Funny, ain't it?

“Catch me up to speed. Fuji, the power plant?” I said as the three of us ran up the enormous staircase.

“Ain’t gonna be burnin’ a damn thing any time soon. Turbine’s ash, substation’s worse.”

“Casulaties?”

“None that I noticed. Made sure to make a lotta noise before actually damagin’ the place so the workers could get clear. Didn’t even waste my time with the MPs”

I breathed a sigh of relief. Fujiko was by far the person I was most worried about playing fast and loose with the ‘no unnecessary killing’ rule.

“Colour me impressed. I hardly expected such restraint from the Daimyo of Domestic Terror,” said Ryou.

“It’s ‘Princess of Electric Power!’”

“Ryou, stop aggravating the Sultan of Senseless Violence-”

“Toki, you too?!”

“-and give me a sitrep. How’d the convoy attack go?”

“I moved what I could to a safe location, but Time’s distress call threw somewhat of a wrench in my plans. I was only able to steal around half what I had hoped.”

“Ah- shit, my bad.” I felt a little guilty. If I had acted more decisively against the girl in the cheongsam, Time wouldn’t have had to interrupt the mission.

“Worry not, securing your survival was far more important.”

“Aww, it almost sounds like you care about me.”

“Of course I do. You make a very adequate meat shield, dear girl.”

“I regret saying anything.” God, what a bitch.

We continued our way up, and our surroundings continued to be mostly silent. We really had picked the perfect timing for the mission: all the office workers had gone home, so all that was left were the MPs. Well, that’s all that should have been left. A little bit of corporate espionage had taught us that another rather important group of people were meeting after dark that night.

“So uhh… what floor are these executive assholes meeting on?” Fujiko asked me.

“Seventy-three.”

“And we’re on?”

“Seventeen.”

“Ughhh, so we have to climb another sixty six floors?!”

“Y’know, this is why I never let you handle the finances when we were dating.”

Despite the complaints from the girl who literally had robotic legs, we kept running up more and more flights of stairs, as tens turned to twenties and twenties to forties.

Something made us stop around the 47th floor.

“That noise… a helicopter?” I muttered aloud.

“It seems the MPs have begun returning. We must hasten to our objective.”

“You mean running up the stairs even faster? You guys aren’t wearing chainmail!”

“Deal with it, Fuji. It’s that or face an entire private militia.”

“...let’s just keep moving.” I could tell by her facial expression she had seriously considered it for a second. Christ, what was I gonna do with her?

We bolted up the remainder of the stairs with all the speed we - or more specifically Fujiko - could muster. We blitzed past the fifties and sixties, and before long we found ourselves at floor seventy three.

Through the door to the staircase was a long hallway, near-identical office and meeting rooms spaced exactly evenly along either side. The walls were a boring grey, only occasionally decorated by pinboards covered in graphs and pictures of rich bastards shaking hands with each other.

“God, just walking through this place is soul-sucking. How the hell do people work here every day and not neck themselves?” I spat.

“By lining their pockets with other people’s money, of course,” said Ryou.

“And wanking themselves off with barrels of crude oil,” added Fujiko. Ever the charmer, that girl.

We continued walking down the hall until we began to hear voices emanating from one of the side rooms. Considering everyone else had gone home, it could only be our targets.

I stopped outside of the door. Ryou, Fujiko and I looked towards one another and shared a silent nod. We knew what we were here to do.

I turned the handle and opened the door.

“Umm… do you mind?”

On the other side of the door, there were two long tables. Along both sat snobby-looking fat bastards, dressed in suits that probably cost more than the food and rent budget of every person in the slums combined. And at the far end was the fattest and snobbiest bastard of them all. A greedy pig with a snout to match.

They were there for a corporate merger. Komono corp, the sons of bitches whose dumped waste caused the slum plague the year prior, sat on the left. Kurogaisha, the scumbags robbing the slums blind with their PMC, were on the right. The fat pig at the back could only be their CEO.

“We’re trying to have a meeting here, y’know.” One of the rich fucks stared at me condescendingly as he spoke. I have to admit, I was completely taken aback.

“Excuse me?”

“What do we pay you for? To stand around in our meeting room eavesdropping? Get back to doing… I dunno… whatever it is you peasants do to make us money. Go. Get out.”

Incredible. I had been beaten, cut, stabbed, burned, manipulated, electrocuted and left for dead, yet that was somehow the greatest shock I had ever felt.

“Pardon me, but it seems there’s been a misunderstanding,” said Ryou at my side. “You see, we do not work for you.”

