What happened to him?"
"The Slayer's history is not relevant to his current mission."
"It's relevant to me."
"That is regrettable."
Zhu Yuan had a sudden, vivid fantasy of arresting VEGA. Zhu Yuan blamed this on the lack of sleep.
Jane Doe, behind the mask of Anne Carver, processed this whilst The Slayer cleaned his weapons.
"Are there others like him?" Zhu Yuan asked.
"No, Captain. There are not." A statement of fact, delivered with the same tone she might use to confirm that the sky was blue.
Zhu Yuan filed that away too and changed tactics. She turned to the Slayer directly. Not to VEGA. To him.
"I need to know who you are," she stated. "I need to know what you want. I can't file a report that says 'unknown man appeared from nowhere and started killing Ethereals.' I need something. Anything."
The Slayer paused. The cloth was halfway through the barrel of the shotgun. He held it there, frozen, like a machine that had been interrupted mid-cycle.
The helmet lifted.
Zhu Yuan had been stared at before. It was part of the job. Suspects stared at her. Criminals stared at her. People who didn't want to answer her questions stared at her. She'd developed a tolerance for it over the years.
There was nothing hostile in the stare. Nothing aggressive. Nothing even particularly interested. He was looking like how she'd look at a piece of paperwork that had been sitting on Cissia's desk for too long; a mild acknowledgment of existence followed by a decision to continue ignoring it.
The Slayer went back to cleaning.
VEGA spoke: "He heard you, Captain."
Zhu Yuan felt her professionalism fray at the edges. "I noticed."
"The Slayer does not reveal personal information to strangers."
She pressed on. "People are scared of him regardless. My people. They're talking about him. The whole city is talking about him. He's a mystery and mysteries get investigated, lest they become a reason to develop paranoia."
"That is not the Slayer's problem, Captain."
"I can make it his problem."
VEGA's tone remained patient. "You are welcome to try. The Slayer is not opposed to effort, but he is considering your efforts to be misdirected."
Zhu Yuan had never wanted to stamp someone's helmet with a citation.
It was then that Anne Carver shuffled forward, notebook clutched to her chest. "Um. Captain? May I…?"
Zhu Yuan waved a hand. "Ask your questions, Anne."
Anne nodded rapidly, turning to the Slayer with wide eyes.
"Umm… What does that weapon do?" She pointed at the skull gun. "The one with the—the skulls. Is it some kind of shotgun? It looks like a shotgun but also... not..."
The Slayer glanced at her. Anne Carver squeaked, avoiding eye contact. The Slayer held the look for three seconds.
Then he looked at Zhu Yuan.
Then back at Anne.
VEGA spoke, his voice suddenly less diplomatic, more flat. "Junior Staff Anne Carver. The Slayer would like to inform you that your performance is excellent but unnecessary."
Anne's pen froze.
"Pardon?" she said, still in Anne Carver's voice.
"I have tracked your vital signs since you entered the clearing. Your heart rate does not match your posture and your pupils do not match your stated emotional state."
Anne—Jane—slowly lowered the notebook. Her shoulders shifted. Her posture changed. The nervous energy drained away, replaced by something looser, more relaxed, more her, as she gazed at the Slayer with an expression that Zhu Yuan had seen her use on gang members who had just realized they'd been played.
"Is that so," said Jane in her usual, melodic, almost teasing cadence.
Zhu Yuan, who had been watching this exchange with the expression of someone whose carefully constructed operation was being dismantled in real time, spoke through gritted teeth: "You were supposed to stay in cover."
"I was in cover." Jane gestured at the Slayer with her pen. "He blew it. Not my fault. You can't blame me for that."
"I apologize for the directness. The Slayer has developed a certain distaste for deception."
"Your boss is a real charmer," Jane said flatly.
"I am VEGA. I provide analysis. He provides violence."
Jane let out a short laugh. "That's one way to describe it."
"You will also stop attempting to conceal a recording device in your writing implement."
Jane looked at her pen. She looked at the Slayer. She looked back at her pen.
"Okay, that's just showing off," she said, tucking the pen in her pocket. She spread her hands in a gesture that was equal parts surrender and acknowledgement. "Jane Doe. I was assigned to this investigation because I'm good at getting information. Usually I can get information without the target calling me out on in one sentence."
The Slayer had resumed cleaning his weapons. He seemed entirely uninterested in their conversation. Or, Zhu Yuan reflected, entirely interested in establishing that he didn't care.
Jane perched herself on the edge of the container, legs dangling over the side. "So. Slayer. The guy who punches Hollows to death. What's your deal? Where do you get the skulls? Do you ever sleep? What do you eat? Is it weird? I bet it's weird."
"The Slayer does not discuss his diet."
"That's a yes on the weird." Jane said. "What kind of maintenance does that suit need? Oil? Are you a cyborg? A mutant? Something else? Something new?"
"The Slayer's operations are classified."
"Classified by who?"
"The Slayer's own protocols."
"I'm starting to hate those protocols," Jane said.
"Many do," VEGA agreed.
"There has to be something," Zhu Yuan said. "A name. A single piece of identifying information I can put in a file and close."
"You may call him 'Slayer.' It is the only name he has ever been known by."
"Slayer of what?"
"He is called the Slayer. You can infer the rest."
"Called by whom?"
"Everyone."
The word hung in the air like a bad smell. Both her and Jane waited for elaboration. None came.
"Everyone," Jane repeated flatly.
"Everyone who has encountered him. It is a descriptor, not a title. He is the Slayer. He slays. It is what he does." VEGA's tone remained perfectly pleasant. "The simplicity of it seems to cause you distress."
Zhu Yuan felt she was going to develop a stress fracture in her molars if she kept clenching like this. "And who, exactly, are these 'everyone'? Who's been calling him that?"
"His enemies."
The Slayer's visor shifted. It dropped to her tail, then rose to her ears. Held there.
Jane's brow furrowed as she followed his gaze. Butt (wrong). Face (wrong). Back to the visor.
A slow grin spread across her face.
"Oh," she said, silkening her voice. "I see. You're still a guy after all, no? You're one those."
Zhu Yuan blinked. "One of what?"
Jane ignored her, stepping closer to the Slayer, her tail and hips swaying. "You know, most guys just stare at the chest. You've got taste. I appreciate that."
"Jane, what are you doing?"
"Making friends, Captain." Jane tilted her head. "So. You like what you see? I'm flattered, really. It's been a short while since someone's been this direct."
SpoilerThe Slayer made no comment.
Zhu Yuan pinched the bridge of her nose. "He is not checking you out."
"How do you know? You're not the one he's staring at."
"He is wearing a full suit of armor. None of us can see his face."
"Doesn't mean he can't appreciate the view."
The Slayer raised one gauntlet, slow and steady as an avalanche, and reached toward Jane's head.
Jane's grin widened. "Oh, this is happening. Okay. I'm ready. Make it good."
The gauntlet descended. It rested on the top of Jane's head. One pat. Almost paternal. Then he withdrew and went back to cleaning his weapons.
