Abandoning her car the moment she arrived near Sector Three due to all the heavy traffic residing there, Seraphina Jaeger resorted to run on foot, amid all the sudden rain that showered down on her with no umbrella to shield her, fate had decided that she was to be late yet again.

There it was, 8-12 street in Sector Three, the busiest street in the city at the moment. The crowds ranged from commoners to businessmen and women to corporate employees and officials. It was easy to determine why the variety in the crowd exist and why there was a crowd in the first place, since crimes such as the one Seraphina was about to handle were rare in this new world, it was rare to see someone be able to break the system, someone to be able to evade at all costs. Even gang members and people of the underworld still worked and practiced all their crimes under the vision of the system, “to keep the balance,'' they would say.

Seraphina stood in between the crowds, confined by a group of cosplayers. None could understand the fashion trends during that time, but they just went along with it. Seraphina could not stand how most people decked themselves in excessive costumes, and how they always looked like they were competing to see who has more feathers, or whatever accessory they stocked themselves with. She pushed through the crowds and the seemingly long street until she reached the barricaded sidewalk.

The alleyway block perched gloomily, mimicking the feeling one would get from a dark and grizzling horror mansion welcoming whatever poor soul would enter, it was desolated entirely from life like an abandoned town, griddled only by policemen and the FPASB from everywhere. Seraphina reached into her pocket and brought out her police identification badge she had received after her final test in the academy. The holographic tape opened up momentarily for Seraphina to pass, only to be closed a moment later, no one from the crowd bothered to move or pay attention to Seraphina walking through easily, they all seemed like lifeless puppets just standing still on a stage with nothing but apathetic interest. Seraphina immediately began to sort out her already drenched clothes, as the sidewalk was covered from the rain by a large canopy tent.

Inside the canopy tent were random officers you would find here and there, accompanied by FPASB operatives dressed nicely in suits and covering their eyes by the unnecessary and customary sunglasses to add on to their mysterious impression and demeanor — a few more hours and it would be midnight, how can they see with all the darkness? Only God knows. What seemed like military surplus cases were nested on top of each other like one giant and wide pedestal, in the deep end of the sidewalk, near the alleyway entrance, tucked only by the two officers who observed the briefing screen that rested on the cases. A drone, which stood out as the only drone moving around instead of the other drones standing by the barricade tape, seemed to be scouting the area for whatever unusual items or clues they could find, perhaps it was a search and investigation drone, Seraphina would think. The last thing — which should have been the first in all honesty — Seraphina had noticed was the only female officer standing in the area, she could only glance at the woman from the back as she was facing the direction of the alleyway entrance, the woman seemed to have a long and dark brown hair, mostly wrapped up in a ponytail. She was swathed only in a blue rain jacket from what Seraphina could see from behind and black shorts (not even a skirt), it was an attire unbefitting of an officer working in the law, the strict and naive Seraphina would think, making her question if the woman was with police or not.

With everyone busy with their tasks at hand and no one bothering to approach young Seraphina, she shifted her legs one by one and walked in the direction of the woman’s, as she looked like the easiest person to approach — from behind at least. As Seraphina got closer, she noticed the back of the woman’s jacket had the police’s symbol of peace on, along with an extra shape of what looked like a brain above it, under the symbol was the acronym “A.P.S”, which Seraphina failed to translate, she was new after all. But she figured that the woman was indeed with the police, the police symbol giving it immediately away.

Seraphina positioned herself exactly a few feet away from the woman, who was slightly taller than her, but she suddenly paused. Was she supposed to approach the woman? In fact, Seraphina had forgotten who she was supposed to meet, she vaguely remembered Daiya mentioning a special agent, the woman certainly had an out-of-place attire, so she could have been that agent. If only I could I remember the name, Seraphina thought in the midst of her worry.

Unexpectedly, the woman turned her head to the side, only for her eye to take a slight glance at Seraphina behind her. The woman smiled and turned to face Seraphina, ‘Ah, you must be the new recruit,’ the woman welcomed Seraphina with a warm and mature smile.

