Tag: anime

January 15^th, 2044

07:30 AM

Central Ward

Horizon District

Nanbu Naoya

Naoya sat on the couch, his back to the window that was streaked with countless drops of falling rain. He was dressed in a simple white undershirt and a pair of black sweatpants, unable to summon up any more energy to get dressed and face the day. Instead, he was partially slumped in his seat, one arm hanging over the back of the chair as he stared at nothing in particular.

Hurricane Izumi let her clouds swallow up the sky, creating a barrier that blocked out the rising sun, making it appear as though night had yet to leave. Lightning flashed in the window, and thunder rolled afterward, booming throughout the city. Despite the tumult outside, Naoya couldn’t be bothered to move from his seat.

He hadn’t slept since the night before. After Hideki’s garage collapsed, Naoya had come straight home. He spent the entire day in a nervous state, trying to understand what had happened to him, reliving the encounter with the Towers over and over again. It wasn’t the first time Naoya had gotten into a fight, far from it, but it was the first time he’d ever been so seriously injured.

“I was mutilated, wasn’t I?” Naoya asked himself that question, again and again. He stared at himself in the bathroom mirror, running his hand over the left half of his face. He remembered the pain of blades running across his eye, blinding him before gouging open the side of his jaw. But of those wounds, no trace remained, not even a scar.

His laminate jacket, which had been torn open by the flashing blades, had sown itself back up, leaving it without a mark, but the shirt beneath the jacket told the tale. The grey sweater Naoya had been wearing was shredded and stained with trace amounts of blood. Holding the torn article of clothing in his hands, Naoya stared at it, observing it as the only proof that he hadn’t lost his mind. He’d been forced to hide it before Suzume came home; he couldn’t risk letting her suspect what happened, but she seemed to know that something was wrong.

Before Naoya had even gotten home, Suzume had been calling him, but Naoya was in far too frantic a state to answer. When he finally picked up, he assured her that he was back home and that he was fine, but she continued to pester him with questions for as long as she could. When she came home late at night, she didn’t ask any more questions, but she kept a keen eye on him, watching for anything strange.

The rest of the night was a blur, and Naoya spent it simply staring up at the ceiling while Suzume slept beside him. He tried to wrap his head around everything that he’d experienced; the battle with the Towers, the wounds that disappeared, his supernatural strength, the lightning that wrapped around him. He spent so long thinking about it that he wished it never happened, and that it was all just a dream, but it was true. Even worse, the more he thought about it, the more the answers to his questions became clear.

“I’m a monster, aren’t I?” Naoya couldn’t evade that thought, but he couldn’t dare ask it aloud. It was like actually saying it would make it real.

Even as Naoya sat in silence, his mind turned entirely inward, Suzume was busy getting ready for work. He listened to the sound of Suzume step into the shower and turn on the water. Suzume’s presence made Naoya feel more at ease, and he wished she didn’t have to leave. He wanted to shut out the world for a day and pretend that his problems didn’t exist. He wanted to share that seclusion with Suzume, to just be with her, but he couldn’t do that. Besides, being with Suzume brought its own sense of uncertainty, as well. If anyone knew the answers to Naoya’s questions, it was Suzume.

“What am I?” Naoya wanted to ask the question when he heard the sound of Suzume opening the washroom door, but he bit his tongue. He remained silent as she crossed into the living room, shrugging on her uniform jacket. She stopped near the couch, standing in her black suit with its silver zippers, blue blouse, and red tie. She tugged on her gloves and then tightened the straps of the holster on her right thigh.

“Are you staying in today?” she asked, her crystal-blue eyes evaluating him while her porcelain features remained smooth and stoic. She ran a gloved hand over her blue-black hair, and small sparks of electricity danced between her fingers, provoking her long hair to sway and then lay flat.

“I’m, uh,” Naoya struggled to answer, having not even thought about working, being so absorbed in his own thoughts. “Not feeling too great, right now.”

“I see,” Suzume stood looking at Naoya silently, and the two held each other’s gazes for several seconds. “Well, try and get some rest. It’s no use working yourself to the bone in this weather.”

And just like that, the moment was over. Naoya almost wanted to protest, expecting Suzume to grill him about the day before, and his sudden change of attitude. He was behind on rent, and he was staying home, and she had nothing to say about that? It bothered him, and it made him realize that Suzume had questions of her own, things she was scared to ask. Naoya’s fears, and hers, together made a wall of silence that neither could cross.

“Well, I’m off,” Suzume stepped towards the front door.

“Suzu!” Naoya called out to her, feeling an urge to dare the border that had come between them.

“Yes?” she turned to look back and Naoya froze.

“What am I?” that was the question that Naoya wanted to ask, but the words refused to come out. He wanted the truth, but if he had the truth, the answer threatened to change his world forever.

“Have a good day,” Naoya said instead, his fear burying the question.

“You, too,” Suzume smiled back at him and then left, the sound of the door closing behind her seemed louder than the thunder. Naoya was left alone with the pouring rain, trying to contemplate his own existence.

“Human Calamities are monsters made from exposure to random accidents, right?” Naoya tried to summon everything he’d ever heard about the monsters that plagued Yōgai-shima that he could, but he could only stand in awe of the cavernous gaps in his knowledge. “What are Human Calamities?”

Unable to answer that question himself, Naoya posed it to his Augur, hoping to find the answers to his questions on the Yōgai-shima Net. He scooped up his Augur and held the nanite device in front of his face and stared into the holographic screen that came up. A million people across the island had asked the same question, and a hundred thousand answers had been provided. Unfortunately, the vast majority weren’t useful.

“Yokai, Ayakashi, and Saigaijin: how Human Calamities connect to Japanese mythology.”

“Series of arsons in Remembrance Ward linked to Human Calamity; ‘perpetrator or victim?’ authorities unsure.”

“Exclusive! Evidence that Human Calamities were created by the US military!”

“Human Calamities: evolution, intelligent design, or alien interference?”

“How I brought down Tokyo; confessions of a Human Calamity from the Downfall.”

“The Science of Saigaijin, by Kiyotaka Emon.”

Naoya scrolled through the list, seeing countless articles and social media posts that all promised the truth, most of them contradicting one another. Conspiracy theories, puff pieces, and pseudo-scientific articles dominated the holographic display, and Naoya scrolled down, going through a list of countless more articles that had been penned in the last decade. The truth, if it was among the endless assortment, would be hard to find.

After several minutes of exposing himself to the madness of the island’s internet, Naoya threw down his Augur onto the table in front of the couch and slouched in his seat again, the momentary surge of energy entirely expended. He returned to staring up at the ceiling, trying to find the codex that would unravel the mystery standing in front of his face, but the apartment held no answers. Instead, staring up at the roof above him only reminded Naoya that he was alone in the all too little living space.

The reminder filled Naoya with anxious energy that provoked him to finally get up out of his seat. While self-doubt and confusion sapped Naoya’s reserves of energy, he found the thought of waiting the next twelve hours for Suzume to come home to be unbearable. He decided to get outside, somewhere open and free, and solve the riddle of what he was going to do later.

He went into the bedroom to get changed, tossing his clothes into a hamper before he retrieved a black sweater from his closet alongside a pair of jeans. Last of all, he withdrew his black laminate bike jacket, its leather-like surface hiding all trace of the damage it suffered the day before. Despite knowing better, Naoya still held the object up by the shoulders and looked over it, looking for some reminder of the blades that had cut through it. Though he predictably found nothing, looking at his jacket reminded him of something else.

Naoya reached into the lining of his jacket and unzipped an interior pocket. His fingers groped into the small fold, and they brushed a thin piece of paper. He gently pulled it out, holding up a small sheaf of paper as long as his hand and as wide as two fingers. Runes were written on the piece of paper in a deft hand using dark blue ink. It was one of the many talismans that Suzume foisted on him under the promise of combating his perennial bad luck, but his lover’s random superstition now took on a new light.

His thoughts returned to the week before, when he confronted Nishijima and was nearly hit by a truck shortly thereafter. He remembered the talisman that he’d had with him on that day, and how it had become scorched and twisted. Burnt. It reminded him of the fire he had in his chest when he faced Sakai, and the lightning that coursed around him. That same lightning coursed around that Suzume so very often.

“What are these really for?” another question Naoya couldn’t answer or even bring himself to ask. Another lie by omission. A defiant part of him wanted to crumple the thin piece of paper into a ball and toss it aside, finding an instant distaste for the amulet, but he stopped himself. Another part of his mind reminded him that Suzume had given him the talisman, and he trusted that her reasons were kind. Replacing the talisman, Naoya shrugged his jacket on and headed for the door, tugging on his boots before he stepped out into the hallway.

He impatiently took the elevator down to the garage, trying to tell himself that the shaking metal box wasn’t closing in on him, and that the muffled sound of thunder wasn’t the clamor of the building around him slowly rattling itself apart. When he emerged into the underground garage with its low concrete ceiling, his anxiety only increased as he searched for his bike. Only when he climbed on it and rode the bike outside did he feel any relief, despite the storm endlessly rolling overhead.

Driving through the streets in the early morning darkness, Naoya aimlessly wandered across Central, trying to discern what his next course of action should be. He found himself going around in circles through the early morning darkness, lacking any direction. Despite the looming threat of not being able to pay rent this month, the question of his own identity took precedence over anything else.

He stopped and started, torn between a restless desire to keep moving and finding a spot to stop and think. He pulled out his Augur and scanned through it again, skimming through the numerous articles that it pulled up about Human Calamities, but they quickly lost his attention once they descended into conjecture and conspiracy. He wasn’t discouraged, however; instead, he felt a budding desire to find out the truth, wherever it was. There had to be someone who knew the answers. There had to be someone who could explain to Naoya what he was.

He parked his bike on the side of the road next to the outdoor seating area of a café, though the half a dozen tables set up were left unused on account of the storm. Like a madman, Naoya continued to search through the Yōgai-shima Net, looking for a single ray of truth amidst a sea false information and rumors. So focused was he, that Naoya forgot his surroundings.

He didn’t notice the other rider creeping up on him until they were already on top of him. The newcomer drove her bike into Naoya’s space with a deliberate, provocative intent, driving up at an angle to park her front wheel ahead of his bike, preventing him from pulling away. Naoya looked up in surprise, looking down at the smaller rider and her bike, knowing that he could easily bowl both over if he needed to, but that thought vanished when he recognized her.

The slender woman on the black sport bike was dressed in a laminate rider suit with triangular spikes across side of her boots and midriff. Over her black suit, the woman wore a black suit jacket cropped up to her ribs, and she kept the sleeves rolled up to wear a pair of motorcycle gloves. The woman had a head of wild hair gathered into a messy ponytail and her face was concealed behind a bright pink oni mask.

“The Inspector from the other day,” Naoya stared at the smaller figure that had abruptly crossed his path. Despite the vast size difference between the two riders, Naoya didn’t feel like throwing his weight around. An aura of danger surrounded the slim woman, and that was more than enough to put Naoya on the backfoot.

“Nanbu Naoya?” the woman looked up at Naoya as she switched her bike off, keeping him penned in against the fencing of the café to his left. The woman’s voice was a growl augmented by the mask she wore, deep and rasping, though undeniably female.

“Uhh, yes,” Naoya responded slowly, unsure how to react in this situation. He slowly lowered his Augur and tucked it into a pocket on his thigh. “Can I help you?”

The Inspector reached up to touch the chin of her mask with her right hand, and the nanite surface produced several folds across the mask’s face. Raising her hand, the mask collapsed as she pushed upward, transforming into a horned hairband across the top of her forehead. The woman beneath the mask had a young face, and Naoya gauged that she was barely in her twenties. She had a heart-shaped face with ruddy skin and a pair of thick eyebrows over large pink eyes. Despite her evident youth, the young woman carried herself with a far more confident stature than Naoya had seen most men, and her eyes were sharp and serious.

“Senior Inspector Ayame of the Human Calamity Response Bureau,” the Inspector reached into her jacket and withdrew a leather wallet and let it fall open, revealing her ID and a silver badge that featured a Cheshire moon whose horns wrapped around a black void. “I’d like to speak with you about something that happened across the river in Sin Ward, the other day.”

“In Sin Ward, huh?” Naoya immediately felt a pang of anxiety, but he tried to cover it with a smile. “You’re a little out of your jurisdiction, aren’t you?”

“My authority allows me to go anywhere on this island as long as it’s relevant to the case at hand,” the small Inspector fixed Naoya with a keen eye as she tucked the wallet back into her coat. “Today, that means you, big guy. Consider yourself lucky.”

“I can’t imagine what you’d want to talk to me about,” Naoya raised his hands, trying to play it cool. “Are you here to give me a parking ticket or something?”

“Don’t get cute; it’s not a good look for you,” the Inspector advised with a stern look.

“Sorry, I tend to get flippant when I’m nervous,” Naoya did his best to keep a jovial smile and attitude. “It’s a self-defense mechanism.”

“As long as you answer my questions, you’ve got nothing to worry about,” the Inspector folded her arms as she balanced on her bike. “I’m in the habit of getting things done in a hurry; you be honest, and this can be done in thirty seconds.”

“Alright, but I have to warn you,” Naoya gently reached out and took hold of his bike’s handle with his left hand. “If I get any more nervous, I might try to run.”

It was a playful joke that would have gotten a stern reaction from any typical law enforcement officer, but the Inspector’s face split into a sharp, predatory smile.

“That might be fun,” Ayame considered, her eyes venturing over Naoya’s ride. “But it would be over too quickly.”

“Oof,” Naoya laid a hand over his chest and feigned being wounded. “That double entendre cut deep.”

“Alright, tough guy,” the Inspector rolled her eyes, a wry grin lingering on her face. “That’s enough flirting for now.”

“Who’s flirting?” Naoya asked innocently, but Ayame ignored him.

“There was an auto shop down in Decadence District,” the Inspector regained her brusque demeanor, returning to the matter at hand. “21^st Autoboys, or something: you know it?”

“21^st Century Autoboys,” Naoya corrected her. “I used to work there.”

Naoya knew better than to deny the fact; he imagined the Inspector knew everything that happened the day before.

“Is that all?” the Inspector challenged him. “Did you know it collapsed the other day?”

Naoya reached up to rub the back of his neck, a display of nervousness that the Inspector couldn’t miss. As much as he wanted to distance himself from what had happened, it was clear that he couldn’t. He’d likely been spotted leaving the garage on traffic cams between there and Central. Honestly, he was just thankful that the Inspector hadn’t come to his apartment.

“I may have been there around that time,” Naoya admitted, his smile a much less bright.

“I’m not here to arrest you in regard to any criminal or civil violation,” Ayame read Naoya’s hesitant response and tried to allay any fears he had about answering. “All I want to know is what happened.”

Naoya looked away for a moment, trying to decide what to say; his survival instinct told him to lie, or at the least, stay quiet, but that didn’t sit well with him. He was tired of lies; tired of hearing them, and tired of speaking them.

“I was doing a job for a friend,” Naoya began, deciding to tell some of the truth to start with. “I needed a car part to do a little vehicle maintenance, and I figured I’d give Hideki a call; he’s been in the car business for a while, and if anyone could help me track down the item I was looking for, it was him.”

“And how did the Towers get involved?” the question cut to the heart of the matter, and Naoya’s commitment to honesty was tested.

“Honestly, I don’t know,” Naoya rolled his shoulders, fidgeting beneath the gaze of the Inspector. “I went inside to pick up the part, and they followed me in. They threatened us. I’m not sure what they really wanted.”

“I’m not seeing how that led to them knocking down a building,” the Inspector clearly saw through Naoya’s lackluster falsehoods.

“It was all kind of a blur,” though it was given to distract from uncomfortable truths, the answer was still partially honest; everything Naoya remembered from his encounter with the Towers was spotty, at best.

“What did they say to you?” the Inspector continued her interrogation, her eyes narrowing on Naoya with suspicion.

“I don’t really recall,” Naoya spread his hands, trying to seem nonchalant, but he knew he was foundering. “The leader of the group was a tall guy; he threatened us with a knife, and he. . .,”

“And?” the Inspector prompted him.

“He stabbed himself with a knife,” Naoya mimed the act by pressing a balled fist to his chest. “And then, blades started coming out of his body.”

“Blades?” the Inspector repeated, a little surprise on her face. “What did he look like?”

“He had his hair falling down over his face,” Naoya swept his hand over his head to emulate the lieutenant’s hairstyle. “Beneath it, he had a tattoo across his right cheek. He said his name was Sakai, I think? And he was from Nishi-Shinjuku; whatever that means.”

In response, the Inspector reached up to her horned headband and pulled it down, unfurling the smart-metal mask partway to cover her eyes. From inside the mask, Naoya could see lights flashing against the young woman’s cheeks as her Omen relayed some kind of information to her. A few seconds later, Ayame lifted the mask back up, her eyes still full of suspicion, but slightly softer.

“What about the other guys with him?” the Inspector was unable to hide the keen interest in her question. “Did any of them do anything strange?”

“Like what?”

“Cause an earthquake strong enough to shatter a small building?” the Inspector prompted him, and Naoya felt a jolt of fear. He felt the Inspector’s eyes on him, studying his features with intensity, and Naoya struggled to remain calm.

“There were over twelve guys there,” Naoya answered, trying desperately to seem casual. “And things got pretty crazy. When stuff got wild, I just ran.”

“I see,” the Inspector agreed in a manner that reminded him of Suzume, an answer that betrayed nothing about whether or not she believed him. Naoya sat on his bike under the probing gaze of the Inspector for several long seconds. Then, the Inspector backed her bike several steps away, signifying her retreat.

“Well, whatever happened yesterday, it sounds like you’ve made some powerful enemies,” the Inspector warned, and she pulled down her mask over her face. “Do yourself a favor; stay out of Sin Ward from now on. Understood?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Naoya agreed, feeling a pressure slowly be lifted off his shoulders.

“Good boy,” the Inspector leaned down on her bike, and kicked it back into motion. Less than a second later, the bike burst into motion, becoming a black shadow zipping away through the rain. Long after the woman on the bike had departed, Naoya continued to stare after her.

“Inspectors hunt Human Calamities,” Naoya glanced down at his own hands, trying to understand everything. “And if I’m a Human Calamity, what does that mean for me?”

“Suzume. . ., are we enemies?”

The thought terrified Naoya all the way down to his soul, creating a deeper and more profound anguish than any he’d ever felt. In that moment, Naoya wanted to deny everything he’d experienced since the year began, and to desperately believe that it was nothing more than a delusion he’d allowed himself to fall into, but he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t lie to himself anymore when the truth was staring at him.

Lacking any recourse, Naoya spurred his bike into motion again. He drove through the rain, letting the storm strike him with all its fury, wanting to distract himself from the turmoil inside, but it was little use. The traffic in Central was omnipresent, and Naoya could scarcely vent his frustration when he could barely even reach the speed limit.

“If I’m a Human Calamity, when did it happen?” Naoya wondered as he sat in traffic behind a bus, waiting for a light ahead to change. “Why did I never notice it until now?”

The answer to the second question was obvious: Suzume. Naoya thought back to the paper talismans she’d often given him, claiming that they’d bring him good luck. It was a practice that had never really made sense to Naoya: Suzume was many things, but superstitious wasn’t one of them. If those little shifts of paper had actually been used to exert some kind of power over him, that would put some things into perspective.

A horn honked behind Naoya, and he looked up and realized that the bus had already started moving again. Naoya hastily began driving forward, unable to fully escape his inner doubt.

“Now that I know, I can’t just rely on Suzume,” Naoya looked up towards the sky, which had brightened as the sun rose. “I need to be able to stand on my own two feet. But how do I do that?”

The thought gave birth to a new course of action; one Naoya wasn’t entirely certain he liked, but if he wanted to learn how to be a Human Calamity that could live in normal society, he didn’t have very many options. Naoya continued to drive across Central Ward, working his way up to the north side of Horizon. As the early morning hours went by, Naoya kept his eye on the Yōgai-shima Maverick, checking the job board every few minutes. It was shortly after eleven when the job Naoya was expecting finally appeared.

“FAIR Insurance Agency – Lunch Delivery.”

Naoya accepted the job without hesitation and quickly followed the beacon placed on his back. He wound his way south towards the northern edge of the Golden Mile where he picked up an order of sandwiches from a small shop called “Ragnarok Café,” and hastily turned about. Once more, he plunged into the wall of grey concrete office buildings in the east. By this point, the path through Iron District’s buildings was almost familiar to Naoya, but he still didn’t trust himself enough to try navigating the maze without guidance.

He hurried to park the bike in the parking garage and was so quick to get into the building that he nearly forgot the food. Taking the delivery in with him, Naoya walked down the corridors of the office building, filled with an anxiety he’d never felt before. He turned into the FAIR Insurance lobby, its peaceful and bright décor emulating the sunny sky at odds not just with the storm outside, but the turmoil inside Naoya.

“Good morning, Nanbu-san,” Sakura was there to greet him once again, dressed in a light-yellow sweater and a darker floor length skirt. She smiled at him, her violet eyes bright behind her large glasses.

“Good morning, Sakura-san,” Naoya flashed her a tight smile as he held up the plastic bag that held the new delivery.

“You’re as consistent as the sunrise these days,” Sakura got up from her seat and stepped around the desk, taking the bags from Naoya as he stepped closer.

“Hey, uh, is Yamato-san in today?” Naoya’s question was far from elegant, and Sakura couldn’t help but notice.

“He is,” Sakura cocked her head to one side as she considered him. “Why?”

“I’d like to speak to him,” Naoya provided a partial truth. “I had an accident on my bike not too long ago, and I’d like to talk to someone about getting a new insurance policy.”

“Oh, Nanbu-san!” Sakura fixed him with a concerned look. “There’s a hurricane outside and you men still can’t help but drive like maniacs! You need to be more careful!”

“I know, I know,” Naoya agreed, bashfully rubbing the back of his neck. “That’s why I decided I need to take another look at my options for insurance. My old policy wouldn’t cover me at all.”

“Well, it’s not really normal to have customers come into the office directly. . .,” Sakura tapped her chin as she thought about it for a moment. “But you’re practically a regular around the office, so as long as Yamato-san is willing to talk, it should be fine.”

The secretary turned around a half step to her right and led the way into the interior of the building. Past the bright and sunny furnishings of the exterior lobby was the drab confines of FAIR’s reality. The interior carpet was a dark grey-blue color and the walls were a bland grey, though the view of them was obstructed by the center of the floorspace being taken up with dark walls that divided room into small cubicles that deprived their occupants of any view besides the work set in front of them. Here, a small number of men were forced to work like bees in a hive, deprived of space, leisure, and humor, and Naoya was immediately reminded why he disliked this place.

“Go down to the end of the hall and take a right,” Sakura gestured with one hand as she direction Naoya. “After that, Yamato-san’s office will be the third door on the left.”

“Thank you,” Naoya hastily stepped away and followed Sakura’s directions, marching down the passage between the grey wall of the building and the dark plastic walls of the cubicle hive. There was more than enough space for two of Naoya to walk abreast, but his mind played tricks on him, and the walls on either side of him quietly threatened to pin him between them, pressing in from the corners of his eyes.

“I don’t care what you’ve gotta do!” a familiar raised voice met Naoya’s ears as he rounded the corner. Two doors down, an office door was open, and a heavyset man stood in the doorway, leaning in to shout at the occupant. “Witchcraft! Voodoo! Whatever you need to do to get your sales up, you do it! If you can meet quota today, you’d best make an appointment with the unemployment office.”

With his warning delivered, the heavyset man stepped back into the hall and slammed the door behind him. The rotund manager was dressed in a light pink button-up shirt pitted with sweat stains and pair of wrinkled khaki pants. The large man waved a small fan in his right hand against his perpetually perspiring wide, jowled face and with his left hand, the obese manager reached up to pat the top of his bald head, which looked like an island of skin surrounded by a sea of oily unkempt brown hair.