Jane stood frozen, her grin still plastered on her face, her brain clearly short-circuiting.
Zhu Yuan stared. "Did he just..."
"Pat me on the head," Jane said, her voice flat. "Like a dog. Like a Bangboo. Like a small child who did something cute." She swiveled hotly to the chestplate. "Vega, what does that mean? What does that gesture mean? Was that a threat? A blessing? Is he mocking me?"
"The Slayer's intentions are his own."
"That's not an answer!"
"I am aware."
Zhu Yuan fought the urge to laugh.
"I'm going to figure out what that meant," Jane hissed. "I'm going to figure it out and then I'm going to have words with you about appropriate personal space."
The Slayer said nothing.
Jane pointed at him. "That's fine. That's fine. I'll wait. You'll find that I am a patient woman."
As Jane worked on what angle she could approach him best, debating if this man in a green tin can could, somehow, communicate with the Ethereals, The Slayer began holstering his weapons. His hand brushed the shotgun's stock, and the weapon vanished. Not into a compartment. Not into a holster that Zhu Yuan had somehow missed. It just stopped existing, like it had been swiped from reality, absorbed into the space where his thigh met his hip.
The skull gun went next. He touched its barrel, and it dissolved into motes of green light that streamed into his gauntlet. The rib-cudgel followed. The mace. The cannonball launcher. One by one, each weapon disappeared into the armor's surface.
Jane watched with her mouth half-open. "Okay. What. What was that."
Zhu Yuan's eyes narrowed. She'd seen a lot of storage solutions: Bangboo with integrated cargo compartments, exosuits with weapon racks built into the frame. She knew some individuals could manifest Ether projections such as creating a massive sword formation, or even summon a giant blade to rain destruction on enemies.
She'd never seen a weapon the size of her torso vanish into a man's armor like it was being swallowed by a pond.
"That's... not Ether projection," she said slowly. "Ether projection doesn't do that. Ether projection is energy, not matter."
"Correct, Captain. The armor incorporates dimensional storage technology. His weapons exist in a pocket dimension accessible only through the suit's interface."
Jane had stopped pretending to be nervous. She leaned forward, tail swishing behind her, her ears perked in genuine fascination. "So you could just... carry anything in there? Like, a whole arsenal? A car? A building?"
"Regrettably, it is not designed for large-scale cargo transport."
"Theoretically? Humor me, Mr. Vega. Can you hide a body there?"
Zhu Yuan shot a concerned glance at Jane.
"Theoretically, yes."
Zhu Yuan shot an even more concerned glance at The Slayer.
"Regrettably, the energy cost of attuning non-combat items is prohibitive."
Jane made a humming, purr-like noise as she stored that piece of information. Zhu Yuan stored it as well, in a different part of her brain, one that was already drafting a memo to R&D about reverse-engineering possibilities.
TOPS would kill for this. The Defense Force would kill for this. Midsummer Inc would kill for this.
"You have no idea what you're doing, do you?" she said. "What you're showing us. What this means for New Eridu."
The Slayer's visor turned toward her.
"The corporations are already circling," she continued. "Every major player in TOPS is already scrambling to make first contact. Belobog, the Defense Force, independent research groups, everyone. They're going to come for you. They're going to want your tech, your armor, your weapons. They're going to want to understand how you work."
The Slayer stood. He was huge, even from a distance. The container groaned slightly as his weight shifted.
"You're a walking anomaly," Zhu Yuan said. "The city is terrified of you. The city is also fascinated by you. That's a dangerous combination."
"We are aware of the risks. He has faced them before."
"Not here. Not in New Eridu. You don't know what this place is like. You don't know what the corporations will do to get what they want."
"Impossible," VEGA said flatly. "The Slayer's suit does not permit external analysis. Attempts to interface with it have historically resulted in catastrophic failure. For the analysts."
"Historically?" Jane repeated. "You've been here before."
"Not here. Elsewhere. It is not a pleasant experience."
Zhu Yuan stored that too. The Slayer had been somewhere before New Eridu. Somewhere with technology that made PubSec's best gear look like toys. Somewhere where people had tried to figure out how his suit worked and had died in the attempt.
She was starting to build a picture. It wasn't a coherent picture. But it was something.
She stepped forward. Close enough that she was in the Slayer's shadow, close enough that she had to crane her neck to meet the visor. She had faced down criminals, Ethereals, and corporate lawyers who thought they were above the law. She was not going to be intimidated by an AI and a silent man in a suit.
Even if the suit could fold spacetime.
"Listen to me," she said. "I don't care what you are. I don't care where you came from. I care about—" She stopped. The words weren't coming right. Felt rehearsed, hollow, like she was reading from a script she'd written for someone else.
The Slayer's visor tracked her movement. His posture remained impassive. VEGA said nothing. The silence stretched, and Zhu Yuan realized she was expected to fill it.
She didn't want to fill it. She wanted to be anywhere else, actually, even be back at her desk, or out the street, doing something that made sense. She wanted to be in the training yard, shooting at targets that didn't move, didn't think, didn't stare at her with an unreadable visor that made her feel like a child playing dress-up.
But she was here. And if she didn't say something now, she'd regret it.
"There was a girl," Zhu Yuan said. "Two weeks ago. She was maybe five or seven. She was holding a Bangboo—one of those little rabbit models, the ones that sing. She had crystal growing around her eyes. She asked me if it would hurt." Zhu Yuan paused. "I didn't know how to answer. Because I didn't know. The Hollows don't give you a straight answer. They just take."
Her voice didn't crack. It couldn't crack. She was Captain Zhu Yuan, and Captain Zhu Yuan's voice didn't crack.
"I told a mother her son wasn't coming home," she said. "His name was Liang. He was twenty-three. He died in a Hollow breach last night because we didn't have enough people or firepower. Because we didn't have enough anything. I sat in her kitchen, dead of the night, and I told her, and she thanked me. She thanked me for telling her, because the Hollows had taken everything else and at least she knew. She knew he was gone."
Behind her, she heard Jane's pen stop scratching.
The Slayer's hands had stilled on the skull gun.
"I wrote those reports," Zhu Yuan said. "I signed them. I sent them to families who'd spent four days hoping. And then I went back to my desk and wrote the next one, because that's what you do. You keep going. You keep trying. And the Hollows keep growing, and the children born in the outer districts keep testing positive for Ether exposure, and every year we lose a little more ground. Every victory is just a slower defeat.
And then you showed up. You did more in seven hours than we could do in seven months. You walked into a Hollow and you broke it. You walked into nine of them and you didn't stop." She let out a breath that was almost a laugh. "You make it look easy. I hate that. I hate that you can do what I've been trying to do for years in a single night."
She paused.
"But I'd rather hate you and watch you win than love my own methods and watch everyone lose."
The silence stretched. The Slayer stood motionless, his visor fixed on the distant wall. Zhu Yuan had the absurd thought that he might have gone to sleep standing up. She didn't say: I don't know how much longer I can do this. She didn't say: Some nights I lie awake and I wonder if any of it matters. She was Captain Zhu Yuan, and Captain Zhu Yuan didn't say those things.
