Contains violence, language, drug use, and other graphic elements
Will contain characters not in the anime
Zero Slate
Mission Prelude
Details
[Sunday, March 1, 2029; 2100 hours]
[Somewhere in the Honshū Alpine Forests]
The crack of bullets ripped through the night sky; concealing the rustle of brush and thud of lead on bark.
"FIND THAT TWAT AND BRING HIM TO ME ALIVE!" A gruff British man growled in English to the party of 19 gathering around him as he reloads his AK-47, "I don't pay you dumbasses by the hour! STOP BUTT-FUCKING EACHOTHER AND SPREAD OUT!"
He held back the 2 closest men and watched the other 17 turn on the red flashlights duct-taped to the ends of their guns.
50 meters North-West of the man's position, a handsome young Japanese man laid in wait in a hollowed-out tree hidden amongst the thousands.
His thick black swept-back jet-black hair helped camouflage him from above, but did little to stop any moonlight that reflected off his soft skin tone.
He had his left hand clamped tight on the bullet hole right under the left side of his ribcage. He took off his coat and plate carrier, hearing the clink of steel bullet fragments on a rock; seeing a bleeding hole large enough to fit a thumb in.
'Damnnit. I'm gonna bleed out at this rate, even if it didn't hit anything vital.'
He fished around the coat for the last shot-shell he stuffed in an inner pocket. Instead, he felt a plastic button slick with his blood where the shot-shell should've been.
He cursed under his breath in Japanese as he tore the right cuff off and stuffed his wound, "Naichō has been hiring more dumbasses or something lately. Why the hell would you have the last day of this guy's Kill Order be on a full moon? But at least it's a good night out. I can still see some of the constellations."
Through his labored breathing, he heard the telltale unzipping of pants behind him; silently lurching forward in case the guard would come around. And using the excessively loud splash of high-pressure urine on leaves, he snuck out of his cover and spotted the guy answering nature's call.
Before the guard could zip his pants back up, the black-haired man held him from behind by the neck and mouth. Powering through the pint of blood loss chipping away his stamina, he kicked the guard's left knee inwards to set him off-balance.
Leading the guard to the side, he placed his left knee underneath the guard's ribcage and drove his elbow into his neck; snapping his spinal cord before digging his fingers into his throat to stifle his final screams.
'1 down.' He crossed off his list as he looted the guard's pockets before dragging his corpse into a hole a few steps away.
A wallet full of 1000 Yen bills and family photos; 2 unmarked wrapped peppermints, no doubt laced with fentanyl; and a generic cigarette lighter.
Looking back at the 12-gauge Mossberg 500 shotgun the guard equipped, he groaned audibly before eating one of the mints. He unloaded 2 shells and cut them open with a jagged rock; separating the wad and buckshot from the gunpowder cupped in the brass heads.
After marrying the powder into 1 head, he took out the cloth serving as a cork and quickly cupped the head over the bullet hole. He sparked the lighter and held the flame under the makeshift cup.
After a few more seconds of hoping the plastic and brass wouldn't sear or fuse to his skin, the gunpowder finally cooked off and cauterized the bullet hole with a lightning-quick flash and sizzle.
He fiddled with the other mint in his pocket, wondering if he should wait to take it now or wait till the job was done. His indecision was cut short as a dull red light washed over him.
He rolled out to the side and into a bush to avoid the burp of gunfire. The guard frantically swerved his gun around in an attempt to follow the rustle of leaves and brush surrounding him on all sides.
He began blindly shooting into the trees and bushes, praying he'd get a lucky shot and stop the spy that had been in their midst. Quickly spending his magazine, he grabbed a spare from his vest and tried to speed-load the convenient "banana mags" the AK platform was infamous for.
He placed the front of his new mag against the release switch to drop the empty one. The fresh magazine slipped off to the side ineffectively, cutting his finger against the sharp corner of the release.
Frantically breathing as the rustle of leaves closed in, he felt a predatory breath brush against the back of his neck. A moment later, his limp corpse left little more than a snake-like trail leading into the haunting woods.
[8 minutes later]
"Check in, now!" The boss growled into the radio.
"..."
"..."
"..."
"FUCK!"
