Three Days Ago – Scarpoint Central Fortress
TARA -- POV
"Again," I rasped, spitting a wad of soot and metallic-tasting saliva onto the floor.
Sub-level testing bunker was supposed to be indestructible. Jerry had sworn the five-foot-thick adamantium plating could eat a tactical nuke. But right now, the walls were weeping molten slag, glowing a sickly, blinding orange.
"Heart rate is operating at one hundred and ninety beats per minute," Clara's synthesized voice clipped through the intercom, stripped of her usual warmth. "Mythic-tier energy reserves are redlining. You are tearing your own cellular structure apart, Tara. Shut it down."
"I spent years in a cage," I muttered, my small hands shaking as the raw, unadulterated heat tried to rip its way out of my chest. "I'm done being helpless. I'm not shutting shit down."
"Kid, you're literally liquidating my life's work!" Jerry's voice hacked over the comms, sounding panicked. "Do you know how much blood I had to spill to steal that plating from Iron Fang territory? Stop cooking my basement!"
"Then get better plating, Jerry," I shot back, my voice dropping an octave into something that didn't sound like an eight-year-old girl at all.
I closed my mismatched eyes. I wasn't thinking about some heroic bullshit about saving the world. I was thinking about the slavers who put a collar on me. I was thinking about the rotting, bloated corpses Varn had sent to kill me.
Kaiser hadn't dragged me out of hell just so I could be a liability.
I reached deep into the core of the mythic trait. The resurrection fire didn't want to be contained. It wanted to explode and consume. I grabbed it, gritted my teeth until I tasted copper, and violently choked it back down. I didn't let it radiate. I forced the roaring, golden flames to compress, crushing them against my own skin until they formed a hyper-dense, searing layer of armor.
"Jesus," Clara whispered over the feed, her optical sensors buzzing. "You are weaponizing a localized resurrection field. You're effectively making your physical body a walking ground-zero."
I didn't answer. I locked my eyes on a heavily reinforced combat dummy sixty feet across the room. I didn't run.
I reached into the spatial-skip.
CRACK.
The air shattered. I reappeared instantly in front of the dummy, the vacuum of displaced air howling behind me. I channeled the compressed fire into my small knuckles and drove my fist into the solid steel.
The dummy didn't just break. It detonated. A shockwave of pure kinetic and thermal force ripped it into microscopic shrapnel, burying the molten pieces deep into Jerry's precious adamantium walls.
I stood in the wreckage, my chest heaving, the golden aura holding perfectly steady. The next time a Kingpin looked at me, they weren't going to see a victim. They were going to see a goddamn wildfire.
"Okay, that was terrifying," Jerry sighed over the radio.
"But I'm still billing Kaiser for the structural damage."
HAWK -- POV
I was stuck doing crowd control.
And by crowd control, I mean I was standing on the hood of a rusted-out transport vehicle, twirling a pulse-blade, while Rambo aimed a plasma cannon the size of a tree trunk at a mob of very irritable scavengers.
We were standing at the violent, messy border where Iron Fang territory bled into Baron Varn's old rot-zones. With Tartarus erased and the Kingpins dead, we had five massive, masterless zones sitting empty. And in the undercity, a vacuum just meant every two-bit gutter-trash with a cheap augment thought it was their turn to wear a crown.
Currently, a heavily modded brute with steel teeth and a spiked collar was screaming at me. He had about four hundred heavily armed, aggressively unwashed gangers backing him up.
"You think a dead prison means you own this dirt?!" the brute spat, racking the bolt of a rusty assault rifle. "This is Chop-Shop territory now, sweetheart! We got four hundred guns aimed at your pretty face. You and the walking tank better turn around before we decide to peel that leather off you and see what an Apex bleeds!"
I didn't blink. I just looked down at my fingernails, inspecting a chip in the polish, then glanced over my shoulder at Rambo.
The massive behemoth was leaning casually against the transport, his finger resting lazily on the trigger of his heavy ordinance, looking intensely bored.
"You know, Rambo," I sighed, stretching my neck until it popped. "I have a date some time with a man who literally eats traits for breakfast. I'm really not in the mood for foreplay with a scrap-peddler."