Jane watched him with narrowed eyes, her tail curling and uncurling.
VEGA spoke after a long moment. "Captain Zhu Yuan, The Slayer acknowledges your dedication to your citizens and understands your desperation."
Zhu Yuan felt a flicker of hope.
"However, he will not work with any corporation, institution, or organized military force. He has seen what happens when organizations gain access to power they cannot comprehend. He has cleaned up the mess and has no desire to repeat the experience."
"New Eridu isn't like that."
"People are like that, Captain. They will offer resources in exchange for access, and then they will attempt to control him when access is not enough."
"I'm not asking him to work with corporations—"
"With respect, Captain, that is exactly what you are asking. You are asking him to integrate with your system and to provide his technology, his knowledge, and his capabilities, to an infrastructure that will inevitably be co-opted by those who seek profit or control. This is not a criticism of New Eridu specifically. It is a universal truth. Greed and hubris are not variables that change."
Zhu Yuan felt the hope curdle. "Then what are we supposed to do? Just watch him kill Ethereals and hope for the best?"
"Not at all. The Slayer has no objection to assisting individuals who share his goals."
Jane perked up. "So he needs a middleman. Someone who's not a corporation. Someone who operates outside the system."
"Precisely."
Zhu Yuan frowned. "Who? Who could possibly—"
"The Proxy known as Phaethon."
Of course it had to be them. Zhu Yuan knew the name. Everyone in PubSec knew the name. The legendary Hollow Proxy who operated with no official registration, no paper trail, no digital footprint, and what TOPS would have paid a fortune to acquire and the Defense Force would have loved to conscript. No one knew who they were. No one knew where they operated from. They just appeared, completed Hollow expeditions, took commissions with Hollow Raiders factions, and vanished.
Jane smirked. "Phaethon. You're joking."
"I do not joke, Jane Doe. I am an AI."
"Oh this just keeps getting better."
Zhu Yuan shook her head in disbelief. "That's like saying 'just find the invisible man.' No one knows who Phaethon is. Half the city thinks they're a myth."
"Half the city is incorrect," VEGA said. "If you wish to work with him, I suggest you find Phaethon and assist them. You will not attempt to arrest Phaethon or expose their identity. The Slayer will provide aid to Phaethon's operations, and by extension, to New Eridu."
Zhu Yuan stared at the armor. "You're saying we need to work with an unregistered Proxy. An illegal operator. Someone who's been evading our detection for years."
"Yes, Captain. That is exactly what I am saying."
Jane folded her arms. "And this Proxy—they just happen to be aligned with your goals? Have you met them?"
"We have observed Phaethon's operations. That is all you need to know. Find Phaethon, and you will find us."
"And if we can't find Phaethon?"
"Then the Slayer will continue as he has been. He is offering this as a courtesy; a recognition of your persistence, if nothing else. A test of your competence, if that motivates you."
He didn't need her, basically.
Zhu Yuan didn't know what to say to that. She had come here expecting nothing. A refusal, maybe even a threat. She had not expected a dismissal and a nudge to a name she was already chasing.
But before she could formulate a response, the air changed.
Subtle at first. A sharpening of the ambient pressure, a faint static charge that prickled against her exposed skin. Then the emergency lights flickered no longer with their usual lethargy but with a nervous, stuttering urgency.
VEGA's voice cut through the silence, stripped of its earlier pleasantness.
"Captain. Jane Doe. Be advised: a critical escalation in Ether density has been detected within this localized pocket. At current exposure rates, unprotected organic tissue will sustain irreversible cellular damage within approximately ninety seconds."
Zhu Yuan's blood ran cold. She'd been in this Hollow too long. She knew that warning. She knew what came next.
Zhu Yuan's blood ran cold as her hand went to her sidearm by reflex.
Jane's easy posture evaporated. Her tail went rigid. "That's stage-three territory. We need an exit. Now."
Behind her, the air split open. A Fissure swirled with a pale blue light that had no Ether signature, no corruption, no trace of the dimensional instability that Hollows always carried. Unnatural in a way that made Zhu Yuan's hair stand on end.
She spun. Her hand went to her sidearm. Jane was already moving, her posture shifting from relaxed to coiled in the space between heartbeats.
VEGA's voice came from behind them, calm and conversational. "The Slayer would like to thank you for your visit. I would also recommend that you should not be here when the pressure releases. The portal will take you to the outer perimeter of the Hollow's influence."
Zhu Yuan opened her mouth to demand a coordinated extraction—she had training for this, procedures, protocols—but her feet had already left the ground as a massive gauntlet closed around the back of her collar, the fingers surprisingly precise, avoiding her skin like he was handling a fragile package.
"W-Wait—!"
"The Slayer regrets the discourtesy. He found your company... tolerable. He is opting for haste. Safe travels."
He tossed her. The world became a blur of rust and shadow and emergency lighting before the pale blue void swallowed her whole.
⦕⦖
Zhu Yuan had a brief, disorienting moment of flying through the air, her training screaming at her to tuck and roll, her dignity screaming at her to file a formal complaint. She caught a glimpse of Jane's face beside her, caught the flash of irritation in her eyes, and then... and then she was through the Fissure and was tumbling onto hard pavement.
She landed on her side, skidded a few feet, and came to a stop against something that felt suspiciously like a traffic cone. Gingerly, with a soft groan, she pushed herself up. Her uniform was no longer immaculate, her pride in tatters, and her brain was still trying to process what had just happened.
Beside her, Jane landed in a far more graceful crouch, her tail flicking with irritation. "Well. That was rude."
Zhu Yuan looked around. Familiar buildings. Familiar streets. The yellow and black police tape that cordoned off the Dead End Hollow entrance fluttered in the breeze of dawn. The same entrance they'd entered an hour ago.
They were back outside.
Zhu Yuan stood up, brushed herself off, and stared at the Hollow entrance. The portal was gone. The Slayer was gone. The only evidence that any of it had happened was the torn fabric of her collar and the faint ache in her shoulder where she'd hit the pavement.
Jane walked over. "Welp." She brushed a piece of debris from her hair. "That went better than expected, honestly. He could've tossed us into a wall. Or another Hollow. Or just... not tossed us at all. Would've been nice, but I'm choosing to see this as a gesture of trust."
Zhu Yuan wished she could be that optimistic.
"So…Phaethon then…" Jane stretched her hands up. The sun was coming up over the red-bricks of Sixth Street, painting the sky in shades of pale orange and grey. Somewhere in the distance, a Bangboo was beeping about something. Normal city sounds. Normal morning sounds.
"We've been trying to track them for years."
"And you haven't found them." Jane's ears twitched. "Funny how that works. Maybe they don't want to be found."
Zhu Yuan frowned.
Jane rolled her shoulders, worked out a kink in her neck. "I've been wanting to meet them for years. Well. I know a guy who knows a guy who might know something. Maybe. If I ask nicely and don't threaten to arrest him."
"Jane."
