Despite the obvious fact that she had sometimes gone in the slumps of a city that pretended to be pristine and rich to take bounty offers and conduct others, Ema had never been so terrified of a criminal hidden in a dark street that much in her life.

She had seen criminals before. The people she had gone to some schools with had become so: crackheads encouraging other crackheads, classmates turned prostitutes with no remorse, muggers and pseudo-thieves trying to assault her mother and her in their sleep one time. The darker parts of living in the suburbs of Den City, she figured.

Maybe she had a part of that in her blood. She was a virtual bounty hunter in a way just like her half-brother: she was tasked with ruining people's reputations, sometimes, but she didn't care as long as it paid for her bills and her cup noodles. After all, who didn't like to have a folder filled with embarrassing stuff on people to laugh at? She sure wasn't one of these people.

Usually, she'd have concluded missions and objectives in nice spots: busy parks, deserted views in the middle of the day. Most of the time, it wasn't even a real meeting: she'd just sort everything out through the Internet, chat programs and sites, crypted messages and impersonal letters typed out on a keyboard.

However, she always made an exception when it came to her main hirer: Akira Zaizen, of SOL Technologies. They had met years before, she couldn't even say exactly how long, when they were both in the same hacker team working for some shady company. They had been illegal, they had been white hats: they had worked together long before he had started working for SOL.

They had never truly parted ways. In fact, his number had the longevity record in her phone aside from her mother's and her late father's (she had still kept it in there as a memory sake, maybe hoping that his ghost answered the phone one day). He was the one person outside her family whose number she had never deleted, even when they had long periods of time where they didn't talk to each other. The only numbers that were that way had a much shorter life, one of them being his little sister, Aoi's, mobile phone.

Ever since Playmaker and the Ignes had made their way to the public eye, they had seen each other much more often. SOL truly felt endangered by the high schooler boy and his witty AI and, as a workaholic trustworthy employee-of-the-month, Akira always made his job. And who was he going to call when it came to accessing databanks and catch back on a hacker playing Duel Monsters in Link VRAINS?

Ghost Girl, that was who!

This day was supposed to be an ordinary meeting between the two of them. He had called her on the day before because he had to hire her for a new mission he couldn't fulfil himself and didn't trust anyone more than her to do (what? They were long-time colleagues, she was more trustworthy than all these pesky beginners ready to sell their dignity at the first bid offered to them). She had accepted, thinking it was going to be something about AIs and SOL trying to bust off Playmaker again. No big deal.

In a way, Akira was her favourite person to work for. She usually preferred her anonymity and her capacity to hide behind avatars and pseudonyms, but she did trust that guy who was less awkward than he looked (he was still kind of embarrassing at times, but nobody who didn't know him outside of SOL wouldn't know that). She knew he'd pay her, even tip her when she had never asked for it, guarantee her safety if she needed. The thrill of risk was great too, but sometimes, feeling safe wasn't too bad.

However, their usual spots were all taken, and it was an urgent deal considering how tight SOL was on schedules. She could read in Akira's eyes how stressed out he was by the situation he had both feet in, thus why she decided to go against her usual principles and find shelter in the darker corners of nearby streets.

It was dark enough for them not to be spotted by passers-by, yet clear enough to be free of drug dealers, smugglers and hitmen going around. They could have a nice discussion about whatever it was all about, yet another mission of retrieving information in secret from SOL's databanks, and they did have it.

She just hadn't foreseen an old fellow coming back to bite her in the ass.

Increasing footsteps coming from the dark parts of the street had caught her attention right as Akira was monologuing about the risks he didn't want for her to take. There was indeed a guy walking towards them, holding something suspicious-looking in his right hand, angry expression on his face and an outdated outfit: a black trench coat, a Stetson hat covering the upper half of his face, forgettable shoes. He didn't ring a single bell to her, but she sure rang one to him, considering he was glaring at her.

"Wait a second," she told Akira in a whisper as she fully turned her head towards the uninvited party. She could tell she had startled her hirer, but it wasn't as important as dealing with that third person was at that moment.

