ONE

Two Years Later...

Location: City of Haven, Downtown Streets

Date: April 27th, 2037

Time: 14:36

The city of Haven was a bustling metropolis, a city like no other in North America. One of the biggest, and the fastest developing by far. Its name suited was it was advertised to be, a safe Haven for those with powers, a place they could live free of a fearful and judgmental society. Its name was derived from the very thing it was supposed to be, a safe Haven for people with abilities in a world where they were not yet fully accepted or integrated with society.

Of course, not everyone in Haven had such abilities, not even close. Most who did were barely touching their potential, weak and untrained abilities, many of such people barely knowing what they could theoretically do, then again, that was the point. It was safer that way. It was a city of twenty million people, most of the population were regular people living amongst the others. For people with abilities, it was the city to live in. It was not so different from any other that it seemed obvious to go to, it was merely its marketing and open doors to people of all kinds that made it that way. Yet, to those people it was home, it was a safe spot where they could have normal lives, living in blissful ignorance of all else around them, leading peaceful lives. As if Haven was truly that.

There were tens of thousands of people rallied near the town centre in one of the many town squares, which overflowed and drained down a massive road six lanes wide; a major road in Haven's downtown lined by a wall of skyscrapers. All were businesses and apartments, all closed like the roadway, with traffic being rerouted and riot control forces backed by ample security, the street was in chaos.

Helicopters flew overhead above the buildings, many of them from various news stations trying to capture what was happening before them. Drones flew lower, over the horde of people, making their way back and forth, monitoring everything below. It was impossible to maintain order in something like this, but all attempts were being made.

An elderly woman in her sixties stood on a large podium in front of all the chaos. A line of riot control APC's surrounding it, with a battalion of riot control police in front of it, all keeping her and her associates guard from the beckoning crowd. Realistically, they could overrun the security easily, but those in the front would be trampled, and many would be hurt especially from the many water cannons pointed toward them from the tops of the APC's.

The woman was speaking into a microphone, her voice echoing through the street, loudspeakers blaring the sound, aided by the many drones that flew among the crowd, each equipped with loudspeakers of their own so that everyone could hear. She made no attempts to calm them, just to speak over them, trying to appeal to the crowd with her words over her actions. She was giving a usual speech of progress, security, and condolences to the families of a recent attack which saw mean dead and wounded by the hands of a rogue ability user.

Yet another event that tore at the relations of those with abilities and those without. Much of the crowd was with her, most were against her. They saw through her façade, hers, and those she worked with. High class business types who had no idea what it was like out of their ivory towers, on the ground levels with all the rest who actually suffered from these events when they happened.

The town square itself was half a kilometer wide, surrounded by tall skyscrapers made of glass which bounced and reflected the sunlight around in every direction, keeping the city well lit and visible. Shadows seemed to perfectly cover the sidewalks of the roads but not the roads themselves, leaving the pedestrians canopied in the hot summer months, but not damaging visibility and light for the drivers as the glass sued semi-reflective surfaces to keep the light in, but not so strong that it was blinding.

It was quite the city in all things. An impressive night life, massive skyscrapers, and powered entirely by solar energy. Solar panel fields coated the roof of every building, covered every parking lot like a canopy, providing shade to vehicles, something especially useful in the hot summers, and generated enough energy to power the city all night, and radiated heat from built in vents to melt any snow that built up on them.

It lived up to its advertisement. It was a safe place, a haven for those with abilities to live free of prejudice or fear of anyone else, a common situation many who had such abilities found themselves in. Certain cultures, nations, and even areas within nations reacted to them differently. In some places they were cast out and seen as cursed, in others they were revered as gods, and everything in between.

The idea of throwing a bunch of people with abilities together in a closely compact city seemed to draw many worries at first, but many studies came to include that just because people had the power, did not mean they would abuse it. Most people it seemed, were not criminals at heart, and had no intention of doing bad things regardless of what they were capable of. Strict laws and regulations ran the city just in case, and enforcement forces were at an ever abundance. Yet, the people were happy, most of the time.

