Anticlimactic : New Developments

Asher blinked.

"...Why are you here?" He took a half-pace back, distancing himself from the girl.

Yan took a half-pace forward.

"I was given permission to."

Their voices were flat, artificially deadened.

A tense moment of silence passed as Asher processed the information. His eyes narrowed.

"By the Prescripts. Again."

Yan didn't disagree. She tilted her head again, repeating her question nonverbally. A few gazes were drawn from the buildings lining the street, but she ignored them.

Asher smiled wanly. It pained him to see just how different Yan was acting now as compared to his fonder memories of her.

He didn't know what to feel. Pity? Sympathy? Indifference?

But first, he had to think about her question.

Yan stood lifelessly still in wait, so he had more than enough time to think.

There were pros, but there were cons too. The pros were...

"Are there any benefits of me giving the answer to a Messenger of the Index?" Asher spoke his thoughts aloud. The words coalesced into a scathingly rhetorical question.

Yan didn't react to his tone, answering him plainly.

"Yes. I wan-"

She wants?

Her mouth shut with an audible clop. What reason could there possibly be? Her emotions, her opinions?

Distress built in her eyes. She waited for a voice in her mind, yet it stayed eerily silent.

Asher let out a bark of laughter, his eyes filled with derision.

"I pity you, I really do. But you've stayed away from Mei, so I'll give you a hint."

As soon as the words left his mouth, they could both see the flaws in Asher's statement.

Yan shot the excuse down.

"How do you know I've stayed away from her?" She whispered.

Bad idea.

A shiver ran down her spine as the boy in front of her morphed into something else. The pain he had repressed bubbled forth.

The boy's eyes hollowed. They carved through Yan's soul.

"Care to repeat yourself?" His voice was flat and rasping, sublimating with a medley of rage and disappointment.

The colors of the world seemed to lose their vibrancy.

"...I haven't gone near her." Yan finally relented, deflecting her gaze away from his.

Asher nodded, and the heavy atmosphere dissipated in an instant.

"Good."

They stood there for a while, staring at each other. At last, Asher responded to her original question.

"You're right. Sophie and I are different people. But I really was using her appearance to disguise myself that time. Don't think too much about it."

"Then, how about you 'disguise' yourself right here?" She didn't believe his words.

Asher shot her an irritated glance.

"Mind your business. Don't forget that you killed Bellecote."

With those words, Asher began to walk away into the alley Zulu's body laid.

Yan furrowed her brows. Asher didn't have a bloodless track record, either. She had handed Prescripts to his victims' families. They were mourning, just like Mei was.

The more she thought about his words, clearly attempting to fill her with guilt, the more uncomfortable she became.

Bellecote's expiration was only one death, so why did he push so much blame onto her? Did he ever think about his own victims?

Yan's thoughts bubbled out as a faint mutter, beneath her breath.

"Hypocrite..."

The word, though soft-spoken, was carried into Asher's ears with perfect clarity.

"What did you-?"

By the time he turned around, Yan was gone.

"What does she mean by that?"

An uneasy feeling crawled beneath his skin.

Perhaps subconsciously, Asher knew what Yan meant. And combined with the true nature of the System, through his new experiences as Little Red, a seed of doubt was planted.

Even if Asher did not recognize it, he was forming his own mountain of corpses, under the guise of 'righteousness'.

He briskly shook the feeling off.

[+5 Justice.]

His Justice increased.

That meant he was doing a good job.

Right?

...

An undisclosed warehouse in the Industrial District.

Previously used to manufacture machinery and other goods, before it was swept clean in a particularly eventful Night of the Backstreets.

Slash marks from the hooks of Sweepers riddled the walls, a lingering remnant of the past.

Now, this place was used for cremation and funeral rites.

The glows of the furnaces spewed more smog into the air.

The cremation operator narrowed his eyes at the two Stray Dogs in front of him. It wasn't every day that Urban Legends came here.

With the bodies of their comrades, no less.

"This calls for a bulk discount, no?" The man smirked with amusement as Gyeong-mi growled at him. "Don't get twitchy, brother. I'll send them off for three hundred. Do you want their augments back?"

The two Stray Dogs gently leaned the corpses from their shoulders onto the table. Gyeong-mi gestured to the three bodies.

"Yeah, the ink stays with us. But I'll pay full price. They deserve that much."

The cremation operator grinned.

"What a nice boss, eh? And these are some expensive tattoos..." The table in front of them expanded into a sleek operator's table.

"Let's begin."

Needles and scalpels were drawn from the man's coat.

Soon, the three ex-Stray Dogs had the nano-ink plastering their bodies liquified and extracted from their skin. In total, the murky black liquid filled just under two liters' worth of airtight plastic containers.

"There's the ink." The man chuckled as Gyeong-mi snatched the cylinders from his hands. "Well, now time to cremate these-"

He froze. Dino had already picked up the bodies and dragged them to the furnace. Without another glance, the Stray Dog dumped the bodies into the flames, in somber silence.

The man's face drew into a grin. This duo... faintly reminded him of another pair.

He remembered the two children who cremated Stella's body here. And he recalled that the boy had a few interesting videos of him floating on the web.

"The Capo Killer..."

Gyeong-mi whirled around.

"What did you say?!"

The man paused.

"That new Capo Killer was here a week ago."