"Who are you?" she asked him in a louder voice, hoping to at least catch his attention.

He didn't say anything back until he was quite close to them, she'd say far enough to avoid any hit, but close enough to be in hearing range… or a long-range threat.

"You don't recognize me," he spoke in a low, enraged voice as he stared right into her eyes. Yet, nothing prepared her for the freeze she'd experience upon hearing the remaining of his sentence.

"Ghost Girl?"

That was more than unexpected. That guy had somehow associated her real-life face with her virtual persona, which, in return, only meant trouble. He had also managed to track her down, somehow. Even if she was getting his information right at this moment through the use of the portable devices she always had on her (and especially whenever she met with Akira), it meant he had hers and, well, that needed to go.

"How are you so sure that I'm that 'Ghost Girl' person you're talking about?" she asked, feigning ignorance.

"Don't try to fool me! You're the one meeting people in backside alleys!"

As he said these words, the creep changed his glaze's target from her to the man standing right next to her.

"My, my… Isn't this the Security Manager of SOL Technologies? Perhaps I should tell that to your company, they should make sure they seal any potential leak."

She could feel Akira tense up immediately. She knew him enough to tell that spot at SOL mattered immensely to him for reasons outside of taking care of Link VRAINS.

"Why would you do that?" She asked in return, crossing her arms. "If you're here to deal with me, don't involve Zaizen into this."

She had to force herself to call him by his last name again. It was for his sake, she figured, almost like how Playmaker had told the Zaizen siblings that they shouldn't get involved in his revenge plans.

"You're right," the guy replied, "but that won't prevent me from avenging myself."

What was he even talking about? She must had missed an episode or, rather, an entire season of her life.

"I'm afraid we don't know each other. What "avenging" are you talking about?"

He rose his head as to look down on her, eyes burning.

"Years ago, you dumped all private information on me on the Internet for everyone to see. You ruined my reputation, then my social life. I had to change identities to become free again. I'll show you I was nothing to mess with."

Yet, Ema was unimpressed. They all said that. All talk and no act.

"You must be a person a client has asked me to give private stuff to, huh. I don't check the use my clients have of what they asked me for, so you'll have to fix that with them."

She shrugged.

"I just did my job. I have a flat to rent and food to buy, you know? I was just doing my job."

He couldn't give her that "you should find yourself a real job" excuse of an excuse. Not only what was she doing satisfying her: it qualified as a real job. Her freedom was more important to her than selling her soul to corporations and her parents had always supported that capacity to do whatever she wanted after going to college. Her free spirit was what had prevented her from changing her fate to Akira's, aside from having to care about a sibling on her own that was.

"Naïve of you to think I haven't dealt with that asshole already."

A cold sweat drenched her back. The implications of this sentence were downright chilling.

"You should leave right now," she heard Akira whisper to her, leaning just stealthily enough not to get spotted by their uninvited guest.

"And leave you there? Never."

The third man got out a firearm she had troubles identifying from his coat, pointing it directly at her.

"This ends now."

She was undeniably nervous about that ordeal about to fall on her, but she couldn't let that get to her or show on her face. It was time to bluff with a tiny fact she knew first-hand.

"It's one of these clandestine laser guns, right?" was all she asked instead.

"Yes."

"Those are quite expensive! How many loads do you have in there? One?"

His soured expression was all she needed to see. If she managed to dodge the bullet, she'd be free to go. Not hard, right?

Right.

Ema decided, in her usual fashion, to just piss that jerk off by walking away from him in a swagger, hoping for her business associate to follow her as they escaped the grip of some random psychopath after her, right before she'd dump the information she had managed to steal from his phone. Some people really lacked proper security on their phones. Ironic, for someone wanting to take his revenge on her after getting doxed.

"Whatever," she launched at him in an enthusiastic-sounding voice, turning her head away from him. "See you later in jail for your first murder!"

