Vixen Aysun Chazona paced. Her feet were getting tired, and the soles of her knee-length brown leather boots were wearing thin as quickly as her patience. Striding up to the wall again, she stopped, turned on her heel, and began in the opposite direction, like she was made of clockwork. Truth be told, she was using the repetition as a means to keep her mind off the nagging doubt at the back of her brain, which was small and annoying, and stuck to her like a tick in her coat, but truth was for the virtuous, and, as she was sure Kaidan was now being told, hybrids weren't virtuous.

She finally allowed herself to stop pacing, and leant her back against the wall, tilting her head until it too was touching the brickwork. Letting her breath out in a frustrated groan, she flicked her eyes to the doorway, and saw the blurry outlines of several figures inside. The slight bulge at the belly of the one who was standing near the far wall betrayed its identity, and Vixen chuckled to herself as the figure kept half-turning towards the door, expecting someone to charge in and threaten them with a sharp projectile at any second.

Moving her eyes away from the still-wary Trevor, she observed the two sitting figures, who were facing each other across a dark wooden desk. She could tell from the difference in height and pose that the straight-backed one was Cyrus Haines, and the slumped, seemingly disinterested figure must have been Kaidan. Unable to see in any more clarity beyond fuzzy silhouettes through the frosted glass, she turned her attention to the chorus of voices that periodically darted across the room in semi-formal exchange. So, Klaus, Aden and Faith were in there too. Well, at least she could be sure that if anything happened, they'd be able to get out of there in one piece. Again, however, Vixen's trepidation flexed its muscles, and she scoffed under her breath.

'Yeah… if. Because it's highly likely that nothing bad will happen at all.' she deadpanned, partly in an attempt to convince herself, though mostly so her throat had something to do. As if all she could do to entertain herself had now been done, she exhaled, and let herself slide down the wall a little, her feet moving forward in her boots as they gripped the lino floor. She would be inside, listening to the lecture her companions were receiving, but she'd heard it all before. So had Aden, but she was more inclined to sit in on the conversation, quietly fuming as a human euphemised and skirted round what had been done to her species.

In fact, Aden was not sitting, and, although she was becoming frustrated, it wasn't due to the elderly man spouting nonsense. He'd been making sense so far, and it was his henchman that was truly getting on her nerves.

As seemed to be his party line, Trevor was ignorant of this. That didn't mean to say he was comfortable, however, as the glares he kept getting from various people in Haines' office alerted him to some kind of miscommunication, though he had no idea who by or of what kind. Despite this, he remained where he was, leant against a filing cabinet to one side of the room, casually perusing the files that were strewn atop it. One item in particular had piqued his interest, and his fingers found themselves creeping along the cool metal towards its spine, but then they halted. Behind the desk a few feet away, Trevor's superior sent a withering glare that could quite feasibly grind diamonds into a fine powder, and the cowardly subordinate gulped. His hands slithered back across the metal, and found themselves conveniently placed in his pockets. Satisfied, the CEO with the grizzled hair continued his allocution.

'As I was saying, young master Sawyer,' his gaze fell on the slouched figure, '…do you follow me so far? The boy across from him nodded disinterestedly.

'Yeah, I do. I've heard the stuff about the Insurrection before, actually.' He shifted forwards in his chair, gripping the armrests, and continued, 'I was rather hoping you'd be more specific.'

'Specific?' the man enquired, raising a bushy eyebrow in the boy's direction. Kaidan nodded.

'Yes. I'm a demon, but all I can remember is the Capital. Why?' Haines cupped his chin in a bony hand, mulling over his reply.

'I am, as yet, unsure. Tell me, do you remember your childhood?' Kaidan stalled at this apparent change of direction.

'Huh? What does that have to do with anything?' Cyrus Haines smiled accommodatingly.

'Rather a lot, young master Sawyer.' Kaidan frowned, a little put out.

'Well, I mean… of course I remember my childhood.'

'Are you sure? The man pressed, his voice sterner than Kaidan had anticipated.

'Yeah… most of it.' Cyrus leant forward imploringly across the desk.

'Most?' After a few awkward seconds, Kaidan conceded.