As soon as Naoya heard the other man’s voice, he froze. He stood at the corner, staring at the heavyset man, and it took a second for his survival instinct to tell him to retreat, but by the time it took hold, it was already too late. The heavy-set man looked in Naoya’s direction, and their eyes met. Immediately, the fat man’s face split into a scowl of anger.

“You!” the big man lumbered down the hallway, shouting as he raised his fan to point at Naoya. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I’m just making a delivery, Adachi-san,” Naoya raised his hands in a submissive gesture as the fat man grew closer, for all the good it did.

“Those hands look real empty to me,” Adachi’s voice rose as he drew closer, his features turning red. “That means your job is done. Now get the hell out of my building!”

“I’m only—!”

“About to break something, aren’t you!?” Adachi demanded, shaking his angry finger in Naoya’s face. Naoya pressed his lips together as Adachi’s bad breath washed over his face, and he resisted the impulse to turn his face away from the fat man upbraiding him. “Every time you stop by, I need to replace something!”

“Printers! Doors! An entire toilet!” Adachi counted off each transgression on his thick fingers, and his skin moved beyond red and quickly turned people. “What are you gonna break next, huh? The whole building?”

“I just want to talk to—,” Naoya tried to keep calm and play the peacemaker, but he knew that it was useless.

“And I don’t want to replace the coffee pot in the breakroom every time you come through, and only one of us is going to get what they want!” Adachi simply couldn’t be reasoned with, and his voice grew louder and louder, echoing off the walls. Anger stirred in Naoya’s chest, and he knew he was only a few moments away from losing his own temper. Rather than let that happen, Naoya had decided to simply turn away and allowed Adachi to run him out of the building, but before that could happen, a shadow, tall and lean, appeared at the fat man’s elbow.

“Adachi-san?” the spindly tenebrous figure loomed over the portly manager like a dark omen. The figure was hunched over, a pair of eyes shining in the light of the hallway, holding a pair of gloved hands intertwined.

“Oh, Kenji-kun,” Adachi started, clearly just as surprised by the appearance of the third man as Naoya was. The heavy man wiped his forehead, wicking away a sheet of sweat. He glanced up at the black-cloaked salesman, who was standing at his side with his shoulders hunched demurely with an eager smile on his face.

“I hate to interrupt you, Adachi-san, but I must protest; you can’t speak to a customer that way,” Yamato’s voice was soft and submissive.

“Customer?” Adachi glanced at Naoya, clearly baffled.

“Yes,” Yamato nodded vigorously, rubbing his folded hands together for emphasis. “Nanbu-san came in today to discuss a new insurance plan.”

“Him? This guy?” the fat man couldn’t hide his incredulity, but Yamato continued to nod. “There’s no way; he breaks everything he touches.”

“Ah! But it’s rule number one at FAIR that we never turn down a customer for coverage!” Yamato raised his right hand, extending his slender finger. “We only adjust our coverage as necessary.”

“But he—,” Adachi stammered, looking back and forth between Yamato and the hated deliveryman.

“Don’t worry, Adachi-san,” Yamato stepped away from his boss and crossed over to Naoya. As Yamato leaned forward and wrapped his arm around Naoya’s shoulders, Naoya felt the urge to pull away, but he was forced to allow it, as the salesman was the only thing protecting him from the irate Adachi. “I’m positive that Nanbu-kun and I can come to a mutually satisfactory arrangement.”

Yamato guided Naoya forward and Adachi was forced to step aside to allow them to pass. Naoya cast a side eye at the salesman, but Yamato ignored him and continued to herd Naoya forward towards an open door on their left. The pair had only made it a few steps before Adachi began to follow, the fire inside stoked again.

“You make sure you get everything on this guy before you offer him any kind of plan,” Adachi barked as he followed at their heels. “I guarantee you this guy has more broken cars behind him that a scrapyard. I refuse to be on the hook for this idiot unless—.”

When the pair entered Yamato’s office, the salesman wasted no time in slamming the door behind them. Not deterred, Adachi pushed the door open, and Yamato blocked him from coming in, pressing the door closed even as he promised to agree to Adachi’s every request. Despite his slender frame, Yamato was able to shut the burly Adachi out into the hall. As soon as Adachi was out of the office, Yamato hastily locked the door. For several long seconds, Adachi continued to pound on the door, shouting the whole time before he eventually gave up and stomped down the hall.

“That didn’t seem like the smartest thing to do,” Naoya spoke only after the sound of Adachi’s rampage finally faded.

“He’ll find someone else to take his anger out on,” Yamato seemed entirely nonchalant, as he straightened up and adjusted his tie. “As long as I bring him something profitable, that is.”

The tall man gestured towards a wooden seat in front of the desk and Naoya obligingly sat down. The chair seemed small for a man of his size, and the wood cried out as he tried to settle into it. Yamato rounded the other side of the desk and took his own seat, which was a tall leather backed office chair. As the salesman reached down to retrieve something from inside one of his desk drawers, Naoya took the opportunity to glance around Yamato’s workspace.

The office had sparse décor; it wasn’t simply utilitarian, but it had a sense of emptiness, like a vacant room that no one had ever lived in. The walls had the same grey walls and dark carpet. Outside of the pair of chairs and the desk, there was little in the way of furnishings, with only a tall wooden laminate wardrobe place against the wall opposite Naoya. The top of the desk had a small lamp made redundant by the fluorescent light in the ceiling, along with a stack of neatly piled paperwork and an assortment of pens. On Yamato’s right hand was a monitor which he could use to search the Yōgai-shima Net, but it was kept to the side to prevent anything from coming between Yamato and whomever sat across from him.

“Sakura-chan called me and said you wanted to talk about an insurance plan for your bike,” Yamato commented as he sat up in his seat, retrieving an enamel cup from his desk. “It’s a good thing she did; otherwise, Adachi-san would have torn your throat out.”

“I suppose I should thank her,” Naoya flashed a weak smile. “Although, I have to admit, I’m not really here about insurance.”

“Oh, Nanbu-kun,” Yamato adjusted his glasses, his bloodless lips parting to reveal an ivory smile. “Give me some credit.”

The salesman placed the enamel cup on the desk and left it there for Naoya to inspect.

“What’s that for?” Naoya pointed down at the cup.

“You’ll see,” Yamato leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table before indenting his fingers. “Now, let’s set aside any formalities and get down to business and talk about how we can help each other.”

“Look,” Naoya shifted in his seat, causing it to groan. “You said that you could teach me to control my ‘gift.’ Is that true?”

“Of course I can,” Yamato quickly seized on the opportunity. “So, you want my help, and, in exchange, you’ll use that gift to help me.”

“Hold on a minute,” Naoya raised a hand up, his brows furrowing together in confusion. “I don’t want to get caught up in anything sketchy.”

“Sketchy,” Yamato repeated the word with a sense of amusement, as though he was repeating the words of a child. “When did I ask you to do anything of the sort? You’re leaping to conclusions.”

“I’m having a hard time thinking of a legitimate use for breaking things,” Naoya grumbled with a suspicious eye.

“Then I would suggest you suffer from a severe lack of imagination. All I’m asking is that you help me just one time. If you can’t agree to that, then why should I help you?” Yamato gestured towards Naoya with an open hand. “What do I gain from it?”

“Well,” Naoya sighed and tried to avoid shifting in his seat, so as not to break it. “I can pay you.”

“Look at me, Nanbu-kun,” Yamato laid his hands down on the desk, his pale face losing all affected affability and becoming a stony visage. “Do I look like a friendly neighbor offering to teach your children to play the piano?”

“No,” Naoya quickly denied the idea; even if he had kids, he wouldn’t let Yamato look after them.

“That’s right,” Yamato leaned back in his seat, and his posture changed. He leaned back in his chair and interlaced his fingers again as he assumed a relaxed, yet still dominating demeanor. He shifted his seat forty-five degrees away from Naoya and looked towards the wall, as if not to give him the satisfaction of looking him in the eye.

“I don’t know what illusions you might have conjured up about this little office building,” Yamato loftily gestured towards the walls of his workspace and the structure beyond. “But the FAIR Insurance is one of the largest insurance agencies in Yōgai-shima, and by that token, one of the largest left in the world. We have offices and buildings in every ward of the city, not just here in the Iron District and our clientele is just as diverse.

“We have customers up in Solar District who work directly for the Cabinet,” Yamato continued on with a high and mighty air. “We insure buildings on Gambler’s Row in Sin Ward. There’s nowhere on Yōgai-shima we don’t do business.”

“So, what is this?” Naoya scoffed, his patience running thin. “Are you trying to give me a job?”

“No, Nanbu-kun,” Yamato swung back to face him and leaned forward with sudden intensity, placing both hands down on the table again. “It means that I’m already in a position where the gleanings of a fast-food delivery boy hold no interest for me.”

“This was a waste of time,” Naoya shook his head, and he made to rise.

“Leave, and you’ll be just what Adachi thinks of you,” Yamato goaded him, his red eyes glowering from behind his glasses. “You’ll be just what you think of yourself; a fool that destroys everything he touches.”

“You don’t know the first thing about me!” Naoya shot back.

“You came here today because learning what I have to teach you matters to you,” Yamato spelled out the obvious in a way Naoya couldn’t deny. “If it didn’t, or you had any other option, you wouldn’t be here.”

“That doesn’t mean I’ve got to get in bed with you and whatever it is you’re planning,” Naoya couldn’t hide his scorn.

“Nanbu-kun, please,” Yamato’s features softened and he cocked his head to one side, a soft smile on his face. “What do you think I am? Mephistopheles? There’s no need to be so dramatic; I’m not going to ask you to sell your soul to me. All I want is a mutual exchange. I teach you to control your gift, and you use it to help me.”

“Help you do what?” Naoya demanded, fixing the salesman with a stern look.

“Do what you do best; break something,” Yamato answered, making it sound as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I’ll tell you what; if I teach you how to control your special little ability, in exchange, you’ll use it for me exactly once. That’s all it will take in order to pay me back.”

“I hope you’re not thinking of having me break through a bank vault,” Naoya commented wryly, which provoked a mirthless laugh from Yamato.

“Oh, what I have in mind is nothing so overt or illegal,” Yamato assured him, his ivory smile returning. “Trust me when I say, I don’t intend to have you hurt anyone, directly or indirectly. All I want is your help for one single job. After that, if everything goes well, I get paid, you get paid, and we see where our friendship goes from there.”

“Friendship,” Naoya scoffed again, though Yamato hardly smiled this time. “I’ll do it. But just once, and only if I don’t have to hurt anyone or commit a crime or something.”

“Perfect,” Yamato laid his right arm across the table and held up his hand, pinky finger extended. “Let’s make it official.”

“What are you doing?” Naoya stared down at the other man’s hand.

“Let’s make a promise,” Yamato encouraged him, a knowing smile on his face.

“What are you, five years old?”

“The way things are, I have no reason to trust you,” Yamato observed without a trace of self-awareness. “If I can teach you to use your power, what then? You could just turn around and leave, and I’d have nothing. Before anything else, I’d like you to give me your word that you’ll pay me back for my services.”

“Let’s just get this over with,” Naoya reluctantly extended his own hand, extending his small right finger. Yamato quickly extended his own hand to catch Naoya’s finger with his own.

“I hereby swear to teach you how to use your Crisis, and in exchange, you’ll use your Crisis when I ask you to one time,” Yamato spoke each word clearly and with authority. “Do you agree?”

“I agree,” Naoya quickly acquiesced to the idea, hoping to get the bizarre ritual over with.

“Both of us swear then to uphold this deal, and neither of us will speak of it to anyone else,” Yamato’s smile became a wide, cruel grin containing a certain malevolence. “If either of us fails to keep their word, then they’ll choke on their broken promise.”

As soon as Yamato finished intoning his words, Naoya felt a shiver pass through him as though he’d been splashed with a bucket of ice-water. He flinched in his seat and reflexively pulled his hand back as the sensation lingered. A tightness across his neck drew Naoya’s hand to his throat, his fingers seeking a noose that wasn’t there.

“Shall we get started?” Yamato invited him and took hold of the enamel cup to push it forward towards Naoya. Naoya, rather than take the item, leaned back in his chair, the strange sensation lingering on his mind. The small cup on the desk appeared entirely normal, but Naoya was on his guard, now.

“What do you want me to do with this?” Naoya glanced back and forth between the innocuous item sitting on the desk in front of him and the smiling expectant Yamato.

“Break it, of course,” Yamato leaned back in his seat. “You didn’t have any trouble breaking the one in the break room the other day. This should be an easy test for your Crisis.”

“You keep using that word,” Naoya observed.

“It’s a term for powers like yours,” Yamato explained hastily, eager to move past it. “Don’t worry about the details.”

“So, what am I supposed to do?” Naoya tentatively reached towards the small cup, looking back and forth between it and Yamato, as if expecting some kind of trap. His fingers brushed the smooth, cold polished exterior and he gently lifted the object up, keeping his cautious eye on Yamato as he did so.

“Think back to how you broke that cup the other day,” Yamato prompted him. “How did you feel at that time?”

“I felt. . .,” Naoya trailed off, not exactly wanting to open up to the strange salesman, but he saw no recourse. “Anxious; I guess that’s how I’d put it.”

“Good,” Yamato smiled, his red eyes alight. “You must have already sensed it then. There’s power nestled deep in your subconscious, Nanbu-kun, and it only comes out when you feel truly pressured. It’s a primal thing, that gift of yours, and it responds to fear. Master your fear, and you can make that power come forth whenever you need it to.”

“Great,” Naoya held the cup in his lap, both hands wrapped around it. “How do I do that?”

“You need to learn to put yourself in the right headspace,” Yamato leaned back in his seat and gestured idly with his hands as he looked up at the ceiling, trying to conjure the words he needed. “You need to grasp something that makes you anxious or nervous and force yourself to feel those emotions. Then, the power will come.”

“So, I just need to think about something that makes me uncomfortable?” Naoya couldn’t hide his skepticism. It couldn’t be that easy, right?

“It has to be something that provokes a true feeling of fear,” Yamato leaned forward again, an earnest tone in his voice. “What made you upset last week?”

“I was going through a lot of stuff,” Naoya avoided the topic.

“Alright,” Yamato didn’t sound as though he believed Naoya, but he didn’t argue the point. Instead, he straightened in his seat and fixed Naoya with a keen look. “Let’s try and find something that can provoke your sense of danger. Tell me, have you ever broken the law?”

“No,” Naoya answered, reflexively.

“Really?” Yamato seemed surprised. “You’ve never stolen anything? Not once?”

“No,” Naoya denied it again, more forcefully.

“Have you ever hurt anyone, Naoya?” Yamato leaned closer over his desk, his voice a conspiratorial hiss. “Have you ever wanted to?”

“No!” Naoya’s thoughts immediately went back to the day before, and his clash with the Towers, and he inwardly recoiled.

“Nanbu-kun,” Yamato affected a disappointed tone and cocked his head as he peered at Naoya. “How can we do this if you don’t actually try?”

“Do what?” Naoya lifted the cup, and the ridiculousness of the situation seemed unavoidable. “Use my magic powers triggered by nervousness to break a teacup? This is insane.”

“Nanbu-kun,” Yamato tried to speak, but Naoya was past the point of listening.

“I can’t believe I ever came here,” Naoya stood and slapped the cup down on the desk in front of a disapproving Yamato. “I’m done.”

“You made a promise,” Yamato reminded him keenly.

“To hell with tha—,” before Naoya could finish speaking, his words seemed to catch in his throat as an unseen vice wrapped around his neck. The fingers of his left hand traced his windpipe, searching for an invisible noose that his digits couldn’t feel. Alarm turned into an outright panic, and he tried to bring both hands to his throat, to desperately seek whatever was choking him, but he found his right hand was fastened to the desktop. He desperately tried to lift his hand from the desk, but something held his fingers to the cup, preventing him from pulling away. His fingers, instead, were wrapped around the enamel cup, and they couldn’t break free.

Naoya tried to speak, but his words came out only as hoarse rasps. He tried to breathe, but his throat wouldn’t open. He looked to Yamato, trying to communicate his distress, and the salesman simply looked back at him with that ivory smile. The grip on his throat only intensified, and Naoya saw black spots forming in the corners of his eyes. He pulled and tore at the unseen tethers, clawing into his own throat with his left hand while desperately trying to pry away his other hand from the top of the desk.

The noose wrapped tighter, and Naoya felt all of the muscles in his neck seize, trying desperately to breathe through the choking pressure. His teeth ground together and his lips pulled back into a snarl, the last of his air escaping his mouth in a wheezing grunt. Black dots swam in his vision and then, the world cracked.

Fractures ran through the world, turning Yamato and his desk into a pile of multicolored glass. As soon as the fractures appeared, the pressure on Naoya’s throat vanished and his desperate attempts to escape the unseen trap caused him to fall backward. He crashed through the wooden chair behind him and collapsed to the floor.

He lay on his back for several seconds, coughing and sputtering as the imaginary breakages in his vision sealed themselves shut. A few moments later, Yamato appeared over him, looking down at Naoya with a satisfied smile. Naoya reached a hand up to his throat, rubbing his sore neck before sitting up. He placed his hand down into the pile of splinters that the chair had been reduced to.

“That’s quite a talent you have,” Yamato considered the heap of wood scraps and metal that had been shattered beneath Naoya like glass. “We’re lucky you didn’t fall through the floor.”

Naoya opened his mouth and tried to say something, but his throat burned, and he decided not to say anything. As Naoya tried to regain his bearings, Yamato leaned against the front of his desk and then turned to look down at something on top that Naoya couldn’t see. The salesman swept his right hand over the top of the desk and balled something in his fist.

“You see, Nanbu-kun?” Yamato held his fist towards him, and Naoya held his hand out, letting Yamato pour a handful of pulverized enamel into his palm. “All you need is a little fear.”

January 4^th, 2044

09:45 PM

Foundation Ward

Cornerstone District

CRACK!!!

The sound echoed off the walls of the linoleum bathroom like the crash of thunder. Underneath the flickering fluorescent lights, blood spattered onto the grimy green tile floor. The far wall was an old, peeling fresco that depicted a hellish scene. Horned oni bared curved fangs and brandished metal instruments as they danced among flames. The horde of illustrated demons looked out from their vantage, staring at the scene of genuine carnage playing out in front of them.

 A beaten and bloody man crawled across the bathroom floor, aimlessly looking for something to hold onto. Blinded by a crimson mask and concussed beyond reason, his hands brushed against the edge of a filthy pink tub in the center of the room, and he instinctively took hold of it, trying to use it to pull himself up. The beaten man operated solely on a primal need to survive, but the chance to escape this situation with his life had long since passed.

Yakiyama watched as his victim crawled desperately across the floor. Yakiyama was short and lean, being barely above five feet, but his fury was something to behold. Both hands were thoroughly coated in red blood, and Yakiyama’s lips were pulled back in a horrifying rictus, revealing a mouthful of blackened teeth. Dressed only in a pair of black slacks, Yakiyama’s pale upper body was exposed, revealing the nanite sculpture fused to his skin.

An effigy of Tokyo’s skyline was inscribed on Yakiyama’s flesh, spreading across his body like a skin disease. Yakiyama had a head of short dark hair across the top of his scalp, but the sides and back of his skull had been completely shaved, creating space for the miniature metropolitan sculpture that had been worked into the skin on either side of his head. The laminate coating wasn’t simply the product of dyes, nor was it a flat illustration. Instead, the replicas of the thousand buildings on Yakiyama’s skin were hard, grey, smooth, and three-dimensional; feeling every bit like the concrete and steel they emulated. Not limited to the sides of Yakiyama’s head, clusters of cement buildings formed a solid sleeve up Yakiyama’s arms from wrists to shoulders, though both limbs were drenched in an additional layer of blood.

 Leaning against the tub, struggling to get his uncooperative feet to obey, was a man with a head of messy dark hair that was stuck to his face with a mixture of sweat and blood. His face was a swollen mass of red and purple skin, and he coughed up a trail of blood and saliva which dribbled down onto his dirty white shirt. Unable to stand, the brutalized man tilted his head to look over his left shoulder at Yakiyama, revealing that his right eye was completely swollen shut, leaving him to peer pitifully at his attacker with his left.

“Why’d you do it, Namba?” Yakiyama’s voice was a low, ragged whisper, filled with the pain of betrayal. “What could anyone promise you to make you try and fuck me?”

Namba didn’t answer, and only coughed, filling the tiny room with the echoing sound of his ragged breathing. Yakiyama stared down at the broken man, his pity quickly being eclipsed by his ever-present anger. Brimstone burned at the back of Yakiyama throat, and his face contorted into a snarl. The rage inside him demanded an outlet, and Yakiyama reached out, digging his hand into Namba’s head of bloody hair and grabbing a handful. Yanking Namba’s head back, Yakiyama slammed his forehead into the side of the tub, creating a hollow clamor, and he continued bashing Namba’s skull against the hollow object, filling the room with the clamor of the vicious beating.

Blood spilled across the ugly, filthy pink surface and Namba went limb even as the beating continued, and Yakiyama realized that Namba was flirting with death. He didn’t care so much about that; not after Namba had screwed him, but Yakiyama’s rationale managed to make itself heard for a brief moment, reminding him that he wanted an admission of guilt. He pried his fingers from Namba’s skull and let the stunned man fall backward to collapse on the bathroom floor.

Namba lay on his back, staring emptily up at the ceiling, his face an unrecognizable mass of swollen flesh. His chest continued to rise and fall, the act itself the only evidence that Yakiyama’s victim was still alive, however imminent his death was. Yakiyama loomed over him, staring down at the dying man as he wrestled with his desire for violence, and his need for answers.

“All this shit was your idea, Namba,” Yakiyama caressed his knuckles, trying to restrain his anger. “Getting in bed with Kabuki? Hunting down some asshole from Tsukuyomi? I wouldn’t have gone in for that shit, Namba. Not without you whispering in my ear. You should have known this would come back to you when shit went south.

“Why’d you do it? Who put you up to this? Give me a name, Namba,” Yakiyama planted a foot on Namba’s sternum, and he pressed down on the man’s chest, causing the other man to release all the air from his lungs in a long, rasping wheeze. As the last of the air exited Namba’s lungs, Namba released a sputtering cough, but said nothing. Silence echoed for several seconds, as Yakiyama wondered whether the other man was too far gone to answer. The killer ground his teeth; the sting of betrayal compounded with the prospect of never learning the truth. Yakiyama relaxed the pressure on Namba’s chest, letting him take in one final breath, before stomping down on his ribs.

“Give me a name!” Yakiyama roared, sparks and embers pouring from between his teeth.

“Amon.”

The answer was quieter than a whisper, so softly spoken that Yakiyama barely heard it. The sound lingered in the air for a split second before it vanished forever, and Yakiyama wondered if it was nothing more than a hallucination. But the name made sense; and it was the name Yakiyama had expected and had even wanted to hear.

“Amon,” Yakiyama shook his head, his lips pressing together into a scowl before anger pulled them apart in violent snarl that revealed his blackened teeth again. “Amon!”

For a moment, Yakiyama imagined he saw Amon’s face staring up at him from the floor, his bright iridescent eyes shining and his lips contorted into handsome, mocking smile. Though the phantasm vanished, Yakiyama could already taste the brimstone burning at the back of his throat. A fiery light glowed through his cheeks, bathing the beaten and broken Namba in an orange glow.

