Birds of the Night: A Story of Love, Death, and Blood

[Charles Flynn]

The contract was sealed in blood.

I could make no sense of the Malkavian who hired me's ramblings. But I was not paid to interpret the babbling of mad prophets. Nor was I paid to understand why my clients wanted people dead. I was paid, in both vitae and lucre, to kill things. And so, here I was. In Tokyo. Mitakihara, to be precise. Stalking the halls of Mid Bio Informatic's headquarters to kill my target.

The journey to get here had been an arduous one, both for the difficulty of avoiding the notice of the Kuei-Jin, and for the trouble of convincing the North Macedonian Post to ship my coffin to Japan in the first place. I would most likely have to wait a while to arrange my return trip to Macedonia, as a corpse in a coffin making a two-way trip would be all sorts of suspicious, but that would be no hardship. For some reason, since arriving in Tokyo, I hadn't found a single sign of Kuei-Jin presence, a fact that I would waste no time in passing on to the Old Men of the Mountain upon my return.

My client had managed, at the very least, to coherently tell me the name of my target, Karasuba, her location, and given me a work of macaroni art that he purported to be an accurate rendition of her face, which I now held in her hand. Supposedly, the fate of the world hung in the balance. Although Pavlos had a tendency to say that the fate of the world hung in the balance every time he contracted me to kill someone, even when that someone was just the teenager who kept throwing rocks at his haven, so I took it all with a grain of salt. I would still kill the woman, of course, fate of the world or no. Madman or not, Pavlos always paid upfront. He was dependable like that.

I saw a woman round the corner, and immediately cross-referenced with the macaroni art. Color palette aside, it was a fairly accurate match. Of course, if the macaroni art wasn't confirmation enough, there was also her security lanyard, which identified her, in both Japanese and Latin script, as Karasuba, no last name.

And so, my target acquired, I began to plan how I would murder this woman. It would need to be in a private location, of course, away from the watchful eyes of the employees who even now teemed through the halls, giving my target a wide berth, of course.

I followed her, cloaked in the shadows, waiting for the time to strike. And soon, opportunity knocked. She, apparently having to leave on some matter of business, decided to take an elevator to the ground floor, and, given the apparent terror that MBI's staff held her in, there would be no witness brave enough to share the elevator with her. Perfect for my plans. And so, as we waited for the elevator, her impatiently oblivious, I contemplative and all aquiver with the nervous energy of an impending assassination, I considered my options. To strike from stealth in a place where she could reasonably expect no threat was, all things considered, a guaranteed kill. But I had not survived so long as an active duty assassin of Clan Assamite without developing an exceptional sense of caution. Whatever breed of monster this woman was, it was enough to make both Pavlos and MBI's employees terrified of her. I was not in the habit of disregarding the terror of the people in the best position to know my target's capabilities. And so, I decided to be cautious. Licking my blade, I coated it in my blood, transmuted by the Discipline of Quietus to eat through all manners of flesh, in volume enough to make the next two strokes of my sword disintegrate my target's flesh.

This was all the preparation time allowed, for no sooner had I finished coating my blade than the elevator opened, and my target walked inside. I followed, only Celerity allowing me to get in before she pushed the "close doors" button.

And so, I was in the elevator, alone with my target, seven floors away from our destination. Not ideal, but I would take it. I moved, carefully positioning myself so that I could strike from behind her, without my scimitar clipping the walls. And then, with all my superhuman speed, I struck.

As my cloak of Obfuscation broke, as my sword closed the distance towards her neck, I saw her head turn, and her eyes widen, as her hand dropped to her sword. If she had been a hair quicker, or I a mite slower, a fight might have broken out in that cramped elevator. But such was not the case. Instead, her decapitated head tumbled to the floor, even as her headless body drew her blade in a textbook iaijutsu swing that forced me to the ground to avoid its arc.

I of course, being utterly terrified, immediately vomited acidic blood at her until her entire body had been reduced to a liquid slurry, seeping across the floor. Then, I came to my senses, seeing that I had only three floors to go before we would reach our destination. I immediately poured out the contents of the jerry can of gasoline which I always carried with me on assignments over the remains (such as they were.) Because you can never be too careful. Activating my cloak of shadows, and readying to light a match, I waited patiently for the elevator doors to open. And then, amid the horrified gasps as those waiting for an elevator saw the gruesome remains inside, I walked out unseen, lighting a match and tossing it over my shoulder as I went. The fire alarm soon went off, and I escaped through an emergency exit, scot-free.

A perfect assassination. Praise Haqim. Then, I set out to find a place to stay until I can ship myself back to Macedonia, and perhaps a drink. Killing people always did make me thirsty.

---​

As I wandered through the night, thirsty and ever so slightly lost, I happened to notice someone walking alone. She was tall, blond, and leggy, with some fairly impressive… blood packs on her chest. And so, since I could sense no witnesses, and I really was quite thirsty, I decided to help myself to a sip or two. The shadows embraced me, and I was soon upon her, her breath catching in her throat as I appeared before her, my teeth sinking into her throat.

And then… And then things got weird. Giant glowing wings appeared from her back, and just as I thought to myself, "good going, David, you actually managed to find an angel, and you're fangs deep in her," the taste hit me. It was rich, and deep. The ecstasy of the Kiss swept over me, magnified a thousandfold by this woman's unnatural blood. It was like being hugged by my family, like smooth, slow lovemaking with someone I deeply loved paired with the finest wine. It was intoxicating. It was addicting. I had to have more. My hunger consumed me. I could not bring myself to stop drinking, even past what I knew would leave her in need of hospitalization. And then, full, I stopped, already plotting out how to get her to the nearest hospital as my high faded. Although my loss of self-control was shameful, I would not allow this woman to die for my mistakes.

But she did not stumble, did not collapse as I licked her bite wounds shut. Instead, she stood strong, her face slightly pale, her stance a bit shaky, but otherwise stable. And she looked at me, the pleasure haze fading from her eyes.

"You…" her hazy eyes began to grow sharp with anger, as she focused on me. "What did you… Do you have any idea what you've done?"

Realizing that the answer was no, and the girl was probably some sort of bizarre Japanese werewolf if she was still standing after losing so much blood, I decided that discretion was the better part of valor, obfuscated and ran like Hell.

Privately, as I dodged the blasts of water that the Japanese werewolf girl was tossing down the alleyway, I swore that I would never again drink the blood of some strange woman in an alleyway. Sure, I had sworn the same thing before on the eight previous occasions when drinking the blood of strange women in alleyways had gotten me into trouble, but this time I meant it.

After I had made sure that I lost the weird werewolf girl and found the address of the temporary haven I had rented in the city, I settled down for the night. Unknown supernaturals aside, my time in the city had been quite pleasant. The assassination had been textbook, and if I could manage to lay low until I found a way to get myself shipped back to Macedonia, I might actually get to enjoy some peace and quiet for a change.

Thinking such pleasant thoughts, I drifted off to sleep, in my securely locked, fortified, and sun-proofed haven.

 

[Charles Flynn]

Minaka, chairman of MBI, was, all things considered, having a really, genuinely terrible day.

"Sahashi," he said, rubbing his temples as he took a sip of coffee. "What the hell happened last night?"

"Well, going over the data…" the woman who was the love of his life and the most competent employee of MBI said, bringing up the camera footage. "Here we have Karasuba walking through the halls. She gets the call telling her to come down to the lobby, and she gets in the elevator."

"Okay, what about the elevator cameras?" Minaka asked. "What did they capture?"

Sahashi pulled up the footage, letting the recording speak for itself.

In it, slowed down to one-tenth speed, you could see the Black Sekirei's eyes widen as she turned to look at something behind her, and her sword leap from the scabbard. Not that it did her any good. Something invisible cut straight through her neck, while her body's last desperate attack, still operating on her now-severed head's final commands, hit nothing at all, carving a gouge into the metal walls of the elevator, but seemingly finding no other resistance. And then Karasuba's corpse began… melting into a pile of blood and…

"Is that gasoline?" Minaka asked.

"According to forensic analysis, yes," Sahashi said with a sigh. "You know, I always thought that the day Karasuba died, I'd be celebrating. But now we've got an invisible assassin capable of killing the second strongest Sekirei in existence running around, and we have no clue where he is."

"All right. Have the forensic techs look for clues, and Haihane and Benitsubasa double down on projecting authority. We just lost our strongest trump card, and we'll have to bluff like hell if we want to keep this plan on rails." Minaka rubbed his temples even harder. "Also, could you send someone to get aspirin? I have one hell of a headache right now."

"Already got it," Sahashi said, tossing him the bottle. "I figured you'd need it."

"Marry me."

"Never."

And with their customary goodbye having been exchanged, Sahashi walked off to do damage control, while Minaka popped aspirin, called in a few favors from some old Technocracy colleagues, and improvised like Hell.

---​

"That. Didn't. Happen," Tsukiumi muttered, as she stalked through the streets, her eyes narrowed as she tried to find him. Her Ashikabi, whoever the hell he was. She had no idea how it had happened, but one moment, she had been prowling the streets, looking for her last fight of the day, another chance to prove her strength, that she could be the strongest Sekirei ever all on her own, without an Ashikabi! And then, all out of nowhere, some random guy had just… jumped out and winged her. Without her permission! She didn't really remember how he winged her just… a haze of pleasure. It had felt good, that at least was certain, but she didn't want it. She could feel her bond with her Ashikabi now, inside her head, trying to make her love him, and she slammed that wheedling voice out through the window of her mind. She didn't need an Ashikabi. She didn't want an Ashikabi. But she had an Ashikabi now, and come hell or high water (heh) she was going to fix that. With excruciating amounts of violence.

Of course, first, she had to find the bastard. And-

Just then, the sun rose, and she felt her Ashikabi… die. And as her body locked up, as her mind began to shut down, she had one thought, and one thought alone. "HOW DARE HE NOT STAY ALIVE LONG ENOUGH FOR ME TO KILL HIM MYSELF?"

---​

That evening, Tsukiumi, Sekirei No. 9, woke up in the cold-storage where MBI kept deactivated Sekirei. Her first thought was that she was still going to kill her Ashikabi, but she was very grateful that he was apparently alive again, since it gave her so many more options vis-à-vis killing him. Her second thought was that she was naked, and it was very cold in here. She vowed further vengeance upon her Ashikabi for putting her through this. And so, after a brief and extremely pointed conversation with the morgue attendant, she was out, and on the road to vengeance once more, drawn inexorably by her bond towards her Ashikabi.

Her search led her through the city, searching for her prey everywhere she could. He was moving. But he was her Ashikabi. She could feel his presence, calling her towards him. And she was answering. Oh boy was she going to answer him. She chuckled, entertaining herself with visions of the absurd amounts of violence she planned on inflicting on her Ashikabi.

She walked on. Daytime was drawing near, and she feared that her Ashikabi would "die" again, once daylight came. She wasn't sure how that worked, but she knew she was going to probably beat an explanation out of him. And maybe, just maybe, if he apologized profusely enough, she might allow him to assist her in becoming the strongest Sekirei ever. But first, he would suffer.

Of course, what she did not know, what she could not know, was that she was right on top of her quarry, who was quaking under his obfuscated veil as his efforts to lose her repeatedly failed. Until, at last, "Found you, knave."

He had been forced to cease hiding and confront her.

"You dared to wing me? To try to make me into some… smiling puppet, enslaved by love? Think again, dog! I am here, and I am-"

What else Tsukiumi was would prove to be a mystery, lost to time, because that's when David Nikolovski, Son of Haqim, her Ashikabi, who had been very careful about luring her away from any witnesses, brained her with a shovel at roughly half the speed of sound. She stared, woozily, until he hit her with the shovel another nine times, and she passed out.

"Right. Best not to waste someone who might know the local scene," David muttered to himself, grabbing her by the ankles and dumping her into a steamer trunk he had prepared nearby. "Bloodbond it is."

 

[Charles Flynn]

I regarded the werewolf girl with distaste, as she stared back at me with equal antipathy from the steel chair that I've chained her to.

"Shall we begin with the basics?" I asked. "What is your species called? I'm assuming that you are the same breed of creature as Karasuba, right now."

"Karasuba?" the girl said, looking flabbergasted. "How do you know Karasuba, lecher?"

"I killed her," I said matter-of-factly, enjoying the way her eyes widened, and she sidled back. The familiarity between them reinforced my theory that she and Karasuba were the same sort of creature, although this one was clearly a lesser exemplar of the species. "Now, what is the name of your species?"

"Sekirei," she said. "Now let me go."

"You will continue to answer my questions until I am satisfied. Otherwise, I will kill you," I told her.

She blinks. "No, you… You can't do that! You need me!"

"I'm fairly certain that your role as a source of information can be easily fulfilled by any other member of your species that I capture. In fact, killing you might aid in future interrogations. Any more Sekirei that I interrogate will be more inclined to take my threats seriously if I punctuate them by presenting your severed head."

"That's…" she looks completely and utterly lost. "I bet you couldn't even do it, you weakling! You're nothing! That's why you winged me and…"

She stops when she feels my blade cut into her throat.

"Your continued existence is a privilege, not a right," I inform her. "Please conduct yourself accordingly. You will receive no further warnings. Now then. What do you mean, I 'winged' you? What is the significance of this word?"

"I…" she eyed me warily as I calmly licked clean my blade, all short, measure licks, like a cat cleaning its paws, with none of that 'slowly trailing your tongue along the blade' nonsense that some of my clanmates were fond of. "It means that we're… bound together. Sekirei mate for life, and…" she blushed furiously. "It means. That. You're." She forced each word out with difficulty. "My. Ashikabi."

"You seem roughly as enthusiastic about this as I am," I note with a raised eyebrow, inspecting my blade to see if I'd missed a spot. Finding no blemishes, I returned Drusilla to her sheath. "If it's a mate you desire, I am unable to fulfill your desires."

"I don't want a mate! I don't want an Ashikabi! I wanted to grow strong, all on my own, without having to … whore myself out to anyone! But then YOU happened!" she screamed, her eyes flooding with tears. "I wanted to be a strong, honorable warrior, who was powerful all on her own, and you… you! If you didn't even want a Sekirei, didn't even know we existed, why did you wing me, huh? You have to seal it with a kiss, you know? What, are you just some creepy pervert who takes advantage of cute girls in dark alleys? You are, aren't you!"

I didn't cut her head off, because she was technically correct, if off on a few details, but I did slash her across the forehead. Apparently, the Blood Kiss could wing Sekirei. I decided then that I would have to be more careful in my feeding patterns in the future.

"Let's endeavor to stay on topic, shall we?" I say pleasantly, lapping up the blood from the blade even as she tilts her head back to keep the blood from her forehead from reaching her eyes. "Now then. Thank you for clearing that up. Honestly, I think we should just part ways from here on. You are, of course, free to seek strength on your own. Meanwhile, once I have successfully secured a transport flight, I will return to my native Macedonia, and hopefully never return to this damn country again. In the best-case scenario, once that happens, we'll never see each other again. We may resume our separate lives, unperturbed by this unfortunate twist of fate."

"You… just want to go our separate ways?" she repeated, sounding absolutely flabbergasted. "Pretend… this never happened?"

"Yes. I am attempting to delete your existence from my memory at this very moment, and sadly, it's slightly impeded by you sitting there, existing, like some great lump," I said. "You're a Sekirei who doesn't want an Ashikabi, I'm an Ashikabi who doesn't want a Sekirei. Fantastic. Match made in heaven. Let's split. Part ways. Mutually go to different shops to go get cigarettes and never come back. Vamoose. Is that fine by you, or was all that, 'I want to be the strongest all on my own' talk just talk? I'd hate to be associated with a liar who abandons her dreams, after all."

"I…" she looks honestly lost. "Ever since I was winged by you, I've been… I've been shutting down during the days. It's like I'm dead. How can I… how can I be the strongest if I'm completely helpless during the day?"

I started laughing. "You'll manage. Now GO!" And with that, I unchained her, and pointed towards the door.

I should've killed the girl. She had, after all, demonstrated the ability to track me, even when I was Obfuscated. But… I respected her goals. Just a little. I too had once sought strength. And I too had once longed to be free.

And so, I waited until after she had left before I called Valorius on my burner phone.

The Tremere picked up on the second ring. "Yes."

"This is David. David Nikolovski."

"David! Always good to hear from my favorite procurer. What brought this on?"

"I've discovered a new species of supernatural creature in Japan. Tell me, have you ever heard of 'Sekirei' before?"

"No. Can't say I have." I can hear the curiosity in his voice.

"Well then, how about three bottles of vitae, 7th​ Generation or lower, along with five grand American per sample? Double if the sample's live."

"Hm. I'll need proof first."

"I'll send you a head. If it checks out, I'll expect my fee to be deposited in the usual spot. My ghoul will process it in my place."

"I'll be sure to check my mail, then. Pleasure to work with you, David."

"Same here, Valorius," I said with a nod, hanging up.

I looked down at my phone, and grinned.

I always told people, when they asked me why I always chained my contracts back-to-back, that I was simply dedicated to the cause of Haqim. But the truth was… I just loved to kill people for money.

It seemed I'd found my next business opportunity. It was time to hunt some Sekirei.

 

[Charles Flynn]

"You stupid bitch!" the hoodie wearing man shouted, striking his companion, clearly a Sekirei, across the face. "You let him get away!"

Perched on a windowsill two stories above my prey, I observed the goings on in the alleyway. I had lured the fools below me away easily enough, and now I could… experiment with them at my leisure. I had already sent a body Valorius' way, now… Now it was time to indulge in my own scientific curiosities.

The more I observed the Sekirei, these strange creatures who were MBI's signature product, the more they began to remind me not of werewolves, but of ghouls. The scene below me confirmed it. The female, easily strong enough to crack pavement with that enormous hammer of hers, was cowering, refusing to fight back against her physically inferior mate. I could see it earlier, when I had used Obfuscate to take up the appearance of my earlier prey's Ashikabi, and her body had seized up to prevent her from striking back at me. The Sekirei, however powerful, all had one thing in common: They were slaves. Slaves of "Love" but slaves nonetheless. The only question was: Why?

The process of "winging" was far too finicky and specific to be a natural one. Were they of supernatural origin? Or scientific? Had MBI created them? Bound them? Simply found them and exploited their bindings? And what was MBI's stake in this whole matter, anyways? Did they aim to domesticate them, tame them as prehistoric man turned wolves to dogs? Mass-produce them, market to the entire world as ethically non-problematic slave labor, bound only by pre-programmed bonds of love? I suddenly regretted letting my stalker go earlier. She could have brought with her so many answers. Now, I could only hope that Valorius' dissection would yield answers, and that he would be inclined to share them with me.

And, of course, test one thing: What happened to a Sekirei if her Ashikabi died?

Sword in hand, I pounced, and cut the man's head clean off.

"You!" she cried, hammer raised, before she took in her Ashikabi's state and began to sob. "No, no, no!"

"Are we going to fight?" I asked politely, lapping up the blood on my blade. "I would hate to have to kill you so soon after freeing you."

"No… what's the point?" she said, her hammer lowered. "Now that he's dead, I'll die, too. I don't even know why I'm still alive to talk to you."

"His brain will take a minute or two to suffocate to death. Now, with regards to your impending death, are you willing to consider a job offer from me? Side effects may include drinking the blood of the living, but do you want to go on without him?" I kicked her Ashikabi's severed head just to make sure she knew who I was referring to.

"No." she shook her head. "You sick monster. What the hell are…"

And then, of course, she keeled over, dead.

"A slave to the last," I said with a sigh. "What a pity. And now you'll serve another's ends even in death, when, if you'd taken my offer, you could've lived for yourself." I heaved her corpse over my shoulder. Hopefully, Valorius would pay for a second body as well.

And then I leapt to the side to dodge the gout of fire that erupted in the alleyway.

"Put. Her. Down." A voice said above me.

"Why? She's not using the body anymore, might as well be put to use for medical experimentation," I said with a purposefully nonchalant air, even as I restrained the panicked Beast inside me from fleeing. "What's your stake in the matter, anyways?"

"She's kin," said the man, and it was a man. Silver-haired and clad in a black outfit, complete with a light, stylish trenchcoat and a mask covering the lower half of his face. His fists were enshrouded in flame, and his glare towards me was warlike. "And I pay my dues to the dead."

"Ah. Another Sekirei," I said, with a raised eyebrow, shoving the Beast even further back into the dark. "A male one, and a man of great familial piety, at that! So rare in young men these days, wouldn't you agree?"

"Put her down," he said. "MBI will be coming to collect her body and inter her with the other fallen Sekirei. I don't know what sick plans you have for her corpse, but like hell I'll let you take her without a fight."

"Hm. A trade, then," I said. "I'll release her body into your care, and in exchange, you'll answer three of my questions with complete and total honesty."

"For three questions?" the Sekirei asked, tilting his head. "Why?"

"Because I've never seen anything like you Sekirei before," I said. "And the more I learn about your kind, the more desperately ravenous for new answers I become. So please, dear friend. Won't you sate this poor old man's curiosity?"

I was telling the truth. In all honesty, I don't think I could have brought myself to leave Japan by that point, even if a flight had opened up the very next day. I was gripped by a ravenous curiosity, the likes of which I had felt only once before, in England, during the Summer of 1862, which had ended with me facing off against a werewolf on top of a moving train, while down two arms and wielding a sword cane using my teeth. It remained, to this day, one of the fondest memories of my long, long life.

I was on the trail of some grand adventure, of danger, excitement, and frenzied combat the likes of which I hadn't faced in decades, and it called me towards it like a bottle of whiskey calls on alcoholic.

"Fine. Put her down, and I'll answer."

"Firstly," I said, rolling the body to the ground and making sure I was in a position to mutilate it if my enemy and or interviewee should break his word. "My name is David, by the way."

"Homura," he says by way of introduction, allowing me to avoid having to waste one of my questions asking for his name. I'm not sure if they're fae, but better safe than sorry.

"Very well. It's a pleasure to meet you, Homura. My first question is this: What manner of being are Sekirei? To put it another way, from whence do you draw your origin?"

"We're an alien species, although biologically similar enough to humans to mate," he said, causing my eyebrows to rise.

"An alien? Really? How fascinating! You wouldn't be lying to me, would you?"

"I am a man of my word," he said with a glare. "Every answer I give you is the truth, so far as I am aware. There are limits to my knowledge, though."

"Extraordinary!" I said cheerfully, a grin splitting my face ear to ear beneath my wrappings. "I've never met an alien before! This is new! I love it!"

"Glad you're pleased," Homura said, looking faintly disturbed.

"Now then, Homura, my extraterrestrial friend, why is your species enslaved by humans?" I asked.

"We aren't- No! We're not slaves!" he said, looking appalled.

"My experiences with your species so far would beg to differ," I said, with a tilt of my head. "In all honesty, this 'winging' procedure seems akin to a form of domestication, as primal humanity did unto the savage wolf. It certainly doesn't strike me as any sort of natural evolution. I certainly wouldn't put it past MBI to… ah, yes, my third question, how are your kind connected to MBI?"

"We…" he looks lost. "MBI found us and modified us so that we could bond with human Ashikabi without hurting them. They also retrieve deactivated Sekirei and oversee the Sekirei Plan."

"And I've run out of questions, so I can't even ask what the Sekirei Plan is," I said with a sigh. "As for why I assumed your kind were slaves, well, I'll give that knowledge to you for free. Do your kind have any who remember a time before MBI had control over you?"

He remained tight-lipped, fire in hand, waiting for me to fulfill my half of the bargain.

"Because I don't think that your species' bonding is inherent to your kind. I think it's something MBI slipped in, to tame you. Humans have always been a dab hand at domestication, and you Sekirei, well…" I nodded towards the fire burning in the alleyway. "I'm sure you can see why MBI thought you'd make a useful slave race."

"That's not true!" he snapped. "If that was their goal, they wouldn't be making us all fight to the death!"

So that's what the Sekirei plan was. Good to know. "Keep telling yourself that, Homura. I'm sure you and all your species have a bright and shining future ahead of you as Man's Second-Best Friend. Right after Canis Familiaris, of course."

He responded to that particular burn by trying to burn me to a crisp. Fortunately, I had already vanished into the shadows, dashing away at lightning speed. His fire only hit the body of his deceased kinswoman, reducing her to ash.

His scream of grief and fury echoed through the alleys behind me as I raced unseen towards my haven. The sun would soon be up, and I had a great deal of knowledge to think over.

 

[Charles Flynn]

When the sun rose in the sky, it found Tsukiumi, Sekirei No. Nine, temporarily terminated once more, passed out on the street in a puddle of her own blood. Her bond with her unwilling Ashikabi had registered him as dead, and so her limiters (courtesy of MBI) triggered her shutdown. Admittedly, her body was starting to notice a pattern here, and soon, the limiters would have adapted, and her bond with her Ashikabi would learn to distinguish between Final Death and Torpor. But soon was not now, and so she lay in the puddle of blood from the head wound her Ashikabi had given her.

She could have, and really should have, gotten that head wound treated, but unfortunately, prior to the sun's ascension, she had been a hotbed of emotional turmoil. Her Ashikabi had rejected her. He'd supported her dreams (which a part of her couldn't help but fawn over) by showing her to the curb. It was… mind-boggling. Utterly contrary to all expectations. She had teetered upon the edge of madness attempting to wrap her head around what had just happened. Her Ashikabi, who she'd never wanted, and who'd forced her to be his, didn't want her. He'd said he would kill her if they ever met again. Then why did he wing her in the first place? Make up your damn mind, you contrary bastard! These sorts of thoughts endlessly spiraled about her mind, throwing her into a fugue. She knew not up from down, nor left from right, only the ceaseless turmoil of her mind. (Admittedly, that wasn't just her emotions, the blood loss from her head injury was not helping her sense of direction.)