The city was a technological marvel, one of the most advanced cities in the world. It was common for cities made to house the powerful to be so advanced. It was easily at least ten years ahead of the rest of the world, Haven was a leader in cybernetics, androids, artificial intelligence, military and medical technology, weaponry, and research. Those with abilities, the often referred to as 'powerful' were major contributors to such things, as such abilities were highly studied from various labs across the city. A worldwide endeavor which Haven took part, one that saw a lot of money and funding which enhanced the city's economy by a drastic margin.

Yet, with all this advancement, difference, and progress, Haven was still home to the same issues every other faced. Civil unrest, class differences, healthcare and education concerns, crime, political struggles, economic concerns, business and industry struggles, poverty, law enforcement issues, and everything else that is present in every other city in which a municipal government is assigned to mend.

April 27th had seen one of the biggest gathering of people in protest of the political struggles of the people, an event which the powers in control were not yet prepared to handle.

Jun waited in silence as the elevator took him up the floors of one of the tallest buildings in the town square. He was holding a large brief case in his hand which would have looked normally when paired with anyone dressed professionally, though he was anything but. The grey techware pants and the baggy, puffy sleeves blue jacket he wore made the briefcase stand out more than he did. He was a young, Chinese boy, standing at five feet and five inches, his black hair short and messy, and his expression was blank as he just stared at the illuminating floor numbers above the elevator door, signaling how far they were going up. They were going right to the top.

His companion, Shinobu, another uncanny character like Jun, stood just behind him. They stayed in the back of the elevator, letting people get on and off as they went up, never saying a word or even sparing a glance to each other. Shinobu had longer hair, tied into a small ponytail, and dressed in all black Techwire covered in straps and buckles, many of which just hung at his sides. His pants, baggy as they were, were wrapped at the bottom of his legs and tucked into long socks, leaving his feet obscured.

He was a Filipino boy, a few years Jun's senior, but had been in the business for a shorter time. He had grown up as a street punk and had been taken in by Jun's family many years back, and had worked with them since, but Jun was essentially veteran in their line of work, he had grown up in it, and so Shinobu followed as his shadow.

When the elevator dinged and the doors opened at the one hundred and tenth floor, the two were alone. Rarely did all of the rooms in a hotel so large get booked, and the bottom floors always filled out first. Between that and the protesting happening outside, they had some privacy.

Without a room key however, they had to get creative, and Jun had passed Shinobu the briefcase while they walked down the hall before stepping up to a room that Jun guessed by eyeballing it, to be around the middle of the building. He got down on one knee and pulled a lockpicking set out of his pocket and got to work.

"Change is coming!" The woman shouted over the bellowing crowd. "Change is on its way!"

That was what all of the protests were about, change. Changing ways, changing systems, changing who was in power. The people always wanted change. They could never settle for what there was, for what they had. A safe and secure people had bread a greedy people, and it was starting to show.

The woman's words were drowned out by the crowd, cheering and booing all together. Most heard the words, but very few still believed them. There were always promises, always plans and affirmations, always words. But they were only ever just that. Words. Empty words with no backing, and people's doubt of Haven grew with every passing day. The people were growing sick and tired of the city not putting in any money for them, but somehow finding a seemingly unlimited amount of funding for yet another research project, yet another building or sky bridge, yet another thing that didn't affect them.

Shinobu threw the briefcase onto the bed as the two stepped into the empty room. It was a single bed suite with a small backroom out the side, and a television screen on the wall opposite the bed. It was a cheap room, not a penthouse suit or anything luxury, that was above them on floors they had no access to without an authorized key card, one which they were not going to get in order to remain inconspicuous. Jun walked over to the window and pulled the curtains open a bit. He glanced down. It was a long way to the ground.

Heights made him a little uneasy, but he had faced them in much more dangerous circumstances before, one where he wasn't safe in the comfort of inside a set of walls. He lifted the window opened and pulled up a chair from the small desk beside the television. Shinobu opened the briefcase and spread out on each side were metal pieces held in foam casings. It was a weapon, a rifle, one which could be easily assembled and disassembled to fit such a conspicuous case.

