Noel Vermillion finally woke up on the couch, feeling a bit groggy, trying to remember what had made her fall asleep before.

"Evenin' kiddo." Colton Black spoke as he finished another glass.

"M-Mister Black? What am I?"

"Sorry, didn't know you were that much of a lightweight." Colton shook his head, cursing his own curiosity. "It was my fault for dragging you in to that, but I did give you a sobriety pill, so there shouldn't be too many ill effects."

"Sobriety? You mean…"

"Yep, bathroom's over there. When you're done, I'll tell you what you came here to find out."

"Wait, are you…" Noel suddenly grabbed her stomach. She really didn't feel so good all of a sudden, and ran as fast as she could to the bathroom Colton had pointed out a second ago. After slamming the door shut, Noel shouted, "UGH! When's the last time you really cleaned this place?"

"Hey, I wasn't expecting company." Colton grunted. "Let me know next time, it might motivate me to do a better job."

"Screw you!"

"Sorry kid, you're not my type." Colton sat on the couch, idly tapping his fingers as he thought back to his giant conspiracy board in his room. He was on the verge of something big, evidence that there was some crossover between Sector Seven and the Library. Too many questions remained, too many variables he didn't have yet. Even so, it was a working theory. He just hoped Noel would believe it, because at this point he was running out of people he could trust…

A few years ago, Colton Black was the chief of security in a highly-secret facility at the time when an experiment was happening deep inside the capital of the Ikaruga Federation. He didn't know exactly what the eggheads at Sector Seven were doing, but he did hear enough around the facility to recognize that they were trying to gather a large amount of seithr, focusing it into a giant Cauldron for some purpose he didn't recognize. What he did know was that Noel was at the center of that project.

She had a different name then. The scientists simply referred to her as Mu-12, or just "Myu." She was a little blonde-haired girl with blue eyes who had no clue what she was getting into. And frankly, neither did Colton. He had other concerns at the time, like staying alive and drawing a paycheck. It seemed easy enough, considering very few people knew about the facility all he had to do was catch the occasional straggler or discipline someone for slacking off.

Just as the eggheads were beginning their great experiment, it seemed that the Library did in fact know about the facility, because the place was vaporized in an instant. Colton had no clue at the time, considering at one moment he was just sipping a cup of "Irish coffee" while a rifle hung by a leather strap over his shoulder. Then in the next moment, there was a rumbling noise as a great light pierced through the center of the facility, and suddenly everything was in ruins.

Colton knew there were a few people who survived the ordeal, but most of them didn't last long. NOL troops moved in after that explosion, killing everyone that moved. In retrospect, they probably committed a few war crimes that Colton could name, but these men didn't seem too concerned with being court-martialed at the time. The only reason Colton's life was spared was because of the blonde-haired girl he managed to pry from the wreckage of the facility. Unconscious, but alive, and with an odd piece of metal lying next to her that seemed to disappear into thin air a minute later.

They probably would have finished off Colton as well, if not for the little girl he held up high as leverage to appeal to their conscience. The soldiers held their weapons up high, but none of them felt like moving forward to attack until one soldier spoke, a rifleman that Colton would later find out was named Corporal Vermillion.

"Give me the girl," he said. "She doesn't deserve this."

"You don't know what you're dealing here!" Colton shouted back, though he coughed up a lot of dust as well. "If I give her to you, what's to stop you from killing me? Get her some medical attention, and I'll surrender."

The soldiers moved forward, but Colton just held Noel closer in response. Then Corporal Vermillion dropped his weapon and stepped forward, holding his hands up high to show he was now unarmed as the gun clattered to the ground. "I come from a noble family," he said, "you have my word that I will treat her well."

Colton had trouble trusting that word, but at that point he didn't have many options. It was either a chance of death or a certainty of death, and he took the chance. "I surrender," he growled as he handed the girl off to the Corporal. "She deserves better than what they did to her."

In response, the Corporal took the girl from his arms and called a field medic over while another man slammed him into the broken concrete that made up the ground and tied his arms behind his back, leaving a bloody mark on his cheek. He was officially a Prisoner of War, though that designation didn't last long when he heard a few days later that the war had ended.

After rotting in a cell for some time, he ended up going before an Arbitrator to explain his crimes before the Library. For the information he gave, he didn't expect to get off lightly, but they offered him a chance to repay his debt to the Library by becoming a teacher for a short period. He expected that the Vermillion family had pulled some strings in that regard, so he decided to teach the only art he really knew: gun-kata, the way of the gun.

Not many people showed up to that class, seeing it as a far-fetched version of a dying art, but Noel was one of the people who did. The same girl he rescued from the wreckage awhile ago. It was one hell of a coincidence.

"Ugh, I don't know how you do it." Noel said as she stepped out of the bathroom, slamming the door behind her, "How do you live like this?"

"Live? That's one fine way of putting it Noel." Colton stood up from the chair. "There's something I need to tell you."

