The hybrid raged in her cell, stalking about when she wasn't lashing out at the padded walls in a blind frenzy. The remnants of the straightjacket were mere shreds, leather straps ripped apart by her inhuman strength. With long, quick steps she leapt towards the far wall and began to pound on it with small fists, screaming in that strange tongue of the hybrids which no regular human could perceive as anything other than shrill screeches.

After a minute of fruitless pounded, the walls were thickly padded and beyond the white pads lay several feet of null-steel, she gave up and began to restlessly stalk around the small room. Over sixteen days she had exhibited the same behavior, never stopping to sleep even once. More than one of the staff doctors had acknowledged that the human part was too deeply suppressed to give the hybrid any chance of a biological imperative to sleep. The rings around her eyes and the general haggardness of the body, for he no longer felt that there was anything human left inside, spoke of the endless days in this artificially light cell.

"Doctor Roderick, what is the status of the null fields?" The cold, flat voice of the elder Ikari chilled the room with the utterly inhuman, synthesized voice.

"Th-They're working at fifty-two percent. It's enough to suppress the more advanced abilities, but not enough to damage the specimen or cause irreversible damage. In fact," the sandy blond haired scientist shuffled nervously as he paused to gather his courage, wiping sweating palms nervously on the inside of the pockets of his lab coat, "I'd like to request we lower the null field to study the full effect of this hybrids powers. We've never seen a combination of mastery in areas quite like this one. I'd like to get her into the Cage and what its capable of in battle. It might even help in Project Infinity if we can get some adequate readings of the Yoldaner Field."

The shadowy, imposing figure of Gendo Ikari was silent from behind the metal desk. His arms moved, blurs adjusting their position on the armrest of the chair he sat in. "A wondrous thing, this is the first real hybrid that humanity has created since Rei. Imperfect as it is, it is still lacking. It will never be like Rei and that is a pity. Tell me Doctor Roderick what the differences between Rei and this monster?" There was no opinion in his voice, only a cold statement of facts. The eight year old girl was long dead, her psyche ripped apart for the monster inside her to feast.

The doctor looked flustered and nervously looked this way and that. "Plenty," he said anxiously after a moment, glancing furtively towards the door. "Rei is or rather was," he added in a small nervous voice, but went on after the elder Ikari didn't react, "the perfect hybrid of human and Angel. Since the Angels aren't fully material we trapped that part within a semi-ambient null faction field. The new hybrid is the opposite, a mindless monster trapped in a sack of flesh without too much human modification. The Foundation didn't even try to inject any sort of self-regulating null field much his chagrin. It had forced NERV to expend the extra funds for the generators, funds that were no longer endless.

"Indeed. There is hardly a difference between man and monster. The supposed line doesn't exist, it never existed except as an abstract creation of the collective," the elder Ikari answered his own question, ignoring Roderick's answer. "You may proceed with whatever tests you wish doctor, but you must be in the same room when you conduct your experiments."

"W-what?" Roderick sputtered indigently, taking a weak step towards the commander. "That's insane! I'll be ripped to shreds or burnt alive by corrosive acid!"

"And?" Gendo replied flatly. He had issues a death sentence and it seemed that the criminal refused to comply quietly.

"Do you want me to die?" he snapped angrily, naked fear in his eyes. His looked towards the door, ready to bolt as if that would save him from the fate he had asked for.

"You asked for this. You asked to conduct the experiments and I require you do them yourself by hand. Is there a problem with that?" Roderick's fate had been decided hours before. The good doctor was preparing to run to the press and blow the whistle on their research. Section Two had was already storming his apartment ready to seize the information Roderick had copied off the MAGI during the last diagnostic sweep when the security systems had been down for brief time. "In fact, you'll start right now."

Fear of certain death was apparent as Roderick's face lost all color. The man bolted for the door, but didn't get halfway before the two Section Two agents tackled him to the ground. The two men, lean foreigners, pushed the man down as he clawed at their immaculate clean suits. Binding Roderick with a pair of handcuffs they forced him to stay with them as they pushed him out of the room.

Metal fingers and human flesh interlaced, Gendo laid his chin on his human left hand, relishing the sting of cold on what remained of his nerves. Pain was proof of life, this reality was no dream or illusion, but such matters of the flesh and philosophy were not his concern. He intently studied the hybrid. The girl's body was stills stalking around. So young and yet the Foundation had given her this body. Such hybrids deserved better, stronger bodies specially breed over a lifetime for the sole purpose of becoming true hybrids. A child's body was lacking in the power that even a teenager or young adults body possessed.

