"Attention citizens of Port Cyrreine. The PCPD and Sentinel Academy are issuing an emergency 'shelter in place' ordinance effective 6:15pm," the synthetic voice of the mass-broadcast announced to empty streets. "Please comply with all police, android, and huntsman orders. If you are not currently sheltered, please enter the nearest residence or place of business as soon as possible. This ordinance is effective through 7:00am, or until an update is provided. We thank you for your cooperation."

The notice began to repeat.

Above crooked lines of abandoned vehicles that couldn't escape the city in time, an airship descended. Flecks of light danced in the reflection of Lazula's eyes in the window, and the two prongs of Empyrean Tower rose to greet her. Her resting hand tightened on Impetus's hilt.

The cabin jolted as the airship touched down. As if on queue, the Headmaster's call came through their Holobands. "Remember, your primary objective is to prevent Kraken from interfacing with Frontline Biomedical servers. According to the schematics, the main server hub is on the thirty-fifth floor. I've granted you all access through the main doors, but the elevators are disabled in emergencies. You'll have to take the central stairwell, located immediately behind reception."

All was eerily still. It felt like rain should fall, or it should be the dead of night, to frame what may be the Red Claw's final act of terror. But Empyrean Tower's two spires pierced a cloudless sky, and the sun glinted off their edges. Their shell, seventy-five feet tall at its lowest and unfathomable at its peak, protected the towers from ocean wind. They sheltered the garden within– nicknamed Eden, by Frontline Biomedical– from noise too. Its hedges, rose bushes, marble fountains and walkways bathed in near-silence. It was beautiful, and in the face of the sublime Lazula could have forgotten her mission.

The echo of a hundred tortured screams brought her back. She tore Impetus from its sheath to face a pack of Sabyrs, and its blade lit up with the reflection of a hard-light barrage that shredded two on approach. The pack's leader pounced at Lazula, and Aegis rang against a gnashing of teeth. She bounced the energy back, shattering its skull and knocking a second off its feet with the shockwave. She leapt forward and skewered its gut, then pulled her blade out so an afterthought of a swing each could drop two more.

The crack of Laurel's rifle made Lazula flinch. It was just a bit too loud to get used to, but did the trick of tearing two Griffons into black dust in one well-lined shot. Another shot, another despatched. She turned Aegis to one Laurel missed, but Snow's spear skewered its chest and flung it into Impetus instead. Lazula turned to thank her partner, who had already stuck her blade into the chest of an Ursa. Her weapon changed configurations inside black flesh, and its axehead ruptured the Ursa from within.

Snow nodded back. Nodded, and blinked to the side of the Beringel that abandoned its climb up Empyrean Tower. Its fist shattered the concrete where the android stood before, and all braced themselves against the shockwave. Two of Laurel's shots bounced off its armor and it sprung for her. She rolled away from the first swing but the second caught her before she could correct herself, and sent the faunus airborne a dozen feet, skidding and rolling a dozen more in a violent somersault. The beast bared its teeth and clutched the concrete, pulling itself toward her as shaky arms pushed herself back to two feet. Two hacks to the leg from Ichigo's hatchet distracted the beast. He dove beneath a sudden backhand, then rolled onto his side to scoot away from the face that neared. Grease dripped from black fur and onto the cracked gorilla-skull mask. Its eyes glowed like stoked embers deep within and a mouth too wide, fixed by strands of black flesh, opened to let free another scream. Tar spewed onto Ichigo's glasses, his eyes wide behind them.

Lazula and Snow nodded to each other again. They sprinted forward in tandem, and Snow flung her whip around the Beringel's shoulder. Hard-light barbs ensnared it– down its bicep, past its elbow, and she pulled. Lazula leapt, and in one swipe Snow's whip went slack. The Beringel screamed, this time in agony, and flung its remaining fist into Lazula's shield. All the force of a speeding semi truck meant little to her. She took it in, expelled it through Impetus, and, as Snow speared its gut, split the beast down the middle.