He threw his radio against the ground in fury; rationalizing that the incompetence of the others in his terror cell were no better than the civilians they were planning to attack with the newly purchased military-grade nerve-gas grenades from Afghanistan thanks to Russia's involvement in the Soviet-Afghan Conflict of 1955.
Of the 400 grenades his cell bought, he stored one on his person for any contingency or scenario he would have to commit suicide. This grim reassurance strangely soothed his nerves as he and his last 2 men huddled together within a 5-meter diameter ring erected by earth magic.
The guard on his left peeked over his cover. Not even a blink later, everything from the nose up evaporated into a sanguine sheen that sprinkled their faces with shards of skull and hair.
The other guard threw his hands over the barrier and blindly shot icicles thick as arms. The speed and mass of each frozen projectile was more than enough to tear a limb off should it connect with any unfortunate bystander.
A hail of gunfire missed their heads by a finger's worth of space every time they tried to steal a glimpse into the woods. The boss wildly shot 3 of his 4 spare mags; frantically reloading and fumbling around with the last of his magazine, which fell onto the supple dirt.
His final lacky fell over into the entrenchment when the upper half of his head was deleted by a rapid-fire barrage of 00 (pronounced "Double Odd") buckshot.
Time seemed to stand still as more adrenaline flooded his bloodstream. The dilation restored enough of his hand-eye coordination to load his last magazine and pull the charging handle to rack a 7.62 x 39mm bullet.
Standing completely out of cover, the Leader of this relatively insignificant terror cell aimed his left hand out into the dense vegetation rustling with the breeze and the traitor in their midst.
Hearing a particularly close disturbance of leaves just outside his field of vision, he spout a baseball-sized fireball capable of instantly charring wood into a random bush.
Repeating this bait-and-waste tactic for 5 minutes longer, the Black-Haired Spy became increasingly unsure if he would win this war of attrition between Fire Magic and internal bleeding.
Fingering the one of the 3 other fentanyl mints in his pocket he had relieved the other terrorists' corpses of, he quietly positioned himself behind the thickest tree within the Leader's immediate Line of Sight to unwrap, grind, and spread the illicit candy against his gums.
The narcotic effects of the opioid disrupted the neuro-chemical signals of the pain in his side, allowing him to stabilize both his breathing and the .380 (pronounced "Three Eighty") ACP Walther PPKS in his hands.
*PAK* The gun fired in his experienced hands and found its mark in the casting hand of the terrorist. He fired again before the Leader could pull back his hand; his left leg collapsing with the spit of bone, tendon, and blood out the lower thigh.
Coming out from behind the tree, he gently pulled back the slide of his pistol to make sure the next bullet wasn't jammed before tapping the back of the slide back into battery; approaching the terrorist who had dropped his rifle and reached into his jacket after thoroughly exhausting his mana.
With a limp and a stifled grunt to each step, the Black-Haired Spy crossed the 20-meter clearing between him and his still exhausted target before he gained his bearings.
Holstering his pistol, he vaulted over the meter-thick barrier and grabbed the AK with his right hand; kicking the Leader onto his side and planting the white-hot muzzle against his right temple.
"All suicide bombers go to hell." He graveled his voice as he placed his right foot onto his target, more so to keep himself steady rather than the man still.
He pulled the trigger and watched all 30 rounds turn the terrorist's head into a soup of gore and grime in a matter of seconds.
"And blood makes the grass grow green." An all-too familiar female whispered in the recesses of his mind.
Tossing the spent rifle aside and picking up a radio from one of the other slaughtered men, he tuned into the back-channel frequency of one of his Agency's nearby monitoring stations.
"ID challenge. Word of the Day" A female radio operator received his transmission.
"Pleiades. Muck-rucker." He responded.
…
…
"ID challenge passed. Assignment status report."
"Just send in a damn Medevac already. The asshole is dead, and I'm gonna bleed out in a bit." He bitterly confirmed accomplishment.
…..
…...
"Request received. Stand by for recovery." The radio operator killed the line.
Snatching a thermos from a carabiner hanging on the Leader's hip, he vaulted over the barrier to escape the sight of the bloodbath.
'About time I got this job done...' He slid down with his back to the wall, sitting down and contemplating.