"I hate public speaking," Rambo rumbled, his voice like grinding tectonic plates. "You want me to handle the rebuttal?"
"Nah," I grinned, feeling the dark, familiar rush of Overdrive flood my veins. "Let me warm up."
Chop-Shop opened his mouth to bark another threat. He never finished the sentence. I launched off the hood, crossing the thirty-foot gap in a terrifying blur of motion.
Snikt. Slice.
I landed softly behind him, my Razor Pulse bone-blades already retracting. A second later, Chop-Shop's metal jaw—along with the top half of his throat—slid neatly off his neck and hit the dirt with a wet thud. His rifle arm followed a split second later.
He dropped to his knees, gurgling blood through a ruined windpipe. The four hundred gang members behind him flinched, raising their weapons, a collective roar of panic and fury rising in their throats.
I didn't even look at them. I casually flicked the gore off my boot. "Rambo. Rebuttal."
Rambo let out a heavy, tired sigh. He hoisted the massive plasma cannon onto his shoulder, didn't bother aiming, and pulled the trigger.
The deafening roar of superheated plasma eclipsed the wind. A blinding blue beam the size of a city bus tore through the dead center of the mob. It didn't just kill forty men; it instantly flash-fried them into ash, leaving nothing behind but a perfectly smooth, glowing trench of molten glass carved straight through the earth.
The remaining three hundred and sixty gang members froze. Total, absolute silence descended on the wasteland, save for the crackle of burning flesh.
"Let's make this simple," I announced, my Oracle-Eye pulsing a brilliant, murderous red as I looked over the terrified survivors. "There is no pie. There is no negotiation. These five zones, the scrap, the dirt, and the blood in your veins now belong to Kaiser."
I stepped over Chop-Shop's twitching body, my voice dropping into that cold, absolute authority.
"You work for the Trait-Thief now. You breathe when he says breathe. You kill who he says kill. You have exactly five seconds to drop your weapons and fall in line. If anyone has a problem with that..." I pointed a perfectly manicured finger at the smoking trench. "...line up by the crater."
For two seconds, nobody breathed. Then, a rusty rifle hit the dirt. Then a machete. Within ten seconds, the entire surviving mob was on their knees, heads pressed to the ash-stained earth.
I tapped my earpiece. "Karin. Tell me you're seeing this."
"Affirmative," the intelligence officer's flat, clinical voice replied. "Logistical borders are established. Supply convoys are en-route. The eastern frontline is secured. All five zones are officially under Kaiser's banner."
"Good," I said, wiping my blade on a kneeling ganger's jacket. "Because I've got a flight to catch.
Tell Kaiser to pack his nicest combat boots."
KANE -- POV
I stood on the massive, reinforced balcony of the central fortress, the diamond-plate armor fused to my skin humming with a faint, violent nuclear warmth.
Down in the courtyard, the reality of what we had built was laid out in the dirt.
It wasn't a mercenary crew anymore. It wasn't a gang. It was a meat-grinder in the making.
Thousands of soldiers—Scourge's hardened killers, Tartarus guards who preferred living over bleeding for a dead Kingpin, and the newly broken conscripts from the five zones—were moving through brutal, synchronized combat drills.
"You call that a strike?!" Scourge's demonic, roaring voice echoed off the fortress walls, his Shadow Weaver core bleeding dark, writhing energy into the air around him. The massive warlord kicked a conscript square in the chest, sending the man flying backward into the mud. "The dead walk quicker than you pathetic sacks of meat, and I know, because I've slaughtered them too! Get up, or I'll use your spine as a coat rack!"
Off to the side, Jerry's engineering bays looked like a hazard zone. Sparks showered the courtyard as recruited mechanics retrofitted captured Kingpin tech. I watched in mild horror as Jerry literally bolted a highly unstable piece of Tartarus's old suppression-core to the back of a heavily armored transport, laughing maniacally as the vehicle vibrated with lethal energy.