Yakiyama stepped over Namba and sat down on the fallen man’s chest. He raised his hands, already painted red in Namba’s blood, and he began to pummel the other man’s face. Powered by rage and adrenaline, Yakiyama’s first blow shattered Namba’s skull; a death blow in every sense, but the beating didn’t stop. The following blows pulverized bone and reduced flesh, cartilage, and brain matter into a slurry. Blood sprayed across Yakiyama’s face, chest, and arms, coating him in a grizzly color. The assault only stopped when Namba’s head was entirely gone, reduced to a disgusting smear across the tile.

Yakiyama stood, panting out puffs of smoke, and he stared down at the bloodied carcass of Namba. The blood coating Yakiyama’s body seemed to burn against his skin, as though the dead man’s humors had been boiling hot, and the blood pumping through Yakiyama’s veins burned with a kindred heat. He looked down at his calloused hands, which weren’t strangers to murder or being coated in blood, and for a moment, the crimson coating made him feel dirty.

“Let him see it,” a voice spoke in the back of Yakiyama’s mind, dispelling any notion to clean himself. “I want to see the look on that fucker’s face when I walk in on him.”

The feeling of disgust turned to pride, and a desire to exhibit his propensity for violence, and Yakiyama turned away, leaving Namba’s corpse to bleed out on the floor. He wrapped his fingers around the slender aluminum door handle set into the metal door behind him, and he pushed it open, causing the door to squeal loudly on its hinges as he strode out the door. He stepped out pf the washroom and emerged into a small hallway which featured a number of identical doors on all sides of him. To his left, the hallway opened into small entry room with a pair of glass doors standing across from a desk.

The bathhouse was decorated with bright red carpets that emulated the color of fire, and the walls were an orange color that were constantly being bombarded with an array of alternating colored lights that made them look like dancing flames. The walls were decorated with pictures of young woman dressed in kinky fetish costumes, all of them sharing a “demonic” theme that amounted mostly to a pair of plastic horns and a bikini, and little else. The air that filtered out through the gaps in the doors felt hot and damp, and speakers near the ceiling played a low, bass soundtracks emphasized with the soft panting vocalizations of a woman’s voice.

At the end of the hall was a small square lobby, with a set of glass double-doors that served as the building’s primary entrance. Across from the doors was a waist-high counter, behind which was another set of lurid photos advertising specific girls. Stepping into the lobby, Yakiyama joined the three men waiting there. Two of them were familiar to Yakiyama; the first was the muscular, broad-shouldered Shōki with a head of bleached blonde hair shaved down nearly to the scalp, who stood in an ostentatious fur coat with his back to his boss. Paying next to zero attention to the situation at hand, Shōki’s eyes were drawn to a four-by-three poster placed on the right side of the wall which featured the business’ premier soapgirl, who was standing on her knees in a black bikini while directing a sultry look at the camera. At the bottom of the poster was a caption: “Hell’s Number One Sinner.”

Sitting on a chair to the left of the soapland’s double doors was a tall man, Sakai, who was rakishly thin and dressed in a dark brown suit with a black button-up shirt. The slim Sakai kept his shoulder length dark brown hair raked forward across his face, leaving only his left eye to peek out at the world around him. The man in the brown suit kept his one wary eye fixed on the third man waiting in the lobby, but Sakai glanced in Yakiyama’s direction when he stepped into the hall, but he said nothing.

“Oh, god,” said the third man, the first to see Yakiyama exit from the washroom. The third man was the owner of the establishment, and he was an older man with a slight paunch and a black toupee that didn’t quite match the salt and pepper hair at the sides of his head, and he clutched the labels of his baby-blue raincoat with a death grip. The manager stared wide-eyed at the bloody man walking out from the bath, and Yakiyama could tell he was struggling not to vomit all over himself.

“Is it over?” Sakai asked, turning his head slightly to look at Yakiyama, his features partially obscured by his cascading locks.

“Halfway,” Yakiyama hissed, his eyes looking towards the trembling man with the hairpiece.

“Hey, can you give me this girl’s number?” Sakai turned around and tapped the manager’s shoulder and jerked his thumb in the direction of the picture on the wall.

“What?” the manager’s face scrunched in disbelief at the question.

“Really?” Sakai scoffed, casting an accusing eye at Shōki from underneath his hair.

“Come on man,” Shōki shrugged his shoulders, knowing what was about to take place. “I’m not gonna have a chance to ask later.”

“Go bring the car around,” Yakiyama rasped the order, his eyes still on the soapland manager.

“Ah, man,” Sakai turned about immediately, disappointment written on his features as he pushed both glass doors wide open and strolled out into the rain. Sakai silently followed after, brushing his hand through his long, dark hair. Each time the door opened, the alarm ringed, and a blast of frigid air and the sound of rain momentarily filled the lobby before the doors swung shut, leaving a tense silence to fill the void.

“Look, whatever happened back there—,” the man in the toupee began to speak first, holding his hands out in front of him.

Yakiyama’s left hand shot out the moment he thought about it, striking the man in the gut with his fist, leaving a bloody smear. The manager crumpled, a wheeze escaping his mouth as he collapsed. Yakiyama watched impassively, thinking that the man should consider himself lucky that he pulled his punch. He could’ve killed the fat bastard with a single blow.

“There was another girl here, tonight. One you didn’t advertise,” Yakiyama whispered, crouching down to speak to the manager who was bent double, still clutching his stomach. “Who was she?”

“I don’t—,” the man gasped, looking up at Yakiyama with tears in his eyes, his face red with pain and fear. “I don’t know! I was paid to keep her here! I don’t know anything else about her! I didn’t ask questions! I-I—,”

“You just took the money,” Yakiyama finished, his voice a neutral hush.

“That’s how it works,” the other man seemed torn between explaining himself and pleading. “I just take what I’m given. I never wanted any trouble!”

“Who paid you to take her?” Yakiyama let his voice twist into a growl, and sparks flickered behind his teeth.

“Your people did,” the man protested, but when he met Yakiyama’s eyes, he realized he’d spoken wrong. “I mean, the man in the back,” the manager’s eyes strayed down the hall, towards the still open door that Yakiyama had come out of. “He brought her here this afternoon, and I was paid to just keep quiet about it.”

“And he handed her over to Nishijima?” Yakiyama already knew the answer to his question, but he always liked to hear the truth with his own two ears.

“I wasn’t given a name,” the soapland manager shook his head from side to side, sweating beading across his face. “I just got a phone call: I was told a man in a sharp dressed suit was going to come in tonight and ask for her. I was just supposed to let him take her. That’s all.”

“I believe you,” Yakiyama’s words seemed to bring the pleading man some relief, but that was something Yakiyama in no way intended. Yakiyama stood up, standing over the manager, who swallowed hard, and then reached up to adjust his toupee. Just as he seemed like he was about to stand up, Yakiyama kicked him across the face and the manager stumbled backward, falling into the desk behind him.

“You crossed me, tonight,” Yakiyama rasped, hardly even looking in the direction of the whimpering man who lay sprawled on his back. “Kabuki. Amon. Those pricks from Tsukuyomi: all of you’ve forgotten your place in all this city.”

“It wasn’t my idea!” the man crawled back up to his knees, finally realizing that his fate was sealed the moment Yakiyama walked through the doors. “I didn’t have any part in this! I only did what I was told!”

“A lesson needs to be learned,” Yakiyama went on, ignoring the man’s pleas. “An example needs to be made.”

“Please! Please!” the soapland manager crawled forward, taking hold of the sleeves of Yakiyama’s pant legs as he begged for his life. “I’ll give you the money!”

“Take it to hell with you!” Yakiyama’s voice rose into a vicious bark, and an orange glow blossomed in his chest, bathing the room in a fiery light. The soapland manager looked up, tears framing his face, and that was the last expression Yakiyama saw the crying man make. There was a surge of heat and a bright flash of light, and the man was dead.

Sitting on the floor in front of Yakiyama was a blackened and charred human effigy. The burning corpse’s head was bowed, and its hands were clasped together, as if in penitence. A bed of fire was wrapped around the burning corpse’s knees, which spread across the floor, running up the desk, beginning the process of setting the whole building on fire. Yakiyama didn’t stay to watch.

He shoved the doors open and stepped out as flames spread through the lobby. The rain fell down on Yakiyama’s head, matting down his dark hair before running down the nanite buildings that were fused to the sides of his skull. The rain quickly made the blood coating Yakiyama’s body run, much to his disappointment.

 Lightning flashed in the sky, heralding the imminent thunder, and the sound of an engine grew louder as the storm continued its clamor. A car pulled forward, an SUV with a garish red smart-skin that featured roiling multicolored flames across the chassis. The fiery pattern continued on the rims of the wheels, made even more outlandish through the LEDs placed into the hub caps, which bathed the street in a barrage of colors. Powerful bass thumped in the night, making it seem as though the gaudy vehicle was trying to challenge both the growing fire and the rampaging storm overhead. As the machine pulled to a stop in front of the building, the driver side window rolled down so that Shōki could poke out his blond head.

“Hey boss,” the gangster looked at Yakiyama, standing in the rain as the blood washed off him. “You, uh, want a towel or something?”

“No,” Yakiyama didn’t waste a moment; stepping forward to pull open the back door.

“You know, you could stay outside for a few more seconds,” Shōki offered, but Yakiyama ignored him, and climbed into the backseat.

“It’s gonna stain,” Shōki complained in a small voice, turning to look over his left shoulder as Yakiyama sat down.

“It’s just a car, Shō,” Sakai reclined in the passenger seat, his arms folded over his chest.

“It’s a new car,” Shōki hissed, nervously.

“Drive,” the anger inside Yakiyama remained unsatisfied and razor sharp, and the fire inside demanded action.

“Alright, alright,” Shōki’s defeat was marked with a reluctant sigh, and he stared out the side window at the soapland. The glass doors revealed a curtain of flames that spread across the entire lobby, making it appear as though the building had been transformed into an entrance to hell itself. Nothing of the interior could be seen behind the dancing lights, and the inferno inside hungered to escape into the streets, held back only by the raging storm outside.

“We’re going to Temptation,” Yakiyama announced as Shōki put the car into drive.

“Temptation?” the driver looked over his shoulder at his boss. “Why?”

“I’ve got business at the Ivory Tower,” Yakiyama could see the color drain from Shōki’s face.

“What kind of business?” Shōki couldn’t help but ask, but Yakiyama didn’t answer. When his boss chose to remain silent, Shōki looked towards Sakai, who lay back in his seat, appearing to be asleep. With no recourse, Shōki swallowed, and turned to back to the wheel, nervously beginning the drive towards Sin Ward.

The trip was spent in silence; Yakiyama looked down at his hands, his digits still coated in blood, his knuckles throbbing with the percussion of the beating he gave to Namba. Sakai remained entirely still and as quiet as the grave, but Yakiyama knew better than to assume the quiet man was asleep. Shōki spent the drive wearing his anxiety openly, muttering to himself and shaking his head. None of the three men were truly worried about the murder scene and the fire they left behind; the police knew better than to stop their care. Instead, it was what awaited them at the end of the trip that gave Shōki cause for concern.

The city was a hive of activity at this time of night, and lights from the countless signs and banners shone through the windows of the car as it rolled down the street, fighting to move against the sluggish traffic. Yakiyama had no eye for the marvels outside the car, and he kept his thoughts entirely inward, thinking only of the end of the trip. Under Shōki’s anxious direction, the car forged its way through Sin Ward, heading north into Ambition, where the brightest lights and most magnificent of sights awaited.

Through the pouring rain, Shōki’s car pulled up beneath the Ivory Tower, the magnificent structure extending above them. The Ivory Tower had a white-enamel coating, making the exterior of the building so bright that it seemed to shine in the middle of the night. The outside of the building was designed to appear like a whirlwind frozen in place: the base of the building was wide, constructed of countless slender white walls that swirled together, flowing upward as they merged. The middle of the Ivory Tower was a slender spire that fanned outward again at the top, sending forth countless white shoots to mirror the lower half of the building. The building stood on a small landing, with a covered walkway leading into the tower.

Shōki rudely left his car parked halfway on the street, jamming the front end of the vehicle between a cherry-red corvette and jet-black limousine parked on the street, while leaving the rear sticking partially out into traffic. The appearance of the vehicle drew the eyes of the countless men and women on the street, and the cars behind Shōki began to honk, expressing their disapproval at his poor driving. Attitudes quickly changed when Yakiyama climbed out of the vehicle.

He stood in the rain, awash in the headlights of the street cars and the neon haze of Ambition’s buildings. The blood washed away from Yakiyama’s nude upper body, revealing a laminate sculpture of a city skyline that spread across his skin. The nanite artistry covered Yakiyama’s left arm, his stomach, and his back, coating him in dark grey facets that mirrored Tokyo’s architecture, and each tiny window on Yakiyama’s body shined in the light.

Wearing a memento of Tokyo across his own body the way a tiger proudly bore its stripes, Yakiyama mounted the steps, while the synthetic skin on his body projected a warning to all who laid eyes on him. The cars on the street ceased to honk their horns and began demurely diverting themselves around Shōki’s SUV while the other two men climbed out of the vehicle. Striding up the steps, Yakiyama stepped beneath the transparent passageway that shielded visitors from the rain and strode down the opulent red carpet.

A small group of stood off to Yakiyama’s right hand side; a man dressed in a suit and white coat, a woman in red on his right arm, and a woman in blue on his left. Though their hairstyles and dress were different, the two women had nearly identical faces. The twins braced themselves on the arms of their escort, looking to him for safety, but the man’s bloodless face told Yakiyama that he would rather run away than stand his ground. Yakiyama glared at the trio as he passed them by, but they held his interest for nothing more than a moment. When he looked away, he heard the sound of their feet shuffling on the carpet, retreating back towards the street.

Standing at the end of the carpet and supervising the doorway into the Ivory Tower was a man dressed in a black-on-black suit. Just like the first man, the doorman gaped at the approaching Yakiyama, but he made no move to impede Yakiyama’s progress, nor the progress of Sakai and Shōki as they followed. The sliding transparent doors opened at Yakiyama’s approach and he strode inside, his lieutenants at his heel. Over his shoulder, Yakiyama heard the sound of a muffled voice, which he quickly ascertained was the doorman radioing the arrival of the three men to the onsite security, but the sound was cut off by the doors sliding shut behind them.

“Well, ain’t this a change of scenery,” Shōki marveled, the sound vanishing into the open and spacious interior. The sound of a piano tinkled from distant, unseen speakers, and the buzz of conversation filled the air. From the entrance, the red carpet ran across white marble floors and split into three directions. The pathway on the right seemed to lead to some ground floor facilities, perhaps a pool, while the center path ran down a tall corridor with golden walls that was lined with elevators that guarded the ascent to the peak of the building. To the left, the sound of conversation could be heard the most strongly, along with the sound of clinking glasses.

“What’s the plan?” Sakai asked from behind the perpetual wall of hair that fell over his face.

“We get some attention,” Yakiyama headed to his left, his eyes on the bar.

When Yakiyama stepped into the entrance of the bar; in the middle of the night, at the prime hour for business, the bar was full. A sea of tables stretched out in front of Yakiyama, each and every one of them full by a living tapestry of men and women dressed in the finest clothes that money could buy. To the right was a bar, which had another two dozen patrons standing and sitting shoulder to shoulder along the countertop. The laughter, raised voices, hushed murmurs all melded together into a chaotic chorus that slowly began to fade away as the patrons became aware of the man standing in the entryway.

Dripping with water and blood, Yakiyama strode into the bar, sauntering among the tables. Conversation died and silence swooped in to dominate the room as the very out of place Yakiyama swaggered among the elite. He kept his head on a swivel, glaring at each and every table he passed. Every person, no matter how wealthy or self-assured, looked away. Yakiyama represented something that they could only buy, but never truly possessed: the power of violence, and the violence that his eyes promised was indiscriminate and barely restrained. The stench of fear from each table was thick and powerful, and the scent brought a smile to his face.

Intoxicated by the smell, Yakiyama spotted a heavyset man in a red suit and a thick pair of glasses staring at him. The large man quickly looked away, silently encouraging his grey-haired companions to do the same, but brief exchange encouraged Yakiyama to leap into action. Yakiyama stepped forward, and the intent of his approach was obvious, such that the big man in red and his retinue quickly climbed out of their seats before the approaching Yakiyama flipped the table, sending the glasses atop it clattering to the floor.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” Sakai called out from the entryway to the bar, following Yakiyama inside. “We’re here to conduct a little business. Please be kind enough to stay out of our way.”

Despite his reassuring words, Sakai joined in with Yakiyama overturning tables, kicking the one nearest to him over, sending the stunned guests tumbling to the floor. Shōki broke away from the other two heading towards the bar. Sauntering through the crowd with his gaudy fur coat, Shōki grabbed one of the bar patrons by the shoulder and threw him to the ground, stealing his drink while scaring the bartender away from the countertop. A tall man in a white suit jacket who had been standing near the end of the bar, stepped away, his eyes on Yakiyama as he raised his wrist towards his mouth and spoke something into it.

The short figure looked up at the approaching bouncer, who seemed to have concluded that Yakiyama was the ringleader of the group, or at least, the most dangerous. The two men locked eyes as the bouncer approached with equal parts seriousness and confidence. The bouncer’s boldness made conventional sense, seeing that Yakiyama was nearly two feet shorter and lighter by some hundred pounds or more.

Yakiyama smiled to reveal his black teeth and tasted the brimstone at the back of his throat. The bouncer stopped five paces away from Yakiyama, his eyes widening in surprise. Perhaps he saw the glimmer of hellfire between Yakiyama’s teeth, or perhaps the bouncer realized that he wasn’t the predator in the room, but the prey. Whatever epiphany he had, the man in the white coat didn’t have the opportunity act on it.

Yakiyama opened his mouth, letting the flames roar from out of his throat. It was a short blast, not intended to kill or cause serious harm, but then, Yakiyama never cared much for restraint. The man screamed, though the sound was nearly swallowed by the rushing fire, and a human torch tumbled away, flailing and screaming as flames swallowed his upper body. More screams followed immediately.

The silence was broken and the invisible restraints that held the patrons in place were loosed. Men and women began to scramble away, colliding with one another as they desperately sought to flee the bar. Yakiyama let the herd of human cattle rush around him, while Sakai moved to the side to avoid being trampled, and Shōki remained at the bar, savoring his stolen drink while he appreciated the portrait of a blonde woman in a white dress. As the customers flooded together to get out, knocking tables over in a desperate scramble, another group appeared trying to get in.

As the last of the patrons fled from the bar, six men became visible standing in a line, forming a living barricade across the entrance. All of them were dressed in black-on-black suits, with leather gloves and dark sunglasses that obscured their eyes. They stood with solidarity, their hands folded at waist level, each one silent and motionless until the last of the guests had slipped by them.

Yakiyama paced like a tiger in a cage, walking back and forth across the fine carpet, kicking over any table that was close enough to earn his wrath. Sakai remained leaning casually against the wall to Yakiyama’s right, while Shōki sat at the bar, pointedly ignoring the half-a-dozen newcomers. Yakiyama glared at the six men, but said nothing, the only sound being the hiss of a fire extinguisher as one of the bartenders sprayed the burning bouncer, putting him out.

“You’re a little out of your depth, Yakiyama-san,” one of the men in black stepped forward, acting as their spokesman. He had a head of dark hair with a fringe that fell over the right side of his round, boyish face. The leader of the six was shorter than the rest of his comrades, but that still made him a head taller than Yakiyama.

“Amon,” Yakiyama ignored the younger man’s provocation, and didn’t even bother making eye contact when he addressed him, instead continuing to pace. “Call him down here.”

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” the young man in black spread his hands, a smile spreading across his face. “You think the boss will come downstairs just because some riffraff from Foundation comes asking? I think you’ve forgotten whose ground you’re standing on.”

Yakiyama’s eyes snapped up to look at the young man in black, and a fire kindled in his stomach. He stepped forward, directly challenging the other man, and the five men behind him. The man in black didn’t falter even for a second, continuing to stare down at Yakiyama with a smile deforming his round cheeks. Smoke billowed from between Yakiyama’s teeth, a hint at the flames kindling in his chest, but he didn’t let his anger loose.

The six men weren’t like the bouncer in the white coat; they weren’t a group of ordinary human beings hired to strongarm belligerent drunks. No, they were Human Calamities as much as Yakiyama was. More even than that, they were undoubtedly Towers, too, and attacking them first wasn’t a line he was going to cross.

“I’ve forgotten?” Yakiyama demanded the young man repeat his insult. “I’ve forgotten? I wear Nishi; you’re just another Kabuki conman. You work for me, asswipe. All of you do.”

“You think repping Nishi-Shinjuku makes you a high roller?” the Kabuki spokesman scoffed. “Not in this part of town. Here, you’re no one. We run things here, not you. It’s only because you’ve got the city on you that we haven’t beaten you half to death, but that’s as far as our camaraderie goes. Do yourself a favor and go back to your circle-jerk in the slums where you belong.”

“Go on,” Yakiyama inclined his head and raised a finger to his ear. “There’s supposed to be an ‘or else.’”

“Or else,” the Kabuki enforcer let out a small chuckle and leaned closer, ignoring the smoke being blown in his face. “The six of us are going to remind you who really owns this island.”

“That’s the best threat you’ve got?” Yakiyama stroked his chin, pinching his thin goatee between his fingers, pretending to judge the ultimatum. “I’m not impressed. But, you know, for all you Kabuki bitches like to talk tough, whenever trouble comes around, you run to Shinjuku. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to clean up after you people when you shit the bed. I suppose I should be grateful some of you have found some balls; now I can give you the ass beating I’ve always wanted.”

“You want to be the one who breaks the peace?” the young man spread his hands to emphasize his challenge. “You’re the guest; the first strike is yours. But if you lay a hand on me, the rest of Shinjuku is going to peel those buildings off your back. Think about that before you start a war you can’t win.”

“War?” Yakiyama repeated the word, his voice tinged with disbelief. Adrenaline flowed through him, and the fires burned inside Yakiyama’s chest, demanding a burnt offering to be made of those that wronged him. “You don’t know anything about war! But I’ll teach you! You and Amon!”

Of the nine men in the room, none of them moved. All of them were completely frozen, every muscle tensed for immediate action. All of them knew that violence was imminent, but not a single man wanted to accept the responsibility for beginning the melee. There was a soft chime, and Yakiyama clenched his hands into fists and had them raised halfway, instinctively reacting to the new noise as though it was a signal to begin the fighting. He wasn’t the only one.

Sakai had stepped away from the wall, producing a knife from his sleeve. Shōki stepped away from the bar, throwing aside his fur coat to reveal the skyscrapers molded on his chest. The six enforcers had likewise flinched, half of them had hands reaching into their coats for hidden weapons, while the rest likewise balled their fists and raised them for the fight that was about to happen.

The chime continued on for several seconds, as each member of the Towers stared down their counterparts, trying to discern the meaning of the sound. Then, one of the enforcers standing to their leader’s left withdrew his hand from his coat pocket. He moved slowly, and held his hands upward to reveal an Augur, which rung in his hand. When Yakiyama and his retinue recognized that the man wasn’t holding a weapon, the enforcer lowered it and answered the call with tap of his finger.

The remaining eight men remained silent and still, watching as the enforcer raised the Augur to his ear. The enforcer spoke very little, listening intently to the voice on the other end of the line with a severe face, his lips pressed tightly together. At a command the rest of the room couldn’t hear, the enforcer stepped forward and held the phone out, passing it to the spokesman over his shoulder. The prior conversation repeated itself, and the leader of the Kabuki enforcers said nothing, listening in obedient silence.

“Understood,” the leader of the Kabuki spoke one word, accepting a command with dutiful meekness. He held the Augur back over his shoulder, letting his comrade take his phone back, while fixing Yakiyama with a sober look. The smile on the man’s face was gone.

“Well?” Yakiyama prompted the man to share the contents of the call, taking the other man’s confident smile for his own.