Jane flashed a grin over her shoulder, no teeth and all mischief. "I'm gonna go poke around. See what I can dig up. You, on the other hand… should get some sleep. You look like you've been dragged through a Hollow and spat out the other side."
"I have been dragged through a Hollow and spat out the other side."
"Exactly. So go home. Take a hot bath. Drink your wine. Write your report. Sleep. Let me do the sneaky fun stuff." Jane started walking toward Canvas Street, her tail swaying behind her. "I'll call you if I find anything."
"I'm not sleeping while you're—"
"Zhu Yuan." Jane's voice was suddenly sharp, cutting through the protest. "You can't help anyone if you're dead on your feet. Go home. Eat something that isn't a protein bar. I know a ramen shop there that has the best pork buns in New Eridu. If you're going to hunt a ghost, do it on a full stomach."
She turned and walked away, her tail swishing behind her, hands in front of her chest, loose, like Zhu Yuan's pet hamster. The picture of casual confidence paired with a rather adorable tic she didn't dare speak aloud.
"Jane," she called out.
Jane paused. Turned. Raised an eyebrow.
"Be careful," Zhu Yuan said.
Jane winked. "I'll find your ghost Proxy. I'll bring them back. And then we'll have a lovely chat about how to make your life even more complicated. Ta-ta!"
Zhu Yuan watched the elusive Rat Thiren disappear around a corner, her tail the last thing to vanish from sight, leaving her alone in the empty street. Sixth Street was already stirring—the first food stalls opening, the smell of coffee beans drifting through the air, the distant clatter of that trio of Bangboos making their morning rounds, beeping at each other like they were discussing the weather.
And tried to remember the last time she'd slept.
Failed.
That was terrifying. She never lost track of her schedule. She had a system. Color-coded calendars. Alarms that went off at precisely the right intervals to remind her that she was a human being who required basic biological functions like sleep.
She checked her phone. 5:03 AM. The sun wasn't even pretending to rise yet. The sky was that particular shade of grey that existed only to mock people who hadn't gone to bed.
…
How she envied him being able to work without resting.
Perhaps most would look at him and see a curse. No rest. No respite. No off switch. Nothing but a lifetime of endless fighting, moving endlessly in endless motion of violence... yet, surprisingly, not mindless violence. A man who had forgotten how to stop.
Zhu Yuan looked at him and saw a blessing.
Imagine it. No need to sleep or eat. No need to sit at a desk and file paperwork while your eyes burned and your skull throbbed and you seriously considered whether the Bangboo in the corner could be trained to fill out incident reports. No need to drag yourself home at five in the morning and collapse into bed with your uniform still on because taking it off required too much effort. Just forward momentum. Mission after mission. Twenty-four hours a day of getting things done.
She could protect so many people if she never had to stop. She could close every case. She could write every report without her handwriting devolving into illegible chicken scratch halfway through page three because her brain had decided to take an unscheduled vacation. She could stop a mother from losing another son. She could be the Captain that New Eridu deserved, the one who never faltered, never wavered, never had to admit that she was human and humans got tired.
"...Nngh... What am I thinking..." She sighed, rubbing her eyes.
The Slayer probably didn't have to fill out paperwork. That was the real blessing.
She reached her apartment building. Trudged up the stairs. Unlocked her door. Stepped inside. Dark. Silent. Bed was waiting.
She looked at it with the same expression she'd use on a suspect who refused to confess. Suspicion paired with a deep, personal grudge.
"You're going to take eight hours of my life," she told the bed. "Eight hours I could be using to protect people."
The bed did not respond. It was a bed. It had two pillows and a couple of plushies and zero opinion.
She huffed. "Fine." She kicked off her boots. "Don't think you've bested me."
She collapsed onto the mattress.
SpoilerSleep was a weakness. A weakness she would overcome.
Tomorrow.
Or whatever year it was when she woke up.
Spoiler: woe
Interlude: Case File CISRT-148-NE-2506-143-XZhu Yuan sat at her desk at 8:47 AM, 25th of June, 143 A.C (After Calamity), and stared at a blank incident report template wearing the same expression she reserved for suspects who'd just asked if his heavily modified Bangboo could stand for a lawyer.
The template stared back. It had fields. Neat, organized fields with labels like SUBJECT NAME, AFFILIATION, and THREAT CLASSIFICATION, each one a small white box waiting to be filled with information that made sense and fit into the taxonomies PubSec had spent decades refining, information that could be cross-referenced and pulled up later by an analyst who had not personally watched a man ride a Notorious Ethereal like a mechanical bull.
She had showered. She had eaten a protein bar, which was not the ramen Jane had recommended but was faster and did not require leaving the apartment. She had changed into a fresh uniform. Immaculate. Buttons aligned. Tie ironed. Collar perfect.
The collar was always perfect. The collar was the one thing in her life she had absolute control over. She was going to hold onto that with both hands until the heat death of the universe or the end of her career, whichever came first.
She typed:
CASE FILE: CISRT-148-NE-2506-143-X
SUBJECT: Unregistered Anomalous Combatant (UAC), designation: "The Slayer"
SUBJECT STATUS: At large. Non-hostile to personnel. Uncontainable.
She stared at that last word. Uncontainable. It sat on the screen, all smug. A fact that didn't care whether she liked it or not.
Technically, she could have written "containment not recommended." That sounded better. More professional. More like a decision she had made rather than a reality she had been forced to accept.
She left it. Uncontainable was accurate. The man walked through walls. He had a multi-targeting rocket launcher. She wasn't going to sugarcoat that for Commissioner Lowell's comfort. If Lowell read "containment not recommended" he might think she meant "difficult" and then he'd authorize a task force and then she'd have to attend the funerals.
She cracked her knuckles and continued.
1. SUMMARY OF INVESTIGATION
On 143 A.C. 06-24th at approximately 19:30 hours, a Sub-Hollow Breach was detected at the outer perimeter of Dead End Hollow, a Companion Hollow to the Cretan Great Hollow. A Notorious-class Ethereal (codename: N-HATI) was confirmed on-site. CISRT responded as first responders.
Per HIA classification, Notorious Armored Hati is designated as a Tier 6 (Nickel / Ni) threat—a large-scale threat possessing devastating physical power, with seamless crystalline armor that heavily resists damage. Standard tactical support squads are insufficient for Tier 5 (Cadmium) and above; such threats require high-level corporate defense units or Section 6 intervention.
During engagement, an unidentified humanoid combatant in heavy green armor emerged from an aerial entry point and terminated HATI via physical force in under seven seconds using no visible weaponry, Bangboo support, or coordinated tactics.Click to expand...
Seven seconds. She'd timed it. She'd gone back and timed it against the bodycam footage because her brain had refused to accept the number until she'd confirmed it at least thrice.
Seven seconds. Her team had been engaging the Hati for four minutes. Four minutes of rotational fire, barricade cycling, losing Officer Liang. Four minutes of procedure.
Seven seconds.
She didn't type: "I have spent my entire career preparing for moments like this and he made me feel like a child with a water gun." That was irrelevant to the investigation and she'd rather eat her own badge.
