing; Kodera said that I’d been saddled with a Deputy and I needed to be there.”
“You skipped the meeting, but you met up with him in Horizon when he was fighting that Casualty,” the AI answered him, looking up at his face with concern.
“I—,” Takeyoshi tried to find the words to answer her, but they weren’t forthcoming.
“We’re back at HQ, now,” the AI spoke softly. “Don’t you remember?”
“Right,” Takeyoshi agreed, remembering where he was. He was standing in the bathroom of his Bureau provided apartment; he’d decided to come back to get a shower and a change of clothes. He tried to remember what had happened before that, and he vaguely recalled the sound of the storm howling in his ears and the twisted face of some monstrosity with a repulsive shark-like maw. The dispatching of the Casualty was so ordinary to him that he’d nearly forgotten it.
“Right,” he said again, trying to sound a little more confident. “I remember.”
“Maybe you should see if you can take the day off?” Ink offered and Takeyoshi scoffed.
“Did you forget what kind of job this is?” Takeyoshi asked with a mocking grin. “It’s not like I can call out; not with this newbie hung around my neck,” he sighed and hung his head, trying to marshal his mental resources.
He reached for the door handle, his thoughts racing ahead of him.
“Right now, I need to—,”
“Put some clothes on?” the AI offered, and Takeyoshi had pulled the door halfway open before he realized that he was still stark-naked and dripping wet. He pushed useless feelings of embarrassment away, set Ink down on the rim of the sink, and turned back to the open shower closet. He climbed back into the small compartment behind him and shut the door to close himself inside. He pressed a button on the wall to his right, and the nozzle overhead retracted into the walls. A moment later, vents opened up, piping in warm air. After a few seconds of uncomfortable heat, the small space was as dry as a desert, and Takeyoshi climbed back out into the bathroom.
In the reflection of the bathroom mirror, Takeyoshi spied a short man with ruddy skin and a head of wild black hair. His dark eyes were red with exhaustion, and his flat nose was positioned over a thin mouth and a square jawline that hadn’t been shaved in a week. Takeyoshi looked on himself without remark, while any inclination to groom himself was thoroughly ignored. He had no time to look presentable; the world outside was constantly turning and moving, and it waited for no one.
Takeyoshi stepped out into the halls of his apartment, feeling like a guest in someone else’s home. From the beginning, he hadn’t liked it. It was decorated to suit the Bureau’s tastes with its scarlet rugs, though he was thankful that the walls were a cream color as opposed to the harsh black of the Eclipse Tower. Along with the living space, he’d been given a full set of furniture, which was all in a very hard-edged and angular style Takeyoshi had never found appealing. Beyond that, the apartment was too large: he had his own living room, a shower room, a toilet, a full-sized kitchen, and two extra rooms that had been left bare. For any ordinary person, being given a full-sized apartment with furnishings would be miraculous, more so in Yōgai-shima, where space went at a premium, but that wasn’t true for Takeyoshi.
He’d been given all this not long after the Downfall, when Tokyo was still burning. While countless men and women struggled to survive, whether it be here on Yōgai-shima or back on Honshu, the Inspectors of the Bureau had been given food and shelter in surplus. Takeyoshi hated it; he wasn’t the kind of person to be given a gift like this and not ask where the money and manpower that built the complex around him came from. He felt ghoulish, taking the Bureau’s handouts in the middle of such calamity, but he couldn’t reject it all. To do his duty as an Inspector, he had to rely on the resources given him by the Bureau, but he didn’t have to like it.
For the past few months, he’d barely spent any time here, and whatever minute attachment he’d developed for this space had dissipated. Not once in the last decade had he considered this place to be “home.” In fact, he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d slept here. Still, he found it occasionally useful as a storage space, if nothing else.
From his closet, he retrieved another uniform that had been left dangling there for who knows how long. He dressed in silence, tugging on his pants and buttoning up his shirt. In moments, he was dressed in the accoutrements of the Bureau’s enforcers, that being a black suit and tie. The only addition Takeyoshi made was a dark brown waistcoat that he’d picked up from somewhere he couldn’t remember.
He left his bedroom behind and went to the living room, still decorated with furniture he didn’t like. A sofa was pushed into the corner of the room, while a wall-mounted monitor that he never used hung over a coffee table and a worn chair. Outside of the occasional nights he crashed in his provided bed, Takeyoshi spent most of his time in this apartment sitting in that chair, going through the countless notes and files he left scattered across the living room table. The notes were still there, even now, but Takeyoshi didn’t feel any temptation to revisit them. He’d learned to stop writing his thoughts down with ink and paper and instead kept them in his own head. When his own mind failed him, Ink was always there to remember; an AI didn’t have the virtue of forgetting anything.
Takeyoshi glanced over the papers from a distance, noting that the chaos of the piled notes seemed exactly as he remembered it. Nothing about the apartment suggested that a single person had entered it since the last time he’d been here. He knew better than to trust things based purely on appearance, especially where the Bureau was concerned.
The only thing that stood out of place was a neon green jacket that was slung over the back of Takeyoshi’s chair. The jacket was made of smart-fabric, and it could change its appearance to suit Takeyoshi’s desire at any given moment. For some reason, the jacket had taken on a texture similar to lizard scales, and it had buckled straps on the cuffs and across the collar, which Takeyoshi didn’t remember ever changing it to.
Outside of his mental notes, Takeyoshi knew that his short-term memory was completely shot, and assumed he must have had good reason to change its appearance. He swept the jacket over his shoulders and slipped it on; the feel of the coat was instantly familiar in a way he could scarcely describe. More than the Bureau uniform he wore every day, the coat felt like a part of him, and he’d feel naked without it.