"The helicopter will arrive in about 30 minutes, Dear." The female voice in his head spoke more clearly.
"Figured. The bureaucrats at the top make it a point to hide in their bunkers instead of keeping their prize pony within earshot. Especially now that it's harder than ever to do any more spy shit with all the tech advancements." He opened the thermos and smelled the water it held.
Looking up to meet the moonlight directly beaming directly onto him, he took a long breath and looked down at the shadow his knee cast onto the dirt.
"You can show up if you want." He softened his tone as he focused on the shadow.
The shadows at his legs rippled like water as a head of silver hair broke the surface. A porcelain white face adorned by eyes like amythests with gentle blue pupils followed shortly after.
Her ears resembled those of pure-blooded elves from before the war that ended only 10 years prior, but as with the surviving descendants in hiding, they ended with a rounded edge; proof of her half-elven half-human heritage.
"Hi." A gentle breeze carried her voice.
Hearing her voice with his ears instead of his psyche washed some tension from his body as he poured the chilled water over his head and onto his clothes. He made eye-contact with the woman sitting with her legs tucked in.
She wore quaint black leather dress shoes, dark purple thigh-high socks with small golden frills at the top, and a matching dark purple one-piece sleeved mini dress with golden flower embroidery. Head to toe, one could easily affirm her a pretty lady farther out of their league and grasp than Oda was with the end of One Piece.
Squinting in pain, he tore off his left cuff and began scrubbing away some of the biomatter and muck that clung to his skin; careful not to open the scrapes and scratches that come from tree hopping like a messy blonde hair and blue-eyed ninja, not to be confused with his bratty son who would rather spend time with another unnamed black-clad individual that spent most of his time brooding or reading pocketbooks written by a lovable old man that gave his life to save the world.
Wiping his cauterized bullet wound one last time, he threw the cuff away and dropped his hands into his lap as the color drained from his face. A sickly weariness washed over his senses, one he could no longer stave off as his head finally drooped to the side and through the lap of his sole companion.
"I'll be right here, as always." She stroked his hair gently, remembering that she no longer had a corporeal form; she sat and could do nothing to stop the internal bleeding as he fell into shock and closed his eyes.
…...
…...
"..." He heard a familiar female voice he had come to fear for private reasons but could not understand what she was saying.
His arm suddenly stung, and he silently cursed as someone injected something into his system.
"... unresponsive. Shoot up 4 more c's of Narcan."
"But Gōyoku-sensei, he could've OD'd twice over with the amount we've given him!"
"He'll be fine like always, Ayumi. Just make sure you remind me to heal over most of the scars for this next mission."
'If you weren't so lackadaisical, I'd've already gotten up.' He grumbled quietly.
"Oh look, his eye twitched!" The first woman noticed before giggling mischievously, "Quick, give him 5 cc's from that bottle labeled Sildenaphren."
"Silden- …. You bitch..." Ayami flatly vocalized.
He felt another prick in his left arm that only added to the rising of his blood pressure. And if it was a special concoction that a particular black-eyed borderline-albino made, it would certainly explain why he felt a gradual rising and tightening in his pants.
"Echidna, you bitch." He glared and grumbled at the porcelain skinned woman smiling innocently at the foot of the hospital bed he was laying on.
He glanced down at his clothes, relived that he wasn't in a hospital gown, but rather his favorite clothes that served as his go-to urban camo and taunt-ware for any would-be assassin or spy-hunter after him:
Deep-grey tracksuit bottoms with an orange stripe down the side, black sneakers with vibrant orange laces and soles, and a black t-shirt underneath a zipped-up white tracksuit jacket with a stand-up collar, deep-grey sleeves with an orange line running down their sides and orange cuffs, and deep-grey shoulders.
"Ara ara, someone's certainly excited to see little old me." She teased him as she slowly ran a finger up his left leg.
Fumbling around for the remote, he adjusted the angle of the back support and flexing his thighs to kill the unenjoyable erection; all while focusing a distasteful look towards Echidna, who shooed the nurse to leave and close the door.
"One of these days, I will kill you." He leaned forwards with a strangling grip outstretched.
