"Okay…" Foyet breathed deeply, smelling his own exhale trapped behind the metal mask over his face. He gripped the rifle in his hands with a vice as he stared at the chaos. The Twenty-Third Ward had clearly seen better days. "I just have to get into Cochlea, kill everyone in my path, and rescue my friend. I can do this. I can do–" he cut himself off and leaned on a wall, huffing. "Who am I kidding?! I can't do this alone! My life isn't some sorta action movie…"

"Something on your mind, Scratch?"

Years of active combat made twisting around and aiming the automatic weapon second nature. The muzzle was but a few centimeters in front of the other person's nose. Foyet silently cursed himself. His CO had made sure he was better than this, above being snuck up on.

However, his self-deprecating train of thought was derailed upon recognizing who had made it so close to his back.

"Yakumo?" Lowering the firearm, Foyet undid the straps keeping his mask on his face and removed it.

"I thought I smelled you. You came all the way out here for me?" Yamori was in bad shape, to say the absolute least. His right eye had been stapled open. His teeth were chipped. His ears were missing chunks. Nails and other shards of metal were embedded in his neck and shoulders. Blood was seeping out of dozens of holes. "You look worried, Scratch. Did we miss happy hour again?"

"Yaku-... Yamori, are you– well, obviously, you ain't alright, but are you… aware of the situation?" Foyet approached this cautiously, like after his older brother had snapped.

"Yeah. Yeah, me and Goumasa had a wonderful time." He pressed the tip of his thumb into the first joint of his index finger, making it crack.

Foyet raised a brow. That was a new detail. "I wouldn't call what you clearly went through 'wonderful,' Yamori."

"You don't understand, Scratch. He showed me such amazing things. Such… revealing things."

Foyet glanced over his shoulder. The screams and fire were spreading. "C'mon. Let's make ourselves scarce."

Neither of them were paying much attention to the news.

"Michael Mathis?"

"Not too unique like, say, Isaac Asimov, and not too run-of-the-mill like John Smith." Scratch said dismissively, tampering with a pair of boots.

Yamori's oldest friend glanced at him for a moment, not bothering to turn his head. "Heeled footwear and lifts. Makes me look taller, thus enforcing the old evolutionary instinct of having power over others."

"What's the point of these… boring lies?"

"The point is that Michael Mathis doesn't have an unsavory, mostly blacked-out track record while Levi Foyet does."

Yamori laughed at that. "You spent too much time on the water, Michael." The name was spoken with an obvious tease.

"Or maybe you didn't spend enough on it." Scratch-no, Michael deadpanned back as he forced himself to finish his verticality-improving boots. Out of the blue, he said "forewarning. I'm gonna be acting differently for a while."

"Differently how?"

"Gonna be taking pages out of Naki's book."

That claim perked Yamori. "Oh really?"

Michael slid on his newly refurbished footwear. "Jigsaw, like most psychotics, likes exerting control. And thus, a maniac is easier to influence."

"Ain't that the truth," Yamori chuckled. "Just as well. You've always been a little boring."

Mister Scratch again glanced at him briefly. The television droned on about another so-called terrorist attack but neither cared. "There's something else." He did not wait for Yamori to ask what. "I'm gonna need to borrow some space... for a while."

Lawrence was hesitant to drink the hot beverage in front of him. Part of him thought it might be poisoned, another just was not keen on accepting something from a man he had never seen before.

"What did you say your name was?" He asked carefully, looking at the man in question drop brown cubes of what he hoped was sugar into a mug..

"Michael Mathis, doc. At your boss's service." He grinned like a predator before sampling his own coffee. "Ahhhh. Good batch. Sorry it ain't spiked. I understand you Yanks like to get plastered and cover yourselves in green today."

John nodded in agreement (at least with the first part) as he sipped his mug. "I'm rather curious, Michael. Exactly how did you find yourself here?"

Michael drank more of his brew and dabbed his lips with a pocket square… right before his mood changed entirely. His eyes changed back to that unsettling combination of red and black. "They called me mad!" His skull twisted on its perch to make him glare at Lawrence. "Insane!" His unforseen rage was then directed to the ceiling. "Mikey!"

His gloved hands slammed on the table as he stood up, twitching and staring at the wall as if it had insulted his mother. "They left me stranded here with nothing just when MBI started stamping their boots on everyone's heads! Well, who's hopeless now, huh?!" His hands gripped Lawrence's lapel and hoisted him up to his feet, forcing him to lock eyes with the towering psycho, who in turn was now smiling like an unsupervised kid with power tools. "Who's a lost cause now, eh?!"

Lawrence found himself unable to answer as he felt Michael's excited breath caress his face. The relief he felt was astronomical when Michael let go of him and returned to his jovial mood from not twenty seconds ago.