Few Grimm remained in the Garden of Eden, and even fewer had spawned inside. Shoving her blade down a King Taijitu's throat in the lobby of Empyrean Tower was a new experience, but she couldn't dwell on it. She walked through the lobby, under catwalks and terraces that would have made more sense in a luxury hotel. Past white pillars and abstract statues of gold that hung between them. Past idle Organds and Holoscreens reciting the joys of Frontline Biomedical. Into the stairwell, and up to the thirty-fifth floor.

Though windows made the majority of Empyrean Tower's exterior, it was interrupted about a third of the way up by a band of solid white concrete, and vents sticking out like the fletching of a massive arrow, or the fins of a rocket. As Lazula unlocked the stairway door, she recognized that band must have been the server room. Despite the vents, an oppressive warmth wafted over them as they entered. Within a minute, Lazula's combat outfit clung uncomfortably to her skin. The maze was dark– no light, aside from the tiny specks on the walls that chirped and whirred like a swarm of artificial cicadas.

Lazula took a second to listen in. Nothing out of the ordinary. "Laurel. See anything weird?" she asked.

Laurel closed her eyes. They glowed yellow when they opened, but blinked out in just a half-second. "Shit. Almost went blind," she said. She shook her head. "It's hot in here, that's for sure. Nothing caught my eye, though."

They made their way through the room, working their way into three concentric circles of server towers two stories tall. Every now and then Lazula would see a shadow shift, or a light blink out, and she'd point Impetus, but realize it was nothing. Eventually, at the center console, she called out into the darkness. She heard nothing but the echo of her own voice.

In a handful of seconds nobody noticed, Ichigo slid off his shoe and lifted its tongue. He pulled out the drive Douglas gave him, labeled 'Snow.' The drive that, after his death, only gained more apparent importance. He glanced at Lazula again, still with her blade drawn and her head turned away, and slid the drive into place behind a bank of consoles. A tiny light on the end facing Ichigo flashed blue.

"He's not here, is he?" Lazula stated. She turned to Ichigo, who for some reason was putting his shoe back on. "Are the servers still running?"

"Sure looks like it," Ichigo returned. He finished lacing, sat against the console, and opened his laptop. "I can double check, but… Oh."

"What?"

"Kraken's talking again."

"What are you doing way up there? You're missing out on the fun."

Ichigo clicked the message box. "You're not in the server room?"

"Nope. Come down to the basement. Alone, preferably. There's something I want to show you."

Ichigo showed the conversation to his teammates. "Uh… should I do it?" he asked.

"He offered his location, just like that?" Laurel questioned.

"This is very likely a trap," Snow warned.

Ichigo pursed his lips, and his fingers danced above the keys without committing to a response. "He's been surprisingly honest with me in the past."

"Even if he is being honest, going down there is incredibly dangerous," Snow maintained. "If he's currently in the basement, the problem will very likely sort itself out soon."

"I got the elevator running. I'm waiting :)"

"No, you're right," Ichigo admitted. "I'm probably gonna learn some dangerous information down there. I don't wanna implicate anyone that doesn't need to be implicated."

"If you know how dangerous this is, why do you insist on going?" Snow insisted. "We should report to the Headmaster, and let him decide how to proceed."

Lazula scoffed. "Bold to assume he'd make the right choice."

Ichigo looked between the two uneasily, but settled on a nod. "I want to go because I know something's up, and I need to know the truth," he returned. "And what if I don't go down there, and the Red Claw succeeds? What then? Wouldn't you rather have the truth in the hands of someone you trust?"

Snow was silent. She looked down, but found her resolve, balled her fist around it, and looked back to him. "Then I'm going, too. You can't convince me otherwise."

"Either way, I don't think you'll need me for their IT guy," Lazula decided. "I've got bigger things to deal with."

The elevator doors opened to the lobby, and Lazula waved to the teammates that disappeared again behind them. They descended in silence, into the catacombs beneath Empyrean Tower. An odd feeling crept into Snow's mind. She found herself wanting to follow Lazula. She'd prefer a fight against Condor to their silent descent. She was returning to the basement– the white walls of her beginning. The white walls of the end.

Holoband service cut off entirely four floors beneath the city. If something went wrong, nobody would know until they came down themselves. Or more likely, nobody would ever know. They would be gone, a story would be told, but the truth would die with them.

Twelve floors beneath the city, the elevator doors opened.