"What a waste Theresa," he muttered to himself. She was too reckless at times even as the leader of the Foundation. It was as if she had all the money in the world to burn on worthless projects, he wasn't willing to put it past her to have ties to underground elements who would like to have such an attack dog as their failed hybrid. Even as a failure, this hybrid could be sold off to some kingpin as an attack dog that most organizations would be hard pressed to stop.

The hybrid had stopped pacing and looked upwards towards the one-way glass, towards him. For a brief moment he saw the pained flash of a human intellect in those wide eyes, glassy with unshed tears, but it was replaced by the dead stare and snarl of the monster she was. He hummed thoughtfully. It seemed a portion of the original personality still existed somewhere in the depths of the monster's psyche. That was the trouble with hybrids. Either the human personality held control and they had no power or the monster took over bringing with it all the powers NERV and the Foundation needed. His own hybrids were special cases, but he only had three of them. For a moment he considered if the Foundation might have made a breakthrough in the psyche splicing of the monster and the human. This hybrid would bear more observation until he could be sure. That would be a step forward unlike any other made such the first unstable second generation hybrids.

The door to the room briefly opened and Roderick was hurled in, a black bag thrown in after him and the door quickly shut. The man, wide and fearful of the monster who watched with unblinking eyes, ran to the door and began to pound on it. He started screaming things, but Gendo set the intercom to one-way, briefly moving his metal hand away from the fleshy one. Noting with some satisfaction that the entire seen was being recorded by another terminal, he watched as Roderick faced his final moments.

The hybrid retreated back to opposite wall and began to slowly pace with hunting eyes. This was the scene of a cat and mouse locked in a room with only one victor. Open tears ran down Roderick's face as he begged not to let him die, or so Gendo read from the man's lips moving. The hybrid seemed to have decided that the man was prey and not a threat as it started to move towards him with long slow steps.

"Has is started already?" Ritsuko said as she entered the room, bringing with her the scent of coffee.

"Indeed. Dial down the null-fields. Forty percent," he commanded. Roderick had turned about and seen the hybrid approaching, causing him to dive for the black bag. He was desperately rifling through it, trying to find some way to defend himself with the handful of prepared scientific instruments.

"Forty percent, are you sure? It might break the inner door at that level?" Ritsuko questioned as she walked to the front most command console and sat her mug of hot coffee down.

"Do it. Doctor Roderick wished to test the hybrid with more power. We will oblige him this once," he answered. Roderick had pulled the null-field detector, a boxy yellow thing, and started to brandish it around like a club as if the hybrid would be scared off by such actions.

"Dropping the null-field to forty percent in three, two, one," the faux blonde said without a tremble.

It was proof of her loyalty to him that she willing contributed to this action even when it reached the point most reasonable people would have backed off and blown the whistle on him. The fact that they both had enough dirt on each other to put the other in prison for life was a mere check. They were accomplices to the bitter end and would hang together for crimes against humanity, if the United Nations ever found out the truth of NERV and decided to turn on them again.

The hybrid's eyebrows rose as the room grew lighter for a second, then it darkened as the monster came out with all its power. Roderick looked helpless and pitifully towards the one-way glass that had once spared him from facing the hybrid, but now only showed his reflection. With a feral snarl the hybrid was upon him, biting and clawing the arm with the null-field detector. In a show of strength, it shattered the upper arm in half and ripped the rest of the arm free of his body, throwing it aside. The man fell to the ground clutching what remained his arm, crying and screaming.

The hybrid wasn't done; it started for him again with greenish flames licking at its knuckles. Roderick screamed as he saw it coming again, a murderous look in its face. The hybrid's mouth opened and moved for a moment, but it was too quick for Gendo to read. It leapt towards the cowering, whimpering scientist and its fist shattered his head like an overripe watermelon. Blood and brain decorated the wall like the tribute to demonic god such beings might worship; very little was known of demonic culture if they even had such a thing.

"It said something," Ritsuko stated sharply as they watched the hybrid start to lick the blood and brain matter out of the ruining head, occasionally spitting out bits of bone.

It was a disgusting scene, but he forced himself to watch the gruesome scene from start to finish. A part of him wondered the monster would eat the whole body except the bones, but he didn't have the time to watch it eat. He still had an organization to run, cults to hunt, XDMs to put down and a restoration to commence. "Suppress the hybrid and review the tape. Find out is it said anything."

"Anything else? Should I lock this footage up in the Epsilon-Zeta file or do you want it on a separate cloud sever?"