"Try the coffee, Doctor Gordon, before it gets cold."

Hand shaking like a leaf, the American doctor did as was politely suggested to him. He admitted to himself that it was indeed tasty.

"Michael," John spoke up. "I ask this in the most sincere way possible. Did you ever partake in medical experiments?"

Their new friend thought for a moment. "Twice. The first was for a new line of juvenile depressants."

That struck Lawrence as odd. "Do you mean antidepressants?"

"No, just straight up depressants. There's some folks out there that want their brats to just sit and be quiet for a few days, right?"

"I see." Jigsaw took another sip. "And the second?"

"Do you know what clozapine is?"

"Sir, there's a Shinohara Yukinori to see you."

With his ever-present grin, Director Minaka pressed a button on his desk intercom. "Of course! Send him in!" Preparing to greet his scheduled visitor, he stood up and dusted his suit off.

The door opened and in walked a bulky but friendly-looking man.

"Investigator!" Minaka offered a hand. "Nice to see you again."

Shinohara shook the hand with a firm but grip, smiling back. "Director. Always a pleasure."

"I agree. Have a seat." He pulled up a chair before returning to his own behind the massive desk. "I'd like to clarify that I take no offense to your bosses not being here personally, like always."

"Well, they are always busy," Shinohara replied with a shrug.

"To get to business, Chairman Washuu informed me that our agreed exchange will be delayed?"

"Unfortunately, yes. The CCG has been experiencing some unforeseen upheavals lately, both internal and external. Thus, our supply of Quinque steel is limited for the time being."

"Oh, that's nothing to fret about, I assure you." Minaka was disappointed, but not concerned. Plenty of the Sekirei that used weapons were already armed for the Game, so a few of them having to wait for their arms was of no consequence. Reaching into his desk, he pulled out a small data drive. He could have kept it hostage until the deal was fulfilled, but the CCG undoubtedly had just as many tricks up their sleeves as he did. "Our test data for the month, practically gift-wrapped for you." He passed it to Shinohara. "While I have you here, could you please tell your Chairman that we need a few more test subjects."

Ghouls, evidently, could only take so much.

Shinohara nodded. "Consider it done. And while I'm still here, might I entertain a curiosity and as just what you are doing with the Quinque steel?"

Minaka's smile did not vanish. "Do you have the clearance to ask me about such a subject?"

"I... am not sure."

"Then with my apologies, I'll have to deny you an answer, Investigator."

"You know, when you said you were going to start living as a different person-"

"I ain't a method actor, Yamori," Michael replied with a dismissive roll of the eyes as he went back to his book.

Yamori leaned down and over to get a look at the title. His English was far from perfect but he managed to get by. "Screw It, Let's Do It? Weird title."

"If he can go from squatting in slums to being rich enough to never care about tomorrow, he can call his work whatever he wants."

His oldest friend gave a noncommittal but understanding grunt as he picked up the other two novels Scra- Michael had been occupying his thoughts with. "The Art of the Deal and How To Read People Like A Book. Whatever you've got planned, Scratch, count me in."

"I seriously doubt you'd be interested, aside from partaking in the frivolity of extortion."

"You'd be surprised." He reached over to a small table next to the couch. "Speaking of surprises, I got you a little something, Michael." With a smile most would have run away from, he presented his old friend with a box.

His friend glanced at him. Yamori understood the hesitation. They were nowhere near any special holiday and the anniversary of Scratch's first breath was in Autumn. After an impromptu staring contest, he put down the book and reached for the box.

He opened it and stared down at the gift, his face completely blank. "You cannot be serious."

Yamori smirked. "What, you don't like it? It's high time you got a new, proper mask."

"Right, now, first things first," Mathis said staunchly, tilting his head at the sight of the Oxygen Crusher. "You and the doc need to uproot and settle down elsewhere."

"Why so?" John asked, genuinely curious. This tall fellow was an odd sort. He acted foggy at the sight of the tools and traps, yet was laser-guided in all other things. He had even taken the news of extraterrestrial life being among them in a secret lab in stride. Perhaps war had hardened him to his core...

"Because if I found you as quickly as I did, the morons called coppers won't be far behind before long. Sooner or later, they'll get their algorithm about your victim's final spots of life."

John pondered on that claim, moreso on the first half. Just why had Michael taken the time to find him. What did he want?

"Fret not, Jigsaw," Mathis gave a dismissive wave as he leaned in close and prodded the Angel Harness with a gloved finger. "If I wanted you dead, I'd be eating your face right now."

The aging engineer blinked at that. He had a good point... and had apparently read his mind. Not that distracted from the last statement. "Eating my face? So you're a cannibal?"