"Hey Kane!" Jerry yelled, wiping a streak of oil off his cybernetic eye. "I figured out how to make the heavy transports hover! There's a thirty percent chance the localized gravity field implodes and turns the driver inside out, but the speed is phenomenal!"
"Just make sure the guns work, Jerry!" I yelled back.
I looked up at the massive black banners hanging from the walls. Kaiser's emblem—a fractured crown wreathed in black flame.
I remembered Tyler Wayland. The broken, furious kid bleeding out in an alley. The kid who had died under tons of concrete in the Spire, only to crawl his way back out of the grave as a force of nature.
He told me he was going to tear down Ryzen's pyramid. I used to think it was just the arrogant death wish.
But looking at the army assembling below, smelling the ozone, the blood, and the absolute, unhinged violent intent radiating from this fortress, I realized the truth.
Tyler wasn't just trying to make a point. He was building an apocalypse.
"Where the hell are you anyway!"
Scene shifts to Dr. Molloy's Clinic, Central Fortress
KAISER – POV
I had faced Kingpins, prison riots, bio-freaks, and a mythic kid having a meltdown.
None of that scared me as much as this.
"I'm fucked," I announced.
I was pacing in Molloy's clinic like a glitching NPC. Coat thrown over a monitor, boots squeaking on the tile, brain cycling through every bad decision I'd ever made. There were a lot.
Molloy was elbow-deep in some poor bastard's chest, cigarette in her mouth, looking like she was changing out an engine instead of a lung.
"Is the fortress on fire?" she asked, not looking up.
"No."
"Anyone bleeding out on my floor right now?"
I glanced down. "Technically no."
"Then shut up," she said. "I'm busy."
Karin was on the counter, legs swinging, polishing her glasses with that slow, judgmental precision that said she regretted meeting me at all.
She squinted at me. "You're doing the panicked goldfish walk. Explain."
I stopped, dragged both hands down my face. "I have a date with Hawk. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing."
Molloy snorted. "Groundbreaking revelation."
"I'm serious," I said. "I can plan a siege. I can plan a jailbreak. I cannot plan a romantic evening with a woman who can see my heartbeat spiking in real time."
Karin blinked once. "You interrupted surgery. For… date advice."
"Yes."
"From me," she added, pointing at her own chest, "your ex."
"Yes."
"And her," she jabbed her thumb toward Molloy, "who literally threatened to staple your mouth shut ."
"Exactly. You are both terrifying women who haven't killed me yet. That's basically a focus group."
Molloy sighed like a tired god. "Make this fast before I 'forget' anesthesia."
Karin folded her arms. "Alright, Emperor. What's your grand plan so far?"
I brightened. "Glad you asked. So. I found this abandoned wing near Fukushima. It's quiet, semi-stable, good sightlines. I bring Hawk there, we talk a bit, I hit her with the smile, we take our clothes off, break a bed, then go kill some randoms , done. Simple. Elegant."
Molloy put her bloody tools down with an audible clank.
Karin just stared. The silence was brutal.
"You absolute dumbass," she said finally.
"What? That's a great plan."
She slid off the counter, dropping her cloth. "No. That's a plan you use on drunk club rats, not a trauma-riddled Apex assassin who just risked her neck for you."
"Hey," I protested. "I have standards. Higher than club rats."
"Really?" she said. "Because so far your pitch is 'ruined room, quick fuck, goodnight.'"
"It's not ruined," I said, offended. "Structurally compromised, sure—"
Karin hopped off the counter, hand going to her karambit. "Tyler. Listen to me."
Full name. Knife. Great combo.
"I'm listening," I said carefully.
She flipped the blade once, real casual, then pointed it at my chest. "Sex is not the only thing, you fool."
I felt my face twitch. "It's… high on the list, though."
She ignored that. "Hawk butchered fifteen elite guards to keep you alive. She walked through hell for you. And your best idea is 'congrats baby, here's my dick'?"
"Hey, my dick is a very generous gift—"
Something whizzed past my ear and smacked the wall. I looked over. Molloy had thrown an empty syringe at my head.
"Finish that sentence," she warned, "and I'll remove it and sell it to science."
I shut up.
