Lockout

"You will all be stationed in various strategic areas throughout the city when the bomb goes off. If you must wander, be sure to do so with much greater caution. We cannot afford to draw extra suspicion at this point in the plan."

Jacob looked down at the location he had been given. "Tsubame's Cookery."

"Should any of these locations prove to have unforeseen defences in place, it is incumbent upon the unit stationed there to bypass those defences. That is all! Dismissed!"

He stood up from where he was sitting, saluting with his arms in front of him in a sideways T shape, his left fist halfway up his right forearm. The troops in front of him mimicked the salute before filing out through the exit.

***

Jacob woke up, his head near the window. The miasma outside was gone. He was lying on top of the table. The sleeping arrangements from last night came back to him. He saw Chizuru sleeping on one of the benches, with Izumi already awake on the other, writing something in a notebook.

"Good to see you're up." Izumi said, leaning forward to peek behind the window's closed curtain, her head uncomfortably close to Jacob's as she did. "Seems like the miasma has cleared. Probably still a good idea for Tsubame to keep her Tag going though. I'm not liking the look of the guys wandering the streets."

The guys in question were wearing splotchy gray and green camouflage, armed with weapons that Izumi didn't recognize.

Jacob clambered off the table. "Shit!" he hissed, scrambling off the table onto the bench next to Izumi. He was looking around, trying to find a way to hide his face before just covering it with his hands.

"The chances of them seeing you are super low, don't worry." Izumi said, keeping her voice low so as to not wake the still-slumbering Chizuru.

"No, it's- The thing is-" he stammered.

"You are—or were—in cahoots with them, whoever they are. Am I correct?"

He nodded, shrinking into himself.

"Riko seems to think she's got you figured out," Izumi continued, "and I'm inclined to believe her, since her hit rate with that kind of stuff is surprisingly high, but she also clearly doesn't have the full picture given how little she's seen of you. She tends to have tunnel vision when it comes to... certain things." She cleared her throat. "At any rate, I need to know what your deal is. I can only assume you were sent here to mess with anything that might've stopped that weapon thing's effect." Her face darkened. "So I need you to tell me why you didn't."

"I don't know if I have an answer for you. At least not one that you'd like."

She leaned in a little. "So you do have an answer then."

He fidgeted in his seat. "I just... You guys seem nice, I guess."

She leaned in more. "Really? That's it? I call bs."

"Yeah, I figured you'd say that."

She was looming over him at this point. "And you knew it wouldn't be enough for me."

He shrank into his seat. "Yeah..."

Izumi leaned back, looking up at the ceiling.

Silence stretched out between them.

"God, I swear, Izumi. You get caught up on the smallest of things." Chizuru's voice broke the silence. "He's fine. If he was gonna do anything, he'd've already done it, and at this point whoever put him up to this is probably more fed up with him than you are, which looks to be quite the achievement."

Chizuru sat up from where she was lying.

"You were listening the whole time, weren't you." Izumi deadpanned, to which Chizuru just smiled.

"Anyways, c'mon, we gotta give 'em some hell! Whatever they've been doing to Hyper-Tokyo for the last few hours, we've gotta pay it back with extra love! And punches."

"You're gonna give me grey hairs at this point." Izumi said, shooing Jacob out of the bench as she did. "I'm guessing we're grabbing Riko and Yoshiro for this?"

***

"So you're telling me not only that our coverage wasn't 100%, but that there was more than one stronghold? Spread out across the settlement!? Probable deserters!?!" His voice got louder as he talked, ending in a shout. The table shook as he brought his fist down. The room was silent. "Who came up with this farce of a plan? Whoever it was, I want them personally sent to the front lines to sort this mess out."

"But sir!" One of the figures replied. "Surely you can't! I'm hardly suited for field work!"

"You opened this box, and now you'd best put every last monster back in, otherwise not even the hope that's left in the box will save you. Dismissed."

Newly-appointed field officer Jameson shuddered at the memory, pulling at his gloves to make sure they were still on. From one of the top possible offices to mere grunt work. It was more than he could bear. He barked orders over walkie-talkie to surround the various holdouts. He couldn't allow a resistance movement to build up here too. Everything was riding on him. He looked at the entrance of Tsubame's Cookery.

The doors flew open, revealing five figures.

All hell broke loose.

Chizuru was out of the door in an instant, several runes glowing a deep green on her arms. Her form blurred as the runic effect was amplified several times over. With how fast she was able to move, her hover skates wouldn't be able to accelerate fast enough for her. She pushed off the ground, activating her skates to keep her momentum. The trajectory of her launch forward was clear. The man who was issuing commands.

Fist connected with face.

The other soldiers followed her movements, too slow to actually do anything as she deactivated her skates and launched towards her next target. By the time they had their weapons trained on where their commanding officer was standing, she was already at her next target.

With all the other soldiers distracted, Riko, Yoshiro, and Izumi got to work. Yoshiro pushed off from the doorway, taking on a group of soldiers who were coming around from the side of the building. Riko started calling down lightning, the runes that she had just applied to her arms not even dry yet as they fizzled out with each lightning bolt. The strikes were hardly lethal, especially in tightly-packed groups like what was in front of her, but they were enough to let someone else swoop in and deal with them, which Izumi was more than happy to do. She pushed off like Yoshiro, aiming for each of the groups that Riko was stunning.

The assault was swift and vicious, with the soldiers barely having the time to counterattack. A few loud cracks filled the air as the few soldiers who were able to maintain their composure fired off their weapons, but none of the shots hit.

Through all of this, Jacob stood in the doorway, transfixed by the carnage unfolding in front of him, stepping a few steps out of the doorway in a haze. Commanding officer Jameson was waking up from the nap that Chizuru's fist had induced. They locked eyes.

"TRAITOOOOOR!" The officer's voice echoed across the impromptu battlefield. He pulled off his right glove, showing off the back of his hand, where a sigil was carved. It was a deep purple, malignantly pulsing and dripping energy that dissipated moments after it left the rune. "YOU'LL PAY FOR YOUR TREACHERY WITH YOUR LIFE!"

The rune's pulsating sped up, until it seemed to stop, and a blast of purple light poured forth from the rune, heading towards Jacob. He backed up, his eyes wide as saucers. Whatever it is, that can't be good.

It was alright though, because he could just go back into the building. If Tsubame's Tag was able to keep the fog out, surely it would be able to keep out whatever this was. He just had to back through the open door and-

Thud.

He backed into something solid. Looking behind himself, he saw nothing but the open air of the doorway. He pushed against the empty air, but it wouldn't give way, only wavering slightly.

The energy hit him.

He screamed.