Raiden's Manifesto

I was born the son of a corporate, that's what mama told me. That one day he'd come and give me the life I deserved.

She died, and the bastard never came to her funeral. I was just a boy, alone, without any hope of changing the world. That's when they began speaking of him, The R0N1N. A one man army who could cleave through Yuzhou's military as an unimpeded force of pure destruction. He sought freedom in its purest form, through the salvation of death.

Yes, that is what my mother's death gave me. Freedom, no longer was I constrained to the teachings of one who was living in suffering, but instead elevating past these mortal, moral constraints to pursue that which was most sweet to my ears. A legacy.

Should The R0N1N ever die in his efforts, would it truly be to Yuzhou's benefit if he passed in the blaze of glory he was known for? No, he'd be immortalized, as he should be. His sword has unsheathed so many of us from the lies veiled beyond our eyes, untangled the web so our voices may thunder forever more into the beyond.

No one remembers my mother's death, I will make them remember mine.

October 13th

6:18 PM

Diana

"Well, shit." Diamante said a breath before he shot out with the gun in his knee. Raiden's head hadn't yet fallen to the ground when his bullet slammed into Belle's container on the floor, striking it so precisely that it flew right into the middle of the panicked fray of Raiden's entourage.

His second shot struck the center of the canister while it was still mid-air, and a purple mist swelled into the air. In seconds, all fifteen of the men dropped to the ground, coughing blood before their bodies collapsed.

"Diana!" Belle shouted, his breath growing heavy. I pulled away, faint droplets of blood on my hand as I realized Belle was bleeding from where I'd gripped him. The armor was crumpled, and the vines beneath them were dried, shriveled and bloody. "What the hell was that?"

I shook my head, trying to calm down the mess of thoughts swirling through it. "Those other twenty, what's the ETA, Belle?"

"Now." He said with urgency, trying to lift his rifle up but his worser arm impaired him. My Gresalt was already aiming — I'd fired before the first of the twenty ran in.

The burst round struck him on the chin, in a blink the rest of his head vanished and his body flung backwards into the hold of a shaken grunt. I'd taken a step forward when Diamante stopped me, shaking his head.

I stepped past his broken hand.

My second Gresalt shot took another man's head as their stream of bullets dug deeper than flesh, but shallower than bone. I sought the shrapnel on the ground, they lifted as an obedient swarm. Daggers, knives and shards of metal aimed at them, and I reached for the blade Raiden wielded.

It used electricity. It would serve. It flew perfectly into my grip.

"Shit! Isn't that Raiden's sword?!"

"Fuck! Is he dead?"

"Hey, hey, we don't want no-"

My phalanx of knives took out four others, wild crimson spraying from metal lodged into their throats and eyes. I wanted to fall to the ground right now, I was so tired.

But my flame burned on, until it would sputter into ash.

Fire Tendency is now Bronze VI

And ash was very much what I was running on. A Mutant or an Esper… I needed to consume the Energy from one.

And I felt six.

Using the last of my embers, I leaped forward with the katana in hand. A single swipe seared right through the rifle of one man, the blade leading further into his throat. My hands reached into the wound, and his blood frothed out alongside a thick stream of Iron.

Bullets came, and they struck the flesh of their dead friend. Some pellets got to me, but the natural integrity of my skin and musculature prevented them from truly piercing me. These were nowhere near Diamante's caliber.

A rich stream of crimson followed each lightning-veiled strike of my blade, thundering steps carrying me from body to would-be-body. This was how the R0N1N had done it, right? Appearing alongside death. One arm severed in a swipe of arcing blue, another was impaled through the stomach, and the number of scores I'd drawn on chests quite literally bled together.

It was all red, always red but occasional Iron or Bronze spilled through. That kept me going.

I was rusty. It'd been years since I last practiced kendo. Last time I did this was against the training droids in the Cradle. Where skill was lacking now, pure strength forgave. Bones shattered and metal dented, rivers of blood spilled as gunfire dwindled and…

Then they stopped. Around me was a discorded pile of broken limbs and torn corpses. The sight was familiar: the club, the Metal Heaven's base, Soul Killer's lab.