Finally, the sun had risen, and struck her low. This would have been the end of Tsukiumi, Sekirei No. Nine. Perhaps her slow but steady blood loss would have done her in. Perhaps she would have been eaten by rats, or stray dogs. But instead of all those unpleasant things happening, she was found by an extremely angry and distraught Homura, the sixth Sekirei, guardian of the unwinged.

Fresh off his infuriating encounter with David Nikolovski, Homura was shocked to find yet another of his people so callously slain, presumably, by the same creepy bastard who'd killed another Sekirei just two hours ago, and taunted Homura into accidentally burning said Sekirei's terminated form to ashes. And so, despite the fact that he had to get back to the Izumo Inn in order to catch up on his sleep, he decided to stand vigil over the body, until MBI came to pick it up. He flipped her over, recognizing her as the same Sekirei who had so proudly attacked him, declaring that she would never need an Ashikabi to be strong.

"Poor fool," he said aloud. "Probably found an opponent she couldn't defeat alone."

He tore off a strip of his sleeve, and used it, along with the wet wipes he carried for host club work, to clean up her face, and stop her head wound from leaking. Then, with an air of grim finality, Homura crossed Tsukiumi's arms over her chest, to give her the air of quiet dignity in her last rest. And then, he set out to stand vigil, until MBI's people came to retrieve the body.

He stood there for about an hour, and corpse disposal failed to show. Fed up, he called MBI.

"Hello? Yes, I'm…"

"All of our operators are busy at the moment," said the smooth, feminine voice of the answering system. "Please wait patiently."

Smooth jazz began to play.

"Motherfucker!" Homura shouted to no in particular and set in to wait.

It had been another hour, and he'd begun to play Tetris on his phone out of sheer boredom, when the MBI operator picked up.

"Hello?"

"Oh, thank God," Homura muttered. "Hi, this is… are you cleared on the Plan?"

"I'm cleared on the Sekirei Plan, yes," the operator said.

"Good. I'm currently standing vigil over the body of one of my fellow Sekirei, this is Sekirei Number Nine, Homura, by the way."

"The one who burned Number Eighty-Four's body?" the operator asked.

Homura's teeth ground together. "Yes. Is that important, though?"

"I guess not. So, standing vigil over your latest victim, aaaaaaaand….?" The operator prompted.

"SHE IS NOT MY VICTIM!" Homura shouted, punching the wall. "I found her body. I'm waiting on an MBI clean-up squad to bring her to the termination wards."

"Is this Number Nine we're talking about?" the operator asked.

"Yes, she was Sekirei Number Nine," Homura said sadly, thinking back to the fights they'd had. He'd truly wished nothing more than for her to find her own happiness, just as he wished for all his kin.

"The pickup vehicle isn't coming," the operator said bluntly. "Number Nine was already reported terminated yesterday, but she walked out of cryostorage come nightfall. She's probably fine."

"Probably… SHE IS DEAD!" Homura yelled. "I found her in a puddle of her own blood! She isn't even breathing! She's finished! Kaput! THIS IS AN EX-SEKIREI!"

"That's what we thought yesterday," said the operator. "Just give her a day, see if she wakes up."

"From being DEAD?" Homura shouted.

Smooth jazz was the only answer he got.

"I am going to burn that man's fucking house down," Homura said, perfectly calm, before turning towards Tsukiumi. "And I can't exactly leave you here, can I?"

And so, he hoisted Tsukiumi's body onto one shoulder and began to make his way back towards the Izumo Inn.

Only to realize that it was daylight hours in Tokyo, and he was a mysterious masked figure carrying a woman's corpse over his shoulder.

As several onlookers screamed, and the police were being called, Homura could only ruminate upon where the hell he'd gone wrong today. It was, he decided after some thought, when he had gotten out of bed.

---
​

Homura returned to the Izumo Inn at half past twelve. His mask was slightly askew, his hair was mussed, he was dripping with sweat, and there was a bullet hole in his coat. Tsukiumi's body was still firmly slung over one of his shoulders. Entering into the living room, he found precisely the man he was looking for.

Minato Sahashi was at the Inn's living room table, studying for his exams, when Homura came in and dropped a corpse on the table, making him jump and sputter. "H-Homura? What happened to you? Who is this? Why did you just dump a corpse on the table?"

"Minato. Watch the body. I'm going to get a beer, and then go to sleep. If she starts being alive again, come get me," and that said, Homura went off in search of Kazehana, the Inn's resident lush, in the hopes that she would hook him up with some booze.

Minato was, admittedly, extremely confused. But he also trusted and admired Homura enough to let this particular oddity pass without comment, and so, he watched the body out of the corner of his eye, while still trying to study.

After half an hour, he gave up on studying, because he couldn't quite bring himself to ignore the elephant in the room. Or, in this case, the corpse on the table. So, he just stared at the corpse. The corpse, however, refused to yield its corpsetacular mysteries to him, no matter how hard he stared at it. It didn't matter to Minato. He was a persistent man, you see. He just kept watching the corpse.

Such was the state of affairs when Musubi, his first Sekirei walked in. "Minato, Miya said that… Why is there a corpse on the table?"

"Homura brought it in. Said that I should watch it and go tell him if she comes back to life."

"Oh, okay," Musubi said, before thinking things over. "Can I watch it with you?"

"Sure."

And so, they watched Tsukiumi's corpse together, speculating on why Homura had brought it here.

"I think she must be a mummy!" said Musubi.

"But she's not wrapped up in bandages, or desiccated, or anything," Minato pointed out.

"But her chest is super big, and I heard that the girls get bigger when you have kids!" Musubi said confidently.

"You think she's a mom?" Minato said incredulously. "Musubi, mothers don't spontaneously rise from the dead."

"But… But that makes all those Disney movies so much more depressing!" Musubi said, beginning to cry.

At this point, Minato was forced to comfort his Sekirei as she finally realized what had actually happened to Bambi's mother, and the discussion stalled out a bit.

That was when Kusano entered the room. "Mister Minato, why is there a dead person on the table?"

"Kagari left the body here and told me to watch her in case she came back to life," Minato said.

"That's so cool!" Kusano shouted excitedly. "I'll tell everybody!"

"No, maybe don't," Minato said. "I wouldn't want to worry everyone."

"About what?" Matsu asked, poking her head down the stairs. "I heard Ku shouting and- HOLY CRAP IS THAT A DEAD BODY?"

That last bit was loud enough to draw everyone into the living room, and soon Minato was faced with a great many angry people, all demanding answers.

"Look, Homura left the body here and told me to watch her in case she came back to life," Minato said. "I don't know what else to tell you! He looked pretty beat up when he brought her in. And look, doesn't MBI have sensors that point them towards terminated Sekirei? They haven't come yet, so maybe she really is going to come back. I don't know."

"Well, if she's coming back, she'd better do so before dinnertime," Miya, the innkeeper, said. "I'm not serving food on a table with a corpse on it."

And so, soon the entirety of the Izumo Inn (minus Homura, who was still sound asleep,) was watching Tsukiumi's body.

And come sundown, Tsukiumi arose, her mind still in turmoil, to find ten people staring at her (Seo and the twins had dropped by, and gotten drawn in to the corpse-watch.) She screamed like a banshee, and everyone else screamed with her.

As introductions went, it wasn't half bad.

 

[Charles Flynn]

Minaka hated this. He hated the stupid elevator music on his way up to the office of the man he came to see. He hated the fact that he had to fly to them, not them to him. He hated that one interloper, one goddamn interloper, had reduced him to this by killing Karasuba. But most importantly, he hated the fact that in this moment, in this place… he wasn't in control. And nothing was going according to plan.

"Minaka!" said Darryl Brandt, section chief of the New World Order, North Pacific operations, as the head of MBI stepped into his office. "What a surprise! I never thought you'd come crawling back to us."

"Darryl," said Minaka with a forced smile. "Same carpet, I see."

"I could never bring myself to get rid of it. My mother got it for me, you know," said Darryl. "But enough pleasantries! What brings you to my office? Finally realized the error of your ways and decided to turn those damn aliens of yours over for vivisection and termination?"

"No. The Sekirei will continue to exist under my protection until they're ready for the wider world," said Minaka.

"Shame. But you did make that clear during the whole Kamikura Island debacle. You killed an awful lot of our guys there, as a matter of fact," Darryl said, clasping his hands in front of him. "You know, if I was any other section chief, I'd probably be having you shot right now."

"Which is why I went to you, and not any other section chief, Darryl," Minaka said. "Unlike them, you're reasonable."

"Well, give me the details of this deal you're here to make, and I'll see if it's worth my while," said Darryl, leaning back in his chair.

"I'm down an enforcer. My previous one died under… unusual circumstances. I need a big enough stick to keep order among the flock, and I know you can make one. I have the genetic sequences of Karasuba, the previous enforcer, and I'll want five clones of her, all cybernetically enhanced with the best bag of tricks Iteration X can provide."

"And what's in it for us?" Darryl asked. "All I'm hearing so far is that you want me to twist the arms of Iteration X and the Progenitors, just so… what? You can keep on playing at being king of the freaks?"

"I'll leave you the sample, and you can make as many tricked-out clones as you want, all for your own personal use," Minaka said, hating every word of it. "The Sekirei in question was one of the five who fought at Kamikura. You've seen her in action. Imagine that much power, mass-produced, and turned loose on every reality deviant you can find."

"Hm," Darryl stroked his goatee. "Which one was she?"

"The one with the katana…"

"That describes half your combatants-" Darryl interjected.

"…who was laughing maniacally as she slaughtered your men."

"Oh, yes, well I suppose that does considerably narrow things down," Darryl sat back in his chair. "Oh, I remember her now. I think I'll take you up on that offer."

"Alright, then." And Minaka laid the briefcase he'd brought in onto Darryl's desk. "Here's the sample, along with MBI's data on cloning Sekirei. I'll expect your end of the bargain in a week."

"I can pull some strings," Darryl said. "We'll make it. Incidentally, I'm surprised you didn't keep this in-house."

"We have the technology to clone Sekirei, true, but we're not able to flash-clone them," Minaka admitted. "And need those clones sooner rather than later."

"And… if we were to make the clones, and not give any to you?" Darryl asked.

"Well, then I suppose I'd just trigger the nano-explosives I put in your lunch yesterday," said Minaka.

"What? How? But, no matter, that's easily disarmed."

"But the other five undetectable kill-switches I set up aren't," Minaka said, pushing his glasses up his nose. "You might catch one or two of them, but all five?"

"You sly son of a bitch," Darryl said, anger quickly supplanted by awe. "Are you sure you won't come back? We still miss you around the office."

"My course is set. And I'll be expecting your delivery in a week," Minaka said. And then he triggered the self-destruct on his robotic proxy body, utterly ruining Darryl's carpet.

---​

Back at MBI, Minaka disconnected from the control rig for his mechanical doppelganger. "The deal's set," he said to Sahashi. "We're good to go."

"Glad to hear it," Sahashi said.

"Any new developments while I was dealing with Darryl?" he asked.

"Miya got another tenant," she said.

"Minato winged another Sekirei?"

"No. We think 09, the Sekirei in question, might've been winged by something… unusual. She's terminated in a way similar to Ashikabi death induced terminations and come back. Twice."

"Vampire," Minaka said. "If they lay down dead during the day, the Sekirei-Ashikabi bond could mistake that for death."

"Do you think the Gaki sent our mysterious murderer, then?" Sahashi asked.

"No. We took measures to prevent them from getting in. But…" Minaka was silent for a while, and then voiced his thoughts. "There are some in the Technocracy who theorize that the vampires we have over here, like the Gaki, and the ones on the mainland, are an entirely different breed from the ones they have in the West. If that's the case…"

"Our mysterious assailant could be a Western vampire who slipped past our defenses, simply by dint of being biologically dissimilar enough to not trip sensors calculated to detect Japanese vampires," Sahashi finished for him.

"That changes things a little. It means that we're dealing with an even more unknown opponent. We have very little knowledge of his abilities, and even less of his motivations. But it does mean that there's a solid chance that the Gaki don't know about our current state of weakness and won't react quickly enough to take advantage of it," Minaka sighed, and ran his fingers through his hair. "So now we just have to avoid any of the Sekirei Plan's participants realizing that the Enforcement Squad's been defanged for a week. I can manage that."

---​

"My lady," a man in a darkened building in Saitama Prefecture said. "Our spies have reported in. The dog of MBI known as Karasuba is dead. Several sources have confirmed it."

"Very well," said the woman, sitting upon a throne of jade. "Send out the call. Rally our kindred. The time has come to put the interlopers to the sword and retake our homeland's capital for the Wan Xian."

And so, the Hungry Dead of Japan began to muster for war.

 

[Charles Flynn]

The Sekirei Plan.

A deathmatch between members of an alien species, bound and enslaved by human beings.

And, honestly, I wanted in.

It was fascinating. Legitimately fascinating. For the first time in over a century, I felt alive. My body was aflame with energy, my mind consumed by curiosity. I had, I realized, been merely going through the motions before. The centuries had worn me down. Even the march of technology and innovation had lost its luster after I discovered the nature of the Technocracy (although, for business purposes, I still kept up with the latest tech in order to blend in). But now, I had found a mystery unexplored, a horizon unventured! And now, my heart beat once more from my excitement.

I had already achieved Ashikabi status, of course, but I had also given my word that I would support… you know, I never caught my Sekirei's name. But I had promised the girl that I would not trouble her, that she would be free to pursue her dream of freedom, without interference from me, despite the ties that bound us. And I was a man of my word.

Perhaps… Perhaps I had discarded her too readily. Perhaps I had let my sympathy blind me to her usefulness, allowed my pity for the clipped bird, bound to me no matter how much she hated it, to influence me too greatly. I had discarded a useful tool.

But my word was my bond. And so, I would have to find another Sekirei to use. Regardless of what victory in this plan might entail, I could clearly see that any Sekirei would make an exceptional ghoul, especially if I were to pair their "winging" with the blood-bond.

And that was why, that night, I was standing on the rooftops above an Ashikabi-Sekirei pair. Relative small fry. Number… sixty-one? Somewhere in the sixties.

They would be my subjects for tonight's experiment.

"And… begin."

I dropped, still wrapped in the shadows, landing behind the female.

Test one: Could the Blood Kiss take precedence over a pre-existing winging?

"I don't think chicken stock works well with ramen," she was saying before I sank my teeth into her neck. Her words were cut off by a strangled gasp, as the Kiss swept over her.

But even so… No wings.

Test results… negative. The blood was excellent, though. It tasted like…

"Anko!" her Ashikabi screamed, as he witnessed me drink his girlfriend's blood. And then, she began to struggle against me. Fascinating. The bond between Sekirei and Ashikabi could allow them to resist the Blood Kiss? So it seemed. I released her, and she immediately leapt back, bringing up her sword (a fairly well maintained khopesh) into guard stance.

"Fascinating!" I said, grinning ear to ear. "It's rare that I've had the opportunity to cross blades with a khopesh user. I look forward to seeing just how well you measure up compared to my previous opponent." That particular Settite elder had been a pain and a half to beat, but Jesu Christos was she fun to fight!

"You… what?" she said, as blood trickled down from the holes in her neck. "What the hell are you? Why are you attacking us?"

I lunged, and she stepped back, even as I blitzed her with an aggressive opening offensive. She used her khopesh as it was intended, attempting to catch my blade in a parry and disarm me from there. A pity, then, that the throwing knife I tossed into her belly with my left hand even as my right hand brought my scimitar down upon her disrupted her parry, allowing my blade to hit her wrist instead of the curved section of her khopesh, taking her hand clean off.

Just like most of my swordfights against less experienced opponents, it ended within less than five strikes. She was left clutching her bleeding stump, back pressed against the alley's wall.

"Well now. That's a bit of a handicap you've got there," I said with a smile. "This is hardly fair now, is it? Perhaps I should even the playing field? What do you think, Mr. Ashikabi? Should I even the playing field?"

"Don't you dare touch him!" she screamed, lunging for me with her one remaining fist clenched.

"Look, I admire your fighting spirit, but your hand is off, and…" I threw another dagger with pinpoint accuracy into her Ashikabi's kneecap as I sidestepped her telegraphed punch. "Your master isn't going anywhere. The least you can do is hear out my offer, play for the winning team for a change."

"I'll never abandon him! Seiji! Run!"

"Not without you!" her Ashikabi, apparently named Seiji, cried out, clutching his knee as he struggled to his feet, clutching his injured kneecap. "Remember? I still have to introduce you to my parents! So, I'm not leaving unless it's with you by my side!"

"So melodramatic," I said with a sigh, even as I chopped off the girl's other hand. "Really, is it so hard to hear a man out without going into hysterics? Ugh. Teenagers."

"You won't touch him!" she screamed. "I won't let you!"

"Stulta femina," I muttered, sweeping her legs out from under her and placing my boot firmly upon her chest. "There. I have literally disarmed you, and you are currently bleeding to death. Shut up and open wide."

And so saying, I cut open my wrist and poured my vitae into her mouth. She coughed it up, her very body rejecting it.

"Fascinating," I said, marveling at how thoroughly MBI had bound their pet bioweapons. "Anko, was it? You're dying."

Her eyes were wide, and her breathing frantic. She was well on her way to the great undiscovered country, and she didn't want to go. I could hear her Ashikabi sobbing behind me.

"If you die, who will protect Seiji?" I asked her. "My blood can heal you. My blood can save you. So… Even if it revolts you, no matter how much your body tries to reject it, you need to swallow it. Think of Seiji. You need the blood to save Seiji, to live with Seiji, to get to be with Seiji for the rest of your natural lives." And I poured it again. This time, she got it into her system, and she moaned indecently as her wounds closed. At the sound, Seiji looked up, a sort of indignant jealousy on his face.

"I… thank you," she said, looking at me with a strange, conflicted light in her eyes.

"I can give you more, if you want," I said with a smile. "I'm not so bad a fellow, you see. This blood of mine… well, with enough of it, you can even regrow your hands, if you've the stamina and will for it. So, tell me, dear Anko, would you like some more? Do you want to regain your hands?"

"Anko, don't!" Seiji said, his teeth gritted with pain. "He's planning something! He's up to no good! He just attacks us out of nowhere so, what? He can feed you his blood? There's got to be a catch, don't you see?"

"He's right, of course. There is a catch," I said with a shrug. "But… is evading my machinations really worth a life without hands? Unable to protect the man you love? Everything has a price, little Anko. The question is… how much will you pay to be able to defend your beloved?"

"Everything," she whispered, and she opened her mouth wide.

I answered her silent acquiescence with a stream of vitae, just a little more than what a ghoul can safely hold within them without side effects, enough to regrow a hand. "Once the vitae is inside you, exert your will. You need a hand. There should be a hand at the end of one of your arms, but there isn't. The Blood within you is the pathway to miracles. USE IT. Fix it."

And lo, she fixed it. First the bones, then the muscles, slowly but surely, her right hand regenerated, before my very eyes, even as she screamed like a banshee. I had quickly deployed Quietus, of course, but the first scream was loud enough to have me glancing about, looking for any onlookers who might've heard the scream. I found none.

Soon, she was staring in awe at her regrown hand.

"Would you like me to do the other one?" I asked.

Seiji quietly sobbed as Anko nodded.

And then, thirty minutes later, it was done. I spent most of that time applying a tourniquet to Seiji's leg while Anko regrew her left hand. It wouldn't do to have my next act disrupted by his death, after all.

Thrice had she drunk of my blood. The first drink produced strong emotion, fleeting emotion. The second produced stronger emotional attachment still, to the point where she would implicitly trust and even obey me, according to the dictates of her nature. But the third? The third produced absolute, slavish devotion, a twisted and total love. A Blood Bond. It would be interesting indeed to see how the blood bond's forced love interacted with MBI's restrictions. Which tool of enslavement would prove the greater?

"Why…" Anko murmured. "Why do I love you?"

Seiji stiffened and let out a groan of pure heartbreak.

"I love Seiji, but… but…" her eyes widened, and she seemed to be fighting off a panic attack. "I also love you. How is this even possible, I'm not… I'm not supposed to feel like this?"

I put my finger to her lips and shushed her.

"Get away from her!" Seiji screamed.

"This is the catch of the blood, dear. It makes you love me. But… It hurts, doesn't it? Loving two people equally greatly. It hurts you, doesn't it, little bird? Like catching two winds going opposite directions at the same time. It's tearing you asunder," I surmised. "The blood can't make you stop loving your Ashikabi, and at the same time, your bindings can't overcome the power of my blood, willingly accepted into your body. I think I know what would make it easier to bear, though."

She looked up at me, soul tearing down the middle. "Anything,"

"What if being loyal to your Ashikabi and being loyal to me were the same thing?" I asked with a gentle smile. "I could make him love me just as much as you do quite easily, you know."

"Anko, please, snap out of it!" Seiji called out, eyes welling with tears. "He cut your hands off! Don't listen to him!"

"With how the knife is lodged in his kneecap," I said to her, "He may never walk again. My blood can fix that. You know it. He knows it. But he's being stubborn. You know how good the Blood is. You know how grand it feels, to love me. You need to hold him down for his medicine, Anko. You know he needs it. Or else he'll just wind up hurting himself, maybe even dying of his blood loss, and for what? Old grudges? Fear? It's for his own good, Anko."

She rose. "How much blood will he need, Master?"

"Just three drinks. I might need you to rebreak and set his leg a few times, though."

"Anko, please!" Seiji screamed, tears running down his face. "I love you! Why are you doing this to me?"

"You'll understand soon, my love," she whispered, even as she pinned him down and forced open his jaw. "It'll all make sense soon."

The first dose of blood was in, and I saw the bone in his kneecap fuse together. "Oh, well that's no good. Rebreak his knee."

Anko nodded, and Seiji looked up at me, tears in his eyes, as the woman he loved, who an hour ago would have died to protect him, prepared to break his kneecap. "Why? What did we do to deserve this? WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO US?"

"Because I was bored, and you looked like you could be useful," I said, completely truthfully.

He stared at me in blank incomprehension, and then screamed as his kneecap reshattered. I broke out my medical kit and got to work putting his kneecap back together.

The third dose was no act of healing. Simply giving a new junkie his fix.

He stood, gingerly, on his newly reassembled leg, staring at me with unabashed devotion.

"How can we serve you, Master?" he asked, tears still running down his cheeks. He hated me as much as he loved me, and he couldn't even remember why.

"Why don't we go back to your apartment together, so that I can sleep for the day, how does that sound?" I said with a cheerful grin, finally getting around to licking my blade clean.

"It sounds wonderful, Master!" Anko said, a sycophantic grin on her face.

And so, we headed off into the waning night, a vampire and his two new servants, bound in chains of love.

---​

Up on the rooftop, above the gruesome spectacle, Sekirei Number Ten, Uzume, nervously licked her lips.

"What the actual fuck."

 

[Charles Flynn]

When I went to sleep the night I Blood Bound Anko and Seiji, I dreamt. This was not in itself unusual. My dreams during the day were a common fixture of my unlife, a welcome respite from the worn-out world I dwelt in, this past century. They ranged from the fantastical, to reliving memories dating back as far as my mortal life. Sometimes, I would even catch glimpses of my mother's face, and awaken with a deep sense of melancholy, as I once more recalled the woman I had only known for the first five years of my life.

But never before had I dreamt I was in the body of a woman.

"Tsukiumi?" an unfamiliar voice called out. "Are you just about done in there?"

My body, or perhaps, this "Tsukiumi's" body, was bent over a sink, washing my/her face. She straightened up, and I caught the reflection of the woman whose body I was, apparently, passively observing. It was the face of the Sekirei I had winged.

At once, understanding gripped me. The bond of the Sekirei and Ashikabi, it seemed, held more mysteries to it than I had first thought. Very well then, it might be entertaining, or even informative to witness this… Tsukiumi's struggles.

She ran a hand across her forehead, tracing the stitched-together cut that I had left there. It was healing nicely enough, I supposed, but it was still very likely to scar.

"Yes!" she called back, and, turning off the tap, exited the washroom she was in.

The building she was staying in seemed to be… some sort of boarding house? The architecture was actually rather unfamiliar to me, so I simply enjoyed the style of it, and tried to figure out how Tsukiumi fit into this place.

"Are you feeling okay?" the woman outside the door asked. She wore a t-shirt with a star on it, and her brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She was also rather full-chested. "No dizziness, no weakness?"

"I'm fine, Uzume," Tsukiumi said gruffly.

"Hey, just because you didn't shut down at sunrise today doesn't mean you're completely in the clear," Uzume said. "We still don't know what caused those… false terminations of yours. Anything might set it off."

"I'll be careful," Tsukiumi promised.

"Okay," said Uzume, still looking at Tsukiumi, and particularly Tsukiumi's forehead, with concern. The way she treated her… it put me in mind of someone worried about a friend that was staying over because of trouble at home. All care and concern, while also trying not to appear careful or concerned.

How much did she tell them, I wondered. How much did they know? Tsukiumi, now that she was apparently aware during the day, was easily the worst possible hunter we could face.

"Hey, Tsukiumi?" Uzume asked, after a moment's thought. "Do you mind… telling me what your Ashikabi looks like?"

"He was tall," Tsukiumi said, her eyes unfocusing and staring past Uzume. "Black curly hair, and dark eyes. His skin… I didn't see much of it, he had wrappings over his face for some reason, but it seemed pale, with an olive tint. I don't remember much more."

"That's plenty, thanks," Uzume said, looking troubled. "I'll see you later, Tsukiumi. I have… something to think over."

"Well, good luck with that," Tsukiumi said, shaking her head and walking away.

She was greeted by a bespectacled fellow she called Minato soon after, and although events proceeded apace from there, apparently Minato was planning some sort of breakout? And Shinto Teito was cordoned off under military guard? All the same, I could not focus on it. My mind was consumed by fear and suspicion. Just what did Uzume know, that she seemed to recognize my description? Just what was she planning?

