The train ride from the bustling heart of kyoto toward the outskirts of the Ibaraki Prefecture was strangely quiet. Most commuters had filtered off at the major hubs, leaving Malik and Liun alone in a car that smelled of ozone and damp upholstery.

  Liun wore a sleeveless, midnight-blue changshan that clung to his frame, the high mandarin collar framing his jawline. The most striking feature was the golden dragon coiled across his chest. Around it he wore white daopao that didn't reach down to his legs, instead he placed it around his shoulders without obscuring the changshan. This was his battle attire.

  Perched calmly on his shoulder was a raven.

  The bird’s feathers were pitch black, glossy under the pale train lights. It watched the passing scenery with unsettling intelligence, occasionally tilting its head as the countryside rolled past the window.

  “I've still got no clue where we're actually going.” Malik said, scrolling through videos on his phone.

  “Ash said that it's called the catacombs, an underground cave system similar to the tunnels we used to access sb bases, but eventually they were put out of use due to being found and overrun by sin's.” Liun explained the site to his teammate.

  “Damn… sounds like a skill issue on their part”

  The raven’s feathers puffed slightly

  “What? It was in no way an issue of skill, I have no doubt the people in there were completely overrun with no way out.”

  “Cool it, I was just joking. Ever heard of a joke?” Malik looked at the boy who seemed peeved by him.

  “That was not funny.” The Chinese boy said to his teammate

  The raven gave another quiet caw, almost like agreement.

  Malik rolled his eyes at Liun's lack of a sense of humor. "Geez, chill out a bit. It was just a joke."

  Liun just huffed in response, still annoyed at Malik's attempt at humor. The train continued its journey, the damp upholstery and ozone smell filling the air, creating a strange atmosphere.

  "So, this underground cave system," Malik changed the subject. "What's supposed to be inside? Are we looking for anything specific, or just exploring?”

  “We're to clear out the entire system. Every last sin.”

  The raven shifted slightly, spreading its wings for a moment before settling again.

  Malik sighed “I was afraid you'd say that… why are they even giving this to us anyway, I've got no problem killing sins but a whole cave’s worth? That seems a little much don't you think? Especially since I don't have my guns, that guy behind the counter said they weren't done yet”

  Liun let out a sigh, nodding in agreement. "I know, it's a tall task. But you can keep up right, after all it's just phase 1’s?"

  Malik, frustrated, scratched his head in annoyance. "Yeah, but without guns... this is gonna be a real pain in the ass.”

  “If it comes down to it you can stand back and let me do the heavy lifting.” The white haired boy said, looking at his teammate

  “Hell no! I don't hide behind anyone. If you wanna do it alone then that's fine by me but don't insinuate that I can't handle myself.”

  Liun seemed taken aback by Malik's fierce response. "I didn't mean it like that. I just meant...if things get too intense, it wouldn't hurt to have a backup plan. I mean, we've already got one backup plan on us.” Liun and Malik both looked out the window to see a person following them, it was a conductor

  “I still don't get why the conductors can't do this themselves. It'd be easy for them” Malik said

  Suddenly, the train shook

  The sudden shuddering of the train caused Malik and Liun to stumble slightly, caught off guard by the unexpected movement.

  "What the hell is going on?" Malik exclaimed, looking out the window again to see if he could spot the cause of the disturbance. “Oh holy shit”

  “What is it?” Liun went to look outside, and saw a sight he hadn't expected to see “Oh my Abaddon”

  Outside the train was being stopped by a giant tentacle of… something, it looked fleshy almost.

  It was completely disgusting, and it wasn't just stopping their training, dozens of these 15 or so meter tall tentacles were popping out of the ground, terrorizing the world around, and one of them had caught the train in its grasp

  “All in favor of getting off this train, fucking run” Malik yelled at the passengers who entered a panic as he and Malik followed through the train cars

  Metal screeched against metal, an agonizing wail that climbed up through the floorboards and deep into everyone's bones. The metal bent and screamed.

  The fleshy appendage wrapped around the center of the carriage like a python around a mouse. Window glass shattered inward, showering the panicked

  commuters in glittering shards. Through the new openings, the smell of ozone was replaced by the overwhelming, stench of rotten meat.

  "Liun, the roof!" Malik yelled, pointing upward as the ceiling began to sag. The structural ribs of the train were snapping, bending inward under a pressure that shouldn't be possible.

  It was then that the train was ripped in half, separating Malik and liun from the passengers.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Well that ain't good”

  The giant tentacle was about to reach in to grab the passengers, but it was stopped by a yoyo that cut it right in half

  “Mister aoi!” Liun called out as the man with the blue streaked hair landed on the tracks,

  “Hey, you kids okay?”

  “We’re fine, but the train’s a write-off,” Malik grunted, wanting to hop down from the train, but deciding against it. He felt naked without the familiar weight of his sidearms, his hands instinctively twitching toward empty holsters. “Where the hell did that thing come from?”

  “What, you think I know? I just got here little dude”

  “We're the same damn height”

  “Listen, take your teammate and get outta here, whatever mission you guys are on, without ash here it ain't worth it. Find some way back to base or something.” Aoi stated, before having to jump out of the way to barely avoid an attack from another tentacle.

  Unfortunately the tentacle pushed the two teens, as well as they're half of the train off the bridge and out onto the streets, where another tentacle grabbed them and pulled that part of the train under

  “Shit!” Aoi yelled as the teens were seemingly devoured below ground.

  The man slung his yo-yo around the tentacle that was attacking him and tried pulling but his yo-yo couldn't cut through it's tough body.

  “what the hell are these things?” Aoi questioned, as if he would get an answer.

  “Oh boy, aren't you struggling aoi.” The blue streaked conductor looked up at the annoyingly familiar voice.