“The boss wants to speak with you,” the spokesman admitted, struggling to restrain his frustration.

“It’s about time,” Yakiyama chuckled out a mouthful of smoke, taking relish in now having control of the confrontation.

“But just you,” the spokesman went, nodding in the direction of Shōki. “Your men will stay down here with us.”

“Fuck that!” Shōki thumped his chest, still high on adrenaline, but a side look from Yakiyama convinced him to back down.

“Take me to him. Let’s get this shit over with.”

The other enforcers traded looks, then looked at Shōki and Sakai, both of whom still seemed ready to fight. The spokesman looked towards his own men over his shoulder, then back at Yakiyama, then, after a moment of indecision, he turned about, his underlings stepping aside to let him pass. Yakiyama followed behind him, exiting the lounge and heading down the central gilded corridor. The escort in black strode down the hallway, ignoring the elevator doors to the left and right. At the end of the corridor, the man in black approached the final elevator and removed one of his gloves. He pressed his right index finger against the elevator button and held it there for a second and a half, and there was a soft chime.

The doors parted, revealing an elevator car with a red carpet, dark wooden walls, and rich golden patterns. The two men stepped inside, and the elevator doors closed, and the car surged into motion. There was no display inside the private car to reveal which floor it was on as it traveled up the tower, nor was there any information about their destination. Yakiyama had to imagine that was not simply an oversight, but the product of Amon’s exact specifications.

“Is all this what ten years of work has been leading to?” Yakiyama questioned himself in the silence. “A bunch of rich fucks hiding out in brothels? Is that what the Towers are?”

He hated it. Amon. The Ivory Tower. The Kabuki. He hated all of it.

When the elevator came to a stop, the escort stepped through first, and Yakiyama followed, the pair entering an opulent penthouse. The floors were thick white carpet, and the walls and doors were a bright polished oak. The far wall was a massive floor to ceiling window that looked out on the island, allowing flashes of lightning to radiate through the glass, filling room with brightness. A short hallway led from the elevator into the living room, with a variety of doors to the left and right. At the right end of the hallway was a set of wooden stairs that led up to another floor, though what lay above held no interest for Yakiyama. The hallway descended several steps before the penthouse spread out in front of the colossal window, with an ornate brown leather three-seater couch facing in Yakiyama’s direction. Sitting on the middle seat with a dark mahogany table between them was Amon.

Amon was beautiful. It was a strange though for Yakiyama to have, as “beautiful” wasn’t word he would ever use to describe another man, but he lacked another descriptor for the man sitting on the couch. Dressed in a red silk robe with fine gold embroidery, Amon sat with his right leg crossed over his left knee, his left hand in his lap while his right hand held a drink glass.

Amon had shoulder length violet hair that framed a cherubic face, whose features twisted into a handsome smile. There were three small platinum studs at either of Amon’s temples, each of them shaped like a diamond. Not merely decorative, the metal studs served to conceal ports in Amon’s skull which connected directly to his pair of ocular implants which enabled his irises to change color.

As far as Yakiyama knew, Amon had never told anyone the story behind the pair of artificial eyes he had, and the absence of an explanation led to countless stories being told about them. Though he’d heard countless stories about Amon losing his eyes to a rival or a jilted lover, and just as many theories about what purpose they served, Yakiyama didn’t believe a single word of them. Amon’s eyes served as nothing more than a distraction, and Yakiyama knew it. They exemplified how paper thin the other was.

“You can leave us,” Amon raised his glass, using it to gesture towards his lackey.

“Sir, I-,” the Kabuki gangster hesitated, and Amon silenced him with a look. It wasn’t anything approaching a threatening glance; Yakiyama wasn’t certain if Amon could look intimidating if he tried. However, whatever menace the expression was meant to convey, the underling was forced to bow to it. The dark-suited Kabuki gangster stood up straight, bowed, and the turned back towards the elevator.

“Take a seat,” Amon raised his left hand and gestured towards a seat on the opposite side of the table. “I’d offer you a drink, but you’ve tested my hospitality enough for one night.”

“I wouldn’t trust anything you put in a cup,” Yakiyama’s retort earned only a sarcastic scoff from Amon. Yakiyama sat down, though he remained hunched over, shoulders pointed towards the other man, his elbows on his knees. He wanted to project his anger and intensity, and the unspoken threat that he could spring out of his chair at any moment, but if Amon was the least bit intimidated, he didn’t show it.

“If you despise me so much, I can hardly imagine why you would call on me in the middle of the night,” Amon’s statement was an invitation to business, and Yakiyama didn’t hesitate to leap on it.

“Nishijima. Where is he?”

The question caused Amon to scoff again, and he raised the glass to his lips for a moment, his smile broadening.

“Gone,” Amon’s answer was simple and mocking in its banality. “Is that what you wanted to know? You might have settled for a phone call.”

“How the fuck did you let him get away?” Yakiyama’s words were a hoarse bark, accompanied by a mouthful of sparks that danced through the air. “I gave you over a hundred men; you have everything you needed to run that son of a bitch down.”

“He’s a Dealer from Tsukuyomi,” Amon gestured with his glass as he spoke, his words slow and well-enunciated as if he were speaking to a child. “We both knew that trying to run down Nishijima was a gamble, pun intended. Even a hundred men would have trouble turning this city upside down, and there are a thousand places for a man like that to hide. We took a risk and we came up short.”

“Then why does it seem like I’m the only one getting fucked here?”

“We’ve lost a day,” Amon’s voice was a soft, convincing purr and his eyes shifted to a luminescent red. “We both knew that this was a unique opportunity with a limited window. Business goes back to normal tomorrow. Really, considering what we could have gained, our investment was pitifully small.”

“You didn’t lose shit,” Yakiyama snarled in a low voice, his words almost lost in an animalistic bark. “I had to pull men from all across Foundation for the sake of your little hunt. I had to call in favors from every man I know to get the muscle you asked for. The ones that didn’t see Nishijima don’t get shit, while my boys who were lucky enough to cross his path are in the ICU. Each of those men followed your orders, Amon. They did ask you asked, and they got burned.”

“You knew the risks,” Amon gave a slight shake of his head, his eyes switching to a burnished orange as he took a sip of his drink. “And they were commensurate with the reward. Need I remind you that you stood to gain far more than I did? We agreed that we’d split the bounty on Nishijima, and you’d get his credentials to boot. A free one-time pass into Tsukuyomi is worth three times what we were being paid to pin Nishijima down.

“I could have fought harder, Yakiyama-san,” Amon laid a hand to his chest as he cast himself in the role of a victim. “Nishijima’s ID was the real prize in this equation, you know that, but when you asked for it, did I put up a fight? No. As a show of deference, I let you lay claim to it. We agreed to split the prize, you demanded the lion’s share, but by the end of the night, we both turned up empty-handed. How am I at fault for any of this?”

“Your friend in Tsukuyomi,” Yakiyama switched gears as he changed tactics, deciding to use what he’d learned to apply some pressure. “Who is he?”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Amon spread his hands, sounding annoyed.

“You knew a lot about what Nishijima was after,” Yakiyama sat back in his seat, glowering at Amon all the while. “More than you told me.”

“Of course I did,” Amon didn’t deny the accusation. “This was a job I was given, and I chose to bring you into it. Information was provided on a need-to-know basis; you know how this works. But if I held anything back, it was all for business.”

“Why did Nishijima leave Tsukuyomi?” Yakiyama challenged Amon immediately, knowing the answer to his question. “Any Dealer that ventures south knows that he’s going to have a target on his back. Every two-bit gangbanger wants into Tsukuyomi, and they’d gladly kill a man to do it. Nishijima must’ve had real good reason to come into town.”

“He was looking for women—,” Amon launched into the same justification he’s given the day before, but Yakiyama wasn’t about to let him continue.

“He was looking for one woman,” Yakiyama leaned forward again, jabbing an accusatory finger at Amon. “A girl that just so happened to work in one of the soaplands you owned halfway across town. Seems to me you could have saved us all a bunch of trouble by telling us what he was really looking for.”

“Does it matter?” Amon slipped away from the accusation with an irritated shrug. “Whether he was looking for a thousand women or just one, our job was to grab him. It doesn’t matter what he was after; what mattered was catching him.”

“If you’d told us about the girl, I could’ve had an army of guys waiting for Nishijima when he arrived,” Yakiyama countered, but Amon brushed it aside.

“A fantastic strategy that would only succeed in scaring Nishijima away,” Amon’s mockery was thick and plain. “Better to keep the girl hidden and jump Nishijima before he finds her.”

“But he did find her, Amon,” Yakiyama breathed out an accusatory whisper. “How did you let that happen?”

“Where did you hear this?” Yakiyama shouldn’t have known about Nishijima’s true objective; Amon must’ve have known that, but when Yakiyama brought up the girl, he tried to let it slide. Now, though, it was clear that Amon couldn’t ignore Yakiyama’s insider knowledge.

“Oh, you didn’t hear?” Yakiyama smiled, leaning so far forward that he was nearly hovering over the chair. “Nishijima got caught.”

“By whom?” Amon asked, his eyes changing to a bright white as they narrowed to slits.

“Some freelance muscle out of Central, apparently,” Yakiyama smiled wider, showing more of his blackened teeth. “Though I’d bet you already knew all about him. But what you didn’t know, Amon, is that the man who brought down Nishijima was spotted by one of my men.”

“Well, where is he, then?” Amon held up his glass, gesturing towards the hallway behind Yakiyama. “If you’ve got him, bring him in.”

“That’s the thing, Amon,” Yakiyama shook his finger at the other man, feeling certain he had his opponent in the bullseye. “As soon as I heard someone was badass enough to bring down Nishijima, I drove out to Foundation myself. But what did I find? Nothing. Nishijima was gone. The girl was gone. There was nothing there.”

“Sounds to me like you were lied to,” Amon took a discrete sip of his drink.

“That’s what I thought at first, too,” Yakiyama tasted the brimstone again, reliving the anger he felt an hour ago. “But when I heard that Nishijima was with a girl, it got me thinking. ‘Who’s the girl?’ ‘Where’d she come from?’

“So, I went looking. It wasn’t too far away, Amon, that soapland of yours. Do you know who I found there?” Yakiyama’s question went unanswered; Amon simply remained silently listening while peering over the rim of his glass. “One of my men, just sitting in one your businesses. The same business where you were hiding Nishijima’s girl. And not just one of my men, but Namba. The same stupid son of a bitch that convinced me to get in bed with you on this.”

“Coincidence,” Amon brushed aside the accusation, rolling his eyes and pressing his cup down onto his knee.

“That’s not what they said, Amon,” Yakiyama spoke in a soft, slow whisper, relishing the moment. “They flipped on you. They sold you out.”

Despite the accusation, Amon merely chuckled and inclined his head with an amused smile.

“Go on,” Amon prompted him, holding up his drink. “Tell me what they said.”

Yakiyama’s own smile faltered; Amon’s reaction wasn’t what he wanted or expected. He wanted to see Amon squirm under the pressure. He wanted to hear the other man make excuses, to try and bargain his way out of the grave he’d dug for himself. Instead, Amon remained unmoved.

All the more reason to turn up the pressure.

“None of this shit makes any sense, going off what you told me,” Yakiyama stood up and placed his foot against the mahogany table, sliding it forward to pin Amon’s foot against the couch. “If Nishijima was a Dealer, then only whatever Gambler he was attached to up in Tsukuyomi could have sent him into town, right?” Yakiyama observed, but Amon said nothing. “So, where did the girl come from, and where did she go? And who put the bounty on Nishijima, and how did you find out about it? All this shit begins and ends up in Tsukuyomi.

“Whatever shit is happening up there, you’re right in the middle of it,” Raising a bloody finger, Yakiyama gestured towards the northern wall, pointing accusingly towards the silver tower that stood near the base of the Gettō-san. “Someone in Tsukuyomi called on you to put out the bounty, but whatever they promised you wasn’t enough, was it? You’re playing both sides of this. You had the girl the whole time and you knew that Nishijima was looking for her but kept quiet. You had my boys out there, combing the streets to make Nishijima’s search harder, applying pressure to whoever was holding his leash, but he wouldn’t play ball, so you called in some trouble-shooting hotshot from Central as your ace. The end result?

“Nishijima gets laid out and you call his boss and give him an ultimatum,” Yakiyama fixed Amon with a fierce glare as he reached his conclusion. “Give me what I want, or you never see the girl or Nishijima again. And he did give in, didn’t he? As soon as you got what you wanted, you let Nishijima and the girl go and decided to lie to my fucking face about it. Nishijima didn’t get away, Amon; you let him go.”

“Namba told you all that, did he?” Amon raised his glass to his lips, calm as ever, and anger flashed in Yakiyama’s throat. He slapped the drinking glass out of Amon’s hand, sending the cup crashing to the floor where it exploded into a mess of shattered glass and alcohol.

“What the fuck were you promised, Amon!?” Yakiyama leaned closer, his nose nearly touching Amon’s. Smoke flowed from between his teeth and sparks flew from his nostrils. “Did he promise you a fortune? No, no, that wouldn’t be enough for you, would it? You demanded a seat at the high-roller’s table, didn’t you? You think you have what it takes to bet your life in Tsukuyomi?”

“You’re out of your mind,” Amon’s continued defiance pushed Yakiyama passed the boiling point. He reached down, taking hold of the table, and he flipped it to the left, sending the heavy piece of furniture tumbling end over end across the penthouse. With his right hand, Yakiyama took hold of Amon by the lapel of his robe and lifted him up off the coach, breathing a stream of smoke into his face.

“You cocksucking Kabuki prick!” Yakiyama hissed, sulfur, ash, and saliva running down his lips. “You think you can double cross the Shinjuku? You haven’t just fucked with me; you’ve fucked with the Towers! When Kazuya finds out what you’ve done, you and your whole fucking clown show are gonna be at the bottom of the Sanzu!”

“And what are you going to tell Kazuya, huh?” Amon’s eyes flashed red and an expression somewhere between a smile and a snarl appeared on his face. “You think that he’ll find your stage act impressive? What evidence do you have? What witnesses? I wonder if Namba’s in any state to speak.”

“You’re nothing but a two-bit conman,” Yakiyama’s growl was accompanied by a baleful light flashing in his throat as the fire demanded to be released. “You’re just an ordinary human trying to stand among giants. I can step on you any time I want.”

“Do it, then. When Kazuya finds out you laid hands on another captain, they’ll peel the architecture off you,” Amon slapped Yakiyama’s right shoulder, and dug his fingers into the laminate fused into his skin. “They’ll flay you, Ki-chan, long and slow. Then you’ll be the one who gets dumped in the Sanzu.”

Fire raged in Yakiyama’s throat, but he was forced to contain it. Kazuya wouldn’t accept Amon’s death; not tonight. Not like this. With supreme force of will, Yakiyama pried his fingers from the scarlet robe, releasing Amon from his grip. A triumphant smile appeared on Amon’s face, and Yakiyama was forced to stand down, filled with barely contained violence.

“You’ll pay for this,” Yakiyama spoke in a quiet whisper, his throat ravaged by the flames inside. He raised a finger to point up at Amon, but the other man slapped his hand away.

“We’ll see who pays whom,” Amon waved his hand over Yakiyama’s shoulder, gesturing back to the hallway. “Now, if we’re done? Get the fuck out of my building.”

It took everything in Yakiyama not to kill Amon on the spot. The con artist with his shining eyes had no real power; he was a just a man. He’d even sent away his own protection. Amon’s death stood within arm’s reach, and Yakiyama only had to act on his instincts to take the other man’s life.

But he didn’t.

Respect held him back. Not respect for Amon; respect for the Towers. Respect for Kazuya. There was a process for settling disputes, and while Amon’s disrespect could hardly be stomached, Yakiyama couldn’t let his wounded pride motivate him to insult the rest of the Towers by overstepping. Even so, his time would come.

Yakiyama let that thought cool his anger as he silently turned his back on Amon, imagining that the other man watched him depart like a whipped dog. He’d let Amon have his laughs, but there would come a time when Yakiyama would pay back every insult in excess. First, he would need to expose Amon’s duplicity to the rest of the Towers.

Namba was dead, and the soapland where Amon had handed the girl over to Nishijima was still burning. They were the first to taste Yakiyama’s wrath, a mere prelude to the suffering Amon was going to feel, but the deaths of those two men left Yakiyama without a lead. But there was still someone else he wanted to speak with. The man who let Nishijima go.

“I’m smarter than I look.”

The Daily Grind

Case File #7

January 4^th, 2044

07:20 PM

Sin Ward

Temptation District

Nanbu Naoya

“Have you seen this guy?” it was a question Naoya had asked for the last few hours, and, often enough, he would get the same answer. In his hand, he held out his Augur, which projected the clean-cut image of Nishijima.

“Yeah, I’ve seen him,” answered the surly bartender who looked down at the image.

Naoya was standing in a bar on the first floor of a casino called the “Ivory Tower.” True to its name, the building was a white marble spear that pointed up towards the sky. While it would have stood apart in another ward, in Sin Ward, it blended into the numerous gregarious buildings that vied for the attention of passersby. Since spotting Nishijima down in the south, Naoya had broken away from the chase, and headed north, up into the busier parts of Sin Ward. Though he was no longer looking for Nishijima, he hadn’t truly given up the chase.

The way Nishijima suddenly disappeared finally convinced Naoya that there was more to this man and the people chasing him than Ichinose had told him. It was obvious that running down the man in the grey coat was going to be far more difficult than cornering an ordinary mark with an overdue bar tab, and so Naoya changed his tactics. He headed up north, looking to pick up the earliest steps in Nishijima’s path; he needed to anticipate what the other man really wanted if he hoped to catch him, after all. All his work over the past few hours had led him here.

“I’ve got to tell you, though,” the woman behind the bar fixed Naoya with a keen eye. “You’re not the first guy to come in here asking about him. You’re not even the tenth.”

The inside of the building had a very foreign and very expensive vibe, like it was the palace of a European prince. The floors were pristine white marble with gold patterns, and the walls were decorated with white and gold floral patterns, which contrasted with the hard black furniture and countertops. Golden chandeliers hung from the ceilings, although they were only there to provide the illusion of luxury, as the true light sources were sconces on the walls. The rest of the staff were dressed in the same monotone formal attire with black suits with white button up shirts, waistcoats and gloves.

Far from Ichinose’s soapland in the middle of Sin Ward, or the dark town whose debauchery was on full display, the Ivory Tower was a far more formal and refined den of vices, but it was no less a market of sin than anywhere else in the city. The Ivory Tower was a comprehensive business with various services offered up and down its seventy-odd floors. The first floor had check-in services for the hotel rooms above, along with a ground floor restaurant and bar that Naoya was told paled in comparison to the eateries above, but the Ivory Tower was more than a hotel; it was also a multi-story casino, and brothel.

While soaplands like the Virgin Sacrifice still abided by old laws of Japan and tried to pretend that they were anything but brothel, the Ivory Tower remembered that it was in Yōgai-shima, and Japan’s legislature held no sway over it. Still, the high-class establishment advertised the services of its employees with more grace than Ichinose could ever hope to have.

Like Ichinose’s bathhouse, pictures of numerous women were hung at various points around the lobby in positions that commanded the viewers’ attention. Sitting at the bar, Naoya could see the framed portrait of a woman behind the bartender. The portrait had a frame of gold and the picture itself was styled to look like an oil painting, though Naoya imagined that was the result of some filter applied to a digital photo. The woman in the painting was blonde with wavy hair and a pair of blue eyes and pink lips. She was dressed in a white form-fitting dress with fur dangling over her right shoulder and a small fan in her left hand. She was looking to her right, her sharp eyes and dangerously beautiful features looking away from Naoya, as if to tell the viewer that she was simply too far above them for her to even consider making eye contact.

While the portrait had no name assigned to it, Naoya didn’t doubt that the woman worked in the Ivory Tower at one point or another. The other portraits he’d seen since he’d walked in were much the same; all of them showing women in expensive clothes with the most immaculate of makeup, and every photo framed in a way that made them seem untouchable. The women who worked at the Tower were singers, private dancers, and companions of the rich and famous: courtesans of the modern day. They were beyond the reach of ordinary men unless a commensurate price was paid for their attention. All of that made the bartender seem a bit out of place.

The woman behind the bar was roughly Naoya’s age, maybe a few years older, and dressed in the white shirt and vest that the rest of the staff had. She had thin dark eyes and a headful of black hair that was tied into a loose and messy ponytail. Contributing to her rough appearance, the woman had a washcloth dangling over one shoulder and her sleeves were rolled up, exposing a tattoo on her left forearm. Naoya couldn’t say why the woman was allowed to present herself so out of line with the building’s aesthetic, but he didn’t mind, as it made her seem far more real than the women in the portraits ever were.

“I imagine you’ve had a train of guys coming through this door, flashing this picture around,” Naoya tucked the Augur into his pocket.

“That’s quite the understatement,” the lady bartender cracked a small smile. “I’m afraid you’re out of luck, though.”

“How’s that?” Naoya asked, casually leaning against the bar.

“You’re gonna get the same answer I gave to every goon that walked through those doors,” she flashed him a knowing look.

“And what’s that?” Naoya spread his hands and offered a smile.

“He came in, asked a few questions, and then he left,” the woman gave Naoya a soft shrug and a smile of her own. “He spent less time in here than you did, big guy. He didn’t say who he was, where he was going, or how he planned to get there. He walked out those doors behind you hours ago and never came back through.”

“Really?” Naoya looked over his shoulder back towards the entrance.

“Sorry I can’t be more help,” the woman made it sound as though she were dismissing him, but Naoya didn’t leave.

“That wasn’t what I was going to ask about, though,” Naoya corrected the bartender, and she gave him an appraising look.

“Alright, then,” the woman flashed an amused grin. “Shoot.”

“The man that came in here today,” Naoya leaned closer and lowered his voice, not wanting the few customers in the otherwise vacant bar to overhear their conversation. “He was looking for someone; a woman.”

Naoya gestured at the photo of the woman in white for emphasis.

“Sounds to me like you know more about this guy than I do,” the bartender observed, her dark eyes searching Naoya’s face. “I don’t know what you expect me to tell you.”

“The woman he was looking for,” Naoya fixed the bartender with a pleading eye, trying to impress on her the importance of his question. “What do you remember about her? Did he tell you her name?”

“No,” the bartender shook her head. “He said he was looking for a new girl. I mean, really new, like he expected her to be here yesterday.”

“Did he say anything else about her?” Naoya asked, though he tried not to seem too forceful with his questions. “Did he describe her?”

“No, but he had a picture of her,” the bartender answered, and Naoya felt a soft jolt of surprise. None of the other men and women he’d spoken to had mentioned a photo.

“Do you remember what she looked like?” Naoya asked, feeling a jolt of excitement, thinking that he might be onto something.

“She was young. She had red hair,” the bartender answered, her eyes drifting away from Naoya as she tried to recall the details of the photo. “You don’t see that a lot in this city. She was pretty, too. Not drop dead gorgeous, like, you know,” the bartender nodded her head at the picture of the blonde behind her. “But she was cute.”

“Do you remember anything else?” Naoya asked, grasping for anything else to go on.

“She had brown eyes, and a slim nose,” the bartender gave Naoya a weak smile as she grasped for something to appease him. Naoya felt his face falling into a frown, an expression that was often unsettling for other people, and he remembered to keep his features stoic, despite his disappointment. Even though she may have seen a picture of the woman Nishijima was looking for, the bartender’s description wasn’t far off from what Naoya had heard secondhand from the other dives he’d hit up before this one.

“Oh!” the bartender spoke up after another moment of thought and reached up to touch a finger to the top of her left cheek. “She had a tattoo right here under her eye. It was a heart, with a small kanji inside it.”

“A small heart, huh?” Naoya reached up and touched the same spot on his own face. “I didn’t hear that before.”

