The journey back to the agency from the old district was the quietest I had ever experienced. Inside the speeding van, no one spoke. The professional confidence we had when we left was now gone, replaced by a heavy, worried silence. Ryukyu's pro sidekicks re-checked their equipment with grim expressions, while Uraraka and Tsuyu sat in silence, clearly shaken by how quickly our well-planned mission had fallen apart. Nejire, usually a source of limitless energy, just stared out the window, her mind clearly racing. I myself felt the echo of Akame's piercing gaze, and the dragon's heartbeat in my chest was still beating erratically, as if it had just met a distant, dangerous relative.
We reassembled in the main operations room, even though it was already three in the morning. Fatigue was nothing compared to the urgent need to debrief. Ryukyu stood before all of us, her usual calm aura now having a fracture of frustration.
She replayed the body-cam footage from one of her sidekicks on the main screen. We saw it again: the figure of Akame landing without a sound, the brief confrontation, and then the puff of smoke followed by her disappearance. "She's not just a skilled assassin," Ryukyu said, her voice sharp. "She has some kind of perception Quirk or danger sense that surpasses anything I've ever seen on file. She didn't see us visually. She felt us, even from a significant distance and from a blind spot."
All eyes in the room then turned to me. I knew the question was coming. I took a deep breath.
"She felt me, too," I said, my voice steadier than I felt. "And I… I felt her, too."
"Felt her how?" Ryukyu asked, stepping closer.
I tried to find the right words. "It wasn't like seeing or hearing. It was... an echo. In my chest. My power reacted to her presence, and it seems her power reacted to mine. It felt like two tuning forks set to the same frequency. We could sense each other."
My statement sent a shockwave through the room. Nejire stared at me with wide eyes, a hundred new questions clearly forming in her mind. Uraraka covered her mouth with her hand, while Tsuyu placed a finger on her chin, her expression deeply serious. My hypothesis was no longer just a clever analysis; it was now proven that I had a direct, supernatural connection to our target. This made me their greatest asset, and also the team's most vulnerable member. If I could feel her, it meant she could also feel me.
Far from Ryukyu's agency, in a hidden room beneath the Yozakura no Chaya Teahouse, Akame carefully cleaned the blade of her katana. Murasame. The blade was jet-black, radiating a deadly, cold aura. She had just returned from an aborted mission, but her mind wasn't on her escaped target. Her mind was on the strange sensation she had felt on the rooftop.
She paused her movements, closing her eyes. She was a reincarnator, just like that young man from another world. But unlike him, Akame remembered everything clearly. She remembered her brutal life as an assassin for the Empire, her betrayal, her struggle with Night Raid, and the deaths of her friends. When she had died in her final battle, she thought it was all over. It turned out, she was wrong. She awoke in this new world, in the body of an infant, but with the soul and memories of a weary war veteran. The Yozakura clan, an ancient family of assassins in this world, found her as a child, drawn to her terrifyingly natural talent for killing. They trained her, honed her, not realizing they were merely re-polishing a weapon that had already been forged in the fires of hell. For her, this work—eliminating the villains and corrupt individuals the law couldn't touch—was simply a continuation of her lifelong mission.
But tonight, for the first time in this world, she had felt something impossible. An echo. The echo of a Teigu. It was an unmistakable sensation, the same vibration of energy that every Imperial Arm emitted. But how could that be? The Teigu were artifacts from her old world. Here, there were only Quirks. Yet, the echo was real. It felt powerful, wild, and… draconic. The energy instantly reminded her of one person. The only person who had ever shared a bond like that with her. Tatsumi.
An emotion she had long since buried deep—a painful longing—surfaced for a moment before she forcibly suppressed it again. No. It couldn't be him. But whoever it was, the existence of another Teigu user in this world changed everything. Was it a friend from Night Raid? Or an enemy from the Empire? She had to find out. Her usual hunt for targets now felt insignificant. She had a new, far more personal mission. She had to find the source of that echo.
Back at the agency, the atmosphere grew even more tense. "This changes everything," Ryukyu said, pacing back and forth. "We can no longer conduct surveillance. She'll always know if we're getting close. We can't hunt her."
"So we give up?" Uraraka asked in a small voice.
"No," Ryukyu replied, her eyes flashing with a dragon's resolve. "If we can't hunt her, we'll make her come to us. We're going to set a trap."
The plan was bold and incredibly dangerous. In cooperation with the police, they would spread false information through informant networks about a "secret meeting" between several of the remaining high-level targets on Akame's list. The meeting would be held in an abandoned warehouse complex on the edge of the city—the perfect location for an ambush.
"Your role, Tatsumi-kun, will be the most crucial," Ryukyu said, looking at me. "You will not be fighting. You will be our detector. You will be at the center of the operation, and your job is to tell us the moment you feel her approach. You are our early warning system."
Suddenly, my control training became that much more important. I didn't just need to manifest my armor; I needed to sharpen this arcane sense. The next day, my training with Ryukyu took on a new form.
"If you and the killer can sense each other, then it's possible you can learn to control the 'echo' you emit," she explained in Training Room Gamma. "You must learn to hide your presence. And conversely, you must learn to sense her presence from a greater distance and with more precision."
My training was no longer physical. It was mental and sensory. I spent hours in deep meditation, with Ryukyu guiding me. She had me feel my dragon's heartbeat, then try to project my consciousness outward, using that heartbeat as the center of a sensory spiderweb. I had to learn to differentiate between the background noise of Quirk energies in the city and the specific echo I was looking for. It was far more difficult than any physical training. It drained me mentally to my very limits.
After two days of intense preparation, the night of the operation arrived. The old warehouse complex felt eerie in the night's silence. The wind whistled through broken windows, creating strange sounds that made the hair on one's arms stand up. Ryukyu's team and an elite police squad had taken hidden positions throughout the area. I was in a makeshift command post inside the main warehouse, with Ryukyu and Nejire. Uraraka and Tsuyu were in the communications van outside, monitoring all channels.
I sat cross-legged on the floor, my eyes closed, in full concentration. I stretched my senses out, searching for that cold, sharp echo in the sea of the city's energy. Hours passed. Only silence. The tension in the room was so thick you could cut it with a knife.
"This is more stressful than waiting for exam results," Nejire whispered, trying to break the tension. "Are you feeling anything? Does she like sushi? Maybe we can bait her with sushi next time."
"I doubt she'd fall for a sushi trap, senpai," I replied without opening my eyes.
"Ssshh, you two!" Ryukyu hissed, her eyes glued to the monitors displaying the views from the hidden cameras.
I kept searching, on the verge of giving up. Maybe she wouldn't come. Maybe she knew it was a trap. But then… I felt it. Not near the bait's location. But very far, on the edge of my perception. A flicker. A very faint echo, like a whisper, and it was moving fast. It appeared in one direction, then vanished. Appeared again in another, slightly closer. She wasn't approaching directly. She was patrolling the perimeter. She was hunting. She was hunting the hunters.
My eyes snapped open. I looked at Ryukyu, who immediately saw the change on my face. I pressed the communicator in my ear, my voice urgent yet whispered.
"Contact. I feel her. She's nowhere near the bait." I paused, trying to pinpoint the constantly moving vibration. Then, with a piercing sense of horror, I realized it. "She's… she's on the roof. She's above us."