The Daily Grind
Case File #1
January 4th, 2044
09:10 AM
Horizon Ward
Central District
Deputy Inspector Atarashi Shin
The towers of Horizon’s “Golden Mile” rose up into the sky, their gaudy and clashing designs representing Sin Ward setting a foothold into Central’s pristine heart. The spires of the Golden Mile rose up in competition, some reaching twenty stories or more. Side by side, the rectangular and bland towers of Yōgai-shima’s founding stood with newer buildings of glass that bent and curved in ways only made possible by their smart-metal skeletons. In contrast to the rest of the District, the Golden Mile had taken on a little of Sin Ward’s dirt, offering a cheaper, tamer nightlife to the city of vice that sat just across the bridge to the east.
While the new buildings had eye-catching and smooth designs of glass and luminescent veins of nanite, the old-world buildings made do with garish neon lights and partial coatings of smart-fabric to cover up the grey concrete truth. The apartments made to house the refugee population of Japan had been converted into fronts for a thousand little businesses that operated out of a single building, which led to a single structure covered in a collage of clashing skins and signs. Even in the middle of the day, when the darkness of night could no longer cover their ugliness, the businesses continued to advertise and their fluorescent lights flashed in the downpour like lightning, bathing the streets below in a colorful swathe of lights that reflected back up from the puddles.
The foot traffic on the Golden Mile was disinterested in the endless barrage of holographic banners that tried to get their attention. The commuters cutting through the swathe of eateries, bars, cabarets, and gambling parlors had no appetite for entertainment this early in the morning, and they were instead focused on simply getting somewhere else. The only thing that did arouse any interest was the flashing orange alarm that appeared on their Augurs, warning them of an emergency of which there was no sign. The streets were busy with cars and pedestrians, but there were no monsters or mayhem in sight. Instead, the danger lurked high above.
On a geyser of water, what had once been a homeless man rose into the sky, cresting over the top of the Golden Mile’s buildings. Dressed in a torn flannel shirt and a ragged raincoat, the figure might appear human from a distance. However, the transformation from homo sapiens to Human Calamity had not been a kind process: the old man’s face had torn in two, creating a second, eyeless sharklike visage that hungrily bit at the air. The man’s arms had likewise been transformed into grotesque claws, but he’d been deprived of one of them moments after the initial change. Heedless of the bodily trauma, the creature sought escape where one man pursued.
Where the twisted old man used his Crisis in order to quickly climb the face of Horizon’s buildings, Deputy Inspector Atarashi Shin had to use brute force. Drawing on all the energy he could muster from Exigency, the state of mind that made him more than human, Shin leapt upward. He soared over the side of a ten-story apartment; its rain slick surface nothing more than a blur to his eyes, and crested over the top, rising another dozen or so feet. He felt his stomach lurch as gravity took hold of him and dragged him back down. He landed with a splash on the roof beneath him, but the water simply ran off his black suit and blond hair. Before he even touched the ground, his eyes were searching the building tops around him, looking for the Human Calamity he was pursuing.
There, on a building north of him, Shin saw what he was looking for. The old man was gathering small pools of water and causing them to burst beneath him, sending him up into the air. The force that the small pockets of rain could lend him was minimal compared to the geyser of water he used to leap up into the sky, but it was sufficient for the Casualty to skip across the divide between roof tops as it sought to escape. It bounded off one pool after another, making it seem to Shin more like a frog than anything else.
Shin wasted no time in pursuing, bounding across the wet cement ceiling beneath him towards the fleeing monster. Sword in hand, he charged over the side of the building, lunging over it like a track runner, and over onto the next building. Though the old Casualty was aided by a more overt supernatural force as it pounced over the endless array of structures beneath it, its flight was imprecise at best. The creature had a powerful surge of energy at the start of his leap, but he quickly slowed as he moved through the air, and the Casualty often overshot his mark, or landed poorly, colliding with the rooftop and losing precious seconds, enabling Shin to consistently gain ground.
“Where the hell does he think he’s going?” Shin asked as he watched the one-armed monster drag himself back to his feet from a clumsy landing.
“He’s probably not thinking very much at all,” the voice of Shin’s Omen spoke from the black sword in his hand. “When a human being turns into a Casualty, their amygdala swells up and transforms. It puts a lot of pressure on the rest of the brain, so they act more by instinct than anything else. Honestly, he’s nearly as stupid as you are.”
“I’ve heard all of your jibes before,” Shin rolled his eyes as he performed another running leap over the railing of the next building. “You’d think an artificial intelligence connected to the internet could search up some better material.”
“Ehhh,” the machine let out a digital sigh. “The internet isn’t what it used to be.”
There was a single building between Shin and the Casualty, and the Inspector poured on every bit of speed that he could to close that gap. The Casualty turned to look at Shin as the wind whipped its parka around its shoulders like a flag. For a brief moment, Shin made eye-contact with the old man’s face, his eyes wide and bleeding while his features were stretched and pulled by the new mouth growing from his skull. The old man’s mouth moved, and Shin thought that he was mumbling something, but the tempest between them swallowed all sound. Thunder flashed, and the Casualty turned away, rushing across the skyline on another burst of water, and Shin continued to pursue.
“Hey, idiot,” the Omen sword interjected itself again. “You’ve got another call coming.”
“Now isn’t a great-!” but Shin didn’t get a chance to finish.
“Inspector Atarashi, please respond!” came a harsh voice from the Omen sword. Shin nearly tripped over his own feet, momentarily distracted by the chase. He regained his footing and kept running, laying the flat of the sword across his left palm to instinctively speak into it, awkward though it was.
“Oh, Forecaster Kodera!” Shin chuckled nervously. “I, um, uhhh. . ., how are you?”
“Inspector, what are you doing?” the other man cut straight to the point. “You were ordered to monitor the situation from a distance.”
“Oh, I am!” Shin agreed hurriedly, still watching as the Casualty hurtled over the rooftops. “I’m watching it right now!”
“You were ordered not to engage, Inspector,” Kodera reminded him. “You should have waited for Senior Inspector Asahi as you were told.”
“I know! But if I hadn’t done anything, then people might have been hurt!” Shin objected, remembering the two police officers that had been foolish enough to try and shoot at the Casualty. “I couldn’t just sit by and do nothing.”