“Well,” the bartender spread her hands. “That’s really all I can remember.”

“You’ve been a big help,” Naoya assured her and he flashed another smile.

“I’d say good luck finding the guy, but. . .,” the bartender trailed off, sizing up Naoya as the man stood upright.

“Don’t worry,” he tried to reassure her. “At this point, I’m more interested in just talking to this guy.”

“For his sake, I hope you’re not lying,” the bartender cracked a smile and turned away, signaling the end of the conversation. Naoya was about to turn and leave when he saw the small kiosk mounted on the end of the bar that customers could use to order drinks. He pulled out his Augur and swiped it over the kiosk, triggering the device to pay out a small tip to the bartender. It was probably insultingly small considering the building’s usual clientele, but Naoya figured leaving without a gesture of thanks would be inappropriate considering the Ivory Tower’s hospitality.

The man at the door gave Naoya a dirty look as he left, though he said nothing. Ordinarily, Naoya imagined a man dressed the way he was, in a leather jacket and boots, wouldn’t be allowed into a place like the Tower, but his reputation as a deliveryman in Sin Ward preceded him. Some doors that remained closed to others were open to Naoya, if only because complacent doormen thought he was there on business.

Returning to the world outside, Naoya was greeted by Izumi with a roaring peal of thunder chasing a lightning bolt that had long since vanished. Night had fallen in the hours since he’d had his first “encounter” with Nishijima, but the rain and the wind had continued without ceasing. Naoya strode down the steps in front of the Ivory Tower towards his bike, looking down at his Augur.

He picked his helmet up off the back of his bike and slid it on before his Augur transformed back into a pair of goggles. Pressing the lenses to his face, Naoya mounted his bike and started it up. The engine whined to life, and the Bridge-Runner pulled away into traffic.

When the sun went down, Sin Ward truly came to life. Heading west from the Ivory Tower, Naoya was afforded the familiar view of some of the district’s most scenic structures. The Elysium Fields, a soft tan multistory building that was some sixty floors tall and nearly as wide, which featured a towering relief of two women embracing in the center of the building, and then the Perdition, one of the tallest buildings in the ward with a nanite superstructure which had reshaped itself into a spiral around the building. The tip of a building shaped like a wine bottle peered over the skyline, struggling to be seen by the busy traffic, and another building flashed bright red, imitating a volcano, but none of them could compare to the mysterious tower of Tsukuyomi looming in the background, its false pale moon hanging forever in the sky.

Traffic moved too slowly for Naoya’s liking; with the sunset, the human tide flowed into Sin Ward, filling the streets with flashing lights, roaring engines, tires sloshing through the wet street, and people crowding the sidewalks. There were thousands of people around Naoya in all directions, be they in a car, or a bus, or in one of the rail cars that ran along the tracks suspended over the city streets. Ordinarily, Naoya enjoyed the sights and sounds of Yōgai-shima when the island came alive, but being stuck in the traffic jam, barely able to move forward while a hundred other vehicles flanked him made him feel trapped.

“Just breathe, Naoya,” he tried to imagine those words being spoken in Suzume’s voice. “Breathe.”

When he was finally able to fight through the traffic clogging the east-to-west streets, Naoya turned south, heading back towards Decadence District. The traffic thinned, but it didn’t disappear, though Naoya was able to gain enough space and speed that he could shove his anxiety somewhere into the back of his mind for the moment. When the opportunity came, Naoya turned down a side street and pulled into a dark alley between two apartment buildings.

He pried his Augur away from his face, and the device shifted back into the silhouette of a phone. Holding it in his gloved hands, Naoya paused for a moment, considering what he was going to say to the man he was about to call. He needed to be discreet, he knew, but he felt the press of time. He’d chosen to try and approach the problem of Nishijima from a lateral angle, trusting that the man would prove too elusive for his other hunters to find, but Naoya knew he was daring a little too far at this point. Nishijima might have been caught already, and if he wasn’t, Suzume was soon to be off work, meaning that Naoya would have to suspend the chase. With those thoughts in his mind, Naoya swiftly placed the call, choosing to improvise.

The call rang four times, and an automated voice tried to prompt Naoya into leaving a message, he hung up. He stared at the phone, wondering if he’d made some kind of mistake and waited too long, but his thoughts were interrupted as he was called back, and Naoya promptly answered.

“Tell me it’s good news,” came Ichinose’s voice from the other end of the phone. The man sounded tired and irritated.

“Not exactly,” Naoya folded his arms, frowning as he considered the other man’s mood. “That guy, uh, Nishino; has anyone caught him yet?”

“What do you think?” Ichinose growled, his frustration palpable. “I don’t suppose you’ve gotten shit done, have you?”

“I’ve got a lead or two,” Naoya answered, though he only said it to try and keep the soapland manager agreeable. “But, about this guy; would you know if he got picked up by a debt collector working for another pimp?”

“I’d know, Accident-kun. I’d know,” Ichinose assured him, and Naoya could hear the other man shuffling around, leaning over the phone. “Now, what leads have you got for me?”

“They’re my leads,” Naoya told him, shutting the other man out. The more he heard, the more it sounded like Ichinose was just a middleman for someone else. He didn’t seem to have any personal investment in the chase; he didn’t even remember Nishijima’s name. “I don’t need anyone else cutting in and taking this out from under me.”

“Taking it out from under you?” Ichinose scoffed; his voice filled with mockery. “Have you forgotten who’s paying you to do this?”

“Somehow, I get the feeling that you’re not the one in charge of all this,” instead of saying that out loud, though, Naoya chose a different tact.

“I’m being paid by a man who is very well connected, to hear him talk,” Naoya agreed, adding a little mockery to his own voice. “Which is a good thing, seeing as I need to find someone.”

“You and me both,” Ichinose scoffed, his patience wearing audibly thin.

“I’m looking for a woman,” Naoya could hear Ichinose laugh over the phone line at that.

“Hitting up all the flesh bars in town helped you work up an appetite, eh, Nanbu-kun?” the other man chuckled. “Swing on by if you have an itch that needs scratching.”

“I’m not looking for one of your girls,” Naoya ignored Ichinose’s provocations.

“Who, then?” the manager asked with interest and Naoya paused, knowing he needed to choose his next few words carefully. Every bartender, janitor, or working girl that Nishijima had spoken to all told Naoya the same thing: he was looking for a specific woman. Young, red hair, brown eyes, a tattoo under her left eye, and very new to the industry. Though it was clear that Nishijima was looking for a specific person, he hadn’t mentioned any names. The secondhand description was all Naoya had to go on.

“Someone young; late teens, to early twenties,” Naoya felt a little unclean saying the words aloud. He knew how he meant them, but he also knew how the other man would perceive them. “Red hair.”

“Red hair?” Ichinose repeated the words, thinking aloud. “That’s not so common. Black hair, brown hair, bleach blonde. Blues and pinks, but red? You don’t see that a lot.”

“The woman; she’s new in this line of business.”

“You’re a real freak, Nanbu-kun,” Ichinose sounded truly amused. “I always knew it. You’ve got an appetite for the nasty stuff, but you’re just too ashamed to admit it, aren’t you? Or maybe it’s that girlfriend of yours keeping you hungry?”

“Do you know of a girl like that or not?” Naoya demanded, sincerely regretting that he ever called Ichinose, or that he’d ever met the man to begin with.

“Chill, Nanbu-kun,” Ichinose tried to sound soothing, but there was a toxic mirth in his tone. “I know it’s hard to stay calm when you’re about to have your cherry popped but relax. Take it easy for a moment. You don’t want to be too excited when you find this girl you’re looking for.”

Naoya’s fingers hovered over the screen of the Augur, and he fought not to just hang up and write the day off. At this point, it was curiosity that kept Naoya’s attention, not the money: who was Nishijima and why was everyone looking for him? He wanted to know.

“So, Nanbu-kun wants a redhead who is still young, and not too loose,” Ichinose listed off the details of the girl’s description, thinking aloud. He went silent for a moment, and Naoya waited with baited breath. “Can’t say that rings a bell.”

“You’re sure?” Naoya demanded, desperate for a lead.

“I know what’s on offer in this town,” Ichinose insisted, sounding defensive. “Managers like myself; we’re like coaches and owners for baseball teams. We watch each other, we talk, we study different team compositions, and the women? Well, they float around and trade hands from time to time. Sometimes the girl wants a chain of scenery, other times the manager owes someone else a debt, and he trades an employee to square things. It’s real political, you understand?”

“Political, right,” Naoya scoffed and rolled his eyes.

“What I’m trying to say is that in this industry, it behooves a man like me to know the roster of the other teams in the league,” Ichinose went on. “And to know who the freelancers are, and the new draft picks. But let me tell you, when a new girl shows up in the circuit, that gets attention. More so if she’s young. Lots of repeat customers will pay extra for, uh, freshness, let’s say. Red hair; that makes a splash, too. If a girl like that was in circulation, I’d have heard about it.”

The soap-land manager paused for a moment, choosing to be dramatic.

“If she were on this side of the river, that is,” he finished and Naoya knew instantly what he meant.

The White-Mountain Sanzu; a “river” that ran through the east side of Sin Ward. In reality, it was a crack in the city’s foundations from the quake of 2042, and the rupture had filled in with seawater. The homes and businesses near the Sanzu were badly damaged, and many of the buildings on the east side of the Sanzu had been left to fester, and they’d since become occupied by many of the transients from Foundation, which in turn transformed the White Mountain Sanzu into the de facto borderline between Sin Ward and its eastern neighbor.

“You don’t keep up with the business in Foundation?” Naoya tried to pump the other man for more information, but part of him knew that he may very well have hit a wall he couldn’t climb.

“It’s not that I don’t,” Ichinose corrected him. “It’s that I can’t. The Kabuki Towers run all the sex trade in that part of town, and they don’t talk to people outside their circles.”

“Shit,” Naoya clicked his teeth in frustration.

“If the lady you’re looking for is working in this town, my bets are she’s on the other side of the Sanzu,” Ichinose affected an amused nonchalance. “Of course, if you’re still looking to hit it while she’s fresh, I’d cross the river sooner rather than later.”

Naoya hung up and sat staring at the phone for several long seconds, torn by indecision. Several times today, Naoya had been close to hanging up the chase and washing his hands of everything, but he was never closer to giving in than he was at that moment. Crossing the Sanzu wasn’t something he’d ever done before, and it wasn’t something he wanted to do.

He’d been close to the river before on a delivery or two, and he’d seen the damage that still lingered from the quake. Even on Sin Ward’s side, he’d felt hostile eyes on him as he crept through the town in his bike. He’d had enough thugs in Sin Ward that targeted him because he was tall and intimidating to ordinary people, but Naoya had no desire to go looking for trouble, and crossing the Sanzu was always a recipe for just that.

It was getting late, the sun had fallen, and the storm howled overhead; all of them convincing reasons not to go. On the off chance that he did find Nishijima, there was no guarantee that he could actually catch him this time. He still didn’t know how the stranger had even performed his little disappearing act, and he couldn’t stop him from doing it again. Maybe it was the challenge that Nishijima represented that spurred Naoya into motion.

“I’ll just take a look,” Naoya told himself as he pressed the Augur towards his face, shifting them back into the shape of goggles. “I’ll make a quick pass through and then go home.”

He spurred the Bridge-Runner into motion, exiting out through the other side of the alley. He headed east, traveling down along the southern coast while the storm rolled on overhead. He felt a sense of foreboding, but he pushed it to the back of his mind, reasoning that it was nothing more than a feeling of lingering anxiety.

The first thing that Naoya noticed as he headed towards the island’s eastern edge was the gradual diminishing of traffic. Cars quickly made themselves scarce where the roads connecting Sin and Foundation were concerned. Regulars visited the Temptation District in the north, and some tourists went down to the Ambition or Decadence Districts, but no one was keen to visit Foundation Ward. Pedestrians vanished even faster; driven indoors by the rain. Only a single commuter rail actually ran across the Sanzu, furthering Foundation’s sense of isolation.

The businesses with their flashy neon signs and provocative imagery thinned out, becoming sparser with each block that Naoya passed. Naoya felt the slight shift in his tires that told him he was riding over fissures in the wet street beneath him, though he couldn’t see them in the dark. The headlight from his bike was reflected in the broken, dark windows of the buildings on either side of the road, many of them having the grey, standard shape of the island’s early mass-printed buildings. They weren’t unoccupied, but they were abandoned in nearly every other sense. The concrete buildings were bare, lacking a laminate to protect them from the rain, or to hide the graffiti painted onto their sides, or the spider-webbing cracks that traveled up their walla. Ahead of Naoya, a light shined, and he slowed as he reached the edge of the Sanzu.

The Sanzu stretched from north to south, forming a fracture in the foundation of Yōgai-shima as it passed from the banks of Getto-san out to the sea. The rift in the city’s concrete and steel foundation stretched some one hundred feet across, and every year, the tear grew wider and deeper from the erosion of the saltwater. The river had overflowed from the constant downpour released by Izumi, and the Sanzu had flowed up its concrete banks, however, it wasn’t enough to overcome the protections the city had put in place.

A pair of identical bridges had been erected to span the Sanzu, which were a bright and polished silver in color, serving to contrast the worn roadway. The floor of the bridges was a dark, coarse material made to provide friction for car tires in inclement weather, and two smaller pedestrian walkways were sequestered at either side of the bridge. Matching silver barriers had been placed on the banks of the river to hold back the overflow, and Naoya heard the hum of machinery and sloshing of water, suggesting some mechanism was redirecting the current to prevent it from breaching the barricades. A pair of signs were fixed over the bridges, flashing the same message: “FLOOD WARNING! CROSS WITH CAUTION!”

Naoya gently nudged his bike forward, guiding the vehicle onto the bridge across the Sanzu. He drove slowly and carefully, crossing the bridge while keeping his eyes peeled for any obstructions ahead of him, however, a glinting light to his right slowly drew Naoya’s attention. Turning his head, he could see shapes within the water of the Sanzu. Piles of concrete could be seen stacked below the water’s surface, along with broken pipes, and the silhouettes of more of those grey concrete buildings that had collapsed into the river. Flickering lights flashed in the dark currents, illuminating the sunken buildings, but Naoya couldn’t tell whether they had somehow survived the water for the past few years, or if the lights had been placed in water for some reason he couldn’t fathom. The ghostly sight stayed with Naoya even after he looked away.

Leaving the bridge behind, Naoya crossed into Foundation. The city wasn’t what he’d expected; half the stories he’d heard about Foundation had prepared him for some kind of post-apocalyptic wasteland with burning buildings, broken roads, and the clap of gunfire echoing from some indiscernible location. Instead, the wear and tear from the fringes of Sin Ward continued unabated.

Naoya rolled by block after block of grey buildings, not seeing anyone. The rain seemed to start pouring harder the moment his bike crossed the bridge, and the wind hit Naoya in the chest with more force, as if whatever ephemeral protections the rest of Yōgai-shima had simply didn’t exist here. The streets were empty save for the pooling water and cars parked against the side of the road. Not a person was in sight, which made Foundation feel all the more vacant. The only evidence of habitation were lights in the windows of the apartment Naoya passed, and old lit-up signs over bars and stores still open amid the hurricane.

In his goggles, the map Ichinose gave him appeared in the corner of his vision. The flesh-peddler had the foresight to mark businesses on the far side of the Sanzu, but there were only three. Of the businesses that were in Sin Ward, Naoya reasoned that whatever men were looking Nishijima, they’d certainly canvassed the entire north side of the city and were likely pressing towards the southern shore. He could only hope that Nishijima had remained a step ahead of the hunters chasing him, even as Naoya hoped he was another step ahead, still.

Taking a turn, Naoya laid eyes on the first building marked by Ichinose, which appeared to be a squat grey building with only three floors, a veritable dwarf among the towers of Yōgai-shima. The sign out front showed a fisherman with a large net, who leered lustily at a mermaid caught inside it. Although he couldn’t see the name of the building, there was a lit red sign that flashed in one of the windows, declaring that the establishment was open.

Pulling over at the side of the street, Naoya tried to decide whether or not he should go inside. If the girl was there, then he could find her and confirm his suspicions, but there was also the chance that Nishijima could spot him coming in or out of the establishment. Naoya looked at the map again, which still flashed in the corner of his eye.

The soapland in front of Naoya was the nearest to the bridge into Foundation, so if Nishijima had already beaten him here, then he was wasting his time. Looking at the map, the two other establishments were further into Foundation, and it wasn’t lost on him that Ichinose’s admitted ignorance about this part of the city meant that there could be more brothels or dives operated by the Kabuki Towers that the manager didn’t know about, and spending his time searching them one by one risked missing Nishijima somewhere else.

“What if I don’t have to chase Nishijima?” Naoya felt a different tactic forming in his mind. “What if I can draw him to me?”

Twisting his wrist, Naoya spurred the bike into motion again. Using the map for guidance, Naoya circled the block, heading a little further into Foundation. He eventually guided the bike through several tight alleyways, parking it behind a building beneath an awning roughly the same distance away from the three spots marked by Ichinose. When the bike came to a stop, Naoya climbed off and pried off his Augur.

He stood to the left of an alleyway exit door, using the small canopy perched above it to shelter himself from the rain. A small, flickering fluorescent light illuminated the tight corridors in brief bursts of yellow luminescence, revealing that the alleyway formed a T-junction. Naoya stood in the gap between two smaller buildings, with the passage to the street continuing out to his right. To his left was a much larger apartment building with another longer alley that ran parallel to Naoya, from north to south, though the corridor was tight and hardly large enough for Naoya himself to walk down.

He shifted the Augur back into the form of a phone, and the device displayed Ichinose’s map. Looking at the different red pips that flashed on the map around him, Naoya raised a finger and dragged it across the screen, marking a path that ran between all three. A moment later, and the Bridge-Runner charged off at his direction, racing back into the streets of Foundation.

With sheets of rain pouring into the streets, visibility was limited, and Foundation’s sidewalks were marked with few streetlights, and maybe half of them were still working. The Bridge-Runner, even as large as it was, blended in with the heavy shadows on the streets, making it nearly impossible to discern save for the piercing beam of its single headlight and the characteristic whine of its engine. After the first lap around the streets, Naoya switched off the Bridge-Runner’s light and began guiding it around the illuminating gleam of the occasional streetlight, trying to hide the passage of the machine in the darkness of the night.

Guided by Naoya, the Bridge-Runner accelerated through the storm, moving faster than he’d ridden it all day. Buzzing through the streets, Naoya was able to see the occasional person through his Augur which he hadn’t seen before. Vagrants, who had no homes to shelter in, moved about in the alleys, wrapping themselves tightly in raincoats, tarps, and blankets to shield themselves from the endless downpour. Guiding the bike, Naoya gave the misfortunate a wide berth, having no desire to add to their troubles.

The Bridge-Runner circled the streets of Foundation, following the path that Naoya had marked. Whenever he neared one of the businesses that Ichinose put on the map, Naoya would slow the bike, allowing it to hover at a distance from the entrance so he could peer at the doorway through his Augur, watching and waiting to see who was entering and exiting before moving on. The bike spurred into motion again, moving away from the northmost brothel and towards the one furthest east. The machine was halfway between the two when lightning flashed and Naoya noticed a pair walking down the sidewalk on his right.

He was so myopic about getting to and from each bar and soapland Ichinose had marked that he’d momentarily lost sight of the pedestrians he was passing on the road. His eyes locked onto the two figures, but the Bridge-Runner was already moving parallel to them and stopping the black bike in the middle of the road risked attracting attention, so he let the bike race forward down the dark, rainy street and immediately took a sharp right turn. He wheeled the bike around, spinning the block as quickly as he could to get behind the pair again.

At the top of the street, Naoya slowed the bike, moving at half the speed he had before, careful to keep his distance to avoid alerting the pair of pedestrians that he was following them. The bike crept down the road and Naoya kept his eyes fixed on the sidewalk to his right, straining his sight for any motion. He caught up with them not much farther down the street than they were before and Naoya slowed the bike even more, keeping a good twenty feet behind them.

It was a man and a woman walking down the street, with the woman standing on the right, sheltered in the shadows of the buildings while the man stood on her left, with his arm draped around the woman’s shoulders, protectively. The woman Naoya could barely see, hidden by the darkness, the shape of the man’s body, and a dark grey trenchcoat that was draped over her frame. The man, however, was different.

As they passed beneath a streetlight, Naoya saw the man more clearly, and beheld a familiar figure. The man was dressed in a dark suit, unheard of in this part of town, and his black and grey hair was pomaded back with care. The man cut a slim figure, and it was one that Naoya was certain he’d seen before.

The pair were heading east, back towards Sin Ward and away from the last of the three buildings Ichinose had marked. Naoya realized the bike must have already passed them once or twice while driving around the city, and it was only happenstance that a lightning strike revealed them to him. Now that he had them, though, his instincts told him he needed to act quickly.

The bike crept forward, angling the front of the vehicle towards the pair and Naoya flicked the headlight of the bike back on, bathing the pair in the white-blue radiance of the beam. The man, Nishijima, turned to look back, raising his left hand to try and shield his eyes from the light. Then, at Nishijima’s urging, the two of them began to run.

Nishijima didn’t move with the speed Naoya had seen before, instead busying himself with ushering the young woman wearing his trenchcoat. While the Bridge-Runner was built for endurance and not speed, the bike could easily have overtaken the pair, but he kept the bike moving slowly, having it dart forward and honk at the two of them like a dog herding sheep. Halfway down the street as they were, Nishijima chose to step off the street and push the young woman into the alley to escape to the other side of the block, heading east.

The pair scrambled to keep ahead of the bike as it pursued them down the alley, its horn blaring. When they escaped into the street beyond, Naoya had the bike circle north to their right, herding them further south. The pair scrambled down the street, the young woman panicking and clinging to Nishijima, who himself was silent and stoic, alternating between watching the oncoming bike and turning his head about, looking for some safe shelter the pair could find to escape.

The bike continued to chase them south and east, where the pair rounded a corner where a tall, wide grey apartment building stood. They fled down the street, moving eastward, and Naoya pushed the bike to move faster to convince the pair that they wouldn’t reach the end of the next street before they were overtaken. Naoya could see the moment that Nishijima spotted the tight alleyway on his right that ran between a wide apartment building and two smaller structures on its east side. Once again, Nishijima ushered the young woman into the passageway and then forced himself in behind while the bike pulled itself up to a stop, shining its headlight into the alley that was too small for it to follow them into.

Light flashed into the corridor on Naoya’s left, and the sound of panting voices and footsteps echoed up the alley. A moment later, a young woman wrapped in a wet grey trenchcoat burst into the small intersection in the alleyway, followed by a man with dark black and grey hair. The pair were too busy looking over their shoulders at the light being shined at their backs to notice Naoya standing in the alley with them.

“Evening,” Naoya stepped away from the wall he’d been leaning against, raising his voice to be heard. The woman yelped and Nishijima’s head whipped around, his dark eyes flashing with surprise for only a split second before he placed himself in front of the woman, urging her to stay behind him by holding out his left hand while keeping himself between her and Naoya.

“How did you—?” Nishijima began, his eyes flicking towards the bike at the edge of the alley, then towards Naoya. Nishijima looked almost exactly like the picture Ichinose had been provided, but his drawn features spoke of exhaustion, and his once slicked back hair was now messy from the rain and his hurried flight. His clothes were black on black, with only a small white tie pin bringing any color to the jet-black suit.

“I’m smarter than I look,” Naoya raised his Augur, lightly waving it in his hand. On its screen was the bike’s camera, through which he controlled the vehicle from a distance. “You’re Nishijima, yeah?”

