It wasn't reassuring to learn I was right. We weren't really a match for entrenched special-forces armed with exotics so new and dangerous that they'd not even reached distribution yet.

We discovered and confirmed this as any scientist would; through repeated experimentation. Whether we assaulted the compound head-on, came at it through stealth, tried picking off the patrols, or deploying the eccentric abilities of one of our team, nothing worked. They were always ready, always prepared. But of course they were, they were the best of the best, and their sole mission was to stop us.

Our attempts didn't really hold up, either. It wasn't long before it was too dangerous to even get close, or that we saw ever-growing numbers of XPCA patrolling the streets, strike teams marching in formation and recon units slipping in and out of shadows as they swept for any sign of us. In fact, it wasn't long before we had to leave the Tokyo area altogether, and not even by train, as those were now all being watched.

It was late at night and we'd just failed another raid. Lia sounded exhausted in my comms as I sat, back against a wall, panting over the body of one of Saga's 'toads', the slippery-minded bastards seemed to have an unerring gift for spotting us and sussing us out no matter how well we hid or prepared. I was beginning to wonder if they were the product of some kind of super-soldier project, or actually mindless minions animated by an Exhuman, a genesist.

But the one near me was human enough. If it was just animated flesh, there would be no need for it to be living for an Exhuman to control it. It had breathed and looked and thought...until we'd cut it down, but even now, it laid there, smelling of death, seeping blood was the same as any other corpse I'd seen.

They fought like devils, though. Superhuman strength and reflexes, at least. They reminded me of the false-Dragon we'd fought and killed at the XPCA boneyard. Not quite on his level, but close. Closer still in attitude and mannerisms. They always seemed unimpressed, even when dying. And, most unnervingly, Saga hadn't been able to touch him either.

"One more headed your way, Athan," Lia reported out. "Karu's had to pull out, she picked up a flight of air combat drones."

A hand drifted into my view and I took it, the girl on the other end of it easily pulling me to my feet despite our size difference.

"You okay?" AEGIS asked.

"I'm just banged up and tired. It feels like we've been running and fighting forever."

She gave me a sympathetic smile. "It's been a rough couple of days."

"Incoming!" Lia warned, and both of us dropped to ready.

This toad had a long, serrated blade in one hand and a short tri-barreled shotgun in the other, and like his peers, seemed completely unsurprised to stumble onto us. Behind him were a pair of shadow ops, which I only recognized by sensing them, hidden behind optical camo as they were.

"I have the extras," Saga said, and I felt her mind at work nearby. Almost instantly, the two shadow ops began to roil, their silent padding towards and around us arrested by their own jerking movements. No longer sane, they whipped their weapons towards the nearest thing--

And with two precise shots, the toad blasted both of them squarely in the upper torso, the camo erupting into a rain of gore from nowhere. Without so much as blinking, he turned the gun on AEGIS and fired.

I whipped the two of us around so the shots would strike my back and shield, but it was no ordinary shotgun. The pellets were faster, denser...whatever the reason, my shield barely caught them before they tore into me, and I felt my back tighten with adrenaline-soaked pre-pain as the shrapnel buried into my back.

AEGIS continued the momentum of our spin, using it to launch herself straight at him. His blade came up, and she kicked it up and above his head before she even landed, planting only one foot on the ground before the same kicking foot lashed out again, straight at his neck.

He barely got the gun up in time, which was still saying something considering her speed. And the force...the impact of her heel wrapped the barrel of the gun entirely around her foot. She snapped it sideways, tearing the gun from his hand and slapping him across the face with the butt of it before bouncing back out of range and struggling for a moment to extract the twisted firearm from her foot.

He bounced with her, coming in wild with a horizontal swing of that ugly, serrated blade. I threw swords in its path, but he just cut through them, apparently oblivious to the pain and damage they inflicted. And now she was the one barely getting her hands up in time, shoving off the blade itself with her palms and flying backwards to soak as much of the cutting momentum as possible, hobbling awkwardly with the gun still warped around her sole.

She stumbled, she slid, I could almost feel her auto-gyros frantically self-correcting as her arms pinwheeled in the air.

And then she crashed onto her butt on the ground, and he raised for another blow.

"Athan!" Lia shouted at me, and I was already moving, but not fast enough. My back was caught hunched over and I couldn't convince the auto-gyros in my exoframe that I needed to move forward now. I felt Saga blast him a few times with waves of pure psionic energies, but they barely made him blink.

And then, as he planted his feet and readied a strike, he just stopped dead.

Literally. Dead on his feet. I was there, AEGIS was recovering, Lia was about ready to go into conniptions over comms, but the blow never fell. He just stood there with the weapon in his hands.

"What...the…?" AEGIS asked while I put a stim patch on my neck.

"Did he just...have a stroke? Or something?" I asked.