"The cloud sever, the MAGI are under too many attacks each day to ensure that file is safe." The world, in the wake of the Angel War's official end, had taken to trying to take over the MAGI and, failing that repeatedly, proceeded to try to hack them. Everyone from foreign governments to other groups like the Foundation tried to read NERV's files held on the MAGI and he returned the favor. He had created a whole new division just to hack those who tried to hack the MAGI and Section Seventeen was never bored. "Bury it deep. the world can never see this. Only you and I will remember," he instructed pointlessly, his sharp scientist was too smart to forget.

She hummed her response and nodded. The room lapsed into silence that was quickly broken by the low sound of rubber impacting the metal floor as he left the room.

His apartment was silent expect for the voices on the all but muted TV. Shinji idly leafed through another of the seized materials not expecting to find much of anything. This journal was clearly that of a grunt who had no idea what the cult was really doing or how they were doing it. Tossing the small journal into one of empty boxes with a sigh, he felt the urge to get some rest creep over him. It had been a long exhausting day, thanks in no small part to Miya. The overstuffed couch was comfortable, but he couldn't sleep, not until he knew what had happened to Taki and Saki.

Once he returned to find them knocked out on the ground he had put in the call to Takami. Within minutes she had landed her medical helicopter on the rooftop and with her full team of doctors and nurses had taken over his apartment. They had agreed that the two Sekirei needed closer medical attention than his apartment could provide.

"…and in other news tonight, a robbery at a local paint shop."

As he heard the news reporter, a pretty young woman showing just enough cleavage to attach attention and not look scandalous, his attention was captured. This was the fourth such robbery of paint shops. He leaned forward, studying the footage as it was shown.

"Last night six unknown robbers broke into this small family run paint store." In the background there was a number of police surrounding a small, squat grey building with a number of banners hanging off the roof. The name was obscured to protect the identity and the reporter hadn't been any more helpful. "They picked the backdoor and entered through the storage room. Video recording exist, but the police have yet to release them. According to the owners the only things stolen was all the yellow paint, several gallons in total, and the small amount of yen left in the cash register overnight. This is the fourth robbery and theft of yellow paint, causing local police to link to other break-ins around the Shin Tokyo region. One can only wonder what sort of crazy kids would need that much yellow paint for. Back you in the studio…"

He lost interest at the story about a broken gas main somewhere in the city outskirts and leaned back, thinking. One break in was nothing to set off any alarms. Two was a chain robber but hardly his problem. Three robberies of the same material was taken each time was enough to raise his suspicion, but it was this fourth one that tipped him off. It was too strange that each time only yellow paint had been taken along with pocket change. What he exactly he had on his plate was still a mystery and could yet be unrelated to anything in his line of work.

"A cult?" he wondered aloud, placing a hand over his eyes for a moment of darkness. "Whatever," he said dismissing the notion for the immediate future. He returned to the journal he had been leafing through and started reading though the pointless ramblings. Many were nothing more than updates about the owners life, where they ate, what they ate, inside jokes, and idle fiction of an overzealous mind. As his mind began to wander over the mindless readings, he was forced back to reality as he came towards the end of the book. He read the abnormally shaky script as best he could aloud just to make sure he wasn't seeing things in his lethargy.

"July, 19. Today the Stranger came to our meeting. The Chief was visibly shaken when the Stranger entered. He told us the Stranger was gone four years ago. He said it failed, nothing came to us. He lied. The Stranger was silent. He(she/it?) didn't even seem to touch the ground, but I couldn't see the Strangers feet. Tokami said it was so, he was sitting along the aisle. Tokami's dead too. He hung himself after the meeting, had a haunted look when he told me about the floating thing directly after the meeting. The Chief tried to talk to the Stranger, but he (it?) didn't stop. It just…flowed I guess is the word, up on the stage and in front of the Chief. The Stranger stood in front of us, couldn't see the Chief from our seats, but we heard him. He screamed. The Chief. The Chief screamed. It was bloodcurdling and the Chief doesn't scream like that. He's not a little girl. No grown man screams like that. I swear it will haunt me till the end of days unless Our Stagemaster is merciful. How else could the Chief, who's never shone much emotion let alone pure fright, be as broken as that shell that stepped out from behind the Stranger. He had this weird yellow marking, kinda like the sort you get from lipstick on his forehead and he started talking in some strange language. It might have been Russian or at least that's what Alec thinks it was, then he fell down all pale and shrived up like he had aged fifty years in a few seconds. After that I ran. I don't want to die! That's why I'm here. I don't want to die! Ever!"