Ichigo led, then Snow, then Laurel. The walls were glass, with what looked like holding cells beyond them. Ten foot cubes, back to back. White plank suggesting a bed, white ceiling, white floor. White walls, save for the floor-to-ceiling mirror in each cell that made the hall feel deceptively large. Twelve holding cells lined the hall. Snow counted them, on the trips between her own and the testing chamber. But they were always empty. Even now, years and a new generation of Organds later, she only saw her own reflection. She focused on her eyes. On Ichigo, and on Laurel. If she didn't, she'd feel as though she was back behind that glass.

The end of the hall opened to a circular chamber. Desks and idle Holoscreen banks circled a hard-light tube in the center, within which a doctor's examination table sat on a raised platform. Snow kept her head down, quickened her pace and made for the door at the far end of the room. Ichigo kept in pace with her, but flung his arm in front of her a step from the doorway.

"Snow, wait!"

Her shoes squeaked on a ground free of imperfections.

He pointed Hack n' Slash at a metallic node placed atop the doorway, only an inch wide by two long. He fired a magenta bolt and sparks fizzled around it. The device dropped into his hand, and he looked it over.

"Anti-Organd mine," he muttered. He pocketed it, and turned to Snow. "An EMP. Probably would have short-circuited you instantly. You really shouldn't come any further. Please stay here with Laurel."

A troubled look washed over Snow's face, but she nodded wordlessly. The sterile chamber was silent– or filled with something quieter, more maddening than silence. "Why?" she thought. "Why, of all places, did we have to stop here?"

"Good luck in there," Laurel offered. "Give him hell for us, alright?"

At the door's threshold, the white walls reversed. All was black, aside from a single strip of light guiding the spiral down. Ichigo proceeded alone, further into the darkness.


As the rest kept an eye out, Caspian left Lilly in charge of destroying the first Nexus. She swirled Elysian Bloom's cover and flame surrounded the barrel until it glowed with heat. The tar inside it squelched and turned over itself, and grey fog spewed from the brim like an oversized pot boiling over. One last Beowolf hauled itself, lethargic, into the steam and straight into Rowan's blade.

"Alright, that's one of three," Caspian announced. His gaze swept around his teammates. They all seemed uneasy, keeping an eye down the street, up to the overpass, down a sidestreet. He couldn't blame them. With the Grimm Nexus no longer holding his attention, he did the same. "If Sable's coming, let's wait for him. We have the best chance at winning together."

His suggestion drew a few nods and affirmations, but Noxis spoke up. "Gotta remind you, though. We're on a time limit."

Caspian nodded. "Then let's make our way to the next Nexus. Maybe we'll catch him on the way there."

"We're already cutting it close," Noxis reminded. "Do I have to remind you who Sable is? Fighting him is more than a minor inconvenience, even for all of us at once."

"Then let's get moving and stop arguing," Rowan cut in.

A pulse of vibration interrupted them. Above static, Caspian heard the Headmaster's voice. "Ichigo's making his way to the server room now," he said. "All goes well, you can cut CCTS in about ten minutes."

"Ten minutes?!" Caspian echoed.

Noxis crossed his arms. "If we're not there to cut off CCTS in time, this is all for nothing."

"No, you're right," Caspian acknowledged. He remembered the last mission Sable interrupted. If one of the highest-rated active huntsmen hadn't intervened, it would have been his last mission. He shook his head. "I just don't want to send anyone off alone."

"The way I see it, we've only got one good option," Noxis asserted. He pointed to Caspian, Rowan, Lilly, then himself. "He'll kill you, he'll kill you, he'll kill you, he'll gladly kill me…" he stopped at Moka. "You, I'm not so sure about."

"I've fought him before," she replied. "It didn't go great, but I lived. And that was a while ago!"

"Just be careful," Noxis warned. "You're not the only one that's been training."

"She's quick on her feet, too," Rowan offered. He looked at Moka, and Caspian couldn't help but feel he was trying to encourage himself, too. "Even if you don't directly fight, you can keep him occupied."
Noxis cracked a smirk. "And she's annoying. Best case scenario, she talks him to death."

"Hey!"