The man said nothing but continued to back himself and the young woman up against the wall as Naoya stepped forward. The young woman peaked out over Nishijima’s shoulder, allowing Naoya to get a look at her face. Her features were as had been described to him before, having red hair matted down against her face by the rain. She peered at Naoya with only one good eye; the left half of her face was bruised and swollen, forcing her left eye shut. She was dressed in a slender, semi-transparent dress that was partially torn, which would leave her unprotected against the rain if not for Nishijima’s coat.

“Did you do that to her?” Naoya asked, but he never got an answer. The moment Naoya’s eyes shifted to the battered woman, Nishijima reached into his coat with his right hand and withdrew something. Naoya scarcely had time to react before the man in black whipped something out of his jacket and swung it towards Naoya’s face.

There was a loud crack as something collided with the right side of his helmet and Naoya was sent reeling backwards, stumbling to his hands and knees. His helmet was thrown from his head, sending it clattering across the alley before it hit the wall of a building and came to a stop. Whispers of smoke rose up from the side of the helmet where it appeared to have partially melted from whatever struck it. The impact, although blunted by his helmet, still sent a painful wave through Naoya’s head, and it took him a moment to regain his bearing.

“Do you think you’re the first of the Towers’ goons to catch up with me today?” Nishijima asked, his voice was soft, but it had a rasp that suggested a hard-lived existence. He held a slender black collapsible rod in his right hand, which had a rounded handle and a rectangular shaft which was split in half down the center, and the gap shined with an ethereal blue light. The rod crackled with energy, and every raindrop disappeared into a stream of vapor the moment they collided with the baton.

“Walk away,” Nishijima ordered Naoya in his soft, rasping voice, his eyes shining in the blue light. “This is the only chance I’m giving you.”

Naoya’s head swam with pain and confusion. He didn’t know who this man really was, or the girl who was with him for that matter. And the Towers? How did they play into all of this? The rational part of Naoya told him he should accept the invitation Nishijima had given him and just leave, but something in Naoya, something he couldn’t explain, denied that possibility.

Naoya grit his teeth and slowly stood, raising his fists and bending his knees to drop into a boxing stance. Nishijima continued to hold the baton out in front of him, his gaunt features becoming more severe as he realized that Naoya wasn’t backing down. Without taking his eyes away from Naoya, Nishijima stepped to his left, leaving the young woman behind to cower against the wall. He circled to Naoya’s right in the cramped intersection between the two alleys, and Naoya allowed Nishijima to create space between himself and the woman, not wanting her to get caught up in the fight. The two men stared each other down, neither making a move forward. Though they both waited, neither man was looking for an alternative: that opportunity had already passed.

Nishijima moved first, taking a step forward and swinging his baton low towards Naoya’s left knee. Naoya took a half-step backward before Nishijima revealed his attack was a feint, bringing the baton upward towards the side of Naoya’s unprotected head. Immediately, Naoya reversed his course, trying to start forward again while reaching out with his left hand to try and catch Nishijima’s arm by the wrist. Before he could wrap his fingers around the other man’s arm, Nishijima rolled his wrist, bringing the baton down on his hand. Pain exploded through Naoya’s fingers, along with a surge of electricity, and Naoya struggled to hold his arm up. Nishijima immediately leapt on Naoya’s weakness, swinging his weapon.

Naoya was forced into full retreat, circling around in the small space as Nishijima pressed his advantage, making precise swings of his baton to force Naoya to give ground or risk another hit from the stun rod. In the span of a few seconds, feeling returned to Naoya’s arm, but he was hard pressed to find an opening to engage Nishijima and turn the tide back in his favor. The other man seemed to be very experienced in the use of his weapon, never overextending himself or leaving an opening. Whenever Naoya managed to move a single step closer, Nishijima jabbed with his baton like it was a fencing foil, forcing Naoya to retreat again.

Having been in a few scrapes himself, Naoya was hardly inexperienced when it came to fighting. Against an opponent with a weapon, the best solution was to grapple, denying them the leverage they needed to bring it to bear with full force. Of course, that strategy relied on Nishijima giving him the opportunity to close ranks, which the veteran fighter wasn’t going to allow. Without that, the next best solution was to run away, but again, Naoya denied that possibility.

Perhaps it was the effect of the stun baton, but Naoya began to feel an electric charge in the air around him. Every hair seemed to stand on end, and he could feel an invisible current dance across his skin. While the rippling electricity coursed outside his body, another energy surged inside him.

A perverse exhilaration crept over Naoya as his heart beat faster and the sense of danger multiplied, bringing a smile to Naoya’s face. Even as Nishijima tried to press Naoya into a corner with the crackling rod, the feeling only grew. The world seemed more vivid, and somehow, surreal, as he danced around Nishijima’s blows.

Naoya sidestepped another rapier-like thrust of the baton, moving back to his left and denying Nishijima the option of pinning him against the wall of the alley. Nishijima matched Naoya’s motion, preventing the younger man from circling him. The two men strafed slowly across the alley, keeping pace with one another, an Naoya noticed that Nishijima wasn’t pushing as aggressively as he had at the first.

“Feeling tired?” Naoya asked, his grin growing broader as Nishijima glared back. He didn’t wait for an answer as he continued to strafe along the wall, his left foot colliding with his discarded helmet. At that moment, Nishijima looked down at the fallen object and seemed to realize what Naoya was planning, but it was too late.

Naoya stuck the toe of his left boot beneath the helmet and flicked it into the air with one swift motion. Emulating the shot of football players he’d seen on TV, Naoya kicked the helmet like he was kicking a goal, sending it hurtling towards Nishijima’s face. The other man instinctively stepped backwards, sweeping the baton through the air to knock the helmet back to the ground, and Naoya was on him a moment later.

Naoya’s fists flew in a furious flurry as he pressed into Nishijima’s space. The black-suited man sidestepped the initial rush, but Naoya was quick to chase him, never letting the other man get out of his arm’s reach. Despite being the bigger of the two, Naoya danced around Nishijima on his toes, darting from one side to the other, pressuring him with feinting jabs designed to force him to open his guard. Nishijima held the baton horizontally, being hard pressed to defend himself, shifting side to side as he tried to find an opportunity to counterattack. Naoya slipped a left jab through Nishijima’s guard and the knuckle of Naoya’s left index finger brushed his jaw. The speed of the jab and the unexpected feeling of being touched caused a microsecond of confusion to play itself out in Nishijima’s mind and his eyes darted to his right, seeking the fist that had already pulled back, and in that moment, Naoya launched his real attack.

A right hook caught Nishijima across the jaw the moment his eyes looked straight again. Naoya’s heavy fist crossed Nishijima’s chin with such force that he imagined that the alley was filled with the sound of thunder. Nishijima’s head whipped to his right and blood spurted from his mouth, painting the alley way. To his credit, Nishijima didn’t collapse from the blow, and he remained on his feet.

Nishijima looked back at Naoya with a fury in his eyes, blood dribbling down his bottom lip and across his chin. Sweeping his baton back and forth like he was conducting an orchestra of mad musicians, Nishijima retreated further back, trying to hold off Naoya. Despite the fury of his defense, Naoya recognized that Nishijima’s wild swings were the product of desperation, as the other man was still partially stunned from Naoya’s attack. Pressing forward, Naoya continued to throw jabs, forcing Nishijima to back up against the wall, looking for the moment he could make his final rush and tackle Nishijima to the floor. That was when something truly unexpected happened.

Realizing his poor position, Nishijima raised his baton overhead and swept it downward, and the entire rod broke apart. The weapon shifted into a chain of black rectangular pieces connected by a hot electric blue wire. Nishijima swept the electric-whip through the space between Naoya and himself, causing the weapon to violently crackle as hairs of electricity surged outward to evaporate nearby puddles of water. Instinctively, Naoya retreated, confronted by the strange weapon and the blinding flash of blue light released from it.

Nishijima raised the whip handle and lashed it towards Naoya’s head, and the thong of black metal and electrified wire extended through the air. Immediately, Naoya ducked, and the whip surged through the air above him, striking the concrete wall of the alley with the sound of metal digging into cement. Naoya looked up just in time to see the whip in Nishijima’s hand pull itself taut, and the man in the black suit was pulled into the air, disappearing over Naoya’s head.

Before Naoya had time to turn around, he felt the heel of Nishijima’s foot collide with the back of his head. Lights flashed in Naoya’s vision, and he stumbled forward, off-balance, and he struck the wall of the alley in front of him, stopping himself from cracking his skull against the surface by bracing himself with his hands. Clutching the back of his head, Naoya turned around to see Nishijima standing behind him, his whip once more collapsed into a baton.

Nishijima pressed the baton into the center of Naoya’s chest and electricity immediately flowed through Naoya’s body. He screamed as the pain coursed through him and he dropped to his knees, but Nishijima continued to press the rod into his breast, never breaking contact. Naoya violently seized and he felt his heart begin to palpitate, all while Nishijima callously watched on, only pausing to brush the blood from his bottom lip with the back of his gloved left hand.

“Am I going to die?” Naoya asked himself. The question was hesitant in his mind, and fearful in its tone, but it provoked a response in him. Anger flowed through Naoya: anger at being afraid, anger at Nishijima, anger at feeling pain.

Naoya pressed his teeth together, turning his cries of pain into a growl of rage. He reached up with his right hand and wrapped it around the baton pressed against his chest, trying to pull the weapon away. Nishijima took the baton handle in both hands, trying to resist, but Naoya placed his left hand on the baton and struggled back to his feet. He could see the alarm in Nishijima’s eyes as he struggled to keep the stun baton jabbed into Naoya’s chest, clearly surprised that any man could withstand its current. In truth, Naoya could barely even feel the pain anymore. Gritting his teeth, Nishijima pressed the weapon deeper into Naoya’s chest, trying to elicit some response, and then, there was a flash of golden lines that spread from Naoya’s hands through the stun baton.

The weapon crackled with blue light two or three more times in a stuttering display before the light vanished altogether. Nishijima stared down at his weapon in confusion, trying to understand what happened, when a piece of the baton broke free and clattered to the floor of the alley. Then, the entire baton broke apart like shards of broken glass and spilled onto the pavement. Nishijima looked down at the black fragments that gathered around his feet, opening his hands in disbelief to let the last few pieces fall from between his fingers onto the ground. He looked back up at Naoya and seemed to realize something as he peered at the figure that now towered over him.

Naoya loomed over the smaller man, incapable of words or reason. Like an animal, he panted and grunted, his hoarse and beastly vocalizations growing louder with each second. Violence was imminent, but Nishijima seemed to think that running for his life was beneath him.

“I see,” was all he said, his rasping voice filled with finality.

A moment later, the alley was filled with the sound of crunching bone. Nishijima was held up by Naoya’s left hand on his lapel, while the big man pummeled Nishijima with his right fist, smashing it into the other man’s face over and over again. Nishijima had long since ceased to put up a fight, but Naoya didn’t stop hitting him, filling the alley with the sound of each brutal punch and Naoya’s own animalistic growls. A small voice at the back of Naoya’s mind wondered how long he’d been hitting Nishijima, and when he was going to stop, but he ultimately decided he didn’t care.

“Hey, shithead!” a voice called out from somewhere behind Naoya, but he didn’t listen, deafened by the sound of his constant, demonic panting. Nishijima’s face was swollen and nearly unrecognizable, but Naoya didn’t stop. Blood sprayed from Nishijima’s face, painting Naoya’s knuckles red.

“Hey, asswipe!” the voice called out, louder this time, and full of rage. “I’m talking to you!”

Naoya paused his assault, continuing to hold up Nishijima with his left hand. Nishijima wheezed and gurgled, coughing up blood through his broken mouth, drooling out a handful of teeth. With almost robotic detachment, Naoya let the man fall to the ground, turning his attention to the voice behind him.

“You see?” a familiar voice asked, mocking and smug, as Naoya turned around to face three men that stood tightly packed in the alley. “I fucking told you guys that it was his bike!”

Juzo stood in his raincoat, the small man’s face twisted into an awful smile as he addressed the two taller men standing behind him. Juzo puffed on a cigarette, its tip glowing bright red before he plucked it from his mouth and gestured at Naoya with it. Naoya stared at them in response, the small man’s words pounding in his ears like noise heard underwater.

“You get yourself a little fucked up, dickshit?” Juzo asked, gesturing at his face with one hand, a sneer written on his features.

“I don’t think that’s his blood,” Kubo, the widest of the three men, observed, his voice full of trepidation and his eyes fearful.

“Like I give a shit,” Juzo dropped his cigarette to the floor of the alley and stomped it out in the rain before ambling forward with disinterest. He stepped around Naoya and paused, then exploded into motion.

“Shit! Shit!” Juzo exclaimed in surprise as he beheld the fallen Nishijima. He laughed and danced back and forth, giving the fallen man a middle finger while he cackled. “Holeee shit! It’s him!”

At the sound of Juzo’s crazed exclamations, the other two men moved forward to see what was happening. Kubo hugged the side of the alleyway, being careful to put as much distance between himself and Naoya, but the third man, Hibiki, the tallest of the three, paused to look over Naoya’s shoulder rather than pass him.

“Who is he?” Kubo asked, as the young woman in Nishijima’s jacket made for the dark-clad man’s side, crouching near him.

“It’s the guy from Tsukuyomi!” Juzo cackled, dancing on the spot. “This big son of a bitch actually caught him! Can you believe it!”

“No way!” Kubo took a few steps forward, peering closer at the fallen man.

“Really?” asked Hibiki, and he stepped closer, brushing into Naoya’s shoulder. Naoya reacted immediately, taking hold of the other man by his left bicep. The skinny gangbanger tried to pull away from him, but Naoya’s fingers dug into the man’s arm like a vice-grip, and the other man hissed in pain.

“Hey, relax bro,” the other man’s voice trembled with clear anxiety, the scarce lighting in the alley revealed frightful eyes and a quivering lip. “We just mess with you sometimes. That’s all. It’s just messing around.”

Naoya didn’t respond. He couldn’t.

The man’s voice sounded distant and far away, and his words were incomprehensible. Out of the corner of his eye, Naoya could see Juzo laughing and cackling like a maniac, grabbing hold of the kneeling young woman’s arm to try and drag her to her feet while Kubo watched, impotently. The lanky man tried to pull away again, and he said something that Naoya couldn’t understand.

The lanky man’s face soured, his frightened expression giving way to irritation and anger to mask his fear. He said something again, louder, more forcefully, his expression twisting in a bare-tooth snarl. He tugged his arm back again, shouting in his warped voice Naoya couldn’t understand. When posturing and anger didn’t persuade Naoya to release him, the lanky man raised his right hand and slammed the heel of his palm into Naoya’s chest, trying to push Naoya away.

The push was barely enough to budge Naoya; the lanky ganger wasn’t a brave man, or a strong man, but rather, he was a coward that hid behind his friends and only threw jabs and slaps when someone’s back was turned. Still, the harmless gesture was enough to antagonize Naoya. The world cracked, and fissures of golden light spread through everything in Naoya’s field of vision.

At the end of Naoya’s arm, he gripped a shapeless pile of human glass, its shards a kaleidoscope of different colors and textures without rhyme or reason. Though the mound of glass bore the rough silhouette of a human being, shards with the texture of a wet pink rain parka mixed with pieces of a fractured human face. One slim shard at the top of the pile bore a single human eye, while a larger chunk in the middle held its twin. The disconnected eyes stared angrily at Naoya, and a human mouth, broken into three separate pieces, mouthed words at him, but only distorted noises came out.

Naoya wasted no time in laying into the bizarre mound, slamming his left fist into the mass. The pile of human glass rippled as Naoya struck it, and it cried out, warbling in a strange tongue. The sounds echoed out into the broken alley as Naoya continued to pummel the esoteric assortment of broken pieces, and the conglomerate of shards collapsed to the broken ground.

“Stop!” “Please!” “Don’t!”

The tangled pile of shards made noises that almost sounded like words, but Naoya paid them no heed. The heap of broken glass pulled itself together, tightening itself into a ball to endure Naoya’s fists as they fell onto it, pummeling the accumulation of shapes without consideration. He continued his assault, thinking nothing, his mind filled only with a pure animal desire to destroy the distorted world that threatened him on all sides. With each strike, he grew stronger, feeling bones break and fracture beneath his knuckles, but he still didn’t stop. The collection of broken shapes on the ground tried to crawl away, and Naoya’s hand went wide, missing its target and burying his fist up to the wrist in the concrete.

Naoya felt a hand on his shoulder, and he turned around to see another misshapen collage of broken glass latching onto him. It was a bulbous mass, but it screamed at Naoya in a high-pitched voice, demanding something that Naoya couldn’t understand. Instinctively, Naoya grappled his new attacker with his left hand, expecting that his fingers would be lacerated by the sharp edges of the broken silhouette, but his digits brushed against wet smooth material, and Naoya balled it in his fist. He lifted the shifting pile of shards into the air and cocked back his right fist.

Power surged through Naoya, filling him with greater strength than he ever had before. He poured every bit of strength into his right arm, preparing to shatter the collection of shards into a thousand smaller pieces. However, as soon as Naoya did so, a buzzing sounded in his ears. The noise was deafening, followed by an intense heat and the feeling of needles punching into his skin.

He felt as though he was being electrocuted again, but the energy wasn’t flowing through him so much as it was flowing against him. The energy hit Naoya like a river, pushing against him, pulling him down, draining his strength. Immersed in the crackling energy, Naoya struggled to hold up the second pile of human glass, and he was reluctantly forced to throw his captive to the ground.

No sooner than the second pile of broken shards hit the ground than it fled backward, racing across a sea of broken concrete to escape from Naoya’s grasp. Naoya struggled to give chase, barely able to raise a foot as the mysterious pressure sought to hold him in place. He tried to push forward, to fight through the invisible bonds holding him down, but he stopped and turned when something moved in the corner of his eye.

A third human effigy moved in the chaos of the alley, standing out from the chaotic tumult of the endlessly fracturing concrete buildings by virtue of its pink color. Among the tumble of its broken form, Naoya could perceive a human face, though the features were broken into five pieces and spread up and down the roughly humanoid body. Though it was hard to discern anything within the shifting fragments of what was supposed to appear human, Naoya thought that the features were madly grinning at him, and, more importantly, it seemed like it was holding something.

The small, pink glass figure charged at Naoya, its distorted voice making some kind of whooping laughter as it lunged. Naoya raised his right hand as the living kaleidoscope closed the distance, trying to fend off the oncoming attacker, and he was rewarded with a sharp sensation in his palm. A blade had stabbed through his hand, sliding between the bones of his middle two fingers.

Intense pain shot through Naoya’s hand, and the living kaleidoscope cackled again as it twisted the knife and pressed it deeper, causing blood to run down the back of Naoya’s hand. Surprise followed the pain, which gave way to anger. Against logic, Naoya closed the fingers of his bleeding hand around the blade impaling it, tightening his hand into a fist. Something surged through Naoya, and luminous cracks appeared on his arm, spreading from his shoulder down to his forearm, and then into his hand. The light faded from Naoya’s body in less than a second, but the effect it had on the knife was immediate.

The knife fell apart, and the metal shards of the blade fell out of Naoya’s hand to clatter against the shifting concrete pavement at his feet. There was a strange sound from the little glass heap, and although it was a wordless burble of sharp, clashing noises, Naoya faintly comprehended a sense of surprise.

He pulled his hand back, closing the fingers of his right hand around the broken weapon’s handle, crushing it to powder between his fingertips. The little assortment of human glass backed away, its crackling voice raising higher and higher as Naoya began to advance again. The pressure on Naoya’s shoulders began to increase, but the power inside his body swelled, enabling him to keep moving forward.

The little glass heap moved away from Naoya, a series of rising, terrified exclamations as the big man moved closer and closer. The power surging through Naoya increased with every step, and the energy built in his chest, pressing against his ribs. The power surged up through his body and Naoya was forced to release it, throwing back his head to scream. The power tore through his mouth, releasing a terrible wave of pressure that seemed poised to blast apart the broken world around him.

With his cry, the three shifting shapes of glass fled, each one escaping down a different alley. Still held down by the lightning wrapped around his body, Naoya could not give chase, and he was forced to watch the human silhouettes run away into the night between buildings of concrete that seemed poised to fall on them. When they disappeared into the night, Naoya was left alone, feeling as though all the power of the storm above him was holding him down.

He stood staring at nothing, listening only to the sound of his own breathing thundering in his ears. As the moments passed, Naoya’s heartbeat began to slow, and the cracks in the world began to slowly fill themselves in, and a sense of normalcy returned. Naoya stared down the northern alley where the smallest of the three figures had fled, slowly returning to himself.

He wasn’t sure where he was right away. All he knew was that he was standing in the middle of an alleyway, listening to the constant whisper of the rain falling down on his shoulders, while thunder boomed somewhere in the night. He blinked, trying to remember what he was doing, when he faintly heard the sound of someone sobbing.

Naoya turned his head, casting his eyes on the form of a young woman crouching on the ground, leaning over a fallen man in a dark suit. Nishijima coughed through his broken jaw, sending trails of blood down his chin, and Naoya looked down at his hands, observing the wet blood that lingered there, while being slowly diluted by the falling rain.

“Did I do this?” Naoya asked himself, feeling somehow revolted.

“Don’t make me go back,” a voice intruded on Naoya’s thoughts, and he made eye contact with the woman leaning over Nishijima. She stared up at Naoya, her own face bruised and her left eye swollen shut, traces of makeup running down her face.

“What?” Naoya asked, not entirely certain what she was asking.

“I just want to go home,” the woman implored, her one eye full of terror.

Naoya looked down at her, and then at his hands again, not for the first time feeling as though he’d stepped into something deeper and darker than he knew. He didn’t know what Ichinose really wanted with Nishijima, and he had no idea how the girl fit into everything. He didn’t even know what he’d done in the last ten minutes, but he did know what he was going to do next.

Naoya pulled out his Augur and the woman trembled. He stared down at her as he tapped the screen and raised the Augur to his ear. It rang twice, and then Ichinose picked up, sounded annoyed.

“Are you still—?” Ichinose demanded, but Naoya cut him off.

“Nishijima’s gone,” Naoya told him, sharply.

“What?” Ichinose sputtered, clearly caught off guard. “What do you mean he’s gone?”

“Someone grabbed him,” Naoya hadn’t even thought out his lie before he started talking. “I don’t know who, but someone has him.”

“Fuck!” Ichinose snapped, punctuating his curse by slapping something, and Naoya heard something shatter in the manager’s office. “How? Who grabbed him?”

“I already said that I don’t know!” Naoya protested. “Some guys just up and grabbed him! It was dark and I didn’t see their faces.”

“And what the hell were you doing while that happened?” the manager screamed through the phone. “What the hell are you good for, you big son of a bitch? You’re telling me you just sat there with your thumb up your ass and let someone else take our payday?”

“I’m done with your bullshit!” Naoya was tempted to squeeze the Augur in his hand and break it to pieces. “You lost Nishijima! You lost the girl! It’s over! Go crawl into a hole and cry about it, you fucking parasite! Maybe learn to solve your own damn problems!”

“What gi—?” Ichinose tried to ask but Naoya ended the call with a forceful press of his finger. He looked down at the young woman, knowing nothing about her or even her name. The two stared at one another in awkward silence for several seconds before Naoya spoke.

“I’m sorry,” he told her, speaking softly. “This is all I can do.”

“I don’t know where to go,” the young woman shook her head, but Nishijima shifted. The man turned his head to the side and spat out a mouthful of blood from his broken face. Slowly and painfully, Nishijima began trying to climb to his feet, and the young woman hooked his right arm around her shoulder and began to lift him up. Watching her struggle, Naoya stepped forward and took hold of Nishijima’s other arm, helping pull the man to his feet. Nishijima stood, swaying on the spot, but the red-headed young woman supported him, helping him to remain on his feet.