'…some. But what does that have to do with it, anyway?' Kaidan snapped, embarrassed by the hole in his memory. From behind him, leant against the wall between two blocks of shelving, Klaus chuckled, seemingly entertained by the young demon's discomfort. Haines remained intense despite this.

'Kaidan, can you definitively guarantee that you have been nowhere other than the Capital?' the burgundy-haired boy broke eye contact for a moment, thinking, before he answered, his voice bearing a modicum of unease. He flicked his eyes up to meet those of marled hazel.

'…no.' Haines' eyes darkened, and he glanced to the desk for an instant.

'Then, Mr Sawyer, you may need to remain here for a while longer.' Something in this statement made Aden snap out of her absent-mindedness, and she stood forward from where she was standing, near a clutter-free patch in the wall.

'Why?' she asked, almost impulsively. Startled, Kaidan jolted a little in his chair, and turned to observe her with mild annoyance. Aden shrugged dismissively at the unspoken rebuke, sending the demon a glare out of the corner of her eye.

'Because, Miss Ravenkey, my worst fears have not yet been disproven.' Kaidan sat up in his seat, almost choking on thin air.

'What fears would these be?' Haines smiled affably at the boy, and clicked his fingers at Trevor, who was watching the proceedings like a cat unable to reach into the fish-tank. Alerted to his superior's command, Trevor fumbled several of the files that lay on top of the filing cabinet, and passed them to the time-grizzled man, who took them with a nod of thanks, and then pointed to the door with his chin. Trevor was unawares for a moment, then took the hint and left.


The door to Cyrus Haines' office creaked slightly as Trevor opened it, slipping outside. The noise the old wood made covered the sound of a deep breath he took to steady himself for what would inevitably be outside waiting for him. The door swung to behind him, and Trevor shut his eyes against the inevitably-impending threat.

'Miss Chazona.' Trevor was unsurprised when no sound came in reply, but he dreaded having to open his eyes, only to be faced with an arrowhead millimetres from his eyeball. He gritted his teeth, and did it anyway.

'I- Miss Chazona?' to his alarm, the corridor outside was deserted. His cynicism making him assume that the white-haired hybrid was merely hiding somewhere, he looked around for her, trying not to break into an anxious sweat. After around thirty seconds of searching, however, his labours had borne no fruit. The middle-aged man groaned, putting his hand over his face.

'The boss is gonna kill me for this…'


Haines flicked a file open, pressed the spine flat with the back of his nail, and slid it across the desk to Kaidan. The boy pored over the faded print, which was in the form of some kind of report, judging by the case numbers and law enforcement officers' identification codes stamped at its top.

'I see…' he scanned the file intently, then looked up, baffled, '…what am I looking at?' From behind him, Aden just supressed the urge to chuckle, and Kaidan turned round momentarily to cast her a "Oh, like you know better?" scowl before facing front once more. Seeing the two's exchange was completed, Haines knotted his fingers together, and leant them against the warmly polished wood of his desk.

'You are looking at the official police report of the evidence found for a covert Razing just over one hundred and sixty years ago.' At this, Aden darted from the corner and snatched the file from the blood-haired demon, who gaped indignantly at the sudden intrusion, speechless.

'I think I've heard of this…' the fire-eyed Hybrid nodded as she read the file, and glanced from Kaidan to Haines, 'this is the time when- ' She stopped, as if the words were taken from her throat, and replacing them was painful, 'when…' This is where Haines took over once more.

'Yes, Miss Ravenkey, this is what you think it is.' Kaidan slapped his hands on the desk in frustration, though also in an ineffectual attempt to diffuse the growing heat in them.

'Is anyone planning to tell me what exactly this is, or do I have to guess?' he enquired, exasperated. Cyrus stoles a glance towards Kaidan's seething fingertips, and laughed under his breath.

'My apologies, Mr Sawyer. This report details the experience of a young detective -' he held a hand out for the report, which Aden begrudgingly returned. He nodded in thanks, and referred to it momentarily, 'a Detective Inspector J Clarke, in fact – who was investigating a series of virulent arson attacks on the city. He-' Haines was waved into silence by the blood-haired demon.

'Wait, wait wait wait… Clarke? As in Santa here?' he jerked his thumb to the back of the room, where Klaus, his eyes closed and his arms crossed, was standing in the silhouette of some shelving, almost completely at home in the shade. The hybrid's eyes snapped open, and he regarded Kaidan with a kind of cold indifference.