‘An Intern Operative from the FPASB, Seraphina Jaeger reporting,’ Seraphina set her gesture to a salute before her face suddenly shifted to confusion, stopping her from continuing her words. It was confusion towards the woman, her face was full of a mature tenor, that of someone who is calm and calculated, seeming to be an inquisitive person, yet she also seemed like someone able to steal your boyfriend in a bar without a flinch with her upturned eyes and cupid’s bow lips, but Seraphina swayed that silly thought away. The most important feature in the woman that caught Seraphina off guard, was simply the fact that she looked almost exactly like Daiya, the leader of the CCTF, ‘M-Ms. Daiya…?!’ Seraphina found herself accidentally muttering Daiya’s name upon seeing the woman’s face.

‘Oh...! So you have met my sister,’ the woman spoke with a soft, yet a mature feminine tone in her voice, ‘A playful one, isn’t she?’

Then Seraphina remembered what Daiya had told her about her sister earlier, “you’ll know her when you see her.” This woman was Daiya’s sister, twin sister more likely, however, the woman looked slightly older than Daiya, maybe a three-year difference, but their extreme likeness made Seraphina dismiss that they had an age difference at all — twins, first and foremost, are the same age.

The woman sensed Seraphina’s loss for words and her superlative overtone of amateurism, she chuckled and placed her hand in Seraphina’s direction, asking for a handshake, ‘I’m Riona Kurashima, head of the APS Division. Ni— ’

Seraphina stopped Riona midway through her sentence, as she bowed down in respect to her. The moment Seraphina heard the words “head of”, she realized how high positioned Riona was, and how rude she was to her as a subordinate. ‘Excuse my rudeness, ma’am!’ she uttered with a firm but apologetic tone.

Riona smiled once again and chuckled, ‘I don’t mind the formalities, ease up.’

But Seraphina remained as she was, choosing to respect her superior like she was taught. Riona reached out her hands to set Seraphina’s position back to upright before pulling up her thumb with a smile on her face.

Much like her twin sister, Riona had a thoughtful and eased up personality in comparison with the other hard-boiled stick-in-the-mud officers and operatives. However, when it came to it, Riona was a responsible and somewhat strict person, able to manage, and hand out individual and various tasks to all her subordinates. But even with her position and name being “The Boss” to everyone around her, she wasn’t the backbiting and officious type of leader, always supporting the teamwork and trying to keep up good morale among everyone. When she was just a normal detective (which was only about four years ago), she and her sister were regularly the life of every team or squad they were placed on, with her sister bearing the mantle much more as Riona was the mature one out of the two of them — she stuck more with the title of a “fun” team leader in those days.

Two men approached both Seraphina and Riona, they were the same two individuals near the military cases that Seraphina assumed were officers. One was around a hundred and eighty-four centimeters tall with the other being a hundred and seventy-five centimeters tall. Nevertheless, they stood like giants compared to Seraphina’s a bit below average height, the same could have been said about Riona’s average height.

The taller of the two men had a slightly darkened, maybe tanned, skin with a muscular build that wasn’t leaning too much on the “bodyguard” appearance. He seemed to be around his late thirties as he stood out with his wide-set and blood-piercing eyes, along with his Balbo beard and messy bed head hairstyle. Most of his appearance screamed that he was a thug, or perhaps an ex-yakuza to anyone’s knowledge. He wore a dark blazer, covering a dark shirt (that was almost unbuttoned near the chest) with an upturned collar, and a normal suit pants, and a dark snakeskin shoes and belts at his legs that matched the rest of his upper body attire.

