Kass smirked to herself as she came across two members of Schatten: Lee Changmin and Lee Junho. Both of which shouldn’t even have her breaking a sweat. She skidded to a halt on her heels and debated on whether she should stop to play the part or just go ahead and kill them.

At the back of her head Kwon and Fei’s voice echoed, telling her that there was no need to engage combat with Schatten. A scoff escaped her lips at the thought. Kass Lee, not engage in battle? And in one where her victims would be sitting ducks? There was no way in hell.

Carefully, she lifted the flowy satin skirt of her long dress, and taped to her inner thigh were several needles, about a finger in length. The two Schatten officers hadn’t noticed her yet, and she quickly maneuvered two needles into her bracelet.

It would only take two shots, and Kass fired, an evil smile gracing her lips.

…

Junho couldn’t make it out, but his instinct acted before his brain could process it, and he ducked to the ground. This was at the expense of his commanding officer looking at him funny, but both men let the matter go.

Changmin felt something graze his neck, but seeing nothing, he shrugged it off and continued towards the basement parking where Mai should be. Junho had called her a few minutes ago, and with her not taking the call, they were aptly worried.

The same could be said for the remaining members of the Schatten. Wooyoung and Taecyeon, even Jay had suddenly disappeared without warning. Changmin had already contacted Fuu and Conny to locate the missing members, but the analysts had yet to get back to him.

…

Fuu’s brows furrowed at the middle of her forehead. Taecyeon, Jay, and Wooyoung were in the middle of nowhere. She couldn’t seem to get to their receivers, and the only other way left for her was to actually contact their phones. She debated on the option as she kept receiving weird signal variations on the frequency they used for their radio.

Given a few tweaks, she cleared all the noise, and the results surprised her.

Your Bauer is pretty useless.

She’s still in the building, I don’t know what she’s doing. I don’t suppose you would want to volunteer to go find her?

No.

Mr. Laufer is out of the question. I’ll send you Dame’s coordinates. Go see what they’re up to.

“Bauer, Laufer, Dame?” Fuu clapped her hand to as soon as she realized that the speaker button was switched on.

“Uh-oh,” came the voice from the other line.

Jinwoon looked at his monitor confused. Did someone just tap into our frequency?! With a sigh, he stretched his fingers and tapped away at his keyboard. “Hell, nobody talk. We have a little situation.”

…

Junsu shrugged at Jinwoon’s instructions. While he wanted to speak up just to irk the boy, he had heard the other voice on the line as well. The woman sounded pretty, and Junsu wanted to hear her talk again, but he didn’t fancy a lecturing from Jinwoon when he got back.

Stashing his blow-dart away, Junsu looked over at the dead body of Bulatov sprawled on the floor, and towards the picture of a young woman on the table.

“Your daughter’s pretty. Maybe I should console her after she finds her father brutally murdered,” he muttered to himself.

“Who are you?!” said the pretty voice over the line.

Junsu could hear Jinwoon groaning from the other end. “I’m supposed to be the Laufer, nice to meet you. Our archbishop doesn’t seem to like you much. Don’t worry, I’m nothing like him. Maybe I can call you some other time when neither of us are otherwise occupied?”

“You really want to die, don’t you?” he heard Rai say.

Apparently, he wasn’t the only one who had trouble shutting up.

…

Rai rolled her eyes and dragged her feet towards the car park exit. She wanted a clean escape- no need to confront Schatten- not when those giant crayons were involved. With the slight trembling of the ground beneath her, Rai hid behind a shadow as two members of the police team, the unit leader and that other one, came running into the scene.

The two of them separated ways as soon as they entered the room, and Rai was just about to make her exit when Changmin suddenly fell to the floor. Under her, the vibrations that reflected the fallen captain’s heartbeat became ragged and labored, and Rai found herself unable to leave.

There was only one reason for this to happen, and she stepped out of the shadows and towards Changmin, who was now doubled over the floor clutching at his chest.

Rai pulled off her left glove and laid a hand on his shoulder, her eyes growing wide as Changmin continued to struggle to breath. Rai pushed him to the floor and his panicked eyes met hers.

“Help...” he croaked.

With all the external noise in her ear and the multitude of vibrations in the air, Rai stared back just as helplessly. Instinctively, Rai knew there was only one way to ease the pain from the writhing man before her.

It was pain like Changmin never felt before. The burning sensations were coursing through his body, and it was beyond any pain he could ever imagine. His lungs appeared as if they have stopped functioning altogether, and try as he did to voluntarily in breaths of air, his body refused to cooperate.

In front of him, he was certain, was his killer, and her amber eyes watching him mercilessly die a slow and painful death, would be the last thing he saw.

Rai closed her eyes and bit her lip. Even when Changmin was the opposition, she did not believe he deserved to die like this. Such horrific deaths were saved for those men who cut down people who do no wrong.

It was a decision Rai never had thought she would have to make. Muttering an old shinto prayer and apologizing for the absence of her kodachi, Rai drew her right fist high in the air and swiftly struck down. Heartbeats came slower and slower until they came no more, and Rai bowed her head finishing off her prayer.

…

Mai stared in horror as the members of 2ne1 slowly dropped to the ground like flies sprayed with insecticide. Their bodies froze, and though their cries were voiceless, their eyes expressed unspeakable pains as the circuits on their headgears crackled and snapped.

Her trembling hand came up to her lips as she slowly backed away on unsteady feet. Nothing was going through her head but the sudden silence and the sound of death in the air.

Junho was instantly by her side, and he wrapped an arm around her to support her. There was nothing more he could have done, and he quickly made a call to Fuu, who asked to speak to Mai immediately. He couldn’t make out the conversation, but the look on Mai’s face said enough, and he knew it would not be right to ask her why.