He turned towards the door, tucking Ink into one of the pockets of his jacket before leaving the apartment behind, not bothering to consider the living space a moment after he left it. He stepped out into the halls of the dormitory, and he was instantly confronted by the harsh colors of the Bureau’s interior design. Red carpets like bloody rivers ran up and down every hallway, but the walls were made of black marble with faint white veins. Small circular fluorescent lights illuminated the halls, but the passages were deathly quiet, and empty, save for Takeyoshi.
Up and down the corridor were a number of doors, with either end of the hall terminating into a T-junction. Behind each of the dark doors was another apartment where another of Takeyoshi’s colleagues was quartered, be they fellow Inspectors or members of the Bureau’s support staff. However, every room was entirely soundproof, meaning that not a single decibel could be heard through the walls of the other apartments. Anything could be going on behind the doors that Takeyoshi passed on either side of him, whether it was a band recital, a vicious argument, or a bloody murder, and he wouldn’t know it. The only sound Takeyoshi could hear was the rustling of his clothes and the sound of his footsteps on the carpet. The eerie silence, combined with the hostile colors, made Takeyoshi eager to leave.
The Bureau Dormitories were held in a large building near the northern border of the Lunar District. The Dormitory tower was fifty stories tall, and it had the appearance of four rectangular buildings that corkscrewed together into one, with walls of dark tinted glass. Here, the bulk of the Bureau’s manpower was housed, or at least, those that worked in Central Ward. Each ward of the city had their own headquarters for their local branch of the Bureau, and they were connected through a series of tunnels that ran to and from every corner of the island, through which employees could ride a private rail system. The Dormitories, too, were connected to the Eclipse Tower through a tunnel that ran beneath both buildings.
Takeyoshi crossed into the elevator that sat on the west side of the building, facing the Eclipse Tower across from it. The elevator car and shaft were both made of tinted shatter-proof glass, enabling passengers to look out into the city. Staring at the Eclipse Tower, Takeyoshi reflexively raised his hand, swiping Ink over a small display on the inside of the car to prove that he had the authority to enter the tunnel beneath the building, and there was a small mechanical chime to let him know that he’d been approved. The doors closed behind him, and the car surged into motion, spiraling down to match the shape of the building.
The tinted glass walls allowed Takeyoshi a glimpse of the Lunar District from his vantage. Technically the smallest district in Central Ward, the Lunar District was still a city unto itself. Of course, the Human Calamity Response Bureau was never intended to carve out a fraction of Yōgai-shima for its own purposes, but the unabated accrual of power over its decade long tenure had allowed the organization to alter the city as it pleased.
First came the Eclipse Tower, a seventy-story skyscraper that served as the nerve-center of the Bureau. After that came the Dorms, to provide homes for the Bureau’s staff. Little by little, the Bureau had more buildings put up to suit its needs, beginning with more barracks for its support staff, garages for its fleet of vehicles, private hospitals, and more. With each new addition, the Bureau pushed out any rival influence on the southern shore of Yōgai-shima, and it extended its reach only as far as it wanted.
Someone at the top, whether it was the Director himself or one of his cronies, had decided that the Bureau had cast a large enough shadow over the city, and they chose to end their expansion and mark the limits of their territory with a single move. Black walls had been erected from the east to west side of the Lunar District, cutting the southern curve of the crescent-shaped island off from the rest of the city. The gates were only fifteen to twenty feet tall, but they were lined with cameras, and there were only three entrances via checkpoints set into the east, north, and west.
The checkpoints were always busy between automated shipping vehicles bringing food and supplies into the Lunar District, and the Bureau’s own black-clad Peace Officers patrolled the gates, checking each vehicle and pedestrian against an exhaustive itinerary. No one was allowed in or out of the Bureau’s shadow without documentation. Everything and everyone had to be processed to ensure the Bureau’s protocols were satisfied.
As Takeyoshi descended further and further toward the ground, the Eclipse Tower, the heart and soul of the Bureau, seemed to become taller and exaggerated in its stature. Standing at seventy stories tall, the Bureau headquarters was an impressive piece of architecture, though it paled in comparison to the super towers that dotted each ward of the city. The Eclipse Tower was a teardrop shaped building with its pointed side facing the white mountain in the north, while its smooth rounded side faced the sea to the south. The entire structure was covered with a dark, light-absorbing glass that made the building appear as a jet-black monolith in the daytime, save for the pair of relay towers that extended over the roof whose tips blinked a vibrant red. The only other color the building had was near its top, where the emblem of the Bureau was displayed on its sloping east and west sides; a cheshire moon rendered in silver, whose horns enclosed around a black void.
Though already impressive by twentieth century standards, the Eclipse Tower was raised higher still by a wide concrete base with multiple landings and flights of stairs that forced pedestrians to climb up from the street just to reach the lobby. Within that concrete foundation was the employee parking garage with direct exits onto the intersection, though the garage itself was nothing more than the first of the Bureau’s many below ground rooms and floors that extended unseen beneath the streets.
The Eclipse Tower and, to a lesser extent, the Dorms, had become symbols of the Bureau’s power in Central Ward, and the rest of the Lunar District had taken their aesthetics to heart. In place of grey concrete and whitewashed walls, the Lunar District became a forest of black, sleek, and reflective monuments, evoking the same penumbra of the Bureau itself. Red was the most dominant accent color, another borrowed design element, with silver ornamentation not far behind. The moon, and its phases, had also become popular imagery, but perhaps the strangest of all to Takeyoshi was the change in language.
Signs within the district had changed, whether they were for public awareness or advertisements for private businesses. Hiragana and kanji were depicted with sharp, slender strokes, while sentences were written in a clipped but almost formal style. The occasional word or sentence in foreign languages, particularly English and Korean, also had that short, direct, and detailed stern voice. It was a kind of stagey bureaucratic language born of ordinary men and women imagining the way the Bureau and its agents communicated. If only they knew just how chaotic the Bureau truly was underneath.