“I understand your frustrations, Inspector,” Kodera answered, though his voice never rose above his stoic inflection. “But getting yourself killed isn’t going to make the situation any better.”
“I didn’t join the Bureau to be protected,” the Deputy allowed himself a small, wry grin. “Besides, I think you’re giving this guy too much credit.”
“Just keep your distance until Inspector Asahi, arrives,” Kodera continued to warn. “Don’t push things too far; this one is a bad match up for you.”
“A bad match up?” Shin questioned aloud, scoffing at the notion.
A sensation bloomed in Shin’s chest, both hot and piercing at the same time. The Casualty whipped about in midair, turning to face Shin even as he sailed through the sky. Perhaps the creature reacted to Shin getting too close, or maybe it felt insulted by Shin’s cavaliere dismissal, but whether it was acting on base instinct or the lingering traces of human emotion, the creature responded. The sheets of rain falling down around it seemed to hang in the air, frozen, as the creature punched holes through them with its flight. Then, the rain began to fall sideways through the air, flying towards Shin.
The horizontal downpour picked up speed, moving far faster than any natural phenomena, and a thousand tiny missiles of water shot forward like a hail of bullets. The water bullets had little effect, splashing against his skin and clothes without harm, but the same wasn’t true for the building beneath him. The cascade shredded through the rooftop where Shin was standing, and the barrage made the concrete flesh and the steel skeleton beneath melt like clay in the rain. The roof lurched beneath the Inspector’s feet and he staggered, his forward momentum entirely halted, but before the platform beneath him could give way, Shin leapt into the air.
The force of Shin’s leap broke the dissolving cement apart, kicking up a cloud of grey dust that was soon smothered by the rain. Shin soared through the air, crossing the last remaining span of distance between himself and the twisted old man as the raindrops continued to pelt him without success. Both of them, the malformed Casualty and the black-clad Inspector, collided in the air a hundred feet above ground.
The black sword swung through the air, the impossibly sharp smart-metal blade singing as it completed its deadly arc. Shin swung the sword with the intention of splitting the creature in half from the left shoulder to its right hip, but the beast’s control over water allowed it to gather a pool of water between it and Shin. The floating rain puddle resisted the travel of Shin’s sword no better than the Casualty’s own flesh, but as the sword bit into the Human Calamity’s shoulder, the floating pool of water burst violently outwards in all directions.
The rushing water splashed across Shin’s face and flooded into his eyes, blinding him. He was hurled backward through the air, spinning head over heels. His stomach rolled in his belly, flopping around and colliding with the rest of his innards. Literally blind and full-on panicking, Shin somehow managed to clear the water from his eyes and take control of his fall.
The first thing Shin saw as he fell was himself, or rather, his own reflection staring back at him from the dark glass of the Golden Mile’s more exotic structures. Twisting about, Shin kicked the glass paneled walls of the building and surged back into the air amidst a shower of dark shards. Shin traveled across the alley between the glass-walled edifice and its brick-laminated neighbor, and he rebounded off it as well. Using the strength and agility of Exigency, Shin was able to keep moving through the air as he bounced between buildings. He cast his eyes around him as the countless neon lights flashed in the pouring rain, turning the buildings around Shin into a swirl of hard lines and indiscernible color. He couldn’t see where the Casualty had disappeared to during the tumult, so he decided to focus on finding a safer place to touch down.
He descended over a large, grey roof, passing over a boundary of wire fencing that circled it. He landed on the gravel with a crunch, surrounded by generators and ventilators that were being assaulted by the constant rainfall. The fenced off rooftop was part of a dip in the city’s skyline, being a few floors short of meeting its taller peers around it. Standing up, Shin wheeled about, his eyes running across the sharp edges of the buildings above him, looking for the fleeing figure of the Casualty.
He heard it before he saw it. A rasping, wheezing growl sounded out somewhere from the rooftops above, and Shin whipped around to face the Casualty, which loomed over the edge of a taller tower and peered down at him with its eyeless piscine face. The old man’s head was nearly absorbed into the new growth by this point, leaving only a faint pair of eye sockets visible in the side of the blind shark’s neck. Even without eyes, the monstruous new mouth seemed as though it knew to orient itself in Shin’s direction, and it snapped at the air with its mismatched teeth.
It growled through its vicious smile, a horrible sound that grew more intense with each passing second. Then, the creature seemed to seize, its body violently constricting as though an invisible hand were crushing it. It screamed, the noise echoing off the walls of the nearby building and blood sprayed from its left arm. A new limb grew out from the remains of the old, though this limb was larger than its counterpart and even more distant from its human source. The talons were longer, and flaps of skin dangled from its smooth epidermis to awkwardly mimic the fins of an ocean creature. It brandished the new appendage, twisting and turning its new hand out in front of its face in a way that Shin found uncomfortably human. Then, it shuffled forward across the roof, leering down at the Inspector with naked intent.
“Tired of running away?” Shin asked the creature as he brandished the Omen sword, sweeping it through the air. “Good. I’m tired of chasing you.”
The Casualty leapt into the air, and it pulled the rain from the sky around it, forming a bubble that engulfed it entirely. The bubble burst a split second later, all its force directed in firing the Casualty like a bullet down at the roof Shin was standing on. As the Casualty launched itself towards the roof like a projectile, but before it touched the gravel covered rooftop, another bubble formed in the monster’s path, which burst and sent the Casualty up into the air over Shin’s head.
The Casualty grinned down at the Inspector with its shark-mouth, water spilling out from between its teeth. It fell towards the rooftop and opened its maw, spitting a globule of rainwater larger than Shin’s head. The burning in Shin’s chest flared preemptively and he chose caution this time. Shin darted away across the gravel, narrowly escaping the cannonball of water. It burst through the top of the building and Shin felt the entire structure shake beneath him.
“This isn’t a safe place to fight,” Shin realized, glancing down at the massive hole blasted into the top of the building, which descended through several floors of reinforced concrete. “There’s no telling how many people are in this building, right now. I can’t risk letting them get hurt.”
The Casualty didn’t seem to care about the damage it caused; instead, it was galvanized by it. It struck the ground with a wet splash but didn’t pause to get its bearing before it went on the attack again. The Casualty spread its claws, and it raced across the rooftop, the water beneath its feet forming a current that carried it forward. It sharply changed direction just before it entered Shin’s striking range, instead circling to his right for a few feet before changing direction again.
