District 7, Morning, Present

  The streets are quieter than yesterday. Ryuga walks with purpose, eyes scanning each alley, each shadowed doorway. Marcus mentioned Sarah. Said he'd be home by Tuesday. Now he'd never make it home at all.

  The gang left a message, Ryuga thinks. Which means they wanted us to find them. But where?

  Ryuga opens the file Yuna gave him, identifying one of the target locations. He goes to the address: a convenience store with shattered windows. Fresh damage. Three days old, maybe four.

  An old woman sweeps glass from her doorstep. Ryuga approaches.

  "Excuse me,” Ryuga says with a friendly tone. “The people who did this…where do they operate from?"

  She doesn't look up. "You with the police?"

  "No."

  "Then I don't know anything." But her eyes flick toward the eastern district. Once. Deliberate.

  Ryuga follows the direction. More broken windows. Graffiti and crude symbols mark territory, concentrating the more Ryuga goes east. The damage gets worse as he walks, like a trail leading to the source.

  Ryuga finds it twenty minutes later: a dilapidated building that once served as a homeless shelter. The windows are boarded up, but light seeps through the cracks. Voices and laughter are heard inside.

  Marcus's blood is still under Ryuga’s fingernails.

  He pushes the door open.

  District 7, Gang Hideout, Present

  The hinges shriek, metal on metal, announcing his arrival.

  Inside, the main hall is massive. One huge box of a room with no windows, just concrete walls stretching up to a ceiling pockmarked with holes where rain has eaten through. Old cots line the ground floor, most torn apart for materials. Pools of stagnant water collect on the concrete. The air smells like mold, blood, and something chemical he can't place.

  Twenty, maybe thirty shifters occupy the ground level. Some sit on overturned crates playing cards. Others stand in groups, talking in low voices. A few sharpen weapons: knives, pipes, anything with an edge.

  Across from the entrance, a mezzanine platform spans the entire opposite wall. No railings, no barriers; just an open ledge hanging over the room like a stage. Two staircases hug the walls on either side, leading up to it. On the platform itself, a few shifters stand watching. Behind them, multiple doors are built into the wall that lead somewhere.

  And at the very edge of the mezzanine, sitting on a wooden box with her legs dangling over the drop, is a woman. She's leaning forward slightly, elbows on her knees, watching the room below like she owns it.

  They all stop when Ryuga enters.

  The silence spreads like a wave. Card games freeze mid-deal. Conversations die mid-sentence. Every eye on the ground floor turns toward the doorway.

  The woman on the mezzanine straightens up, interested.

  A shifter near the entrance – young, maybe eighteen – rises slowly from his crate. "Yo, who are you?"

  Ryuga doesn't answer. He steps further inside, shoes splashing through a puddle. His eyes scan the ground floor, then track up to the mezzanine. The woman. The shifters flanking her. The doors behind them.

  "I asked you a question." The young shifter moves closer, trying to look tough. His friends rise behind him, emboldened by numbers.

  "You from the other team?" Another voice calls out from the left side of the room. "Thought you idiots gave up."

  "He's got that mark," someone whispers. "On his shirt. You see it?"

  "The plus sign?”

  "Yeah. Looks like a dumbass.”

  The energy shifts. The shifters on the ground floor exchange glances. A few hands move toward weapons.

  Up on the mezzanine, the woman leans forward more, elbows still on her knees, chin resting on her fists. Watching. Curious.

  A scarred shifter pushes through the crowd on the ground floor. He moves with authority. "So Yuna sent her attack dog." He stops several feet from Ryuga, looking him up and down. "Didn't think she'd escalate this fast. We only killed one of you."

  Ryuga thinks, furious.

  "You here to negotiate?" the scarred shifter continues, cracking his knuckles. "Because if you're here to fight—"

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  "Where's your boss?" Ryuga's voice cuts through the space, flat and cold.

  Laughter ripples through the ground floor. Nervous laughter. The kind that precedes violence.

  Up on the mezzanine, the woman tilts her head slightly. Still watching. Still silent.

  The scarred shifter signals. The shifters around the room move as one, closing in from all sides, their weapons rising. The ones on the mezzanine shift their weight, ready to jump down if needed.

  Ryuga thinks, chuckling.

  Ryuga looks at each face on the ground floor. Memorizing. Calculating. Then his gaze lifts to the mezzanine, to the woman sitting on the box, still leaning forward, still watching with that curious expression.

  She meets his eyes. Doesn't look away.

  The scarred shifter steps closer, grin widening. "You decided to come defeat us?" He spreads his arms theatrically. "How foolish."

  Ryuga thinks as the gang closes in slowly,

  Gang Hideout, Five Minutes Later,Present

  The street outside is quiet. Serene, almost, if you ignore the grime. Trash clusters in corners where the wind pushed it. Graffiti tags cover every available surface. A broken streetlight flickers weakly, casting uneven shadows across cracked pavement. The kind of neighborhood where people learn not to ask questions.