"What is it, Mr. Black?"

"Listen and listen good, because this is going to sound a little weird at first, but it involves the Library."

"Oh? Hazama said you had some information on Sector Seven? What are you talking about with the Library?"

"Well, that's what I mean, I think Hazama is playing both sides."

"What? Why would he do that?"

"I've got some evidence that I can show--"

Colton was interrupted by a loud knock at the door. He picked up his pistols and held a finger to his lips, signaling Noel to be quiet for the moment. "I wasn't expecting company today." He called out as he walked closer to the front door, "This is quite a surprise. Who could it be?"

He only received more knocking in response as he looked through the peephole.

"What's wrong, who is it?" Noel asked.

Colton hissed at her to keep quiet. "Look kid, there's a trapdoor hidden in the middle of my bedroom. Dig it out and escape, I'll hold him off."

"Is it something dangerous?"

"Trust me kid, you can't handle this monster."

"I'm a soldier of the Librarium, I have to help!"

"Kid, patriotism and three bucks will get you a pint of cheap beer. Now get out of here! Go!" Noel saw the front door of the house cave in as a large metallic fist punched through it. "It ain't my time to die yet!" Colton started firing at the "monster" as it retracted its giant fist back outside.

"You really think point-38 caliber bullets are enough to stop me?" Tager spoke as if Colton was a mere annoyance, not once raising his voice. "My armored skin is enough to stop even a Nox Nyctores from penetrating it, you'll have to try a bit harder than that."

"The Red Devil of Sector Seven, the Iron Tager himself." Colton growled through the now-open doorway, "Of all the people Sector Seven could have sent to finish me off, they had to send you?"

"For some reason, Sector Seven claims that you know too many of their trade secrets to be left alive." Tager shook his head. "If it's really been that long since the incident at Ikaruga, then I don't think it'll matter what you told them, but orders are orders. So let me make this easier for both of us. If you give up now, I'll make it quick." Colton fired another shot from his pistol at Tager's face in response, piercing the glass covering his right eye. Tager growled in frustration. "So that's your answer then?"

"If you happened to know more about me than my rap sheet, you'd know I don't give up so easily."

"So be it then." Tager charged the magnetic coils built into his arms, and the pistols quickly flew out of Colton's hands along with other assorted metallic bits and pieces in the surrounding area and towards Tager's body. A crowd started to gather around outside at the sight of the strange red man who seemed to be collecting metal around his torso. "You want to die the hard way? That's your choice."

Colton ran back into the house. He didn't see Noel behind him, so he assumed she took the hidden way out. Colton planned to follow her, but he didn't get the chance as several small pieces of metal suddenly ripped through his body. Tager took all the metal in the area he had attracted with his magnetic coils, and then repelled it with tremendous force in the direction of Colton as he tried to run.

"Damn it all." Colton growled as he lay on the ground, unable to move from the pain and the blood loss. "Guess I could only cheat death for so long before it caught up with me."

Tager bulldozed his way into the house, his tremendous frame bringing a section of the front wall down along with the door frame. He had to make sure this time.

"C'mon, c'mon." Noel muttered to herself as she mashed the panic button Hazama had given her awhile ago as she crawled through the dusty crawlspace. Compared to the rest of the house, it was surprisingly clean, if dark, as if it had been installed quite recently. "Please be nearby, please be nearby…"

She continued crawling through the duct, trying not to make too much noise so the monster wouldn't find her. She wasn't running, she was retreating and calling for backup, just like someone taught her at the Academy. She continued telling herself that as she tried to open the exit hatch. She just hoped that Hazama would get here in time.

Elsewhere, Hazama found himself skimming through a list of tasks on his PDA when a warning popped up that the panic button he had given Noel had been activated.

Well well, looks like she actually went and did it. Hazama smiled as he began humming joyfully to himself. But then he stopped as another thought crossed his mind. I do hope she remembered to get out of the way this time, or else I'm going to have to start this all over again, and with the interlopers wandering around it would be even more of a problem than before. There's only so many little teeny errors I can account for before they combine into one big one.

Tager certainly didn't expect what happened next.

One moment, the filthy house with several empty liquor bottles was host to a crippled old alcoholic mercenary. It was going to be easy, but apparently the man was smarter than he gave him credit for.

The next moment, the entire house was suddenly engulfed in flames. An incendiary explosive, probably hidden within the house in the event of Mr. Black's untimely death. Tager didn't expect that to happen with this man, but now he was more concerned with getting out of the flames before his systems overheated and he automatically shut down to vent out the heat.

As he ran back out the way he came, the crowd shouted, screamed in fear, or just scattered. The fact that Tager happened to be on fire at the time only fueled the superstition about the infamous Red Devil who walked the streets. In any case, the NOL was probably going to send troops to this location. A primal part of his brain wanted them to come, just so he'd have a little more of a challenge than the sorry old gunman.