Danger.
The warning flashed in Takeyoshi’s mind as he impatiently waited for the elevator to finish its descent to the underground tunnel connecting the Dorms and the Eclipse Tower. The prediction heralded the bright flash of lightning that traveled through the sky, and the rumble of thunder that followed moments later. His prescience didn’t care that Takeyoshi was standing in an insulated shaft, and even if he was walking in the rain, a single lightning bolt couldn’t kill him, but that didn’t stop his brain when it, subtly mutated by exposure to Hazard Energy, sensed the agitated current of electricity through the atmosphere and responded. If he was asked to, he wasn’t certain he could explain what triggered his Forecasting and what didn’t, and he was tempted to believe that there was no logic to it, sometimes. Though his inelegant premonitions had saved his life countless times, it was moments like these that made Takeyoshi wish he never had them at all.
Looking out through the translucent walls, Takeyoshi saw a wave of shimmering black and white particles that swirled in the sky between the hostile clouds and the city below. The protection afforded by Hazard Energy was less substantial than a physical barrier, yet far more effective. More than just stopping the water, the barrier of fortune redirected the wind and rain entirely. Every so often, a brilliant bolt of lightning would dare to descend towards the rooftops, only to be deflected by a flash of light that sent it arcing sideways, safely away from Yōgai-shima and out over the sea.
Danger.
Of course, Takeyoshi’s Forecasting didn’t care, and the warning bloomed in Takeyoshi’s mind, heedless of how well protected he was against the danger that a bolt of lightning represented. Each alarm was accompanied by an involuntary flinch, like a hiccup. The disruptive and unavoidable jolt would only grow more powerful in comparison to the apparent threat, but even a mild inconvenience could set it off. On a day like this, with constant wind, rain, and thunder, Takeyoshi imagined he’d be jumping at every little thing.
“It’s gonna be a long day.”
He rubbed his sore temples as he waited, fishing Ink out of one of his pockets to hold her in his hand. He tapped the slim nanometal device, and it produced a dark green screen, and his fingers hovered over it, waiting for a mental command to give him direction. Takeyoshi likewise paused, his face twisting into a scowl as he tried to remember what he was going to do. Then, it came to him.
“Ink,” Takeyoshi decided to give a command to the AI, rather than struggle to do the simple job himself. “Dial the kid.”
Immediately, the glowing green screen changed, and the name “Atarashi Shin,” was displayed over the word “CALLING” with a small vibrating phone icon. The phone rang twice before it was picked up; that was good. If the Deputy waited even a moment longer to answer the phone from his superior, Takeyoshi was going to have words for him.
“This is Deputy Inspector Atarashi speaking,” came the young man’s voice as Takeyoshi raised the Omen to his ear.
“Kid,” Takeyoshi didn’t affect the same formal tone of his inferior. “Where are you?”
“I’m in the lobby, sir,” the young man replied, hastily, and Takeyoshi questioned himself about his Deputy’s deferent way of speaking.
“Meet me down in the garage,” Takeyoshi ordered. “We’re going back out on the streets.”
“Yes, sir!” Shin was quick to answer, but Takeyoshi barely heard it, having already lowered the phone, allowing Ink to hang up for him. The elevator finally reached the nadir of its downward journey, and Takeyoshi was allowed one last fleeting glimpse of the world above before the elevator plunged below ground, and all he could see was darkness. He could faintly hear the sound of the storm crashing against the elevator shaft again, though the sound was muffled by the glass, but eventually, the sound of the world above faded into nothing, leaving Takeyoshi alone with the soft hum of the elevator as it delved deeper below ground.
Takeyoshi stared into the darkness beyond the glass as he wracked his brain, trying to remember the events of the past few hours. He hardly remembered the drive back to the HQ, or any of the words he might have exchanged with the young man already. In fact, he barely remembered what the young man looked like. A stranger could come up to him and claim to be his new deputy, and he’d have half a mind to believe them. His mind had already evaluated all those details as being “not important,” and had pushed them somewhere to the corner of his brain to be forgotten.
“Welcome, Inspector Asahi,” a male voice greeted Takeyoshi as the elevator reached the bottom of the shaft, though it belonged to one of the AI’s that governed the Eclipse Tower and its secure areas. The elevator doors slid open with a rush of air, revealing a jet-black tunnel that stretched out ahead of him. He paused in the car for a moment, watching as a series of lights clicked on overhead, revealing the passage before him.
The connecting tunnel between the two buildings was a utilitarian rectangular space with the black marble walls of the Bureau’s style and rich red carpeting that quickly gave way to a set of automated walkways to ferry employees back and forth. Takeyoshi strode onto the moving walkway without stopping, not content to let the machine carry him across the long room.
He strode in silence with his hands shoved into his pockets as he went. On either side of him, illuminated billboards were placed on the walls, and they shined into the hallway. The billboards, however, didn’t flash to reveal advertisements, but instead, images of times and places long gone. More than one picture featured a ward from Tokyo, its landmarks and towers rising scenically while white text recounted the ultimate cost of its destruction in both lives and yen. Each still image was accompanied by various slogans which cycled between “Never Forget” and “Never Again.” Takeyoshi was blind to the images and the phrases that had been cynically designed to provoke a sense of guilt in the viewer and manipulate them into working harder for the Bureau’s benefit.
When he reached the other end of the corridor, a pair of sliding doors hissed open, revealing another momentarily dark space beyond. The air whispered through the open space past the threshold, though Takeyoshi could faintly perceive the distant sound of cars echoing through another entrance in the garage beyond. Though he was confident in his own ability to navigate the darkened interior, he customarily paused for a second or two for the automated system to register his presence.