Still, the breakout might be interesting. This could be a chance to see some more Sekirei in action, and perhaps find a worthwhile fight in the process! And, to my surprise, apparently, Tsukiumi had helped fight off the mysterious Veiled Sekirei that had been menacing the beneficiaries of this Minato fellow's planned breakout attempt two days prior. It seemed that she truly was on her way towards her dream of strength, the very dream I had let her live for.

Good.

Then, as they were going over assignments, I heard… something. Not through Tsukiumi's ears, but through my own body's.

My Haven was under attack. No. Not my Haven. The apartment of my two new ghouls.

Going to their place was a mistake. One that I could only hope that I would live to regret. And so, I summoned up my willpower, and struggled to wake up, and defend myself.

It took two tries, but I roused myself, pulling free of Torpor, and coming to full wakefulness in the closet I had been resting in. I immediately cloaked myself in shadows, and-

A body crashed through the door of the closet, slamming me back into the wall, and revealing the state of the room. Anko was currently unconscious, slumped at my feet. Seiji was sobbing in an armlock by the same one who had thrown Anko. A Sekirei, veiled in white.

"I saw what you did last night," the creature said. "I know what you are."

"How?" I asked. "I'll warn you; I am well capable of defending myself. You will not get away with this."

"I don't think so," she said. "Your kind can't stand sunlight, can they?"

The rays of the sun streamed in through the broken window behind her. I clamped down on my Rottschrek and started thinking.

"So," she said. "It seems I have you at my mercy."

She didn't, but I'd found over the years it was best to not contradict my enemies when they were gloating at me.

"So it seems," I said, non-committal. "What do you aim to do about it?"

"That depends on one simple question, vampire," she said. "Your blood. It can let people regrow limbs, right?"

"Yes."

"Can you…" she hesitated for a moment, and then went on. "Can your blood cure someone who's really, really sick?"

"I… beg your pardon?" I asked, exceptionally confused. The encounter was not going where I'd thought it was going. I had thought she was about to ask about my kill count, to which the only acceptable answers were 'oh I've never killed anyone, innocent as a lamb, I am,' or 'How many loaves of bread have you eaten in your life?' The second one I had my doubts about, but some younger vampires had assured me that it would go over great in Japan. According to them, it had to do with someone named 'Jojo' presumably some sort of popular Japanese clown, to judge by the name. Were clowns still cool? Did kids still like clowns? I had no idea.

"Can your blood cure someone who's really sick?"

"Bacterial, viral, or congenital?" I asked her.

"Does it matter?"

"Quite a bit, yes."

"Congenital."

"Ah. Well, then, in answer to your question, both yes… and no."

"Why?" she asked, eyes sharp.

"Well, I can't cure congenital illnesses like one would handle regrowing a limb. The disease is a part of their bodies' pre-existing blueprints, as it were. However, I could turn a congenitally ill individual into another vampire, which… would solve one set of health problems, at the cost of several others. And possibly their immortal soul."

"And… if you turned her into a vampire, would she still be the same person?" the Veiled Sekirei asked, hesitantly.

"That's an interesting philosophical debate, but… yes. Of course, as time went on, and her new monstrous nature chipped away at her humanity, she would become less and less like the person she once was. But, if she held to the same code of ethics she did while alive, and resisted the urges that drove her towards monstrous deeds, she would be the same person. And, of course, any change she might undergo in her nature wouldn't be immediate, simply the addition of new experiences and ideas to the collective tapestry of her soul over time, changing her in the same way we all change over time. She would be the same person immediately after the Embrace that she was before it, simply with the addition of fangs, immortality, supernatural powers, and, of course, a lust for blood."

"Sounds… like a fairly good deal," the Veiled Sekirei said, hesitant, thinking it over.

"Let me see if I understand the situation," I said with a smile. "Your Ashikabi is congenitally ill, most likely with an extremely shortened lifespan. And you want me to cure her."

"Yes," she said, frustrated.

"I'm willing to Embrace her, if only to see how it affects you, but… well… I'm curious, here. Why are you still listening to me?"

"Because…"

"I've cut down several of your fellow Sekirei, after all. Most of your kind would be taking the opportunity to kill me. Why? Is it because your Ashikabi is beyond medicine's power to treat? Because her care is being used against you in some way? I'd like to know a bit more about my potential daughter-in-law, here."

"I- wait, what?" she said with a yelp. "Daughter-in-law? Where did that come from?"

"Well, if I were to embrace your Ashikabi, that would, essentially, make her my daughter, wouldn't it? And I was told that for the Sekirei, their Ashikabi was more or less their spouse. Hence, if I do turn your Ashikabi, that'd make us in-laws, wouldn't it?" I grinned, spreading my arms wide. "Come on, tell Papa all your troubles! He's curious."

"I… I want her to be free. I want her to be able to walk again, outside that damn hospital," the Veiled Sekirei said. "Safe. Away from that bastard Higa. Chiho will understand. She'll have to."

"Admittedly, there are some perks to the whole situation," I said with a shrug. "And, if we're to do this, I'd like to know the name of my daughter-in-law to be." I held out my hand.

"Uzume," she said, confirming my suspicions as she left the sunlight behind her, and took my hand. "And I'd like to know the name of… you."

"David. But you can call me Father if you'd like to," I said, still smiling. "So then. How're we doing this?"

---

Hiyamakai Hospital. Its security measures were easily bypassed by Uzume and I through a simple application of Obfuscation and a quick jump through an open second-story window. From there, it was a simple matter of finding Chiho's room, and the Sekirei standing guard outside it.

"One of that Higa fellow's, I presume?" She had told me about the unscrupulous Ashikabi who was holding her beloved hostage for her cooperation beforehand. This seemed very in-character for the man.

"Yes. Thanks to this, invisibility field of yours…"

"Unnoticeability field. Trust me, there's a difference."

"Well, thanks to it, we can take her out easily."

"No."

"Why?" Uzume asked, looking at me indignantly.

"It'll alert an MBI cleanup crew. Additionally, there's a high chance that your Ashikabi will wake from the Embrace in a blood frenzy, in which case, we'll want a spare meat shield for her to drain. Best to just knock the guard out and bring her in with us as emergency rations."

Uzume looked nauseated. "That's… Okay. I've done worse, I suppose, to keep Chiyo safe."

"Glad you approve. Get the door." And with that, I came up behind Higa's watchdog and pulled her into a chokehold. Uzume opened the door, and I dragged the unfortunate guardswoman inside with me, choking her all the way.

A young woman I could only presume to be Chiho sat up in her bed. "Uzume? What's… what's going on?"

"Um, I… Chiho, I found someone who can make you better," Uzume said. "He's…"

"A doctor," I said with a calming smile. I might have majored in Phrenology, and not been to university in over two centuries, but she didn't need to know that. "Trust me, Ms. Chiho, the treatment I'll be using on you today has been tried and tested for centuries, and has proven effective against all kinds of congenital illnesses."

The guard desperately tugged at my arm, but was unable to break my hold, silently begging Chiho to save her with her eyes.

"But… he's choking Miss Shi," Chiho pointed out. "And… Miss Shi's really nice! When she comes to visit me, she always brings a board game to play with me!"

"Just administering a Heimlich," I said with a smile, pulling the guard up and exchanging a look with Uzume. Then, I whispered into Shi's ear. "I killed Karasuba. Do you know who that is?"

She nodded, tears streaming down her face.

"So, you know that I'm not bluffing when I say that if you don't play along, and keep your mouth shut, I'll chop you into dog meat," I whispered to her. "Which I will then feed to dogs. Are we clear?"

She nodded.

"Good, now play along in three… two… one…" I gave a single, final jerk against her neck, and then released her. She collapsed on the floor, coughing and spluttering. I knelt down, and gave her a hearty slap on the back. "There you go! Feeling better?"

"Y-Yes, Doctor," she said, tears in her eyes.

"Glad to hear it," then I looked up at Chiho. "See? We're all friends here."

She still looked unconvinced. "Okay, but you're not dressed like a doctor, though."

I looked down at the white lab coat I had donned for the occasion. "Really?"

"And you have a sword," she pointed out.

"I told you to leave that," Uzume groused.

"Look, I paid in orphans for this sword. It can cut through tank armor. I haven't let it out of my sight in ninety-seven years, and I'm not starting now!" I snapped, momentarily forgetting my cover, and then feeling embarrassed when I noticed Chiho staring at me wide-eyed. "Look, kid, cutting the bullshit here. Do you want to live forever?"

"W-What?"

"Do you want to live forever? Be with her in more ways than whatever chaste-by-necessity watered-down equivalent of hanky-panky you two have been engaging in? Walk? Run?" I paused my monologue to step on Shi's hand as she tried to crawl away without me noticing. "Because, if we go through with this, you're going to be able to do all of those things. All of the things you've always wanted to do. All of those things you've never been able to do. And you'll have all the time in the world to do them. The choice is yours."

Uzume looked at me, worried, but then smiled reassuringly at Chiho. "I know… we don't- We don't have all that much time. I want to see the world with you Chiho. I want to be with you forever. So… please."

Chiho blinks, but hesitantly nods her approval.

"Alright then. Uzume, block the door."

She stuck a chair under the doorknob, while I pulled out a syringe of my blood that I'd prepared in advance.

"When I've finished draining her, I'll give you the thumbs-up to let know it's time to inject this into her. Understood?"

"I… is…" she paused, and then asked, hesitantly, "Is it possible for this to go wrong?"

"There are several ways. But the odds are distinctly positive, and we're gone too far to pull back now," I noticed Shi trying to crawl away again, and pointed at her. "Emergency Rations. Stay. This is your second strike, and on the third, I'm declaring an emergency. Sit in the corner and BEHAVE!"

She complied, shivering.

Then, I moved to stand at Chiho's bedside, looming over the girl.

"Will this hurt?" she asked.

"You'll barely feel the pinch," I assured her, and then I sank my teeth into her neck, relishing the way her lifeblood flowed into me. I had to spend some of the blood already inside me enhancing my body first, of course, to make room, but that was a lesser concern. For the moment, I simply allowed myself to savor the sweet taste of Chiho, as I drank every last drop of blood from her veins. And then, when I felt the well run dry, when I heard her final, dying moan, I gave Uzume the thumbs up, and she rushed in with the injection.

The blood was in, and I pushed my will for Chiho to live through it. And I felt it take.

"You might terminate for a second," I told Uzume, as the heart monitor gave a final notice, and she sobbed into her hands. "I'm not sure how this will affect your bond with her."

"Why isn't it working, why isn't it working?" she muttered, as…

Chiho convulsed, eyes wide, teeth turned to fangs. Excellent. Then she roared, and leapt from the bed, hungry and maddened by the Beast, which was less good, but somewhat expected.

I responded by grabbing Emergency Rations and tossing her at my frenzying childe. Then, I checked on Uzume. Terminated. Interesting.

While Chiho tore open her erstwhile guard's throat and feasted on the Sekirei's rich, warm blood, I examined Uzume. Why wasn't she waking up? What was the difference between her and Tsukiumi's cases? Hm. Perhaps the difference lay in that I had already been Embraced long before I met Tsukiumi, while Uzume had been bonded to Chiho while she was still properly alive. Would having Chiho administer the Blood Kiss to her work?

Worth a shot. Chiho finished off Emergency Rations, and lunged for me, so I grabbed her by the hair and slammed her into the wall until she stopped struggling.

"Oy, back to your senses yet?" I asked.

"Yes, I…" she blinked, tears coming to her eyes. "Oh, God, what was that?"

"The Beast, we'll have a more prolonged course on the matter later. For now, your girlfriend broke. Fix her," and so saying, I tossed Uzume's inactive body at Chiho.

"I… oh, no, Uzume, no!" Chiho cried out, holding her love in her arms. "Not you too! How do I…"

"Try kissing her, then, if that doesn't work, try drinking her blood," I said, staring at the exsanguinated Sekirei on the floor. Well, I was curious what might happen, and the body was still warm.

While I considered Embracing Emergency Rations, Chiho desperately attempted to revive her girlfriend via mouth-to-mouth. When that failed to produce results, she moved on to necking (heh).

The very moment, Chiho sank her teeth into Uzume, the Sekirei's wings flared up, and she jolted back to life.

"Ah. Splendid," I said, even as I began bandaging up Emergency Rations' neck. Turned out she was still breathing, somehow, so we'd have to hit the bloodbank on our way out. I tossed Rations onto my shoulder, and, reaching out with Obfuscation, cloaked all four of us. "Grab your girlfriend and get ready to go, kids."

"Oh, okay, right," said Chiho, as she scooped Uzume up in a bridal carry, to her Sekirei's open wonderment.

"You're, you…" Uzume said, stumbling over her words, as she looked up at her beloved Ashikabi, wrapped up in Chiho's arms.

"You know, you don't have to carry her," I said, amused.

"DON'T YOU DARE RUIN THIS FOR ME!" they shouted in perfect harmony, and I decided that, perhaps, I should leave the two lovebirds to it.

"Just stick close, kids," I said, and kicked down the door.

And, if, as we stealthily made our way through the halls of the hospital, they accidentally broke our obfuscation once or twice by walking into people, too busy looking at each other to watch for obstacles, I forgave them. After all, I was young once, too.

That, and it was funny.

 

[Charles Flynn]

Haruka Shiigi was, for once, having a good day.

As he stared back across the broken bridge, at the people, no, at the heroes, Sekirei and Ashikabi alike, who'd helped him escape Shinto Teito with his Sekirei, Shiina, he could only wish Minato and all his Sekirei's good karma from this would carry them through the Sekirei Plan unscathed.

But he couldn't reflect on the events of his escape forever, and so, he turned to his beloved. "C'mon Shiina. Let's go introduce you to my parents."

She wasn't looking at Shinto Teito. Instead, she was staring with mounting fear at something behind him. Slowly, stomach dropping, he turned.

"Well, this is a surprise," the man who looked like a rotting corpse decided to cosplay a Yakuza member said. "When we saw the flare-up on the bridge, well, we weren't really expecting any of you little interlopers would be coming over to meet with us."

"What's the human along with you for?" another man asked, this one pale with a yellowish-green tint to his skin. "Handler? Emergency rations?"

There were seven of them in total. Seven, all not exactly human, and all of them armed.

"Look," Haruka said, desperately trying to think of a way to get out of this. "We don't want any trouble."

"Then your little gaijin friend there shouldn't have come along with all of her damnable kind, when they came and booted us out of Tokyo eight years ago," the corpse-like man said. "We are the Wan Kuei of Japan, this nation's first defense against spiritual corruption and impurity, the bulwark against mainland control, and your kind think you can come and humiliate us, slaughter us like animals, kick us out of our own country's capital, and you think you can get away with it? Bitch, you're not even from this planet, and you think you can walk anywhere you damn please?" He grinned, his teeth sharp. "You'll make an excellent message to the rest of your filthy kind, little bird."

"Please!" Haruka shouted, eyes wide, as the inhuman strangers began to close in around him and Shiina. "We just got out, we're not with the Sekirei Plan, we're not with MBI, we just wanted to survive! We don't even know who you are!"

The corpse turned to the yellowish man, who nodded. "He's telling the truth."

"So, then… are you going to let us go?" Haruka asked.

"No," the corpse-man said, and the Wan Kuei resumed their advance.

Shiina pushed Haruka behind her. "Please, don't hurt him! You can kill me, but don't hurt him!"

"The boss does want a source of intelligence on what's going on in Shinto Teito," one of the Wan Kuei, a woman, said. "We could just keep 'em around, use them as a data source on MBI's defenses, and the state of the city."

"I'll tell you whatever you want me to, just don't hurt Shiina," Haruka said immediately.

"I'll tell you whatever you want, just don't hurt Haruka," Shiina said at the exact same time.

The leader of the seven Wan Kuei seemed to mull things over for a moment, before sighing. "Fine. We'll bring them to the Foreigner Eviscerating Devil Tiger so they can tell her what she wants to know. But if either one of you tries to give us the slip, we'll feed your significant other their own entrails, and make you watch. Got it?"

Both Ashikabi and Sekirei nodded.

And as Haruka was frog marched into an unmarked van beside Shiina, it dawned on him that perhaps MBI's sealing of Shinto Teito had not been, as Minaka claimed, to keep the Sekirei from escaping the plan. Perhaps it had always been intended to keep the monsters beyond the river out.

---​

Tsukiumi looked up at the moon and doubted herself.

"Can't sleep?" Homura asked, settling on the roof besides her.

"I'm weak," she said, after a long pause. "Musubi is stronger than me."

Tsukiumi's poor showing against the Disciplinary Squad alone had proven that. Where Musubi had somehow managed to come back from being terminated and defeated Benitsubasa with some unknown, overwhelming power, Tsukiumi had barely escaped Haihane with her life.

And it… it stung. She was alone, free of any lustful beast of an Ashikabi, who would only ever want more of her body. Free to pursue her own strength. Free to become the strongest Sekirei there ever was, without any interference from her Ashikabi. But there was no strength to be found, here. She could not grow stronger. And for all the kindness of Sahashi Minato and his flock, their presence was the ultimate torture for her.

When she looked at Musubi, at Matsu, even at Kusano, she could see it. How happy they were. They had found someone who completed them. Who would cherish and support them whenever they asked, and who would love them no matter what. A partner, in every sense of the word.

And she could feel it in her soul, she could have had that. She could have had someone who she truly loved, perhaps not Minato, but somebody, anybody! Someone who cherished her. Someone she could trust completely, someone she could love, someone… someone worth fighting for. And in their place, she had…

She had the man who gave her the scar that even now stretched across her forehead, red and angry and raw.

"It's funny, you know," she said, eyes fixed on the moon. "I thought that this would be all that I ever wanted. But… instead? Instead, I can't even get strong on my own, and I can't even find any comfort in my bonds. Isn't it funny?" She started laughing.

"Tsukiumi," Homura said, his voice said. "No. I don't think it's funny at all. How could I laugh when you're hurting?"

"Because YOU WERE RIGHT!" she shouted, laughing and sobbing at the same time. "You were right. And I was right, too. I thought love was a chain. A thing to enslave and hurt. And it is! It is, for me. But, at the same time, I can see all the ways it could have been better, and it's killing me inside. And I can't even hate them, you know, for making me miserable with how happy they are, because they're just SO DAMN NICE ABOUT IT!"

"They're worried about you. So am I," he said.

"Why?" she asked, teary eyes still staring up at the moon.

"Because you're in pain," he said. "How could we look away?"

"I'm going," she said after a moment.

"Tsukiumi, you won't survive out there!" Homura snapped.

"If I do survive, I'll be back," she said, still staring at the moon. "But… I can't just be your protectorate. If I can't have what I've seen here, this… loving bond, then I'll seek out the power I need to protect this place, and the people in it."

"And how do you…" Homura paused, face growing slack with horror. "You're going to try to find your Ashikabi, aren't you!"

Her silence was answer enough.

"You said it yourself; he'll kill you if he sees you again!" Homura shouted, rising to his feet. "Tsukiumi, this is suicide, I can't let you do this."

"I know," she said, as the noose of hard water she'd looped around his neck over the course of the conversation drew taut. "That's why I came up here alone with you. Out of everyone here, you'd have the best chance of stopping me."

Homura struggled, but Sekirei or not, he still needed oxygen. And soon, he lost consciousness.

She left him behind, following the sensation in her heart, the aching in her crest, on the path to death, or power.

And she would welcome either of them, at this point.

 

[Charles Flynn]

Oosumi Orahiko hated his name. Not his true name, Hunts-In-The-City's-Silent-Shadows, but his human name, the name he was forced to take to blend in. The one he had to wear when he walked the city in Homid form.

The birds from beyond the world might have driven out most of Tokyo's supernatural entities, but the Wyrm and Weaver still whispered. The spirits still moved through the Umbra. And so, even as the Wan-Kuei and magi were forced out, the Changing Breeds stayed, albeit with an agreement negotiated with the head of MBI that, in exchange for his not meddling in their affairs, they wouldn't meddle in his. And that worked just fine.

Hunts-In-The-City's-Silent-Shadows was born in Lupos, wolf form. The city did not suit him. But he endured, alone. He had been cast out of his tribe. He had failed to keep the Litany, to respect his elders, and so he was now a Ronin. Tribeless. Exiled.

But he survived. He looked close enough to a dog that he could pass for a stray, and a human intellect in a wolf's body easily allowed him to find food and shelter.

And he had… survived. He'd survived well enough. He had hunted Bane spirits, and the occasional squirrel. He had begged food from passing strangers, winning them over with puppy-dog eyes and tricks. Even performing the most basic, simple tasks was enough to make people coo over you and shower you with free food when they thought you were a dog.

And then, he met her.

He'd thought she was some random lunatic at first, the crazy girl in the shrine maiden costume, carrying around a naginata. He'd been in Lupos, his natural form, when he'd met her. She was wandering around the park he frequented whenever he had to relieve himself (because the humans got pissy when he shat on pavement), acting like she was looking for something or someone. And then he saw her face, and he found himself incapable of looking away.\

And so, he had trotted up to her, this beautiful stranger, and, circling about her and jumping, with a wagging tail, walked beside her. She wasn't human, that much he could tell from a single sniff, and so he justified his accompaniment of her by telling himself he was simply investigating her mystery. Besides, he had reasoned to himself, if she simply went about as she was, devoid of caution, she would find herself in trouble, and that certainly didn't sit right with him.

His predictions had borne true in no time, as she found herself approached by all manners of disreputable men, whom he had growled at until they got the hint.

And she had turned to him, pouting. "Mister Wolf? Why must you growl at them? I'll never find my Ashikabi if you keep scaring people off."

He had huffed. He had no idea what the hell an Ashikabi was, but he knew that those fellows meant this girl no good.

"Are you jealous?" she teased, crouching down to look him in the face, ruffling his ears. "But I'm sorry, Mr. Wolf. You can't be my Ashikabi. I couldn't possibly marry a wolf, after all."

He had whined sadly at that, not even understanding why her words made his chest hurt.

She had continued to ruffle his fur, though, turning progressively more flushed as she continued to lean in closer and closer. "Even if your eyes are that really pretty shade of amber… And you really seem worried about me, and… And your fur is so very so- Ah!" She jumped to her feet. "Nope. Nope, that did not happen. That did not happen. This is not happening. My Destined One probably just happens to be nearby, probably. I'm not reacting to a wolf, actually, because I'm not attracted to animals! I like humans! Human men! Not wolves!"

He had sat back on my haunches and tilted my head at her quizzically, wondering what in the Wyrm was going on in her head.

"Ohmigod, he so CUTE!" she had squealed, momentarily distracted from her inner turmoil by the sheer adorability of the head-tilt. And then she stiffened once more. "I'm not attracted to animals, I'm not attracted to animals, I'm not attracted to animals! Body, why are you doing this to me? You know we can't be emerged by animals! Come on, Kaho, focus! Your real Ashikabi must be somewhere around here!"

Hunts-In-The-City's-Silent-Shadows had chuffed quietly, enjoying the show. The girl was amusing, when she babbled to herself like this. Not to mention that all the turning and pacing she had done in her turmoil did interesting things to her ample chest, which he had found he quite enjoyed.

She had looked about, but nobody was nearby. So, face flushed and breath coming in uneven gasps, she had squatted down, and looked the sitting werewolf in the eye. "I guess it wouldn't hurt to try, at least once."

She was just too cute. And so, Hunts-In-The-City's-Silent-Shadows had licked her face point-blank. Eight glowing wings of light had erupted from her back at that, and he had finally recognized her for what she was. Sekirei. A bird from beyond the world. Something that did not belong. Would never belong.

And yet, he loved her all the same.

She had sat back on her butt, looking befuddled. "So. I finally found my Destined One. And he's…" She had started laughing and crying at the same time. "He's a freaking wolf."

She had slowly gotten to her feet, and brushed herself off, composing her face. "I guess, you probably don't have anywhere to stay, do you? I can rent a hotel room, I guess. Can you even understand me?"

He had nodded at that, and Kaho's eyes had widened. "You're… you're not a regular wolf, are you?"

He had given her a look that said, Stupid alien, of course I'm not.

---​

Kaho had used her MBI card that very night to secure a hotel room for them to occupy, and, still feeling out of sorts from her Ashikabi being a wolf, she went to take a shower, contemplating just what sort of future she could expect from an Ashikabi who wasn't even human.

He had been waiting for her, naked as the day he was born, sitting on the edge of the bed in Homid form, when she got out of the shower.

She was quite glad at the sight. So glad that she had put off his explanation for later in order to properly physically express her gladness.

When that vigorous physical expression was done, they had laid back, sweating and panting, staring up at the ceiling. Kaho was the first to speak. "So. You're a werewolf."

"Surprised you know what that is," he had said with a grunt.

She had given him a look of sheer pity. "I read Twilight, once. Also, you know, kind of hard not to know at least a little bit about Western ghouls and ghosties, what with how prevalent American media is over here."

"Fair enough. But I am more of a... opposite werewolf. Not a man who turns into a wolf. Wolf who turns into a man," he had said with a grunt. "Do not like being human. Can do... Can do for you. When alone. Do not want to do for all, when not alone. Will walk with you, though, always." He had felt vaguely exhausted by that. It was rare that he would say so many words in such a short time, and the thought required was... draining.

"Walk with me, but as a wolf?" she asked. "You'll only be human when it's just for me? Not during the day?"

"Yes."

"My Ashikabi," Kaho had said, seeming to relish the sound of it leaving her mouth. "Who cares what they think of me during the day? This handsome face of yours..." she traced a hand along his jaw. "It's mine. Only I get to see it. That... I can learn to love that. I look forward to learning to love each and every part of you, my dearest Ashikabi."

And so, they were joined, body and soul, and Hunts-In-The-City's-Silent-Shadows was no longer alone. Kaho was his pack now. And he would do anything to protect her.