Left with no other choice, Junho walked Mai back to where he and their captain separated, and the sight before him left him stunned and speechless.

Rai was kneeling over their captain, her bagh nakh firmly planted on his chest.

Mai saw red.

Coming quickly to her defense, Rai channeled her attacks directly to the officer who came screaming and barehanded at her. Mai was more forceful this time, all the caution she normally took when fighting vanished as she wantonly threw herself into her attacks. Rai was just as determined to keep own self alive, and she did not hesitate to slash at her enemy.

So into the fight they both were, that none of them foresaw what would happen next. Junho pulled out his pistol bow, docked two tranquilizers, and fired at both women. Now was not the time to choose to whom his alliance would lie.

…

“What’s taking so long?” Seungri asked, already impatient.

Big Bang was stationed outside the outpost near district VII. After the general left the charity event, they were all pooled together in this building as their commanding officer went inside the office to discuss matters with an anonymous guest.

“Must be a long discussion, then,” Daesung quipped, grinning from ear to ear. Unlike the youngest, he was not bored at all. What Daesung was preoccupied with, was trying to extract information from one Dong Youngbae standing right across him.

“Stop staring at me like that,” Youngbae said, a hint of annoyance in his voice. “I’m not going to kiss and tell.”

“So there was a kiss involved!” Seunghyun asked, clapping a hand on Youngbae’s shoulder.

The shorter man frowned. “Figure of speech,” he answered dejectedly. “But that’s not the point. The point is-”

“We know, you like her.” Seungri rolled his eyes as he peered into the dark hallways of the Outpost. “What’s taking so long? Someone should go and check. I volunteer our brave leader.”

Jiyoung rolled his eyes at Seungri who was pointing at him with both hands. “Why don’t you go and check?”

“You’re the leader, oh brave and honorable one,” Seungri retorted. “Just go check. Marianna would be so disappointed,” he added, eyeing the sword strapped to Jiyoung’s back.

Jiyoung sneered at the youngest.

“Hey, no need to bring in dead girlfriends into this,” Daesung cut in, stepping in between the two men.

The remaining members of the group watched Jiyoung’s back disappear into the darkness of the hallway.

“That was a foul, Seungri.” Youngbae reprimanded.

“Hey, he needs to get over his dead girlfriend. Besides, isn’t there a new girl? The flower shop one, Chaeeun?”

Daesung slapped Seungri behind his head, “Just shut up. No more mentions of dead girlfriends,” his eyes flashed briefly towards Seunghyun, “or ex-wives,” he whispered.

Their gazes turned towards Seunghyun whose eyes were suddenly distant.

…

The scent of nicotine aded the office walls as puffs of smoke emanated from the tightly wrapped and rolled bundle of tobacco leaves poised at the fingers of the dark figure lounging on the executive chair behind a large oak desk. He exhaled several clouds of smoke from his mouth, and the rings slowly rose up in the air and dissipated into the unlit portions of the room. From behind the dimly lit lamp, another figure sat on the plush leather sofa, his fingers drumming slowly, one finger at a time, on the armrest.

The brown leather squeaked at the aged man’s movements. “Things are going as planned, so it appears,” he stated, the grind to his voice unable to hide his pleasure.

“Be wary, General, not everything appears at it seems to be,” answered the man behind the desk. “I’m afraid who we believe are allies, may in fact be betraying us as we speak.”

“They wouldn’t dare!” scoffed the general, “They know what they’re facing. It would be simply idiotic of them to to even attempt a rebellion.”

The other man suppressed a laugh and brought the tobacco cylinder to his lips again. Looking outside, a small smile appeared on his lips. “It’s only a matter of time. What is no longer required needs to be disposed of. We’ve no room for excess baggage.”

“Agreed. I am under the impression that you are to take care of it all?”

A nod.

“Well then, Chief, it has been a pleasure working with you.”

“And I you, General Yang,” Lee Sooman said, standing up from his chair and setting his tobacco on an ashtray on his desk. “It has most definitely been a pleasure.” He raised his other hand that had been obscured from General Yang’s view.

Yang Hyunsuk’s eyes bulged out of its sockets as a railgun pointed at his direction. Before he could even react or fully digest the situation, the Police Chief fired, sending deadly jolts of electricity into the general’s body.

“Again, it was a pleasure working with you, General. Unfortunately, Hell has targeted you, just as they had been targeting the rest of our excess baggage.”

…

Jiyoung watched in horror as the General fell on his back, bolts of static electricity still coursing through his body as his limbs jerked on the floor. Jiyoung kicked the door fully open, ready to attack the assailant, but once again he froze as his eyes took in the Police Chief’s form.

“Ah, I suppose it would have come to this anyway.”

With a press of a button from the remote in the Chief’s hands, Jiyoung’s hardsuit froze up and he lost control completely. All over his body, the circuits started to shut down, and slowly, the weight of the suit crushed him and he fell like dead weight to the floor. His eyes remained fixated on Lee Sooman as he stepped over his crumpled body and out into the hallway.

If this was happening to him, then surely, the rest of Big Bang and 2ne1 were experiencing the same thing. A red light beeped by his wrist, and Jiyoung closed his eyes, resigning himself to his fate.

~ II ~

end scene

As the angel stood and laughed, I was betrayed by stinging tears

Rage overwhelmed me and I screamed drawing my blade to venge them all

And a song was echoing, my destiny’s refrain

A song of the wanderer’s lonely soul, song of sinners to redeem

- Piece of Heaven, Weiss Kreuz

Act III coming soon