The armored car roared through District 13's fog-choked arteries, wheels screaming against the concrete. Sophia drifted hard around a corner as sparks erupted beneath them. Behind, the Kurokumo convoy followed.
She glanced into the rear mirror, eyes narrowing at the headlights gaining ground. Then, turning her head just enough to catch Imogen's reflection in the mirror, she said, calm but commanding,
"Imogen. Ve do zis properly."
Imogen blinked, gripping the Barrett-11 across her lap. "Properly? While being shot at?"
Sophia smirked faintly. "Zat is exactly ven you learn best."
Another jolt. Shmuel yelped as a bullet ricocheted off the armored plating near his window. Pisanio remained stoic, hand on the car's side rail, watching through the smoke.
Sophia continued, tone sharp and instructive, her words cutting through the chaos like a drill sergeant teaching under fire.
"A sniper is never alone. You need a spotter. Someone to find ze target, to calculate ze wind, ze distance, ze elevation. Ze spotter sees what you cannot."
She glanced at the others. Kamina was still howling with laughter. Shmuel was clutching the dashboard for dear life. Pisanio was sitting still like an old statue under siege.
Sophia sighed. "Unfortunately, ve have none of zose right now. So you improvise."
She flicked her eyes toward Shmuel. "You, boy! Help her. Get ze rifle through ze sunroof. Hold it steady. Try not to drop it, ja?"
Shmuel, nodding. "Right–right." He scrambled toward the middle seat, fumbling to lift the Barrett-11. The weapon was heavy, the matte-black barrel gleaming under the flickering lights of the city. Together, they maneuvered it through the open roof.
Pisanio said, "My lady, please be careful."
Imogen steadied her breathing, the rifle braced against the rim. The hum of engines, the vibration of the car, the roar of the wind–all of it pressed against her.
Sophia's voice was steady, low. "Trust your eyes. Feel ze weight of ze wind. Don't force ze shot. You let it happen."
Imogen's mechanical eyes shifted–white irises blooming into sharp, bloody red. Thin veins of light crawled across her sclera as her pupils contracted like a lens focusing. She inhaled slowly.
Then came the pain. Her temples flared, her vision fracturing. Blood welled from the corners of her eyes.
She pulled the trigger.
The shot cracked through the din–a thunderclap in the storm of engines. The bullet sliced the air, shattered the windshield of the nearest Kurokumo car–and buried itself harmlessly in the seat behind the driver.
A miss. But it was close.
Sophia saw the shot from the car's mirror, one hand on the wheel. "Not bad, Fräulein. I've seen worse from men who called themselves professionals."
Kamina shouted. "Ha!"
Shmuel was pale, still holding onto the rifle mount.
Sophia lit another cigarette, eyes still on the road. "Ja. Und far from ze last."
Imogen's eyes dimmed back to white, her breathing ragged, the smell of gunpowder sharp in the cabin.
Imogen fell back into the armored car, her hands trembling against the rifle's stock as the vehicle bucked beneath them. The taste of gunpowder and metal still clung to her tongue. Above her, the sunroof snapped open once more–two figures rising into the pale, ash-streaked light.
Kamina was the first through, his cloak snapping like a banner. Pisanio followed, a silent silhouette against the drifting smog. Their boots struck the roof in rhythm with the roaring engine, and for a heartbeat the world seemed to slow.
Kamina's gaze locked onto the chasing cars. There was no hesitation, only the trembling heartbeat behind his grin. He moved.
Heretofore thought could chain him.
Heretofore fear could take form.
Heretofore his own image fell under his own statue that he carved himself.
His muscles coiled, and then he leapt.
The wind tore at him, a thousand knives of air and grit. He hit the Kurokumo car's roof hard enough to dent the metal, knees bending under the impact. His katana came alive in his hands, a slash of silver defiance against the drab world. The blade split the car's roof open with sparks and torn steel flying into the fog.
He dropped down halfway, kicking out at the driver's throat. But the man's tattoos hardened across his skin. Kamina's boot struck with a dull thud, and the driver only staggered, blood trickling but not falling. The scent of burnt ink filled the air.
Then the passenger in the backseat moved. An Odachi, flashed upward through the torn ceiling. Kamina twisted, the blade missing him by a breath.