Michael scoffed with a grin, now entranced by the Magnum revolver fastened to the back of a test door. "You're not fully aware of the stuff 'round you, eh? What, you refuse to watch the news?"

John thought hard. Having been on the run for nearly two decades, he had clearly made sure to keep an ear to the ground. The red eyes... the claim of eating flesh. "Ah, so you're one of them."

"Right on the money, Jigsaw."

"... very well. Just where do you suggest we relocate?"

"Oh, I have a spot."

The evening was wet yet comforting. The sky above, covered with rain clouds not even two hours earlier, was littered with stars and a crescent moon.

Two men stood at the mouth of an alleyway, coated by the shadows. The taller one was holding a black knapsack in his left hand.

"Tell me, does the stink of Larry G's cancer sticks ever make you gag?"

John glanced at the tall man he had spent the last five months acquainting with. There was no doubt that his choice of words and casual nicknaming of the Doctor had been anything short of sadistically intentional. "Sometimes, I'll admit."

Michael Mathis, he had found out, was immune to most anything thrown at him. Fire was but a mild nuisance. Knives were useless. Bullets seemed to work, but only when administered, so to speak, to the eyes and mouth.

"Who, exactly, are we waiting for?"

"Oh, just an old friend. An old friend who knows he's in for a real world of hurt if he messes up tonight."

"And you trust him?"

"I trust him to know I'll kill him if he disappoints me."

John looked back at his latest teammate with steely eyes. "Killing is distasteful."

"To you." He took a drink from a flask held in his right hand. John recognized the reek of blood. "I spent my post-formative years protecting my homeland by ending the lives of the enemy."

"And just who is that enemy?"

Michael took another swig. "Whoever the higher-ups say it is."

John was not entirely sure, but the moonlight seemed to illuminate a toothy half-grin.

"Tell me, Michael. Do you enjoy what you do?"

"I see it as a necessary action to take in the name of loyalty to my home. Though, I will confess, seeing the world was a bonus."

"That's all? A paid vacation is all you have needed so far in life?"

"Well, the spoils ain't too bad, either."

There it was.

Every living being had a weakness, a poisoned motivation. Michael's was blood-soaked money.

Pondering on that revelation would have to wait. A taxi rolled up and stopped right at the entrance of the alley.

"There he is," Michael hissed out with a smile as he slid the flask into his coat. He marched up to the vehicle and leaned down, bringing his face to be level with the window.

The glass rolled down, allowing John to clearly see the driver. At first glance, the lanky man seemed unimpressive. Messy black hair and eager-to-please eyes. But that was hardly any reason to look down upon him. After all, the aging, physically frail American had a body count in the double digits.

"Karao…" Michael was practically drooling.

"Mister Scratch," the driver answered back, gripping the wheel with white muscles.

Mister Scratch? Now there was an interesting piece of information.

Michael reached into a pocket and pulled out a roll of money. "Your employer's usual fee, a little extra for your trouble," he passed the knapsack to Karao, "and a resupply, for your… compliance."

The driver fidgeted as he let go of the wheel and took the bag. With a smile that reminded John too much of Hoffman, Karao pulled out… a rather mundane camera.

"Your favorite brand, if I recall," Michael said dismissively yet knowingly. He reached over and opened the back door.

"Welcome aboard, sir!" Karao said enthusiastically. Evidently, the cameras were exactly what he needed that evening. Is that how he and Mathis had acquainted, with their apparent mutual interest in photography? "I promise you a safe and comfortable journey to the Eleventh Ward."

John gave Michael, or Mister Scratch, one last look before climbing in.

Mathis closed the door. Through the glass, he smiled and waved, even as the car took off into the night. He did not move even as he left John's line of sight.

"Why did you call him Mister Scratch?" John asked, easing back into the chair.

The driver looked at him via the rear-view mirror for a moment before returning his attention to the road. "That's all I've ever known him to be called."

"Nothing but a nickname… How long have you known him?"

"Personally, not long. He's never stuck around Tokyo for long whenever he's dropped by. Jason only ever addressed him as Mister Scratch."

"Jason?"

"His friend. Probably his only true friend around here, besides you, I mean."

John stared at the front seat for a long moment. "Are you like him? One of… them?"

Their eyes met again thanks to the mirror. Karao blinked. When he opened them, they were like Michael's whenever he was excited or angry. Black and red.

"I'll take that as a yes."

"Are you?"

"No. I'm just a man with whom… Mister Scratch also has a deep mutual interest."

Karao's eyes returned to normal. "I'd stay away from Jason, then. He hates humans. And humans hate him."