---​

Tonight, he hunted, his snout in the air, taking in the scents of the city, as his love walked beside him. His snout twitched, taking in the distinctive smell of the ENEMY.

There was a vampire in this city. And on his honor as a Garou, he would see that Wyrm-blasted leech dead.

 

[Charles Flynn]

I watched as Chiho ran through the meditational exercise, her hands, once frail and faltering, now strong and sure, bringing the polishing cloth and fluid over her scimitar, as she contemplated the blade.

"Is this strictly necessary?" Uzume said with a sigh, arms crossed as she leaned against the wall outside Chiho's meditation room in my Haven.

"Yes," I said. "It will help her deal with her own Beast. And trust me on this, if she doesn't learn to control her Beast early, you'll wind up having to clean up a lot of bodies over the centuries to come."

"What even is the Beast?" Uzume asked, throwing up her hands. "I mean, where does all this even come from?" She sighed. "Thank you for saving her, but…"

"You're going to spend centuries with her, so you want to know everything there possibly is to know about what she's become," I said with a smile. "It's understandable. So, dear daughter-in-law, how much do you know about the Book of Genesis."

"Is that… like… in the Bible?" she hazarded.

"Oh boy,": I muttered. "So, the tale goes that way back when, after God created the world, or thereabouts, there were two brothers, Caine and Abel. Caine was the first farmer, while Abel was the first shepherd. And when it came time for the two brothers to present a portion of their harvests to God, Caine brought up the vegetables and fruits he'd grown to the altar, but Abel, he brought up a sheep. And God liked the sheep better. So, Caine bashed in Abel's head with a rock, becoming the inventor of murder, as well as the inventor of agriculture."

"Murder and agriculture," Uzume noted, deadpan. "Wow. The two mainstays of human civilization. I'll say this for this Caine fellow, his ideas certainly tended to last."

"Oh, daughter dearest, you haven't even heard half of it," I said with a grin. "So, God decided to mark Caine, to curse him, so that everyone, everywhere, forever, would know that he was a monster. He made the sin of murder the sum totality of Caine's existence, forcing him to drink the blood of the living. A dead thing that walked, forever banished from the light of the sun. The very first vampire."

"So…"

"Every vampire on the planet can trace their lineage back to Cain. Chiho and I included. Our closeness to the first vampire even can be used as a rough determination of our strength."

"That's pretty heavy," Uzume said after a moment.

"I've borne its weight for centuries. You get used to it, after a while."

"So, the Beast?"

"Is every Kindred's innate desire to do evil. It doesn't matter how good of a person you were before the Embrace, the Beast is still there. The blood of Caine flows through us all, and draws us towards our worst natures," I said. "Self-control is absolutely necessary, if you don't want to have to deal with humans going after you for murder or worse."

"And Chiho has that inside her?" Uzume asked, sounding disturbed.

"Indeed. Which is why it falls to you to keep her from leaving this building while I'm out," I said, turning to go out the door.

"You're going? Why?" Uzume asked.

"We're about to have a guest," I said with a smile. "I'd rather not have them find out precisely where I live, and they'll track down my location regardless of how I try to hide. So, I'll wait for them in a place of my choosing. Is that clear enough for you?"

"I suppose," she said with a sigh. "Good luck."

"Ah, but dearest daughter-in -law," I said, spinning as I opened the door. "Luck is for those who lack skill. And I am nothing if not skillful."

---​

Tsukiumi first saw me standing on the roof of a five-story building, looking down at her. As intended. I had been very conscious of the balance between inconveniencing her enough to put her off balance, and not wasting so much time that the sun might catch me unawares.

When she, (after much panting and cursing) finally made it up the stairs (I had chosen a building where the elevator was out of order, simply because it amused me) she found I was gone.

"No," she muttered to herself, even as she approached the spot she had seen me standing at. "He was just there, and I didn't feel him change position, so…"

I, standing Obfuscated behind her, seized the initiative. I kicked her legs out from under her, slamming her to the ground face first, her chest slamming into the parapet, and her head hanging over the edge. Then, I flipped her over and position myself over her, my sword at her throat.

"OW!" she yelped. "I…" her eyes widened as she took in the situation she was in, and the gravity of the circumstances sunk… "You are an absolute churl, sir, I hope you know that."

Or apparently not. "So. You've returned. Have you come to kill me?" I asked, eyes sharp, allowing my face to betray nothing of what I knew.

"No," she said with a grunt, trying to angle her head away from the edge of my blade. "You know as well as I do that would end me as much as it would you, unless you've somehow managed to remain completely ignorant of Sekirei."

"So, you came crawling back, unable to bear the weight of freedom," I said. "Disappointing. I had higher hopes for you than that, when you shared that dream of yours with me."

"No. I…" she looked lost as she stared at me. "Sekirei can only get stronger based on the strength of their bond with their Ashikabi. I… finally realized that I was at the point where I could grow no stronger than I already am, no greater than I already am, without a strong bond with my Ashikabi. And…" she looked off into the distance. "I've found something to fight for. People I love and care about, who looked after me when I had nothing, who supported me when I could offer them nothing in return. But, thanks to you, I can't find strength in those bonds. I can't grow stronger to protect them, because you, my Ashikabi, hang around my neck like a dead albatross. My bond with you," and I was honestly proud at the sheer loathing in her voice, "is the determinator of my strength. So, I came here to find if there was something, anything I could do to learn to care about you, so I could grow strong enough to protect the people I actually cared about."

I withdrew my sword from her throat, and, standing, applauded her. "Bravo! You pass!"

"There was a test?" she asked, slowly coming to her feet and rubbing at her throat.

"Indeed," I said with a smile. "If you'd simply given up on your dream, I would have cut your head off, and let your arterial spray shower down on the pedestrians below. If you'd come to kill me, I would have given you the same treatment, less out of philosophical reasons, and more out of practical ones. Much as I admire the guts of those who strike out at me despite the odds against them, and the personal cost to themselves, I also enjoy living, so my admiration of those bold and fearless opponents tends to be best expressed via a glowing obituary."

"Why?" Tsukiumi asked, hesitant and baffled. "Why would you make that a test? Most people would be glad to have a Sekirei serve them. Why would you kill me for giving up on my dreams and just serving you?"

"Because you remind me of myself when I was younger," I said. "And I hate it when the people who remind me of myself fail to live up to my standards."

"You're insane," she said, aghast. "You're actually insane."

"Well, clearly, yes, but I'd like to see you live for four hundred years without losing a screw or two along the way."

"Four hundred… what the hell even are you?" she asked.

"That's for me to know, and you to find out," I said with a chuckle. "There's a briefcase with three syringes in it right next to the building's main entrance, waiting for you. The contents of those syringes will bring you power, and deepen your bond to me. But… be warned. If you use all three, you will be reduced to the level of a mere slave, incapable of disobeying me in any way."

"All the way down by… It'll be gone by the time I can get down to the ground floor again!" she complained.

"Well, that's my last test for you, isn't it?" I said with a grin. "Survive!" And then I kicked her off the building.

She cursed me all the way down, even as she summoned up a column of water to break her fall. Excellent. I was rather proud of her hatred. To despise the one you were bonded to, to curse and resist them all the way, even though you were forced to love them at the same time? She really was just like me when I was younger, although I should think that I was a slightly kinder master than my sire, the damnable Turk.

I noticed, however, for all that she hated me, she still picked up the briefcase with the syringes in it as she stormed off.

Then, my eyes widened as I noticed something else. The was a Sekirei two blocks away from me, leading around a wolf on a leash. Not a dog, no, a wolf. I knew the difference between the two by heart. I could think of no other reason for a wolf to willingly accept a leash, than…

Werewolf.

I cloaked myself in the shadows, and immediately began to retreat in a way that I knew would break up my scent trail, even as I made my way towards one of the secondary havens I had set up. It wouldn't do for the wolf to find Chiho, or my ghouls. I would have to be more cautious, in the future. There was now one individual in the city who knew exactly what I was. The hound had my scent, and I could no longer play about with impunity.

And I couldn't help but grin. Finally, a challenge!

---​

In a darkened hall, distant, but not too distant from Shinto Teito, the Foreigner Eviscerating Devil Tiger held court over her subordinates. Contrary to common expectations, she wasn't dressed like some lunatic. No, she was clad in a sensible power suit, with a lapel pin of the Japanese flag, to represent her devotion to her country. Any accounts being bandied about of her being some rampaging lunatic clad only in the Japanese flag and the blood of her enemies should have been dismissed as mere slander, or at the very least prefaced with the disclaimer that it was just the once and she was very drunk at the time.

"Do the sniveling whelps speak truth?" she asked of the man to her right.

"You, milady," said her vizier. "They do."

"And have the Hakken and Same-Bito responded to our entreaties?" she asked.

"They have sent their mercenaries, yes, milady," the vizier replied. Though the need for such mercenaries shamed the Wan Kuei, there was no denying that it was truly necessary. Most of the eldest of their number had perished in the American firebombing of the capital during World War Two, and the mainland had conscripted Japanese Wan Kuei en masse as cannon fodder for their disastrous "Great Leap Outward." Then, MBI had forced them out of the capital, with their Disciplinary Squad cutting a bloody swathe through any vampire that held their ground. As it stood, the Wan Kuei of Japan were too few in number to reclaim Shinto Teito. Of course, with the mercenaries and intelligence they now had, success was now within their reach.

"Then the time is right. We shall begin to put our plan of attack into motion," she said, as her court rejoiced around her. "In four days, Shinto Teito will be ours once more. Japan will belong to the Wan Kuei once more, and the mainlanders and their wretched 'Middle Kingdom' will be forced to see that we are strong! For Japan!"

And the Hungry Dead of Japan cheered, in anticipation of the feast to come.

 

[Charles Flynn]

How did one train a young vampire?

This was the driving question that lay before me, as I dealt with the consequences of Embracing Chiho. I would have to train her, that much was clear. I could not in good conscience send her out into the world as an unrefined and untrained fledgling. And so, I would have to train her. Preferably in a more… condensed timeframe than usual, seeing that the Sekirei Plan we were both entrenched in was an unstable and fickle beast, which could change at any time.

As always, though, when faced with a seemingly impossible task, I found that the technology of mortal men could bear me to victory! Truly, I lived in an age of wonders, and blessed my fortune each and every day that I had lived long enough to see the age of miracles that the luminaries of the Order of Reason had spoken of when I was young.

---​

Chiho looked up at me, then at my teaching implements for the night.

"Er… Sensei? Why are…?"

"My dear Childe, we stand in a viper's den. A deadly game orchestrated by the madman Hiroto Minaka. Thus, it falls to us to always be ready. As you are, you are not ready. And so, I must educate you in the arts of the vampire, in the power of your vitae, and in the society and history you have been entered into." I tapped the batting machine to my side. "And so, for our first lesson, I will be educating you on the Discipline of Celerity. The art by which you may move at superhuman speeds. It has many uses, from attacking more frequently and accurately in combat, to running away faster, and so, it's the first one I'll be teaching you."

"Okay, but why are there two batting machines pointed at me?" she asked. And indeed, there were two batting machines aimed at her. One at her front, and the other at her back.

"Because any human in peak condition can hit a baseball, that's not something that takes vampiric powers to do," I said, pacing along the crossbeam of the warehouse we were training in. "But, deflecting two baseballs back-to-back, coming from opposite directions? Now, that takes Celerity."

"This seems a little extreme!" she shouted.

"This discipline is a part of our clan, passed down from Sire to Childe for countless centuries!" I said, gesturing emphatically. "You already know how to do this, I'm just jarring it loose." I tossed her the bat. "Now batter up, slugger."

The first time, the baseballs hit her in the tit and in the small of her back simultaneously. She glared at me, which left her unprepared for the second round of balls, which hit her in almost the exact same places. Then, she started concentrating.

Soon, she was close. Very close.

"Come on, Chiho, feel the blood within you, aching to move faster, faster, FASTER! You know how to do it, push beyond the limits of your flesh, beyond the limits of mortal men! The blood whispers its secrets to you! ANSWER IT!"

Then, she did it. Fast as lightning, she hit one ball, and then, faster than the eye could follow, she turned about, quick as lightning, and bunted the other ball.

I turned off the batting machine and began to applaud. "Well done. Well done indeed."

"I… I did it," she said, smiling wide. "It was impossible, but I did it!"

"You're a vampire now, Chiho. Your definition of 'impossible' will come to be a bit slimmer once you've truly realized all that you're capable of," I assured her, tossing her a blood pack. "Now drink up, dear daughter. Now that you've learned how to use Celerity, we're going to help you learn how to use it on a hair-trigger."

"How's that?" she asked, curious.

I gestured at the arcade machine that I had carefully assembled from stolen parts earlier that evening. "You're going to get a perfect score at Dance Dance Revolution!"

"Ummm… Dance Dance Revolution doesn't really seem Celerity-worthy, though," Chiho said, perplexed.

"Oh, absolutely not! Normal humans get perfect scores on Dance Dance Revolution all the time, so it hardly merits supernatural powers!" I said with a smile, as I pulled out a gun. "Getting a perfect score at Dance Dance Revolution while simultaneously dodging bullets, on the other hand? Well, that takes Celerity."

She did remarkably well, in the end. I only shot her twice.

---​

The second night, I grinned as I looked down at my sweet little childe. "So. Tonight, we'll be learning the particulars of the Obfuscate discipline, the art of being unseen. Or, possibly, how to regrow limbs, if you do poorly enough."

"What do you mean by that?" she asked, eyes haunted. She'd taken getting shot poorly, which I found hilarious. Really there were much worse injuries than guns could cause for us Kindred out there. If this was the reaction she had to being shot, I shuddered at how she'd handle fire, sunlight, or werewolves.

"We'll be playing Chainsaw Tag!" I said with a smile, revving up my chainsaw. "I'm going to chase you around with this, while you try to hide!"

"Um, are there any other rules?" she asked, panic clear on her face. "Like, safe words?"

"Oh, silly Childe," I said with a chuckle, as the chainsaw revved up to a full roar. "The only TRUE rule of Chainsaw Tag is MORE CHAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIINNNSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSAAAAAAAAAAAAAW!"

And then I leapt down from the rafters to chase after her with a chainsaw.

At first, she eluded me using Celerity, screaming and swearing as she did so. But that wouldn't do. That wouldn't do at all. She was there to learn Obfuscation, not Celerity! Also, if she kept going like that, she'd run out of vitae.

So, the next time she used Celerity to try and evade me, I used Celerity as well, fast-stepping to stand behind her and rake my chainsaw across her back.

She screamed, as the bloody gash I had carved struggled to mend. "Sensei! Sensei, please! I don't want to do this anymore, I yield, I yield!"

"Nice speech, daughter dear!" I shouted. "Do you think the next werewolf you meet will listen to it? The next Kuei-Jin? Hell, even the next enemy Sekirei? You think any of them will accept your quarter? I'd love to take it easy on you, but I can't. Because," I stalked forward, as she limped away, eyes wide with fear. "If you can't outrun me, you sure as hell won't be able to outrun them. And if you can't hide, then, well, what the hell can you do?"

I rounded a corner and saw that she'd vanished. Completely and utterly. I activated Auspex, and looked again, and… there. Cloaked in shadows. Obfuscated.
"Very good, daughter," I said, lowering the chainsaw. "You managed to obfuscate yourself."

She snarled, and lunged at me, eyes wild with the Beast! Of course, being the calm, rational fellow that I was, I simply positioned my chainsaw with its blade horizontal, level with her gut, and let her momentum do the rest. Of course, I also grabbed her by the throat with my off-hand, so that she wouldn't be able to bite me.

Then, once the chainsaw had torn all the way through her gut and severed her spinal cord, I released my grip on the chainsaw, and began decking her across the face until I could see a human being behind her eyes again.

"Ah, are we sane again?" I asked with a smile.

"Uh-huh," she grunted, her jaw too thoroughly broken to form words properly.

"Excellent!" I said with a grin. "Now, let's move on to our second lesson of the night! Healing a broken spine!" I yanked out the chainsaw, and she nearly fell apart in two pieces. Then, I went to grab some blood packs. She'd need the blood.

---​

On the third night, Chiho arrived at the soundproofed warehouse we used for training with Uzume in tow, apparently thinking that having her superstrong alien girlfriend on hand would be enough to make me take it easy on her. Adorable as it was that she thought Uzume could take me on in a fight, I actually hadn't planned on physically injuring her at all that night. This night was sacred. This night was for the secret truths of Haqim.

She found me sitting before an oil drum fire, burning incense and myrrh. "Come, child. Sit. Tonight, I tell you of our heritage, and of the Discipline we Banu Haqim can perform that sets us apart from all other Kindred."

And so, I told her of our heritage. Of Haqim, the judge of the First City. Of the other clans, who were unworthy. Of the name they called us, Assamites. Of our duty to the greater clan, to follow the will of the Elders, the Viziers, and the Sorcerers. Of the duties of the warrior caste, killing in the name of Haqim, to support the sorcerers and viziers and our revered elders. And I taught her the secret of Quietus.

Uzume heard me tell Chiho these things but did not understand. It was better that way. If she had understood, I would have had to kill her.

And, after I had finished telling Chiho the secrets of our heritage, sitting around the fire and breathing its sweet-smelling smoke, she showed what she had learned. Calling upon her blood, she silenced the area around her.

I opened my mouth to congratulate her, stopped, back up several paces, and then opened my mouth again. "Very well done, Chiho! Very well done indeed! In just three nights, you've mastered what has taken other vampires entire weeks to wrap their heads around. I'm very proud of your progress."

She mouthed something out. I couldn't quite read her lips, too much smoke in the way, but I could guess the gist of her question.

"Er… no, sorry. That particular Discipline power doesn't actually have an off switch. It just wears off after an hour, no way to turn it off sooner. Which is the main reason I almost never use it."

Chiho threw her arms up in the air and silently swore. Uzume, seated behind her, massaged her shoulders soothingly, and silently mouthed sweet nothings into Chiho's ear.

"All the same, in celebration of your rapid progress, tomorrow night, I'll let you decide which discipline you want me to teach you. Maybe you want to improve your grasp of Obfuscate, Quietus, or Celerity. Or maybe you want me to share one of the many other Disciplines I've picked up over the centuries with you. Either way, whatever you want me to teach you tomorrow, I will do my best to instruct you on." I smiled. "Now, then. I'll leave you to think your options over."

---​

On the fourth night, however, everything went straight to Hell.

 

[Charles Flynn]

Yuuta Tanabe was a guard for MBI.

The pay was good, the benefits package was better, and he got all the same bragging rights cops got, since, in Shinto Teito, MBI more or less was the government. Meaning their private army was more of a police force than the actual police force. And was that a teensy bit worrying and unethical? Sure. But even so, Yuuta got to go home every day to a pleasant, well-appointed apartment, a wife that loved him, and two kids who were ever so proud of their father, the security officer. Say what you will about MBI, they paid well.

But, even so, in spite of his status as the dutiful guard, Yuuta still sometimes asked questions. Some big, some little.

"Why are we here?"

"Well, that's a big question, isn't it?" his partner said.

"No, no, I don't mean that in a philosophical sense, don't go into a bit," Yuuta said, waving a hand. "It's just… The barricade around Shinto Teito, it's so that Sekirei don't wuss out and try to escape the Director's big tournament, right?"

"Yeah."

"And that explains why there are a whole bunch of guys with guns manning checkpoints on all the bridges out of the city, right?"

"Sure enough."

"But that doesn't explain why we're here, on the opposite side of the bridge from where the Sekirei would be coming from, guarding a checkpoint that faces away from Shinto Teito," Yuuta said. "What, does he expect the JSDF to invade or something?"

Yuuta's partner didn't answer him, because there was a crossbow bolt firmly lodged in his throat.

"Oh, shit!" Yuuta screamed, desperately reaching for his radio. "HQ, this is…"

That was all he got out. A Wan Kuei brushed past him, appearing behind the hapless security guard, not even deigning to look back at Yuuta as the man exploded into a shower of gore behind him.

The Invasion of Shinto Teito had begun.

---​

Hiroto Minaka was in the middle of a late-night game of Tetris, contemplating how best to next screw over the Ashikabi of Shinto Teito, when it came to his attention that his city was under attack by an army of vampires.

This revelation was mostly facilitated by the young Wan Kuei sneaking towards Minaka with a katana in hand, who would have most likely been completely invisible if not for the fact that Minaka's eyes had long ago been replaced by some of Iteration X's finest cybernetics.

Minaka sighed, pulled out a laser pistol from his desk drawer, and blew the offending vampire's brains out. "We were so close," he muttered. "Why now?"

All the same, the enemy was at the gates, and it fell to him to notify his employees. The assassin had most likely been sent in in advance, to decapitate MBI before the Gaki's main forces arrived. He turned on the intercom, his voice reaching the entire building at once. "Hey, everybody. This is your chairman speaking. We are about to come under attack by an army of undead monsters. Now, nobody panic, this is what we have our biannual vampire invasion drills for. Just remember. First, put on your bio-sign detection glasses. They'll outline the vampires in red. Next, do you remember all of those flamethrowers and laser rifles sealed behind panes of glass in the building? The ones labelled 'Break in Event of Vampire Attack And/or Zombie Apocalypse?' Well, start breaking that glass. Lastly, once you've armed yourselves, don't, under any circumstances, split up! Groups of five or less, we covered this in orientation! Move to your designated chokepoints, and remember, biosigns red, make 'em dead!" He clicked off the intercom, then, remembering something else, he turned it back on. "Oh, I'll be issuing fifty thousand dollars' worth of hazard pay to each and every one of you that makes it out of this alive."

Morale restored, he turned off the intercom, and called Takami. She picked up on the first ring. "Hiroto? Thank God!"

"Takami! Are you alright?"

"I'm down by the labs. You caught their other infiltrator, I'm guessing." She gave a grunt of pain, and Minaka felt his heart catch.

"Yes, sounds like you did as well," he said, detaching the mobile form of his building command console and triggering his desk's self-destruct. It would take a while to repair the damage but said damage would be but a fraction of the harm the invaders could do if they gained control of the building's security systems. "I'm on my way down."

"Good. I'm going to need another set of hands to stop the bleeding."

"Is there no one else down at the lab with you?" he asked.

"No. I was out taking a smoke, when he showed up. Might've been targeting me, I don't know. What I do know is that he caught one glimpse of the Technocracy's first installment to us and went apeshit. He killed everybody in the lab. Nearly killed me, before I put him down."

"Is the clone damaged?" he asked.

"No, but it was a near thing. And we lost all of our progress on setting the clone up for field use, since her pilot was one of the fatalities."

"Of course he was," Minaka muttered, as he went down the stairs to the lab two at a time, his lab coat billowing out behind him. "Judging by their choice of decapitation strike targets, I'm guessing their armies will be making a beeline for MBI. We'll need to get her up and running in an hour or less."

"Our defenses won't last an hour or less. Minaka, the infiltrator they sent to kill me was a wereshark. They have shapechanger backup."

Minaka hung up, swore, and started taking the stairs three at a time. Soon, he burst into the laboratory, and immediately began bandaging Takami's wounds.

"So," she said, face pale. "Did you somehow come up with a plan to save our skins on the way down?"

"We need an intelligence capable of using Karasuba's body to fight, who's loyal to MBI," he said, even as he applied a tourniquet to her shredded arm and eased her onto a medical table. "I know of one such soul who we can call up at our convenience: Karasuba herself."

"You want to use Necromancy?" Takami asked incredulously. "To make Karasuba's Wraith possess her clone. I knew it. You finally have gone insane."

"If you have a better plan, I'd love to hear it."

"And how do you aim to buy yourself the time to do all that, Mister Delusional? Your defenses might suffice to keep out the Gaki, but they won't do shit against werebeasts."

"Simple, light of my life, I have the phone number of every Ashikabi in Shinto Teito. If I tell them a Jinki is on the line, they'll flock to defend our headquarters from the vampires."

"Heh. That might actually work. Shame I can't help you with it, since my arm's out of commission."

"Take this," he said, pressing his laser pistol into her hands. "You have the glasses, right?"

"Yes, but… Hiroto! You only have one gun! Don't go out there unarmed!"

"Don't need it!" he called back as he strode out of the room. "You just focus on staying alive, I'll take care of the rest!"

"You goddamn lunatic! You had better come back to me alive, you hear me?"

The last thing she saw of him before the door slid shut behind him was his hand, extended outwards in a thumbs-up.

---​

That night, every Ashikabi in Tokyo received a phone call. "Congratulations on making it to the Third Stage! Now, competition will begin over a set of artifacts called the Jinki! Those who have these artifacts will be allowed to move on to the fourth stage! MBI's headquarters is currently under attack. The five Ashikabi who kill or neutralize the most attackers will be awarded Jinki. Those with lower kill counts will be forced to duke it out over the remaining three Jinki. I look forward to seeing you all in action! Good luck and may the best man win!"

It was Hell that these Ashikabi were entering. But they would not realize it until much, much later.

 

[Charles Flynn]

I arrived at the warehouse that night to find Chiho and Uzume in a tizzy.

"What seems to be the issue?" I asked from behind them, relishing how they jumped at my sudden appearance.

"David," Uzume began, but I gave her a look. "Fine. Father-in-law, please tell this idiot that we're not going to MBI headquarters!"

"I'm not so fragile anymore, Uzume! I can handle a little danger! And besides, there are a lot of innocent office workers at MBI's headquarters right now! They need someone to help them, or else they could die!" Chiho stared at her girlfriend with determination in her eyes. "People are suffering, and I refuse to stand by helplessly! I'm strong now, I can change things!"

"What's this about MBI headquarters? And people dying therein?" I asked, intrigued.