AEGIS warily advanced and then, delicately, like it might wake him, put her hands on his neck and read his vitals, before probing across his body. "He's...absolutely dead. Never seen anything like it. Acute nervous system failure looks like. His joints are completely locked up, it's like, instant tetanus. His heart stopped, his brain has no oxygen...and he's…"

"Creepy as hell?" I suggested.

"Well I wasn't going to put it that way, but yeah," she said, shivering as she took a step away. "Think it's because he's a toad? Something involving that process went wrong?"

Someone cleared their throat nearby and we all jumped and turned.

It was a normal-looking Japanese dude. He bowed at us, and practically by reflex now, we bowed back. He was wearing a tee shirt and slacks, but most interesting was the length of straight wooden pipe in his hand, which looked to me exactly like a blowpipe, though I'd never seen one outside of movies and such.

He began to speak, and of course, it was all in Japanese. Although I did recognize the konbanwa part of it as 'good evening', but that was as far as I got. AEGIS engaged him in chatter for a moment before turning to us.

"Blowpipe," she said, gesturing with an open hand at the man's armament. "A very potent neurotoxic dart. He says he has seen us fighting the toads and wanted to help."

"Um, thank you," I said, addressing him. "Uhh, don't touch the moustache."

I got the small noise of acknowledgement, the half-bow, and the correct pronunciation as well as several 'hai, hai's as I'd gotten every other time I'd massacred the language on this trip to someone. It was a little startlingly consistent.

And also, very strange given the context. I cleared my throat.

"Um, can you ask him why he was walking around the city at night with a neurotoxic blowdart, watching us fight?"

"Head's up guys, more inbound," Lia chimed in. "You've got...maybe nine or ten minutes."

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AEGIS was fully capable of speaking while she listened and related my question as Lia spoke. The man answered and she translated.

"He says, he is Hibakusha, and he hoped the dart would be for Ikeda-san. I mean, Ichiro."

I furrowed my brow at her while she chatted with him more like it was the most natural thing in the world. Maybe it was just the fact that I was exhausted and she could never be, but this situation seemed a lot more...like...worrying than she was acting. Like, who the hell was this guy? What's a Hibakusha? And why does that mean we should trust him?

She gave me a frown when I asked. "Um, I told you before. They're the terrorist organization looking to bring down IkaCo for producing the exotic weapons. They liken the proliferation of these crazy firearms to the nuclear state of the world, between the Cold War and the Sino War."

"Oh," I said, remembering that she did say that. It seemed a lot less important then, before I thought we'd ever be meeting these guys. I think the Hibakusha guy saw my glimmer of recognition and again, gave me a smile and a half-bow.

"I'm just asking him about their philosophy and how they know about the arms. He says a lot of them were once all part of IkaCo variously, and it wasn't until people started questioning the company and then disappearing or winding up dead that there was any sort of formal resistance. People started leaving, out of fear for their lives, anyone who spoke out was silenced, and it was like the government couldn't or wouldn't hear them at all. This gentleman is the brother of an employee who was killed in such a way."

"Oh. I'm so sorry to hear that," I said. It felt like a stupid thing to say, completely insufficient to the problems this guy was facing, but as AEGIS translated for me, the man's smile was small, tight-lipped, but genuine, as he gave me an acknowledging nod.

"He says...thank you. And in better Japanese than yours--" the man began talking again, more excitedly this time, and I waited for a translation. "Um, he says...that they appreciate what we are trying, but it will never work. In fact, our overt movements have done nothing but increase IkaCo's active forces and public sympathy."

"Well I've noticed the first part," I agreed. "Lia, how long on that ETA?"

"Six minutes. Don't linger."

"He says the Hibakusha think we should stop doing what we're doing. The more we attack the one place, the easier it will be for them to stop and kill us, and he would prefer we not die. Aw, that's sweet."

"Well, tell him we can't. We have a friend there, and we're not going to abandon her."

They spoke again for a moment and she turned back to me. "He says, the Hibakusha have a plan, if we would be willing to help. They can't do it with their strength, but they do have the knowledge we need." Her eyes sparkled at me, and I knew she was sold as soon as insider knowledge and plans were being offered.

Honestly, given how things had been going, I'd take just about any plan now. So I listened carefully as he spoke...and then again and more practically as she repeated it in English.

"IkaCo does not own these soldiers. We know that, they're only here because of the weapons, and also because of the weapons...in a more general sense, I guess? Oh that was a Japanese pun! I get it. Um, anyway, these men are here for the guns, but the XPCA and everyone else is going to keep turning up in spades so long as the source of their arms is threatened."

"Right. Not only do the XPCA have a bone to pick with us, we're threatening them indirectly, by attacking their dealer, basically," I said.

"Yeah. Ooh, I like this plan. But see, there's a weakness in that relationship. Do you spot it?"

"Four minutes guys," Lia reminded us. AEGIS pouted a moment as though Lia were intentionally ruining her fun and then continued.

"Well the issue is that these soldiers only care about IkaCo as much as IkaCo is useful to them. There's not a ton of goodwill between these groups, it's just a practical partnership. So if we destroy IkaCo's utility…"

"Then they'll stop protecting Ichiro, because he's no longer of use."