“I’m not certain how many people are still after you,” Naoya looked into Nishijima’s dark eyes as he spoke, and he could see beyond the obvious pain a sharp clarity. “I don’t even know if Ichinose believed me. I’m not so good at lying.”

A thought occurred to Naoya, and he held out his Augur, bringing up the map Ichinose had given him.

“The guys looking for you wanted me to scope out the local brothels and soaplands,” Naoya explained, looking from Nishijima to the young woman. “I guess Ichinose must have known you were looking for someone. Or whoever the hell it was that gave the map to him. Either way, it seems like whoever’s looking for you is combing their way down from the north of Sin Ward. They’ll be here in Foundation before too long, so I guess you might find a place to lay low for a while. I have no idea who you are or where the hell you’re going, and I figure that’s probably for the best.”

Nishijima looked down at the woman holding him up, and then back to Naoya. Like her, Ichinose’s left eye was swollen shut, and his gaunt face was swollen and red, while broken bones pushed beneath his skin. The dark eyed man stared at Naoya for a long moment and then managed to say something through his broken mandible.

“I’ll remember this.”

With that, Nishijima nodded towards the eastern alley exit and he began to stagger forward, assisted by the girl he’d been looking for. Naoya watched the pair struggle together, uncertain whether Nishijima’s last words were expressing gratitude or a threat.

“Are you the good guy in all of this?” Naoya asked as he watched Nishijima stumble out of the alley and back into the city. “Or are you the villain? Where do I stand?”

Naoya didn’t know.

He scooped up his helmet, and looked down at it, turning it over in his hands. There were two dings in the helmet on the left and right sides, and both breaks were half-melted, destroying the helmet’s surface. Reluctantly, Naoya tugged the helmet on over his sopping wet hair and struggled for a few seconds to get it to sit right before sighing and reluctantly heading south, heading back towards his bike.

He mounted the Bridge-Runner and turned it about, preparing to head east and go home. As he reached out to take the handle, Naoya noticed a small glint from the back of his right hand and he paused. Holding his gloved hand up to his face, he saw a small metal fragment jutting out of it. With his left hand, he plucked the piece of metal free and inspected it.

“The knife,” Naoya realized what it was and tossed it down to the street, where it was washed away in the rain streaming across the black pavement. He tugged the glove off and turned his hand over, searching for any sign of injury, but found nothing.

“I was stabbed, wasn’t I?” he asked himself as he cradled his right hand with his left, rubbing the spot where he felt the pain with his thumb. He tried to recall the events in the alley, but it had already faded into a tumult of adrenaline and hallucinations. He sat for a moment on his bike, trying to rationalize the reality of his uninjured hand with the sharp pain that still lingered in his recollection. When he couldn’t, he forced his glove back on and revved his bike, seeking to put as much distance between himself and the alley as he could.

“What do you have to show for all this?” a voice in Naoya’s head reprimanded him as he drove, and he fed the Bridge-Runner more speed, as if hoping he could outrun his own self-doubt and regret. “You wasted an entire day, turning down a dozen smaller jobs to try and be a debt collector; a job you’ve avoided doing for years, and then, you let the guy go. You busted your helmet, you got into another fight, and you’re down another day’s income.”

He drove east, heading back towards the bridge that forded the White-River Sanzu, moving with speed. With each moment, he felt a longing to be home; he’d had enough of the city for one day. He fed the Bridge-Runner with more and more gas, feeling the wind and the rain whipping against him as he went. The sensation kept him in the moment, holding his own misgivings and doubts at bay.

He drove through the streets of Sin Ward, passing by the plain southern shore, taking in the smell of the salt. Cars and pedestrians were out on the streets in force, defying the natural disaster that loomed over the island in their corporate quest for escapism. Naoya weaved around slow-moving cars and drove his bike through alleys large enough to fit the Bridge-Runner, eschewing his usual caution at this time of night in his haste to keep moving and to get away from the part of the city he felt was increasingly vile. He thought of what route he was going to take to get back to Central, and he immediately thought of the Golden Mile, the largest crossing between the two wards, but he eschewed that idea.

The Golden Mile was going to be congested at this time of night, and Naoya had no patience for the blaring horns, flashing lights, and the endless chatter of pedestrians. Naoya continued driving along the southern shore of Sin Ward, heading for a smaller bridge that crossed over into Horizon, hoping to break away from the current of commuters. The small two-lane crossing was vacant at this time of night, save for the distant lights of an oncoming truck looking to cross into Sin Ward. Naoya stepped on the gas as he crossed the bridge, and, immediately, the weather took a turn for the worse.

The wind picked up, pushing against the bike as it neared the other side of the crossing. Naoya reflexively slowed, struggling to regain control of the bike. The front tire slid across the asphalt, losing traction with the road, and the entire bike threatened to slide out from under Naoya. In desperation, Naoya fully hit the brakes, and he leaned to his right, placing his right boot on the street to further brace it and prevent it from flying out of control. He brought the bike to a complete stop and paused a moment to regain his bearings. There was a sudden flash to Naoya’s right, so intense it was blinding, and sparks filled the air.

He blinked, trying to understand what just happened, and he looked up to see the green box truck heading in his direction, smoke pouring from its front grill which had been melted by a lightning strike. The five-ton vehicle went out of control, its headlights flickering as its engine failed, and the machine crossed the lane markings and careened in Naoya’s direction. The flashing headlights blinded him, and the truck’s horn blasted in his ears as the driver desperately warned Naoya of the wild automobile, but it was far too late for Naoya to get out of the way.

“What are the odds?” he asked himself.

January 4th, 2044

04:20 PM

Central Ward

Sunset District

There was a storm outside. A hurricane swept up by the Sea of Japan that, even now, was pelting seawater down on Yōgai-shima, hurling thunderbolts at buildings, attempting to rip apart the city’s infrastructure with gale force winds. It all sounded suitably dramatic and terrifying, but to Fubuki Kamui, it was a world away.

All morning, she’d been inside, sheltered away behind the finest protections modern science could provide. She’d slept peacefully this morning when the storm hit, and not even the loudest thunderclaps served to rouse her. All the pouring rain and howling wind could do nothing to harm her in the twenty-first century fortress she now lived in. She was nothing less than a single citizen of a private city that sat nestled inside a solitary building, as good as being a world away from the ugliness of Yōgai-shima.

It was only now, well into the afternoon with evening fast approaching, that Kamui actually laid her eyes on the storm that vainly tried to engulf the city outside her precious walls. On her way out from her residential block, she’d been so absorbed in preparation and catching up on the news of the day that she hadn’t bothered to so much as look out a window. She hadn’t even intended to see it, lost in her own world as she was, but the scenic view of the Heights’ skybridges made looking at the typhoon unavoidable. All around her, the silver towers of the Heights rose up, breathtaking in their enormity and their design. Their smooth, mirror-like exteriors had the sense almost of an organic creature, folding and undulating in ways that conventional skyscrapers would not and could not.

Each singular building had a footprint large enough to engulf an entire city block, crowding out any hopes for smaller buildings to find purchase in the district. The Heights was made up of two dozen such spires, each one a condensed metropolis unto itself. Like a metal net suspended in the air, skybridges formed an above ground highway, allowing residents of one tower to quickly visit another.

It was in one such skybridge that Kamui found herself when she witnessed the storm outside. The skybridge itself was a shatter-proof plexiglass tunnel that ran between two towers with a metal rail inside it. Kamui sat in the car of a twenty seated capsule that ran through the tunnel, its translucent roof allowing her to view Yōgai-shima in all its glory from her lofty perch. The capsule was empty, save for Kamui and the bag of groceries placed on the seat beside her. Tower 5, her place of residence, had stores aplenty up and down its hundred odd floors, but Tower 3 had the quaintest little bakery on Floor 18, not to mention its superior produce up on 78. Normally, she wouldn’t go out of her way to buy more food when she already had a pantry full of provided rations but today was special. It needed to be perfect.

In the reflection of the glass, Fubuki Kamui beheld a slender woman of average with neck length dark hair and brown eyes. She’d chosen to wear a thick scarlet turtleneck sweater and a long, white skirt in order to combat the foul weather she was only dimly aware of. Of course, the temperature-controlled interior of the Heights meant that Kamui’s precautions were meaningless. Even so, Kamui decided that she cut an attractive figure nonetheless, and that was still worth something.

There was a flash somewhere in the sky and Kamui looked up just in time to see lightning strike Tower 12. The blinding flash of heaven’s arrow vanished as quickly as it arrived, leaving only a lasting mirage in Kamui’s vision. Kamui’s eyes scoured the surface of Tower 12, confirming to herself that the bolt of lightning had utterly failed to leave the smallest stain on Yōgai-shima’s architecture. Her gaze fell on one of the exterior gardens built on said tower, where even now, residents could enjoy the scenery while being sheltered from the storm by a bubble-like dome. Every tower had one or two exterior spaces that were raised high over the city streets below to give its occupants the chance to breathe fresh air and feel the natural sun when the artificial lighting of the tower wasn’t enough.

Kamui reached down to her left wrist, taking hold of her Augur which disguised itself as a bracelet of pearl-white rectangular pieces of nanometal. At her touch, the shape-shifting material changed itself into a compact device in imitation of a smartphone. With the latest of Yōgai-shima’s communication technology in her hands, Kamui tried to get herself lost in the digital world again as the ride continued, once more tuning out the impotent hurricane outside.

Despite the presence of a valuable distraction, countless little worries nibbled at the back of her mind. She didn’t have much time before her husband came home, but she wanted his dinner to be hot and fresh when they ate together. If he got home early, then they could always spend a few moments talking before the meal was served. But should she give him the news before or after they ate?

The anticipation was becoming nearly overwhelming, and the adrenaline was making Kamui anxious. As soon as the car docked itself at Tower 5’s thirtieth floor, Kamui wasted no time in gathering up her groceries and climbing out. She strode across the landing platform connected to the tower and followed the passages inside. Soft, classical music played from unseen speakers, contrasted by the holographic projections of the walls and ceiling that mimicked an arboreal forest, as though Kamui was outside and currently enjoying better weather.

Floor 30 wasn’t a residential level, instead it was used as both a travel hub and shopping center. It had all the amenities a visitor could ask for: restaurants, bars, salons, tailors. But by now, Kamui was numb to the luxuries of the Heights, having been a resident for years. The glitz and the glamor had lost their charm, not simply because of acclimatization, but because she’d closed her mind off to the outside world. All that was on her mind was the impending dinner date with her husband. It had to be perfect. It just had to.

Reaching the bank of elevators made to ferry the enormous populace up and down the tower’s length, Kamui hit the up button and waited for the lift to arrive. She stood indignantly, tapping her right foot expectantly as she glared at the sealed metal doors, daring the elevator car to be late even a second longer. The slow-moving machine won the contest of wills, and Kamui turned back to her Augur to distract herself from the wait.

She’d scarcely began thumbing through the luminescent display when it happened: the lights in the atrium flashed. For a brief moment, Kamui stood in the dark. The tinkling of piano keys playing over the Tower’s speakers cut off abruptly, leaving Kamui alone in blackness. A lightning bolt had struck the tower, the booming of thunder echoing through the building informing Kamui of what had happened.

Within three seconds, the lights came back on. The digital band struck up its tune as though they hadn’t missed a beat, while the artificial scenery sprung back to life. The vents exhaled a cool wind in time with the rustling leaves of the holographic forest. Yet, despite that, the brief lapse in Kamui’s environs was enough to prompt a response in her. A feeling that had been foreign to her for the past few years of her sheltered existence made its unwanted return in the dark: fear.

She stood paralyzed in front of the elevator doors as they finally opened, ominously sliding apart to reveal a windowed car that offered her a front seat viewing of the storm swirling overhead as she rode up the tower. A profound sense of vulnerability made her unable to step forward, and she simply waited, as if expecting something else to happen. It was only when the elevator chimed and began to close that Kamui was spurred into action, and she hastily slapped the elevator button again, coercing the doors into opening back up so she could hustle inside with her groceries.

She stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for Floor 35. The doors slid shut smoothly, acting as though nothing in the world could be wrong, though Kamui clutched her groceries in silence. She stood facing the doors, not wanting to even glance out the window behind her. Even so, the storm chased her into the car. Every drop of rain striking the glass, every wail of the wind, every peal of thunder; Kamui heard it all. Whatever barrier kept the sound of the storm out minutes ago had failed. Had some part of the Tower been damaged by the lightning strike? Or was it her own illusory bubble of ignorance that the lightning bolt had pierced?

Every time light flashed through the window behind her, Kamui flinched, holding the bag of groceries tighter to her body. She wasn’t entirely certain whether she was protecting the food, or she somehow believed the produce would protect her, but either way, it felt good to have something to hold onto. Seconds ticked by, achingly slow, as the car made the short ascent up a mere five floors. With every moment that passed by, Kamui was overcome by the fear of another lightning bolt cutting the power, this time leaving her stranded in the elevator, trapped between floors on the edge of the building and fully exposed to the typhoon outside.

As soon as the elevator came to a stop, Kamui wasted no time in getting out, squeezing herself out through the doors before they even fully opened. She scurried down the luxurious halls with their hardwood floors and rich cream wallpaper. The familiarity of her surroundings did nothing to dampen the growing fear she felt at the sound of the looming thunder.

The front door of her apartment clicked open, the electronic lock activating at the proximity of her ID. Almost as soon as the door closed behind her, Kamui allowed herself a deep sigh of relief, as though the storm was trapped outside in the hall and couldn’t reach her in her domicile. After a few moments of steadying herself, Kamui tucked her Augur into an invisible pocket inside her nano-laminate blouse and made her way to the kitchen.

She unpacked and organized the assortment of food items, laying them out on the countertop. Next, she searched the cabinets for each and every pot, pan, and cooking utensil she might need, trying to get everything put just right before she so much as turned the stove on. She gave the entire assortment of tools and ingredients one last look over, checking each one off a mental list, and then, she took hold of the rice cooker’s power cord and plugged it into the wall.

The lights in the apartment flashed. Kamui felt every hair on her body stand on end as static ran up her arm. Electricity buzzed in her ears, drowning out everything. Pain surged through her hand, and Kamui fell backward, dropping the plug before it got into the socket halfway. The lights came back on as she found herself laying on the kitchen floor, cradling her right hand.

She crawled to her feet and stared at the smoking electric outlet and the scorched plug lying near it. It must be a fault in the electrical wiring, she decided. Or maybe it was something to do with the storm. She’d have to use another electrical socket for the rice cooker. Looking down at her hand, she saw that the right sleeve of her sweater was blackened and scorched. Doing her best to stomach her fright, she left the kitchen and went into the spacious bedroom.

She quickly undressed, tossing her clothes into a hamper. Opening her wardrobe, she shifted through the numerous outfits her husband had bought for her. She wanted to wear something serious and direct, but romantic. But maybe something sexy would work, too? She wasn’t entirely certain what kind of image she needed to project for a day like this. How was she supposed to tell Kamiya what she needed to say? Her Augur rang somewhere in the bedroom, and Kamui turned about, still in her underwear. Following the sound to her hamper where she left her phone in the pocket of her blouse, she fetched it out and answered it automatically.

“Hello?” she asked.

“Kamui?” the voice on the other end was one she was intimately familiar with.

“Kamiya,” Kamui felt herself smile. “How’s your day been?”

“It’s been good,” he told her, though he sounded nervous.

“I’ve missed you,” she felt a little needy saying that aloud, but it was true.

“I’ve missed you, too,” Kamiya agreed.

“I’m making dinner tonight,” she told him, shifting her feet as she talked. “It’s your favorite.”

“That sounds great,” something in Kamiya’s voice was strained.

“What is it?” Kamui prompted him, the sweetness fading from her voice.

“My boss wants me to go out drinking tonight,” Kamiya explained, clearly feeling awkward.

“Tonight!?” Kamui lowered the phone, clutching it in both hands as she tried to suppress her frustration. She crossed over to the bedroom window, peering out through the blinds at the rain pelting the entire city.

“Why does it have to be tonight? The city’s halfway underwater.”

“It’s a work thing, sweetie,” Kamiya tried to explain but his young wife would have none of it. Work could wait, at least for today. Today was too important. Today had to be perfect.

“I need you here,” Kamui pleaded. “I’ve been planning this for a week!”

“Is there something special about tonight?” Kamiya asked and Kamui paused, having nearly let the surprise out before her husband had even gotten home.

“I just really need you home, tonight,” Kamui evaded the question. When she felt that wasn’t enough, she decided to lay it on thicker.

“Please,” she said. “The lights are flickering, and the sockets are smoking. I don’t know what to do.”

“If I refuse to go along, I may not get invited out next time,” Kamiya protested. “It’s not just about going out and getting hammered, sweetie, it’s about social networking. If I dip out on this, it’s going to look bad on my part.”

Clearly, Kamiya was caught between a rock and a hard place, but whichever she was in her husband’s dilemma, Kamui was determined to win.

“If you don’t come home tonight, what I’m going to do to you will make you look even worse,” Kamui warned.

“I’ll be the first one out the door,” Kamiya assured her. “I’ll be out just long enough to be seen with the rest of the guys and then I’ll go, I promise. I’ll be home by eight.”

“Seven,” Kamui insisted.

“Sweetheart,” Kamiya tried to argue, but he was quickly shut down.

“Seven!” she accentuated her demand with a stomp of her foot, and her reward was a weary sigh on the other end.

“Seven,” Kamiya agreed.

“Don’t drink while you’re out,” she added. “And don’t eat anything, either.”

“Kamui!” her husband tried to object but she hung up.

That could have gone better, she chided herself. It needed to go better. Throwing her Augur down on the bed, she felt a tremor of pain flash through her right hand. Cradling it with her left hand, she refused to give up. Tonight could still be perfect. She went to the bathroom, digging through the cabinets as she looked for something to put on her hand. Welts were all over her fingers and her skin throbbed. She must have burned herself when she tried to plug in the rice cooker.

Life was happening fast for twenty-two-year-old Fubuki Kamui. She never dreamed she’d be married already. She never dreamed she would find a husband that could afford all this luxury and still be young and romantic enough to treat her the way she wanted to be treated. Life was moving at a mile a minute in her eyes. It was all she could do to hang on, but hang on, she would.

She found some burn ointment in one of the drawers and smeared it over her fingers before quickly setting about styling her hair. After that, she put on some makeup to hide the stress she was under. She couldn’t show Kamiya an unhappy face. Just before she stepped out, Kamui caught sight of a pregnancy test kit sitting on the edge of the counter and she quickly grabbed it and dropped it into the bathroom’s trash bin. Kamiya couldn’t see that. After that, she went back to her wardrobe and quickly threw on a white shirt and a long blue skirt. It was hardly what she wanted to wear at dinner, but she could always get changed before her husband got home.

Soon, she told herself. Tonight. Everything was going to change. What was once a married couple would blossom into a family and what was simply a house would become a home. The future was so bright, Kamui could hardly bear to look at it. She wiped tears from the corners of her eyes, setting about laying the foundation for tonight’s dinner.

Without wasting a moment, she strode back to the kitchen, looking over the ingredients as she checked her pots and pans. She pulled out knives from the block and laid the carrots on the cutting board. She put the beef in a skillet, ready to get cooking. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the rice cooker sitting on the counter, not plugged in, and automaticity took over. Without thinking, she picked up the power cord and pressed it toward the socket.

Lightning danced up Kamui’s arm as the plug entered the smoking socket. She screamed, her voice sounding out as an inarticulate staccato shriek, and the electricity made her dance on the spot. The lights flashed and strobed, eventually bursting and casting the room into darkness. The power socket exploded, raining sparks and melted plastic onto Kamui’s face as she fell backward.

 She collapsed to the floor, pain flooding through every nerve, heat filling her body. Stars danced before her eyes in the pitch black. Her ears buzzed and popped. Her body writhed and seized on the kitchen’s linoleum floor, refusing to heed her brain’s commands. She was in the darkness again, helpless, as the rain pounded against the walls and the wind howled. Thunder rumbled somewhere outside, and Kamui whimpered helplessly where she lay.

Fear consumed her every thought; fear and pain such as she had never felt. As agony tore through the terrified woman, the seizures became more intense. She rolled onto her stomach, her spine twisting and contorting with bone breaking pressure. A fire was kindled inside her brain, as though it was pressing against her skull. Her teeth clenched involuntarily, and a long, slow groan escaped her throat, the cry warping and twisting.

How did this happen? Today was supposed to be perfect.

January 4^th, 2044

04:30 PM

Central Ward

Sunset District

Senior Inspector Asahi Takeyoshi

The Survivalist was parked in the shadow of a massive silver tower that gently undulated from side to side like a piece of seaweed. The garish structure ran upward over a thousand feet, with metal rails and tubes sticking out of its sides, connecting the argent building to the forest of its siblings that stood in the pouring rain. Red and white lights flashed against the mirror-like surface of the building, and the sound of powerful engines and sloshing water heralded the appearance of white and red fire trucks as they swarmed around the base of the Tower. Among the vehicles was a lone man in a black suit, who waved his arms in the air as he tried to get their attention.

“I need this street closed off!” Takeyoshi faintly listened to his Deputy trying to make himself heard over the wind and the rain. Shin was standing out on the street, speaking with the white clad members of the Civil Service, trying to control the emergency response to the situation inside the building. The young man in his black suit was flashing his silver badge to anyone that would listen, trying to project authority and confidence, though Takeyoshi found it hard to imagine he was accomplishing anything other than irritating the city’s emergency personnel.

The Inspectors and the Civil Services were always at odds with one another; the Bureau and the Cabinet fought a constant, invisible war for power, and their appendages did likewise. The Bureau used to have its own police officers, firefighters, and medics, who would ride along with Inspectors in a parade of black vehicles that had become known as “funeral processions” among the populace. The Bureau’s own emergency services created confusion when they responded to a situation alongside the Civil Services, and clashes over authority were commonplace. Eventually, the Bureau agreed to pull back the Peace Officers, and other emergency personnel, restricting them to policing just the Bureau’s own territory.

It was a rare win that the Cabinet could claim in the game of power taking place between it and the Bureau, but with that victory came concessions; in particular, that the Civil Services bow to the authority of the Inspectors where Human Calamities were concerned. That was how things were supposed to work on paper, but Takeyoshi imagined that Shin was getting a firsthand taste of how much respect the Cabinet’s lackeys afforded them.

While Shin wasted his energy trying to herd the cats outside, Takeyoshi remained comfortably inside the Survivalist. He didn’t have time for cockfighting with the firefighters about the emergency, and he wasn’t keen to throw himself headlong into danger until the situation had properly crystalized. Instead, he waited where he was safe and comfortable, and turned his mind to more important things.

After leaving the Lunar District this morning, Takeyoshi had fallen asleep for an hour or two. He’d been woken up by Shin when they made a routine stop somewhere in Horizon as directed by Kodera. Hazard Energy flowed up and down the entire world, provoking the miraculous and the tragic, and where Negative Energy gathered, disasters often broke out.

Nowhere in the world was more awash in Hazard Energy than Yōgai-shima; the island fed on the abundant energy of natural disasters, but that esoteric diet made the city a magnet for outbreaks of misfortune. Fires, electrical shortages, and car accidents weren’t uncommon, despite all of the protections that Yōgai-shima offered. It was among those disasters that human beings could become something more, something worse, when bathed in the energy of raw misfortune. When a human being was reborn as a Human Calamity, it was the Bureau’s responsibility to deal with them, either by eliminating them, or recruiting them.

In the wake of Hurricane Izumi, the city had become showered with more than just water, and hotspots of Negative Energy appeared up and down the city, threatening to break out into disasters. Less than one out of every ten potential emergencies predicted by the Forecasters actually broke out, and of those that did, they rarely produced a Human Calamity, but the Bureau needed to be present, just in case. Takeyoshi and Shin had spent the day travelling up and down the city on “Emergency Patrol,” going wherever the Forecasters directed them.