As Shinobu started pulling out the pieces and screwing the weapon together, Jun noticed the five bullets that sat upright in the case, each given their own hole in the foam to sit in. They were not very big, just standard thirty caliber rounds, but no less deadly than anything else. Their target, an elderly woman, did not require much to finish the job.

Between her small size, and the fact she was not armoured, nor a soldier trained to be hardened against battle wounds, this was an easy kill. The most important thing was her age. Her old age made her weak, more susceptible to shock, and based on their research of the target, they knew she suffered from cardiovascular problems. Heart problems, and high blood pressure. Her body would not be able to handle it.

Shinobu has the weapon assembled in ten seconds short of a minute, a new record for him. They spent at least a couple hours a day training, drilling, and practicing everything in their arsenal. Weather it was swordsmanship, shooting, assembling and disassembling weapons, maintenance of gear, meditation, it was all part of their doctrine. He passed the rifle off to Jun who leaned forward and stuck the weapon toward the window opening.

Shinobu pulled out a knife from his pocket, flipped the blade out, and sliced open the window screen behind the glass just enough for Jun to fix the barrel through, resting the rifle's bipod on the interior windowsill. He would have to shoot through the safety net that sat outside the window, all windows in the building, and most buildings in Haven had them, so that windows could still be opened without compromising safety.

Jun looked through the scope, though over a kilometer away, he and the woman were facing each other. He had a clear sight through the entire street and of the podium the woman stood on, surrounded by her security a level lower, riot control and APC's all focused on the crowd at their feet, none of them suspecting a threat so drastic, so serious, and from so far away.

Shinobu could hear Jun controlling his breathing, checking his sights and aiming up to counter act gravity, so that as such a distance he would land a clean shot. He popped up the bolt, opening the firing chamber, reached out without taking his eye off his scope, grabbed a bullet and loaded it in, loading the bolt and flicking off the weapons safety, moving his finger over top of the trigger. He took a few more deep breaths, opened his other eye to gauge the distance better, and held his breath.

The woman was shouting once more over the intensity of the volume of over a hundred thousand people. "Change is coming!" She said, before the bullet struck her through the chest.

Two young Japanese women were sitting in the back of a black service van many blocks away. It was a standard looking van, nothing out of the ordinary for the city, completely hidden in plain sight among the field of other cars in the parking garage they sat in. They sat in the rear bay, a set of computers on desks running off a power generator they had against the wall between them and the driver's compartment.

The two sat side by side, their little office taking the entire length of the van's long back. One of the women, Nabi, sported thick black hair in a medium bob with a black, one-piece, sleeveless outfit, fitting like a skintight romper. She wore baggy, black, detached sleeves with it and a long overcoat. She had two pistols in holsters sat on her desk beside her as she worked. Sena, the other woman had longer brown hair, and a very large, puffy, and baggy black and orange sweater over a white shirt. Her legs were cybernetics from the mid thigh down, having lost both of them years ago in a terrible accident during a mission that left her gravely wounded. That she had survived was nothing short of a miracle.

At their computers, the two had their eyes on everything. Satellite images, city maps, live news feeds, communication messages with their people, everything, all hidden in their van where none would think to look. They both watched the live feed, and when they saw the woman get thrown onto her back several feet from her podium, and the erupting chaos that ensued afterward as the crowd went into a panicked frenzy of confusion, Nabi silently picked up her phone and made a call.

As the phone ringed, she watched on the feed as the security went to hold back the crowd and a medical team ran up to the stage. The crowd was going feral. Many tried to rush the stage and were immediately resisted by the riot control; people were getting shields to the face and batons to the ribs as the officers tried to keep them at bay. Many others, in a panic, tried to flea and began pushing through the people.