Despite the thuggish looks of the taller man, the other man stood as more outlandish with his attire than threatening or thuggish. He was certainly of a slim build. His skin was of a normal caucasian color. Seraphina failed to confirm whether he was a foreigner from his looks like her or not, as he did seem to be of mixed ancestry, probably Eurasian. He had a friendly, almost boyish, face but it didn’t subvert the seriousness of his general look. His hair was in a dark shade of blonde, it was unkempt and longer than usual, almost reaching the back of his neck. He presented himself with a professional attire, as opposed to his colleague, with a long and dark trench coat that was slightly unbuttoned around his chest, revealing a glimpse of his knit high-neck red sweater underneath, while wearing black pants that seemed to imply that it helped with flexibility just from appearance, and dark boots at his feet. Another feature that stood out more than anything else in him, were his eyes, he had different colored irises, with his right eye being of hazel color and the other of blue. Seraphina did not question the color of the man’s eyes, one of them was probably artificial, she thought to herself. She also couldn’t shake the thought that he seemed awfully familiar. If Terminus wasn’t as big as it was, she could have probably guessed that she had spotted him before in the streets, but that seemed unlikely.

After closer inspection on the two men by Seraphina, she started to notice that both men felt like polar opposites by standing next to each other, the thuggish man felt like an upbeat and open person while the blonde man seemed like a firm, silent, and a by-the-book strict person, almost resembling Kotarou’s tendency — only in tendency, Seraphina would remind herself as she looked away from his extremely youthful face.

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'Updates?’ Riona spoke with a firm tone towards her two subordinates.

‘Nothin,’ the thuggish man said with annoyance as he rubbed the back of his neck, he spoke with a raspy voice, a voice that could be mistaken for the throaty voice of a heavy smoker, ‘We had surveillance on the alleyways from the inside, nothin but the damn homeless, all the buildings were even filled with em. Even if that old bastard really passed through there, the homeless wouldn’t have cared less about his presence. They would’ve probably mistaken em and the hostage for a drunken couple.’

‘There’s a hostage?!!’ Seraphina shouted with shock, interrupting the dialogue, and further increasing the annoyance of the thuggish man, ‘Oh, I’m… I’m very sorry!’ She bowed down once again. She was never informed back at the department that the nettracer was holding a hostage in his possession, but she thought back again, thinking that perhaps Daiya had informed her of that during the information overload that she heavily remembered.

The thuggish man was visibly confused to Seraphina’s presence, the blonde man, however, expressed little to no expression but only a slight sigh that escaped his breath. Riona placed her hand on her forehead, probably at Seraphina’s incompetence and how rude her interruption was, Seraphina would think.

Riona cleared her throat, ‘Agents, this is Seraphina Jaeger! A new FPASB operative,’ she waved her hand in Seraphina’s direction, as to introduce her, while Seraphina immediately bowed again and greeted the two men, ‘Seraphina, these are the APS Special Agents, Ichiban Yagami…,’ she pointed at the thuggish man, but he simply groaned and turned his head away from Seraphina’s direction, setting off her first impression. ‘And this is Yashiro Kira,’ Riona pointed at the blonde man. He, in contrast to the thuggish man, nodded his head and smiled warmly at Seraphina, being the one out of the two men to actually bother with greeting her.

As the introductions were finally done, Seraphina’s questioning shifted to another topic. It occurred to her that she had no idea what the division Riona and those two men belonged to, only the acronyms “A.P.S”, which did not ring a bell to her ears.

'Uh…,’ Seraphina spoke once again before the rest would continue with their conversation, ‘What’s the APS?’

Surprise loomed over Riona’s face before smiling once again at Seraphina, who seemed oblivious to everything, somehow she reminded her of her younger self, ‘We are the Advanced Psyche Squad!’ she responded with ease, ‘I thought you were informed of our squad prior to the mission.’

The Advanced Psyche Squad was a whole new division squad specialized in investigating and handling crimes that dealt with psychological disturbance crimes on normal civilians that tend to be extremely philistine and show signs of deviance towards the general system (depending on their psychological evaluations), with the latest example for such crimes being the ex-corporate official turned nettracer. Usually, the APS would approach their crimes in a civilized manner, only resorting to stunning their perps if eminently needed, however, with the nettracer’s case, there could be the possibility of using lethal force, due to his psychological evaluation being low on the danger side, he could become a target of annihilation. With exactly four years on their backs since their foundation by the Public Safety Union, the APS was still considered an anonymous division to many. Their psyche crimes (as the deviant psychological crimes were nicknamed) occurred on rare occasions, most of their crimes dealt with average criminals and such, which is why their existence wasn’t boasted about as much as it should have been.