The handwriting became worse and worse until he could no longer make out entire sentences. He could make out words like 'screams', 'running' and 'Stranger' but there was little beside that. It was clear that this was a cult, but the Stranger could be a monster. It wasn't uncommon in antiquity for cults to rise up around powerful, intelligent creatures seeking to use humanity for their own gain. The centaurs had one such secret cult until Alexander the Great had slaughtered them and ended the rape of women by that particular monster. This could easily be a similar matter, but the type of monster was like none he could recall off the top of his head. The official reports when NERV had seized the documents hadn't said anything about a monster being present. It was possible that if this Stranger was a monster it was long gone by the time NERV arrived.

Looking for a cell phone took a minute as he hadn't placed it back in his pocket and had search through the messy coffee table. Pulling open the address book he froze, his finger poised over the call button to an address only labeled as 'A'. He hesitated as unanswerable questions formed. Would she even listen? Did he want to have to hear her sweet voice after his betrayal? Did she want to hear from a man who couldn't even keep himself confined to her? Would she bring up that oath he had sworn to her in the bloodstained wastelands beneath a bloody sky and surrounded by the bloated corpses of a million dead?

She would have the answer. He knew it. She knew the mythology of the world backwards and forwards. There was very little about monsters she didn't know about from the old stories and tales. That had made her the perfect slayer, the perfect hunter of monsters who plagued the old lands of Europe for a millennium and then some. There was a reason his angel of war had been sent to exterminate the monsters there and himself or Rei.

"No," he answered his unspoken questions. He didn't need her help. He would find the answer himself, through other channels if he needed, but he wasn't ready to face her. Not yet at least. It was running away again, but he couldn't do it. It was still surreal, his betrayal and the acts of consummation that followed it. Oathbreaker fit him well beside other titles he deserved, coward foremost amongst them.

Scrolling through the address book he found the address he wanted. Pressing the call button he put the phone to his ear with a sigh. He needed information and that meant dealing with the one man who was able to bring him to the edge of wanting to stab someone. There was no getting around it. He had to go to the Serpent no matter the price, even with the venom of the snake pulsing in his veins.

"Hullo?"

Shinji licked his lips and mentally prepared to maintain his cool. "I need the Serpent," he said in English. The American on the other end was hardly an American, having been exiled from the United States when there still was a United States. Last time he had checked the Serpent was still based in the ruins Hong Kong, still living on a collection of barges tied together.

"Ho-ho! Is that you my pretty little friend?"

"Al, focus," he said warning the other man. The Serpent, or Al Federicks, was amongst the foremost monster information brokers up until the Second Impact. Second Impact had wrecked the few monster hunting communities in the regular world, leaving most mere shells and only the more extreme monastic monster hunters had any strength left to defend the world. The Pacific Harrowing, one of the only operations ever jointly undertaken by NERV and the Foundation, hadn't been possible without the Serpent's information and for that alone we was willing to put up with the man.

"Right, right. Of course, you're always all business and no play. Really NERV needs to lighten up, otherwise you blokes might go all emo on the world and kill us all."

Al was seamlessly slipping from accent to accent and he only left a headache for Shinji. "Pick an accent and stay with it please," Shinji implored.

"Fine, no accent then," Al said coyly, "You do so love to play hard to get with the fake bossy attitude of yours. What do you? How can the Serpent of Tiamat help his lovely friend with on this fine, er…" he paused for a moment, "yep, fine sunny day?"

"I need info on a certain type of monster that might be in Japan," he said knowingly full well what the next words out of Al's mouth would be.

"Why don't you call that sweet piece of ass you had on you're arm last time we met? She knows this bullshit field almost as well I do."

"Bullishit field?" he iqnuiered, his curiosity raised even though he knew he might reject it.

"No offensive to your girl, but she a shitty scientist. This is a science after all, the study of weird and wild creatures who want to eat us…or rape us in the ass. Fucking lamia! Tails ain't supposed to go into asses like that… Tell her thanks for wiping those whores out a few years ago. Can't exactly talk to her after I tried my last stunt…"

"You tried to fondle her breasts in front of our troops," he stated flatly. "You deserved everything you got. From both of us," he reminded the man.

"Aye-aye I shan't forget my captain! Anyway where was I…of yeah! Shitty scientists and all that. Yeah so she's great at killing these beasties, but that's only half the science. You have to watch 'em, observe them for while in their natural habitat. What they eat, where they live, how they fuck and all that. Word to the wise, never go into the Balkans during the late spring. My leg still has phantom pains…"

Shinji rolled his eyes. There was something he would rather not know about people. Al was one of those people who simple had no sense of decent conversation and let anything and everything relevant spill out, including strange adventures and putting things in places they should not be. "Focus," he reminded the Serpent sharply.