"I got a call from Mister Minaka," Chiho said. "MBI's chairman and the organizer of the Sekirei Plan. MBI's apparently under attack, and he's offered a reward for the Ashikabi who help out the most."

"Well now," I said with a smile. Chiho flinched at the sight of my grin, which I attributed to her excellent sense of pattern recognition. "That sounds like fun. I might as well drop by, scope out the party."

"Thank you!" Chiho said, face lighting up. "See, Uzume, I told you he'd agree with me!"

"You're not coming," I told her point blank.

"What? Why?"

"Because you're not ready. Your mastery of Obfuscation only lets you hide in place. Your mastery of Celerity is that of a novice, handicapped by your body's weakness from your long hospital stay. And your mastery of Quietus hasn't progressed beyond the Glorious and Holy Mute Button. (Yes, that is the unofficial clan name for that particular technique, don't repeat it in front of the clan elders.) If I brought you into a combat situation against anything other than bog-standard gangbangers, you would be a stain on the wall in five minutes flat," I told her, then looked to Uzume. "You're in charge of making sure she stays put. Understood?"

"Thank you," Uzume said, almost seeming to deflate with sheer relief. "I can do that."

"I…" Chiho seemed to hesitate for a second, but pushed through. "Okay."

"Okay?" I repeated, wondering what the catch was.

"Okay. I won't go. I don't want to die. But I can't stay put if I know that people are in danger," she said. "I hate feeling helpless. So… Promise me that you'll save as many civilians as you can. Promise me that, and I'll stay put."

"Chiho," I said, my face solemn. "That's more than a promise. It's a contract. And I accept."

"Really?" she asked. "You promise?"

"Not promise," I said. "I agree to your contract. Quid pro quo. You stay home, and in exchange, I play the hero."

"What's the difference?" Uzume butted in, eyes narrow, looking for a catch that might cause her beloved Ashikabi pain.

"The difference, dearest daughter-in-law," I said with an arched eyebrow. "Is that while a Childe of Haqim may lie, cheat, and steal as the clan requires, a true Banu Haqim never breaks a contract. Not once in the last four hundred years have I gone back on a contract, and I'm not breaking my perfect record tonight."

Chiho nodded at that, cracking a smile. "Alright then. We'll stay here. Good luck."

And so, I headed off into the night, leaping from rooftop to rooftop, off to play the hero, for once. The novelty of it would be entertaining, at least.

---​

Funnily enough, the promised army hadn't even reached the MBI building yet. Oh, it was getting closer, the fleet of pickup trucks with armed men in the backs racing through the streets. But a mixture of the various barricades put up by off-duty MBI guards and the attacks by small-time Sekirei-Ashikabi pairs had slowed the enemy's advance.

This much, I could tell at a glance.

The real problem before me, then, as I stood watching over the assembled Ashikabi and Sekirei of Shinto Teito, in the MBI plaza, was that we had no defending army to oppose the incursion. A collection of warbands, perhaps, but no true army. The various tribes, North, East, West, and South, had formed ranks, and looked to be a hairsbreadth away from going to war against each other, with the hapless lesser Ashikabi caught in the middle. Dear God in heaven, I was getting flashbacks to Byzantine politics at that very moment! Still, though, I had promised to play the hero, and I so disliked the idea of letting my childe down.

Now, then, what would a hero do at that very moment?

Make like Diocletian. Like Aurelian. Like Genghis. Unite the bickering tribes behind a common enemy.

Of course, I would need suitable ethos to match whatever pathos and logos I could muster. Fortunately, I had come prepared. Off came the facial wrappings. Off came the leather bomber jacket I'd worn for the past three years (it was starting to wear out, so honestly this was rather overdue). My pants, dark and professional looking enough to pass for office wear, stayed. Now, on came a pair of suitably scholarly-looking glasses, and a brilliant white lab coat. I checked to make sure that my weapons loadout was secure and concealed, since I had come loaded for wolf, and then gave my hair a quick ruffle. A few quick touch-ups of makeup to help me pass for a living human, and… voila! My disguise was complete.

It was a simple matter, to Obfuscate and make my way over to the MBI building's entrance. (I saw Tsukiumi, standing with the Northern faction, look puzzled, but she was a good sport and didn't give the game away.) Then, I broke Obfuscation, and started my performance.

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU IDIOTS DOING?" I shouted, storming out into the plaza in a way that suggested I had just come out of the building's main entrance. "The enemy's almost here!"

The effect was immediate. Everyone started looking at me, as the shame of being denounced by an apparent authority figure caused them to defer to me and lend my words more weight. Well, for most everyone, anyways. Tsukiumi looked like she'd just tried to swallow a live python, so low had her jaw dropped. And Izumi Higa, Ashikabi of the East, simply gave me a cold, calculating stare.

"Now that I have your attention, allow me to lay out some ground rules for the upcoming battle!" I shouted. "Rule Number One! The enemy is THAT WAY!" I pointed towards where I had seen the Kuei-Jin's trucks driving in from. "Some of you might be tempted to play this to your advantage, maybe arrange for a rival or two to die in the fighting! We are faced with an existential threat right now, a menace to all Ashikabi and Sekirei! Treason to that common cause endangers all of us, and as such, will be punishable by death! Any grudges you might have, any schemes and ambitions that you have, NONE OF IT MATTERS! Tonight, in this place, we are comrades, united by a common cause! Conduct yourselves accordingly!"

"And who are you, to enforce that?" Higa asked. "None of us take marching orders from M…. B… I…" he trailed off as he realized that in the space of an eyeblink, I was behind him, my scimitar resting lazily on his shoulder, its edge at his throat.

"Right now?" I said, making sure my voice carried. "Right now, I'm your commanding officer. Got a problem with that?"

"No. No problems," Higa said, looking unnerved.

"Glad to hear it!" I said with a smile. As I did so, I noticed Sekirei Number Six, Homura, standing near but not with the Ashikabi of the North's flock, his eyes wide as dinnerplates as he stared at me. I gave him a jaunty little wave and carried on with the show. "Alright! As of now, I'm establishing a clear chain of command! Will the Ashikabi of the North, East, West, and South all step forward?"

Reluctantly, they all did.

"These are now your commanders!" I shouted out, to the surprise of just about everybody in the plaza. "Lesser Ashikabi, you may choose which one you'll be following, so long as you pick one and follow his orders! Clear?"

"Why're you putting us in charge?" a biker-looking fellow who I vaguely recognized as the Ashikabi of the West asked, as the four Cardinal Ashikabi moved closer to me.

"Because you know your Sekirei better than I do, and you all have experience with Sekirei group tactics, which I lack," I said. "Besides, they identify more with you than with me, and having a commander that the troops see as a kindred spirit can be a great asset for morale."

I clapped my hands, looking over the four of them. Minato, the Ashikabi of the North. Bleeding heart, timid, honestly the kid would probably be dead in a decade, or however long it took before he ran into a threat his little harem couldn't protect him from. Sanada, the Ashikabi of the West. Rough, aggressive, and an absolute meathead. His habit of charging in to fight besides his Sekirei would probably kill him faster than Minato's particular vices. Higa, the Ashikabi of the East. Cold, scheming, manipulative, honestly, I'd be surprised if he didn't wind up at Pentex or Embraced by the Ventrue. Either way, the man probably had a long and prosperous career ahead of him. And lastly Hayato Mikogami, the Ashikabi of the South. He was grinning, and I realized immediately that this kid saw the whole thing as one big game. I could respect that. "Alright. So, here's what we're not telling the rank and file."

"Oh, there's more?" Mikogami asked, grinning ear-to-ear. "I'm eager to hear it."

"The attacking forces are what's called Kuei-Jin, although the local ones are called Gaki. Feel free to call them either, it ticks them off like nobody's business. They're a bunch of undead abominations that feast on the flesh of the living. Or, in layman's terms, vampires. Best way to kill them is with fire, but immense physical trauma works in a pinch." I really did hate giving away this much about our kind, but I kind of wanted these folks to win, and to do that, they'd need to know what they were fighting.

"Don't be ridiculous," Higa said, shaking his head, while Mikogami looked speculative, Minato looked scared, and Sanada looked at my feet. "There's no need for such unnecessary mysticism and superstition. While I appreciate your attempts at warning us of whatever threat you seem to have imagined, what you saw were most likely some sort of Sekirei variant, and…"

"Higa," Sanada said, eyes wide and face pale. "He doesn't have a shadow."

Now, all four of them were looking at my feet, and seeing no shadow behind me, thanks to that Lasombra I diablerized back in 2007. Turns out you are what you eat. Clan 'curse' included.

"Well, well, well, somebody's observant," I said with a grin. "Welcome to the world behind the curtain, boys. It only gets weirder from here."

"And you… what's your stake in this?" Mikogami asked, eyes sparkling. "Why are you fighting your own kind?"

"Because they're not my kind," I said pleasantly. "And fucking over the Kuei-Jin is always fun."

"Is this just a game to you?" Minato snapped. "This is… people could die!"

"People are definitely going to die," I said pleasantly. "Hopefully them, but probably at least one or two of us. So, no, it's not a game to me, but I'm enjoying myself nonetheless."

"You…" Minato looked like he was going to launch into some sort of idealistic speech about hope, and justice, and 'they were people,' so I clamped a hand over his mouth.

"We're wasting time you could be using to strategize with your Sekirei," I said with a smile. "So, I'm just going to give you your assignments. Mikogami, Higa, you're our frontliners. You have the most Sekirei, and so you can best form a line of battle. Sanada, Minato, you're on rear-guard. Stop any flankers and provide reinforcement to our frontlines when necessary. Any questions?"

"Where are you in all of this?" Higa asked, looking resentful that I'd put him on meatgrinder duty.

"I'll be dealing with the werewolves," I said with a smile.

"There are werewolves?" Mikogami asked, excited as could be.

"Don't try to look for them. Your squishy human brain is literally incapable of comprehending their existence. If you see one, you will wind up curled up into a tiny little ball, desperately whimpering as the primal terror they exude violates your mind."

"Noted," Higa said, looking unsteady on his feet.

"I'll be putting together a team without any humans on it, to respond to the threat the werewolves pose, while the rest of you attend to your parts of the battle plan," I told them. "Oh, and boys?"

They all looked at me.

"Do try to keep what I've just told you close to your sleeves. Try to only tell those who you know will keep a secret, that sort of thing. I'd rather not have to cut off any loose lips."

They got the message.

And so, I set off in search of team members. Fortunately, my first one was obvious.

I made a beeline towards Tsukiumi, enjoying how she tensed up as I walked closer to talk to… the person standing right next to her. "Homura, my friend! Good to see you. I'm putting together a squad of elites to take on the enemy's best fighters. You interested? No humans allowed, but I don't see an Ashikabi nearby, so I'm assuming you're still going stag, and the no humans allowed rule won't be a problem for you."

"That's… correct," Homura said, scanning my face for an ulterior motive. "Will this help to protect my fellow Sekirei?"

"Yes. Against a threat that the human Ashikabi can't even comprehend."

"I won't let you wing me," he said, still guarded.

"And I respect your commitment to freedom and independence," I said with a smile. "I appreciate how you've taken my words to heart."

"This isn't about…" Homura sighed. "Sure. Yes. Your five minute, completely off-base speech totally changed my worldview, and I've refused to take an Ashikabi solely out of what you, an asshole I met for five minutes in a dingy alleyway standing over your murder victims, told me. Woo. You're a modern-day Socrates. Happy now?"

"Oh, I think I like you," I said with a wider grin than usual. "Come on, new friend. Let's go recruit the rest of our squad." I turned to Tsukiumi, who was silently glaring at me. "You can come too, if you promise not to slow us down."

"YOU!" she began, and I promptly tuned her out again and walked off towards the Sekirei with the werewolf on a leash. Homura and Tsukiumi both followed, to my great satisfaction.

"So," I said to the wolf. "Are you a spy for the Kuei-Jin? Because I noticed a few of your furry fellows making their way here along with the rest of the invaders."

The wolf shook his head, glaring at me.

"Yes, yes, I know what you are, you know what I am, you hate me, I hate you, it's a whole thing. But then, I don't think you'd be letting the lovely lady here lead you around on a leash if you weren't fond of her, and the Kuei-Jin are here to kill or expel all the Sekirei," I said. I didn't actually know that for sure but was a reasonable and motivational assumption. "So, I'm guessing that's why you're not going into warform and killing me right now. Because that'd hit the other Ashikabi with the Delirium, and you might suffer their collective wrath if you did. Or rather, your lover might."

A slow, grudging nod.

"I'm rather interested in seeing the Sekirei survive," I said. "How about you?"

A nod.

"Enough to fight other werewolves?"

Hesitation. Conflict. Then, a nod.

"So, shall we fight together?" I asked him.

A nod, coupled with a glare.

"Shake on it?" I asked, extending my hand.

It took a bit of finagling, but eventually, we shook on it.

"Nice to meet you," I said to both wolf and Sekirei. "I'm David."

"I'm Kaho," his girlfriend said. "And he's Oosumi."

"Pleasure to work with both of you. Let me introduce you to the rest of the team."

And just like that, my squad was assembled for the night, and soon, we turned to face the enemy's expected approach vector, as the Sekirei began to form up around us. In the distance, the roar of engines could be heard, drawing closer.

"Well, then," I said, grinning ferally. "Showtime."

 

[Charles Flynn]

I watched, carefully, from my chosen vantage point, on a rooftop above the plaza. The enemy was almost here. Their trucks, battered and scarred, carried their vanguard forward. I grinned.

"Hey, Homura! Bet you can't hit their gas tanks from here."

"And what do I get if I do it?" he asked, looking at me wryly.

"I'll buy your drinks at the afterparty," I said with a smile.

He sighed, and then, three bolts of fire. Two of them simply damaged their target's roof, but the third… The third found its target, and the truck exploded.

I grinned, as the enemy transports skidded to a halt, the Kuei-Jin and their mercenaries scrambling to get out. The battle was beginning, Sekirei leaping into action, so where…?

"There. At the rear of the enemy's forces," I said, pointing out the four figures clad in sweatpants and nothing else, at the back of the Kuei-Jin's forces. "That's them. They're waiting for the Sekirei to finish off the cannon fodder before they go into war form. Probably taking the time to pick out their targets."

"You're the expert," Homura said with a shrug.

"Not as much as him," I said, nodding at Oosumi. "Think I'm right?"

The werewolf nodded, giving me a look of begrudging acknowledgement.

"Alright then. We don't give them the chance to shift. Pick your targets. I'll take the one furthest to the left. Homura? Tsukiumi? Kaho?"

Before they could reply, the werewolves started advancing towards the front.

"Shit. Go. GOGOGOGOGO!"

I put my money where my mouth was, and leapt down, cloaking myself in the shadows as I drew my blade, Drusilla.

Fortunately, I scored a kill with my first hit, cutting the human-form werewolf's head clean off. Unfortunately, however, my comrades in the Assamite Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Aliens (working title) had been less adept at reacting to the immediate demands of the situation. Consequently, I was standing, completely uncloaked, murder weapon in hand, over the decapitated corpse of a werewolf, with three of his comrades all staring at me in rage. Without any backup. And they'd shifted all the way into war form on reflex.

I hadn't lived this long by freezing up in the face of danger, though, so instead of panicking and babbling lame excuses, I rolled quickly out of the way of the closest werewolf's retaliatory strike, slashing his right leg's Achilles tendon as I went. The other two began to close in around me, however, and I braced for immense amounts of pain… before a dragon-shaped blast of water from up on the vantage point I'd jumped from slammed into one of them, courtesy of Tsukiumi, and a wolf the size of a Humvee tackled the other, leaving me to fight only the one that I'd already crippled. Good.

The werewolf I'd hamstrung screamed in pain, and tried to claw at me, but I was faster than him, and Drusilla took the beast's hand. The corrosive blood I'd slathered onto my precious blade did her work, burning into the wounds and preventing them from healing. He still attacked, of course, snapping and clawing at me, but I danced out of the way, sticking to his now-crippled right side, measuring his rhythm.

"For Haqim," I said, and then, I decapitated the beast, stepping past his one remaining good arm as it struck out at me, and bringing Drusilla up in a perfect swing, cleaving through muscle and bone, severing all. A normal sword would have blunted, but Drusilla cut through everything, without distinction.

It was at that point that I realized that the werewolf that had been blasted back by Tsukiumi hadn't been severely damaged by it (because of course not, it was pressurized water, and he was a werewolf in War Form), and had managed to firm up his footing enough to move without being pushed away by Tsukiumi's strikes.

I realized this because he shoulder-checked me away from his comrade's corpse, howling with fear and rage as he slammed me into the façade of a nearby building.

He could have killed me then and there. Could have ripped me to shreds. I had lost my grip on Drusilla, and I was disoriented. But he made a mistake. He looked back. Terrified for his comrade, not realizing I had already killed said comrade, the deathblow too fast for the eye to follow. He looked back. And he saw as gravity toppled his brother-in-arm's head, no longer attached to his neck. Then, he turned back, and jaws wide, made to bite my head off! …Only for me to throw the silver dagger that I'd pulled out from a hidden sheath in my now-tattered lab coat while he was looking away into the roof of his mouth.

He staggered back, eyes wide, the brain-melting agony of silver putting him on the back foot. And I took the only opening I would get. Celerity roaring through my veins, I moved like lightning, drawing two more silver daggers from their concealed sheathes and, in a blur of motion, rolling between the werewolf's legs, cutting both his Achilles tendons as I passed. He fell forwards, with a gurgling screech, and I leapt onto his back, driving both silver stilettos into his eyes, and past his eyes, his brain. That did the trick, and he reverted to human form, a clear sign that I'd killed him.

I sheathed my daggers, making a mental note to give them both a thorough cleaning and new sheathes now that I'd gotten blood on the inside of these ones (silver weaponry corroded so easily that it required regular, often weekly maintenance.) And then, I searched for Drusilla, taking in the conditions of the fight as I did so.

Homura, and Tsukiumi were keeping the Kuei Jin from swarming us, blasting back any who drew near with wide-ranging area attacks. Kaho and Oosumi were taking down the last werewolf in tandem, beauty and beast working in tandem like they'd been fighting together their whole lives. I briefly considered joining them, but decided I'd only get in the way. Or wind up under friendly fire from Oosumi.

Then, as I grabbed Drusilla from where she'd fallen out of my hands, I heard a blade leave its sheath, and turned.

There was a female Kuei-Jin in a pantsuit standing behind me, katana in hand. "You," she hissed.

"Yes, that is what people tend to call me," I said with a smile, turning to face her while keeping an eye out for threats in the periphery. "What do they call you?"

"I am the Foreigner Eviscerating Devil Tiger," she said, eyes wild with hatred. "Tell me, monster, do you recognize me? Do you remember me?"

I blinked. "I'm sorry. I really don't. I know you've probably got some sort of grudge against me, but I have no memory of you. At all."

"YOU KILLED ME!" she snapped.

I blinked. "Yeah, that… really doesn't narrow it down. Maybe if you gave me some details, but as is, no."

"Fine then," she said, eyes tinged with madness. "I'll jog your memory. I've waited ninety years dreaming of this glorious revenge, what's a few more minutes if it means getting things perfect?"

"Eh, sure."

"Do you remember Morihiro Seta? He was a nationalist politician, back in the twenties. Just when Japan was really stepping up towards imperial glory. The mainland Kuei-Jin didn't like that much, though. They wanted their glorious 'Middle Kingdom' to remain undivided, and that meant making sure that Japan remained peaceful. But they couldn't kill a Japanese citizen themselves, oh, no! The cowards needed an outside actor! So, they hired you."

"Mmm. Yes, remembering that, now. So… You're Morihiro Seta, you came back from the dead and got a sex change. Got it."

"No," she said, gritting her teeth. "Morihiro Seta wasn't the only person you killed on that trip."

"Oh," I said, finally putting the pieces together. "So, you're that one person I Frenzied on and drained to death in that alleyway."

"No."

"The… customs official I melted into a puddle with my blood when he opened my coffin and I panicked and thought he was a vampire hunter?"

"No!"

"One of the actual vampire hunters I killed when they came after me for melting a customs official?"

"HOW MANY PEOPLE DID YOU KILL WHEN YOU CAME TO JAPAN LAST TIME?" she screamed, revulsion and disbelief warring on her face.

"Either six, or seven. One of them was pregnant, and I'm not sure if that counts double."

Her face… froze. But I could feel the sheer unbridled rage emanating from her like water from a busted pipe, pouring out and filling the world around her. "You knew I was pregnant?"

"Well not at the time I chopped your head off, but I got a taste of pregnancy hormones when I was licking the stump of your decapitated head," I said nonchalantly. "So, you're Seta's secretary, then! Come back from Hell as a Kuei-Jin, I see. Sorry about killing you, by the way. But you saw me killing your boss, and I couldn't have any witnesses. Nothing personal."

She didn't say anything. She didn't move. She stood and stared, paralyzed by the sheer enormity of her rage.

"I'm digging the new body, though. Straighter teeth, much less cross-eyed, honestly, I might've done you a favor by killing you," I continued, taunting her with a merciless smile.

That did it. She lunged for me, blinded by fury, and I struck her down like lightning. She brought up her katana to deflect, illustrating to me once more the most annoying part of the Kuei-Jin. They didn't frenzy mindlessly. Which meant that they actually had enough of a self-preservation instinct to defend themselves.

Of course, Drusilla still cut clean through the katana, and the Kuei-Jin behind it, taking her by surprise. I wasn't surprised, though. Drusilla cuts through everything. And, calling upon Celerity, I kept cutting. And cutting. And cutting, until her body was little more than a collection of shredded meat. She'd be back, though. The Kuei-Jin had an annoying habit of returning from death in new bodies.

With that little blast from the past done and dealt with, and the fourth werewolf now very much dead thanks to Oosumi and Kaho, the others congregated around me, awaiting orders. The Kuei-Jin were starting to route, and the Sekirei were just about triumphant.

So why couldn't I shake the feeling that I was missing something?

Then, I saw them. Three men, one woman, at the back of our ranks, making their way towards the Ashikabi, specifically Minato and Sanada, whose Sekirei had gone to bolster one or two breaks in our lines. They were in human form, so it wasn't anything about their appearance that gave them away. No, it was that they were here, witnesses to a battle between inhuman, supernatural forces, as Sekirei and Kuei-Jin alike bent the elements and threw cars like they were made of Styrofoam, and they weren't reacting to it like any sort of innocent bystander would.

How do you break a defensive line? Send someone in disguise to hit it from the back.

Beside me, Oosumi turned to see what I was looking at, sniffed the air, and stiffened.

The weresharks shed their human forms, growing into enormous shark-human hybrids as they lunged for the Ashikabi, ripping through their reduced guards like they were nothing. Sanada vanished with a bloody crunch, causing his Sekirei to fall, and Minato was lifted up by two enormous hands towards the wereshark's waiting mouth.

I watched, in the eye of my mind, as the entire fate of the battle began to tip towards the Kuei Jin, as Minato Sahashi's bloody death took out his Sekirei, most of our heaviest hitters, and the Kuei-Jin rallied to hammer and anvil our main forces. We might still pull off a victory, but it would be a bloody one. Higa had already taken heavy losses, and while Mikogami's contingent had fared much better, their Ashikabi was too close to the weresharks. The dominos of disaster tipped over, one after the other in my mind's eye, and I realized that my dream of preserving a healthy breeding population of the Sekirei to entertain me and add wonders to the world in the centuries to come was doomed. Some Sekirei might survive this battle. But most likely no more than ten.

But that didn't happen.

Because, before the wereshark could bite Minato's head off, there was a gunshot, and a bullet caught the wereshark in its brain, killing it instantly. I traced the angle of fire back to its source, and saw a man in a white labcoat, with frizzy white hair, holding a rifle and looking down on the fight from one of the MBI building's upper-story windows.

Then, the sliding glass doors of the MBI building opened, and a dead woman stepped out.

Karasuba was looking a lot better than the last time I saw her, as flaming sludge on an elevator floor. Her eyes had been replaced by a glowing red vizor, and I could see bits of metal poking out from beneath her skin. She wore nothing but a bloodstained labcoat, and was armed with nothing but a katana.

I immediately changed my face with Obfuscate and turned to my team. "Slam the Kuei-Jin from behind! Break their morale! We're too far away to help with the weresharks, the best we can do is take pressure off the defenders!"

Our purpose clear, we moved. I cloaked myself in the shadows, decapitating Kuei-Jin with sneak attacks. Kaho danced her dance of destruction, while Oosumi (now in wolf form) herded his victims into his girlfriend's attacks. Tsukiumi and Homura began layering down herd-hitting attacks from behind, obliterating anywhere that the Kuei-Jin dared cluster up.

And as I killed the Kuei-Jin's stragglers, I could see snapshots of the events in the rear, as Minato's Sekirei moved in to defend him, while Karasuba and the sniper with the silver bullets (because what else could kill a werebeast in one shot) laid out the other three weresharks stone dead.

It was brutal. It was bloody. And, before long, it was done. The surviving Kuei-Jin had all fled. The enemy werebeasts had been terminated. And the Kuei-Jin's human mercenaries were currently smeared out across the streets like jam on toast.

I could have taken center stage, handled the cleanup, strengthened my connections with the Big Four- well, Big Three, now that Sanada was shark chow, but that would have required drawing Karasuba's attention. So instead, I clapped my hands, and got my team's attention.

"Welp, looks like the whole mess is over, and we won! Who's up for drinks?"

"You want… There are so many people dead," Homura said, looking out over the mess of shredded bodies, mostly Kuei-Jin, but with at least twenty Sekirei mixed in. "And you want to celebrate?"

