Gun shots blared in the facility. Orders fused as soldiers ran, changing course or stopping to decide whether to fire or not.

While all of this was happening, a human figure was sneakily running around in the facility, in the process of escaping. It was precisely the target the soldiers were searching for : unfortunately for them, it didn't encounter many obstacles as it swiftly and confidently made its way out, the night certainly helping with that.

Behind him, soldiers were at a grip with attackers. Said attackers had been called here by the hooded person now looking at all of this from the top of a hill that was overviewing the whole facility.

'The soldiers are winning. Well, not much were summoned this time, so there's no helping it. I already did what I needed to do anyway.'

A sigh. 'Not here too, huh ? Even though it's about me, intel seems just nonexistent.'

The young man was about to turn on his heels and leave this place but he brutally stopped in his tracks. The reason being that his inhuman senses were alerting him that enemies were about to materialize right in front of him. And materialize they did : he was in front of a dozen of gigantic mechs. 'They found me quickly. I shouldn't have wasted my time here.' though the boy as he clicked his tongue.

"Alright, game's over, intruder ! You're gonna calmly follow us for a nice little chat about you invading our base, in jail !" cried out a very angry woman voice from one of the speakers of the mechs, as the mechs made their way to grab him.

Usually, those kinds of situations would have your typical intruder cursing or shuddering, or both at the same time.

He wasn't doing either of it. There was no reason to be scared by this much. After all-

"Wha-" A sound of bewilderment leaked from the speakers. It was natural. All around the intruder, bits of reality seemed to be pulled inside of a hole, hole from which emerged gold and black beings who had a close resemblance with machines. Yet, the woman talking from the speakers knew what they were. It was part of her job, after all.

"What the hell are Imaginary Constructs doing here ?!"

He chose that moment to tilt his head slightly upward. The woman and pilots of the mech then barely managed to see his grin under his hood, which infuriated them.

"Well, there's a bunch of your friends coming here for our little meeting. Sudden as it is, I thought I should call a few of mine to be fair. Do you like my consideration ?" provoked the grinning intruder.

That was the last straw. "Go !" the woman, who seemingly had authority over the pilots, ordered.

"Yes ma'am !" the pilots charged forward before they even finished talking, eager to teach a lesson to this cocky intruder.

...

"Haa, haa...Report. Is everyone okay ?" the captain of the team sought an overview of the situation as soon as the last Imaginary Construct was crushed.

The reports came in with delay, the evident tiredness of the ones delivering them. The captain bit his lips : half of the units were unable to fight, and the remaining ones were only working at 50% of their best. Without the pointers from their superior about these new enemies, perhaps they would have lost.

But this wasn't the worst. "Sir, we have no trace of him. Nothing indicating that he left the encirclement, footprints, or even a clue of where he is." A mech that still could move came back, reporting the results of the search for the intruder. The captain banged his fist on his mecha's control panel. "Freaking hell ! Just what is happening ?!"

...

In the middle of the fight, the mysterious intruder had disappeared without a trace. The entire facility tried to find him, to no avail. To add insult to injury, they had no idea who he was and why he came here either : no one killed, the facility suffered negligible damage, and he only briefly skimmed through their Previous Era records.

She couldn't understand. 'This guy's objective is completely unknown. From the traces he left in the database, he wanted to know about the Previous Era but...'

She brought up a file on her computer that mentioned several other attacks on multiple facilities belonging to them or Shicksal. "Same modus operandi. And he's only after the intel and nothing else."

"We can only speculate that this mysterious intruder has a great amount of interest in the Previous Era, Doctor Tesla. He didn't even try to hide his traces." concluded a blue haired, small woman entering the command center with a coffee in hand. Einstein handed the cup to her.

"I know, Mophead, but that's just frustrating." retorted Tesla as she downed the drink in one gulp. "Ah, it's hot !"

"...Of course it does. It is freshly out of the coffee machine after all." she laughed.

"Grr, just you wait !"

...

Ten minutes later, in a small town on the other side of the planet

A stall was open in the city-center at the middle of the night. A hooded figure approached the stall, removed his hood and ordered : "Boss, 3 skewers please."

"Aye, coming right up. Having a bad day, Lux ?" guessed the middle-aged man behind the counter as he greeted one of his regulars.

"You could say that. Tried a little outing for a search but it didn't work well." sighed the boy as he took a seat while the man prepared his command. His face came into the light of the stall.

Black hair with gold at the end of each strand, black eyes with a touch of red in the middle and a pale skin.

"That's unfortunate. Let me cook you up something to cheer you up, lad."

He killed time by looking at his phone for any interesting contracts for the night. 'Oh, there's an Honkai eruption in Africa and they would like help to deal with it, huh. Well, let's go after these skewers then.' Despite breaking into a secured facility earlier, he felt barely strained.

...

"Doctor Tesla, come see this." Einstein motioned Tesla to come closer. "Don't you think something is wrong ? The timing of the attacks is too close sometimes. Take these two last year for example. Despite these locations being more than 10000 kms away from each other, they were infiltrated the same day, with less than 30 minutes between them."

"That's...true. Does he have a way of traveling that fast or is he just part of a larger group ?"

"No definite proof of that exists for now, unfortunately."

...

In Egypt, Alexandrie

"We've confirmed the Eruption is over. Thank you very much for your efforts."

The commander in front of him just announced the end of his job to Lux. Said commander was a man used to battlefields. As such, when he saw that the help was a single kid who couldn't be older than 19, he was disappointed. And yet...

...one could say that without him, half of the people in this camp wouldn't even be alive. Honkai beasts and zombies would have flooded it had the Eruption not been contained. With how his soldiers and Africa's Valkyries were spent from the fighting, and the number of injured, if he hadn't used a diversion to lead a group of Honkai beasts away from them...

However, what truly scared him was what he said when he came back : "I killed the Honkai beasts. Here's the proof." And showed the video. Awe, but also fear resided in the heart of the commander as he saw him decimate them.

Since he was paid according to the number killed, he would get a huge hall this time. When the curious commander tried to get some explanation about the boy's capabilities however, he got nothing.

'He isn't just strong. The head isn't bad either, huh.' At any rate, the commander had also a lot of gratitude to him.

"It's fine. I only did it for the money after all."

"Of course. Go ahead and check. You should've been paid by now." He did it immediately without losing time. And after a few more formalities, he went away.

Another odd thing to add to the list was that he didn't ask any kind of transport, yet left the base without leaving any trace.

A strange one, that's for sure.

Author's note :

Second story beginning ! Been working on the plot for a while. I cooked up something special for this one, you'll see ;). As always, leave a fav/comment if you like the chapter, thanks for reading, and I'll see you later.