KARIN – POV
I let out a long, deep sigh. I felt like a tired mother trying to explain basic human decency to a toddler with a loaded gun.
He blinked, some of the fake swagger dropping. Good. Maybe a neuron had fired.
Fun fact: I dated Tyler Wayland for six months before the world fully went to shit. The sex was great. The rest of it? Him making bad jokes while leaking blood all over my apartment and calling it 'charm'.
I broke up with him after he tried to be 'romantic' by stealing a corporate hover-car and immediately crashing it into a sewage plant. On our anniversary.
He hadn't learned a goddamn thing.
"A busted hospital bed and a quick fuck?" I asked, stepping closer, knife still out. "That's your grand plan for a woman who just turned a Kingpin's elite guard squad into meat strands so you wouldn't die?"
"Hey, the bed isn't busted yet," he said, shuffling back. "Also, my quick fucks are legendary, you know that."
"Legendary for who?" I snapped. "Your ego?"
He gave me that crooked grin. "You weren't exactly complaining when we—"
I grabbed a metal tray off the nearby stand and slapped it across his shoulder. Hard.
"Ow! Fuck—"
"Language," Molloy said automatically, not looking up.
"She just assaulted me!"
"You deserved it," I said. "Also, if you even think about joking your way past this, I'm carving a warning label on your forehead."
He threw his hands up. "Okay, okay. Fine. Teach me how to not be an asshole.
Consider me a blank slate."
Molloy muttered. "You're stained."
MOLLOY – POV
He really did look lost, for once. Not the cocky kid, not the trait-thief with a god complex. Just a stupid, stubborn kid with more scars than sense.
I put down the clamp, wiped my hands, and walked over, still in bloody gloves.
"Alright, idiot," I said. "Let me spell it out."
He swallowed. "Hit me."
"Not literally. Yet." I pointed a bloody clamp at his sternum. "Hawk has spent her adult life being handled like a weapon. Kingpins, corps, gangs—they all looked at her and saw a tool. A gun with legs. You copy the same shit, you become them."
He stared at the clamp. "I'm not— I don't—"
"You brought her into your mess," I cut in. "You peeled back your ribs for Tara. You made Hawk watch you nearly die twice in a week. She said yes to that risk. You do not get to treat her like a stress ball with knives."
Karin crossed her arms. "She may pretend it's all jokes and fights, but she cares, Tyler. You can see it. The way she looks at you when you're not paying attention. She's all in and it scares the shit out of her."
"So," I said, "if this is just sex to you, tell us right now so we can drag her in here and let her stab you in a controlled medical environment."
His jaw tightened. "It's not just sex."
"Good," I said. "Then start acting like her brain and heart exist, not just her ass."
He winced. "Harsh."
Karin hopped back up on the counter. "You need to give her something that isn't about survival. Not a fight, not a mission, not a way to burn off trauma. Something that says, 'I actually see you.'"
He thought about that, eyes unfocused for once.
"You know what she told me the other night?" Karin added. "That nobody ever gave her anything that wasn't attached to a job. Weapons, gear, orders. That's it. You wanna stand out? Don't be that."
KAISER – POV
Okay. That… actually punched.
"Fuck," I muttered.
Molloy nodded sagely. "Correct."
I dropped onto a metal stool, slumped there, staring at the floor. "I'm good at breaking things," I said. "Not… this. I don't know how to do 'soft'."
Karin snorted. "You have Tara literally worshipping the ground you walk on. You absolutely know how to do soft, you just hide it behind stupid jokes."
"That's slander," I said. "And also fair."
I looked up. "So what? You want me to… draw her a picture? Sing? I can't sing. I sound like a blender full of gravel."
"Do not sing," Molloy said. "I will sedate you."
"Take her somewhere that means something," Karin said. "Show her something that isn't just 'here's another body'. Give her a view she's never had."
We were quiet for a few seconds.
Then it hit.
"Oh," I said.
Karin's eyes narrowed. "I don't like that sound."
"Fukushima," I said.
She groaned. "Of course."
Molloy rubbed her forehead. "Dear god, Please help this idiot."