'Clarke is a common enough name, Kaidan. If the name was Sawyer, however,' he took a stride into the harsh electric lighting in the centre of the room, 'then I'd start to worry.' Kaidan smiled a little.

'True enough. Sorry, pal.' Klaus snorted quietly, returning to his post.

'Don't mention it.' Perhaps it was due to being up all night listening to anecdotes, but, all the same, Kaidan was sure he heard a larger tint of imperative to the Hybrid's words than he would have liked. Electing that it was most likely down to fatigue on both their parts, Kaidan disregarded the thought, and returned his attention to Haines.

'You were saying?' The small man's eyes widened, as if he was jolted from a notion of his own.

'Ah yes, thank you, Kaidan. These incidents Clarke was investigating had no definable source – at least, until these prints were found at the scene of one such fire.' Haines opened a drawer on his side of the desk, and withdrew several old black-and-white photographs from it. He passed them to Kaidan, who in turn gave one image to Aden, whose hand was already proffered over his shoulder, ready to receive it.

The resolution was grainy at best, but was in decidedly good condition considering what time period they were taken in. They depicted human footprints, the scale of which was indiscernible, imprinted onto a singed wooden surface in black. Their shape was only just visible, and that appeared to be due to a difference in lustre between the carbonised wood and whatever the foot shape was printed in. Kaidan stared at the photographs, rapt.


As Vixen passed under each electric strip-light, the rainbow highlights in the hair that fell around her face as she walked made the illumination seem to change colour like the fibre optic strands on an artificial Christmas tree. This would have been pleasant, if the lighting were not overly harsh, and so definitely artificial. She could have sworn it made her skin itch just being under it.

She sighed, and stopped walking. As always seemed to be the way with big corporations like this, it was easy to get lost, and although the opalescent-eyed hybrid remembered exactly what route she had taken to get here, she had no idea where exactly here was. The rooms she passed had some kind of numbering system on plaques by each door handle but, not being employed here, they meant very little.

A sharp click sounded through the hallway, and Vixen whirled. Her eyes widened but caught nothing as she scanned the lino passageway for any trace of the perpetrator of the sound. She took a few strides back the way she had come, until she was level with a door, and she stopped. Peering in at the door's frame, she noted how a slither of light escaped from the gap which had recently been made between the latch and its nook. Someone had gone in there, and she hadn't seen them.

Silently and with well-practiced ease, Vixen unhitched her longbow from her shoulder, and knocked an arrow. Advancing towards the door, she pushed it open a little way with her foot. Next, relying on her inhuman reaction times to outpace who or whatever may be inside, she barged the door into the opposite wall with her shoulder, drawing the bowstring back until it was trained just behind her jawbone. She cast the weapon's sight around the room beyond – it was yet another cramped and dank storeroom – and yet again, she saw nothing.

Curbing her growing frustration with the patience of a hunter, Vixen began to stalk past the rows of crates, at each turn preparing to shoot at anything that might pose a threat. After a few minutes of seeing and hearing nothing, she lowered her guard a little, and stooped to examine a crate by her foot. It was about two and a half feet in width, and almost perfectly cuboid. She relaxed her bowstring, and traced her fingers over the letters burnt into the rough wood.

In amongst the letters was the familiar logo of Vindicta Inventories, a tall letter "V" with an "I" nestled in between its prongs. Vixen chuckled at Haines' lack of imagination. However, the other symbols were more perplexing than entertaining. Vixen narrowed her eyes at the fluid and elaborate shapes – they weren't in any language she'd come across before. But, as she examined their sequence more closely, she saw that some symbols were repeated, but not in a predictable order.

'What language is this…?' she whispered to herself, curiosity breaking the silence. A small dot of high pressure on one of the vertebrae at the back of her neck answered her question and she sighed, fingering her longbow's riser with her left hand. The pressure increased, until Vixen got the message and laid her weapon down on the floor, pushing it away from herself a little. An unfamiliar voice snorted from behind her.

'Good move.'


'The hell…? What are these prints made of?' The blood-haired demon asked, unable to tear his eyes away from the evidence in front of him.