A wave of confusion and panic shot down the crowd from the podium to the base of the hotel as a hundred thousand people all succumbed to a fight or flight response. Nabi had to turn it off, she didn't want to see what would happen next. She knew it would be chaos that would echo across the whole city, and that was all that mattered.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Then the phone was answered, she wanted no time. "It's done." She said. "You're up."

Kaihua casually walked Haven's sidewalks many blocks away from the rioting. It was quieter in their area, the buildings acting as a fence to block much of the noise, though one would have to be on the other end of the city to not hear it fully. She was a tall, well built woman with long, flowing white hair and blue eyes. It was an unusual set of features for a Chinese woman, an impossible set to be sure, but they were her natural features.

People with abilities sometimes had odd physical traits, the mutations in their DNA which caused the mutations often created a rippling effect, effecting other areas as well, causing little changes throughout. The most common were colour changes of certain features. She wore a long, black, formal dress as if she were headed somewhere on business, with full sleeves and a tight neck, tied neatly in the back with a built in corset.

There were nine others with her, all of them walking in a triangular formation, taking up the entire sidewalk. They all wore combinations of tech ware, jackets, straps, belts, and carried an overall baggy aesthetic, and nearly all of them were sporting at least one sheathed katana, some two. Pedestrians on the sidewalk seemed to part ways for them, stopping and making way for them to pass.

They were a menacing group with their weapons brandished, their quickened strides as if they were headed somewhere important. They looked like a gang, and people were not going to stand against an organized group with swords.

The Cherry Demons, as they were known, had gathered a somewhat notorious reputation. Though many had no idea who they were, the name was common in whisper and behind closed doors. A gang, a crime family that ran the city. A group with power and prestige. A group of ruthless killers. The rumours spread far and wide and were as colourful as the characters who made up their gang. Though they all wore stuff of similar style, they all looked very different, incorporating different colours, outfits, aesthetics, accessories, piercings and tattoos, and some of them, cybernetics.

Yet, no one really knew if they were real. No one knew where they came from or what they actually did. Some assumed they ran the city and paid off the police. Some assumes they were the ones stopping change from happening. Some assumed they were like a mafia, too big to be dealt with, and so they endured. Some assumed they didn't even exist. All of these rumours, their name had become bigger than them, and when people saw a gang of any sorts, or people who looked like a gang, it was not uncommon for them to assume it was the Cherry Demons.

Sightings and encounters blew up on the internet in forums and news feeds, people talked about seeing them on the streets at night, or how certain events were related to them. The Cherry demons were not the only powerful family in Haven, nor were they the biggest, they were however, the most well known and talked about, which Kai had always assumed was due to their name.

Kai had returned her phone to her pocket after hearing the report from Nabi, and looked up to see the building they were headed toward. Another building in the sea of skyscrapers that was Haven's downtown, it looked like all the rest, the American made glass boxes that lacked any sort of design or aesthetic. Kai had always found them pretty bland. Yet this one was different, because for them it was a target.

She made a signal with her hand, and the group dispersed. They knew where they needed to be, what had to be done. They had all rehearsed the plan many times over and knew exactly why they were there and what they were there to do. They only had one shot, as always.

Two of the Cherry demons found themselves on the rooftop of a building next to their target, a small, fifteen-foot gap between them for an alley way. They could see down at the penthouse which in itself was a few floors tall, its windows taking up the entire height but being so tinted they could not see through them. That penthouse was their target.

Akane, one of the two, stood at the edge of the building, his Katana sheathed and rested on his shoulder as he waited for his queue. He was an average sized boy with spikey, dyed white hair and dark eyes and skin. He wore baggy shorts and a black hoodie, and black dragon tattoo down his neck and onto his chest was slightly visible underneath it. He stared down at his target with a bored, unimpressed, bland expression, which was his usual.

Jing-Wei, the other of the two, stood out in comparison to him. She was not dressed inconspicuously which was odd given that the specialty of the Cherry Demons was stealth. Her baggy brown pants and dyed red hair almost popped together despite both not being very dark, the brown, leathery crop top that tied to the back was worn and fraying at the edges.