Steel met steel in furious rhythm–Kamina's blade clashing against the long, black Odachi again and again. His body knew he should fall, that he should die here.
But his spirit refused the thought, burning down the thought of it. Though it's ash still remains in his mind.
Behind them, Pisanio's gauntlet gleamed faintly. He lifted his sword in both hands, channeling light into form. His blade hummed.
The next moment, he struck.
The energy slash tore through the smog–a searing slash that split the second Kurokumo car clean down its middle. It came apart like paper, flames consuming the halves as they spun out of control, crashing in two separate fires.
Back at the first car, Kamina's balance faltered–the driver's inked hand snared his leg, pulling him down. The Odachi swung again, cutting the air beside his head. For one heartbeat, Kamina saw the reflection of his own eyes in that black blade–saw the fear behind the bravado, the weakling still pretending to be a man worth following.
He moved.
The sheath in his left hand snapped up, catching the Odachi's edge with a desperate clang that shook his bones. His right arm followed through–his katana slashing down with the fury of a falling star. It cut deep through flesh and ink both, freeing his trapped leg.
The driver's grip broke. Kamina kicked him away. The man tumbled off the speeding car. The last Kurokumo fell with him.
Kamina exhaled once, shoulders trembling for just an instant. The wind caught in his hair, tugging at the mask of courage he wore like armor. Then, with the smoothness of ritual, he reached up, slid his sunglasses back onto his face.
He leapt again. The air screamed around him, the world reduced to smoke and momentum. His boots hit the armored car's roof with a metallic thud, the shock running up his legs. He dropped back through the sunroof.
"Man, that was something," Kamina exhaled. His grin was sharp, wild, and too bright for the blood running down his cheek. "Heh, should've done something like that back in my world–with a Gunman mech, of course. Would've been one hell of a show!"
Shmuel groaned, half buried beneath spent bullet casings and the rattle of loose armor plates. "Every time you talk about that world of yours–the mechs, the giant faces on mountains–the more I think you got hit in the head real hard and just started making things up for fun."
"Heh. Maybe I did. Maybe I didn't."
The others, though, gave no mind to Kamina's wandering myth. Pisanio had his focus fixed entirely on Imogen beside him. Imogen's white hair with its red tips stuck to her cheek, damp with blood that had seeped from her eyes after the shot. She sat still, breathing through her teeth as Pisanio wiped her face clean.
Sophia, one hand steady on the wheel, turned her gaze from the road long enough to glance back at them. Her voice was rough.
"Your shootink vill get better, kleine Prinzessin," she said. "Practice und patience. Field vork makes perfect shot. But for now… you must live. Survive ze hounds who come for you. Ze fixers, ze syndicates… all of zem vant ze daughter of ze Grey King for zheir own greed. I have my debt to pay after all."
Then, without warning–
The world froze.
A flash of pale light surged ahead of them, the air itself shattering with a crystalline shriek. An ice wall erupted from the cracked asphalt, jagged and gleaming like a mirror.
Sophia's eyes widened. Her hand spun the wheel, stepping hard on the break, but there was no time nor space. The armored car screamed as it collided, metal folding and glass bursting in an explosion of frozen shards.
Pisanio moved, pulling Imogen against him as the world tore apart. The crash threw Kamina forward, his arm bracing against the dashboard at the last instant. Shmuel slammed sideways into the chair. Sophia's head struck the wheel–blood streaked her temple, bright against the frost forming on the cracked windshield.
Snow drifted through the broken glass, though there was no sky today for snow to fall from.
Then came the voice.
"Prototype Ice V0.4—operational. Target confirmed. Do as I demand."
A hiss of pressurized frost followed the words, white mist spilling through the shattered street like a ghost's breath. Figures emerged, five of them, clad in heavy Krieg suits glazed with ice, their masks glowing a faint blue from within. Tubes connected their bodies to tanks on their backs, each exhaling fog with every breath. The sound of it was mechanical and human all at once.
"Hand us the princess," the lead one intoned. "And no further harm will befall you."
They looked like soldiers sculpted from winter itself. Frost clung to every inch of their armor, and when they exhaled, the air froze in shapes.