'They couldn't tell, but Clarke notes that the prints stunk of refined oil.'

'Like… petrol?' Aden enquired, placing her hand on the back of Kaidan's chair, the other holding the photo close to her face as she leant forward. Haines nodded encouragingly.

'Exactly, Miss. His colleagues at the time didn't believe his theory, but…' the man gradually stopped talking, allowing the demon and the hybrid the opportunity to glance at him. Once they made eye contact, he remained wordless, beseeching them to ask him to continue. Kaidan caved first, his eagerness undeniable.

'What theory, Mr Haines?' The mild-mannered old man sighed, and unwrapped his hands from one another, laying them flat on the desk.

'His theory was that these fires were caused by a demon.' Kaidan's eyes narrowed.

'And you think this involves me somehow?' Haines nodded, and the boy broke into fits of laughter, 'you do realise I wasn't even born yet, right? And besides, I can't do that!' he gestured to the singing around the edge of the picture's frame of view, still grinning.

'I never said these incidents were your fault, Kaidan. Quite the opposite, in fact; I think they are to blame for your current situation.'Kaidan's face became stern once more.

'My situation being…?'


The pressure at the back of Vixen's neck subsided slightly, as if the one enforcing it was shifting their weight, or perhaps changing hands with their weapon. Either way, Vixen didn't leave anything to chance, and she leapt sideways, ducking into a roll and deliberately hooking her foot through her bowstring, and whipping the longbow upwards and into her assailant's face with a loud crack. The figure grunted, and Vixen allowed her momentum to carry herself and her bow over backwards, throwing herself into a handstand before flicking her foot, and letting her bow fall down her body until it came to rest under her shoulders. Weapon reinstated, the hybrid righted herself, and advanced on her attacker.

Obviously male, the figure appeared young, maybe twenty, and a mat of spiked up black hair sat in stark contrast to a pair of piercing light blue eyes as he looked at Vixen, backing off a little as if to allow himself room to manoeuvre. Wondering why he'd need to do such a thing, she flicked her eyes over the weapon in the young man's hand, and found her answer – a javelin. He was a fighter, which may have gone some way to explain the broadness of his chest as well, but did not explain why he was here in the first place. Vixen cocked her head.

'Who are you?' she demanded, eyes narrowed and flickering in the glare. The young man – or maybe boy, the youth in his eyes made it hard to tell – smirked, and hefted the javelin over one shoulder.

'Now, what makes you think I'd tell you that?' Before he could react, Vixen had re-drawn her longbow, and had trained an arrowhead on the boy's heart. Vixen smiled acridly.

'Oh, I don't know, perhaps a little incentive?' she quipped, shifting her stance until her arrow had a completely uninterrupted flight path from her fingertips to the back of the boy's ribcage. The young man sighed, conceding.

'Okay, you have a point.' He lowered his weapon, and Vixen grinned sarcastically.

'You don't say?' she deadpanned, making the figure in front of her raise an eyebrow.

'Oh, so you're one of those, are you?' Vixen raised the arrow's targeting to his face.

'What do you mean?' her tone was interrogative. He raised his free hand in a peace-making gesture.

'A smart aleck. You're not great at endearing yourself to people, are you?' Vixen snorted.

'Who says I need to be?' she replied.

'No one.' The boy countered accommodatingly. Vixen studied him for a second, and lowered her weapon.

'You didn't answer my first question.' The boy grinned at the edge of his lips, and shrugged.

'I thought I'd got away with that.' He put out his hand in an offer of greeting, 'I'm Connor.' Vixen stared at him, not moving.

'Vixen Chazona.' She pointed to his outstretched hand, 'You can put that away, unless you want to lose it.'


'It has come to my attention that several demons were executed as punishment for these fires. I had hoped that I would never have to face their orphans, but…' Haines trailed off, his eyes saddening as he appraised the copper-eyed demon with sympathy, '…here we are.' Confused by this, Aden leant over her companion's head to scrutinise Haines' face.

'But Kaidan isn't old enough to have been one of their children… is he?' Haines shrugged.

'Demons live for many aeons, Miss Ravenkey. It is a likely explanation for Kaidan's condition, don't you think?' Aden was silent for a moment, then she conceded.