“Then what the hell are you doing here? Scram!”

The suited prick tried literally shooing us away, and received a chorus of approving murmurs from his colleagues.

It was genuinely incredible. They were so oblivious to the things happening beneath them that they didn’t even know they were under attack. Hell, it didn’t even seem like they knew who we were. Were the upper class seriously that oblivious to the world around them? It almost didn’t feel real.

“Hey Toki. Looks like these guys ain’t got a damn clue what we’re here for. Funny, ain’t it?” said Fujiko

“Funny? Funny how?”

“They spend their whole damn lives ignorin’ the sufferin’ of everyone else, and now that ignorance is gonna get ‘em killed. Ain’t that kinda hilarious?”

“Ah. Yeah. I guess you’re right.” I drew my blood-stained sword from its sheath. “I guess that is pretty funny.”

All hell broke loose.

Every person at the tables drew their guns at the same time. It was deafening. Shots were fired in every direction, shrapnel ricocheting off walls and the ceiling. All the while, I calmly jumped onto the table and slowly walked my way towards the fat pig at the far end.

Several guns took aim at me. Every bullet missed, my slight adjustments in movement being enough to dodge the rare few strays that were actually on target. A trail of blood followed me. Fujiko and Ryou stabbed and sliced their way through every suit from one end of the room to the other. Meanwhile, my gaze was transfixed on the one sat at the very end.

“N-no! Not today! I can’t die today!”

The fat pig practically rolled out of his chair and scrambled to his feet, bolting out of the door behind him. I continued to walk slowly. I knew someone like him couldn’t run for long.

The gunshots in the room went silent as my allies finished off their final targets. Only one remained. And he wasn’t getting far.

We followed the sound of his footsteps through the hallway until we entered a room with a back wall entirely of glass. As we all stepped in, his greasy mug reappeared and slammed a button on said wall. The door closed behind us.

“Haha! You imbeciles! You walked straight into my trap! These walls are made of bulletproof glass. Hell, even a tank shell can’t break it! Now I just have to wait for my MPs to get here and finish you off! Ahahahahaha!” The fat pig’s voice called through a speaker system inside the glass room. On the other side, he was doing the most pathetic victory dance I had ever seen. Like a bowling ball sprouted legs and was trying to learn how to walk.

“Hey, Ryou?”

“Yes, dear girl?”

“Your teleportation works by turning your body into light, right?”

“That is correct.”

“And light travels through glass.”

“Of course.”

“So…”

“Give it a moment. I want to enjoy this.”

The three of us stood and watched as the rotund man slowly wore himself out. At some point it passed the point of being funny and just started to be a little sad. There was a flash of light one moment, and a sword in his lower back the next.

“Agh- you bitch!” he screamed pathetically as he toppled to the ground. Ryou punched the button on the wall, and the glass door between us opened.

“You had every chance to make something better of your life. Don’t act like you deserve anything less than this,” I spat at the bastard.

“I knew y- argh! You… Kageno bastards… were bad news…”

The three of us froze. Did he say what we thought he said?

“You… what did you just say?” I said, grabbing him by the tux and pulling him towards me.

“Kageno… bastards… that’s who you are… right?”

I let go. That name. That fucking name. It had come up again. Why?

“You know something about Kageno Kairai?” said Ryou, holding the sword soaked in his blood up to his neck. “Speak, and I’ll make your death quick.”

“Haaaa… you really are… just a group of… loudmouthed upstarts… ain’t ya?” the bleeding bastard actually had the audacity to cackle. “You have… no idea… what you’re… getting yourselves… into…”

“Z and W. Talk.”

“Z and W? Those-” he stopped and spat blood. “Those small timers? They’re… nothing… compared to her…”

“Her? The girl in green?” pressed Ryou.

“No… even… Graviton… bends to her.”

“Then who the hell is she?”

“...Aki.”

“Aki? Who the hell is Aki?” I said, grabbing his shirt once again. But this time, he didn’t say anything in response. Instead, he started grabbing at his throat. Scratching his own skin, like something was trying to get out.

“Hell’s up with fatso?” asked Fuji.

“I don’t know, he just-”

My cybernetic eye identified something.

A modified dead-man switch.

“It’s a bomb!”

I looked around, but there was nowhere to escape. There was no time left.

I overclocked. I grabbed both Ryou and Fuji by the arms, almost definitely dislocating them in the process, and ran the other way.

Had to get away. Had to get clear of the blast. Had to get to a safe distance-

“Fuck!”

The bomb detonated. We were blown out of the window.