00 Hours 00 Minutes 15 Seconds

00 Hours, 00 Minutes, 15 Seconds

Sari walked into the Base, a small, well armoured bunker hidden beneath the Water Towers. It served as the base of everyone working as an assassin, bounty hunter or sweeper. She stopped in surprise when she saw some of the people gathered inside. Sari was well known in the business, however there were three legends and for some reason all three of them were in there that day.

Nareena the Mercenary.

Stories said she was a noble-born English woman who chose to through away everything for a more exciting life. She had red hair that fell around her shoulders, an intricate tribal tattoo ran across one side of her face. Two MF-Searers hung at her waist and the armoured suit she wore was said to be packed with the latest and greatest technology.

K.

Known only by a letter, he was the youngest person in the room, probably only about sixteen years old. However he was undoubtedly the strongest. His Oscillation was abnormal in that it wasn’t one that could easily be put into a class, like Sari’s hybrid form, or Cherry’s enchanted pheromone. The only way to describe his ability would be, ‘He is the main character in an anime series.’ What that might mean differs from person to person but at the end of the day, he is the winner.

And last but not least, Shiro Usagi.

A young, Japanese albino. He was usually called by the English translation of his name, White Rabbit. Information about him was sparse because he moved like the wind, striking a target and completing a mission before most people could get out of bed.

Those three could be considered to be the representatives of each job. What all the lower members strived to become. Nareena the Bounty Hunter, sometimes called the Walking Tank. K the Assassin, sometimes called the Nuclear Missile. White Rabbit the Sweeper, sometimes called the Transient Brawler.

Sari paid extra attention to Nareena. Though she was an assassin like K, his methods were more of the big bang, screw the collateral kind. She looked up to Nareena, not only as the only girl of the Big Three, but also because she was everything Sari wanted to be.

‘What’s happening, Bruce?’

Bruce was a bounty hunter she sometimes worked with, he had lost his legs during an Oscillation and had replaced them with mechanical prosthetics, however he hadn’t stopped there. He gradually replaced more and more of his organic parts with machinery and had started augmenting the other stuff.

‘It would appear they are contesting over who should take an open bounty.’

An open bounty! That was rare. Mostly people would address jobs to whichever specialisation they felt was best suited to whatever task. Assassins worked solely in killing targets, bounty hunters were a jack of all trades that would do anything so long as they were paid and finally sweepers worked best in capturing criminals evading what little law the upper echelons still insisted on using. However an open bounty was open to anyone and everyone.

‘What’s the count?’

‘Six hundred.’

Sari whistled appreciatively.

‘Six hundred thousand, huh? That’d go along way.’

‘Nope, six hundred million.’

‘Fyaaaan!’

Sari let out a cute cat-like gasp.

‘Six hundred million! Who the hell did this fella piss off?’

‘The Yvn Family.’

Sari and Bruce spat on the ground. The Yvn Family were a pain in the ass to everyone whether they are law abiding citizens or people who lived in the underbelly of London.

‘Who is the poor sod?’

‘Some bloke called Echo-’

Sari didn’t hear whatever else Bruce was saying because her heart started throbbing and her vision narrowed. Echo. Echo. Echo. Echo. She turned around and started walking out.

‘Hey, where are you goin’!’

‘I’m going to catch him first.’

‘Are you freakin’ retarded!’

Bruce moved in closer to her and lowered his voice.

‘If one of those three catch you trying to make off with such a high value target you’ll be lucky if all they do is kill ‘ya.’

Sari laughed and waved goodbye, completely unaware of a pair of eyes watching her.



‘And so Nareena-tan won the coin toss. However I doubt Bunny is going to just sit quietly for long,’ the boy was saying.

He was lying upside down on a couch, talking to a man hidden behind a curtained off partition. Two rotting corpses stood on either side of the curtains, protecting the man. The technology people had been able to make wasn’t always good stuff like prosthetics and augmentations. This was a sick piece of technology that forced a person to keep moving and carrying out their daily routines long after their heart stopped beating. So long as the brain kept working, which they did by sending a constant stream of rather high level electric currents through the synapses.

‘What do you think is the chances of one of them succeeding over you, Kuris.’

Kuris was the name that only his owners knew. To everyone else he was just the Indestructible K.

‘Tcha… I don’t think Nareena has a chance. If what your tin boy was sayin’ is true then her little tricks ain’t gonna work. As for Bunny… he might have a chance. From what I’ve seen he seems to have some kinda weird ability. Not as good as mine though.’

‘Of course not.’

The voice slurred, a wet smacking sound echoing as the owner of the voice wet its lips.

‘You are the culmination of my research. The perfect being. Not even the Other could threaten you.’

Kuris snickered. He didn’t know about that. Seems to him the boss was overestimating his chances, and his involvement in developing his power.

‘Still I’ve taken some measures to deal with Bunny, though I’ll be borrowing the R ‘n’ D if you don’t mind.’

‘Whatever you need, Kuris.’

Kuris smirked.

‘Though I can’t wait to kill this Echo guy. It sounds like he’ll actually be a challenge, not like the trash I’ve been picking up.’