  Ryuga walks out through the barn doors.

  Behind him, the main hall is unrecognizable. Blood pools across the concrete floor, mixing with the stagnant water. Bodies are scattered across the ground level: some crumpled against walls, others sprawled across overturned crates. A few lie at the base of the staircases, like they'd tried to run up to the mezzanine before falling.

  The card table is flipped over, the cards soaked red. Weapons lie abandoned where they dropped: knives and pipes, all useless in the end.

  The mezzanine above is empty. The box where the woman sat is still there, but she's gone. The doors at the back hang open, swinging slightly. Fading footsteps echo faintly from the theater alley beyond.

  Ryuga doesn't look back. He just keeps walking, his boots tracking blood onto the cracked sidewalk.

  Thirty dead. But the boss escaped, Ryuga thinks regretfully. And she saw everything: how I fight and what I can do. She'll adapt. I could’ve got her, but my…emotions got in the way. Can’t let that happen again.

  He stops at the corner, looking back at the building one more time.

  Killing the foot soldiers doesn't solve anything. They'll just recruit more. I need a different approach, Ryuga thinks.

  District 7 Residential Streets, Afternoon, Present

  Ryuga walks through the residential area. The streets here are quieter than near the hideout. A few kids play in a fenced yard. An old man waters plants on his stoop.

  The gang will retaliate. They always do. If I can't eliminate them fast enough, I need to fortify the civilians, Ryuga thinks. Make them harder targets.

  He stops at a small house with peeling paint. Knocks.

  An elderly woman opens the door a crack, the small chain still attached. Her eyes go wide when she sees the plus mark on his chest.

  "I'm not here to hurt you," Ryuga says.

  "Then what do you want?" she asks, fear in her voice.

  "To show you something." He holds up a small device, crudely made from parts he scavenged earlier. "For protection."

  She hesitates, then opens the door fully.

  Inside, her living room is cramped. Old furniture, faded photos on the walls. She sits on her couch, watching him warily.

  Ryuga sets the device on her coffee table. "It generates a frequency burst. When activated, it'll disorient anyone nearby. Makes them dizzy or nauseous and may even cause them physical injuries. They won’t know what’s happening to them; all they’ll know is that they feel weird whenever they approach your house, and subconsciously the gang will learn to avoid your neighborhood.”

  He demonstrates, showing her the simple mechanism. "Just press here when they come. The sound will make them dizzy. But cover your ears when you activate it, okay?” He hands her headphones with a genteel smile on his face.

  She stares at the device without noticing the headphones. "You're one of Yuna's people."

  "Yes."

  "Then why help us? You people usually just... clean up the bodies after."

  Because Marcus talked about someone named Sarah. Because he was twenty years old and he'll never make it home, Ryuga’s mind races. Because someone should actually protect these people instead of just avenging them.

  "Things are changing," Ryuga says instead. “I apologize for what you might’ve experienced in the past, but Yuna has made some personnel upgrades. I am one of her new additions, and I can assure you I care more about your safety than anything. I treat anyone Yuna assigns me to as if I was caring for my own…family.”

  The woman, looking up to Ryuga with hope, takes the device carefully, like it might explode. "Thank you," she says breathily.

  Ryuga nods and leaves, moving on to the next house.

  A middle-aged man answers when Ryuga rings the doorbell. Ryuga repeats the process, showing him the frequency device and explains how it works.

  "The gang's been bleeding us dry," the man says. "Protection money, theft, worse. You really think this'll stop them?"

  "It'll slow them down. Probably get them out of your hair. That's all you need."

  The man takes it, unconvinced but desperate enough to try.

  This is inefficient. I should be hunting the boss, not playing neighborhood watch, Ryuga thinks. But if I leave these people defenseless, the gang will just recruit more bodies from the survivors. The whole system is like a pyramid structure; if I cut off the top, the bottom will be left clueless and will scatter.

  As Ryuga turns around, leaving the man’s house, a newspaper boy passes by.

  Ryuga thinks.

  The newspaper boy throws a paper that lands at Ryuga’s feet, then keeps running his route.

  Ryuga thinks, picking it up. The headline is bold, reading, "CRIMSON TEETH RETURN, MORE VIOLENT THAN BEFORE."

  Ryuga scans the article with an exasperated look on his face. Three attacks reported in the last twenty minutes. A store burned down. Witnesses report the gang has doubled in size since this morning.

  Doubled. In less than a day. I killed thirty of them this morning and now there are sixty, Ryuga thinks, pissed off.

  He looks up at the skyline.

  Ryuga thinks. The devices were a waste of time. Pyramid structure only works if you can cut off the bottom faster than the top can rebuild. But if they're recruiting this fast...then

  His jaw clenches. He wants to crumple the newspaper in his fist, but he thinks before doing it. Ryuga walks to the man’s door, carefully setting the newspaper on his doormat and walking away with a flame burning a new temporary purpose in his heart.