Izanagi, He who Invites

[Kazu Chidori]

Omiyomi, Industrial District, Planet New Tokyo, House Kusari, 836 A.S

---

Nagatsune Horui Factory - Owari Securities

---

A Yari streaked across the New Tokyo sky, and Izanagi checked his weapon one last time. It had been a long time since he had used a kinetic firearm, but seeing as the blades of the Kazu family were able to absorb energy-based weapons fire, kinetic was a clear best choice. Limited ammunition was going to be annoying. An alarm went off inside the cargo bay, and Izanagi stood, walking to the bay doors. As they slowly slid open and the wind of New Tokyo whipped through the bay, Izanagi's heads-up display lit up a timer, counting down.

At the exact moment the timer hit zero, he stepped off the edge into the night, plunging through the clouds. As he fell, he thought about how pleasant it was that the pilot of the freighter made no attempts to speak to him. As he pierced the clouds and the factory came into view, six targets were pinned by his targeting system. Regular guards, none of those super-soldiers, three teams of two. Good work, but not enough to even inconvenience him. He angled himself to end his fall on top of two, crushing them instantly. His armor almost completely absorbed the shock from the fall, allowing him to instantly throw two grenades at the other two teams of guards. Electricity arced between them and the ground, and he didn't even waste the time watching them fall to the ground after his suit confirmed they were dead, sprinting towards the secondary entrance to the facility.

A small device which he plunged into the keypad unlocked the door and disabled the alarm, giving Izanagi access. He knew only about the external patrol paths, so he considered this mission to have a very short timer. A patrol from within the facility could converge outside and discover his entry wound at any moment. The guards inside his path towards the the central room in the basement were made short work of as well, but this only heightened Izanagi's alert. It was strange that the facility responsible for generating augments so powerful they give the users a sense of immortality and omnipotence wasn't guarded by one or more of the users of those same augments.

" うーん、夜勤って本当に退屈だ— "

(Hmm, night shift is so boringgg)

A young woman's voice carried up the final hallway as Izanagi burst into the control room. Izanagi barely confirmed the target before shooting her in the forehead. With her dead, her attire stuck out to him, being only extremely short shorts and a lab coat. Sciences like these tend to attract eccentric individuals, he thought to himself. Nonetheless, he strode over to the desk. The terminal showed that it had already been locked and encrypted. Weird, considering he should have been undetected coming in, but it didn't matter. His data-baton could handle it, all he needed was time.

" ねえ、私の仕事について知りたかったら、ただ聞いてくれればいいのに～ "

(Hey, if you wanted to know about my work, you could have just asked~)

Izanagi whipped around in a matter of milliseconds, scanning the area for the owner of the voice. The woman's body had disappeared, and upon closer inspection, it hadn't bled at all. His data-baton was returning fragmented information as he began sweeping the area silently. Yeast, genetic modification, microscopic weaving implements. Nanomachines and neurological splicing. Spider silk? This data was beginning to piece together a picture of what the Owaris were doing, but offered very little numbers with which to recreate it. And then the system locked him out.

" はいはい～、もういいでしょう。"

(Alright, that's enough.)

The door slid closed, locking. On the other side of a viewing port, the woman appeared, smiling and waving at him. There was very much a bullet wound in her head. Clear through her head, he could see shredded chunks of grey matter dangling in the hole. How was she alive, let alone acting like nothing had happened? What was going on here?

" イザナギ様、8分後に回収します。"

(Izanagi-sama, extraction in eight minutes.)

His radio crackled to life. That was good news, he needed to get out of here. He had some data, which was more than nothing. But then, the young woman stepped aside to reveal a familiar face. Unnaturally blue eyes, those Wolf Eye augments. Tiny bits of grey creeping up into his black hair. And if looks could kill, that glare would be a Weapon of Mass Destruction. The previously locked down door opened to put Izanagi face to face with Katsuherabo Genji. He should have been at the summit with Kazu Kumano. Or, rather, he was, they had tagged the both of them alongside Owari Genji. If he was here... Kumano Kazu was back in Kusari well before the summit should have ended. Negotiations had broken down. Kusari was going to war.

Which means Katsuherabo Genji was here on personal business. Was it just the attempt on Kumano's life? Or was Izanami correct when she guessed that they blamed the Blood Dragons as a whole for the assassination that the Buddhists botched? It didn't matter. A hot-headed child could only make mistakes, and a little provocation would see to that. Izanagi drew a short sword he had designed custom for this situation, alongside a kinetic sidearm. He spoke for the first time in a very, very long time.

" 7分だ。7分だけ、お前と遊んでやる時間はある。"

(Seven minutes. Seven minutes is all I can spare to play with you.)

" お前を殺すのに、たった3分もかからない。"

(To kill you, it would only take me three.)

The young undead woman scuttled down the hall as the two soldiers paced a circle, measuring each other. Genji was the first to strike, crossing the distance between them in a single step. He pulled a gun-like trigger on his scabbard, which caused a small explosion that launched the blade with extra force into it's opening strike. Izanagi could see that the blade had become charged from that explosion, but blocked it with his own sword anyway. The red electricity flashed, shattering lightbulbs and monitors in the room. Genji did not let up, a whirlwind of strikes crashing against Izanagi's defense. Izanagi used the last heavy strike to gain momentum and cartwheel away, firing shots from his sidearm in retreat. Genji sliced the bullets cleanly out of the air, though the sword gained no charge.

Genji leapt forward to follow, swinging his sword precisely. Izanagi sidestepped it, counterattacking with his own blade, but Genji saw it with ease and ducked beneath it. Smooth, fluid movement between the both of them generated the gentle whooshing of air that was a pair of swords swinging and missing. Both of them could see and react far faster than than either of them could move. Both of them could also move much faster than a regular human. However, it seemed that Genji could move just a little faster and hit just a little harder than Izanagi. That didn't quite matter, though. Four minutes remained.

The two fought down the hallway, neither landing a direct hit on the other. However, it was becoming increasingly clear to Izanagi that Genji was faster and stronger, and had an unreasonable amount of stamina. He had been on the offensive for their entire bout, but hadn't so much as lost pace. The bio-augments of Owari Securities were a tool that would unreasonably shift the tide of ground warfare, station and ship boarding, and any other form of infantry engagement.

They had made it to the front door, the extraction point was on the other side. Obviously, the massive blast-door was locked, and no mere breaching charge would blow it open. Of course, Izanagi had prepared no mere breaching charge, and the door was blown in by a Wardog mine. The giant blast door careened down the hallway, with Izanagi ducking so that it would just barely pass over the top of his head and slam into Genji. The chime of metal being cut through in an instant rang out, and the door split in two, passing by Genji and continuing down the hallway.

The Yari from before made its second pass by front door, dodging anti-aircraft fire as best it could. It made use of the Yari's famously modified tractor beam array to beam Izanagi away from Genji's approaching blade and into the ship as it made its getaway.

From the closing doors of the cargo bay, Izanagi watched Katsuherabo Genji sheathe his sword and sit in the lotus pose at the entrance to the factory. Their eyes met, and Izanagi almost smiled. It had been fun. Now, though, he had a very bad report to write.

---