"Listen," I said, leaning forward. "Before Kazuo turned it into his personal ashtray, Fukushima was beautiful. Cherry blossoms, clean streets, shining towers. Whole pre-war archive's full of it. People used to propose there. Honeymoons, all that sappy shit."
"And now," Karin said slowly, "it's a glowing corpse full of ash and trauma."
"Yes," I said. "But the bones are still there. Abandoned towers, broken skybridges, rusted rails. If we can get to a still-standing spire, we can see the whole dead city at once. No crowds. No noise. Just us and the ghost of what it used to be."
Karin stared. "Your idea of romance is climbing into a haunted irradiated skyscraper."
"Hawk's idea of romance is beating a Kingpin with his own arm," I said. "Trust me, this is an upgrade."
Molloy exhaled slowly. "And Kazuo?"
"Is busy hating the world," I said. "Look, he'll send patrols. He might even show up himself. Which brings me to part two."
"Of course there's a part two," Karin muttered.
"Alex Artemis," I said. "Our specialist . Living out there. Having a hatred boner for Kazuo. You know the file. If I stir the hornet's nest hard enough, he's gonna clock me through a scope. I make it obvious enough, maybe he takes a shot. Boom. I get my sniper and a date."
"Did you really just say 'I get my sniper and a date' like those are the same thing?" Karin asked.
"You are allergic to doing one thing at a time," Molloy said.
"Correct," I replied cheerfully.
KARIN – POV
I hopped back down, walked up to him again, studied his stupid hopeful face for a second.
"You're actually serious," I said.
"Always," he said. "Well. Mostly."
"You want to take a girl you like to a radioactive warzone, wave your arms until a legendary sniper points a gun at you, and call that romance."
"When you phrase it like that," he said, "it sounds extremely on-brand for me."
It did. That was the worst part.
Molloy lit another cigarette. "He's going to do it no matter what we say, so let's at least stop him from dying in the first ten minutes."
"Fine," I said, jabbing a finger in his chest. "Ground rules."
"Tell me."
"One," I said, "you tell her it's dangerous. You do not spring 'surprise, death zone' on somebody. Clear?"
"Clear," he said.
"Two," I said, "you do not make the whole thing about Artemis. Hawk is not a side quest."
He cringed. "Fair."
"Three," Molloy cut in, "you wear enough protective gear that if Kazuo sneezes, you don't grow a second head."
"Think Hawk would find a second head hot?" he asked.
We both just stared at him.
"Okay, okay, bad joke," he said quickly. "Got it."
"Four," I added, because I wasn't done, "you do not treat sex as the goal. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn't, you keep your pants on and your mouth shut about it."
He raised an eyebrow. "You want me to not flirt? That's like asking Jerry not to hoard scrap."
"Flirt all you want," I said. "Just don't act like her saying 'no' is a failed operation."
He went quiet, chewing that over.
"Deal," he said finally.
MOLLOY – POV
I watched him pull his coat back on, energy returning like someone had plugged him in.
"You do realize," I said, "this could go spectacularly wrong."
"Yep," he said. "But so could everything else I do."
He headed for the door, then paused when I called, "Tyler."
He looked back.
I took the cigarette out of my mouth, pointed it at him like a tiny, smoky dagger. "You tell that girl she can say no to anything at any time. Mission, sex, idea, whatever. If she says no, you stop. You don't pout. You don't guilt. You don't pull some of your usual shit. You stop."
His face went serious. "Yeah," he said. "Of course."
"And if you forget that," I added, "I will break both your legs and hide your trait core in a jar."
He smiled, small and real. "Love you too, Doc."
The door hissed shut.
I rubbed at the lines on my face and went back to my patient.
"Told you he hadn't learned anything," I muttered.
Karin hopped back up on the counter, watching the empty doorway.
"He's learned just enough to be dangerous in a new way."
"That's worse," I said.
"That's him," she answered.
KARIN – POV
I swung my legs, watching Molloy dig back into the chest cavity like nothing had happened.
"You think Hawk actually likes him?" I asked after a moment.
Molloy snorted. "She threatened to shoot a Kingpin's dick off for him. That's basically a love letter around here."