She was covered in beads, belts, ribbons, hanging buckles and clips, bracelets and necklaces and piercings on her lobes, a black sleeve tattoo covered her entire left arm in strange designs, and carried a katana sheathed at her hip and held in place with many of those straps and buckles. Most notable, was a bird, a hawk, seated on her left shoulder, squawking every so often as it looked around and flexed its wings every so often. Jing-Wei sat cross legged in the middle of the flat rooftop of the building, looking like she was meditating while Akane stood to the edge, impatiently awaiting his queue.

Neither could hear it, but they knew the others were inside their target building, working their way up the floors with the blades, taking out security and defenses while not triggering a single alarm. Infiltration, assassination, ambushing and silent kills were what they did. Though their kills were not exactly silent. Their victims were usually left in bloody messes, covered in stab wounds and slashes as the Cherry Demons pounced on them, taking them down in groups.

It was not fair or honourable fighting, and the blood and severed limps that was left behind paid homage to their skill and notorious nature which only further their reputation. Though all crime families killed, most were content to use guns. Dying to a dozen slashes, stabs, and severed limbs were a level of suffering unnecessary for fodder. Torture was one thing, this was another. The Cherry Demons had made an art of it.

Akane felt his phone vibrate and pulled it out. There was a text from Kai, a very simple, clear message so typical of his leader.

[Akane, you're up.]

Inside the penthouse was a lot of commotion from the recent development that had occurred of at the city square. News of the assassination had spread quickly, leaving associates of the now dead politician scrambling for what to do next.

"What do you mean dead? How was she shot through all that security? That shit wasn't cheap!" Shouted a man who was sat on a luxury leather couch, crescent shaped with its back against the rear window of the room. On either side of him were female escorts, each almost dangling off of his arms as they were leaned up against him while he shouted into his phone. Aside from them, and two security guards a few meters in front of him clad in black suits, sunglasses, and concealed weapons holstered under their jackets, there was no one else present in the room.

The bar in the far corner to his left was unoccupied, as was the DJ setup on his right with its back to the other windowed wall. Two of the four walls were completely windowed, looking out onto the city, one of them leading out to a large balcony with planters filled with flowers around its perimeter. The room was built for large parties, but there was not one occurring tonight. The lights were not flashing, there was no music playing, the tables and centre dance floor were unoccupied, all of the luxury couches, comforters, loveseats, all uncannily empty.

"I don't want to hear it!" He shouted back into the phone after a long pause. "Find whoever did it and bring them here! I don't car how many people are there, find the shooter!" He continued before hanging up the phone and tossing it aside. "Useless bastards." He groaned, leaning back and letting out a loud sigh. The man reached into his pocket, pulling out a box of cigarettes and a tighter, lighting one up and taking a drag, blowing the smoke up as he looked to the ceiling.

"I can't believe they went after her, no one had reason to take it so far." One of the guards said.

"Bold move, whoever these bastards are, they're persistent. This is the third attack in two weeks." The other chimed in.

The man said nothing at first, and just took another drawl before sitting up. "We need to find who's been on our asses. Someone's been-"

The man was interrupted as the window to his right shattered just above the DJ's set up. Akane came flying through, curled in a ball, shielding his face with his arms and opened up as he neared the floor, drawing his blade mid air as the sheath was not connected to his clothing. He landed with a roll and plunged his blade through the chest of the first guard on his way up before the man even had time to draw his weapon.

The other did, which Akane noticed in his peripherals, and ripped his sword out of the first in a sideways slash, half bisecting him and spraying blood and innards all over the floor. He rode the motion, spinning and performing a reverse roundhouse kick, knocking the gun out of the hands of the second guard, his blade coming around in a reverse grip and slashing the man's throat in the same spin. Blood squirted out as the man grasped at his throat, gargling as he fell to his knees, drowning in the blood that was pouring out.