"Well, I mean, I worked up an appetite with that fight," I said candidly, as I removed my bloodstained shirt and started looting a Kuei-Jin who'd been bifurcated at the waist's shirt, which was the cleanest article of clothing that I could find. "And, since I'd probably end up visiting a bar anyways to feed, I thought I'd invite all of you, my comrades in arms, to all get intoxicated with me, in celebration of the fact that these assholes are all dead, and we're not." Not said, was the fact that, in the face of the second woman I had killed who'd come back from the dead for vengeance tonight, I was feeling a bit inadequate, questioning whether I was losing my touch, and in dire need of a drink.

They stared at me as I got the man's shirt off, and then moved on to help myself to a headless corpse's pants.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Tsukiumi asked, sounding absolutely nauseated.

"What, are the dead guys using them?" I asked rhetorically. "I need clean clothes, mine have all got blood on them. I've got a spare outfit in a backpack up on one of the rooftops if any of you want to change, or don't have clothes to begin with." I gave Oosami a meaningful look. "I mean, it's only eleven-thirty. Night's still young."

"You know what?" Homura said, staring at Minato, still a ways away from us, now being fussed over by his Sekirei. "I think I could use that drink."

"Oosumi and I will go too," said Kaho, and I could tell that she and her significant other didn't actually want to go drinking, but also didn't want to leave me alone with Homura. "Just to make sure you behave." Aaaand suspicion confirmed.

"I think I'll go check on Minato instead," Tsukiumi said, with a tone that told me she wanted me to be upset about it.

"Give him my best regards on not becoming shark chow," I said with a smile, before throwing an arm over Homura's shoulder. "C'mon, buddy! Let's go! I know a place that doesn't close until two in the morning."

"We're not friends," Homura said, cold as ice.

"That's what all my friends say." And so saying, I led my new friends off to a night of revelry.

 

[Charles Flynn]

"Here's to victory!" I said, raising my drink in a toast. Seeing as my drink was a woozy blond man, nobody clinked their drinks with mine.

"Oy, no mistreating the blood dolls," the barkeep said.

"I had no idea there even was a place like this in Tokyo," Kaho marveled, sipping at her drinks. Beside her, Oosumi lapped up sake from a dog bowl.

"Yeah, Sally keeps a low profile," I said. "But I helped her get to Japan in the first place, and helped her buy her bar in the first place, so I can always get my drinks for free."

"If only to make you shut up, for a moment," Sally said from behind the bar, before turning to the others. "Relax. As long as you come in peace, and do no evil here, no one will speak of the events in this room to outsiders. You can be yourselves here."

Homura didn't question the bar, or who might be the bar's usual clientele. He simply drank, and drank, and drank, like a man dying of thirst. This was a man with a heavy weight upon his mind, a grave burden upon his soul.

So obviously, I immediately decided to pry. Because I was curious.

"So, do you want to fuck that Minato guy?" I asked, enjoying the spectacle as Homura choked on his drink. "No judgement if the answer's yes, he looks like an absolute snack. He kind makes me want to rip out my own sternum and suffocate him in the resultant sucking chest wound, to tell the truth."

"W-What?" Homura stammered out.

"But enough about my depraved and violent sexual fantasies, how's your sex life?" I asked with a grin, resting an arm on Homura's shoulder.

"I… I won't be with Minato," Homura said.

"I notice that's not a denial of attraction," I said. "Come on, tell Uncle David all about it, let me put my four centuries of experience to work solving your romantic trials and tribulations."

"You're not four hundred, Dave," Sally, the lying scortilla, says. "You're older than me, and I'm four hundred and fifty-seven years old."

"Obviously not," I said with a grin, the power of logic behind me. "Because over four hundred is elder territory, and I'm clearly not an elder. I'm young, I'm spry, I do things! Elders just stay at headquarters and manipulate people. I do my own fieldwork, and kill people for my rent money, so obviously, I can't be an elder. So, equally obviously, I'm not a day over four hundred."

"You've been not a day over four hundred for the past two centuries," said Sally.

"Silence, woman! Your facts and logic have no power here!" I shouted, pointing at her dramatically. "And anyways, we're just shifting the topic away from what's really important: Homura's romantic woes! You have the look of a man in conflicted love, my friend, and I BURN WITH CURIOUSITY!"

"I… fine. If it'll get you to shut the fuck up, I'll tell you," Homura says. "I'm attracted to Minato. My body is reacting to him. But I won't wing myself to a man. I want to preserve my identity at least that much."

"You value your freedom," I said with a nod. "I respect that."

"It's not… whatever sick theory you have about all Sekirei secretly being slaves!" Homura said. "I'm imperfect. Unstable. I was one of the first Sekirei MBI took out of stasis, and, as a consequence, my body is… mutable. If I wing myself to an Ashikabi, my body will automatically reshape itself to conform to their preferences, and Minato… he's at least mostly straight."

"So, if you wing yourself to him, you'll lose your dick," I said with a nod of understanding. "And you don't want to have to give up that much of your identity to serve your lover."

"Yes," he said with a sigh. "I'm reacting. I thought… If I could find a female Ashikabi, maybe… but it's too late. I'm reacting to him. Even as I try to preserve my identity with all my strength, I can feel my body starting to change against my will. But… I won't let myself be winged. I'll burn to ash before I surrender."

He moved to take another drink but was glomped by a crying Kaho mid-swig.

"That's so sad!" she said with a sob. "Homura, I'm so sorry, I had no idea!"

Oosumi, behind her, gave Homura a sad look, silently echoing his Sekirei's sentiments.

"Well, that's fucked up," I said. "Let's see how I can help you."

"And how do you aim to do that?" Homura asked.

"Well, first, just to confirm things, Minato has a sister, right?" I had gotten that much by watching through Tsukiumi's eyes during the day, but I could use a confirmation.

"Yes, but… how did you know that?" Homura asked, sounding disturbed.

"I have my ways," I said mysteriously, before turning to Sally. "Can I have an empty glass?" While she went to that, I turned back to Homura. "So, something I've noticed before is that most of the Ashikabi I've encountered are male."

"Yes, men seem to manifest the Potential more frequently than women," Homura said. "What's your point?"

"Thank you for confirming my suspicion," I said with a grin. "And I'm assuming it's genetic?"

"I… think so, yes," Kaho volunteered hesitantly.

"Good. So, that means it's most likely a sex-linked trait, similar to hemophilia, carried on the X chromosome. And, most likely a recessive X-chromosome trait, from the sound of things," I said, as Sally brought me an empty shot glass. "Thanks, Sally."

Then, I cut my left hand off with Drusilla, and filled the glass up with blood.

"What the hell are you doing?" Homura snapped, leaning away from me as I reattached my hand.

"I needed ink," I said by way of explanation, as I dipped my finger in the shot glass of my blood and began fingerpainting out a basic trait inheritance diagram on the bar's surface. "So, let's start off. Here's our end product, Minato. One Y-Chromosome, one Ashikabi-type X-chromosome." I depicted the Ashikabi chromosome as XA+​. "Now, we know for a fact that his mother is either a full-fledged Ashikabi, or an Ashikabi gene carrier, since Minato's a man, and as such, his father is contributing the Y-Chromosome. So, you could try to put the mack on his mother, see what happens."

"Doctor Sahashi? I…. I've known her since I was a little kid. I couldn't do that. It would be too awkward."

"Beggars can't be choosers, Homura. But even so, there is still potentially an option. Do you know if Minato's father has the potential?" I asked.

"I think so, yes," he said after a long pause. "Do you… know who Minato's father is?"

"No, but from your reaction, I'm guessing he's somebody important," I said, as I began tracing out two more diagrams. "So, here are the two possibilities." I pointed at the first square. "Firstly, there's the possibility that Momma Sahashi is a full blown Ashikabi herself, in which case, as she mated with a man who had the Potential, there is a one hundred percent chance of her child being an Ashikabi." I pointed at the other square. "Now, on the other hand, if she's merely an Ashikabi gene carrier, then, assuming consistent mating patterns, her child has a fifty-fifty shot of being an Ashikabi." I licked away half of each inheritance square. "Now, since Minato's sister is, well, female, we can erase the Y-chromosome half of the inheritance squares, leaving us with our full range of possibilities." I spread my hands dramatically. "So, in conclusion, we're left with a seventy-five percent chance that Minato's sister is a female Ashikabi, meaning that seducing her could stabilize your gender identity issues. I could give you an even more accurate analysis if you're willing to seduce Minato's mother."

"I… I'd have to wing myself to someone I won't necessarily love," Homura said, looking at once hopeful and conflicted. Behind him, Kaho had her jaw hanging open. So did Oosumi, for that matter.

"I mean, if we're putting winging in the context of marriage, you and half of all the married people in history, bub. Look. It's not a perfect solution, sure, but this way, you can have a substitute Sahashi, and if that's not enough to satisfy you, a clandestine affair with your new brother-in-law is always on the table, this time without it turning you into a woman," I pointed out, downing the shotglass of my own blood. "But if you want to try this, want to take a path out of this dilemma of yours that isn't surrendering your identity completely or burning yourself to death, then I'll help you every step of the way, and I'm pretty sure those two will too." I nodded to Kaho and Oosumi, who had managed to shut their jaws.

"Why?" he asked, looking at me distrustfully. "Why are you offering this up to me?"

"Because you're an interesting person, and you have interesting powers that I want to persist in the Sekirei gene pool for centuries to come," I said clinically. "Plus, on top of that, you're a brother-in-arms, and a friend. I'm obligated by the bro code to aid you in your romantic endeavors. And as for them? I'm guessing you did at least one of them some great service in the past, maybe even saved them by playing superhero like you were doing when we first met. They probably feel obligated to repay the good turn that you did them."

"I mean, I hate that he's right, but he's not wrong," Kaho said. "I don't know enough about genetics to confirm or deny what he's saying, but I could always check the internet. And, if he's right about this, and you want to go for it, we'll back you all the way. We owe you that much, 'Defender of the Unwinged.'"

"Okay," he said, after a long pause. "Okay. If we do this, and I'm not saying that we're doing this, then what would you need?"

"The name of Minato's sister. And, preferably, a picture to identify her with," I said with a smile. "I'll let you three mull it over for a bit. If you do take me up on this, then we can meet up back at this bar, if Sally's willing to help us."

"Sure, fine. As long as you're paying accordingly," she said, third eye twitching in irritation.

"Then, from there, we can go to it. I think that, between our combined talents, we'll definitely be able to get Minato's sister on board with this. We'll have to improvise the plan according to the circumstances, but I think that we can pull this off."

"Alright," he said. "I'll see you tomorrow, then."

"Well, then," I said, gathering my things. "Hate to leave early, but I'll have to tell my kid about what happened at MBI. See you all tomorrow night."

And so, I vanished into the night, ignoring Sally's cry of, "Wait, you have a Childe?" from behind me.

 

[Charles Flynn]

A/N: Happy Valentine's Day! Have some cute couple antics, and also a nightmarish demon from the blackest pits of hell!


Kenji Kakizaki was not an exceptional man, nor was he a man of great personal ambition. Were an outside observer to examine his conduct in his day-to-day life, they would conclude that he was simply Izumi Higa's toady, the lackey of the year, loyal as a dog, and twice as dumb.

This was largely by design. Kakizaki was quite willing to let Higa take the stage, and merely play the supporting cast. It fit his own designs perfectly, to simply be seen as the unexceptional confidant, riding on his rich friend's coattails, a competent subordinate and nothing more.

"How goes the battle at MBI?" he asked his Sekirei, lounging on the couch as she tapped at her computer, observing as his boss fought at MBI.

"Only bringing the pawns was a mistake, it seems," Kochou said. "We've taken heavy casualties."

"All expendable, I should hope," Kakizaki said, not worried. He'd given Higa the best protections possible without dipping into the realm of the vulgar, and so his dear friend would survive, no matter what.

"All expendable," she affirmed. "They'll think us weak, though."

"Let them. I look forward to breaking a few probing hands," he said, getting up off his couch. "I think it's time we visited our dear CEO's bride-to-be, and… clarified her way of thinking about things. While Higa's out, of course. We wouldn't want him seeing too much."

"Will there be gloating?" Kochou, asked, attempting not to seem too eager. Kakizaki saw through it easily, but he loved her for the façade she put up all the same. It was one of the many little quirks that made his darling songbird such a delight to have around.

"Yes, I think I might have it in me to gloat a bit," he said with an easy grace. "You can bring the tape recorder, as long as you promise to be responsible with the tapes."

"Of course," she said, nodding seriously. He could tell she was fantasizing about falling asleep to the sound of their enemies' screams in the nights to come, and it made him want to pin her down to the couch and have his way with her right here and now. He restrained himself, though. Such thoughts would have to wait for later. A very pleasurable later.

They made their way to the room in which Yukari Sahashi was being held, and, along the way, Kochou disabled surveillance, and made sure that no one would be in position to overhear. Meanwhile, Kakizaki grabbed his… working gear, and prepared for what was to come.

Yukari sat up, wide eyed, from the bed she was on when they entered. And then, after Kochou had told the guard on duty that they were relieved, she watched, catlike.

Once the guard was well and truly gone, she charged at Kakizaki. "You kidnapping motherfucker, I will break every bone in your-"

"Crucio," Kakizaki said, tapping a red icon on his smartphone, and Yukari collapsed on the floor, writhing in agony. Kochou started recording, looking flushed.

"What… the hell?" Yukari mumbled, barely able to move from the agony wracking her body.

"Pain is simply a signal to the brain, Miss Sahashi," Kakizaki said, moving over to look out the window. "I configured my smartphone accordingly, and now all it takes to bring you to your knees writhing in agony… is the press of a button."

"That's… that doesn't work like that!" Yukari said, flummoxed.

"It does if I say so, Miss Sahashi. And while we're on the subject of reality bending to my whims, let's talk about your response to my employer's proposal."

"You… and Higa… can go to Hell for all I care…" Yukari groaned out, struggling to rise from the rug. "I won't… marry him."

"Ah, but I'm afraid that once I'm done fixing that, you won't have much of a say in the matter," Kakizaki said, smirking malevolently. "You know, it's rare that I get to tell anybody of my true accomplishments. And you know, it's something of a cliché, isn't it? The wicked wizard, gloating to the beautiful maiden he holds captive in his sinister tower? Well, I'm game. Care to be cliché with me, Miss Sahashi?"

"Fuck you."

"I didn't hear a no," Kakizaki said. "So, I'll start. Tell me, have you heard the good word of the Wyrm?"

"I don't care… about your religion, you freak," Yukari said, still struggling to rise.

"Oh, not religion, no, no," Kakizaki said with a dark chuckle. "No, religions must be grounded in faith, taken on trust, and the Wyrm is very, very real. If I had the time or the inclination, I could take you on a little trip into the Umbra, and show you the depths of the Black Spiral. I think that would change your mind quite quickly, now, wouldn't it? But I don't have time for that. So instead, I'll tell you. Whether you believe me or not doesn't matter, this is for my benefit, not yours."

"Well gee, thanks," Yukari muttered.

"You're very welcome," Kakizaki said pleasantly. "I could have just used Crucio.exe to torture you unconscious, but instead, I decided to really savor tormenting you. Now where was I?" He put a hand to his chin. "Ah, yes, the Wyrm. Well at the beginning of things, there were three forces in the universe, who we called the Triat. They were the Wyld, who created and mutated, the Weaver, who put the cosmos into order, and the Wyrm, who destroyed parts of the Weaver's Pattern so that the Wyld would have room to create more. But the Weaver grew sick of the Wyrm, longing for perfect and unchanging order, and so imprisoned him at the heart of creation. And there he lies, hungering for the destruction of all that is, so that he might one day be free. And the essence of the world, Gaia, the very spirit containing him, now lies wracked with pain! Poisoned by pollution, hatred, malice, she lies in her death throes! The end times are upon us, and the Wyrm shall glut himself upon all existence! No force on Earth can prevent the Apocalypse, all that we can do is hasten it."

"You're insane," Yukari whispered. "You think… what, that the Sekirei Plan will let you destroy the world?"

"The… Sekirei Plan?" Kakizaki repeated, incredulous. "The Sekirei Plan?" He laughed, long and hard. "Darling, this girl's a comedian! She thinks this is about the Sekirei Plan!"

"I mean, you can hardly blame her," Kochou said, still fighting back a snicker despite her words. "She's just a pitiful Sleeping mortal. Of course she wouldn't know."

"Oh, Sahashi, Sahashi, Sahashi," Kakizaki said, shaking his head in mocking amusement. "This isn't about the Sekirei Plan. Aside from bringing me into contact with my darling Kochou, the Sekirei Plan has absolutely no bearing upon my actions. It's merely a happy accident, which has allowed me to further encourage my dear friend Higa's flaws and allowed us to take you, daughter of MBI's chairman and his second-in-command, captive. With your marriage to Higa, the upcoming murders of your brother and both your parents, and the upcoming merger with Pentex I talked Higa into, soon, we'll bind two of the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies in thrall to the Wyrm. Imagine the poisoning we could bring forth with that! Perhaps we lace the medicine we produce with Wyrm toxins, to weaken the populace and leave them open to possession! Perhaps we stage a highly publicized mass poisoning, completely by accident, of course, and make people lose faith in the medical industry, and cause thousands of deaths from treatable diseases as people turn to 'traditional medicine!' The possibilities for the advancement of human suffering are limitless!" He threw his hands into the air, cackling madly. "But even that is discounting my piece de resistance! For years, through subtle manipulation and encouragement, I have despoiled Izumi Higa's soul! Now, on his wedding night, as he binds MBI and Hiyamakai Enterprises together in the service of the Wyrm, I will finally defile his body!"

"Wait," Yukari panted, having recovered enough to pull herself up into a sitting position against the far wall. "I'm confused. Am I marrying him here, or are you?"

"A bane spirit, the very same one that bonded with the legendary Serpent King, Zahak... Oh, wait, you don't know what any of those words mean," Kakizaki said, giving her a mocking pout. "How very sad for you. I suppose I'll just have to show you, instead."

He pressed something on his phone, and suddenly her mind was overwhelmed with visions. She saw herself, dolled up in makeup, underneath Higa as he thrusted inside her, smiling vapidly with a ring on her hand. Then… suddenly, some dark shadow seemed to pass out of her, and into Higa. At once, her expression grew panicked, and she began to scream and wail, as serpents erupted from Higa's shoulders, and his body grew larger, more twisted and monstrous. And the her in the vision died, her brains devoured by the serpents coming out of Higa's shoulders as he wailed in shock and horror at what he had become.

"You… you're going to put the spirit in me, aren't you?" she said. "Just so you can make Higa into… that monster."

"Yes," Kakizaki said with a grin. "I've always had a fondness for the Shanameh after all. What better way to live out my dreams than to turn my CEO into the reincarnation of my favorite villain of all time? Oh, I don't doubt that Higa will have some trouble with his new, monstrous nature, of course, but I'll be there, to smooth the transition and help him along. After all, isn't that what friends are for?"

"That's only if… I don't stop you first!" Yukari cried out, mustering all of her willpower to stand up and strike at Kakizaki, desperately trying to make him drop his phone.

"Crucio," Kakizaki said simply, and Yukari Sahashi dropped back to the floor, out cold. "Well then, shall we begin?"

"Of course, dear," Kochou said, helping him into a black trench coat as he held out his arms, then sliding on his hacking sunglasses. "I took the liberty of getting out your computing equipment in advance."

"Kochou," he said, cupping her chin and staring into her eyes. "The longer you're in my life, the more I wonder how I ever lived without you."

She blushed, beautiful as the day he met her, and he relished it. But he had work to do, and sadly, he couldn't afford to spend any more time marveling at his beloved.

"Alright, then," he said, placing the metal skullcap onto Yukari's head, then sending Ahriman a quick text through his phone to confirm that the mighty Bane was ready. "And that's our partner in this little escapade, he's ready to go when we are. Beginning transfer. Ahriman ten percent downloaded, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, seventy, eighty… seventy… sixty…" he frowned and began typing furiously. "Paradox thinks it can pwn me? Think again n00b. Back at eighty!" Where the Hermetic mages had Latin, Kakizaki had Dated Leetspeak. It still worked, though, and that was all that mattered. "Ninety! One hundred percent! We're through. Establishing consciousness isolation protocol. Linking host limbic system to Ahriman. Linking host memory to Ahriman. Establishing anti-fomoric firewall. Bodily corruption… negated. All should be good. Can you hear me, lord Ahriman?"

"Loud and clear," the ancient Bane said with Yukari's voice. "I feel so weak, though."

"Technically speaking, I only linked a small portion of your essence into her body," Kakizaki said apologetically, even as he helped the embodiment of pure evil to his borrowed feet. "Enough to control, but not to mutate. She's too virtuous to make a good host for you, but I need her under control to advance the plan, and I thought that you might enjoy the chance to put some of the finishing touches on your future host's corruption."

"You thought correctly," Ahriman said, chuckling. "You have done good work, young Nephandus. We will watch your career with great interest, in Malfeas. You may leave me. I will… get into character."

"Of course, Lord Ahriman," Kakizaki said with a bow. "Kochou? Shall we retire to our chambers and… celebrate?"

"That sounds lovely right about now," she said, face red, practically panting with lust.

And so, tucking her arm into his, they left the demon they'd summoned behind, in search of more pleasurable pursuits.

 

[Charles Flynn]

The next night, I met my team in the bar, wearing a Hawaiian button-up shirt unbuttoned over a Twilight t-shirt, the perfect disguise. (No one would ever expect an actual vampire to wear Twilight merch.)

"So, are we doing this?" I asked.

"Yes," Homura said. "We are." He offered me a picture. "She's the girl on the left, her name is Yukari Sahashi."

"Alright," I said with a smile, holding out a hand towards Sally. She pressed an envelope into it, and I gave her an envelope in return. "Thanks, Sal. Pleasure doing business with you. Come on gang, let's go."

"Y- What the hell?" Homura asked indignantly. "But she hasn't helped us locate Yukari yet!"

I flashed him the envelope Sal had passed me. "She already did. Yukari Sahashi's current place of residence, routine, and significant associates are listed in this envelope. It's a service I usually employ for my.,. professional duties."

"Then what were the picture and the name for?" Kaho asked, as the team followed behind me.

"Just because Sally knows the name, face, and address of everyone in Tokyo doesn't mean that I do," I said, passing the picture to her. "Plus, I thought it would be helpful if we all knew what the young lady looked like and the name she answered to."

I opened up the envelope as we stepped out into the street, Kaho showing Oosumi the picture behind me. And then, after briefly reading through it, I whistled, somewhat impressed despite myself. "Well, she's definitely got the potential. In fact, she's already an Ashikabi. Made a name for herself, apparently. Kicked Mikogami in the balls, too."

"What? Let me see that," Homura said, grabbing the dossier from me. "Devil Ashikabi… Held captive by Izumi Higa… Holy cow."

"Yeah. I've got to deal with some rubberneckers, do you mind reading it aloud for Oosumi? I don't think he can read," I said, earning myself an annoyed but resigned huff from the werewolf. As Homura started to read out the dossier, I headed down a dingy alleyway, and Obfuscated, unobserved. Then, I doubled back, making my way towards the various observers I'd noticed. Best to gouge out the eyes of any that thought to spy on me, after all.

The first two were easy. They were professionals, clearly. Sent in to observe with their eyes what a digital camera couldn't capture: Me. I took both their heads, and wrote sufficiently cryptic warnings in their blood.

The third observer, or should I say group of observers, were far more interesting.

"Minato keeps hogging the binoculars," the busty Sekirei in a shrine maiden fetish costume said, pouting. "Musubi wants to see, too!"

"Please keep it down, Musubi," Minato Sahashi, the very brother of the woman we were hoping to wing Homura to that night, said, staring down at my team through a set of binoculars. "He's not back yet. Maybe he left?" He sat up, backing away from the edge of the rooftop and handing the binoculars to Musubi.

"We can only hope that's the case," a busty brunette said, probably Sekirei based on her appearance and the company she kept. "That David fellow reminds me far too much of the unsavory types I used to deal with as part of the Disciplinary Squad. Homura should know better than to get so close with him."

"Well," Minato said. "He gave them an envelope with some sort of letter inside and walked off. Maybe he was just working for them as some kind of information broker?"

"Maybe," the blonde said. "But you know as well as I the string of eliminations without a recorded victor that's been taking place. We thought it was that Veiled Sekirei woman, but what if it's him? He fits the rumors of an unseen predator hunting Sekirei far too well."

"That's a tenuous connection, and you know it, Kazehana," Minato said. "We can't just accuse him of murdering Sekirei without any proof."

"Yeah," I said, putting a friendly arm over Minato's shoulder as I dropped my Obfuscation. "Plus, it's incredibly rude to talk about people behind their back."

Minato's scream was like a boiling kettle: loud, high-pitched, and incredibly satisfying. He jumped about a foot in the air, fell onto his back, and scuttled away from me like a crab, which I found oddly endearing. Of course, Kazehana and Musubi immediately stepped forwards, interposing themselves between me and their Ashikabi.

"Now, now, that sort of thing is unnecessary," I said, cleaning the blood off of Drusilla with short, measured licks, before sheathing her. "I come in peace."

"What- What do you want?" Minato stammered out.

"Currently? To help your boyfriend resolve his gender identity issues by hooking him up with your sister," I said with a smile. "And, while well-intentioned, you stalking us isn't going to do much to help Homura on his quest to control and define his own identity. He might notice you, and that'd throw him off kilter for the whole night. The mission ahead requires absolute concentration and focus, and we'll need him at his very best. So, please, for Homura's sake, go home."

"I… Okay. I could do that," Minato said, eyes narrow. "But only if you answer one question for me."

"Ask away."

"Why are you helping Homura?" he asked, and I could tell at a glance that the boy had a fierce desire to protect the so-called Protector of the Unwinged, that if I gave him a poor answer, he would fight me. Even if he was scared of me, if he thought me of ill intent towards Homura, he would fight me with all his might. That determination… that raw… unrelenting urge to protect… that unabashed courage. It all made me want to pin him down, cut his belly open, and then slit my own belly open, tying our intestines together as he bled out. But I firmly resisted that thought, shoving the Beast back into its crate as I focused on what my answer should be.