"Fair," I said.
"She likes him more than she knows," Molloy went on. "That's the part that scares her. And him."
"Two birds," I muttered. "One suicidal stone."
Molloy chuckled once. "You going to warn Hawk?"
I thought about it. "No. But I'll make sure she's armed for a date."
"That is the most Scarpoint sentence I've heard all week," Molloy said.
"High bar," I replied.
As I slid off the counter and headed out, I pictured the whole stupid thing:
Hawk on some broken tower, boots dangling off the edge, wind in her hair. Fukushima's dead skyline glowing sick in the distance. Kaiser trying very hard not to say something so dumb she shoots him. A sniper scope somewhere far away, watching the entire mess.
It was either going to be legendary…
Or we'd be back in this clinic tomorrow stitching Kaiser together again.
Knowing him?
Probably both.
Some hours later – Scarpoint Fortress, War Room
KAISER – POV
The mirror knew too much.
I stood in front of the cracked glass, mauling the top button of my black shirt like it owed me money. The collar folded wrong. The coat slid off my shoulder. My hair looked like it had been in a fight with a fan and lost.
"I have robbed Kingpins," I told my reflection. "I have broken into Tartarus twice. Why am I losing to a shirt."
The war room was the usual disaster: maps stabbed into walls, crates in the corners, paper everywhere, one throwing knife still buried in the far panel from last week.
My audience was stacked against me.
Karin sat on my map table with her boots on my reports, arms crossed, eyes sharp. Tara spun lazily in my chair, hugging her knees. Clara's blue holo floated over her shoulder like a smug ghost.
Morgana leaned on a crate near the wall, purple‑and‑black dress flowing around her legs, one half‑chain of dark metal looped around her left forearm, Jerry's "essence control" toy winking runes when she moved.
"You look exactly the same," Karin said. "Scary bastard in black."
"That's the problem," I said, attacking the button again. "This is my 'I'm here to kill your boss' look. I need 'I might actually be dateable'."
Tara slowed her spin. "You're walking in circles."
"I'm thinking," I lied.
Clara's voice floated out, irritatingly calm. "Heart rate elevated. Fine tremors in hands. Breathing shallow. Statistically consistent with panic."
"Love the diagnosis," I muttered. "Ten out of ten bedside manner."
Morgana smirked. "This is already my favorite show."
Karin slid off the table and came over. "Back away from the collar," she said. "You're hurting my eyes."
TARA – POV
Kaiser usually moved like he knew exactly where he was going, even if he didn't.
Right now, he just kept fixing one thing and breaking two others. Shirt, coat, hair, repeat.
"Hawk already likes you," I said. "She's not going on the date with your shirt, Kaiser."
"Yeah," he said, "but my shirt is part of the experience. I'm trying to give the illusion of being a functional human being."
"Ambitious," Morgana said.
KARIN – POV
Up close, he was exactly as I remembered and somehow worse.
Half‑done shirt, strangled collar, coat hanging like it was trying to escape, hair all over the place. Same scar along his jaw. Same eyes that flicked between cocky and cracked depending on the second.
"Chin up," I ordered, grabbing the shirt front. "Stop hunching like you just got caught stealing."
He actually listened. Progress.
I finished the top button in about two seconds, straightened the collar, tugged his coat properly onto his shoulders, then stepped back.
"There," I said. "You still look like a problem, but now it looks like you chose that instead of falling down the stairs."
He frowned at the mirror. "I look… domestic. It's unsettling."
"You look like you tried," I said. "Which is new."
My brain, treacherous as ever, filled in the rest without permission.
Same guy, different room. My old apartment instead of this fortress. Him on my couch, shirt half‑open, bleeding on my ugly carpet, laughing with a split lip while I threatened to throw him out the window. Me, drunk enough once to think it was romantic when he showed up at 3 a.m. with stolen wine and a black eye.
And then the hover‑car.
Tara hopped off the chair and came closer. "You two dated," she said, matter‑of‑fact. "You told me."
I winced. "Did I?"
Kaiser gave me a sideways look. "Tell the class, Karin."