It was so familiar, and so comfor-

My breath hitched, I had killed around twenty people before they could even blink and I had been thinking about my old kendo classes.

I was comfortable with killing.

Even worse, I was good at it.

My knees took my weight as the metal deposited in my bones became too much to carry.

"Warp Burns." Diamante approached, he was the fault of these burns in the first place. "A Fire Tendency, huh, that happens to us. Only makes matters worse is that you can get a refill from the looks of it."

"Is that what you did? Took my Warp Energy?" Belle's arm still looked sore, if I hadn't snapped out of it then…

I would have repeated so many past mistakes. My head throbbed, but I stood up and used the dented and chipped blade as a crutch to walk with. The burns had slowed down my healing. "We'll talk about this later, Belle."

"You owe it to me, think of it as a tax." He joked, but there was a look in his face that spoke more than words did. A wariness, a fear, maybe distrust. It then turned into a grimace, but not for something I had done. "More of them, cars… backup."

I tried standing up, but Diamante lazily kicked the sword I was steadied on and I fell into the crimson pool beneath me. "Don't even think about it. I can't tell who's the more suicidal between the two of you."

I didn't have the words to respond back, I just wanted this day to be over with. Belle did help me up, but he made sure my hand rested firmly on the bone of his clavicle. I didn't want to tell him that I don't think that would've stopped my ability to drain Energy from him.

An almost instinctual part of me wanted to. I had to hold it back, the desire to burn.

Diamante stood at the edge of the entrance to the warehouse, nearly twenty Steel Tygers grunts left their cars and huddled behind the doors to use as cover. Diamante shouted out. "Look, your boss is dead and Spec Op's are ready to shut your operation down. Hide away, and maybe you'll live another day!"

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One of them, a staunch man with a golden fang and a lot of Shardware on his body poked his head up the door. "Raiden's dead?"

"Should I have brought his head with me to prove it?!" Diamante laughed. "His nine lives ran out, you could say curiosity got to him."

"Was he satisfied?" Belle chuckled besides me, before shutting up as one member threw him an intense glare.

A grunt called out to the gold-fanged man. "Hey boss, er… new boss! They're kinda looking a bit…"

Yeah, we weren't in good shape. Diamante didn't have either of his arms, Belle was suffering from low Warp Energy and I was… in no condition to fight.

Gold-fang talked. "So assuming we don't get revenge on you for killing… honestly, don't even want to rinse the phrase, Raiden was the worst. But, we could just kill you and cash your bounty, take the girl's Gold and enjoy a healthy feast with its payout. Y'know?"

"In that case, I would fight you." Diamante didn't hold a hint of humor in his voice.

"With what, your fucking legs?"

"I could, and I'd beat your asses, but I got a new toy installed that I'm itchin to use." That wasn't humor, that was excitement.

"What?"

"My head." Diamante emphasized by clinking his wrist stump to his forehead.

"Alright, enough jokes! Everyone fire!" A hailstorm of bullet fire began, Belle had probably known beforehand as vines abruptly shot up out from his arm under his suit mid-way through Gold Fang's speech, forming a human-sized shield. They were just resistant enough that he could rush us both behind a pillar.

Diamante stood still, embers sparking off his body like he was at the center of a firework. His face began to peel apart, both of his eyes moved to align over each other and a thick electromagnetic force rippled at the center of his head. That sleeping Silver awoke into an inferno concentrating into his skull, as literal heat began to overtake his head — the steel turning red.

Then a fucking laser beam launched out of his head.

A bright rod of scarlet heat that first pierced through the door protecting Gold-fang, before a simple careen of his neck to the left and right drew a molten line of orange across cars, gangsters, Shardware and guns.

All gunfire stopped from the two simple movements. Then they all slid in seperate halves down to the floor as smoking metal and flesh.

"He called himself the Iron Devil, right?" Belle asked with a pale look on his face.