Before she could do more than a couple steps, Ema felt herself get shoved to the ground unprepared. The sound of her sudden fall almost muted the strange, eerie but not-so-foreign sound of a weapon going off. Yet, she didn't feel anything: she just felt the light pain of her fall and nothing else. Rising to her feet, a smirk formed on her lips, ready to be shot at a ridiculed man trying to kill her.

"So," she spoke up unable to hide the pride in her voice. "You tried to kill me, but failed miserably, right?"

The expression on that douchebag's face was beyond priceless. He looked panicked, terrified and unable to do anything at the same time. That was satisfying to watch: he had gotten what he deserved for even threatening to kill her. He ran before she had gotten the chance to tease him further, letting go of his weapon as he fled for his life.

"Okay, now that this is done and over with," she then said in Akira's direction, "let's resume what we were talking about, shall we?"

Delightful about succeeding in escaping death yet again, she finally turned around to see her hirer.

Her breathing became heavy as soon as she did so.

"A…"

Her voice struggled to exit her throat, caught in a string that wasn't there, filling with acid.

"Akira…?"

Only then did she remember the true danger of these streets. The darkness, the weapons, the drug trafficking, the prostitution, the murders and the thieves… It all came back crashing down on her.

She remained stunned for thirty seconds or so, time's course quickly distorting around her, just staring at was in front of her eyes, because she just couldn't move. Her entire body had gone numb, unable to act when it should have. Fuck. That wasn't supposed to ever be. Fuck. Goddammit.

There was a part of her that was screaming it wasn't her fault if he was right in front of her, shoulder leaning against the wall, hand clutching at the higher left part of his chest, near his heart, red drippling from it through his fingers and falling to the ground in a monotonous rhythm. However, it was completely overpowered by the urge she had to run up to him.

In what could be called a small miracle, she managed to catch him collapsing in her arms, allowing her to softly and safely lay him on the ground. His head was on her lap as she called for help on her phone, not caring about the shadiness of their location or as if whether or not the distress she felt could be sensed by anyone else.

Once that was done, her eyes couldn't look at anything else than him. Her mind could only think of him. Her fingers could only go towards him. It filled all of her senses and she'd have hated it if she even was in the right state of mind to do so. She wasn't used to worrying for people other than her that intensely. There was, however, something about the situation troubling her functioning: the strong smell of fresh blood and accents of gunpowder, her sight disturbed by what she knew were tears, her heart beating faster, her fingers printed in some of this blood she was, in a way, responsible for spilling onto the ground.

That was a grotesque turn of events. Ema had planned ahead her day for once: take a job offer from Akira in the morning, go back home, start working on said offer she'd have accepted anyway, eat lunch, continue on the mission, maybe call Aoi to ask her how school had gone, watch a series or two, resume working, go to bed late as usual. She hadn't taken in account the possibility of Akira getting shot because she had been an uncareful broad. Or, rather, because she hadn't expected a guy perfectly capable of pushing her sister out of the way of a laser beam to do so with anyone else.

Well, to be fair, she still didn't get why he had done that. She was Akira's most-employed bounty hunter for sure, considering she had never had any concurrence when it came to that guy. According to him, she was his most trusted employee (ha, what a joke, her, trustworthy? She'd have cried of laughter if she wasn't already about to cry).

That didn't mean he should have taken the blame for her.

Ema couldn't prevent herself from asking the question she knew the answer to already.

"You pushed me out of the way, right?"

His eyes flickered to her, barely open anymore, as he nodded with a slight smile before coughing up, blood dripping from his mouth.

"Why did you do that?"

He didn't answer, looking away.

"Why did you do that…?"

Her repeat of the question was still met with silence and heavy breathing.

She gritted her teeth, overwhelmed by feelings she didn't think existed until now.

"You're… You're a complete fool."

"I wouldn't have let someone die in front of me… if I could have done something about it…"

"Why would you even want to save me? I'm just someone you hire from time to time. I'm shady, a backstabber and dangerous."

"You're not just that, Ema…"

Blue and red lights started to drown the scene, sirens blasting through her eardrums, as feelings she shouldn't have been sensitive to anymore ran down her face.