Lights clicked on overhead, revealing a concrete parking garage waited beyond the doorway. It was a thoroughly conventional structure that you could have seen in a million different cities, once upon a time. The only thing that stood out as odd to the casual observer was the fact that the entire garage was stocked with countless copies of the exact same vehicle. Each and every row was occupied by a powerful, two-seater car with a wide front end, a sleek hood and a sloping rear.
The Bureau’s very own custom vehicle tailormade for the needs of its Inspectors; the Survivalist. It was a hardy machine that could outrun a fighter jet with its wheels on the ground, and its polished finish belied armor that could shrug off a tank round. Hand in hand with its ability to perform in the most disastrous of conditions was an interior designed with all the amenities and comforts the Bureau could provide: leather, heated seats with a built-in back massager, and a relay to the city’s network, along with a transmitter that could allow an Inspector’s Omen to control the vehicle. Part of Takeyoshi wanted to complain about the way the Bureau wasted the taxpayer money it squeezed from the population on excess lavishness, but having a Survivalist was one of the few privileges of being an Inspector he allowed himself to enjoy, so he quashed the urge to speak up.
As Takeyoshi stepped into the garage, more lights clicked on overhead, illuminating more of the space the deeper he moved. Evidently, the lights weren’t coming on fast enough for Ink’s sake. A soft green light emanated from Takeyoshi’s pocket, and Ink’s diminutive avatar reappeared. The pixie circled Takeyoshi, floating over his head while leaving a glimmering trail of sparkling dust in the air.
“This way!” Ink called and zoomed through the garage, leaving behind a luminescent trail of holographic paint. Darting around a concrete pylon, the digital construct vanished even as Takeyoshi followed the trail she left behind. In the distance, headlights flashed, and an engine roared to life as the Omen found and took control of the Inspector’s assigned vehicle.
“I went through the trouble of getting the car washed while it was in the garage,” the AI reported from the Omen in the Inspector’s pocket as Takeyoshi approached.
“It’s appreciated,” Takeyoshi thanked the machine as he took in the restored glistening finish of the Survivalist.
“The inside, though. . .” the AI made a noise, clicking an imaginary tongue in disapproval.
“It’s gonna have to wait,” Takeyoshi growled. “We’ve wasted enough time today.”
The sound of a moving elevator rumbled through the walls and reverberated through the dark parking garage. Somewhere off to Takeyoshi’s right, the elevator doors slid open, and lights automatically clicked on. The sound of distant voices reached Takeyoshi’s ears as the automated greeter spoke to the new arrival and, moments later, a pathway of lights appeared on the floor, highlighting the path to Takeyoshi’s car.
The sound of approaching footsteps brought the Inspector out of a seconds-long dose of microsleep. Rubbing his eyes, he spied his approaching trainee. Shin was a good-looking kid somewhere in his twenties, if Takeyoshi had to guess, and dressed in the standard Bureau uniform. He had small black studs in his ears, and he styled his straw-blonde hair chaotically, keeping the left half of his head neatly combed while the right half was messy, with his bangs styled up into a quartet of spikes. At first blush, Takeyoshi would have assumed Shin had a more delicate disposition, but he knew better than to judge a book by its cover. Whoever he was, the younger man hadn’t flinched from chasing a Casualty across town on his first day, when countless other Deputies would have hesitated.
“Well,” the young man brushed the back of his head, nervously. “Should I introduce myself?”
“We didn’t exactly go through proper orientation, did we?” Takeyoshi answered with a tight, brief smile. “But for the sake of courtesy, go ahead.”
“Right!” the young man stood up straight, placed his hands at his sides, and bowed. “My name is Atarashi Shin, Deputy Inspector for the Human Calamity Response Bureau. I look forward to working with you, sir!”
“I’m Asahi Takeyoshi,” the older man gave a slighter bow than his new subordinate. “My expectations are simple: work hard and pay attention. The most important lessons I have to give aren’t going to come from speeches or handholding. I lead by example. Understood?”
“Yes, Asahi-san,” Shin nodded.
“Takeyoshi,” the Senior Inspector insisted. “I’m not big on etiquette.”
“Right,” the young man agreed, but he shifted awkwardly on his feet, telling Takeyoshi that he was uncomfortable with the idea. Even so, Takeyoshi wasn’t keen to change his mind.
“Good,” Takeyoshi nodded. “Now then, you’ve gotten as much down time as you can expect for your first day. For the next ten hours, we’re working nonstop. Do you understand?”
“I do,” Shin nodded, his jaw set, and brow furrowed, as though he expected it was going to be a battle just to get out of the garage.
“Then let’s get going,” Takeyoshi gestured toward the patrol car, stifling a yawn with one hand. “You’re driving.”
The Inspector stepped around to the passenger side and opened the door, staring down at the numerous receipts and fast-food wrappers stuffed into the seats, the door, and lining the footwell. Shin opened the driver’s side door and looked in, his eyes venturing over the mess on his side of the car.
“I basically live out of my car,” Takeyoshi told him, though the excuse felt familiar on his lips. Had he already told Shin that on their drive back to HQ? He couldn’t remember. Either way, Takeyoshi didn’t dwell on it and focused on snatching up the receipts, tucking them into his pocket to throw away later.
“Did you want these?” Shin held his hand out, holding up a handful of bills found on the driver’s side of the car.
“Just drive,” Takeyoshi snatched the receipts from the younger man’s hand and climbed in, Shin following suit.
Whatever mess Takeyoshi made of the cabin, the Survivalist’s engine remained in top condition, and it roared to life when Shin touched the ignition as an orange light shined from the dashboard console, indicating that Shin’s Omen had taken up residence inside the car. Shin carefully backed the car out of the parking space, ignoring the Survivalist’s desire to run free, and Takeyoshi settled back in his seat, folding his arms over his chest and closing his eyes. When he opened them, the car was on the streets of Yōgai-shima already, driving in the shadows of the city’s towers. Shin calmly guided the vehicle with only one hand on the wheel, though Takeyoshi could tell there was a nervous energy in the newly minted Inspector.