There was barely any sound after the shattering of the window aside from the fearful screams of the escorts and a confused yell form the man on the couch, but things went completely silent after the two guards died behind the intruder. Akane flicked blood off his blade and rested it over his shoulder, walking up to the man on the couch with the escorts, who seemed to be trying to fearfully hide behind him. None dared get up, none were armed, none resisted.

"Who the fuck are you?" The man asked, looking more angry than scared, his position seemingly getting lower as Akane slowly approached, standing over them all. "Do you have any idea who the fuck I am?" He started.

Akane slashed the throat of the escort to his right, making the man flinch to the other side, before Akane slashed the second escort's throat. He sat between them as they both clutches at their throats, twitching and gagging as they choked and gasped for air, blood pouring all over the couch and their bodies. He sat there silently as they both slowly died beside him. It was never a quick process, and being helpless between them was an uncomfortable feeling, but the man did not dare move or resist anymore, knowing how quickly he could share the fate of the four before him. The attacks were so quick, he barely registered that they happened until Akane's stroke had stopped.

"What do you want?" The man asked, almost pleading now.

Akane said nothing, taking a few steps back and waiting. It was only a few minutes before he was joined by the other Cherry Demons. Chan-woo, Kaze, Rai, Aka, Eunji, Eshima, and Akuma, all of them the ones that had stormed the building from the ground floor, working their way up entirely hidden from the security cameras, leaving a trail of bodies from gangsters and guards in their way. They were not seen, not noticed in the slightest, something that was made obvious by the surprised look on the man's face.

The last person to enter the room was Kai, who came in with a confident stride and walked over to the manas the other fanned out through the room, getting all around him and blocking the entrance. He had nowhere to go, and everywhere he looked, he saw a sword clad assassin ready to take his life as they did everyone else.

Kai stepped up to him, towering over him on the couch as he was dirty from blood that had sprayed on him from the dead escorts at his side. She looked at each other them and pushed the one to his right over and sat in her place, crossing oner leg over another and putting her army around the man. In her other hand, she had her phone, and showed the screen to the man. On it was a picture of a young girl with curly black hair and chocolaty dark and smooth skin. The girl was smiling, looking happy and innocent, sat at a table with a bowl of dumplings in front of her, having been taken during a meal.

"Do you recognize this child?" Kai asked the man.

The man was confused, he just said nothing. He still had no idea who these people were, what they wanted, or why they were killing off his men. He was all of the sudden being interrogated by a strange woman who had just walked in. It was all very overwhelming.

"Wait, who are?"

"No no." Kai interrupted. "I ask the questions. All you have to do is answer them." Her voice was soft, almost nurturing. There was this polite, prim and proper persona that came off her which completely contrasted from the armed killers around her. "Take your time and try to remember. We're in no hurry here, I just need you to focus on this girl and tell me where she is."

The man said nothing, and there was a long silence, his confusion still interrupting his train of thought for anything else.

"You and your people know a lot of things about a lot of other people." Kai continued. "You know what's going on in the city. So if anyone knows about her, it's you." Kai said, lowering the phone and looking ahead. She was still sitting with her arm around him, but she seemed to relax more, and begin shaking her leg as she waited.

"I've never seen her before." The man started.

Kai just snickered. "Right. Ok. Let's just skip the part where you pretend not to know and just tell me. It's always the same. I don't want to torture you till you give it up, and you don't want to be tortured. So just come out with it, save us the hassle, and save yourself the pain."

There was fear on the man's face, but he was clearly trying to fight back the urge to plead. "I swear, I don't know who she is. We deal in weapons and drugs, not kids."

"But you hear what goes on around Haven, yes?" Kai asked, looking over at him.

The man nodded.

"Then you must have heard about the attack on the Cherry Demon's seven months ago, leaving two dead and a girl kidnapped?"

The man blanked, not knowing what to do.

Kai just nodded. "I'll assume that's a yes. If you don't know where she is, you can at least tell me who was responsible for the attack, can't you? I'll give you one chance before my associate here slashes your throat too." She said, looking back and forth as the dead escorts on either side of them. "I know you've seen how unsettling that image is."