"So did Raiden." I realized.

"Didn't you say you were going to kill him before? To Sabrina?"

"You were going to kill me?" Diamante turned to us, his head still very much in laser mode.

"Yeah, in a game of fuck, marry, kill." Belle snitched, and I felt myself growing red. "The choices were you, R0N1N and Dreadwire."

His head tilted, the mechanical plating reorganizing itself and a grin appearing there. "Oh, and what did she choose for Dreadwire?"

I covered Belle's mouth with my hands, shaking my head at him.

Diamante's grin only grew wider. "You chose to marry him, didn't you. Don't worry, I won't tell him or… yeah I certainly won't be telling those four."

"The kids." I cut the conversation short. "There's more important things to focus on. Let's not keep them waiting."

Diamante's smile dropped, and it took a resolved seriousness as he nodded.

———

Walking down, the first thing that hit me was the volume of electricity working beneath, then I was hit by the smell of something salty in the air. Diamante stayed silent the entire time, only the grind of his heavy joints moving against one another sounding. When we came down, I wasn't prepared.

The children were here. I counted sixteen of them.

The top of their skulls were exposed to the stagnant air, wires and machinery plugging into the flesh of their brains, like maggots in meat. Diamante had an… expression on him. Neither rage, nor sadness. Instead, it was that same look I'd seen on so many officers.

An almost blank apathy. The lack of a reaction, the lack of disappointment. Only an acceptance of the situation as it was, the terrors beaten against a wall of numbness long ago.

"Dreamframes." Diamante said lowly. "Direct neural jacking to allow a degree of mental modification beyond any Daemon. Each costs nearly half a million."

"How did Steel Tygers get them?" Belle asked, his voice shrunken.

"Metal Heavens. But as for how Metal Heavens got them?… I have my guesses."

I threw one out there. "The Uncaged?"

Diamante's look back at me told me I'd hit the mark.

"For what reason, then?" I asked.

"A Dreamframe?" His step forward was a loud pound. "Too many reasons to count, they could be recording hundreds of snuff films inside their heads in all sorts of imaginary simulations, force a Proxy Network connection to have a slave hive-mind of computing brains morphed into living Cleavers or Shields, create exact mental profiles or program them to be products for those with exacting tastes, or… if I'm right, rewiring their memories. Turning them into whatever you need them to be. A child inserted in the right place, modded to be exactly the type of sleeper agent you need them to be."

"And here I thought Metal Heavens was run by a bunch of steel-junkies." That wasn't a joke from Belle, there was rage in there. "How do we help them?"

Diamante sighed. "They could have Daemons on them, and I know what kind of support the police would give them."

He looked at us, not accusingly but with a sternness. "They'll unplug the kids, offer some basic-ass trauma regulators and ship them back here. Nothing changes, they'll still be altered. Treatment for these kinds of intrusions is a long-term responsibility requiring specialized care."

Belle shot him a dissatisfied look. "You speak like you know-"

"I know." Diamante's jaws snapped shut. "Why the fuck do you think I came here?"

Belle looked away at that, but there was a pain stabbing in his eyes. "You mentioned some group called The Uncaged?"

Me and Diamante shared a look before nodding at him.

"Why… here?" Belle ran his hands over a console, plugging a Datacube into it.

"No specific reason." Diamante plugged Belle's cube out, instead sticking his own one into the console. "They probably saw crimes were borderline legal here and decided to amplify it. I'd wager a third of this District's dealings can be linked back to them, black market Shardware from Skeleton, Cybercrime from the Dogwhistler and everything with organics goes to Soul Killer."

"So then this is… Dogwhistler? Never heard the name. Or Soul Killer." Belle let out a shudder, I gripped myself.

"Could be either of the three." Diamante didn't give a straight answer. "There's nuance, and overlap."

"Only thing that overlaps is that we're going to get rid of them." Belle said easily, even taking me by surprise. "That's what the two of you are doing, and Dreadwire, right?"