2. SUBJECT PROFILE
2.1 Physical Description
The subject is a male humanoid of exceptional physical build. Approximate height: 210 cm. Approximate weight: unknown, but boot impressions at the Hati engagement site measured four inches deep in solid pavement.
Four inches. She'd measured them herself. Knelt down in the crater with a tape measure while Officer Seth watched her with the expression of a man who had already decided this was above his pay grade and possibly above his species.
The armor section gave her trouble. She wanted to describe it accurately, but she also wanted to convey the feeling of looking at it up close. She settled for clinical language as that was her job, and because "his armor looked like it had been forged in an argument between God and something worse" was not going to survive peer review.
The armor bears extensive damage consistent with prolonged, high-intensity combat across multiple engagements. No insignia, faction markings, corporate logos, or serial numbers are present anywhere on the armor.
No serial numbers. No logos. Nothing. He was the only person she had ever encountered who carried no identifying information whatsoever. Even the Hollow Raiders who operated off the books had gear that could be traced. Even Jane's covers came with documentation. This man wore armor that belonged to no one, from nowhere, and the armor didn't care that this bothered her.
2.2 Communication
The subject does not speak. All communication is conducted through an integrated AI system that identifies itself as VEGA.
She paused here, taking a moment on how to describe VEGA.
VEGA's synthesized voice was polite and articulate. VEGA had the smooth, patient tone of a customer service representative who knew your warranty was expired but was going to let you figure that out yourself. VEGA answered every question she asked with technically complete responses that contained exactly zero useful information, and did so with the faintest undercurrent of apology that made her want to put the AI under oath.
She didn't type: "VEGA is the single most infuriating conversational partner I have ever encountered and I once interrogated a man who answered every question with a different rhyming riddle." She typed instead:
VEGA demonstrates high-level conversational intelligence, including the capacity for diplomatic evasion.
Diplomatic evasion. That was generous. "Diplomatic evasion" made it sound like VEGA was a foreign ambassador navigating a trade dispute.
What VEGA actually did was answer her questions like a parent answering a toddler asking where babies came from: with perfect sincerity and complete misdirection.
3. COMBAT CAPABILITIES
This section she wrote quickly and more easily. Facts spoke for themselves without the need of embellishment.
Hati engagement (Sector 7-C): Subject dropped onto the Notorious-class Ethereal from altitude with no parachute or flight apparatus. He rode the Ethereal, pried its jaw open with both hands, tore it free, and destroyed the creature with four strikes. Total engagement time: under seven seconds.She read it back. It sounded insane, like something that Hollow Raider would post on their social feed under a hashtag she didn't want to think about.
It was also exactly what happened.
Dead End Hollow contact: During my investigation, an Ethereal swarm of approximately thirty to fifty hostiles attacked. The subject arrived from the opposite corridor pursuing the same swarm.
She stopped typing. Drummed her fingers on the desk.
Pursuing. She'd chosen that word carefully. Not "fleeing from" or "herding" or "chasing for sport," although the third option was honestly the most accurate. The Ethereals had been running from him. She'd never seen Ethereals run from anything. They were aggressive, stupid in a focused and violent manner and not at all animalistic that she'd spent her career learning to exploit.
They ran from him anyway. They only thing they fear.
She continued:
He destroyed the remaining hostiles using improvised methods, including tearing limbs from one Ethereal and using them as weapons against others.Improvised methods. She liked that. It sounded professional. It didn't sound like "he ripped an Ethereal's arm off and beat another Ethereal to death with it while a PubSec captain and an undercover operative watched from behind a pillar."
She avoided typing: "He displayed visible displeasure at the encounter ending."
That detail was accurate, but it raised questions she wasn't prepared to answer in a formal document.
Questions like:
"Why was he disappointed?"
"What does it mean when a man is sad that there is nothing left to kill?"
"Should I be more concerned about that than I currently am?"
She typed it anyway. Then deleted it. Then typed it again. Then deleted it again.
She left it out.
3.2 Arsenal
The weapons section. She'd been dreading this one.
Not because the weapons were hard to describe. They were hard to describe, certainly, in the sense that several of them appeared to have been designed by someone who had been asked to create the most efficient killing tools possible and had interpreted "efficient" as "also deeply upsetting." But the real problem was the skull gun.
The skull gun.
She had to write about the skull gun.
A weapon that fires fragmented skull material through a grinding, pulverizing tumbler system.
She stared at that sentence. It was correct. Yet if read out of context, would result in a mandatory psychiatric evaluation for whoever wrote it.
An Inter-Knot firearms analyst going by the handle GunBunny_NE had published a detailed breakdown of the weapon that was, annoyingly, both thorough and accurate. She'd verified it against the Bangboo footage frame by frame. She didn't like how a forum poster had done better analysis than her department's technical division, and disliked it even more that she was about to cite them in an official report.
(See Appendix B for GunBunny_NE's published analysis; I have independently verified its accuracy and find it deeply unpleasant.)Click to expand...
Deeply unpleasant. A phrase that would probably be flagged by whoever reviewed this report as "editorializing." But it was the most restrained thing she could say about a gun that used crushed skulls as ammunition. She didn't know whose skulls they were from or how he never ran out of ammunition, and she didn't want to find out.
The dimensional storage section was easier to write and harder to believe.
The subject's weapons vanish into his armor upon holstering. They do not retract into compartments. They dissolve into motes of light and are absorbed into the plating. VEGA describes this as "dimensional storage technology."
She had watched the rocket launcher, a weapon the size of her torso, disappear into his thigh like a stone sinking into a pond. She'd watched this happen. She had not hallucinated it. She had a witness. The witness was Jane Doe, who was pretending to be a nervous intern, but the witness nonetheless existed and could corroborate under oath if necessary.
Jane had asked VEGA if you could hide a body in the pocket dimension. Zhu Yuan chose not to include this in the report. Some things were better left unrecorded. Jane's instinctive interest in body disposal was one of them.
4. SUBJECT DISPOSITION AND INTENT
She poured herself a glass of water. Drank it. Poured another. Set it down without drinking it.
This was the section that mattered most. This was the section Lowell would read first, because Lowell was a politician before he was a police officer, and politicians wanted to know one thing: is this a problem I need to solve or a problem I can delegate?
She needed to make it very clear this was not a problem anyone could solve.
The subject has demonstrated no hostility toward PubSec personnel, civilians, or any non-Ethereal entity. His sole stated objective is the elimination of Ethereals and the collapse of Hollow networks.
She didn't mention the Slayer had physically grabbed her by the collar and tossed her through a portal like a sack of administrative burdens. That detail was... contextually complicated. It was, technically, an assault on a PubSec officer. It was also the reason she was alive, because the Ether density in that Hollow had been about to melt her cellular structure, and he'd known it before she did.
She settled on:
During an escalation in Ether density within Dead End Hollow, the subject facilitated the extraction of myself and Specialist Doe to safety.
Facilitated the extraction. Right.