Inside the wrecked car, steam rose from shattered metal and blood. Sophia's hand twitched toward her rifle. Pisanio shifted to cover Imogen, his gauntlet faintly glowing. Shmuel wiped blood from his brow, eyes wide but focused.
And Kamina was smiling again.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Click.
At first it was nothing.
A silly sound.
A gun click? Impossible. No hand gripped a trigger.
The sound should have meant threat, but there was nothing.
"Do you hear dat? De click?" one of the armored figures asked, voice a mechanical rasp that fogged in the cold air. He bent, boots scraping the glass, and the others followed his stare to the ground.
Tiny percussion toys marched across the asphalt.
Clockwork monkeys, brass cymbals held between tiny hinged paws. They were grim little things, paint chipped and eyes like beads. At first they moved without sound, the cymbals still. Then one of the Krieg men's mouth twisted and he flicked his wrist toward his gauntlet. Ice spat from the ignition head on his palm, a brittle spray that glazed a toy monkey blue before it stumbled and cracked. He fired again and again, but his blast only frozen the edges, the toys kept coming.
The monkeys stopped.
Then, as if some clockwork conductor gave the cue, every monkey slashed its tiny cymbals wide. They detonated in a metallic bloom–mechanisms inside them exploded outward. Shards, tuned cards, razor-edged playing cards spat into the air. They cut three Krieg suits cleanly. Glass and metal screamed, armor ruptured, and men folded without warning. The ice armor did not save them from the raining blades.
Three went down.
Two of the Krieg-suited survivors threw up crystalline walls in a heartbeat, ice coalescing into a spiny barricade that chewed the cards harmlessly like a maw. Frost steamed where steel met sharp paper.
Kamina moved like thunder. He slammed a boot into the armored car's side and kicked the door open. He popped through and met the nearest Krieg man half on the car roof, half falling into the open like some living blade. Steel met Krieg steel. Kamina's katana sang, sparks flew against ice.
Shmuel lunged at the second one. Metal fists accelerated. He felt the suit's plating under his hand, and heard the creak of stressed alloy. As he struck, something glinted on the Krieg man's breastplate. A small, institutional badge pinned beneath a layer of frost.
You are fixer? Shmuel's thought slices clear through the fight. He pressed the strike home and the man staggered. Out of the corner of his breath, Shmuel spat the words between blows. "You are fixer? You are risking demotion with this."
The Krieg man answered with a guttural snarl, and the suit's servos screamed, but Shmuel had already catalogued the emblem. If he lived through this, he would take this to Hana Association. He hoped he would live. He hoped a little harder than he admitted.
The air filled with cards–thousands–raining like a winter that cut instead of cooled. They fell in a furious sheet, a glittering storm. For a handful of heartbeats it seemed nothing would halt that blade-snow.
Pisanio stepped out then. He planted both feet on the asphalt and raised his sword. The blade slash upward.
Light roiled along the edge, an energy that hummed the note of an old bell.
He slashed high, the arc blossomed into a wall of concentrated force that met the falling cards and shredded them into harmless flakes of light. The wind of the blow rolled down the street and blew the worst of the shrapnel aside.
Pisanio did not look back. He turned to the group, Imogen clutched to his flank, Kamina dripping adrenaline, Shmuel wiping frost and blood from his cheek, and spoke.
"Syndicate or Office," he said. "Anyone who comes after us is our enemy now."
A pause, then. "continue to protect my lady with your life on the line."
Sophia's vision swam for a moment, becoming white, hazy, and stinging with the iron scent of her own blood. Her head ached where it had struck the steering wheel, and her breath came ragged as she steadied herself in the driver's seat.
"Verdammt," she muttered under her breath, tasting copper. Her eyes scanned the chaos ahead. The ice wall, fractured now, still glistened like a frozen wound across the street. The toy monkeys had turned the ground into a warzone. Whoever used them, whoever could craft a weapon like that. They were watching from afar.
She gripped the wheel, thinking. Buildings stacked close, no vantage points high enough for her to see from, too many shadows in the gaps, too many ways to vanish. A sniper's nightmare. "Scheiße," she said to herself. "Zis place… it's full of disadvantages. No high ground, no clear lines. If zey shoot again, we are blind."
