"I'll pay you anything you want"
The man swallowed hard. His throat bobbed like a dying fish. "They took my daughter. The Birodo Kairo-Kai—they just... grabbed her off the street. Said she's got the right kind of veins for their experiments." His voice cracked. "Please."
Neon signs flickered through the grimy window, painting the puddles on the street in garish pinks and greens. I finally lifted my gaze. The man's eyes were red-raw. Not from booze. From crying.
The hell, I'm in need of a job anyways. - I thought to myself.
Blue flames licked up my arm, searing the man's fingers without touching skin. He yelped, recoiling. "You don't get to touch me," I said, quiet. The flames coiled around my fist, shaping into a jagged knife. I let it dissolve into embers. "But I'll take your money."
"Let´s talk somewhere private" - I said to the guy with an impossibly serious face.
The relief on his face was almost comedic.
I pulled him into a back alley.
"Allright talk. Who took your daughter and where are they keeping her?"
"The Birodo Kairo-Kai. I do business with them, I'm a wraith merchant you see. And they…..
"Wait did you say Birodo Kairo-Kai? You are in big trouble dude. You shouldn't have got into business with them in the first place.
"You see, I'm a wraith merchant. I deal extensively with the Birodo Kairo-Kai. I source the wraiths from rough hunters and then sell them to gangs for a profit. It's a meager living, but it's how a small fish like me survives in this big pond.
Last night, however, one of the Birodo Kairo-Kai hitmen found me. He threatened to take my daughter if I didn't deliver one hundred wraith lords by the next day." The merchant paused, his voice shaking as he struggled to compose himself.
"Such a task is virtually impossible," he continued. "Wraith lords are the highest rank of wraith, pure beasts, and incredibly rare. To be asked to deliver a hundred of them..." He swallowed, a bead of sweat appearing on his temple.
"When I couldn't meet their demand, they took her. They said she belongs to them now and they will 'make good use of her.' I can't bear to imagine the terrible things they will do to her, or if they force her to become a gang member. She is only ten years old."
He sank to his knees, pleading, "Can you save her, assassin? Can you bring her back to me?"
"I see," I finally managed, trying to appear serious despite my inner shock. "I swear I will do everything I can to get your daughter back."
The relief on the man's face was almost pathetic. I didn't wait for thanks. I shoved past him, out into the humid night. The undercity breathed around me—alleyway mutters, the distant thump of bass from a club, the skitter of something with too many legs darting between trash bags.
I crouched on a rusted fire escape, watching the Birodo Kairo-Kai's eastern stronghold through the gaps of a broken billboard. Floodlights carved harsh angles across the compound's steel walls—meant to deter idiots, not me. Still, my jaw tightened when I spotted the patrol patterns. Too many gaps. Too convenient. Either they were embarrassingly sloppy, or this was a trap.
I rolled my shoulders, letting blue flames ripple down my arms until they solidified into twin curved blades. The heat didn't bother me anymore. Nothing did.
The first guard died without a sound, my flaming blade melting through his carotid before the man could blink. The second managed half a choked shout before his windpipe collapsed under a searing kick. I didn't pause, stepping over the bubbling corpses as I headed deeper into the compound. The air smelled like antiseptic and something sweetly rotten—wraith essence, probably.
I found the girl in a holding cell lined with damp restraints. She was maybe twelve, wrists raw from struggling against the cuffs. Her pupils dilated when she saw me, the whites tinged with the telltale gray of early-stage wraith corruption.
"Don't," she whispered as he melted the locks. Her voice shook. "They'll—"
"Don't care." I hauled her up, ignoring her flinch. Outside, alarms finally started wailing.
The Kurokiba general's voice boomed through the intercom: "You're leaving behind quite the mess, Kageyama." A pause, then static. "But I'll forgive it. For old times' sake."
The general had grinned, lightning arcing between his teeth. "You fight like a cornered animal," he'd taunted, sidestepping my next strike with unnatural grace. His footwork was all wrong—not the disciplined stances of a soldier, but something older, wilder. Like he'd learned to dodge in the space between heartbeats. I feinted left, then spun, my blade extending into a whip of blue fire. It should've severed the general's spine. Instead, the man *bent backward*, his torso folding at an impossible angle as the flames licked empty air.