The Casualty circled Shin for several seconds, moving faster with each moment. It moved through the rain like a blur, and the wake of its passage sent cascades of rain droplets in all directions, each one refracting the lights of the towers on all sides of them. Shin remained stationary, his eyes tracking the Casualty whenever it crossed in front of him, but he didn’t so much as turn his head when it tried to strafe him.
“What’s this thing’s deal?” Shin asked himself as he waited for the next attack. “It’s completely different than it was a few minutes ago.”
Fire bloomed in Shin’s chest, warning him, but he didn’t need it. Shin swept his sword over his back, deflecting a strike from the Casualty’s new claw without looking at it. He turned, bringing his sword around to slash at the Casualty, aiming for a decapitating blow. He sensed that that, if the creature could show expression, it would be surprised, but it wasn’t so shocked as to be defenseless. The black blade carved through the rain as Shin swung his counterstrike, but the droplets stuck to the blade, pulling it, guiding it like it was caught in the flow of a river.
The pulling of the rain wasn’t enough to stop Shin’s sword, but it was enough to throw off his swing. The Casualty stepped backward, and the diverted blade carved a gouge in its chest, spraying blood. The creature shrieked, once more wounded but alive, and it raced backward on its current of pooling rain. The pain didn’t frighten the Casualty into fleeing this time, and it renewed its attack with twice as much vigor.
Shin and the Casualty engaged in a back and forth dance: the twisted figure danced and darted around Shin, riding on water currents that pooled on the roof, while the Inspector remained stationary. Once, twice, thrice, the creature darted in, trying to attack from Shin’s blind spots, only for the Inspector to deflect each blow. Every failed strike had a cost: the Casualty lost more fingers from a brutal parry, it had half of its teeth shattered by a strike that nearly took its head off, and its stomach was opened up by another blow from Shin’s sword, causing its entrails to partially spill out. None of it mattered; the creature only seemed encouraged by the pain.
In spite of its numerous wounds, the Casualty did not slow. Instead, it grew faster and stronger, renewing every attack with increasing ferocity and vigor. Riding on currents of rain, the Casualty developed more novel uses of its power, spewing blasts of water to distract Shin while circling him from out of range of his sword before charging in to try and viciously maul him. Shin was always a step ahead, neatly evading and parrying every stroke, but chances to counter became fewer and fewer as his enemy became more dexterous and evasive. The Casualty never managed to wound Shin, but the previously one-sided confrontation was now tipping towards a stalemate, and the Inspector’s frustration mounted.
“This is getting me nowhere,” Shin growled as he parried another claw trying to tear out his throat.
“You know, I think someone warned you about this happening,” the AI in Shin’s sword mused.
“Shut up!” Shin snapped as he whirled and dispersed a blade of water shot at him from behind. “I can do this!”
Evading a counterstroke, the Casualty raced through the middle of the roof, sending gravel up in all directions. It whipped around to face Shin, pausing some fifteen feet away. Hissing through its broken teeth, the twisted Casualty threw its head back, filling its mouth with rain, and Shin knew what was coming next. The Casualty spit forth a stream of supersonic liquid and Shin threw himself to the side to evade it.
Whipping its head around, the Casualty tried to follow Shin’s movements, and the hydro-cutter snaked through the air. It sheared through the iron fence behind Shin without stopping and raked the sides of the buildings behind him. The pressurized geyser of rainwater ripped through glass, concrete, and steel without stopping, even with only a momentary touch. A newer, nanite hardened building to Shin’s right was deeply gouged by the spray, but the smart-metal skeleton began to patch itself immediately, filling in the damage to support the structure. Its neighbor of naked concrete wasn’t so lucky, as the stream clipped one of its rectangular corners and sliced through it, sending a slab of concrete and iron into the streets below with a thunderous crash.
“Shit!” Shin looked back over his shoulder as the ground rumbled and silently prayed that no one was hurt. He came up on one knee but wasn’t able to rise any further before the Casualty struck again. With a gesture from one clawed hand, the Casualty beckoned the endless deluge of rain that had poured onto the building and summoned it back to the roof. The water pooled beneath Shin’s crouching form in an instant, and it blasted upward another moment later, sending the Inspector skyward. He tumbled into the air once more, leaving the relative safety of the rooftop behind him.
Heat blossomed in Shin’s chest as he fell, and he instinctively raised his left hand to intercept an attack he couldn’t see. A jet of water blasted him across the forearm and for the first time that day, Shin felt a lance of pain pass through him, though the sensation was muted by adrenaline. The force of the blast sent Shin hurtling through the air, away from the rooftop and his enemy. He twisted again in the air, trying to find a purchase to arrest his flight, but the buildings that flew by on either side of him were outside of his reach.
Left with no other option, Shin thrust the black Omen blade into the concrete building on his left, and the smart-metal sword obliged to his need, lengthening itself to impale the side of the structure, while simultaneously making itself blunt enough so as not to simply slash through the concrete without stopping. Clinging to the sword with both hands, Shin swung his legs up to brace them against the wall and kick off, soaring away to his right. He landed atop the sloping roof of a building encased in panels of glass, and his feet clattered as he sought to balance himself on the sharp incline.
Instinctively, Shin raised his left arm to look at the damage done. The high-speed water stream had shredded through the smart-fabric of his shirt and jacket, and sheared off a few layers of Shin’s skin, though not enough to make him bleed. The pain had already vanished, and his body mended the superficial harm in moments through the power of Exigency, while the metamorphic fabric of his uniform repaired itself nearly as quickly. Though he’d incurred little harm, the fact that he’d been injured at all forced Shin to question what he was supposed to do.
“I might not be so lucky next time,” Shin told himself, quietly. “He’s just getting stronger the longer this goes on. If only I could use my Crisis,” he held up his hand, letting the small black flecks float from his fingers. However, the dark substance was quickly soaked by the constant rain and dissolved into a dark slurry that ran between his fingers and disappeared.
“I might have a solution to that,” a voice spoke from the Omen in Shin’s hand, though it wasn’t the sneering voice of the AI.
“Uh, Kodera?” Shin jumped at the sound of the Forecaster’s voice. “You were still on the line?”