"…ain't she off hunting-"

"Shut up," he hissed, cutting Al off before he could go on. "This line isn't fully secure!" MBI was intercepting all transmissions throughout the greater Shin Tokyo area. NERV was also tracking his phone conversations, but he had come to accept and, at times, even appreciated that MAGI's recordings. Alibis were powerful tools in certain legally gray areas he was forced to sometimes work in.

"Fine, but all I'm saying is she could learn some things from those things she going after. I met a female one once in bar. Best night of my life, until the whole feeding thing and staking her through the head thing. That does tend to end any sort of excitement down south, I mean at least for me, the whole blood soaked fucking is no turn on. At least for me others meh! What do I care about others kinks?"

"Kill me now…" Shinji groaned, kneading his forehead. "I didn't need any of that…" This was way he rarely call Al. Perhaps the MAGI would have been a better option in this case than Al. At least then he wouldn't know about Al's fetish adventures. Sex with monsters was never a good idea for the human, even if they were semi-intelligent, never mind the highly intelligent ones. It was strange to think some did in fact get off to such actions, albeit in the growing virtual world.

"So what's our mystery monster?" Al asked suddenly choosing this moment to focus on the matter at hand.

Shinji uttered a silent thankful prayer to whatever might be listening when Al chose to focus. "From what I gathered it might glide or at least have a fluid motion. Leaves a yellow mark on the forehead of its victims and might be able to drain their life away causing rapid aging. This cult called it 'The Stranger'."

Al sucked in a breath. "Damn! That sounds like fine beastie. I'd say vampire or succubus by the life draining. Could be hag or d'jinn though. You've got enough ruined cities in Japan I wouldn't be surprised to find them hiding out in one of 'em. You got a size?"

"Roughly human sized, if that helps," Shinji inferred from the few cultists had about the creature. "It might be bigger though."

"Hmmm…vampires can't float and supposedly move like a human so they're out. Plus they were all wiped out five hundred years ago. Can't say much about the Catholics, but their Popes knew how to set up one hell of good genocide campaign. Too bad they fucked on the werewolf thing. Suppose that happens though, the whole fucking with the doggy boys the royal families were up to you know. Stupid bastards. Anyway, you said it left some kind of mark? Yellow?"

"Yeah," he answered. He mulled over the bit about werewolves and put it aside for the moment. It was an interesting, if very messed up, little tidbit he hadn't known about. Crossbreeding was, as Al had put it, for "stupid bastards'. He would have added sick to that description as well as a few other adjectives. The results of that breeding were never pretty. It had been a mercy to put down that monstrosity in the South China Sea, though he would never forget those tortured eyes of that damned child.

"I more than that. A shape or something."

"That's all I have right now, yellow. Nothing else," he responded. "What do you think? D'jinn?"

"Yeah. D'jinn or hag witchcraft are the most likely candidates, but I can't see either of them being realistically there. The hags were almost exterminated by the Moors and the D'jinn haven't left the Middle East since the Mongols came to town. It might be one of your Japanese monsters, you know the spirit sort, but I don't think any of them leave such a mark."

"I see. Alright I'll let you go then. Call me if you think of anything," Shinji said with all the politeness he could muster. The fetishes of Al still made him want to throw up and only force of will kept him from retching all over the coffee table.

"Wait a minute there partner! I've got another thought. This might not even be a monster could be one of those…" he paused for a moment in a rare show of tact, "other things you people deal with. A new variant or a newcomer to this battlefield called earth."

Al's words chilled him to the bone, yet made sense. If this wasn't a monster then it must be something else. The question was if it was a newcomer to earth or an old player returned at last. The second option was far worse; such beings were far more terrible and far more powerful than their counterparts. The Angels had been near such beings and even then they had failed against the most powerful of the Angels. The handful of Angels that had come nearly overcame the human race's only defense many times. "Great, thanks a lot. Now I'm sure I'll sleep tonight," he responded dryly.

"I'll call you if I find out anything else. Sleep well and dream of that sweet ass doing all sorts of monstrous things to you," Al replied with sickening sincerity.

"…I hate you," Shinji said after pulling the phone away from his ear. He ended the call to Al's mad laughter. The worst part was that the man meant every word he had said at the end. There were certain things one didn't discuss even with company, but Al gleefully walked over such barriers with a sickening glee as he danced form one side to the other. It was little wonder he had gotten himself unofficially exiled while never committing a single crime other than a single count of public indecency.

A/N: And so starts the newest arc. This is planned as a three chapter arc during the opening days of the original Sekirei manga. This chapter is a bit on the shorter side, but there was no natural cutoff between the last part of this chapter and the next scene that was reasonable.

So do you think you know what's going on? If so feel free to speculate as we hit the first real, non-setup arc of this runaway train. Wish I knew where it was going, but not knowing it half the fun!