"Well, I don't have just one reason," I said, beginning to list off my reasons on my fingers. "First, there's the emotional. Homura is interesting, the whole situation he's in is interesting, and I find emotional fulfillment in participating in new and interesting situations. Secondly, there's the matter of obligation. Homura is my comrade-in-arms, and the covering fire he laid down during the battle against the Kuei-Jin was vital to my own success and survival in the fight. If he hadn't done so, I would most likely have been swarmed and ripped apart. And so, I owe it to him to aid him in this personal endeavor of his. Thirdly, there's the matter of conservation."

"Conservation?" Minato repeated.

"Yes. Remember, at the start of the Sekirei plan, there were a hundred and eight Sekirei. Now, there are considerably less. I don't know about you, but it seems to me like the Sekirei are an endangered species, and I don't much like that. I don't want to watch yet another new and wondrous addition to the world die out. I'd like to be able to see Sekirei alive and kicking centuries from now, to continue to bless the world with their presence even five hundred years in the future!" I stretched out my arms. "What I do now will help preserve the Sekirei's breeding population, and hopefully ensure their longevity as a species. And that, Mr. Sahashi is the full list of why I'm helping Homura."

"Okay," he said. "But… is there any way I can help?"

"I'll call if we need backup," I promised him. "But until then, stay back. Having you around would only serve to cause Homura pain."

"But… why?" Minato asked, looking lost. "I thought we were friends."

"The answer to that question isn't mine to give," I said, as I stepped off the edge of the building. "Goodbye, Mr. Sahashi."

Five minutes and three rapidly healed broken bones later, I rejoined my team.

"What took you so long?" Homura asked.

"Turns out that while jumping off a seven-story building is faster than taking the elevator, healing broken legs takes more time than the elevator would," I said with a wince. "Lesson learned. All right. We all up to speed?"

"Yes," Homura said with a grim nod.

"Excellent. Tonight, we begin planning, and map out the interior of Hiyamakai Industries' HQ," I said with a smile. "Tomorrow night, we'll stage our rescue attempt, and break Yukari Sahashi out of Higa's clutches. Are we all agreed?"

Nods all around.

"But how do we get a floor plan?" Homura asked. "Or any level of detailed information on the interior?"

"Well, we could lean on Sally, but I think I've strained her talents enough already. Besides, there's no need to rely upon the supernatural when there's a perfectly good Brain-Type Sekirei that we know the location of, and whose Ashikabi can be persuaded to help us easily enough."

"You mean…"

"Yes," I said. "I think it's about time that we paid a visit to the historic Izumo Inn, don't you?"

---​

"Hi," I said to the purple-haired landlady as I stood in front of the door, hat in hand. "We're with the Assamite Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Aliens, and we'd like to have a talk with Miss Matsu."

She looked at Homura, eyebrow raised.

"He's with me," he said after a moment spent pinching the bridge of his nose. "I promise I won't let him run wild."

"Fine. But I will permit no violence or untoward and immoral conduct in this Inn," she said. "Consider yourself warned, Cainite."

I promptly moved the landlady up several notches on my mental threat range, and gave her a polite smile. "Of course, ma'am. I'll try to be a good guest." I offered out an old pocket watch that I'd left in the junk drawer of one of my safe houses the last time I was in Japan. "Here. A gift, as thanks for your forbearance."

She nodded and stepped aside. I went on in, smiling and waving as I spotted Minato in the living room. "Sahashi! Just the man we needed to see! We could really use some help."

And just like that, I had him. The idealists were always the easiest to use.

In no time at all, his Sekirei, Matsu, Second of her kind, had provided us with full-fledged schematics of Higa's headquarters, complete with notes on guard rotations, security measures, and Sekirei allocation, including one name that I immediately recognized: Shiina, Yukari's Sekirei. A potential ally to be recruited, and an important first stop to make on our break-in.

Of course, one detail stuck out to me. "Yukari's agreed to marry Higa?" I repeated, incredulous.

"That's what some internal company emails would seem to indicate," Matsu said.

"Right. Sorry about this, Homura," I said to the Sekirei sitting beside me, before I stuck my head out the door and shouted. "Minato! Get your ass in here, your sister's getting married!"

There was a crash, then a series of thumps as he came up the stairs, and then a prolonged skid before Minato Sahashi slid into view. "She's what?"

"Getting married. To Izumi Higa," I said. "Now, quick question, as the resident Yukari expert, does Higa seem like the sort of guy she'd go for?"

"Absolutely not," he said.

"So, something underhanded is definitely going on," I said with a sigh. "Right. We'll need to be fast, then. I'm not sure whether he's supernaturally compelling her, or just holding her loved ones hostage, but either way, she's not safe in his clutches."

"I need to go rescue her," he said, panic clear in his voice. "I need to go rescue her."

"Cool your jets, hotshot. In case you missed the memo, Higa has you by the balls on this one. If you attack him, he'll go straight to chopping bits off of your sister. He knows what you care about, and he has her within knife range. You go in there, you'll wind up just another of his blackmailed pawns," I said, making him deflate.

"But if I can't save her, then what can I do? She's my sister. I can't just…"

"But…" I purposefully drew out the pause, as Minato perked back up. "None of my teammates are connected to Yukari. In any way, shape, or form. So, if we attack Higa, he won't know we're there to rescue her. He won't know that hurting her could make us stop. He won't know to hold her hostage. Meaning…"

"Meaning that you guys can rescue her without the risks," Minato said, eyes wide. "How can I help?"

"Just be on hand, within range to come in as the cavalry if we need you to," I said. "And have your Brain-Type, Matsu, run overwatch for us. Can you do that?"

"I definitely can," Minato said, nodding firmly.

"Well then," I said with a grin, offering him my hand to shake. "Welcome to the Assamite Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Aliens, Minato Sahashi. Glad to have you aboard."

He shook my hand without hesitation. "Glad to be here."

 

[Charles Flynn]

I was woken up during the day by my daughter-in-law vigorously shaking me.

"Wake up, wake up! Minato called! He said that Higa is marrying his sister RIGHT NOW, and that you needed to know so that you could get everyone together!" she shouted.

I pulled myself together, rising from my deathly slumber. "What… time is it?"

"Five-thirty PM," Uzume said, utterly without mercy.

"Right. I'll get in my coffin. Where's this wedding at? And could you maybe drink some coffee?" I asked, yawning. "You'll have to drive me over. In the white van, preferably."

"Okay, I can do that," she said. "But why do you want me to drink coffee?"

"So I can drink your blood once the caffeine kicks in, and feel moderately more awake," I said, yawning harder.

"Yeah, not doing that. These veins are exclusively Chiho's property."

"Fair enough," I muttered. "Maybe I should get someone addicted to cocaine, lock them up in the basement. Cocaine usually does the trick when I need to wake up faster."

"No," she said. "Now get in the van, David."

I got in the van, calling Minato as I did so. In the van's pitch-darkness, my phone was the only light. "Hey."

"Mr. Nikolovski? Thank goodness!" Minato said. "I've been trying to reach you since four!"

"And you reached me. Look, Sahashi, you're at a ten right now, do you mind bringing it down to, like, a seven?" I said, pinching the bridge of my nose. "My head is throbbing right now."

"Are you hungover right now?" he asked, incredulous.

"No but being awake during the daytime basically feels like a really bad hangover for me," I said with a yawn. "This had better be important."

"Higa is holding the ceremony now!" Minato said, making my throbbing headache even worse. "Matsu located the building the ceremony is being held at, but if I show up, he'll just use Yukari as a hostage against me. Can you get your team together?"

"Sure, sure," I said with a yawn. "I'll send out the message, and I'll be there soon."

"Okay," he said, clearly trying to remain calm. "I… I know that I might just make things worse, but are you sure that I shouldn't just go in?"

"Absolutely positive," I said, trying my best to project sincerity. "Hold fast. We'll be with you in no time."

I hung up, and then immediately started getting in contact with the rest of my team. Homura was already on site. Kaho and Oosumi were already en route.

My duties done for the moment, I climbed into my coffin, pulled on the lid, and went back to sleep.

---​

Someone was shaking my coffin.

"I don't get it, we're out of the sunlight, why isn't he coming out of it yet?" Kaho's voice said.

"I'm up, I'm up," I muttered, flipping the internal latch, and rising with a yawn. "What's the stu- The schu- the thingy. What is it?"

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Homura asked.

"It's daytime. So… kinda not firing on all cylinders here," I said, then yawned.

We were in a darkened warehouse, the smell of sweet incense and candied meats thick in the air. I could see firelight, flickering underneath a set of double doors ahead of us.

"David," Homura said, looking around fearfully. "Do you remember why we're here?"

"Yukari's getting married," I said, my words coming out slightly slurred. "So, we're going to go all like… objection, on them. Like in the Graduate! I actually hated the Graduate, though."

"I told you he'd be useless," a voice said. I blinked, and then focused in on its source: Oosumi, still in wolf form.

"Wait, you can talk?" I said, bewildered.

"Only when I use partial shapeshifting on my vocal cords," Oosumi said. "Normally, I would refrain, but the situation is too dire to rely on nonverbal communication. Vampire. Can you smell it?"

"Oh, yeah," I said, sniffing the air absently. "Smells like food, and good incense. Which… probably means that whatever it is, it's actually really bad, the only things that smell pleasant to me nowadays tend to be human blood and… black magic."

I suddenly felt significantly more awake. "What's the situation?"

"They are holding the wedding ceremony here, in this warehouse," Oosumi said. "I smell great evil, and the taint of the Wyrm, in so great a concentration that I would normally be calling for much stronger werewolves to come to my aid right now. Unfortunately, I am an exile, and so, werewolf reinforcements are not possible. These Sekirei, and you, will have to suffice."

"How strong are we talking here?" I asked. "And do they know that we're here?"

"We disabled the door guards without alerting any others," Homura said. "Then, once we got inside here, we woke you up. With the twenty-five enemy Sekirei that're supposed to be inside here, we need everyone up and on their feet."

"Right. Oosumi, you're a werewolf, you at least used to do eco-terrorism for a living, how close were those guards to a check-in, and how many security cameras did you spot?"

"At least five minutes away, and I spotted three cameras," Oosumi said. "They definitely know that we're here."

"And, because humans are annoyingly diurnal, this is all happening during the day. When I'm functionally useless," I said with a sigh. "Looks like you and Homura will be carrying the team today."

Homura looked nervous.

"Homura," I said, eyes narrow. "Is there anything you'd like to share with the class?"

"My control's been slipping, recently," he said reluctantly. "I'm more or less almost at the point where I won't be able to use my flames without burning myself."

"So, half our team is effectively crippled, and we can't call in our backup without him being potentially blackmailed into turning on us," I said, my face grim. "Believe it or not, I've faced worse odds before. I got through them then, and we'll get through this now."

I pushed past my daylight headache, pushed past the sluggishness of my body, and the treacle-like slowness of my mind, summoning up the decades I spent as a leader of men while I was still mortal. And then, I started speaking. "The odds seem hopeless, I know. The forces arrayed against us might seem too numerous for us to defeat. But then, we're not here to defeat all of Higa's Sekirei."

I looked around, and saw that they were still engaged, so I kept going. "We're here to rescue Yukari Sahashi. Once we do that, we can call in the cavalry, and Minato's flock can sweep through like the wrath of God. So, here's what we're going to do. At present, I couldn't win against any one of Higa's Sekirei as I am now. So, instead, I'll be using my vampire powers to sneak around unseen, and hopefully extract Yukari from Higa's clutches. Meanwhile, you three will be making your way into the chamber, and drawing everybody's attention. Oosumi, you're point man and commander. You know pack tactics; you can tell the other two how to move in tandem. Above all else, make the enemy come to you. Keep their attention, and make it impossible for them to target anyone but you. Kaho, you're behind Oosumi. Prevent anyone from flanking him and keep people from getting to Homura. Homura," the man had tensed up when I mentioned that he was going to have a designated protector. I'd have to sell him well on this. "You're our one-man artillery park. Hit the enemy whenever they clump up, and keep an eye out for threats. Once I extract Yukari, it's on you to call Minato. The rest of us will have our hands busy. And, above all else, and this goes for all of you, don't advance too far past the doorway, or break formation in any way, shape, or form. We have two advantages going in. First, Sekirei tend to favor one-on-one fights, so the enemy is unlikely to fight in any sort of coordinated formation. Second, we'll be controlling a chokepoint, and are unlikely to face an attack from behind. Those are the only two advantages we have. Do not throw either of them away without a damn good reason, got it?"

Nods all around.

"All right," I said, sticking out my hand. "Go team."

They all layered their hands on top of mine. "And… break!"

They got into formation, while I became unseen.

Showtime.

---​

When the doors opened, we stepped into a scene pulled from a Baali cultist's wet dreams.

Six Ashikabi hung from the wall behind us, on either side of the door, suspended from meat hooks, their eyes glassy, their mouths moving silently. Beneath them, their Sekirei knelt, humming some tune that was ancient when the world was young, that sounded sweet as sugar to my ears but set Oosumi's fur on edge. On the wall to the left, there hung another six Ashikabi, and another six hung on our right. No Ashikabi adorned the far wall, though. Instead, Yukari's Sekirei, Shiina, hung crucified upon an inverted cross, his bloodied hair hanging towards the floor, his eyes empty and broken, despair writ large across his face.

In the dim, flickering light of the green oil drum fires that illuminated the room, I could see the bride and groom. But though the groom was par for the course, the bride was like no other. After all, what bride wore mourning colors to her own wedding?

Yukari Sahashi stood beside Higa, in front of her crucified Sekirei, as the officiant, a busty woman in some sort of nun fetish costume, read out a passage in… Classical Persian? Huh. Behind Higa was a sharp-dressed man in a business suit, who I recognized from the company files Matsu had pulled for us the previous night as Kenji Kakizaki, Higa's secretary. He was on his phone, and smiling.

"Who dares?" Higa snapped, staring at the three members of the distraction squad as I tiptoed away from the door unseen, hugging the walls as I went. "Who dares interrupt my wedding?"

"Don't worry, old friend," Kakizaki said, placing a hand upon Higa's shoulder. "I'll deal with this riffraff myself. You just enjoy your special day."

I noticed then, that Higa's eyes didn't seem to precisely follow the events in front of him. Instead, they seemed to be focused on a different world entirely. Then, Kakizaki tapped something on his phone, and the Sekirei around the room began to rise up, facing the Team Distraction.

"Wizard of the Wyrm!" Oosumi bellowed, shifting into full-on half-man, half-wolf war form. "I am Hunts-In-The-City's-Shadows, Ronin of the Red Fangs! And I will be your doom! Face me, if you dare!"

"Ooh. Scary," Kakizaki said, tapping at his phone. "Get him, girls."

The Sekirei attacked. Higa's bodyguards stayed close, but the singing Sekirei all closed in to attack.

I reached the corner and began inching along the left wall.

Homura struck the first blow. Two jets of flame arced around Oosumi, slamming into the cluster of enemy Sekirei, forcing them to split up, or else burn. Some took that as a sign to hold back, while a few pressed the attack. Oosumi crushed those particular fools' skulls like grapes, and roared, sending the rest of the Sekirei scurrying back. A few tried to circle around and flank him, but Kaho and Homura forced them back.

I was halfway to the altar when it all went horribly, horribly wrong.

"Crucio," Kakizaki said, tapping at his phone lazily, and Kaho collapsed to the ground, screaming.

"What did you DO?" Oosumi roared, furious.

"I triggered every pain center in her brain. Crucio. It's really quite ingenious, when you know how it works. Crucio. What, are you going to do something about it?"

And at that moment, Oosumi, wild with rage, broke formation, leaping towards Kakizaki with singular, bloody-minded intent. Unfortunately, Kakizaki just smiled, as a portal appeared in front of the werewolf. I saw a flash of ocean water, and then the portal snapped shut behind Oosumi, leaving us outnumbers around ten-to-one and without our heaviest hitter. I texted Homura. "Fighting Retreat. Now."

He swore and laid down covering fire as he dragged Kaho away from the enemy.

Kakizaki sighed and tapped something on his phone as the fires Homura had left behind him instantly flickered out. "Kochou, if you would hurry things along? I'd rather not risk them coming back with reinforcements."

The officiant frowned but shut the book she was reading from. "And now, it's time for the vows."

I had reached the altar, but my distraction was gone. The plan would need to change. How the hell could I… My eyes alighted upon Shiina, and I grinned. I slipped up next to him, and wrapped the shadows around him too, allowing us to converse unnoticed.

"Do you, Higa Izumi, take this woman as your lawfully wedded wife, granting her sole authority over what you put into your body?" the officiant asked.

"So. Are you really going to take this?" I asked Shiina, whispering into his ear.

"I do," Higa said in front of us.

"Who are you?" Shiina croaked out, half-dead from despair and the consequences of being hung upside down for so long.

"And do you, the bride, who is called Sahashi Yukari, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband, and vow to raise him up over all the kings and emperors of the world?" the officiant asked.

"A friend. Come on now, bud, the woman you love is marrying another man in front of you, and you can't even bring yourself to so much as raise your voice?" I asked Shiina. "Show some courage."

"She told me… Yukari told me she never loved me, that she wanted to marry Higa," Shiina said, his eyes haunted, his voice raspy. "It makes sense. We were only really together because she was helping me find my sister. Why would she ever want anything more from a freak like me?"

"I do," Yukari said at last, her voice hesitant, muscles twitching violently in her face, and tears leaking from her eyes.

"If she loves him, if this is what she wants, then why is she crying right now?" I asked Shiina, and I saw his eyes widen as he looked beyond his despair and saw his beloved, truly saw her as she was. "Because I don't think Yukari chose to say all those hurtful things to you. I don't think she chose to marry Higa. I don't think she's been able to make any choices for herself, these last couple days. I think she's been fighting it. I think that at this very moment, she is screaming for you to save her."

Yukari kissed Higa's shoulders, and then collapsed, leaving her groom looking confused. "What… Wait. What is all this?" he shouted out, looking around wildly as if seeing the charnel house that he was in for the first time. "What… why…?"

"Ah. Splendid," Kakizaki said, smiling widely. "The changes have already begun."

But Shiina didn't pay attention to the two men, with their soon to be painfully relevant cryptic conversation. He had eyes only for the dark-haired girl who laid sprawled out before the altar like a puppet with its strings cut, a child's plaything, worn out and discarded.

"They hurt Yukari," he said.

"Damn straight they did," I said right back.

"They hurt Yukari," he said, breathless with rage.

"Whatcha gonna do about it?" I asked, taunting him, goading him to rise to the occasion.

"THEY HURT YUKARI!" he screamed, and everything within ten feet of him ceased to be. I just barely got out in time. The wedding officiant didn't.

"Kochou!" Kakizaki screamed, as the officiant, presumably his Sekirei, crumbled to dust.

Shiina rose from where he had fallen when the cross he was pinned to dissolved, face grim, blood leaking from the holes in his hands. Gently, tenderly, he scooped up Yukari. "We're leaving," he said, cradling his Ashikabi in his arms. "And there is nothing you can do to stop us."

Higa screamed, something black and rotten creeping through his veins, something bulging out from beneath his suit's shoulders, and Kakizaki stared numbly at the dust that had once been his lover. Shiina just started walking. Anything that got in his way, be it Sekirei, pews, or walls, simply crumbled to dust.

Deciding to take advantage of the opportunity, I drew Drusilla, and lunged, ready to take Kakizaki's head from his shoulders before he could recover.

And then I was face-to-face with a glowing circle of sunlight. I hissed and leapt away from the small portal Kakizaki had conjured, facing my direction.

"Of course you're here, sneaking around," Kakizaki said, smirking. Or, trying to smirk, anyways. Loss was clear on his face, and his attempt at a smirk faltered and died as he talked. "Higa, we need to go. The vampire is weak right now, but whatever allies he has will be here soon."

"Very well," Higa said, eyes bloodshot. "Portal. You make portals? Open a portal. Vacation house. You know which."

The gateway flickered, and then opened, and I shied away from it. Higa and his remaining Sekirei, the two muscular bodyguards, stepped through. When Kakizaki tried to follow, though, Higa stopped him with a hand on his chest. "We go. You stay."

"W-What? Higa, I've been nothing but loyal to you!" Kakizaki said, eyes wide.

"Is THIS the fruit of LOYALTY?" Higa screamed, serpents erupting from his shoulders as his flesh writhed. "Close the gate. Return victorious, or not at all."

"B-but Izumi-" Kakizaki stammered.

"Close. The. Gate," Higa said, his now slit pupils firmly locked onto Kakizaki's.

The gate shut, and Kakizaki turned towards me. "You. This is all YOUR FAULT!"

"I mean, you're the one who turned him into a mutated monstrosity. That one's not on me," I pointed out. "The bravely inspiring your victim and getting your girlfriend killed thing? That I'll cop to. But Higa hates you for your deeds, not mine."

He replied by opening a gateway, a portal to direct sunlight facing straight at me. I barely dodged in time, rolling out of the way with inhuman speed.

"You can't dodge forever, vampire!" he screamed, eyes wide, and fingers tapping wildly at his phone. "Let's burn together, you and I! Let's check the sun's weather together, shall we?"

"Are you trying to open a direct portal to the sun?" I asked. "That's insane! You'll melt all of Tokyo!"

"Burn!" he screamed, pressing execute furiously on his phone.

And nothing happened.

There was silence for a moment. And then Kakizaki erupted in a pillar of flames that went all the way up to the ceiling, leaving nothing but ashes behind. The laws of physics, so long ignored, had finally taken their pound of flesh.

I looked at the damaged warehouse, at the corpses and the still-moaning Ashikabi on their meat hooks. And I made a very important decision.

"Fuck this, I'm going back to bed."

 

[Charles Flynn]

When I woke up, Homura and Kaho were there.

"Oh, good, you came back," I said, shaking off my sleep. "So. Good news and bad news."

"We found Shiina, and he had Yukari, so we know you got them out," Homura said.

"Mmhm. So, the other bit of good news is that Kakizaki is dead."

"Thank god," Kaho muttered. "You managed to kill him?"

"No, I just pissed him off so bad that he overreached with his sorcery, and got smote by the laws of physics," I said with a smile. "Couldn't get him with how weak I was at the time, so I just got him to commit suicide-by-hubris."

"What the hell was he?" Homura asked, looking disturbed. "He wasn't a vampire, but… He definitely wasn't a human, either."

"Actually, he was human," I said. "If my guess is correct, he was a mage. A human whose worldview is so strong he can rewrite reality, within certain limits."

"And…" Homura was hesitant, nervous. "What makes a mage?"

"Every human being has the ability to rewrite reality," I said with a shrug. "It's just that most of them never do. A mage is just a human that managed to unlock his full potential."

"All of them?" Kaho repeated, horror sweeping over her face. "Then… that means…"

"Any human being, at any time, under just about any circumstances, could spontaneously gain the ability to do whatever the hell they want, with not even the laws of physics stopping them?" I offered up wryly. "Yeah, pretty much. Humans are scary like that. I mean, fortunately, there's an entire organization of technomages dedicated to making sure that enough people believe in science and the laws of physics enough to keep the other mages in line, but even with the weight of around ten billion people's collective belief weighing them down, mages are pretty damn scary."

"So… there are people handling things," Kaho asked. "The… mage thing… all the humans getting powers, it's not going to happen anytime soon, right?"

"No, probably not, but that's why it's important to kill or memory-wipe witnesses if they see you doing something blatantly supernatural. The more people who believe in the impossible, the less impossible it really is. And the humans are dangerous enough already. No need to give them any more cool toys to play with," I said with a shudder. "I mean, can you imagine? Every human on Earth, suddenly granted the power of a god?"

"They'd rip themselves apart," Homura said in agreement. "And us with them."

"Well, on the subject of human evil," I said, deciding to segue away from the existential horror. "Higa got away. That's my bad news. And I think Kakizaki got what he wanted. What we have to do now is figure out what Kakizaki wanted to do to Higa. And how we can stop whatever Higa's become."

"My darling's still missing," Kaho said. "I don't know… He could die at any minute, and I can do nothing!" She slammed her fist down. "Is there… anything you can do?"

"I'm afraid not," I said. "All we can do is hope that he survives and finds his way back to us. Can you feel him in any particular direction?"

"To the southeast. A long way away," Kaho said. "I'm… I'm so scared."

"He's a werewolf, Kaho. Take it from me, as a rule, most werewolves are way too pissed to die to something as pathetic as exhaustion or drowning. He'll be back with us soon," I said, smiling reassuringly.

"So," Homura said, looking uncomfortable. "I assume that we're going to be speaking to Miss Yukari?"

"You assume correctly," I said with a smile. "I think we can talk her into winging you. And once we do, I have an idea she might be interested in."

"What is it?" Homura asked.

"What we stopped here today, the dark ritual, the evil mage, Higa blackmailing and kidnapping other Ashikabi, all of it, this is the sort of thing that the Disciplinary Squad should be dealing with, isn't it?" I asked, rhetorically. "So, where the Hell were they?"

"You're implying that they're derelict in their duties," Homura summarized. "But that argument isn't entirely fair, though. We never even tipped them off to… it…"

"Oh, you're seeing it, aren't you?" I said, grinning widely. "The Disciplinary Squad is MBI's private SWAT team. But their effectiveness is limited by the information available to them. There isn't a single Ashikabi in all of Tokyo who'd willingly call in the Disciplinary Squad, not when they're only known as MBI's enforcers of the rules. And now that we know that Kakizaki was a literal wizard with computers, MBI's own digital surveillance systems can be considered compromised. Especially since there are entities out there like me, who can't be detected on video. MBI's grip on the city is slipping, and in the gaps between their fingers, all manner of supernatural evil is able to find its way in."