“Of course,” he agreed, with consummate professionalism. “We never hang up on an Inspector during an emergency situation.”
“Oh, right,” Shin agreed lamely, feeling entirely foolish.
“The Heavy-Rain Casualty you’re fighting is at an advantage in this environment,” Kodera returned to the matter at hand. “Not only can he weaponize the weather against you, but your own Crisis can’t function in such a damp environment. We’ll need to get you someplace dry to put you on an even playing field.”
“Good luck with—,” Shin began to scoff at the idea, but he was interrupted by the sight of a massive plume of water rising over the rooftops. The Casualty descended onto the sloping point of Shin’s perch, landing higher up on the incline. The ungainly creature slid across the glass panels beneath its hands and feet, trying for a few moments to balance its odd proportions as it began moving downward towards the Inspector. With the currents of water running beneath it, the Casualty bounded forward, propelling itself with its two overlarge arms like a primate. Raising his weapon, Shin met the enemy’s charge.
Man and beast darted back and forth over the rooftop, their feet bounding against the shatterproof glass that lined the building’s walls. The Casualty was constantly moving now, gliding on waves of rippling rainwater, never pausing even to attack. Shin had to perform a dance of his own, unable to remain stationary, instead moving with the Human Calamity. Whenever the Casualty backed out of Shin’s range, it beckoned pools of water beneath his feet, attempting to blast him off the roof again, forcing Shin to scramble away. When that strategy didn’t work, the Casualty switched to a more subtle stratagem, and it began causing small waves of water to run back and forth beneath Shin’s feet, attempting to undermine his already precarious balance on the slippery glass.
“Inspector, are you still listening?” Kodera’s tone made the question seem as though he was scolding an inattentive child.
“Yeah, I’m still here,” Shin grunted as he fended off another claw swipe. “Go ahead.”
“As I was saying, you’ll need a dryer environment, and I happened to find one,” Kodera went on as Shin and the Casualty continued to battle.
“And where would that be?” Shin asked, surprised that the Forecaster had even found such a place, much less so quickly.
“Yōgai-shima Regal Hotel; it should be off to your left. Do you see it?” Shin turned, though the name of the establishment had already struck a chord with him. He risked taking his eyes off his enemy for a single moment, twisting his head to look in the direction Kodera prompted, and then he saw it.
Standing in the rain was a seventy-story building that towered over its closest neighbors, being one of the highest structures in the district. It was a thin, wide, squarish building that seemed as though it was more of an immense wall than a hotel. Covered in dark glass, it didn’t appear so out of the ordinary except for its size. However, there was an external layer of nanite across the outside of the building, which currently took the form of dark grey figures that spanned the edifice from the bottom floor to its flat top. The Regal was one of the first buildings in Yōgai-shima to experiment with nanite for aesthetic purposes, rather than simply for construction. While it didn’t hold a candle to the more garish buildings made since then, the Regal could make for quite a sight when the figures dotting its surface began to move and shift as though alive, their appearance and textures changing to suit different events. Marring the surface of the building was a gap in its eastern side where the dark glass and nanite fell away, revealing a hole that covered at least five different floors. The opening was covered by a translucent tarp pinned to its exterior, revealing the building’s bare frame beneath.
“The Regal has been closed since last year,” Kodera explained with clinical detachment. “They had plans for renovations, but they were halted when Hurricane Izumi rolled in. The damaged floors are still being repaired, but there’s a Type-2 Disaster Shelter on the thirtieth floor that’s still functional and connected to the city’s network. If you can lure the Casualty into the shelter with you, I can close the doors behind you and trap it out of the rain.”
“Yeah, that’s a great plan,” Shin was unenthusiastic in his agreement, and a nervous sweat beaded out on his forehead. “But, uh, isn’t there somewhere else we could lure it?”
“Inspector,” the scolding tone was in Kodera’ voice again. “The Regal is currently abandoned; it’s the nearest shelter to you that will have absolutely zero chance of civilians being present. There’s no better option!”
“I just. . .” Shin trailed off, unable to find the words he needed to say.
“Inspector?” Kodera finally seemed to sense Shin’s trepidation. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” pushing away his doubt, Shin answered. “I’ll go to the Regal.”
“I copy you, Inspector,” the Forecaster affirmed. “I’ll be watching you every step of the way.”
Knocking aside another swing from the Casualty’s claws, Shin countered with a wide, sweeping slash designed to force his enemy to retreat from his personal space, and the Casualty did as expected, moving away to look for another opportunity to press its assault. Rather than pursue, Shin turned away, heading north towards the tall silhouette of the Regal, and the Casualty seemed momentarily confused by his choice of actions. A moment later, Shin heard the pounding of the Casualty as it began to pursue him, and its heavy gait made the glass panes rumble beneath his feet. Shin could only imagine the Human Calamity’s desperate desire to overtake him, but the Inspector leapt from the rooftop before his pursuer could reach him.
He soared through the air, plunging through curtains of rain while lightning flashed in the grey heavens with thunder following after. He sprinted across the next rooftop and jumped from it as well, darting from building to building while the Casualty pursued. It hissed and growled as it sought to catch him, and Shin could hear the eruption of geysers as the creature blasted itself into the sky to gain ground. Pools of water formed in Shin’s path, trying to blast him off the building while currents of rain slithered underfoot to try and trip him, but the Inspector was able to sidestep all the obstacles his pursuer placed in front of him.
Shin made the last leap into the Regal’s shadow, launching himself from across the street and down to its eastern side. He landed in a crouch, pausing just long enough to look behind him for the Casualty, which was nothing more than a dark, twisted shadow falling towards him, its shape backlit by lightning flashing in the clouds above. Without wasting anymore time, Shin leapt up the side of the building and began sprinting up its surface when the momentum from his initial jump wasn’t quite enough to get him up to the thirtieth floor. He kicked off the side of the building one final time and slashed through the tarp shielding the Regal’s innards from the wind and the rain.
As he climbed into the dark interior, the lights clicked on, which he could only put down to the Forecaster’s intervention. He was standing in a crumbling hotel room at the edge of the hole torn in the building’s side, looking up at the gap in its interior. It appeared as though a chunk of the Regal had been scooped out, destroying walls and ceilings in the process, allowing Shin to stare up at a cross section of the damaged rooms above him. All of the rooms had been long since emptied of furniture, and in their place, Shin could see buckets of paint and tools to begin the laborious process of putting the Regal back together.