She wanted that phrase bronzed and mounted on her wall as the single greatest euphemism she'd ever produced. "Facilitated the extraction" for "picked me up by the scruff like a kitten and launched me through a hole in spacetime."
She would take that to her grave.
She also regretted, bitterly, that Qingyi was on leave.
Qingyi would have been perfect for this. Qingyi was an Intelligent Construct. VEGA was, by its own admission, an autonomous AI system. That was a conversation that needed to happen. Two artificial minds in a room together, comparing notes, running analysis, doing whatever it was that synthetic intelligences did when humans weren't watching. Probably something efficient and slightly unnerving.
Qingyi could have sat across from the Slayer's chestplate and matched VEGA's evasions with her own processing speed, tracked the micro-delays in VEGA's responses, mapped the patterns in what it chose to disclose versus withhold, run predictive models on its conversational system.
She could have done, in short, everything that Zhu Yuan had tried to do with her human brain and a notebook and had failed at, because VEGA was faster than her, smoother than her, and had the infuriating advantage of not needing to breathe between sentences.
Instead, Zhu Yuan had conducted the most important intelligence interview of her career armed with a sidearm, a protein bar she'd forgotten to eat, and a partner who was pretending to be afraid of her own pen.
She added a note to the recommendations section: Request Qingyi's assignment to CISRT-148-NE-2506-143-X upon return from leave. Priority: high. Justification: IC-to-AI analytical interface. Also, I need someone in the room who can think faster than he can walk away.
She deleted the last sentence. Kept the rest
5. THREAT ASSESSMENT
The threat assessment was the part she spent the longest on. Not because the answers were complicated. The answers were simple. The challenge was writing them in a way that didn't make her sound like she'd lost her mind.
5.1 Direct Threat to Public Safety
Low.
The subject has shown no inclination toward aggression against humans. His combat activity is directed exclusively at Ethereals.
5.2 Threat of Uncontrolled Escalation
Moderate to High.
The subject's activities are causing unprecedented disruption to Hollow ecosystems. Ethereals are fleeing his presence in patterns never before documented. Dead zones are spreading in areas he has passed through. These effects are beneficial in the short term but their long-term consequences for Hollow stability, Ether harvesting, and the broader dimensional ecology are unknown. No existing model accounts for what happens when Hollows are collapsed at this rate.
5.3 Institutional and Political Threat
Extreme.
The subject's technology, capabilities, and apparent extradimensional origin will draw aggressive interest from every major corporate and governmental body in New Eridu. Belobog, the Defense Force, Midsummer Inc., independent research groups, and foreign governments have already made inquiries. The race to make first contact will produce reckless decisions. Someone will attempt to capture, contain, or coerce the subject. Based on everything I have observed, this will end badly for whoever attempts it.
5.4 Containment Feasibility: None.Click to expand...
She stared at that last one. "None." One word. Four letters. The entire containment apparatus of New Eridu Public Security, summarized and dismissed in a single syllable.
The subject survived a terminal-velocity impact onto a Notorious-class Ethereal. He fought continuously for over seven hours without rest. His armor absorbs Ether and converts it into ammunition and sustenance. He carries an arsenal in a pocket dimension inside his suit. There is no cell in New Eridu capable of holding this individual, and any attempt to construct one would be a waste of resources and an invitation to an incident.
She read that paragraph back three times. Every sentence was a fact equally absurd. Together they formed a paragraph that read like a rejected pitch for a children's action show, except it was a classified PubSec document and every word was true.
6. RECOMMENDATIONS
The recommendations section was where she omitted the most.
VEGA had told them to find Phaethon. The unregistered Proxy. The ghost that NEPS had been chasing for years without success. VEGA had told two PubSec officers, one of whom was an undercover specialist, to go and cooperate with an illegal operator who existed entirely outside the system Zhu Yuan had built her career enforcing.
That wasn't going in the report.
If she put that in the report, someone in the chain of command would read it, and then someone would ask why VEGA had directed PubSec officers to work with criminals, and then someone would ask if she intended to comply, and then she would have to answer that question honestly, and the honest answer was "yes, obviously, because I will not stand and watch the most capable combatant in recorded history walk away because I insisted on following a procedure he doesn't recognize and doesn't care about."
That answer wouldn't survive peer review.
Instead, she wrote:
1. Do not attempt containment, arrest, or engage the subject in hostile action. The subject has committed no crime under New Eridu statutes. Operating inside a Hollow without registration is a regulatory violation, not a criminal offense. Based on observed capability against Tier 6 threats, such attempts at containment would result in unacceptable risk to personnel.
2. Maintain observation. Continue Bangboo surveillance at a safe distance. Document his movements, engagement patterns, and the effects of his presence on the Hollow network. Coordinate with White Star Institute for ongoing Ether absorption analysis.
3. Establish a communication channel. VEGA has demonstrated willingness to engage in dialogue. I recommend designating a single point of contact for future interactions. This will prevent competing agencies from making unauthorized approaches and will preserve whatever provisional trust has been established.
4. Issue a formal advisory to TOPS member corporations. Any corporate entity that attempts independent contact, capture, or reverse-engineering of the subject's technology does so at its own risk.
5. Establish protocols for responding to Hollows where the subject is known to be active. Personnel should avoid entering active engagement zones and should prioritize civilian evacuation only.
6. Coordinate with the Hollow Investigation Association. HIA should be briefed on the Hollow network disruptions and asked to model the long-term effects of accelerated collapse. Their data will inform whether the subject's activities are sustainable or carry risks we cannot yet quantify.
7. Prepare contingency plans for institutional fallout. The subject's existence will reshape the political landscape of New Eridu. Factions will compete for access. The public will demand answers. I recommend the Commissioner's office prepare a coordinated statement before the narrative is shaped by Inter-Knot speculation and media sensationalism.
8. Recommend joint brief with New Eridu Defense Force, Hollow Action and National Defense (HAND), and HIA regarding Hollow stability implications, particularly regarding the Cretan Hollow Companion cluster.Click to expand...
The fourth recommendation was her favorite. It was, beneath its bureaucratic language, a politely worded threat. "Don't touch him. Don't try. If you try, you're on your own. We told you so. Signed, PubSec."
She also omitted VEGA had, with the conversational subtlety of an air horn, suggested that the Slayer found Jane's Thiren features interesting. She wasn't going to add that into the report as it wasn't relevant. The Slayer's opinions on Rat Thiren anatomy were not within the scope of her investigation.
Even if he had patted Jane on the head like a pet.
Even if Jane was still, presumably, somewhere on Sixth Street, alternating between outrage and fascination.
Even if the image of Jane Doe, eight-year undercover veteran, getting head-patted by a seven-foot murder machine, was going to live rent-free in Zhu Yuan's memory until she died.
She moved on.
7. PERSONAL ASSESSMENT (ADDENDUM)
She hesitated here. Personal assessments were optional. Technically outside the scope of an investigation report. They were the kind of thing you included when you wanted to say something that the formal record couldn't hold, something that existed in the space between facts and feelings, between the officer and the person wearing the badge.