“So,” Takeyoshi spoke the word and let it sit, partly because he wanted to get Shin’s attention and partly because he wasn’t certain he knew how he wanted to phrase his thoughts. Ultimately, he decided to be blunt. “Disobeying orders on your first day; that’s not a good look in any line of work.”
“It’s not like I planned it ahead of time,” Shin answered, somewhat bashful, but also somewhat defiant. “I did what I felt I needed to do.”
“In the Bureau, guys like that are usually one of two things: would-be heroes, or total psychopaths,” Takeyoshi shared his thoughts and, if the Deputy was wise enough to see it, he’d also been given a warning about some of his colleagues. “Which are you?”
“What?” Shin glanced at him, seeming surprised by the question.
“Are you a hero or insane?” Takeyoshi asked him squarely. “Let me tell you kid, neither of those kinds of people last all that long in the Bureau. The system we have in place with the Forecasting team, and the divided seniority between Inspectors is there to protect you. We don’t do our job until we have all the information we need to do it right. We don’t just jump in feet first.”
“Even if people could die?” Shin protested, giving Takeyoshi a scrutinizing look. “What good are we if we just standby while innocent people are in danger?”
“A dead Inspector does no one any good except fill an empty grave,” the older man assured him. “And that’s where you were heading, make no mistake.”
“I would have found my way out of that situation,” Shin disagreed, though his objection was quiet, and perhaps petulant.
“Oh, I’m sure,” Takeyoshi’s comment was laden with sarcasm. “And how many people would have been killed in the process?”
Shin didn’t answer, but he stared out through the windshield, his eyes hard and jaw set.
“A hero, then,” Takeyoshi evaluated the young man sitting silently next to him. He was emotional, and defiant, and he seemed to think that the onus of his duty rested squarely on his own shoulders, and no one else. So self-absorbed in his thinking was Shin that he never thought to share the blame for this morning with anyone else, not even at Takeyoshi himself. Ruefully, Takeyoshi acknowledged that if the Deputy thought to point the finger at him, the Senior Inspector would have no excuse for his late arrival, but he doubted that the thought even passed through Shin’s head.
“So, which are you, then?” Shin looked back at his mentor, trying to judge the older man.
“What?” Takeyoshi asked, momentarily confused as the question was turned around on him.
“Are you a hero or a psycho?” Shin had a slight smirk on his face at seeing Takeyoshi’s reaction, mistaking his puzzlement for a small victory.
Seeing that Shin had misunderstood the nuance of his statement, Takeyoshi rolled his eyes.
“I didn’t say all Inspectors were heroes or psychopaths,” Takeyoshi corrected his Deputy. “As for me, I’m neither. I’m a journalist.”
“What?”
“A journalist,” Takeyoshi repeated with incredulity. “I write stories for the local paper. Didn’t you ever read the Yōgai-shima Shinbun?”
“No,” Shin answered with a light shrug. “Who reads newspapers anymore?”
Takeyoshi resisted the affront that rose up in his chest at the young man’s utterly careless words. No, he told himself. Don’t get angry. Someone had to guide the ignorant back onto the proper path.
“Well, I still freelance for the Sanrin Daily,” Takeyoshi told him, pointedly. “Pick up a copy next time you get a chance. Reading’s good for your brain.”
“Okay, so if you’re a newspaper reporter then what are you doing here?” Shin gestured out the window. “Why do all this?”
“The truth is, once you become a Human Calamity, you don’t really get a choice,” Takeyoshi sighed and settled back into his seat as he launched into his destination. “Sure, you might think that you made the decision to join the Bureau, but the truth is that the powers that be would use every dirty tactic they could to draft you into service. Can’t have a living, breathing, catastrophe mingling with the rest of the population unsupervised.”
“So, you were forced to join the Bureau, then?” the younger man’s voice was low, and uncertain.
“In a sense,” Takeyoshi agreed, though half-heartedly. “We all are on some level. In the eyes of Japan, or Yōgai-shima, or the Cabinet, we’re killers. They need us to fight the battles they can’t. That’s the reason they need us here, but at the same time, each Inspector has to decide for themselves why they wear the uniform.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at me,” Takeyoshi told him, and the young man shifted in his seat.
Danger.
“No, not literally. Watch the road.”
“Oh.”
“I joined the Bureau around a decade ago, give or take a few years,” Takeyoshi thought back to the past. “To be honest, I wasn’t too keen on becoming an Inspector, myself. I had a thousand questions about what the Bureau really was, what they were really doing, and who was backing them. So, at first? I dug my heels in. I said, ‘no.’ That was when Natsume came to me. She was already all in on the Bureau. I guess you could say she was a mentor to me. She tried to convince me that the Bureau was something necessary for Japan’s survival and when I shared all my doubts and grievances with her, she listened. Then, she said something to me. Something I haven’t forgotten.”
“Yeah?” Shin prompted him when Takeyoshi fell silent. “What’d she say?”
“‘It’s easier to find the answers you’re looking for from within than from without,’” Takeyoshi recited the words from memory.
“So, she told you to join the Bureau in order to get the answers you wanted?” Shin summarized the intent behind the words well enough, though Takeyoshi mentally docked him some points for his overly blunt way of doing so.
“Joining the Bureau meant being the killer they wanted me to be,” Takeyoshi held up a finger, giving his student a meaningful look. “But it also means that I’m closer to the truth here than anywhere else. The Bureau wants you here for their own reasons, Shin, your own motivations are just as important. Why are you here, Shin? What does being an Inspector get you?”
“I’m here because I want to help people,” Shin made it sound as if it were the most obvious answer in the world.