Akane began stepping forward, drawing his blade slowly.

"Wait wait! It was the Morelli family! They were the ones who attacked you!"

Akane stopped in his tracks, completely paused in movement, and looked over at Kai.

Kai just looked at the man, waiting for more.

"You were attacked seven months ago, right? Weren't you having a celebration or something when you were attacked? It was them, they wanted to get you while you were weak!"

"Why?" Kai asked, her voice sterner and more aggressive now. They were attacked when they were celebrating the mid autumn festival. Though no such large celebrations existed in north America, the Cherry Demons always made sure to celebrate the eastern holidays at their home. Their moon festival celebration the year before would forever remain a stain in their history after what had happened.

"I don't know. Gang wars. They see you as a threat to their business, to their power. You're small but you're dangerous!" The man kept going, he was talking fast, trying to get out what he knew in hopes his life wouldn't be taken.

"Then why take our kid?"

The man shook his head. "I don't know. I'm not with them, I don't know their plans, all I know is that it was them!"

Kai nodded to Akane, and though the man whimpered and flinched, he heard the sound of a sword sheathing, and opened his eyes to see Akane stepping back.

Kai slowly stood up, brushed herself off, and headed for the door without a word, the Cherry demons seemed to file in behind her, leaving the man alone in the room with the dead.

As the group got outside the room, one of the Cherry Demons, Akuma, came up next to Kai. She was a woman with baggy, dark blue track pants that had straps at the bottoms to keep them sight against her shins to not get in the way of running. She had a black crop top and a small backpack on, her hair was long and dyed a light blue on the outside, pink on the inside, and had it cut in bangs in the front. She had a katana sheathed to her side like most of the others. "We're just going to leave him alive?" She asked.

Kai nodded. "Let his word get out. Others will know to stay out of our way."

"He might tell the Morelli's." Another woman, Aka, said. She wore a long, slit black dress with puffy sleeves. The slit exposed most of her right leg, which had blue tattoos on it. Her other leg was red and metal, a cybernetic limb gained after an accident on a mission six years before, her opposite arm was cybernetic too, from the same unfortunate accident. She too had a sword with her, though it was not a Katana, it was wider, heavier, and sharp on both sides. It was a weapon meant for splitting and striking rather than slashing, a strength weapon, one which was meant to deliver a powerful impact. She was quite proficient with it, her cybernetic arm giving her the strength to wield it with ease. "They may rally against us, them and whoever else he tells."

"He won't admit to ratting them out." Kai assured as the gang continued to walk through the halls, passed the many bodies they left behind as they made their way back to the ground. After a few minutes, Kai's phone began to vibrate. It was a call form Jing-wei. She didn't even have time to speak before she heard the other woman's voice.

"We have company." She said, "Looks like we were noticed."

Kai thought that was odd. They were adept at their craft, for them to be noticed would be a sloppiness on their part that just wasn't in character. No one had sent out any calls, no one had made any communications that would get them there, and the response was too quick for it to have been the man they had just left.

Jing-Wei was still sitting in the centre of the roof, her legs crossed as she was in a meditation position. Her eyes were closed, but she could see cleared than ever before. A hawk was soaring the sky in circles around the area, its eyes trained below, watching the movements on the streets with visual clarity no human could ever obtain even with the aid of the most advanced technology. Jing-Wei saw out of the bird's eyes as it lapped around a few blocks' radius of their target building, monitoring all below. The perfect surveillance and scouting tool, with the perfect camouflage.

Through the eyes of the hawk, she saw a convoy of black, armoured van moving toward them. There were five vehicles, undoubtedly filled with soldiers, which stopped outside the building in a semi-circle formation to block the exit of the Cherry Demons inside. She watched their rear doors swing open, and armed soldiers file out.

Kai hung up the phone and turned to the others as they made their way down to the lobby. "Well." She said. "It looks like we won't be leaving so easily. I hope you all didn't exhaust your energy." She said.

The others drew their blades.