"Exactly. There might still be some professional favors he can call in or something, but right now, we're seeing the whole of the XPCA dropping in on us, halfway across the world. They won't be able to justify doing that if it's just favors."

"That's true. That's great!" I said, thinking about how relatively easily Saga had been turning these groups on each other already. "That's a hell of a plan. All we have to do--"

I paused. "Wait, all we have to do is succeed at destroying IkaCo, which is what we're already failing to do. This doesn't help at all."

AEGIS smiled broadly. "You're right, but that's where the inside knowledge from Hibakusha comes in. He says there's an external connection which is exposed, which the XPCA can't and won't protect, because it's secret. It was that connection which started the Hibakusha's questioning of IkaCo to begin with, and led to the current situation."

"And that is?" I asked.

"Two minutes guys. They'll have visual confirmation if you stay any longer. I know you're having a nice chat, but pull out now."

AEGIS sighed. "We should go."

"You're impossible," I told her as she thanked the man, and all three of us exchanged bows. "What about the plan? What about the information?"

"I got it all," she said, tapping her head. "But Lia's right, we don't want to risk another pointless fight. We'll pull out, then we'll talk."

"Pretty big risk there if you ask me," Saga commented. "Athan's pull-out game is pretty weak. That's why I always use protection."

"Just get your dumb butts over here," Lia commented flatly.

AEGIS and I tore off, kicking off the ground hard enough to crack the asphalt, and blowing past the huge country blocks like they were dollhouses. Through the stims, I could feel that the pain in my back wasn't so bad. My shield had done most of the job, but I'd still probably be in surgery tonight under AEGIS' hand, pulling twisted pieces of metal out of my skin and muscle. It wasn't anything I was looking forward to.

"Karu's back first," Lia said. "That officially makes Athan and AEGIS the losers."

"Technically, only one of us will be the loser,' AEGIS beamed, kicking her speed up half a step. Again, I was a little exhausted and a little beat up and a little stressed for her joviality. If I was going to lose, so be it.

But she didn't leave me in the dust. As soon as she saw I wasn't rising to the game, she rejoined my side. "The night we learned about Ichiro's connection to Idris," she said. "When we were holed up in that 'net cafe in San Francisco, the day after breaking into the Irenside Manor."

"Where you had a stupid globe for a prop?"

"A very effective and useful visual aid, to promote education and information retention, yes."

"It was a stupid globe."

"And yet you remember it, so obviously it worked. Anyway, do you remember what I pointed to on that globe?"

I nodded at her, though the gesture was somewhat lost in our strides. "China. You learned that IkaCo is getting tech from China. Some kind of warlord out there or something."

"Yeah. And that's the place our friend was just talking about. That's the controversial source of the tech necessary for them to build these exotics and ship them around the world. The whole world, but especially Japan kinda hates China, for starting a nuclear war, because Japan has...sort of a personal cultural loathing for nukes and their usage. To say nothing of being neighbors to a country which is all fallout and glass now."

"I can imagine."

"So any kind of trade deal or whatever with whomever's out there is like, a big no-no, and yet IkaCo's doing it. Even if the XPCA knows about it, even if they wanted to protect that source, there's ultimately no justifying it. The US simply wouldn't agree to sending forces to protect a national enemy, which China purportedly is. Their own hundred-year propaganda campaign has them pinned."

"So if we go in there and shut down the source," I followed, "we wouldn't have all this military interference from everywhere. It'd just be us, and this Sino warlord. And if we knock him out, not only have we done the world a favor in kicking China in the teeth again--"

"You do realize it's probably not actually a Chinese dude in there, what with them being wiped out and all? More than likely an independent Russian cell or something."

"--but also, we'll strip away the resources that IkaCo uses to control these world militaries. The company will crumble, and we'll be able to take Moon back in the wreckage."

"Almost TOO good of a plan," Lia commented.

"Yeah, almost. Except we're still going to cross a giant glass desert, hunt down a vicious, and improbably-successful warlord, who is probably as powerful as he is ugly, to say nothing of whatever technology he's got that's so advanced, one of the biggest corporations in the world can't replace it or replicate it on their own, and do all this under the XPCA's nose."

"Yeah," Lia agreed. "Almost too good."

If I weren't still on the stims, I'd have laughed. The situation hadn't changed or improved, but we had a plan on how to go forward at least, and apparently, that was huge in my mind. It didn't sound plausible, even really possible to do what we were discussing here, but hell, if we stayed where we were, it would just be a matter of time before a lucky shot caught one of us, or a toad burst through a wall and chokeslammed me into the ground or some shit.

At least this plan led us somewhere, had promise. As hard and long a road as it looked, there was a light at the end of it, and as beaten down as we were, that light meant everything to us.

The light of the Moon, I thought to myself, and this time I did laugh. Because that was corny and awful. But hell, sometimes that was what you needed to keep on.