The alleyway was a jagged wound in the city's side, dripping with shadows and the smell of wet garbage. Kenji slumped against a rusted dumpster, his breath coming in ragged, wet hitches. The matte-black suit was torn, exposing a deep, jagged furrow in his thigh where a high-velocity round had bypassed the plating.
"Stay with me, Kenji! Stay with me!" Akira hissed, her hands pressed firmly over his wound. Blood, dark and hot, seeped through her fingers.
"The bridge... they're blocking the bridge," Hiroki stammered, his eyes glued to his phone. He was monitoring the local police scanners and social media. "Ryo's men are everywhere. They're checking every car. We can't take him to a hospital. They'll find him before the intake forms are finished."
Naomi was white-faced, her hands trembling as she held Kenji's limp hand. "He's losing too much. His heart rate is dropping."
Hiroki bit his lip, his thumb hovering over a contact in an encrypted messaging app—one he had found while digging through the deepest layers of the university's dark-web forums. "I have one lead. A fixer. They call him 'The Eagle.' He's a black-market doctor, but he doesn't work for free."
"Call him!" Akira snapped. "Now!"
Ten minutes later, the low rumble of a heavy engine vibrated through the pavement. A blacked-out armored van drifted into the mouth of the alley, its headlights cutting through the grime like searchlights.
The side door slid open with a heavy, mechanical thud. A man stepped out, leaning on a cane tipped with brass. He wore a sharp, charcoal-grey coat and a flat cap pulled low. His face was a map of old scars, but his eyes were sharp, gold-flecked, and predatory.
"You're the ones who made the mess at the fountain?" Kenzo "The Eagle" Mitsu asked, his voice a low, gravelly rasp. He didn't wait for an answer. He looked down at Kenji's mask, which lay cracked on the ground. "A Hannya. Bold. Or incredibly stupid."
"Help him!" Naomi pleaded.
Eagle gestured to two massive men in tactical gear who emerged from the van. They lifted Kenji with practiced ease, sliding him onto a gurney inside the vehicle. "Get in," Eagle commanded. "Unless you'd prefer to explain the Ronin's blood on your clothes to the Shinjuku police."
The van sped through the backstreets, bypassing the Twin's checkpoints with a series of professional-grade signal jammers. They arrived at a nondescript warehouse in the shipping district—The Blue Line Bar. Behind the neon signs and cheap whiskey bottles lay a state-of-the-art trauma suite.
For three hours, the friends sat in the dim light of the bar, listening to the clink of surgical steel against bone. Finally, Eagle stepped out, wiping his hands on a blood-stained towel.
"He'll live," Eagle said, pouring himself a drink. "But the boy is broken. He fought like a hero, which is why he nearly died. In this city, heroes are just people who haven't met a sniper yet."
He turned a tablet screen toward them. The CCTV footage of the ambush was already trending. Millions of people were watching the Ronin fall.
"The myth is bleeding," Eagle said, his eyes narrowing. "And now that the Twins know he's human, they won't stop until they find the body."