“That sounds nice,” Takeyoshi clicked his teeth, unsatisfied with the answer. “I’ve heard a lot of Inspectors say the same thing. Some of them even meant it. You seem like a nice kid, Shin, so maybe you mean it, too, but virtue isn’t enough to get you through the hard times. You need something real powerful to hold onto when the work gets dark. Do you have something like that, Shin? Something that makes being an Inspector worth killing for? Something worth dying for?”
The young man stared straight out the window, his gaze strong and steady. He put both hands on the wheel, tightening them into fists. There was something he was thinking about, Takeyoshi could tell. Something that was important to him. The young man glanced at Takeyoshi and then back out the window, emotions running through him. He opened his mouth, trying to find the words he wanted to say, but Takeyoshi already had his answer.
“You don’t need to tell me why,” Takeyoshi assured him, holding up a hand as if to physically stop Shin from speaking. “I just needed to be sure you have an anchor. Whatever that reason is, hold onto it, Shin. That’s your first lesson.”
“I thought my first lesson was that I shouldn’t look at Human Calamities as people,” Shin’s mouth twisted into a wry smile, covering his momentary weakness.
“I said you shouldn’t look at Casualties as people,” Takeyoshi corrected him. “Don’t forget that we’re also Human Calamities.”
“Right.”
“Also, don’t correct me,” Takeyoshi scolded the young man, though he was playful. “That’s your third first lesson.”
“So, what’s my fourth first lesson?” Shin asked, going along with his mentor’s game.
“Today, they have us on training wheels,” Takeyoshi leaned back in his seat again and tilted his head back. “We’ll patrol up and down Central for the next ten hours or so. Check the GPS on the console; the Forecasters at HQ will mark areas that feature sudden spikes in Hazard Energy, and we’ll ride around and make sure the area is all clear before moving on. With the storm rolling overhead, they’ll probably be a dozen or more hotspots at any given time.”
“Okay,” Shin shrugged his shoulders, a nervous energy clearly surging through him.
“Don’t rush it,” the older man advised. “Even an Emergency Level Casualty can still kill a lot of people. If we’re lucky, the rest of the day will go by slowly and quietly. If push comes to shove and we run into another active Human Calamity, I’ll take point. You just focus on polishing your Karma and controlling your Crisis. Stick to the basics, for now.”
“The basics,” Shin repeated the words as he drove. “What are those, again?”
“What do you mean ‘what are those’?” Takeyoshi cracked open an irate eye he wasn’t aware he’d closed. “Didn’t you go through basic training already?”
“Yeah,” Shin protested, defensively. “I had a year-long course in the academy.”
“And what did they teach you?”
“How to handle firearms, CQC, defensive driving, CPR, city evacuation routes, hostage negotiation, crime scene investigation,” Shin listed half a dozen random examples and shrugged his shoulders.
“So, nothing important,” Takeyoshi sighed.
“Don’t say that,” Shin groaned with audible frustration. “I busted my ass for a whole year learning that stuff!”
“Did the Casualty that tore through the city this morning know CPR, do you think?” Takeyoshi asked, pointedly. “Do you think I needed to know how to handle a hostage negotiation to stop him?”
He reached down and pulled a pen from the cup holder, transforming it into a blade within a second, holding it up to illustrate his point.
“No,” Shin answered through gritted teeth, his voice rueful.
“That’s right,” Takeyoshi let the pen shift back into its regular form before tucking it into his pocket. “We’re here because we’re Human Calamities, and the enemies the world needs us to fight are our own kind. That means it’s more important to understand the powers that set us apart rather than being some kind of one-man SWAT team.”
“Don’t blame me,” Shin shook his head in frustration. “I didn’t choose the Bureau’s curriculum, alright?”
“I guess starting from scratch’s better than having to correct some other idiot’s shoddy work,” Takeyoshi tried to find an upside to the situation, but he found his glass of optimism thoroughly empty. “Did they at least teach you basic Exigency?”
“Yeah,” Shin answered, though he sounded uncertain. “I know that. I just have to, sort of, remind myself of how I got my powers and I enter a kind of ‘zone,’ I guess.”
“Well, that’s something,” Takeyoshi tried to take that as some kind of good news. “Though, you’ll want to learn to do it at a moment’s notice. I mean that literally; within less than a second. You need to get a real handle on that switch inside your head. Once you’ve done that, then you’ve really mastered Exigency.”
“Alright,” Shin nodded. “How do I do that?”
“Practice,” Takeyoshi gave the obvious answer. “Some Inspectors use a little ritual or a trigger to get the adrenaline flowing. Other’s use a Transaction to stop and start their Exigency; it’s clever, but I just don’t see it as reliable compared to having full control yourself.”
“A Transaction?” Shin asked, the meaning of the word going over his head.
“It’s a thing that Human Calamities can do,” Takeyoshi rattled off the simplest explanation he could. “Basically, Hazard Energy can influence cause and effect by making things more or less likely to happen. A Transaction is when a Human Calamity creates a kind of unique causal chain of action and reaction, where the user agrees to do one thing, and they get something in return.”
“Can you give me an example?” Shin asked, innocently, but it was clear to Takeyoshi that the entire explanation went over his head.
“Like if you don’t sleep for a week, you become twice as strong,” Takeyoshi hastily tried to think up an example off the top of his head, but his tired brain wasn’t sending its best thoughts.
“Really?” Shin seemed taken with the idea. “Is that possible?”
“Yes, but don’t actually do it,” Takeyoshi warned him, hastily. “That’s a terrible Transaction. You can get a lot better than that.” Takeyoshi felt exhaustion turning every possible explanation for the phenomenon into a wordless buzz. “It’s advanced stuff. We’re sticking to the basics, remember?”
“Right.”