I sighed. "Six months," I said to Tara. "He fell through my window three times, bled on everything I owned, and tried to be romantic exactly once."
Kaiser groaned. "Oh, come on."
Tara's eye widened. "What did he do?"
Kaiser muttered, "Nothing," at the same time I said, "He stole a hover‑car."
Tara lit up. "Cool!"
"It was not cool," I said. "He pulled up under my window in a stolen corporate hover‑car, drunk off his ass, yelling, 'Karin, get in, we're making memories!'"
"I stand by the line," Kaiser said.
"He hit the wrong control," I continued, "jumped the safety rail, and drove it straight into a sewage treatment pool."
Tara gasped, then burst out laughing. "Into poop?"
"It was a waste‑reclamation tank," Kaiser protested. "High‑end poop."
"We smelled like shit for three days," I said. "I broke up with him while we were still hosing off in an alley. Naked. Freezing. Furious."
"You kissed me once in that alley," he pointed out.
"I was concussed," I shot back. "And mad at god."
Morgana whistled low. "Wow. That's rough. Ten out of ten content, though."
Tara was still laughing. "You're so dumb, brother."
Kaiser dragged a hand down his face. "I am trying to grow from my mistakes, alright?"
"Step one," I said. "No poop tanks this time."
"Fukushima doesn't have sewage," he muttered. "We're already doing better."
MORGANA – POV
The breakup story was even better from the outside.
"I love this for you," I told Karin. "Tragic romance and bio‑waste. Very cinematic."
"Shut up," she said, but there was that tiny smile she thought no one saw.
Kaiser glared at his reflection like it might transform into a smarter man if he stared long enough.
"Okay," he said. "Clothes are… as good as they get. Phase two."
He moved to the table. Two shiny-golden Desert Eagles sat there among the maps and tools, catching the light like they thought they were pretty.
He picked them up, one in each hand. His shoulders actually relaxed a little.
"Alright," he said. "Introductions, since we're all judging me anyway. This," he raised the right pistol, "is my lady 'Yelp'."
Karin stared. "Huh."
"Because she screams when something's wrong," he said. "It was 'help,' then I upgraded it. Yelp."
Tara snorted. "You're so stupid."
He lifted the other gun. "And this is 'Bad Timing'."
I laughed outright. "Of course it is."
"This one only comes out when things are already fucked," he explained. "Wrong door, wrong time, ten guys too many, no plan? That's Bad Timing's moment."
Karin covered her face.
He looked between us, then at the pistols.
"Should I gift one to Hawk?"
The room went dead quiet.
"You want to show up to your first real date," Karin said slowly, "and hand her a giant gun named Yelp or Bad Timing."
"Yes," he said. "Is that… not romantic?"
Tara thought about it, deadly serious. "If you give Hawk a really good gun, she might think that's better than flowers."
"Exactly," Kaiser said, pointing at her. "Shared interests."
"Do not tell her the names," Karin said. "Do not ruin it."
"So name reveal is like a second‑date thing," he nodded. "Build mystery. I can work with that."
KAISER – POV
I holstered one of the Eagles—no way in hell I was walking into Fukushima unarmed—and slid a knife into the sheath at my back. The other pistol I left on the table for now. My fingers did their stupid pick‑up, put‑down dance with a trait vial until Tara shoved it gently aside.
"You already have Clara," she said. "And the… new stuff in your head."
"Fair," I said. The vial stayed.
Karin hopped back onto the table, boots scraping metal. "Plan run‑through," she said. "No flirting with the map. Just talk."
I spread an old print of Fukushima across the table. Half the towers were crossed out, some circled, one had a crude dick drawn on it from a long night. I turned that part away from Tara.
"Dropship to Station Nine," I said. "We walk in from there. A cute couple and a third wheeler AI. Keep it quiet."
Clara's holo flickered. "I resent that classification, but yes."
"Clara scrambles whatever Kazuo still has online," I continued. "We cut through the outer ring, go for this tower." I tapped a circled one. "It's still got most of its spine. Stairs until they give out, then I cheat. Roof. Dead city under us. That's the date."
