Prologue

All was normal for a Friday. The night was young, the air was clear, and the moon shone brightly upon Fukuoka city. It was a quiet evening in the middle of summer, a slight chill in the air. There were many people walking the streets that night, some making their way home from late night shifts, others on their way to work for overnight shifts, exhausted workers making their way to bars for drinks, or drunkards wandering the streets looking for a good time. But then, as the peace seemed as though it would go undisturbed…

BOOM

A bar called Kuraidori’s Watering Hole erupted in flames in the night, the fire blasting through multiple windows of the establishment. The people walking the streets fled the scene in a mad panic, not wanting to be caught in the inferno. In the back of the establishment, the force of the explosion threw a burning man screaming from one of the bar’s second story windows. He hit the pavement hard, the bones of one leg crunching on impact. He screamed in agony as he attempted to roll in the pavement to put out his burning clothes. The fire was finally extinguished as he rolled into a shallow puddle of water. The flesh of his face was still sizzling and steaming from the heat, some of the hair on his head was burnt as well. The man attempted to stand up and run for his life, but a sharp piercing pain in his broken right leg forced him to stumble to the ground once again. He was left with little choice but to crawl for his life.

However, before he could gain much distance from the burning premise, the metal security door to the back entrance of the bar flew off its hinges and a tall, muscular man with a crew cut and a 5 O’clock shadow emerged from the flames unscathed. He looked down at the crawling man with eyes that glowed red with rage. The burnt man returned the gaze with a look of fear and desperation. Once again, he scrambled and crawled over debris and broken glass, trying to flee the scene with whatever strength he could muster. However, before he could gain much distance, the muscular man walked over to him, pressing his boot down against the right ankle of the victim to halt his scrambling. The man started screaming in pain as more and more weight was put on it. The muscular man looked down upon him with a gaze of hatred and malice, towering over him like a titan, and was once again met with a look of fear from his victim.  

“Guardian to Alpha 0-1, confirm status, over,” a monotone female voice came in over the muscular man’s earpiece, snapping him out his focussed glare. The man put a finger to his ear to respond. 

“Alpha 0-1 to Guardian, target destroyed, one hostile in the open, heavily wounded. Please advise, over,” the muscular man said. There was a slight pause before the next communication. 

“Copy Alpha 0-1, mission parameters are unchanged. Complete your current objective and stand by for further orders, over,” the female voice came back.

“Acknowledged, Guardian,” the man said, coldly turning back to the burnt man. 

The burnt man, in response to this, began to shudder and shake as he knew quite well what was about to happen to him. He immediately tried to claw his way out from under the muscular man’s boot, but to no avail. At the apex of the victim’s struggle, the muscular man knelt forward, grabbing the man by the throat and lifting him up high by it. The burnt man struggled for breath in the muscular man’s grasp, his feet wriggling in the air. He attempted one last look of desperation into his attacker’s eyes as he could not verbally beg for his life. And yet his plea was only met with more unbridled malice from the muscular man’s burning red eyes. As he looked into the pleading eyes of his victim, he couldn’t help but recall the decision that got him in this scenario today, the singular act that started it all…