"You have a way of drawing people in with conversation," Lilly corrected. "That might prove useful as a stalling tactic. Either way, do be careful."

Moka looked at Caspian, who had been silent under the thought of sending Moka off against Sable. Sable, the Red Claw head who nearly killed him with all the ease of swatting a mosquito. The Red Claw Head whose goal was at his fingertips. With nothing to lose, everything to gain.

He must have looked nervous, because Moka nodded at him, and tried to convince him with a smile. But she couldn't hide what really lay behind her eyes– not from him. "I'll be alright!" she assured.

"If you feel like you can't win, or feel like your life is in danger, promise me you'll run," Caspian said. "We don't need you to beat him. We only need you to pull him off us for a few minutes."

"Promise." Her tail twitched, and she got quiet for a second. "Hey, if I don't…" she pulled her hand away from the lock of hair behind her ear. "Nope! Nevermind. See you soon!"

She stepped forward to hug him, and held him for a few seconds. Then she whipped around before any more words could be exchanged, and jogged toward Vale's docks. Caspian stood still, with no choice but to stick to the mission and hope he'd see her again.


The glass doors slid open to Eden, and Lazula stepped into it. More Grimm had spawned since they entered the tower. Condor must still be near. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of black wings circled the tower like a slow-moving cyclone. Though they made no wind, the evening sky still howled with rage. Nevermore. Griffons. And a kind of Grimm new to her. A serpent on twelve-foot bat wings. An Amphityr, according to her Grimm Studies textbook. Seeing one in person, Lazula couldn't decide which was worse, the mouth of six-inch needles that extended too far down its neck, or the quills at the tip of its whiplike tail that glowed red from inside and exploded on impact.

It decided the lone huntress looked like prey. It beat its wings and it slithered down from the sky, flicking its tail thirty feet above Lazula's shield. Spines impaled the concrete around her. Half a second later, a deafening crack and flash of white that wrenched her shield aside and left her ears ringing. She smelled her hair smoldering and she watched it circle around, jaws opening halfway to its shoulders to let out a piercing warcry. She downed an Ursa before the Amphytir divebombed again, this time raking its talons across her shield. The force came at an angle– awkward enough to knock her to her back foot and waste its force on a Beowolf that tried to take advantage. The Amphytir shredded more concrete as it landed, and lashed its tail twice. She took the first blow with Aegis, and felt the searing burst across it. She dodge the second, rolling ahead toward jaws that opened far too wide.

They clamped on the top of her shield. As Lazula tried to wrench herself free it clamped further so its teeth scraped at her arm and putrid tar dribbled down each side of her shield. She wrenched its neck to the side again and struck, feeling black sinews split beneath Impetus's edge. The monstrosity pulled free and whipped its neck in reckless agony, more of the liquid spewing from the gash she left. Before the Amphytir could compose itself she sprinted ahead and drove Impetus to its hilt in its chest. She took the impact of blade striking flesh, of her boots striking ground, into Impetus and let it free. The Amphytir tensed up with the shockwave, and began to dissolve around her blade.

She felt her Holoband vibrate, and Midas's name popped up. He only got out half a word before Nevermore screamed through the sky.

"Gonna have to repeat that."

"Got word of a few Deathstalkers downtown. Big ones. My team's headed over, just wanted to see if you're busy?"

A feather taller than Lazula rained from above. She took it with Aegis. Felt its force swirl inside herself. She jumped, twirled, and swiped Impetus through the air. A gale of distorted force tore through the sky, and darkness scattered as the Nevermore split in two.

"How'd you know?"

Midas chuckled. "Just had a hunch."

A wave of sulfur and rot wafted off the fountain to her right. Two long, clawed appendages split its surface. Behind them, blood-red spines. Another set of legs, and the marble woman adorning the fountain tumbled and shattered on the pavement. A spider– or a demon resembling one of monstrous proportion– shook black sludge from its body. Its two front arms held crooked in front of itself like the claws of a mantis. One raised to quivering mandibles, and it wiped sludge free to the ground.

