"You'll find them, Mia… I'll make sure of it."

Mia Koji looked up from the jittering electric kettle in the corner of the university office. "Folklore and Mysticism" proudly stated the door-side sign that would greet students and faculty alike at the entrance. The faint must of aging fabric and drying lacquer had become so ubiquitous that she began to prefer it over the fresh air of the university grounds. Just as well, for the windows couldn't be opened, lest the climate control for their many antique displays be catastrophically interrupted.

Nothing out of the ordinary, there sat her Grandfather, typing away at his workstation, practically buried in dissertations, essays, and musty leatherbound tomes book-marked to double their original size. He could've just been speaking to himself, as he often did while reviewing the stacks of hopeful applicants to what had become a surprisingly difficult degree to acquire. When you were one of the only specialists in the country, supply side economics were on your academic side.

Mia took the folded square of instant-tea from her lips and raised a curious voice. "What was that, Grandfather?"

Dr. Koji dismissed the question with a subtle "Hm," as he continued his pointed attention to the digital document before him.

He had sensed it. Days before her own realization, Mia recalled the hours her Grandfather had spent clacking away at that old poem he had so often sung to her in her youth. Encoding the knowledge in a vital back up for her records while quietly allowing her final days of carefree leisure to pass uninterrupted. Unmarred by preposterous worry for something that no one could have prevented.

That was the last time she remembered speaking to him before the Dynasty's invasion.

This was one of the many tearful memories that tugged at Mia's waking thoughts as she and her newly introduced cadre spent nights on crumbled asphalt and days searching for a path through the shadows of Talpa's domain.

Ever since the initial assault on Japan's metropolitan center, worries about what to plan for dinner and the tightening deadline on her latest dissertation had been replaced with whether or not the footsteps in the darkness belonged to one of the boys on their night rounds, or a faceless killer employed by mankind's prospective overlords. The foot soldiers weren't quite terrifying, that wasn't the right word. They were more like a pack of wolves. Dangerous, relentless, and always a present danger out there. After that fateful day at the Shibuya Crossing, it wasn't the dynasty soldiers she feared, but their generals. And it was now the unmistakable red streaks of the Oni's kusarigama that split the sky only blocks from their latest campsite.

"Mia, Yuli, get inside! We'll take care 'a this!"

Always the quick decision from the five's natural leader, and this was a familiar song for the two relative civilians. It's why they remained near one of Tokyo's many remaining subway station entrances. Originally built to withstand future bombings with the Allies air campaign of 1942 still fresh in the city planner's minds, they had withstood the Dynasty's invasion and now seemed, even in darkness, a welcome sanctuary.

A distant booming voice hastened Mia and Yuli's preemptive retreat down the stairwell. While Yuli paused next to the ever-vigilant White Blaze to catch a glimpse of the explosion that would herald chain and blade, a sight no young boy could resist despite the implications being what they were, Mia had to catch herself on the handrail with an unexpected flinch.

"Quake with…"

Her eyes squeezed shut involuntarily. Her heart began pounding in her ears as phantom pain from the crush of linked metal around her body flooded back to her. Mia could feel the hairs raise along her arms as that cruel, serpentine voice finished its declaration.

"FEAR!"

The air warped through the underground tunnel, rushing past her, and a bright red flash illuminated the subway entrance briefly. The sound of cracking concrete and snapping rebar blocked everything out but the shock of pain as Mia was thrown to the bottom of the stairwell.