She typed slowly.
The subject is not a threat. He is an Unidentified Anomalous Combatant that happens to be on our side, for now, for reasons he has not disclosed.
She paused. Read it back. It sounded dramatic. It sounded like something you'd find in a novel, not a case file.
He killed a Notorious-class Ethereal in the time it takes me to reload. He collapsed nine Hollows in a single night. He did more to reduce the Hollow threat in seven hours than CISRT has accomplished in seven months. I find this personally galling and professionally invaluable.
"Personally galling." She let that stay. If Lowell had a problem with it, he could take it up with her after he found someone else who'd walked into a Hollow to interview a man whose weapon fired pulverized skulls.
My recommendation, stated plainly: leave him alone. Let him work. Watch him carefully. Do not give him a reason to stop helping.
And for the record, I asked for his identification twice. He ignored me both times. The case remains open.
She stared at the last line. The case remains open.
It would always remain open. She was never going to close this one. There was no resolution waiting at the end, no file stamp, no satisfied green checkmark next to CASE STATUS: RESOLVED. The man didn't have a name. He didn't have an address. He didn't have a social security number or a tax return or a parking ticket. He existed outside every system she'd ever trusted and he was going to stay there.
Her 100% case closure rate stared at her from the commendation plaque on the wall.
She stared back.
"I'll get you eventually," she told the plaque. Or the report. Or the absent man in the green armor who was, at this exact moment, probably punching something that used to be an Ethereal and was now experiencing the consequences of being in his way.
She signed the report.
Captain Zhu Yuan. CISRT. Badge number 148.
She saved the file. Backed it up. Attached the appendices. Drafted the distribution memo. Confirmed the classification level. Then she closed her laptop, lay face-down on her desk, and allowed herself exactly thirty seconds of what she would later describe in no report, ever, as despair.
Thirty seconds. That was the allotment. Thirty seconds of lying face-down on a classified document and contemplating the absolute absurdity of her professional existence.
Thirty seconds of being a person instead of a captain.
On the thirty-first second, she sat up, straightened her collar and tie, and opened her phone.
One new message from Jane.
"Found a lead on P. Also: he definitely liked the ears. I know what I saw. Don't @ me."
"I doubt that," she said to her empty apartment. Her plushies offered no opinion. Her bed continued to exist in quiet judgment.
Zhu Yuan went back to her laptop, opened a new browser tab, and, against every professional instinct she possessed, typed "Inter-Knot" into the search bar. It was her job to constantly monitor the Inter-Knot to track criminal syndicates, gather intelligence on illegal Hollow entries, and predict where unauthorized Proxy activities will occur.
A recent thread caught her attention, posted by a user named QQ. It had her name on it. She clicked it.
She was not going to read fiction about herself and the Slayer. She wasn't. She was a Captain. She had dignity. She had standards and a reputation to maintain.
She read the first chapter of "The Collar and The Caliber" in under a minute and proceeded to scream at her pillow for another minute.
⦕⦖
The summons came at 14:00. Four hours after she'd filed the report. She had about three hours of sleep.
Commissioner Severian Lowell's office was exactly as it always was: neat and smelling faintly of a Therian who'd been fielding calls from the Mayor's office since midnight.
He didn't ask her to sit down. That was the first sign.
The memo on his desk with the HAND letterhead was the second.
"HAND is invoking primary jurisdiction over CISRT-148-NE-2506-143-X," he said. No preamble. Severian Lowell was a man who believed in ripping bandages off cleanly. Zhu Yuan had always respected that about him, right up until this moment. "Effective immediately. All materials, surveillance data, and contact protocols are to be transferred to Hollow Special Operations by end of day."
Zhu Yuan's spine went rigid. "He collapsed nine Hollows last night. The effects are city-wide. That's our jurisdiction."
"The point of origin is theirs, Captain. Everything he does of consequence happens inside a Hollow, and Hollows belong to HSO." Severian folded his hands. "Miyabi Hoshimi signed the transfer request personally. It was approved before I saw it."
Of course it was. Section 6 answered to no one and apologized to no one and sat through exactly zero of the interdepartmental meetings that Zhu Yuan attended every quarter like a responsible officer of the law.
"Sir, I made first contact."
"You did. And your report was excellent. Good work under difficult circumstances."
"I have direct contact experience and I have established communication with his AI. I have seventeen pages of field notes and a partial threat assessment that took me all night to—"
"Zhu Yuan." Lowell's voice was not unkind. That made it worse. "It's the HSO. We don't win this one."
Seventeen pages. One open case. One plaque on the wall she'd been lying to since six in the morning.
He closed the memo. "Take the day off, Captain. You're dismissed."
"Understood, sir," she saluted. Perfect posture. Perfect collar. Turned. Walked out.
Her closure rate had just taken its first wound.
Once outside, she texted Jane: They gave it to Section 6.
Shut it. She thought about calling Miyabi. They'd graduated together. She'd eaten dinner at the Hoshimi house twice. There was a photograph somewhere of the two of them running drills at the Academy, both furious, both laughing.
She also knew exactly how that call would go. Miyabi would pick up immediately, warm and genuine, slightly confusing, and she'd say something like you know how it is, Zhu Yuan, and she would be right, and Zhu Yuan would agree, then nothing would change, because they were friends who'd built careers on opposite sides of a jurisdictional line that neither of them had drawn.
Miyabi, who had eaten dinner at Zhu Yuan's apartment not a month ago and complained about Section 5's budget allocation for forty minutes while Zhu Yuan poured her tea. Miyabi, who had a framed photograph of the two of them doing pull-ups at the academy on her desk, right next to her operational logs.
She hadn't called first. Hadn't warned her. Hadn't even texted.
That meant Miyabi thought the case was important enough to burn a friendship over, or she thought Zhu Yuan would understand.
…Actually, it couldn't have been Miyabi.
Miyabi Hoshimi was many things: heir to the most prestigious martial arts lineage in New Eridu, founder and executive officer of Section 6, the youngest Void Hunter who could bisect an Ethereal at forty meters and then apologize to it, and the only person alive who had seen Zhu Yuan cry, once, at graduation, briefly, under duress, due to wind.
Miyabi was not, however, a bureaucrat.
Miyabi never filed transfer requests. Miyabi didn't navigate interdepartmental jurisdiction protocols. Miyabi attended mandatory administrative meetings with the enthusiasm and frequency of a comet, showing up once every several years, causing visible disruption, and left before anyone could get her signature on anything.
The idea of Miyabi sitting down at a desk, opening a HAND letterhead template, and carefully typing the phrase "primary jurisdiction claim" was roughly as plausible as the idea of a fish applying for a mortgage. The fish had better things to do. The fish's deputy handled that sort of thing.
Deputy Chief Yanagi handled that sort of thing.
Yanagi had never eaten dinner at Zhu Yuan's apartment or had a framed photograph of anyone doing pull-ups on her desk. Yanagi had almost certainly seen Zhu Yuan's name on the case file, understood exactly what it meant, calculated the political value of acquiring the Slayer's contact file, and filed the jurisdiction claim before Miyabi had finished her morning training set.