Seraphina rubbed the back of her head with an apologetic smile, ‘Oh…, I’m sorry, I sorta forgot!’ her response set off the thuggish man, he groaned and constantly tapped his foot on the ground in a hurry, ‘But Kurashima-san told me I was to be assigned with an agent,’ she told Riona about Daiya’s order, hoping that she would have some answers.

'That’s right!’ Riona said. She moved to point her hand towards the men’s direction, implying to Seraphina that one of the agents was to be her current partner for the night, ‘Special Agent Kira will be your partner,’ Riona pointed at the blonde man, Seraphina let out a breath of relief — she did not want to be assigned with the menacing thuggish man.

‘Aight, we finally done here,’ the thuggish man, Ichiban, spoke with vexation, he rested both his hands in his pockets and turned away towards the entrance, proceeding with the start of the mission.

'Wait!’ the blonde man, Yashiro, stopped him, his voice was calm and soothing, that of a strategic person and an obvious contrast to Ichiban, ‘There was something else that Ichi left out, don’t know if he did that deliberately or not,’ he slightly turned his head for a second at Ichiban to throw shade onto him before turning back to face Riona.

'There was?’ Riona said, confused.

‘An abandoned chemical factory is located at the center of this district,’ Yashiro continued, ‘Considering the nature of the nettracer’s psyche, he could be hiding in there. It’s our best shot so far.’

'Right…,’ Riona nodded, then gave a look of disappointment to Ichiban, ‘Head there first and report back to me of what you find then we’ll see what happens next,’ she looked at both Yashiro and Seraphina firmly, ‘Agent Kira! Operative Jaeger will be your responsibility for tonight’s operation.’

‘Got it!’

‘Well, it’s about time we got goin,’ Ichiban said.

Ichiban carried on alone with his tawdry stride, leaving Yashiro and Seraphina in his back.

Yashiro went ahead behind Ichiban, followed by Seraphina, but then swiftly made a left turn toward the surplus cases. Seraphina stood in the middle, confused by Yashiro’s sudden shift, not knowing whether to follow behind Ichiban or wait for Yashiro. A few seconds later and Yashiro was back with something in his hand, a gun. He handed it to Seraphina, who was shocked by it and hesitated to take it.

The gun wasn’t as heavy as the energy guns Seraphina would use during her training in the shooting range, nor did it seem like the old pistols, it resembled the look of a revolver, but its modern design and lightweight gave away the thought it was an actual old revolver. Its cylinder was emitting a small string blue light spiraling like liquid through its chambers. A glowing button matching the small strings lied just above the cylinder's location, a bit to the side near the hammer. Seraphina tried pressing on it, and the strings immediately switched to a red color, nothing else happened to the gun — she expected it to turn into some kind of rifle or something, being that they are from special agents and such.

'That’s a Phaser!’ Yashiro explained, ‘It’s pretty much more of a tool than a normal gun, but yours has level 1 settings, so the only feature you have is this small button. It changes between lethal and non-lethal mode.’

‘What… What are the lethal and no— ’ Seraphina shook her head in confusion before Yashiro cut her off with the rest of his explanation.

'Lethal mode is just a normal gun, it’ll fire proto shots like any other energy gun. Non-lethal is a stun gun, ranging from 100 million to 300 million of voltage,’ Yashiro continued, ‘Only switch to lethal when the target’s reached at least level 3 in the psych evaluation, other than that, most targets are only to be stunned.’ he loaded his gun and clicked on the hammer, ‘But since you are new, only fire on command, other than that, do not press the trigger, Got it?’ He pulled a friendly smile at the end of his words, as to not scare Seraphina.