"Us two, yeah. Dreadwire is debatable, he has his circumstances." Diamante shrugged. "You're welcome to join the crusade, but I don't do work with the police unless it's for special situations."

"Like?" I asked.

"Like you." Diamante plugged the cube out, tossing it into his back pocket. "Daughter of Brian Ulrich, reminds me of Juliet's case."

My eyes widened, that was Anthony's mother. "Juliet Grazhe?"

"That's the one."

"What happened to her?"

His voice took a few moments to come with an answer. "Lost touch when Anabelle had a miscarriage, she went to work at a hospital and… well, there was a bioterrorist attack there. I assumed Soul Killer was behind it. Missy was more in contact with her towards the end."

"Soul Killer was behind the attack." I responded, my heart stilling when I heard about my Lieutenant having a… miscarriage. "Dryder refuses to talk about it."

Diamante stilled, his tone raising in recognition. "Dryder?"

"You know him?" I searched in Diamante's gaze for some possible support. "We've been looking at Soul Killer togeth-"

"You're working with Derrick Ryder?" Diamante said loudly, his voice crackling as he stood up quickly and looked at me with disbelief. "How are you not dead yet?"

"What?"

"Dryder is the. Worst. Possible. Person. To work with." Diamante then mimed drinking a glass. "He's drunk on the job. Constantly."

"Hasn't been a problem so far…" I stopped when Belle gave me a deadpan stare. I checked my eyebrow, it was curling. "Okay, he has a problem. But he's capable."

"He's a loose cannon. Even Missy won't adopt him." Diamante then tossed me a Datacube. "Besides, he copies my fucking style."

Belle guessed. "Broody trenchcoat-wearing gun addicts with a penchant for swearing and constantly insulting people?"

Which was spot on. Now that I thought about it, the similarities were there.

"Okay." I waved my hands. "Let's talk about this later, what's next? How do we help the kids?"

"What's next is that you keep away from Dryder if you value your life." Diamante scoffed. "And for the kids… I know a lady. Good lady. She already has her hands full, but won't say no to this."

I only knew one Data Delver in their group. "Mirage?"

"Exact opposite." Diamante shook his head. "Not her. She goes by Maiden, and not a Data Delver. Shard Op', one of the best I know. She has… experience with these types of situations, healing people. Besides, this is something I don't want Dread to be a part of."

"Really?" I found that odd, but I didn't question his judgment. I might not have known him long, but someone like the Iron Devil has been around long enough to know what works in this city. As I passed by the rows of sleeping children, I didn't let myself dwell on the negatives of their situation.

I was willing to trust Diamante's Shard Operator, much more than I trusted any police operator… besides Trixie.

Even if it meant working with illegal Shard Operators, we'd give these kids a life.

"Hey, I also happen to know a good genetecist named Moi-" I cut myself off, just out of habit, I'd rolled my finger on the Nexus SIM in my pockets and sent a trickle of Gold into it.

I felt a resonance in the room. A Soul Resonance.

Looking around, it didn't come from any of the children. I followed the trail, the tiny pulse of Titanium was here, somewhere. My breath caught as I found it inside a cabinet, a large row of Implants of both SIMs and BUGs organized within.

There. I reached for one of the Iron ones, and I could feel its distaste towards me. Then I scowled, I'd been expecting a SIM.

This was a BUG. Like the one used to raise Stormspinner and Rorsche from the dead.

"What do you know about Soul Killer raising the dead?"

"Soul Killer… can do what?" Diamante spun towards me, I tossed the Implant over to him.

"Do you feel anything off about that Implant?"

"Nothing."

"It has their Mutagen."

"They put this into dead people?" Diamante inspected the Implant closer.

"Skeleton was selling a MAL just a few days ago, and I'd seen them do it in person while I was captured by them."

"Skeleton was selling a MAL?" Diamante rubbed his forehead. "Shit."

"Do you know what that means?"

"That Mikail's getting ready."

"Ready for what?"

Diamante took a deep breath, a strangely human thing to do for someone made of metal. "War."

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