"Don't you know it's rude to keep a lady waiting and unsatisfied?" She closed her eyes and smiled and reached into her black dress slacks, "And don't worry, I'll put a sticky-note on me reads [Place tool here] for when you reach me."
Annoyed by her innuendos and frivolous advances, he shifted his attention and locked his gaze on the folded-up paper Echidna pulled from her dress.
"Relax, it's not another short job. This one might actually take you a good while..." She passed the note to him with a more serious expression.
He quickly unfolded the paper and racked his brain to decode whatever cipher Naichō used this time. He narrowed his eyes as he read further into the encrypted message.
"This is probably the largest and most significant operation since Kutsubako in the 90's, and might bring back the war into full swing if we screw up." Echidna grimly started.
Looking up from the paper, Subaru sunk his head into his hands, "And by we, you mean me. And this sheet isn't saying much, even by our standards."
"And that's where we come in." She took the paper, balled it up, and incinerated it, "50 years ago, MI-6 headed a joint trio for Deep and Double into Afghanistan. It was because of them and the collaboration from Spain's Garbonze that World War 3 ended the way it did back in 2017."
"They don't sound dead yet, so why are you telling me all this?" Subaru groaned.
"Because 2 weeks ago, all 3 of their heads were shipped to one of our retired Agent's home; all with missing ears, tongue, and a bullet between their empty eye sockets." Echidna grimaced.
"Sounds more like Mossad (Israel's intelligence agency) or MSS (China) than GDI. What the hell happened?" He tried to mentally connect the dots.
"Yesterday, one of my old MI-6 contacts leaked that they discovered one of their own went rogue 8 years ago."
"Shiiiit." He began to feel the gravity of the situation.
"They're keeping local for now, so there isn't an inter-Agency Seek and Destroy order on him yet." She brushed the ashes into a trash can.
"How exactly do we fit into this? If the Brits can't make an example, why are they calling us up to mop up?" He sank back into the bed.
"Here's the hole you fill. The Rogue Agent in question is Roswaal L. Mathers; 34 years old, ex-SAS, spent 5 years deep cover in AIVD (Dutch intel agency), and rewrote the Brits' literal book on manipulation twice. Most importantly, he's the current Headmaster of one prestigious Paradiso Academia right in our own backyard." She pulled and unfolded a pair of 35mm film pictures before handing them over.
The 1st photo showed the front profile of a young adult male with neck-length indigo blue hair and heterochromatic eyes; a yellow left and a blue right. He was adorned in a long-sleeved black tuxedo with matching violet lapels, tie, vest, and top collar.
Surrounding him was a busy sidewalk diagonal from restaurants with large flashing neon Russian letters, one of which read [Petrovitch Family Tea Shop], suddenly remembered passing by the same shop in Moscow while on a Joint Operation to bring a captured CIA Agent back to friendly land.
Squinting a bit, he noticed that the left side of the suit had an embroidered eagle and "L" shaped cufflinks on both sides. The bottom border of the photo had a small, nearly illegible, footnote: [186cm, 60kg] (6'1 and 132.3 lbs)
"Eugh, his face and smile are the friggin' Uncanny Mariana Trench." He cringed in uneasy disgust more than he meant to as he swapped it for the other photo.
"Don't worry, it gets worse. Both of those were taken about 7 years ago." She half-heartedly joked.
The second photo was taken from what looked like the underside of a fine dark red satin tablecloth. The focus of the picture depicted a slightly older Roswaal and a Military Aged Man of Middle Eastern descent exchanging a USB for a briefcase.
"This is last year. The drive he bought had global state secrets that cost the SAD (CIA Special Activities Division) and MI-9 a few of their best. If we try to kill his accounts, he draws from offshores or has banks hacked. If we try to bug his pads, our guys get burned and end up streamed on LiveLeak or Dark Web red-rooms. If we try to off him directly, Agents are found in ditches within the hour." Echidna started listing off the target's capabilities.
'Satella, you getting all this?'
'A spy hunter, espionage master, and manipulative bastard. Sounds like the build-up to a bad joke.'
"Skip to the part where I'm important. And what was that you said about an academy?" He grew impatient.
Clearing her throat and cracking her knuckles, "You mission is to infiltrate his inner circle, gather any information possible, and prevent him from kicking off another war... all by creating a family and having your child or children rise through the ranks."