Seraphina nodded along, she understood the severity of Yashiro’s words and didn’t take them as a threat like she thought she would. If it had been the other guy to explain the work of this gun to her, she most certainly would have been scared.

Both Seraphina and Yashiro shifted back to their march to the alleyway entrance, Ichiban was already halfway through and almost out of sight. Before they could move any further, they were stopped by a voice calling out to them.

'Wait wait!’ a techno voice echoed from behind.

They turned back and saw a floating drone approaching them. The drone was in a rectangular shape that was positioned upright, with a screen of a face formed of dots taking half of its surface, two small mechanical hands extended from beneath it. Seraphina figured it was the drone that was roaming the area that she had seen earlier. She was surprised by the drone’s approach, and almost lively appearance, that it wasn’t just a normal by-command drone like the other ones.

‘I want to come along,’ its voice, behind all the altercation done by a drone’s technical sound, favored that of a boy’s. It shifted its direction to Riona, ‘Boss, I wanna go, pretty please,’ a look of dismay was drawn on Riona’s face, ‘Come on, Boss, pleaaase. I’m connected directly to the net, I can be of guidance. You don’t expect two agents and a newbie to take care of all this, do you? And besides, I'm not reaaally here so it won’t affect me in any way— ’ the drone went on with its ramble at a fast pace that no one was able to keep up with what it was saying.

Riona’s expression changed to the look of a tired parent listening to the non-stop run off at the mouth of their child. Yashiro sighed as he laid the tip of his thumb and the back of his index finger on his forehead while the rest of the arm rested on his other arm. Seraphina watched the drone prattle with her mouth almost open from all the confusion.

Fine!’ Riona burst with anger in a shout but tried to contain herself from bursting any further, ‘You… You can accompany Agent Kira and the new operative. You can only search and investigate on command from Agent Kira, don’t mess with anything on your own.’

The drone screamed in joy and began shifting in circles in its place, it rushed at both Yashiro and Kira, getting closer to Yashiro’s face, ‘Hi, I’m HAL, but of course you already know that, Kira... please don’t get angry and punch me when you get back to HQ, kay?’ it then moved closer to Seraphina’s face, ‘Hi, I’m HAL, Special Neuroseeker Agent of APS, nice to meet you,’ before Seraphina could reply back, the drone continued on, ‘FYI, I’m not actually a drone, I’m currently sitting in the comfort of my room back in the APS HQ. I’ll be helping you with any extra information tonight if you need it,’ it extended its hand like it wanted a handshake.

Seraphina reached out to grab the drone’s arm and shook it, ‘Niice to meet you, Hal. I’m Seraphina,’ she was still confused and a little weirded out by the current situation and the sudden shift in tone in the atmosphere — although it was a favourable shift.

‘Oh, by the way, I’m a guy,’ Hal pointed out his gender, since, as he would explain, he was always mistaken to be a somewhat twelve-year-old girl. And that was mostly due to the way he talked so fast like a child and his overly-friendly demeanor with everyone. It wasn’t until his drone got installed with a voice modifier that he was able to speak with his normal voice instead of just a shifty robotic voice.

Hal was someone who disliked the outdoors and spent most of his time indoors, doing whatever he liked doing on the net. Sometime in his life when he was at his lowest, he got a job at the APS, eventually working as a neuroseeker, a job similar to the nettracer’s (but obviously for the good of the city’s system and law instead of against it), specializing in getting information from unusual places from the net — like the dark web — and breaking into net securities however he wanted. Since Hal was an indoor person and was more on the tech team in the APS more than the special agents, he would end up using his drone as a mean of communication with everything outside the APS HQ and if any mission called for a search and investigation on site.

'Kira, you know what to do,’ Riona looked at Yashiro with her firm look, but she had a slight apologetic feeling in her expression.

Yashiro gave a worn-out smile and nodded. He faced back the alleyway’s entrance, and proceeded further, followed by Seraphina and Hal, who was floating from right to left like an overly-excited child. When did we open a daycare? Yashiro thought to himself, before shrugging his thoughts away and moving on into the entrance of the haunted den.