Then the counterattack—a palm strike to my ribs, charged with enough voltage to stop a heart. I barely rolled with it, letting the current ground through my own flames. The smell of my own singed jacket filled his nostrils. The girl screamed.
"You're holding back," the general murmured, stepping into the next exchange. His movements were almost lazy now, probing. Testing. My next slash carved through concrete instead of flesh, the general's afterimage dissipating like mist. "That technique... it's not just fire, is it?"
I didn't answer. Couldn't. The truth was a knife in his throat. My flames *itched*, begging to be unleashed fully—but that would mean burning the girl alive too.
The general's smile widened. "Ah." He lowered his hands. "How sentimental."
I had been fighting with the brakes on for years—chains wrapped tight around my ribs, teeth gritted against the wildfire in my veins. But now, with the general's lightning dancing a hair's breadth from the girl's throat, something in me *snapped*.
The air ignited.
Blue flames erupted from my pores, not in controlled tendrils, but in a rolling inferno that scorched the ceiling tiles to ash. The general's smirk faltered as the fire *moved*—not like flame, but liquid, alive, coiling around my limbs in serpentine waves before solidifying into swords.
The general lunged, lightning spear forming mid-strike—
I caught it barehanded.
The resulting explosion should've leveled the building. Instead, my flames *swallowed* the discharge, the blue fire flaring white as it metabolized raw voltage. My counter was brutally simple: a straight punch to the general's solar plexus. No finesse. Just acceleration. The armored fist connected with the sound of a freight train hitting a wall. Ribs cracked. The general flew backward through three concrete partitions before skidding to a stop in a shower of sparks.
"You—" the general wheezed, blood flecking his teeth. His storm aspect flickered wildly. "That's not just *fire*."
I didn't grace him with an answer. I *twisted* my wrist, and the flames answered—detonating in a controlled burst that turned the hallway into a kiln. The general barely rolled aside, his uniform charring. I pressed forward, each step leaving molten footprints. My next strike wasn't a technique; it was annihilation. A whip of condensed flame lashed out, bifurcating mid-swing into a dozen barbed tendrils that sought flesh. The general screamed as they found purchase, searing through his storm barrier like paper.
Then—
A hand on my elbow. The girl, shaking, her fingers blistering at the contact. "Stop," she begged.
I blinked. The flames stuttered.
The general spat out his blood" His smile didn't reach his eyes. "We'll meet again."
The structure began to vibrate violently, on the verge of total collapse.
A shadow detached itself from the alley wall ahead.
I reacted before thought, flames erupting into a spinning disk that sheared through the figure's midsection. The bisected halves hit the ground with a wet slap—not human. A wraith, its hollowed-out torso still twitching with stolen reflexes.
The girl whimpered. I scanned the rooftops. More shapes crouched there, their outlines warping unnaturally. Birodo Kairo-Kai's failed experiments, set loose as trackers. My stomach twisted. They'd known I'd come this way.
The first wraith lunged, its elongated fingers crackling with stolen electricity—the general's signature. I sidestepped, my flames condensing into a single concentrated point at my palm. I *pushed*. The resulting beam vaporized the wraith's upper body, then kept going, punching through the brick wall behind it in a molten line.
Too much. Always too much.
The remaining wraiths hesitated, their hollow eyes reflecting the blue inferno. I exhaled, and the fire answered—not in weapons, but in living geometry. Flames wove themselves into a latticework dome around the girl, each intersecting strand humming with contained annihilation. I stepped through the barrier like it was water.
The wraiths attacked in unison.
I moved.
Fire became extension—a whip that bifurcated mid-crack to eviscerate three wraiths at once; a gauntlet that shattered a fourth's skull with a backhand; a spear that pinned the last to the alley wall, burning through its writhing flesh until only ash remained.
Silence.
The dome dissipated. The girl stared at me, her face pale. "You're not just a hitman," she said.
I wiped soot from his cheek. "No." He turned away. "I'm worse."
The alley stank of charred meat and ozone. Somewhere above, a neon sign flickered, painting the puddles blood-red.