"You want us to become the new Disciplinary Squad," Kaho summarized, looking at me as if I was mad.

"No. The Disciplinary Squad enforces the rules first, protects Sekirei second. I propose that we protect Sekirei first, enforce the rules never."

"This is… ambitious," Homura said.

"That's not a no," I pointed out.

"I'll think about it," he said after a moment.

"Kaho?"

"I'll think about it too," Kaho said. "I don't want to agree to this without my Ashikabi here."

"Fair enough. Will you two stick together with me for a bit, at least until we've dealt with Higa?" I asked them both. "We could consider it a trial run."

They nodded.

"Alright then. Time to hit up the Izumo Inn, then, I guess."

---​

I took the opportunity to unload even more of my old crap from storage onto Miya under the guise of hospitality, of course. She was flattered by the seventeenth century water clock I brought her. Joke's on her, though. The damn thing had been broken to the point of uselessness since 1893!

"Is Ms. Sahashi staying with you?" I asked, polite as could be.

"Yes, she is," Miya said. "Her brother brought her here, in fact, when he found her Sekirei carrying her unconscious body through the streets of Tokyo. She has yet to awaken, however. With each hour that passes, the odds grow slimmer still." She paused. "If you are responsible for her condition or aim to take advantage of her helplessness for some nefarious end, then know that you and I will most certainly come to blows. I do not permit violence within my Izumo Inn or permit harm to fall upon those under my protection."

"Understandable," I said with a smile. "And your devotion to your duties as a host do you much credit. Rest assured; we will bring no harm to the young Miss Sahashi. Indeed, I and my companions played a role in her rescue from durance vile, although our contributions paled compared to her dashing paramour's."

"So Minato has mentioned," Miya said, stepping to the side, water clock tucked under one arm. "Miss Sahashi is currently resting in Homura's room."

"Wait, what?" Homura snapped out indignantly. "You used my room without my permission?"

"You were absent," Miya said, arms crossed. "And the girl needed a room."

"Thank you, Ma'am," I said with a deferent nod, grabbing Homura by the arm and dragging him along with me. "We'll trouble you no further."

She watched us go, useless water clock still under her arm, as Homura, Kaho, and I all walked into the Inn.

"Alright, hot shot," I said to Homura after a pause. "Your room's the impromptu recovery ward, so you know the way better than any of us."

He led us to his room, but stopped cold when he saw who was outside of it. Minato Sahashi was standing there, waiting anxiously, with his Sekirei, Kazehana, Musubi, Kusano, and Matsu all waiting with him. Tsukiumi was there as well and glared at me with a fiery passion.

"What happened to my sister?" he asked without preamble, eyes dark. "What the hell did Higa do to her?"

"Minato, I'm going to be completely honest here," I said with a sigh. "I don't know."

"What? But…"

"I'm an immortal, undead bloodsucker? Sure. But it's not like the things that go bump in the night all get together to compare notes. I have some rough ideas, sure, but even centuries of studying occult lore and my many, many adventures brushing up against other supernaturals don't mean I know everything there is to know about it." I sighed. "I mean, I have some guesses, but to tell the truth, this particular branch of the supernatural tends to be more in the werewolf or mage side of things, and since we lost Oosumi during the warehouse fight, we can't consult our resident werewolf on this."

"Oosumi's a werewolf?" Minato repeated, shocked. "Oh my god, that actually explains so much. And wait, you lost him?"

"Oh, right, you didn't know about that. Huh," I said. "We lost him because he went berserker and got tricked into jumping through a portal to an unknown destination. That was… what time is it?"

"It's seven thirty," Minato said.

"That was around two hours ago, we haven't heard from him since," I said. "From the brief glimpse I saw of the other side of the portal, I'm guessing he's in an ocean. Which really doesn't narrow things down in the slightest."

"Oh, no!" Musubi said, looking worried. "I'm so sorry about your Ashikabi, Kaho!"

"He'll come back to me," Kaho said, trying to convince herself as much as Musubi. "I know he will. And… I know that we said we'd fight once we'd both found our Ashikabi, Musubi, but…"

"We can wait until you find him again!" Musubi said firmly. "I can't even imagine how terrible this must be for you."

"Thank you," Kaho said with a smile.

"Look, do you have a whiteboard?" I asked Minato, after the two Sekirei's friendship moment was over. "I might be able to sketch out my current leading theories on what happened."

"Um… sure," Minato said, seeming a bit overwhelmed.

"Okay, how about we debrief in the dining room?" I asked.

---​

"So, the debrief will now commence!" I announced, as the others sat down around the dining table. I'd also made sure to record the meeting, so that I could keep Chiho and Uzume in the loop. Bringing them here immediately would raise too many questions, and possibly raise risks, since I wasn't sure that Chiho had mastered her Beast well enough to be trusted around humans, but I couldn't just leave them completely out of the loop, now could I? "First things first, Kusano might have to leave. The events in that warehouse are definitely not suitable for kids' ears."

Homura and Kaho both nodded vigorously.

And so, after much protesting, Kusano was put to bed, and we got on to the meeting proper.

"So. The first thing we noticed after the breach was that Higa wasn't the one orchestrating the wedding. It was his right-hand man, Kakizaki, who, based on Oosumi's on-the-spot identification, and on his feats during our fight, I believe to have been a Mage," I said matter-of-factly, writing down 'Kakizaki=Evil Wizard/Mastermind' on the whiteboard. "The second thing to note is that Oosumi specifically referred to Kakizaki as a 'Wizard of the Wyrm,' identifying him as a servant of the supernatural entity known as the Wyrm. In werewolf cosmology, as best as I've been able to piece it together, the Wyrm is a supernatural force of corruption that, according to the wolves, seeks the subversion and destruction of the world through such means as the proliferation of human sin and the spread of both spiritual and environmental pollution. I've also worked for and interacted with a number of corporate movers and shakers in the past who self-identified as servants of the Wyrm, so I can say with some certainty that the werewolves are onto something there."

"I- I'm sorry," Minato said. "I can take werewolves and vampires being real, but… you're saying that this Kakizaki person was secretly working for some kind of… god of evil? That's a little far-fetched, isn't it? I mean, the wizard thing I can take into stride, I mean, if vampires and werewolves are real, why not wizards? But… an actual, literal divine force of evil that seeks the corruption and destruction of everything in existence?" He looked around, shaking his head. "That's… ridiculous, isn't it?"

"Maybe. But it's real," I said with a shrug. "I've found over the years that reality doesn't give a shit about what you expect it to be. It just happens, and you get taken along for the ride. But… Minato?" He looked up at me, unsteady and unsure. "If you don't want to face this, or the other revelations that are sure to come, you can just leave. Go back to focusing on the Sekirei Plan, and just… forget. Because, if you stay on this path… you'll see horrors. There might be wonders, but there'll be horrors aplenty, things that, once you learn them, you won't ever be able to forget. You're on the cusp of revelation, on the cusp of looking into the depths of a world of darkness that you will never be able to truly leave. But you can turn back. You're at the point of no return, the edge of the event horizon. If you push on here, you'll never be able to go back. You've helped save your sister, and me and my team can go on through this mess without your help. It'll be a bit more difficult, but we'll manage. The only person whose fate truly hangs upon the outcome of your choice here is you." I took a breath. Not because I needed oxygen to live, but because I needed air to talk. And I had just done a lot of talking. "So. The question is: With no responsibility. With no obligation to push you forward… will you still seek the truth? Despite the cost? Because ignorance may be the only bliss you'll ever get, and this is your only chance to keep it."

He hesitated, for a moment, and then he gave his answer. "You've said there's no obligation on me, but… that's not true. All these things won't go away if I pretend, right? So how could I go back, knowing there are monsters in the dark? How could I go back, knowing that a friend who needs my help will go without it, because I was scared? I'm sorry, Mr. Nikolovski. But I'm in for life."

And then Minato exploded. Not like a bomb, though, no, in that very moment, Minato became a veritable font of supernatural light, power flowing forth from him in coruscating waves as his eyes widened. And then he collapsed, out cold.

"WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO?" Homura screamed at me, as Minato's Sekirei immediately began panicking over their Ashikabi.

"I don't know!" I shouted back, panicking a bit myself. "I was just trying to psych him out of getting too involved! I didn't think he'd manage to overcome his personal shortcomings so hard he'd explode! I didn't think that was even possible!"

It was at that exact moment that a familiar, soaking wet wolf walked through the door, drenched and bedraggled, and looked at our panic. Homura was shaking me by the collar. Matsu and Kazehana were both trying to revive Minato by shoving their tits in his face, while Musubi was wailing plaintively. Tsukiumi, who hadn't said a word to me or anybody else, was simply looking at us all in mild irritation, while Kaho just looked confused.

"Okay," Oosumi said, looking confused. "What the Hell did I just miss?"

"Darling!" Kaho said, smiling widely. "Minato exploded!"

Oosumi paused, then turned around and walked right back out. I honestly couldn't blame him.

 

[Charles Flynn]

"Toyotama? Am I a bad person?"

"Ummmm…."

Izumi Higa most certainly did not recline upon a throne embossed with skulls, or any other sort of impractical contraption like that. No, instead he sat in a comfortable recliner, which creaked under his new weight.

Once, literally yesterday, in fact, he had been slender in build, with a handsome face. Now, he was at least six feet tall, and every inch of him bulged with muscle. Two enormous serpents emerged from his shoulders, tasting the air suspiciously, and dark shadows crawled beneath his skin. His mutation had slowed, but not yet completely halted, and he feared what new horror might come next. The serpents whispered into his now-pointed ears, speaking to him of secret powers and dark truths.

"Yeah," Higa said, resigned. "That's what I thought."

"No, no, you just caught me by surprise, is all," Toyotama said. "You have plenty of good points!"

"Like what?"

"You… fed us? And made sure we had clothes besides our combat uniforms!" Toyotama said, after a pause. "You always took care of your Sekirei, my Ashikabi!"

"That is not an indicator of virtue!" Higa snapped, rising up from his chair in a rage. "It is an indicator of basic human decency, a bare minimum of personal responsibility! As well celebrate me for wearing clothes, or bathing once a day! You damn me by your praise!"

He stopped, suddenly, realizing that his hands were tightly wrapped around his Sekirei's throat. He released her and sat back down. "And even now, I am hurting you. I really am a monster."

"Maybe," she said, massaging her throat. "But my monster. And I wouldn't have you any other way."

"There is something deeply wrong with you, Toyotama," Higa said, shaking his head.

"Yeah, it's called having shit taste in men," she said bluntly. "But you fit my palate perfectly, so man or monster, I'll stick with you to the end."

"Hm. Glad to hear it," Higa said, watching the fan on the room's ceiling as it spun, on and on. "Together until the very end, I suppose. Whatever I may become, I'll survive no matter what, however unsightly I may be."

"And I'll be there," Toyotama said with a smile. "To tell you just how ugly you are."

"Ah, what a pair we make," Higa mused, as the snakes whispered eldritch truths into his ears. "What a pair."

Ichiya, the second of his remaining Sekirei, entered the room, carrying a platter with his… dietary requirements contained upon it. The snakes swallowed the two human brains whole, and Higa felt a great sense of… relief. He sat back, took a sip from his wineglass… Chianti, how appropriate, and began to plan.

"We'll need to begin preparations for our reentry into Shinto Teito once my mutations have stabilized," he said, after a lengthy sip. "I've lost too much to the Sekirei Plan to give up on victory now."

"We've lost most of our numbers," Ichiya pointed out. "We'll be hard-pressed to win against the likes of Mikogami and Sahashi."

"We'll have to make up for what we now lack in quantity with quality," Higa said. "The serpents whisper to me. The rites they have taught me thus far may allow for many new sources of strength. We'll need a test subject of course, but Katsuragi and Oriha will suffice."

"We could just… give up, you know?" Ichiya offered up. "We're outside of Shinto Teito. Do you have any idea of how many Sekirei and Ashikabi have died trying to get the chance that we have been handed right here and right now? We can just walk away. We don't have to go back and fight."

"And where in the world will I not be hunted down as a monster?" Higa asked. "No. For all the dark and sinister arts that the serpents which adorn my shoulders have offered me, a cure is not one of them. The only cure I know of, the only possible way out from the monster I have become, is the unknown reward, waiting at the end of the Sekirei Plan. There is no escape for us. Only victory. Or death."

"Then we will follow you, my master," Toyotama said, bowing low. "No matter how hideous you should become."

"Good," Higa said. "Now then. We have time to prepare. Let us use it to its fullest."

---

"Dead or alive, you're coming with me, you filthy Reality Deviant," Takami whispered into Minaka's ear as she clapped him in handcuffs.

"No, Officer, please, isn't there anything I can do to make it better?" Minaka wailed plaintively.

"Let's see," Takami said, taking up the stance of Rodin's Thinker. "I've heard tell that you're the Cult of Ecstasy's number one sex wizard."

"Absolutely," Minaka said, managing to keep a straight face through sheer force of will alone. "There's no one better in bed than me!"

"Oh? Well, then," Takami said with a smug purr in her voice. "I suppose, for the greater good of the Technocracy, I'll have to put those boasts of yours to the test, just to see if we can make use of your… talents."

"You won't find me lacking, Ma'am," Minaka promised.

"Please, call me Mistress," Takami said with a voice that could melt steel with the heat it carried. "Now, then," slowly she began to unbutton her suit. "Let's get to it, shall we?"

And then her phone rang.

"If this is that damn intern again, I swear to god, he's getting fired," Takami muttered, pulling it out to check the number. "It's Minato."

"Oh, well, answer it then," Minaka said from where he laid handcuffed on the bed. "I can wait."

"Hello? Yes, honey, slow down," Takami said. "Yes, I was in a tunnel at that time, it'd explain why you couldn't reach me then, and… you know, it's none of your business why I wasn't checking my voicemails right about then. Hold on. What that about your sister?"

Her face grew paler and paler as she listened. "Yes," she said after a moment. "That's good. You did good. I'm proud of you, Minato. You did very well. I'll… I'll be right over, to check on your sister."

"What was that about?" Minaka asked, sitting on the side of the bed, handcuffs forgotten. "Bad news?"

"Yukari's in a coma," Takami said, sounding… hollow. "Higa kidnapped her and did something to her. And now, she isn't waking up."

By the time she had finished, Minaka was out of the bed, and half-done changing out of his sexy hippy costume. "No time to lose, then. Come on!"

She looked at him, wide-eyed.

"What?" he said after a moment of silence. "She's my daughter too. I want to help. And you'd better change too, I don't think our son wants to see you in a far-too-revealing Technocrat uniform."

Sometimes, sometimes, Takami could forget why she had fallen for Minaka in the first place. And then he did something like this, and she fell for him all over again. "Fine. But no telling them you're their father."

"Takami, I'm pretty sure that half the city knows."

"Even so."

---

"Miya," Minaka said, tipping his fedora in greeting. A briefcase full of his technological wonders hung in his right hand, and his old mesh-weave field uniform from his Technocracy days was wrapped around him like a mother's embrace.

"Minaka," Miya said, her voice frostier than the Arctic. "What brings you to my humble abode?"

"I asked him to join me here," Takami said, wearing her old uniform, a mesh-weave reinforced white lab coat, and carrying a duffel bag of medical supplies. "Where's my daughter?"

"In Homura's old room, although I'm sure that your son would be happy to guide you himself," Miya said. "He's currently entertaining… unsavory company, however."

"The vampire?" Minaka asked. He'd seen the Cainite, or at thought he'd seen him, at the defense of MBI's headquarters, while providing sniper support for Karasuba. Still, it would be nice to finally take the man's measure in full, without having to resort to observers, informants, and guesswork. "Is he a threat? Is Minato acting of his own free will?" That was always a threat when vampires were involved. Their powers of mental control and manipulation were second to none in all the world. Even the heartiest mage would need years of practice to pull off what newly turned vampires could manage with a look.

"Yes, so far as I can tell," Miya said. "Of course, you'd be a better judge of that than I."

"Right," Minaka muttered, sliding on his old field sunglasses. "Once more into the breach, then." Here's hoping he hadn't grown too rusty.

There was shouting from Miya's dining room, and a dripping wet wolf walked past them, followed by Sekirei Number Eighty-Seven, Kaho, so the two cautiously proceeded inwards, Miya trailing behind them.

And when the two stepped into the living room, their eyes widened. They both recognized the vampire, how could they not? He was something of an urban legend among the ranks of the Technocracy. The Moon Butcher.

In 1973, both Tradition seers and Technocracy supercomputers had begun to predict that a lowly filmmaker named George Lucas would be the man in the position and with the necessary vision to create the Next Big Thing. A work of art that would shape the collective unconscious, and forever change the fate of the Ascension War. Immediately, both had leapt into action, trying desperately to shape the filmmaker's project to favor their respective paradigm, with the Technocracy trying to encourage Lucas to lean in heavier on the sci-fi, and the Traditions aiming to encourage him to lean in heavier on his idea of 'The Force.' The battles had been brutal, and in the end, the Technocracy had lost. In no small part because of the vampire currently being strangled in Miya's dining room at that very moment.

In 1974, the Technocracy's head of Star Wars Control Operations, John Preston, had decided to think outside the box, hiring an undead assassin named Daniel Papalovski, who'd worked both for and against the Technocracy in the past, to assassinate the leadership of the oppositional Tradition forces. The vampire got his man, but Preston, always eager to keep his overhead low, had attempted to get out of paying the vampire by killing him. It had resulted in the death of every Technocrat in Hollywood, and the vampire assassin managing to gain access to one of the Technocracy's moonbases, running rampant throughout it. He'd then spent the next three years waging guerilla warfare across the Moon's surface, causing irreparable damage to countless Technocracy assets. In the end, the vampire's rampage had been ended only by him hitching a ride back to Earth, and he'd been a thorn in the Technocracy's pride for decades afterwards. Sightings had stopped in 2007, and the Moon Butcher had been presumed dead, but rumors persisted, and the youngbloods of the Technocracy would still whisper of the boogeyman of the Moon.

And here he was, being throttled by Sekirei Number Six, Homura. Minaka and Takami exchanged nervous looks, and in the silent language of facial expressions, decided that they should probably not antagonize the boogeyman.

"You!" Homura yelled, lunging for Minaka with a murderous look on his face as soon as he saw the man.

A quick application of Sufficiently Advanced Kung Fu took care of him in three punches, and the duo redirected their attention towards the rest of the room. Namely, their son, sprawled on the ground, unconscious, with his Sekirei trying to revive him, or, alternatively, just crying.

"What happened here?" Takami snapped out, pushing Matsu and Kazehana aside in order to take her son's vitals. "One at a time."

"Your son pushed past his personal hang-ups and his fears so hard that he exploded and passed out, Dr. Sahashi," the smiling demon said, giving her a polite nod, and seeming to enjoy how it made her flinch slightly. "I'm honestly still not sure how that happened, but I'd imagine you'd know more about this sort of thing than me."

He knew. How did he know she had been an Enlightened Operative?

Minaka smiled, and interceded, ready to quickdraw at any second if the vampire turned violent. "I'm sure she does. Takami is unmatched in biology and pharmacology. To tell the truth, I'm not even sure why she brought me along. She hardly requires a second opinion."

"Hiroto Minaka," the vampire said. "You know, throughout this entire span of time that I've been entangled with your… Sekirei Plan, there's been one thing I've promised myself I'd tell you if I ever met you."

"I'm all ears," Minaka said, readying for a supernaturally enhanced quickdraw in case the vampire lunged at him like Homura had.

"Thank you," the vampire said, completely throwing Minaka for a loop. "From the bottom of my heart, thank you. This Sekirei plan, and the Sekirei too, of course, have been the most entertaining thing that's happened to me in years! I've been enjoying every second of this, and I can't wait to see how you'll spice up the competition."

"Well, thank you, for your kind words," Minaka said, desperately trying to figure out what the hell was happening right now while showing none of it on his face. "Always happy to meet a fan."

"I do have some concerns from a conservation standpoint, however," the vampire continued merrily. "Would you be willing to field some of them?"

"Certainly."

"Oh, and I should probably tell you in advance that I'm a proud member of the Assamite Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Aliens. I hope that won't be an issue for you?"

"Of course not, we at MBI are proud friends of the ASPCA," Minaka said without hesitation, while still wincing internally at the vampire's pun. "Would you mind if we discussed this in a different room though? I wouldn't want to give out spoilers to active participants in the Plan, after all."

"Oh, of course, of course you'd have concerns about that," the vampire said with an expression so sweet and innocent that butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. "Another room is fine, of course."

And, as the vampire led him off to a private room, Minaka hesitated. There was no guarantee that he'd leave this conversation with his mind or body intact. This could overturn the entire plan, his life's work. And then he looked over at Takami, laboring over their son, and sighed.

The things he did for love.

 

[Charles Flynn]

"So," I said, as I launched a lethal knife-hand strike at Minaka's throat. "Speaking as a conservationist, I have some concerns with regards to the Sekirei Plan's impact on an already fragile population's genetic variance."

"How so?" he asked, wisely backstepping in a flawless dodge. My attack had forced him to cede the initiative. In five steps, his back would be to the wall. He realized this, and sought to counterattack, lunging back in while I was overextended.

"Well, the population of Sekirei to start with was at one hundred and eight, correct?" I began, bringing my seemingly overextended hand back faster than any human could possibly manage, turning what had seemed like an overextension into the lightning-fast jaws of a mousetrap, snapping shut about its prey.

"That's true," he said, not even grunting as I shattered his elbow joint, and… ah. A prosthetic. Clever, not risking your real arm.

"To ensure the continuity of the species, a large breeding population would be ideal," I said backing off while Minaka settled into a one-handed guard. "And one hundred and eight is well below sustainable numbers. Of course, there are ways to avoid inbreeding, which humanity being capable of interbreeding with them might help with. But I still think that your Sekirei tournament can only be harmful to the Sekirei in the long term. And I am, by my very nature, obligated to think in the long term."

"I can see your point," Minaka said with a nod. "Is our spar over? I only have one arm left. I've had it since I was a baby, and I'm very attached to it."

"Oh, of course," I said with a smile, taking a seat on the courtyard's tiles. "I'm very glad that you agreed to this. It's been a while since I've faced Technocratic Martial Arts Procedures, and I was very eager to see if I still measured up."

"Anything for a fan," he said with a rueful look. "And rest assured, I have taken the population's genetic diversity into consideration."

"Well, don't leave me in suspense, what's your solution?" I asked, sitting back and enjoying the view of the moon. Off-handedly, I wondered if any of the childer I sired during my stay there were still alive. Eh, probably not.

"It all depends on which Ashikabi wins the final match, and ascends to the heavens," Minaka said. "Should they so choose, they'll have the ability to revived all terminated Sekirei, excepting cases of bodily dismemberment, of course."

"So, if Minato wins, then," I said with a grin.

"If Minato wins, yeah," he said with a sheepish look. "But… You know, I think Yukari might have a chance of it as well, and I have a high opinion of her moral character."

"Well, spot's open in the Big Four since Sanada got eaten," I said with a nod. "Although I think you might be suffering under a bit of paternal bias with Yukari. You know she prowls the streets of Tokyo in a Imperial Japanese military uniform kicking guys in the crotch, right?"

"She really does take after me," Minaka said with a proud smile. "So, you already know about…"

"You being their mysteriously absent father? Wasn't too hard to figure out, with how you and Takami carry on. I had a whole plan to photograph you porking her just so I could traumatize Minato with the pictures."

He shot me a glare.

"Relax, it never panned out. Would've been funny as hell, though," I said with a grin. "This is all about him, isn't it? Your way of creating your successor as protector of the Sekirei."

"How did you…"

"You don't get to be as old as I am without learning a thing or two about reading people's motivations," I said, waving my hand airily. "So, how can I help?"

He looked at me contemplatively, for a moment, then nodded. "Well… if you're serious about this…"

My phone rang at that point. "Hold that thought. Yes? Oh. Ooh." I hung up. "I have to go plug some leaks. We'll have to continue this discussion later."

---​

Three hours later, I was inside Mikogami's mansion, a wicker basket over my back, staring through the window to Mikogami's room. He didn't share his bed with any of his Sekirei, reflecting an admirable mastery of his carnal desires, if a tragic lack of tactical foresight. It made this all the easier.

"Mikogami," I whispered to him, straddling his sleeping form as I set my wicker basket down on his nightstand, leaning in close to his face. "Mikogami…. Wakey wakey…"

His eyes flickered, half-open, half-closed. His body twitched slightly, but did not properly move.

"Ah. Sleep paralysis?" I asked, recognizing the symptoms. "How unfortunate. You really ought to get that checked out. It can be quite… unpleasant. I mean, I'm sure you're aware of them right now, aren't you? That feeling of helplessness, unable to move even a finger, helpless between waking and dreaming, feeling that great weight on your chest," I shifted even more of my weight onto him. "My sympathies. It must be truly terrible, to feel so… helpless." My fangs slid out of my mouth, and I ran one of them along his cheek, close enough that he could feel the razor sharp point, but never with that tiny increase in pressure that would be all I'd need to break skin.

His breathing grew erratic, his eyes still frozen, but frantic in their microscopic movements.

"I brought you a present, Mikogami," I whispered into his ear. "To help you remember what happens to loose lips." I gave his lips a little pinch, and then I was off.

I was at the mansion's gate when I heard his scream and smiled. "Good, he opened the basket," I said to myself, quite pleased. I'd put quite a bit of effort into the heads' presentation. It'd be a shame to have that go unappreciated.

Really, between terrorizing Mikogami and my burgeoning alliance with Minaka, things were looking up for me. So, as I had for centuries, I immediately began laying out contingencies for when everything went horribly wrong.

My preparations would prove quite valuable, in the days to come.