This was, Zhu Yuan reflected, both entirely professional and exactly the sort of thing that made her want to fold a HAND letterhead into a very small, very sharp paper airplane and launch it into someone's eye, preferably Yanagi's.
She did not do this. She was a captain. Captains did not make weapons out of stationery.
This was, strictly speaking, untrue.
Last year's interdepartmental mixer had featured a fifteen-minute recess during which Captain Feng from Lumina Square and Captain Ohara from the Ballet Twins Road had engaged in what could only be described as an arms race conducted entirely in A4.
Feng's entry had achieved a glide distance of eleven meters. Ohara's had hit the Commissioner in the ear from across the cafeteria.
Both had been formally reprimanded.
Both had been visibly proud.
Zhu Yuan had watched from her seat with a disapproving look, and had told no one that she'd been folding a prototype under the table with a reinforced nose and swept wings that would have destroyed both of their records.
She wondered, briefly and absurdly, if the Slayer was that sort of person.
Somewhere under the visor and the silence and the armor that drank weapons. Whether he'd ever sat in a mess hall with other soldiers.
He was obviously a soldier. Nobody handled weapons like that without training, and nobody trained like that without an institution behind them, somewhere, at some point, in some dimension that apparently existed. He had to have some kind of rank. You didn't learn to transition between a shotgun and a chainsaw in .3 seconds from a hobby.
There had to be some drill sergeant, in some impossible barracks, in some place VEGA would never name, who had once looked at this man and told him his form was sloppy, screaming at him to do it faster until his hands learned to move without asking his brain for permission.
Someone had trained him, or he'd trained himself so long that the difference had stopped mattering.
Did he have a rank? Was there a version of him that sat through briefings? That saluted someone? That had an R&D department that made him those weapons and armors? Did he fold paper airplanes during a recess he'd earned by being very, very good at killing things?
Or had he always been alone?
…
She shook her head and slapped her cheeks. Focus, Zhu Yuan. You're projecting. You might need sleep as well.
So she didn't call Miyabi. She didn't mix personal grievances with professional disputes. If she called Miyabi right now she'd say something she couldn't take back. She didn't want that.
Her phone vibrated. She checked it.
Jane: lol no they didn't
Zhu Yuan stared at her phone as she entered the elevator.
Then she called Jane instead of texting back.
"What do you mean 'no they didn't,'" she demanded.
"I mean you're still on it," replied Jane. "You just don't have the title anymore."
"They took the case."
"They took the file. Different thing." Jane sounded like she was eating something. A pork bun, most definitely. Jane ate pork buns the way other people breathed. "They have the Hollows. What they don't get is you, and they don't get me, and they certainly won't get him."
"HAND invoked primary jurisdiction. My files go to HSO by end of day. That's finished."
"Right. And they're going to just walk straight into him with zero prior contact, and try to introduce themselves to a man who doesn't talk. How do you think that goes?"
Zhu Yuan thought about the Slayer watching a fresh Section 6 team approach him. Thought about VEGA delivering polite non-answers to a new set of investigators who hadn't earned even the small amount of ground she'd managed.
This is insubordination, she thought. I am an officer of the law and I follow the chain of command.
What she said was, "Where are you?"
Jane shut the call. Zhu Yuan stared at her phone screen, looking mildly betrayed before another text arrived.
Jane: meet me at ramen shop on Sixth. ASAP. I'm throwing this phone away btw. Cya
⦕⦖
Turbo Remodeling Shop smelled like motor oil and Bangboo coolant.
Enzo's garage was not large by industrial standards. It was large by Sixth Street standards, which meant it could fit two motorcycles, a workbench, a Bangboo calibration rig, and, as of six hours ago, the single most dangerous organism in the recorded history of New Eridu, sitting cross-legged on the floor between a disassembled transmission and a rack of Bangboo firmware chips.
The Slayer sat on the floor in the back, because nothing in the building was rated for his weight and Enzo's only stool had been quietly removed after it groaned when the green giant leaned on the workbench.
He sat with his back to the wall, legs out, visor dim, in what Zhu Yuan would later learn was the closest he came to rest. Not sleep. VEGA had confirmed he didn't sleep. Just a lower operational state, like a tank idling between combat zones.
The Bangboos had found him.
Seven of them. Enzo's shop stock, the ones he kept around for calibration and testing. They had migrated across the shop floor over the course of two hours in a slow, waddling, inevitable pilgrimage toward the armored figure in the corner, now arranged around him in a loose semicircle, their eyes wide and unblinking.
By noon there were eleven, because Bangboos talked to each other in whatever frequency Bangboos used to communicate, and the message had apparently been: large warm thing, doesn't move much.
Two were sitting on his shoulders. One was wedged against his thighs. Another had climbed onto his helmet and was peering over the visor with its single round eye, recording nothing and everything.
The Slayer hadn't removed any of them.
He sat motionless, a mountain of ancient, brutal, sacrilegious green armor buried in a pile of small mechanical rabbits, If there was an emotion behind that visor, VEGA wasn't sharing it.
He had, in fact, placed one gauntlet on its head, and the Bangboo was making a sound that Enzo could only describe as mechanical purring, a low hum from its vocalization unit that he'd never heard any Bangboo produce before and that he was fairly certain wasn't in the firmware.
Another Bangboo had wedged itself against his boot and appeared to be napping, eyes half-lidded, its body rising and falling with simulated breathing it didn't need.
Enzo watched from behind his workbench, a wrench forgotten in his hand.
He'd agreed to this because Belle and Wise had asked, and because Belle and Wise had never asked him for anything that turned out to be a mistake.
Questionable, yes.
Occasionally illegal, probably.
But never a mistake.
Their video store next door was too small. The Slayer had stood in Random Play's back room for a minute before Wise had stared at the ceiling clearance, the Slayer, then at the HDD system taking up the entire back wall, and said: "Enzo's."
So Enzo's it was.
He liked bunnies. That was the intelligence Belle had offered when Wise asked why the most talked about being on the planet was sitting in their neighbor's garage like a large, heavily armed Buddha.
He liked bunnies.
In the back room of Random Play, Fairy's voice chimed through the speakers.
"VEGA's protocols are surprisingly elegant," she announced. "Antiquated encryption layer, but the underlying logic is beautiful. We've established a data-sharing framework, Master. He'll route Hollow telemetry through me in exchange for live Ether density mapping. It took us less than a minute. Would have taken humans a week of meetings."
Wise stared at the wall separating them from a man who could punch through it without noticing. "Did VEGA say anything about him?"
"VEGA said, and I'm quoting directly: 'The Slayer appreciates the accommodations and the robot rabbits.'"
Belle leaned back in her chair. "See? I told you he likes bunnies. I knew it. He didn't boot Eous when I found him."
Wise scratched his head. He supposed some people worked in strange (often murderous) and mysterious ways.Last edited: Jun 26, 2026 Like ReplyReport Reactions:Sir Khakington IV, Gundamshinobi