…...
"…..."
"..."
"Did you hear me? I said that you have to infiltrate Paradi-" Echidna unsurely restated.
"Yeah yeah... Get the girl, get the kid, get into the school, get into this bastard's parties, monitor him, scrub his data, disappear his contacts, prevent World War 4, and come back in time for the imaginary menagerie to be imagined by the manager imagining managing the imaginary menagerie while watching 7 750cc motorcycles race like noisy horses racing at a 77-degree angle."
"Nyanyahan nyanabe nya nya nya. I get it, you're really good with tongue twisters." She reached into her pockets and fished out a Glock 34 with a full 20 round mag, an ID, and a wallet he suspected had 250k in assorted Yen bills.
"Ha. Where am I headed?" He grabbed the basic necessities with a scoff, having Satella store the gun in a very small pocket dimension hidden in his front right pocket.
"Tokyo, by next-ish week." She smirked and helped him stand up, causing the hybrid abomination of epinephrine and sildenafil to rush back down to his groin and reawaken the dragon.
"Damnit..." He smacked his face.
"Hey," Echidna put her chin on his left shoulder from behind and put her hands on his hips, "Wanna let me fix that right here right now?"
Spinning quickly in her embrace, he looped his left arm around the left side of her head and dropped their weight to the floor. Reaching into his right pocket, Satella read his intention and handed him the Glock after chambering the first round.
Pulling her head to his left flank, he rolled it in his arm so she would directly stare into the 9mm pistol resting on his right thigh.
"Wow, didn't take you for the forceful type? Do you also happen to be interested in Domination and Submission?"
"Wanna die right here right now?" He retorted back by inching the gun a bit closer.
"Wanna get hunted? The brass could revive an old Program and hunt you down. What was the name of that all-girls one... Liquorish or Recoris?"
"You wanna risk losing trillions for a One-Man Operation?" He tightened the choke-hold.
"I believe you mean One-Man Army. You do know that you're the only one in the Stargazer Program?" She teased.
"Good answer." He let her go and shoved the pistol back into his pocket as he walked out.
[Tuesday, March 9, 2029; 0900 hours]
[Chiyoda City, Tokyo Metropolitan Area]
Looking up from the remnants of a bowl of chankonabe and the last droplets of Sapporo Yebisu, he let out a silent burp on the way to the restroom to wash up.
In the middle of wiping his face, the phone in his pocket chimed. Letting out a heavy "ughhh", he reluctantly sat down on the toilet and opened the unread message from the contact labeled [Bossitch].
'What does she want now...' He pulled it out and immediately tapped on the notification.
B: Your apartment is ready. 2nd floor, 115 sq. m, 1-way glass, underground parking lot, manual and electronic locks, remote viewing, not too far from a Paradiso bus stop, prepaid 4 years. Here's the dead-drop and apartment address.
Relieved that he would no longer have to spend another sleepless night in a pod hotel. He exited the restaurant, bought a coffee from a vending machine, picked up the hidden package, and made his way to the new apartment.
"Friendly neighborhood, good distance between neighbors, a-" His muttering ceased as his scopaesthesia picked something up. Disguising his scan as a non-chalant look-around, he spotted at least 3 potentials: a man smoking in the alley directly across the street, a woman in a hoodie sweater walking her corgi, and the last was a repeat face from 2 days prior jogging the opposite way of the corgi walker.
'Smoker, Walker, and Repeat.' He made a mental reminder walking up the stairs as the trio secretively stopped looking at him and dispersed.
Taking a deep breath of the "new apartment smell", he shut and locked the door behind him.
10 minutes later, he finished sweeping the rooms for taps and cams, feeling relived that he could sleep and poop and walk around in (relative) privacy for once without having to wait with hostile door watchers or Agency monitoring.
He plopped face-first onto the bed and passed out when 8 sleepless days took a sledgehammer to his hypothalamus and drained away most of his bodily aches and sores.
"H... hey, Satella... take over just in case... gu ... gu..."
His gentle snoring made for soothing background in the recesses of his soul; invisible to all but him, she would silently read the intentions and emotions and dangers in the people and surroundings.