Lazula raised Aegis out of instinct, and realized how deeply her face had twisted with disgust. Without warning all six of the Aracylla's legs launched forward and it struck at her with its mantislike claws. She rolled away from one, dodged the second, and caught the third with Aegis to respond. Impetus cracked the bony plate between its eyes and three ruptured. Its legs went rigid for a second and it drew back, its scream gurgling through the tar that sloughed from the wound.

Aracylla were native to the deepest woods of Northern Mistral. Maybe that's why the voices picked up, so the screech it let out again as she slashed two legs from its body fell against a backdrop of murmurs. Another pulse of vibration from her Holoband.

"We're getting reports of Grimm on Sentinel Academy's campus." At first she thought it was another voice, but it came from her wrist again. 'Headmaster Skye' read from her Holoband.

The Aracylla stumbled, and Lazula drove Impetus into an eye. "Well shit, I can't teleport." She drove her blade further, twisted, and pulled it free.

"Only an update. Sentinel's security staff is on scene. We've got students and androids en route. Stick with your assigned mission."

By the time she split the Aracylla's thorax and its legs curled around its dissolving body, the call closed. Her eyebrows stitched. According to Noxis, Condor could only spawn Grimm within about half a mile of himself. But the Downtown core should be out of that range, even if barely. And Sentinel was a mile across the bay. She looked past a tangle of freeways. Past Port Cyrreine International to the glass clamshell of the Central Line Station. She watched a train depart on the elevated railway. It turned toward the wall of spires, glimmering innocently as they skewered the sky.

She bisected a Beowolf in one effortless slash, and walked toward the station.


Moka kept her head up, hair swept aside, eyes flitting about the street and into each boarded-up storefront. There was too much to keep track of. Sable, somewhere. On the way to tear Team CRLN to shreds. Grimm, everywhere. To her left, sickly white light bathed a silent dock. ships sat at an uneasy standby, and cranes hung still above. At her right, a bustling expressway any night but this. Grimm were the only shapes that moved upon it, their dark cacophony of shrieks, snarls, and cackles echoing through the streets.

A semblance-boosted kick caught a Creep in the jaw, and she watched it tumble across the pavement and disperse before her eyes flicked up. There, on the skybridge over the expressway, a silhouette almost too large to be human. She let out a deep breath, and sprinted up the skybridge stairs to intercept him. She skidded to a halt before him, puffed out her chest, and held the tail that wanted to flick and lash steady. "I recognize you," she addressed, cocking her head back like she'd seen Lazula do before. "Sable, right?"

Sable nodded once. "And you're one of those kids playing hero." He cracked his neck. "Just back off, alright? Leave now, and I won't hurt you."

"Yeah, and you'll kill my friends instead," Moka returned. She raised her fists. "No thanks. Come on. I've already fought someone a hell of a lot stronger than you."

"Yeah? Did you win?"

"It doesn't matter. My point is that you're trying to spread fear. Trying to bring us back to 'survival of the fittest.' But our lives are so much more than that!" Her fist clenched. "And I'm not afraid of you. You can give yourself some convoluted, self-righteous reasoning all you want. But I know this is all just revenge! I know Frontline ruined your life. But that doesn't give you the right to ruin others!"

"When have I ever said I want anything but revenge?" Sable questioned. "Do you even know what you're fighting for? What you're about to die for?"

Moka whipped her arm to the side, and pointed at the Nevermore that screeched past them. "I know I am not letting you get away with all this," she spat."I'm fighting for all the people you've killed. And I'm fighting to make sure people you think are 'unworthy'– people like my mom– can keep living as comfortably as they can."

A scoff echoed inside Sable's mask. "Funny you mention your mom. Do you really think a company like Frontline, a company that produces androids indistinguishable from a human, and can make a crippled man walk again, can't cure something as pervasive as cancer?"

The expression washed from Moka's face for a second, and she lowered her fists.

"Which runs more of a profit?" he continued. "A one-time cure for fifty thousand lien, or milking a family for ten thousand a month?" He stepped closer, shaking his head. "They've got that cure deep in their vault. And they're keeping your mom just as sick as they need her."

Moka's tail flicked. She swallowed a knot in her throat. "Then they're next," she muttered. "Just as soon as I'm done with you. They're next."

Sable's eyes narrowed. They both raised their fists, and set their feet.