“This must be where the first bomb went off,” Shin mused in a faraway voice. “It’s hard to believe it’s been left this way for a whole year.”
“The building’s been passed around since then,” Kodera interjected an unwanted answer, reminding Shin he was still listening. “The bombings were a bit of a PR nightmare, as you can imagine. The previous owners were castigated for not having the Regal’s emergency preparedness infrastructure up to code, and the property’s changed hands a number of times before reconstruction could begin in earnest.”
“A lot of things could be different right now if the Regal had its act together,” Shin opined as he looked up at the crater in the building’s side.
“How do you mean?” the Forecaster inquired, but Shin didn’t answer.
“Read the room, Ko-chan,” the Omen ran defense on Shin’s behalf. “Sensitive subject.”
“Ko-chan?” the Forecaster balked.
The fire in Shin’s chest returned, and he spun on his heel as a jet of water surged skyward, carrying the Casualty up the side of the building. Shin lunged across the broken floor, moving further inside as the creature pursued him, burbling and hissing with each step. Leaving the exterior rooms behind, Shin escaped into the main hallway, which was likewise barren and stripped, save for dangling tarps and left behind construction equipment. In the middle of the hallway was a large median that ran from floor to ceiling. At either end, if Shin remembered right, were the two banks of elevators. However, the pair of stainless-steel sliding doors set into the center of the wall were new. The shining doorway was marked with posted warnings, and a marker written in large bold letters identified the space beyond: “TYPE-2 DISASTER SHELTER.” As Shin slid to a halt, the doors opened with a chime.
“Alert, this shelter’s doors have been unlocked via a remote command from emergency services,” an automated voice began to play through a set of loudspeakers set into the wall on either side of the doorway. “An emergency alert has not been declared at this time. However, please remain aware of your surroundings, and enter the shelter if necessary.”
Ignoring the message, Shin slid through the opening doors, the sound of the pursuing Casualty echoing through the passage behind him. The inside of the shelter was a bare white room, twenty feet long and eight feet wide with a low ceiling. The walls were lined with empty shelves meant to hold a thousand different supplies in case of whatever random natural or manmade disaster visited Yōgai-shima, ranging from first aid kits to food rations and bedding for long term inhabitation. When it was completed, a Type-2 shelter would be equipped to keep its inhabitants alive for at least a month without access to the outside, with sealed walls that could keep out fires, explosions, gas, and most importantly, water.
“If you can lure the Casualty into the room, then you can slip out through the secondary exit,” Kodera offered as Shin reached the middle of the confined shelter. “I can seal the doors behind you; that should contain it until Inspector Asahi arrives.”
“No,” Shin raised his blade, not hesitating for a moment. “I’ll handle this.”
The dark shape of the Casualty soon filled the doorway behind Shin. It ambled through the open doors with its overlong arms dangling at its sides. It moved slowly, almost cautiously, into the shelter, as though its sense of survival was slowly rekindling, but that latent desire for self-preservation was too weak to stop it from willingly walking into Shin’s trap. It’s every step drew it closer to Shin, its heavy footsteps splattering with rainwater. It stood off against Shin, raising its claws up to its sides while it hissed through a mouthful of foam that dribbled through its shark teeth. So focused on Shin was the Casualty, that it didn’t notice the doors closing behind it.
“Alert, this shelter’s Karmic Barrier system has been activated,” the same female voice spoke over the shelter’s internal speakers, and the doors hissed as they sealed themselves shut. “This facility is now closed to the outside due to an override by the Human Calamity Response Bureau. The doors cannot be opened without authorization from emergency services or the facility administrator.”
The Casualty, deaf to the sound of the alert, spat a mouthful of water out, transforming it into a stream of pressurized liquid to cut Shin in half. The Inspector ducked aside, letting the water cutter strike the white wall behind him. The discharge of water shredded through the white plaster coating the interior of the shelter, and a burst of black particles poured out into the open air. When the stream lost its force, there remained only a dripping hole in the plaster which revealed the metal wall of the environmentally sealed box that made up the shelter. The metal infrastructure beneath the paint and plaster was unharmed, despite the Casualty’s power to cut through concrete and steal.
“Wasted your last shot, huh?” Shin observed as he brandished his sword, raising it up to point at the Casualty. “You’re going to regret that.”
Placing his left hand against the flat of the blade, Shin ran his fingers down the Omen’s length. Thinking thoughts of fire and thunder, black particles flowed from Shin’s fingertips, coating the dark sword. The cloud of Black Powder flowed around the weapon, pulsing with fiery orange light as they anticipated a violent detonation.
“Time to show you what I can do.”
Shin lunged forward, the smoking sword leaving a dark trail as he swept it through the air. The Casualty didn’t back down, meeting Shin’s charge with its own, hissing through its nest of mismatched teeth. The Casualty was stronger and faster than it had been during their very first exchange and it was better adjusted to its twisted frame. However, without the ample rainwater to utilize its Crisis, the tables had firmly turned back into Shin’s favor. The Human Calamity was stronger and faster than any ordinary human or animal on the planet, but the black sword cared nothing for the supernaturally durable muscle and bones of the monster.
The Omen sword sang through the air as Shin guided it, and flesh was carved and blood did flow. Beneath Shin’s blistering offense, the Casualty was forced to retreat, its prior eagerness for bloodshed completely smothered by desperate fear. In moments, it had lost both hands, then its arms up to its elbows. Its chest was carved open soon after, revealing more of its once vital organs struggling to function. Wherever the dark sword passed, the Black Powder caked its wounds, clinging to the old man’s flesh while a thin trail of particulates dangled through the air, connecting the Casualty to the sword in Shin’s hand. The old man’s parka and shirt were reduced to shreds by the passage of the sword, and its entire upper half was a slab of gore that spilled endless crimson blood to paint the floor beneath it. Only through purest fortune, or misfortune, had the creature avoided having its head taken off by the merciless weapon in the Inspector’s hands, but Shin only redoubled his efforts.