“So,” Takeyoshi tried to start from the top. “You can use Exigency. Has anything ever happened while you’re in Exigency? Like the way that Casualty could manipulate water?”
“Or the way you can make things into knives?” Shin asked, glancing at his mentor.
“You noticed,” Takeyoshi lauded him. “You have a good eye. That’s called a Crisis Ability. Whatever traumatic event made you into a Human Calamity, well, it’s become a part of you.”
“The old man this morning was drowning, so he got the ability to control water,” Shin reasoned to himself. “And you can make things into blades, so—”
Before Shin could finish, Takeyoshi cut him off with a raised hand.
“Don’t ask people how they got their powers,” Takeyoshi warned him, gently. “Don’t even speculate; it’s something of a taboo. I don’t particularly mind, myself, but for some people, their Crisis is wound up in something awful. You can ask what another Inspector’s Crisis is, but never how they got it. We’re all on the same team, after all, but asking for anything past general information is poor etiquette.”
“I understand,” Shin nodded, looking forward through the windshield.
“Your Crisis: do you know what it is?”
“Yeah,” the young man glanced at his mentor. “I know how to use it.”
“Show me,” Takeyoshi gestured at him. “Real quick.”
“Right now?” Shin gave Takeyoshi a worried side glance.
“Just be quick,” Takeyoshi insisted, retrieving the pen from his pocket, twirling it across his fingers as it became a blade, before putting it away again all in one smooth motion.
“Well, it takes some concentration,” Shin held up his left hand, holding onto the wheel of the car with his right as he divided his focus. “But if I do it right. . .”
Danger.
Takeyoshi ignored the premonition; it always went off in the presence of other Crises.
“I can make a kind of explosive powder—”
“Okay, never mind,” Takeyoshi gently placed his hand over Shin’s and prompted him to lower his fist.
“Are you sure?” Shin asked, crestfallen.
“Let’s not fly too far too fast,” Takeyoshi assured him with a hasty smile, inwardly breathing a sigh of relief.
“Okay,” the young man sounded disappointed.
“Well, after that it’s Karma,” Takeyoshi settled back into his seat and folded his arms. “At least that gives us an idea of what to work on.”
“Karma refers to the internal flow of Hazard Energy that resides in every person and object,” Shin described the phenomenon ably enough, but the slow and thoughtful cadence of his words made Takeyoshi wonder if he wasn’t quoting it from some memorized passage out of a textbook.
“Correct,” Takeyoshi agreed. “Learning how to use that power inside you is fundamental to being an Inspector.”
“This may sound like a dumb question. . .,” Shin admitted, his voice bashful.
“It takes practice,” Takeyoshi answered before Shin had even finished asking. “You’ve got to learn to draw out the energy inside you, and how to apply it to the world around you.”
Shin didn’t say anything, immediately, and Takeyoshi could sense another “How do I do that?” before the young man tried to ask it. Takeyoshi reached into the pockets of his coat, looking for something to help him illustrate his point. His fingers closed around something hard and smooth, and Takeyoshi withdrew it from his pocket.
“This’ll do,” Takeyoshi surmised as he looked at the small Yōgai-shima Yen pinched between his fingers. The gold coin had the number “10” printed on one side, with the words “Perseverance” above it and “Yōgai-shima” below it. The opposite side had the symbol of the Cabinet: a sunburst rendered in gold with the printing date hugging the curve of the coin’s edge.
Takeyoshi reached into himself, and a pair of pages appeared in his mind. Both pages were black with unreadable luminescent script, save for the top third of the lefthand page, which was white with indecipherable black letters. The two pages represented the Karma inside Takeyoshi, which was always slanted towards the negative, with only a fraction of it ever manifesting as good fortune at any time.
He tore a piece of script from the lower right corner of the black page, and he imagined tying it around the coin held in his hand. The Negative Energy settled into the coin, but the empty space inside Takeyoshi’s Karma was immediately filled with more misfortune, and the page was made whole instantaneously. Still, as the Karma reacted to his invocation, the Interest on it turned a little more of the lefthand page white.
“This coin won’t land on its head until Atarashi Shin can Invest 10% Karma into it,” Takeyoshi roughly sketched the outline of the Transaction in his mind as he held the coin. Though he only put maybe –10% into drafting the Transaction, by stipulating the terms with a specific outcome, actor, and the means to break the Transaction, that minute amount of Hazard Energy was enough to get Takeyoshi the outcome he wanted.
“Here,” Takeyoshi held up the coin and Shin glanced at him, then held his hand out for the tiny object. “Hold onto this.”
“What’s it for?” Shin asked, glancing between the coin and the streets outside the window.
“That coin will never come up heads, no matter how many times you flip it,” Takeyoshi informed him.
“No way,” without wasting a second, Shin flipped the coin several times in succession, his eyes wandering back and forth between the small coin and the road. “That’s impossible.”
“Save it for when you’re not behind the wheel,” Takeyoshi scolded the young man, catching his left hand by the wrist to prevent another distracting coin toss.
“Right,” Shin agreed sheepishly, and Takeyoshi released his arm so that the Deputy could tuck the coin away.
“Whenever you’ve got free time, I want you flipping that coin,” Takeyoshi instructed, pointing at Shin’s chest pocket where he’d put it. “Think of it as weight-lifting for your Karma.”
“How exactly?” Shin couldn’t help but ask.
“That coin will only land on its head when you force it to,” Takeyoshi assured him. “That’s how Karma works; you have to look at ordinary causality and tell it what to do, even if your instincts try and tell you otherwise.”
“So, if I believe that I can make the coin land on its head, it will?” Shin tried to wrap his head around the idea, but Takeyoshi shook his head.