'I guess it must be.' She cupped her chin in her palm, and lost herself to contemplation. Kaidan, however, had no such luck, as he'd struck on another point that didn't sit straight with him.

'Hang on, how come Clarke knew about demons?' Haines looked away for a moment, as if reminiscing an embarrassing moment from his past.

'Vindicta is a very old company, young master Sawyer, and, as I've told you and your friends, information is stored here in a similar way to physical goods. Another factor in our policy is that, when we come across information of extreme importance, we pass it on to the required authority to rectify any issues.' The young-faced demon frowned with concern.

'And what about nowadays? How many people have you told about hybrids?' Haines smiled, in an attempt to ease the demon's growing anxiety.

'No-one outside the firm, Kaidan, trust me. Your friends have had more than enough hounding already, don't you think?' Kaidan nodded, abated.

'They have. I'm glad you see that too.' Cyrus Haines chuckled, a kind of delectation in his voice.

'My company sees a lot of things, my boy.'


Flames danced over the city, and embers echoed in his eyes. As his home disintegrated around him, the young man turned, shielding his deep brown eyes from another blast that wracked the streets, like the violent coughs of a dying giant. The shockwave blew his sandy-blonde fringe backwards, and he ruffled his hair with a gauntleted hand to put it back into place. He sighed to himself, and began the descent into his fallen kingdom.

The last remnants of houses smouldered under his iron greaves as he strode through his familiar streets. Black ash fell like snow from the deep red sky, as if the heavens themselves were on fire, and crying tears of decay onto the world below. He disregarded those clumps of burnt matter that landed on his armour but, unbeknownst to him, they stained the thick metal, and from that day on he wore the marks like scars on his skin that no amount of faith could hope to erase.

The irrevocable, unforgivable nature of catastrophe is what made the young man's blood rise to a boil. He glanced at what remained of a window – through it, he saw the incinerated skeletons of a family, thrown backwards by some incendiary blast that seared their very bones into the stonework. Death was instantaneous, but the pain for those left behind was without end.

He moved on, scanning the rubble for his prize. His eyes flicked over heaps of ash, huge carbon stains, and lumps of uprooted stone, but to no avail. A glimmer of frustration sparking up inside him, he growled, and glared irately at the burning sky.

'Why do you hide from your punishment?! I will find you, no matter how you delay me!' He turned in a circle, appraising the sky with an angered reverence, before once more looking earthwards, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. A gust of wind exacerbated by the fire blew against his face, and he flared his nostrils as a familiar scent came to them. He turned his head in the direction it came from, and ran.

Some two-hundred yards or so away, round in what used to be a backstreet, the young man skidded to a halt, a dust cloud erupting from the dirt under his feet. In the middle of the thoroughfare, seared into the surface of a piece of rubble, was a pair of footprints, as black as obsidian and with the lustre of tar. He strode up to the markings, and crouched on his haunches.

'There you are.' He reached out with his armour-clad hand, and let his fingertip graze the substance on the floor. It made a faint hissing noise as it started to digest the metal, and he withdrew his hand, leaving strands of black goo running between the ground and his finger. Satisfied, he put his other hand behind him, where a large disk-like object was strapped against his back. He unhitched it, and laid the article in front of him. It had a diameter of about three and a half feet, and could have been dismissed as a regular circular shield, save for the fact that from the top and bottom of the contraption protruded a blade, as wide as a longsword, and extending about a foot away from the shield's circumference.

The figure carefully lifted up one side of his bladed shield, and directed the strings of black goo around the blade in a circular motion. This time, the metal didn't hiss, as if one were designed for the other. The young man chuckled, and returned his hand to the footprints, digging his fingers in and scraping as much of the substance as he could into his palm, before slathering it over his weapon. Once one side was coated, he did the same with the other, and stood up, strapping the shield onto his right forearm.

The figure groaned under his breath, and tilted his back until it cracked loudly. Bending over to the other side, he unhooked the fastenings on his left gauntlet, the underside of which was now almost completely dissolved through by the black substance. He shook his gauntlet to the floor, and cracked his knuckles single-handedly. Next, he held his shield out in front of him at arm's length, and snapped the fingers of his bare hand. A kind of purple-black fire sprang to life, and danced up the blades, shimmering malignantly in his eyes.

'Here I come.'