The general had been right.
I was afraid.
I kicked open an emergency exit, hauling the girl into the alley. Rain had started falling, hissing against my smoldering sleeves. The girl trembled, her fingers digging into his arm. "They—they put things inside me," she whispered. "Like spiders."
I didn't answer. I scanned the rooftops. No snipers. Yet.
The only way was down, but there was no fire escape. Below us, the falling rain vanished into a void of screaming darkness.
I heard the guards running through the collapsing building.
"There is no other way" - The thought materialized in me.
Plunging into the dark, I rapidly compressed and heated the air beneath us, which slowed our descent and ensured a soft landing.
The building collapsed in an explosion behind us. We made it out. Just as I expected. Quick and efficient. That´s the way I work.
Back at the merchant's stall, the man sobbed into his daughter's hair, his tears mixing with the rain. He tried pressing a crumpled wad of bills into my hand. I let them fall. The girl's veins were still gray. She'd need a wraith-cutter. That wasn't my problem anymore.
I walked.
The streets of the underworld were stinking of blood and alcohol. Wraiths crawling in the shadows like a disease, street thugs fighting over some crap.
That's the first coherent thought that surfaces through the sake haze as I stumble down the undercity's piss-stained alleys. The wraiths here don't bother me—they know better. One scuttles too close, its elongated fingers brushing my ankle, and my flames lick out instinctively. The stench of charred chitin joins the symphony of rotting garbage and cheap narcotics.
I wasn't always this. There was a before. Before the chains, before the blood money, before my fire became something to choke back instead of unleash.
I came to this shithole five years ago. Honestly, I can barely recall why I came here. Probably because this is the best spot to make a living as an assassin, and, well, killing is the only thing I'm good at. My whole life—my birth, my training—was geared toward this. Didn't think it would be such a grind, though.
The undercity doesn't let you fade. It grinds you into paste against its concrete teeth. My first kill here was a debt collector stomping some junkie's fingers to pulp in an alley not unlike this one. Didn't even use my aspect—just snapped his neck with my bare hands. The junkie vomited on my shoes. His tears were the same temperature as the rain that night.
Now? Now I'm just another ghost haunting these streets. The gangs around here pay well, but their yen stinks of wraith essence and children's screams. I take the jobs anyway. What else is there? Redemption? Don't make me laugh.
A gunshot cracks two blocks over. Somebody wails. The undercity digests another loser.
My apartment's a tomb. No photos. No keepsakes. Just a knife collection gathering dust in the corner and the lingering stench of char. The only thing that's changed in five years is the thickness of the grime on the windows. And somewhere below these rotting floorboards, another kid's getting strapped to a table, screaming as the wraith essence floods their veins.
Outside, dawn is just another rumor staining the undercity's perpetual twilight. Somewhere below my window, a fight breaks out—the wet smack of fists on flesh, a bottle shattering, someone's wheezing laughter. Normal sounds. Human sounds. My flames itch under my skin, restless after the dream. I flex my fingers and watch blue fire dance between them, casting jagged shadows on the peeling wallpaper. It's prettier than I deserve.
The sake bottle from last night rolls empty across the floor when I kick it. Should've bought two. Should've bought ten. The merchant's daughter flashed behind my eyelids again—not her face, but her *veins*, those writhing gray lines where the Birodo Kairo-Kai pumped their wraith poison. And the general's voice, slick as oil: *You're still afraid of it.*
I light a cigarette with my thumb. The first drag tastes like ash. Like always.
I take another drag, watching smoke curl toward the water stains on the ceiling. Somewhere in this city, the Kurokiba´s general's laughing over a glass of expensive whiskey, surrounded by sycophants.
My cigarette burns down to the filter. I crush it against my palm, savoring the sting.
Fuck this.
Fuck all of this.
I reach for my robe, fingers brushing the familiar weight of switchblades and loose yen. The Birodo Kairo-Kai's eastern stronghold won't stay rubble forever. And that general—he knows too much. About me. About *them*.
The knife in my boot whispers as I pull it free. My flames lick along the blade, turning steel into cobalt fire. Outside, the undercity pulses like an open wound.
Time to stop being afraid.