Her hand went to the long shape beside her seat, her rifle. She slung it across her shoulder, stepped out into the cold street, and exhaled a thin cloud.
Sophia raised her voice just loud enough to be heard over the ringing echoes of Kamina and Shmuel's fight. "We need to identify who used dose monkey toys! Schnell! Whoever it is, zey are close enough to observe–und far enough to hide behind dese buildings!"
Her boots crunched over shattered glass as she scanned the upper floors through her scope.
Imogen's breathing grew heavy. Pisanio, standing beside her, noticed the way her fingers flexed slightly, her pupils dilating. He moved fast, placing a gloved hand before her eyes.
"My lady," Pisanio said quietly, "not again. You know the rule–you can only use your eyes twice in a day. More than that, and you'll quicken your doom."
"I remember, Pisanio. This is the second time."
He hesitated, then let his hand fall.
Blood welled from the corners of her eyes, bright and thin as tears. The irises flared. Her gaze swept the streets, the rooftops.
Then, she said, "Two kilometers. Northeast building. Twentieth floor."
Sophia didn't question it. Her instincts had learned when to think and when to not. The D-3IS rose to her shoulder, her breath froze in her throat, and her finger found the trigger. "Let's see you, rat," she murmured.
Bang.
The rifle thundered.
The bullet cut the world in silence. Through an open window. Through the gap in a coffee mug's handle, spinning steam into mist. Through the center of a donut that someone had been halfway to biting. Through another window, glass shattering like falling rain.
Two kilometers away, in a dimly lit room, a woman in a tailored suit looked up. Her face was hidden beneath a monkey-faced helmet–bronze and smooth. The bullet struck the mask dead center, splintering it. She staggered backward, one knee dipping as her hand went to her face. Blood ran from beneath the crack, crimson against chrome.
She didn't fall.
The woman straightened, shards of the helmet sliding off her cheek. Her exposed mouth curved into a smile that didn't reach her eyes. She pressed a finger to her temple, speaking into a comm no one could hear but her.
Back on the street, Sophia lowered her rifle. The gun still smoked, heat trembling along the barrel. Her expression didn't change, but her eyes narrowed as she muttered under her breath, "Zat one's not dead. Not yet."
The ringing in Imogen's head began as a faint hum–like the vibration of a plucked string somewhere deep in her skull. It pulsed in rhythm with her heartbeat, then grew clearer, clearer still, until it became words. The world around her–the echo of the rifle, the crackle of cooling metal, Kamina's voice somewhere in the distance–bled into silence.
And then, the voice came.
Soft at first, woman, almost human.
"Along the cramped passage of childhood, by the bench of weathered wood.
Within the heated boxing match, lit by a trembling flame.
Amidst the pressing crowd, under a ragged, dripping eave.
Through the twilight deluge, after the startled, frightened calls.
You appear to me, your image multiplied and layered high.
The noon hour is near."
Each syllable reverberated like drops of water against glass, echoing somewhere between thought and dream. The tone was calm for something that shouldn't exist within her mind. It simply was there, as if it had always been there, waiting for the right moment to speak.
Imogen froze. Her breath hitched, eyes still glowing faintly red from overuse. The blood at their corners had begun to dry, dark and sticky against her pale skin. The voice's cadence was gentle, but behind it lay a presence that pressed against her consciousness like a shadow leaning in close. It felt like each word woven with a meaning she couldn't yet decipher.
Her surroundings blurred–the ruined street, the broken ice wall. Her pulse slowed. Images flickered in her mind's eye.
A wooden bench warped by rain.
A boy smiling beneath a dim light.
The echo of laughter in the rain-soaked alley of a childhood long gone.
The voice's words laced through it all, stringing memory and nightmare together.
"The noon hour is near."
A sudden chill crept up her spine.
Imogen blinked hard, clutching her temples as her mechanical eyes flickered and dimmed back to white. The world returned in fragments–Sophia's heavy breathing beside the car, Pisanio watching her with concern, Kamina's silhouette framed against smoke. But even as the noise of reality flooded back in, the echo of that voice remained, whispering beneath the surface of her thoughts.