“It’s not about belief, Shin,” the Inspector corrected him on the spot. “It doesn’t matter how much you believe in something, because belief alone can’t make anything happen. You can only believe in what you don’t know, and if you don’t know that the coin will land the way you want it to, then it won’t. Get out of the habit of wanting and believing in things and get into the practice of knowing and forcing. That’s how Karma works.”
“So, I have to know that the coin will land on its head,” Shin repeated the idea, slowly, and he raised his hand to his left breast where the coin was. “And then it will work.”
“It will take practice,” Takeyoshi reminded him. “It takes a while to get into the right mindset, just like Exigency, but it will get easier as you go. That coin is the smallest step in becoming a proper Inspector. If you can do that, you can learn the rest.”
“But what if I can’t?” Shin fixated on the negative as he asked that question and he looked at Takeyoshi.
“But you can,” Takeyoshi reminded him, and he tapped the side of his head. “And you already know you can.”
“Right,” Shin reminded himself, looking back towards the road. “Mindset is everything.”
The conversation petered into silence and Takeyoshi found his eyelids drooping as the rhythmic rumbling of the Survivalist lulled him like a child in a cradle.
“So, who trained you?”
The question jolted Takeyoshi awake, and his internal clock made him realize that he’d fallen asleep for a few seconds. Even so, the hum of the vehicle and the heated seat made it too comfortable for him to open his eyes.
“Well, my training was a lot more informal than yours,” Takeyoshi told him. “There was a lot of chaos when I took up the badge, and the Inspectors were all spread thin between the mainland and Yōgai-shima. There was a lot of learning by doing. A trial by fire, if you will.”
“Did Natsume teach you anything?”
“Some,” Takeyoshi folded his arms over his chest, his chin dipping down. His breathing became long and deep. “I still remember the first time we ran into a Disaster Level Casualty. That was one hell of a day.”
“Tell me about it,” but Shin’s words never reached Takeyoshi’s ears, nor did he see his new trainee glance over at him as he finally fell truly and deeply asleep.
“Takeyoshi?”
Personnel Dossier (PARTIAL)
Senior Inspector Asahi Takeyoshi (朝日 偉良)
Birthdate: December 11th, 2009 (34)
Description
Takeyoshi stands about 5’6, with brown skin and a head of wild uncombed hair. He has a squarish, flat face with a nose and heavy bags under his slender brown eyes. He has an unathletic build, with thin arms and legs, and a small gut. He wears the stand Bureau uniform without frills, though he wears a second neon green nano-material jacket over his blazer. He keeps his pockets stuffed with pens, notepads, and old receipts.
Background
Takeyoshi lived a relatively normal life, pursuing a career in journalism after college. Following the events of 2020, Takeyoshi would make a name for himself covering the War for Taiwan. After the war’s end, Takeyoshi would return to Japan, where he would begin investigating the Institute of Human Evolution and their connections to the Japanese Government. He would become a thorn in the side of the powers that be, his digging into state secrets culminating in an attack on his life made to look like a mugging. The stabbing inflicted on him by his would-be assassins transformed Takeyoshi into a Human Calamity.
After the Downfall of Honshu, Takeyoshi would be scouted by the Bureau, desperate for new members after a number of Inspectors died in the burning of Tokyo. Though Takeyoshi would initially buck against this idea, his friendship with one of the Bureau’s Inspectors would see him changing his mind. Opting to join the Bureau to expose its secrets, Takeyoshi would travel to Yōgai-shima and join the Bureau.
Omen: Ink
Takeyoshi keeps his Omen in its basic form as a slab of nanometal, colored a dark grey with neon green lights. In battle, Takeyoshi occasionally unfurls him Omen into a spear, though he prefers to use his more disposable weapons created through his Crisis. The AI avatar of the Omen appears as a small green fairy holding a paint brush. Ink serves as a friendlier voice compared to Takeyoshi’s more bitter disposition, and she spends much of her time trying to coax Takeyoshi into taking better care of himself.
Crisis Abilities
Stabbing Emergency, Cutting Wit
Takeyoshi’s Crisis allows him to channel his Hazard Energy into any object he touches, transforming it into a bladed weapon. This ability can apply to any solid object Takeyoshi touches, regardless of what it’s made of, and the kind of weapon Takeyoshi can create is practically limitless.
Karma Visualization
Takeyoshi visualizes his Karma as a series of pages in his mind, with a single page representing one hundred percent. His Negative Karma taints the pages black with white text, while his Positive Karma is the opposite.
Karmic Abilities
Asking the Right Questions
Transaction
Effect: When faced with an opponent, Takeyoshi asks a series of rhetorical leading questions about their abilities, their motivations, their strategies and so on. For each question Takeyoshi asks, he gains additional insight into his enemy via his Forecasting, allowing him to better understand and predict them. Takeyoshi can ask up to ten total questions, although after the fifth question, he has diminishing returns on his Transaction’s effect.
Cost: Verbally asking questions, requiring +5% Karma on each individual question, with an upper limit of ten questions.
Parameters
Exigency: 6/6.5/6.5
Takeyoshi has above average strength for a Human Calamity, but he’s far from exceptional.
Runaway: 4
Takeyoshi’s power grows slowly over time.
Forecasting: 9
Takeyoshi has a profound ability to sense danger and shifts in Hazard Energy, but his power is so sensitive that it reacts to nearly everything, creating a white noise effect that makes it hard for Takeyoshi to recognize true sources of danger to himself. Takeyoshi suppresses his Forecasting with occasional drinks of alcohol, and his sleep deprivation further impairs it.
Account: 5 (200%/300%/400%)
Takeyoshi has the standard amount of total Hazard Energy control expected of a Senior Inspector.
Precision: 7
Takeyoshi’s powers are built on precision, rendering him mostly incapable of widespread damage outside of his Catastrophe.
Karma: 2.5
Takeyoshi has misfortunate Karma.
Soon, the World Will End 