Tara leaned in, following my finger. "Wind. Sky. Broken buildings."
"Yeah," I said. "Better than another corridor with guts on the wall."
I could see it already if I closed my eyes. Rust. Cracked glass. The ocean of ruins. Her on the edge of it, finally seeing something big that wasn't trying to eat her.
Morgana was watching me again, that little amused squint in her eyes. "Soft boy hours," she said. "Nice."
"Shut up," I said without any heat.
"And Artemis?" Karin prompted.
"Artemis is out there, stalking Kazuo," I said. "We poke a patrol weirdly, move like we know we're being watched. Not enough to pull the whole zone down on us, just enough to make a bored sniper pay attention."
"And if his attention equals a bullet between your eyes?" she asked.
"I time it so Hawk isn't standing next to my skull," I said. "If he shoots, it's at me, not us. Worst case I dodge, best case we exchange some long‑distance flirting through Clara."
"Do not call it flirting," Karin said.
"Gun flirting," Morgana added. "You're built for that."
"You tell Hawk all of this before you leave," Karin said. "Swear it. No 'surprise, we're bait' speech on the roof."
"I already said I would," I protested.
"Say it again," she snapped.
I rolled my eyes. "I will tell Hawk the plan—including Artemis—before we leave the fortress."
"Better," she said.
TARA – POV
They went back to arguing about details, but something about the way Kaiser looked at the map stuck in my head.
He wasn't just planning a fight. He was planning… something else. Something bigger. A break in the constant bleeding.
Morgana pushed off the crate and came to stand next to me, purple dress brushing my arm. She smelled faintly like smoke and something sharp.
"You worried?" she asked quietly.
I shrugged. "It's dangerous."
"It's always dangerous with him," she said. "He doesn't know any other speed."
"I know," I said. I watched Kaiser fuss with his sleeves again. "He looks more nervous now than when he cut his head open."
"That's because this matters in a different way," she said. "You can't fix certain mistakes with punching."
"Do you think it'll go okay?" I asked.
She shrugged one bare shoulder. "I get flashes. Moments. Feels like rooftops and yelling and not dying immediately. That's about as good as it gets around here."
"Rooftops and yelling," I said. "Sounds like them."
"Exactly," she smiled.
KAISER – POV
Tara stepped in front of me when I finally stopped moving.
"Stand still," she ordered.
I did. She tugged my coat straight again, smoothed a line on my chest, checked my collar like Molloy with a scanner.
"Okay," she said. "Now you don't look like you got dressed while being chased."
"I did," I said. "Emotionally."
She grinned. "You'll be fine. Just don't say anything incredibly stupid in the first ten seconds."
"That's a very small window," I said.
Karin climbed back fully onto the table, settling in. "Remember," she said, "you don't have to impress her with some big speech. She already saw you at your worst. Just… don't lie. Don't ghost. And don't drive anything into sewage."
"I wasn't planning on the sewage," I said. "That was a one‑time thing."
"Once was enough," she said.
For a moment, our eyes met and old images flickered between us—me soaked and stinking, her furious and shivering, both of us laughing anyway because the alternative was crying.
"Hey," I said, softer than before. "For what it's worth… I did mean it. Back then. The dumb gestures."
She huffed out a faint laugh. "Yeah. That was the problem."
Morgana clapped her hands once. "Alright, trauma circle over. Go do something questionable but sexy."
"Whole personality in one sentence," I said. I hit the door panel.
It hissed open, corridor light spilling in, pale and harsh.
Tara stepped back, hands on her hips. "Don't ruin it. She'll stab you."
"I'm both afraid and turned on by that," I said.
"Too much information," Karin muttered.
Morgana gave me a lazy half‑salute with her chained arm. "Try not to blow yourself up. Save the nukes for anniversary ideas."
"Noted," I said.
The door slid shut behind me, cutting off their faces and the mess of my war room.
The hallway hummed. Somewhere above, the fortress groaned and kept standing.
Fukushima. Hawk. Artemis. Yelp. Bad Timing.
Terrible plan. Best I had.
I took a breath and walked.
END OF CHAPTER