"I only personally dislike a select few. And none of them are in Japan." He leaned back and stared out at the night sky. When he saw what appeared to be a woman leaping across the rooftops, he pondered on just how MBI's machinations were proceeding, and at what pace. He only became aware of the other car passing them, going in the other direction, as its headlights illuminated both him and his driver.

Foyet continued to wave at the back of the taxi until it was but a speck to him. Letting his arm fall, he paused to consider a few things.

Why was he always finding himself involved with maniacs? His brother. His commanding officer. His oldest-by-default companion. And now the narcissistic Yankee.

His brother… How long had it been since he last thought of his parents' firstborn?

He vigorously shook his head, banishing the painful memories from his mind. Taking in a deep breath, he relaxed and… smelled something. It was weak and far off, but familiar. It reminded him of those women from months ago. Quick encounters but memorable odors. The one with the hammer and the other on…what was it, a bench? No, it was somewhere higher. Whatever the source was, it was getting closer. He looked down the road again, seeing headlights closing in.

Perhaps this calls for a closer look.

The first two times, it had been in broad daylight and he and Yamori had a schedule to keep, not to mention cops to avoid. But this empty street in the dead of night?

He reached into his jacket, pulled out the new mask Yamori had gifted to him, and slid it over his head.

When the vehicle got close enough for the driver to give an instinct-led reaction, he stepped into the road in front of it.

Another evening of looking for more Sekirei for Mikogami to Wing had proven fruitless. Mutsu sat quietly in the backseat of the luxury car, next to his young, stubborn Ashikabi.

"Oh well, there's always tomorrow," the young rich boy never said confidently. "I'm sure we'll find plenty in no time."

"Don't be so sure," Mutsu calmly replied, looking out the window, taking note of a taxi passing them, headed in the other direction. "I doubt the Director will just send them all out at once. He'd prefer to prolong the Game."

"Even better! We can just get them one by AAAHH!"

The driver hit the brakes hard. Warrior instinct took over. Mutsu reached over and grabbed his Ashikabi but the scruff of his collar to prevent him from getting a bruise on his face, or a broken nose.

"I'm sorry, sir," their driver said. "But he came out of nowhere." He pointed forward.

Recombobulating himself, Mikogami adjusted himself to look at the windshield and what was beyond it. He found that they had stopped for a tall, pale man in a dark grey peacoat, lit up like a stage actor thanks to the headlights.

Mutsu's eyes narrowed as he studied the inconveniencing stranger. "There's something off about him."

"Like what?"

"The fact that he's wearing a mask."

The youngest in the car leaned forward, and saw it was true. Initially, he had thought the man to be pale, but that was not the case. He had on what looked like a chalk-white death mask made of latex with messy brown hair and an emotionless expression.

The man outside titled his head to the left, and bent down slightly. He straightened himself, and vanished going upwards.

Instantly, Mikogami's face lit up. "He's one of you!"

"I don't think there was–"

But it was too late, Mikogami was already opening the door. Mutsu followed him. If the kid got himself killed, he was doomed to follow. "Wait here," he told the driver as he climbed out into the night.

"Where'd he go?!" Mikogami was looking all about the surrounding buildings. There was no sign of the masked man.

Mutsu looked up and scanned the area. Empty air and little else.

"I'm over here." Both followed the source of the noise and found the man in the mask standing in the mouth of an alleyway, looking at them.

Mutsu remained wary, but Mikogami did what he did best. Approached what he wanted with an offer and a smile.

"Good evening, sir. My name is Mikogami Hayato. And this is Mutsu."

"Charmed." The single word, muffled but still audible behind the mask, was sarcastic but not malicious.

"I don't suppose you have a name?"

"That's not your business."

The smile faltered for a moment, but the Ashikabi pressed on. "Oh, but it could be. See, I'm sure you're aware of just what's going on in this City. And what if you were able to join the winning team?"

"I'll pass, boy. I'm already in two gangs. And they're both run by psychopaths who don't tolerate disobedience."

Mikogami's smile turned into a smirk as he and Mutsu stepped closer; the stranger did not move. "Well then, obviously what I'm offering is a better deal for you. Stability. And protection."

"How sheltered are you, boy?" He seemed to relax slightly. "Gonna have to say 'no.'"

"And I'm going to have to clarify that I'm not asking."

"Well, when you put it that way..."

Whatever the pair had been expecting, it most certainly had not been that a thick, gunmetal grey tentacle would emerge from his back and wrap itself around Mutsu's forearm. Before either of them could process what had happened, it curled with great force and threw Mutsu down the street.

Foyet weighed the situation. One of those 'Single Number' aliens the doctor had told him about was no slouch. And that sword might be able to do serious damage to him, depending on when it had been obtained. With the exploiting the element of surprise being successful, and his personal rule about harming the young, it seemed wise to flee.