Swinging the particulate coated blade towards the mutilated trunk of the Casualty’s head, Shin was sent stumbling backward when the Human Calamity kicked him in the chest at the last second. The unexpected counter forced both combatants to part, enabling the Casualty to avoid certain death one last time before it slammed into the wall opposite Shin. Blood spurted as the creature struck the wall, creating a dark red outline, and it seemed to lack the strength to move any further. It simply stood in one place, trembling under the weight of its wounds. Hefting his sword, Shin prepared to advance, but he was caught off guard by a sound echoing from the walls.
“What’s that noise?” Shin asked as the shelter was filled with the sound of metal groaning and shifting.
“Pipes?” the Omen offered, equally confused.
“Forecaster, this room isn’t connected to the building’s water supply, is it?” Shin asked, a surge of alarm flashing through his brain while a wildfire burned in his chest.
“No,” Kodera answered, though he didn’t seem as certain as he usually was. “It should be completely isolated.”
“But the shelter has internal tanks for drinking water, doesn’t it?” the Omen asked, arriving at the conclusion before either man.
“The construction isn’t scheduled to be finished for at least another two months,” Kodera answered, a frantic tone creeping into his voice. “They shouldn’t have been installed yet!”
With a loud screech, the pipes ruptured in the ceiling, and jets of water began to spray down. The Casualty burbled and it struggled to step forward, its fighting spirit renewed as water began to fill the room. Feeling the water beginning to pool around his feet, Shin raised his sword to point at the Casualty as the dark trail between the weapon and his enemy wavered in the air.
“It’s time,” Shin tried to steel himself for what came next, but the Omen felt the need to interject.
“You sure you want to do this now?” the machine asked. “And here, of all places?”
“I have to do it,” Shin insisted, watching as the Casualty took another step forward, its flesh knitting back together in moments. “There’s no time.”
“Whatever, man,” the Omen relented with less than stellar enthusiasm. “It’s your trauma.”
Pressing his right thumb against the hilt of the sword, Shin activated a hidden mechanism in the weapon he’d designed himself. Out from the crossguard sprang two small hammers, and they struck the base of the black sword, producing a cloud of sparks. The Black Powder swirling around the weapon ignited into a flash of fiery orange embers which traveled up the length of the weapon, then ignited the dark trail swirling through the air. Like a fuse, the stream of Black Powder burnt up as it crossed the room and reached the Casualty. Immediately, the layers of flammable powder coating its bloody body exploded.
There was a bright orange flash like lightning and thunder followed, consuming the Casualty. The wave of intense heat instantly vaporized the water streaming into the room and the shockwave peeled away the whitewash walls and shelves, leaving only the dark grey metal structure beneath plain for all to see. Smoke rose to the ceiling and washed across the room like a dark cloud, and alarms began to ring.
“Alert!” the automated voice rang out again. “A Fire Emergency has been detected in Shelter-033B! All citizens inside Shelter-033B must evacuate!”
There was a rush of air as the doors unsealed themselves, and the pressure in the room changed again. Air rushed out into the halls along with a current of smoke and embers, threatening to release the fire into the rest of the building. Sprinklers emerged from the shelter’s ceiling, attempting to spray the Casualty’s burning body, but they could only manage a light trickle, their pipes having been damaged by the Casualty’s Crisis.
“You defied orders multiple times and ended up starting a fire in an abandoned building,” the Omen admired Shin’s handiwork as the Inspector shielded his eyes from the fiery blaze he started. “I’m really looking forward to how you rationalize all of this on your report.”
Shin didn’t pay attention to anything the Omen was saying, having long since learned to tune it out. He shielded his eyes with his left arm as he stared into the orange blaze, fixated on the screaming figure of the old man dancing in the fires. The Casualty screamed and writhed as the flames consumed it, collapsing face down onto the floor after several long seconds. Only then did Shin turn his back on the fallen creature to make for the opened exit.
He retraced his steps as the empty building’s fire alarms began to blare, and smoke filled the hallways. The empty passages blurred past as Shin raced out of the building, returning to the floors collapsed from the year-old explosion. He hurled himself through the torn tarp that shielded the side of the building and fell into the rain slicked streets below. He landed on the sidewalk below on all fours, shattering the concrete and sending up a wave of water.
Gasps rose up from the street as men and women gathered to watch trails of smoke begin pouring from the abandoned hotel above. Cars slowed on the cross streets as sirens began to wail in the distance. The streetlights in the perimeter around the building flashed red, producing holographic banners that flashed warnings to commuters.
“Forecaster!” Shin raised his Omen, and the black sword collapsed back into its portable form. “We’re going to need a fire response team from Civil Services down-!”
“Inspector!” the Forecaster interrupted him, alarm in his voice. “I’m still getting a reading from the Casualty!”
“What?” caught off guard, Shin struggled to comprehend what he was told. Fire blossomed behind Shin’s ribs and he turned, watching as something landed in the street. A wall of water blasted in all directions, flipping the cars in the street and toppling pedestrians, creating a chaotic din of honking horns and panicked screams.
Adrenaline surged and Shin felt himself fall back into Exigency and he rushed forward towards a sedan that was being swept towards a group of pedestrians who’d been slammed against the wall of a building by the current. They struggled to stand and pull themselves out of the way, but it was clear that they would be crushed by the oncoming vehicle before they could get away. Shin interposed himself, reaching out with both hands to catch the oncoming car. His fingers dug into the chassis as he grappled the automobile and struggled to find his footing on the slick ground. Digging in, he lifted the car into the air and, filled with adrenaline as he was, his first instinct was to throw the car away as hard as he could. However, a glance through the fogged-up windshield reminded Shin that there was a terrified driver inside, and he gently set down the car as best he could. With the immediate problem solved, Shin looked up and down the street at the toppled cars and civilians, trying to discern who needed his help next. However, a figure rose up in the middle of the shattered road, demanding all of Shin’s attention.
Shedding the remains of its incinerated clothing and burnt skin beneath the rain, the Casualty stood up on its feet, and its body shuddered in expectation of an imminent transformation. The creature stood taller and wider than it had before, having transformed from a mutated old man into a seven-foot-tall monstrosity that was over half as wide at the shoulder. In place of his original leathery brown skin, the Casualty produced a smooth, hairless white epidermis that was stretched tightly over its expanded frame. Two new arms had grown out to produced finned fingers and lengthy claws. The sharklike mouth had grown further and further out of the old man’s head, extending outward on a longer neck. To replace the teeth it had lost, clusters of new fangs had grown out in excess, to the point that they poked violently through the Casualty’s flesh. What remained of the old man was nothing more than a vaguely human silhouette of dark brown skin that marred the pale hide of the beast’s neck and torso.