It was boring work that required only time and little energy. Every so often, Takeyoshi and Shin would receive a call from Kodera, and he’d direct them to a hotspot where the amount of Negative Energy had exceeded a vague threshold. A dozen times at a dozen different places, the pair had been directed to a potential drowning, or a small housefire, or an assault, and they’d sit and wait nearby to see if something actually happened, but nothing ever did. The potential emergencies had not only failed to manifest, but neither Inspector was even called upon to take any preventative measures to prevent the incident from occurring.

It was thoroughly monotonous, but it was the kind of boring Takeyoshi preferred; at least he was able to stay warm and dry inside the car, and Ink gave him access to everything he needed to do some private work that the Bureau wasn’t paying him for. His Deputy, however, couldn’t sit still. It didn’t matter whether it was a lightning strike or a robbery: wherever the Forecasters sent them, Shin was the first person to climb out of the vehicle and take charge of the situation, even though nothing was really happening. Takeyoshi imagined that the young man’s zeal would fade with the passing of hours and mindless repetition, but Shin was still standing out in the pouring rain, trying to do his job to the best of his ability even when almost everything was out of his hands. Takeyoshi hadn’t decided whether the young man’s enthusiasm was endearing or irritating, yet.

Whenever the pair weren’t being forced to stake out a random building at Kodera’s direction, they were free to do as they pleased. Not being assigned to a case, the Bureau expected them to drive around the city as a show of force and a deterrent for potential calamities, but otherwise, they had no obligations until the Forecasters called them again. After the first stop on their Emergency Patrol came to an end, Takeyoshi had taken the wheel.

He’d been to the Yōgai-shima Municipal Bank, to the Civil Police Headquarters, and up to the Office of Civil Records. With each stop, Shin had innocently asked where they were going and why, but Takeyoshi had refused to answer, and he left his Deputy in the vehicle while he attended to personal business. When he came back to the Survivalist, Shin asked once or twice what Takeyoshi had done, but eventually stopped, either because he realized he wouldn’t get an answer, or because he saw the mounting frustration on his mentor’s face.

“Tanaka Jinta hasn’t been seen since last year,” Takeyoshi fixated on the words as he sat in the passenger seat of the Survivalist, writing luminescent letters in the darkness of his mind. “None of his close associates have received any contact with him. None of his male colleagues or friends show any sign of subversion. The police search has completely halted, and the Office of Public Records hasn’t recorded a single blip from his ID on the city network. He’s vanished.”

The two words hung in Takeyoshi’s mind, taunting him.

“A man can’t just disappear,” it was a pedestrian rule of thumb that Takeyoshi tried to argue with, but it was fact that wasn’t entirely true for a Human Calamity. “He wouldn’t just hide himself away and never stick his head out again. He couldn’t even if he wanted to. So where did he go?

“Maybe he left Yōgai-shima?” Takeyoshi tried to reason his way forward from the dead-end fate had seemed to put in his path. “If he felt he could no longer hide on the island, it makes sense that he would flee, but where? The mainland is in chaos and Honshu’s little better. Where then? Hokkaido? Kyushu? Would he be happy in a place like that? Would he be allowed to leave Yōgai-shima?”

“No,” Takeyoshi decided, perhaps because he refused to accept the idea that his quarry was beyond his reach. “He’s still in Yōgai-shima. He has to be.”

But Takeyoshi’s resolute determination didn’t manifest a new path forward for him simply out of desire. The simple fact was that he’d run out of leads, and the trail he’d been chasing had gone cold. He sat in the Survivalist, listening to the sound of the pouring rain while he stared through the front windshield at nothing. In his mind, he grasped at straws, clutching for some kind of path forward.

“Inspector Asahi, please respond,” a voice suddenly spoke from Takeyoshi’s Omen and he jumped in alarm, having slipped into another bout of microsleep in the silence. He pulled his Omen from his chest pocket and looked at the green display. “Forecaster Ibuka” was written over the symbol of a ringing phone while the time was displayed beneath it: “04:43.”

“Go ahead, Kodera,” Takeyoshi asked, expecting the Forecaster to announce an all-clear.

“Inspector, we have the confirmation of a Casualty in Tower 5,” Ibuka’s pronouncement dashed Takeyoshi’s hopes for an uneventful day. “You are hereby cleared to assume control of the scene and enter the building to perform elimination procedures.”

Outside the car, Takeyoshi heard the sound of feet splashing through puddled rainwater, and then the sound of a hand pressing against the driver’s side door. The door pulled open, and Shin stuck his head into the cabin, his eyes alight with determination.

“Takeyoshi, we’ve got—!” the young man began to explain but Takeyoshi raised a hand to stop him.

“I’m aware,” Takeyoshi insisted and he pushed open the car door to step into the rain. Reflexively, Takeyoshi reached for his Karma, and swiftly found the two pages floating in his mind. He tore half of the righthand page off and imagined taking that shift of black paper and wrapping himself in it, blunting the power of the storm. Climbing out of the car, Takeyoshi stood in the shadow of the tower, looking up at it without the barrier of the Survivalist’s windows, and he marveled at the true enormity of the structure. That wasn’t to say that the building was in any way aesthetically pleasing, but more that Takeyoshi found it impressive that even with the near collapse of human civilization, the rich and powerful still found ways to flaunt their excess over the rest of the populace.

DANGER.

The premonition bloomed in Takeyoshi’s mind as he looked up at the tower, and lightning surged across the heavens, momentarily transforming the spire into a shadowy silhouette, accentuating the foreboding feeling. The ephemeral lightning passed within a second, but the sense of danger lingered in Takeyoshi’s senses as he stared up at the super tower. Through the rain, Shin stepped up beside him and Takeyoshi glanced at the younger man, trying to silently communicate that he needed to be ready for whatever happened next.

The Deputy gave Takeyoshi a firm nod, his eyes clear and brow furrowed with intensity, but his body language told the Inspector that the young man was brimming with uncontrolled energy. In the midst of Exigency, Takeyoshi’s brain was flooded with adrenaline and Hazard Energy, but he was practiced in harnessing it, remaining outwardly tranquil. Shin, on the other hand, was cracking his knuckles and shifting back and forth on his feet as he tried to contain the anxious power flowing through him. The younger man’s nervousness was to be expected, but at the same time, Takeyoshi found it hard to ignore.

The power of Exigency went hand in hand with the fight-or-flight instinct that all humans shared, and Takeyoshi wondered if Shin even realized that he’d already fallen into that mindset. An ordinary human in that headspace was easily startled and prone to sudden, reflexive actions that could make them dangerous: a Human Calamity in the throes of Exigency was exponentially more dangerous. If Shin couldn’t harness that power properly, he could be just as dangerous as any Casualty, and that thought nearly made Takeyoshi order the young man to stay behind.

“As long as I keep an eye on him, it should be fine,” he ultimately reasoned. “The kid can’t learn anything if I keep him on the sidelines.”

“Alright, Ibuka,” Takeyoshi raised Ink to his mouth as he spoke into the Omen and looked back up at the massive silver obstacle in front of him. “Give us the facts.”

“Our catch of the day is one Fubuki Kamui; a twenty-two-year-old woman living on floor thirty-five,” Ibuka spoke through Takeyoshi’s Omen, and the device produced the image of an attractive young woman with dark neck length hair and brown eyes. “Her Civil ID reported heightened stress and brain activity shortly after 04:30 PM before it went dark. Hazard Energy activity spiked shortly after a lightning bolt struck Tower 35, and when Fubuki’s ID began signaling a medical emergency, the Negative Energy readings sharply spiked, and have remained elevated since then.”

“Do we know for a fact that Fubuki-san is the Casualty?” Shin questioned, looking at the image of the woman still floating in the air. “I mean, what’s to say she even became a Casualty? She could be a Survivor, like us.”

“Not a chance,” Ibuka dismissed Shin’s question out of hand. “All the signs say Casualty, and that’s what I’m sticking with.”

“What signs are those?” Shin seemed compelled to ask the question.

“Worry about your own job before asking about how I do mine, pretty boy,” the young woman sniffed.

“But there’s still a chance she could be—!” Shin tried to argue with the Forecaster, but Takeyoshi raised a hand to cut him off.

“Whether she’s a Survivor, or a Casualty, it doesn’t change what we have to do,” Takeyoshi interrupted. “We’re going inside, one way or another.”

“Right,” Shin took a step back and looked away, clearly upset with himself.

“Do have any confirmation on the nature of its Crisis?” Takeyoshi asked, raising the Omen to his mouth.

“Nothing solid,” Ibuka reported with a click of her teeth. “The entire tower suffered an electrical outage after the initial lightning strike, and it’s been suffering cascading outages for the last few minutes. Based on the readings, it’s almost certainly an ‘Electrical’ type, but there’s no way to tell if it’s a manufactured or natural Crisis at work.”

“Do we know if the target’s on the move or not?” Takeyoshi looked up at the silver monolith, imagining that chasing a Human Calamity through its innards could last years.

“The disruptions to the building’s electrical systems are making it impossible for me to pull up any cameras, but the surplus of Hazard Energy still seems to be concentrated on the thirty-fifth floor,” Ibuka switched out the image of Kamui, replacing it with a digital reconstruction of the tower, which zoomed in on the floor in question. “Casualty or not, it doesn’t seem like she’s gone far.”

“What about civilians?” Shin asked, once more butting in.

“All of the swanky apartments in the tower can convert to Type-2 Disaster Shelters when the situation calls for it,” Ibuka informed the young man with a tinge of jealousy in her voice. “There are several Type-3 shelters spread out through the building in case of serious emergency, so I wouldn’t really worry about any of the one-percenters, myself.”

“What about the people inside who couldn’t get back to their apartments before the emergency was sounded?” Shin asked, looking up at the building with a frown.

“If we find anyone in trouble along the way, we’ll nudge them in the right direction,” Takeyoshi assured him, if only to appease the young man’s hero complex. “But we’re not going to do that just standing around out here.”

“Before you go inside, I should advise you that the relay in Tower 5 is having all kinds of trouble thanks to the electrical surges,” Ibuka warned. “All the interference is going to make contact with you once you’re inside the building very difficult.”

“We’ll keep that in mind,” Takeyoshi pressed Ink to the left lapel of his coat, and the smart-metal device hooked itself to the article of clothing. Once he felt the device was secure, he started walking, with Shin following at his heels. Firetrucks and ambulances formed a ramshackle barricade around the entrance of the tower, but the Civil Firefighters and EMT’s stood listlessly in their white and red uniforms, being forced to wait until the scene was cleared. They stared silently at the pair of Inspectors as they passed through their midst and headed for the foyer, and Takeyoshi felt a distinct animosity from the men and women surrounding them, but he ignored it. Shin, however, didn’t seem to read the situation the same way.

“Be ready to go at a moment’s notice,” he advised the emergency personnel standing on either side of them, making eye contact where he could as he addressed them with a firm voice. “Once we’ve resolved the situation, we’ll radio down to let you know that the scene is clear. If we encounter any wounded, we’ll direct them down to you if possible.”

Takeyoshi tried to imagine the annoyance and frustration the Civil employees must have felt at Shin trying to assume control of the situation, but that only brought a smile to his face. He considered making a mental note to discourage Shin from interacting with Civil more than necessary, but he decided better of it; unlike some other Inspectors, Shin’s actions didn’t seem to come from a desire to throw his weight around, or to irritate, but from something a little more earnest and genuine.

With Takeyoshi in the lead, the two Inspectors stepped through the pair of automatic sliding doors into the atrium of Tower 35. The interior was a spacious circular room with white tile floors and a light brown wood textured laminate across the walls. The ceiling was a kind of holographic display that cycled through footage of the silver tower and its siblings, advertising the scenic views and luxuries found high above to those visitors on the ground. At the far end of the lobby were six elevators in glass tubes, which allowed Takeyoshi to see the cars sitting patiently in the shafts on the ground floor.

As the two stepped into the interior, some automatic system appeared to trigger, and the center of the open floor began to shift. Beneath his feet, Takeyoshi felt the vibrations of moving machinery, and the sound of tiles clicking together soon followed, along with the groan of metal sliding against metal. Out from the center of the room rose a large desk, coated in the same faux-wood laminate that the walls were. On the front of the desk was the logo of the private wealthy retreat; a forest of silver trees in front of a white mountain.

For a brief moment, a luminescent figure appeared behind the desk, flanked by two ten foot tall digital skeletons of the tower. Before the digital construct could even fully be seen, it shimmered, distorted, and fragmented, becoming a blur of white light smeared across the lobby. The distortion buzzed and shifted like static as whatever program operating the lobby’s front desk tried to fix itself.

“Welcome to the Heights!” a synthetic voice greeted the pair from some hidden speaker. “The world’s last-an-on-lee-refu—.”

The digital assistant barely got a few words out before whatever disruption affected the hologram slurred its speech, and the rest of its greeting fell into a string of staccato syllables. The lights in lobby began to flicker, and the illusory ceiling dissipated to reveal numerous mechanical arms and projectors which made the mirage possible. Takeyoshi stepped around the malfunctioning display, but Shin lingered to stare at it for a moment.

“You ever see something and think to yourself, ‘that’s the weirdest thing I’m going to see today?’” Shin asked, gesturing at the display, where the hologram was trying to remake itself, leading to a face, a torso, and arms and legs sporadically forming from the blur before disappearing,

“That’s nothing,” Takeyoshi brushed off the young man’s naive statement. “Besides, the day isn’t over yet.”

“I don’t suppose we can take the elevators up?” Shin asked, joining Takeyoshi at the far end of the room.

“In an emergency situation, most buildings recall their elevator cars down to the first level and keep them on lockdown,” Takeyoshi gestured at the sextuplet of identical cars waiting behind their glass sheathes.

“Yeah, but we can override that, right?” Shin reached into his pocket and withdrew his Omen, which took the form of a black glossy cellphone. Before Takeyoshi could say anything, the Omen projected a fiery orange eye which fixated itself on Shin.

“Who looks at all the flickering lights and malfunctioning electronics in this building and thinks it’s a good idea to climb into an elevator?” the device demanded in an irate tone.

“These things are built with redundancies these days,” Shin countered, giving the Omen a stern look.

“I’d rather avoid climbing into one, present circumstances considered,” Takeyoshi cast the deciding vote, looking up at the glass shaft where it disappeared above the ceiling and continued to ascend higher and higher. “We’re taking the stairs.”

The stairs up the side of the building were inconspicuous next to the ostentatious bottom floor lobby; they were hardly meant to be seen, or even thought of, but beneath Ink’s careful eye, all was revealed. Takeyoshi walked closed to the wall, following the curve of the room to the right of the banked elevators, while Ink shined a light against the laminated surface. After a moment, Ink’s glowing eye fixated on a spot on the wall, and the emerald rays traced a rectangular doorway that was invisible to the naked eye.

“Stop,” Ink gave Takeyoshi an audible command, but it was pointless, as he’d already come to a halt. There was a brief chirping sound from Ink, and the door shifted, releasing a rush of air as it slid into the wall. Beyond was a small passage into a tight, vertical concrete tunnel that led up into the building above. The stairwell lacked any of the accoutrements of the lobby, being only a perfectly smooth cement cylinder that had likely been molded by nanite. Dominating the space was a steel stairwell made of little more than scaffolding and steps that spiraled up into the confines of the building.

“Why do I get the feeling we’re the first people to ever use this thing?” Shin murmured from over Takeyoshi’s shoulder.

“I doubt anyone’s ever needed it since the building was finished,” Takeyoshi ventured, placing his foot on the bottom step. The sound of his shoe scraping against the metal stair echoed through the small space, but the metal structure seemed stable enough. Takeyoshi reached out and took hold of the metal railing on the staircase, and gave it an experimental shake, being careful to drop out of Exigency before doing so. Satisfied that it didn’t come apart on him, Takeyoshi continued to climb.

“We aren’t seriously taking the stairs up thirty-five floors, are we?” Shin asked, looking cautiously at the scaffolding.

“What?” Takeyoshi asked, turning to look over his shoulder at the younger man. “You aren’t afraid of a little exercise, are you?”

Without waiting for an answer, Takeyoshi turned back around and slipped into Exigency. He raced up the steps, moving with speed that would make an Olympian track runner stop and stare with envy, pounding up the staircase. He circled the steps in moments, his every footstep echoing off the cramped grey walls of the stairwell as he ascended five floors between two heartbeats. However, the staircase began to shake more violently beneath his feet with increasing ferocity, and he worried that he may have trusted the scaffolding too much, and he turned to look over his shoulder to warn Shin not to follow him up. Instead, he saw a black blur racing towards him.

It was only when Shin vaulted over him that Takeyoshi realized that it was the younger man who was shaking the metal structure. Without even turning to look at Takeyoshi, Shin raced ahead of him, and Takeyoshi was scarcely able to follow the Deputy with his eyes. As fast as Takeyoshi was moving, Shin was moving twice as fast, perhaps even three times, and Takeyoshi quickly found himself struggling to keep up. Once Shin had gone a five or so floors ahead of Takeyoshi, the young man would pause on the landing of the stairwell and wait for Takeyoshi to catch up, then race off again as soon as Takeyoshi closed the distance. He continued to follow his elusive deputy until a warning loomed in his mind.

DANGER.

“Shin!” Takeyoshi reflexively called out to his subordinate.

“Yeah!” Shin called out from somewhere above him. “I see it!”

“See what?” Takeyoshi called back, but there was no answer. Whatever it was, Shin had stopped moving, and Takeyoshi hastened to follow. The lights in the shaft above flickered, and Ink automatically shined her own light from the Omen attached to Takeyoshi’s jacket. Takeyoshi slowed his pace as he ventured further up into the passage, the earlier warning still weighing on his mind.

He found Shin standing on the next landing, his back to the metal doorway that exited into floor thirty-four, his own Omen held out in his hand to shine a light upward. The orange beam of light revealed something akin to a spiderweb that dominated the stairwell above them: countless wires ran back and forth across the passage, so tightly woven that neither man could hope to find their way through without touching them. Takeyoshi stepped closer to Shin, plucking Ink from his chest to shine the light on the cord nearest him.

The wires, or cables, Takeyoshi decided, were red and raw, having the appearance of flesh. Each cable was in fact made up of multiple smaller cords that were pressed together and coated in a thin layer of skin. Takeyoshi leaned as closed to the nearest one as he dared, which had fastened itself to the concrete wall, and the warning in his mind grew louder with every inch closer he came. With the strange tendril six inches from his face, Takeyoshi softly exhaled onto it, and the reaction was immediate.

The rope convulsed in response to the gentle provocation, and sparks of electricity glowed from within. The current of electricity ran up the tendril and into the nest above them, creating a chain reaction as the maze of fleshy strings flashed with equal intensity. The stairwell was brightly illuminated by the powerful current and Takeyoshi raised a hand up over his face as the crackling wires grew too intense to look at. After several seconds of activity, the web of feelers began to slowly calm down again, and the light faded, leaving the pair of onlookers alone in the returning darkness, accompanied by the faint smell of burning meat.

“What are they?” Shin asked, naked revulsion in his voice.

“Nerves,” Takeyoshi answered. “I’m guessing Fubuki-san has already transformed.”

“What do we do now?” Shin asked, disappointment written on his face.

“We do what we were always here to do,” Takeyoshi insisted. “We eliminate her.”

He pushed past Shin and stepped to the door behind him. Ink released a series of mechanical clicks as she communicated with the tower’s network again and the doorway released another whisper of flowing air as the door’s seals were broken. The entrance back into the building tried to move once, and then the lights flashed in the stairwell, burning so bright they became blinding. The unseen mechanisms of the sliding door ground together, creating an awful squeal of metal grinding against metal. Then, the lights in the stairwell burst, filling the passage with the sound of intermittent pops from shattered bulbs followed by the sound of glass shards cascading to the floor. The network of nerves above their heads flashed again like lightning, but when their light died, the two Inspectors were left alone on the scaffold with only the lights of their Omens.

“Looks like the Casualty’s the one responsible for the electrical failures in the building,” Takeyoshi surmised, casting his light over the web above them.

“Well, there’s no getting up to thirty-five from here,” Shin leaned against the metal rails to look over the side. “Do we go back down?”

“No. Our highest priority is getting into the building as quickly as possible. The longer that Fubuki Kamui is transformed, the more dangerous she’ll become and the faster the electrical outages will spread,” Takeyoshi turned away from Shin, pulling Ink from his chest. “Ink, where if Fubuki Kamui’s apartment in relation to us?”

“It’s just one floor up, but it’s on the other side of the building from you, which isn’t as nearly as close as it sounds,” the Omen reported, bringing up a map of the building. “There’s another stairwell on the other side of the Tower. You might try going back down a few floors and see if you can cross over—”

DANGER.

Before Ink could finish suggesting her alternative route, the premonition flashed in Takeyoshi’s mind. A second later, there was a thunderous crash and light spilled into the dark passage from behind Takeyoshi. The door into the building had been kicked inward, and it lay shattered upon the carpeted floors outside the stairwell while the culprit, Shin, stepped over it through the opening.

“I got the door,” Shin commented, seeming as proud of himself as he was ignorant of the danger.

Before Takeyoshi could say anything, the nerves above them flashed. A sound echoed through the building, a high-pitched warbling that rose into a shrill scream. The nerves glowed in response to the anguished cry, and they began to unhook themselves from the wall, writhing like a nest of angry serpents.

“Son of a—,” Takeyoshi shoved Shin the rest of the way through the open doorway, and the young man stumbled to safety onto floor thirty-four as the nest of nerves came alive. Like a swarm of electric eels, the nerves electrified the steel walkway, sending an intense current through it. An ordinary man would have been crippled by the pain, alone, and likely would have died in less than a second of exposure to such powerful voltage, but Takeyoshi was already in Exigency. The engorged nerves began tearing the walkway apart, lifting the stairs into the air, while more pressed around Takeyoshi.

He reached into his coat pocket to withdraw a pen, but the small writing utensil exploded and melted between his fingers before he could channel his Crisis into it. Casting the burning tool away, Takeyoshi clawed at Ink, pulling the Omen free from his chest. Without any assistance from him, the Omen shape-shifted into the form of a long, dark grey metal spear half a foot taller than Takeyoshi was. At the same time, Takeyoshi saw Shin standing on the threshold of the door, looking like he was a hair’s breadth from rushing back through, heedless of the tendrils already creeping towards him.

Takeyoshi fixed the young man with his most disapproving look. Flourishing his weapon, Takeyoshi twisted the smart-metal weapon around, carving through the grasping nerves with ease. Even so, the stair broke apart beneath his feet, and Takeyoshi had to brace himself to avoid being thrown over the side to the bottom of the passage. As the stairwell twisted to the left, Takeyoshi used his left hand to brace himself against the rail.

Seeing Shin still standing in the doorway, Takeyoshi flicked his wrist, using the impossibly sharp edge of Ink’s spear tip to cut through the steel walkway beneath his feet, carving out a length of metal nearly as long as the door Shin had broken down. With a flick of his wrist, Takeyoshi struck the chunk of metal with his spear and sent it flying towards open entry where Shin was standing. The crude length of metal slammed across the wall, blocking the doorway and preventing the nerves from following Takeyoshi’s Deputy into the building. Then, the stairwell truly fell apart and Takeyoshi felt himself begin to tumble downward.

He reached into his pocket, withdrawing two pencils, and he threw them upward when they transformed into blades between his fingers. The twin knives sank effortlessly into either side of the metal slab, crudely bolting it to the wall. After that, with no handhold in arm’s reach, Takeyoshi fell back down towards the ground floor as the network of metal stairs fell to pieces all around him..

“Don’t do anything stupid, kid.”