Gyeong-mi and Dino listened attentively as the man described the scene. In his rendition, he recalled that Stella, the previous Capo in the Dawn region, was cremated here by Asher and Sophie.

Her body, except for a garish slit on her neck, was unwounded. The boy carried the woman in regretful silence.

Gyeong-mi's gaze hardened.

"Tell me more about the boy. I can pay you for the info."

The nameless man shook his head, chuckling beneath his breath.

"You're asking the wrong man, brother. Why, were those corpses made by them?"

Dino nodded silently. Gyeong-mi supplicated his comrade's response with a low growl.

"Those two are strong. And there's something uncanny with their teamwork. They were picking us off like flies... I couldn't even hear when they attacked."

Gyeong-mi remembered when the Marionette's explosion cleared the smoke, revealing the already dead bodies of three Stray Dogs, and Zulu's charred afterimage.

A glint of interest flashed within the man's eyes. Gyeong-mi and Dino shivered as his aura multiplied in an instant, forming sparks that fizzled in the air.

"How curious. Alright," he clapped his hands together. "Get out. I need to process my thoughts."

Dino twitched his fingers, but Gyeong-mi held him back before impulse took the man's rationality.

Coupled with the sudden spike in suppressive aura, Gyeong-mi's gaze was pulled to the appearance of the previously unassuming cremation's operator.

The man wore a thin, dark-blue robe, unadorned except for a flowing silk sash that wrapped onto the right sleeve, hanging down to the tips of his fingers.

Balancing the silk sash was the man's draping white hair, combed to the left side of his face and down the front of his robe.

Inscribed into the backs of his right and left hands were smooth red burn scars, formed in the shape of a crescent moon. Strung along his neck were more burn marks, depicting each of the moon's eight phases.

Other than that, his skin was pale, porcelain white.

The man's luminous grey pupils shimmered as Gyeong-mi scanned his appearance.

"Done? Thank you for the patronage, but your presences are unwelcome now."

Gyeong-mi reluctantly backed away. They got what they came for, a final goodbye to their dead comrades.

But before he left, he had to ask one more question.

"I can tell you're not an ordinary civilian. What's your name?"

The man's hand drifted to his face. He began to shiver with laughter.

Gyeong-mi froze as the man pulled aside the portion of the robe covering his chest, revealing a cobalt crescent moon etched into the skin covering his heart.

"Crescent Moon."

Gyeong-mi blinked.

"Uh... I've never heard of that name before." Dino helpfully chimed in.

"Ha! As expected, it's not a name you lowlies would hear, anyway." The man paused. "Here's a hint, have you heard of the Kurokumo's 'Dark Cloud Blade' before?"

At this, the two Stray Dogs shot to attention. Of course they had heard of Sayako, the Dark Cloud Blade.

Did that mean...?

The man read their wary expressions. He smirked.

"Bingo. Now move along, I need to think."

As the two Stray Dogs closed the door behind them, the smile on the man's face faded.

Both the Kurokumo clan and the Stray Dogs were subsidiary Syndicates under the Thumb.

The man knew that it was most likely the Capo's hit order on that Chimère Office newbie that led to the three corpses. Though, that 'newbie' was likely much stronger than he was.

The new Capo seemed almost hellbent on killing that boy.

As the man thought about it more, an ominous chill ran down his spine.

Perhaps the Capo wasn't following his own interests, but instead the whims of a superior.

At that moment, his phone rang.

Sayako was calling.

With a fair bit of dread, he accepted the call.

His sixth sense for trouble was rarely incorrect.

The woman on the other side spared no niceties.

"The Sottocapo is waiting at the clan hall. All higher ranks must be present." Her voice was shaky with fear.

The 'higher ranks' of the Kurokumo included her, as well as the man in the warehouse.

The Crescent Moon could only whisper a timid affirmation before ending the call.

...

Little Red watched in anticipation as Zulu's blood soaked her blade. Surprisingly, even the tattoos that snaked the man's body were liquified and absorbed by the blade.

"Come on..." The woman growled, paying close attention to the progression bar that only she could see.

With the final drop of blood, the weapon began to morph. Razor barbs surfaced on the blade's surface, and blood dripped down the handle to create a disorienting pattern of swirled crimson.

[Blood Function has absorbed enough blood to proceed to the next upgrade...]

[Upgrade complete! 'Blood Function' has transformed into 'Laceration'!]

[Laceration: An unnaturally sharp weapon designed to maim and disable its victims. The barbs along the blade, when sunk into flesh, will cause profuse bleeding and sap the physical strength of the target for up to five hours. This weapon may change after being soaked in blood. Progress: 0% until next upgrade.]

Little Red shivered in excitement as she clenched her new weapon's handle. She could feel a greater connection forming with her host each time one of her skills upgraded.

Asher could feel it too. He smiled.

"Just a bit longer, Red. Then you can be free to do whatever you want."

Asher's strategy was simple. If he achieved full synchronization with Little Red soon, he could shell her and focus solely on his own concerns as a Fixer, both lightening his workload and giving Little Red what she wanted.

The woman nodded. Compared to how she behaved in the Punishment Mission, she was incomparably more tame.

She still had the ability to burst out with violence at times, but at least now she wasn't constantly vying for control over their body.

A small understanding had formed between the two. Not enough for a System notification, but it was a start.