“Dammit!” Shin brandished his Omen, transforming it back into the form of a sword. He stepped into the street, ready to continue the fight, but the Casualty had other ideas. It raised its arms up, its voice rising from a burbling hiss to an ear-piercing shriek. The rainfall stopped and the air became dry, and then, the drains in the street began to overflow, flooding the roadway. Innocent civilians screamed and cried, scrambling for safety as water rushed in all directions while cars lost traction with the road and began to drift helplessly. Geysers of water began to burst up at random, threatening to hurl people into the air or flip cars. Shin froze for a moment, unsure what action to take.
“Do I try and keep fighting?” Shin asked himself, glancing between the shrieking Casualty and the people around him. “Or do I focus on evacuating the street first?”
As if in answer, a new noise echoed up and down the street: a rumbling noise that grew into a roar as it grew closer. It grew louder and louder, and even the Casualty stopped to listen as something came nearer. Following the sound, Shin turned his head to look back up the street behind him just in time to see a car round the corner.
It was a sleek black car with two doors and a wide front end. The vehicle roared forward in the direction of Shin and the Casualty, creating a deafening din that echoed off the walls of the buildings around them. The vehicle passed Shin by, cutting through the flooding street like a blade while also impossibly weaving between pedestrians and toppled vehicles. It charged towards the Casualty and the beast leapt into the air at the last second, carried upward by a plume of water. As the black car passed beneath it, the Casualty gestured downward, and another blast of water shot the vehicle into the sky. The car flipped end over end multiple times and then landed heavily thirty feet down the street. No ordinary vehicle would have survived the rigors of that landing, but the black car seemed perfectly fine and the Casualty whipped around to face it as it returned to the ground.
“Attention! Attention!” the Omen in Shin’s hand began to blare its automated alert. “Senior Inspector Asahi Takeyoshi has arrived at the scene of the Heavy Rain Emergency in Horizon District! I repeat, Senior Inspector Asahi has arrived! All civilians are to comply with orders given by the Human Calamity Response Bureau and the Civil Services!”
It was then that Shin realized there was another man standing in the street between the black car and the Casualty. He was shorter than Shin by a few inches and a decade or so older, with ruddy skin, a head of jet-black messy hair and unshaven cheeks. The man was dressed in a black suit like Shin, but he wore a brown waist coat beneath his jacket, and he wore a neon green laminate jacket over his uniform. In his left hand he held a cup of coffee at stomach level, and he used his right hand to stifle a yawn. Shin gaped at the stranger, trying to discern where he’d come from. The Deputy was certain that the man hadn’t been standing there a moment before.
“Did he jump out of the car in midair?” Shin asked, looking back to the black car which now sat idle on the street.
“A Heavy Rain Emergency, huh?” the Senior Inspector took a sip of his coffee as he surveyed the Casualty, which seemed to be gauging him in turn. “I think that’s a new one. I’ve seen ‘Drowning’ and ‘Flood’ Casualties before, but you’re a first. So, tell me, in your own words, what makes you special?”
The Casualty gave the Inspector an answer; it raised its hands over its head and then thrust them downward towards the Inspector. The frozen rain drops overhead surged into motion, once more shooting downward in a blistering hail of projectiles. Shin stretched out hand and opened his mouth to try and project some kind of warning, but the words caught in his throat when the Senior Inspector casually strolled through the barrage without issue. For a moment, Shin thought that the older man was simply too hardy to be harmed by the downpour that shredded the concrete street to dust and mud, but when he focused, Shin could see that the other man wasn’t being touched by the rain at all.
“How is he doing that?” Shin could only wonder.
“A water manipulating Crisis?” the man mused as he lackadaisically closed the gap between himself and the Casualty. The man paused for a moment, a pensive look on his face as though he was listening to something, then he started walking again. “You can control the directionality and force of rainwater? That’s a bit specific, but alright. That shouldn’t be too hard to handle.”
The Casualty seemed to share Shin’s mysticism regarding the Inspector’s casual and uninterrupted approach. It stared at the Inspector with its eyeless face, hissing and burbling in momentary indecision, then, it lunged. It charged headfirst towards the Senior Inspector, opening its massive mouth to try and bite him in half from head to hips. A second later, the Casualty was stumbling backward, broken teeth and blood streaming in all direction. The shark mouth had been split open vertically, leaving the upper half of its new head to pull apart in two different directions.
The Inspector held an object in his right hand, though Shin had a hard time describing it. It wasn’t an Omen; instead, it was a slender knife with a faceted yellow wooden handle with a pink pommel and a slender dark grey blade. The Senior Inspector twirled the strange blade expertly with the fingers of his right hand while he held his coffee cup away from the spraying blood with his left.
The Casualty, caught off guard by the Inspector’s counterattack, raised its massive claws to rake the small man in front of it. A few deft passes of the dagger in the man’s hand caused lacerations to appear up and down the Casualty’s forearms, spilling blood and rendering the beast unable to lift them. Staggering backward in retreat once more, the Casualty tensed its legs, ready to leap away from the dexterous butcher that was carving it apart. However, the man in green flicked his fingers and the strange knife flew from his hand, striking the Casualty in the chest and the creature froze where it stood. Shin stared at the immobile monstrosity as the rain began to fall again, and the man standing before Human Calamity took another swig of his coffee. The Senior Inspector glanced around, and his eyes immediately found Shin.
“Hey, kid!” the Senior Inspector gestured towards him. “Come over here.”
“Me?” Shin asked, caught flat-footed.
“Yes, you!” the older man barked. “Who else do you think I’m talking to?”
“Smooth,” Shin’s Omen mocked him as the young man stepped across the street, his sword collapsing back into a phone again.
“Senior Inspector Asahi?” Shin ran an awkward hand through his hair and then bowed, uncertain what he was introduce himself, apologize, or explain himself. “I’m Deputy Inspector Atarashi Shin. I’ve been assigned as your student, starting today.”
“So, I’ve heard,” the Senior Inspector didn’t answer Shin with an introduction in kind, and he sounded less than enthused about their meeting. Shin straightened awkwardly, trying not to take it personally. He looked up at the Casualty still standing entirely immobile over them, and his instincts told him to be tense, despite how entirely frozen it appeared to be.
“Uhh, is it dead?” Shin asked.
“No,” Inspector Asahi took another sip of his drink, and then reached out to flick the end of the knife sticking out of the monster’s chest. “I just made it impossible for it to move.”
Shin followed the other man’s motion with his eyes to the beast’s torso, where the yellow wooden handle and pink pommel still protruded from between the beast’s ribs.
“Wait a minute,” Shin asked, realizing what he was looking at. “Is that a pencil?”
“It used to be,” Asahi grunted a confirmation, and he fished an old-fashioned black pen from a pocket in his green jacket. He raised it up to wrap the Casualty on its mutilated oversized shark nose, as if to scold it. “Pay attention to this, kid; it’s your first lesson. Once a human being becomes a Casualty, there’s no going back. Oftentimes, the transformation into a Human Calamity will leave some traces of their original selves, but you need to look past it.
“The only way to kill a Human Calamity is to destroy its brain. Nothing else will work. Ugly bastards like this guy, the type that grow extra heads? They can make that difficult to determine where the brain is, exactly. The best way to handle that is to locate the original head, if possible, and destroy that rather than worry about the other ones.”
He spun the writing utensil between his fingers, and it changed; the black polished length of the pencil thickened and hardened while the bronze pen clip extended into a finger guard. The bronze pointed tip lengthened, transforming into a six-inch blade. Holding the knife in a reverse grip, Asahi raised the knife and held it over the patch of skin that marked where the old man’s head used to be. He glanced at Shin, making sure the younger man was watching, then thrust the pen-knife through the beast’s flesh.
The immobile Casualty burbled and hissed through its teeth one last time, and then, it suddenly collapsed. Shin stared down at the fallen Human Calamity, the tension in him screaming that it would spring back to its feet at any second, but that didn’t happen. The Casualty simply lay on the sidewalk as the rain poured down, mixing with the blood seeping from the hole in the side of its head. Asahi stopped paying attention to the Casualty the moment he pulled his blade from its head, instead focused on his weapon which had returned to the form of a pen. He shook the pen back and forth with disgust, letting it drip blood onto the sidewalk, and he sighed.
“This was my favorite pen, you know?”
Incident Report
1/4/2044
Central Ward
Horizon District
At roughly 08:30, Deputy Inspector Atarashi Shin encountered a Human Calamity during the course of his duties. He attempted to subdue the Casualty, incurring minor property damage across Horizon as a result. I eliminated the Casualty when I arrived on the scene, and I remained on site until Civil Services arrived.
Senior Inspector Asahi Takeyoshi, Human Disaster Response Bureau
Dossier and Autopsy Report
01/04/2044
Subject Name: Unknown (Jaws)
A run of the mill Casualty created by the constant downpour of Hurricane Izumi. Seemed to serve as a nice opponent for Central Ward’s virgin Inspector, though perhaps the old guy was too much for him to handle. By the time the corpse reached us, the accumulation of repeated physical trauma and advanced mutation had left most forms of identification thoroughly off the table. DNA samples have been submitted to the Civil Database, but I’m not keeping my fingers crossed or anything.
Judging from the data we were given from Inspector Atarashi’s Omen, it seems as though the subject was a transient that ended up getting swept into one of the city’s storm drains. However, the subject underwent extreme physiological metamorphosis as a result of continual exposure to stress. The subject developed a secondary mandible growing from the side of his head, as well as a pair of longer arms tipped with claws, in addition to a steadily increasing muscle mass.
Although Inspector Asahi was kind enough to bring the Casualty in relatively intact, the biological changes to the subject’s form have been evaluated and found to be of little use in further research. The cadaver has been carbonized, and his remains are being stored pending the results of his DNA tests.
Crisis: Heavy Rain Emergency, “Deadly Downpour”
Kitagaki won the rock-paper-scissors match, so he got to name the Crisis this time. A water-manipulating ability, Deadly Downpour manifests in controlling the flow of existing water. As far as Crises go, Deadly Downpour showcased great versatility, being capable of offense, defense, and mobility. However, the Crisis did not possess the ability to generate water through the use of Hazard Energy, nor did Deadly Downpour exhibit any esoteric or exotic effects to set it apart from previously researched Crises of its family. As a result, “Deadly Downpour” has been passed over for further research.
Parameters
Exigency: 4.0
A substandard Human Calamity in terms of physicality, but it must be remembered that even a “below-average” Casualty possesses strength and durability eclipsing even the largest organisms in the animal kingdom. Jaws possessed a powerful overgrown mandible and additional talons as force multipliers for its superhuman strength and hardened skin that could repel small-arms fire. However, against the monomolecular blade of an Omen, it stood no chance.
Runaway: 6.0
Jaws possessed an above average ability to draw in environmental Hazard Energy to fuel its growth. Perhaps the subject’s saving grace, Jaws was endowed with exceptional regenerative abilities in response to continuous physical trauma, even to the point of growing entire limbs in the matter of seconds. Even substantially stronger Saigaijin aren’t guaranteed to heal so rapidly. In addition, the influx of Hazard Energy seemed to enable Jaws to harness his Crisis more ably and more forcefully in a very limited period of time.
Forecasting: ? (Unknown)
The subject’s lifespan post-metamorphosis was very limited, as was the data we were able to gather on it. During the engagement with Inspectors Atarashi and Asahi, the Casualty displayed no signs of precognition, which may suggest that his ability to Forecast was extremely limited, or that complete regression to an animal mind state prevented the subject from exercising what foresight it may have possessed.
Account: 30%
The Casualty possessed a token amount of Karma inside its body when tested during autopsy, and that paltry number was likely boosted by the battle before its death. Nonetheless, the subject showed no aptitude for manipulating causality during its brief time as a Human Calamity.
Precision: 6.0
When utilizing Deadly Downpour, the subject showed a strong aptitude for manipulating water for a wide range of uses. By using rainwater to form projectiles, Jaws could harness his Crisis to target enemies precisely with minimal drop in power.
Karma: 3.0
Posthumous testing of the cadaver revealed a Karmic flow inside the body tilted towards misfortune.
Dr. Aburaya, Human Disaster Response Bureau, Corpse Disposal Unit