  “Get your ass down here shoga, can't you see now's not the time for bein a dick?” The man looked up at his fellow conductor who was sitting on a tentacle that had been dismembered.

  “Mm, beg me” the man now known as shoga said

  “I ain't begging you shit!”

  Shoga smirked, flipping lazily off the dead tendril and landing in a crouch. "Then I guess you can die alone."

  Aoi gritted his teeth, knowing full well Shoga wouldn’t let him. it would be bad for his image if he didn't help a fellow conductor, and aoi knew he cared all about his image

  Just as another tentacle lunged from the cracked earth, a burst of plasma fire sliced through it mid-strike. Both men whipped their heads toward the smoke.

  "Y'all really need to work on ya teamwork,” the voice came from a big burly woman, with long red hair. She carried a very big gun.

  “Damn, the American showed us up.” Shoga said in annoyance at the woman in front of them.

  Aoi looked at the woman in contemplation. Genevieve Bell, the first non Japanese person to hold the conductor title in the HAS. She was pretty damn strong, being the conductor of division 1 and all. But.. based off his measurement, even she wouldn't be capable of taking one of these things on.

  It was then that he felt the tentacle below him tensing up, as if finally starting to resist.

  “Oh shit!”

  —kyoto—

  Yui bolted upright in her bed, breath hitching in her throat as if something had grabbed her heart and squeezed. Sweat clung to her skin despite the cool twelve o clock air drifting through the cracked window. For a moment she couldn’t move.

  Her fingers trembled against the sheets.

  That presence…

  She doubled over on the bed, not able to take it as she emptied the contents of her stomach, vomiting all over the floor.

  “Wh-what is that!?”

  —kyoto—

  Kiyohime felt it.

  One moment she had been buried in paperwork inside her office in the Monolith, the quiet scratching of her pen the only sound in the room. The next moment her sin senses went off, and she could feel it.

  Her spine stiffened up.

  A pressure crawled across her skin like cold fingers, dead fingers. Her pen slipped from her fingers.

  “What in Abaddon… is that?”

  The air around her trembled as instinct took over. Without her command, her angel gear activated on its own, causing the entire monolith- no, all of Japan to shudder.

  She could hear the shattering of glass, the sounding of car alarms, the screaming of hundreds of scared civilians. But she couldn't stop herself. She sat at her desk, frozen as her heart hammered like a drum

  —300 feet underground in a secure location—

  “Are you sure he's fine? He's been asleep for a long time now.” A guard said standing in a control room.

  “Don't worry, this guy won't die matter what you do to him. As long as he stays down here, nothing bad can happen.” The other guard said, looking down into a padded white room.

  It was then that they noticed the lone man inside, awake.

  Awake and shaking.

  “Call the doctors, Devon is shaking!”

  —somewhere in America—

  A familiar green eyed man looked up to the sky. He'd been eating a hotdog on a bench in a park, but he felt that. Even if faint, it was still terrifying.

  “What the fuck’s going on in Japan?”

  —china—

  A woman on a bench eating a bean bun, suddenly stopped, as a primal feeling skittered down her spine. Very quickly, the bustling Beijing market around her was tuned out. She looked toward the eastern horizon, her eyes narrowing with lethal intensity.

  “卧槽，那是什么?”

  —japan—

  “Wait, you're telling me that Laura Graves said that?” ash asked the man in front of him, listening intently to his story.

  And then

  The clean and sanitary space of corveaus office, Very quickly started feeling dirty to ash as he stood up out of his chair. It wasn't as though the office had suddenly turned into a disgusting pig sty or something, no. Instead it was that aura ash was feeling.

  “What? What is it?” Corveau asked the man in front of him. Losing his composure slightly, as he had never seen ash like this.

  “That's.. awesome” ash said, a little off balance from that powerful presence, it was taking everything he had to not rip through these walls and go fight.

  “What are you… feeling?” corveau asked, trying to understand what exactly was happening.

  “It… It feels like a sin.. but not any normal sin… not normal at all. Instead of feeling like the predator… I feel like the prey.” Ash revealed, which came as a total shock to the man.

  “Ain't that just awesome” ash gritted his teeth in excitement. His eyes locked into that terrifying predatory gaze “This presence is so strong I can tell… that every other angel gear feels it too”

  Corveau looked at the man in front of him. He'd seen the face of a predator before, he used to work around angel gear, it's be pretty difficult not to see it. But ash's brand of predator was different.

  He wasn't a person bound by his instincts. If every other angel gear was a lion, ash was a honey badger, if there was anyone on earth who would go out of their way to prey on their predators, it would be ash. And it seemed like that's what was happening.

  Ash, crouched down, hands on the floor, getting into a crouch start, before sprinting through the walls.

  He couldn't restrain himself any longer. He had to fight that thing.

  —

  Aoi, shoga and Genevieve had dodged out of the way of the giant tentacle’s attack.

  They don't even know what it attacked them with, the bridge just exploded into a puff of smoke when they jumped away. Aoi hated sins like this.

  “Look at the size of these things… they’re not normal sins,” Genevieve growled, slinging her massive rifle over her shoulder. Her accent thickened as she spat on the ground. “Damn critters bigger’n a barn and twice as ugly!”

  Shoga, brushing off dust from his jacket, looked at her with a scoff. “Normal? These aren’t even in the same league. This one's at least as strong as a phase 2.”

  “Hey” aoi called over to the two other conductors. “I'm not saying we're screwed or anything, but this things got the durability of a phase 3,”

  “Huh?” The other two directors looked at him in shock.

  “This things as strong as a phase 3? The same phase of sin that can wipe out whole divisions?” shoga looked at him as if waiting for confirmation.

  “Of course, it'd need to be at least that strong for me of all people to not be able to kill it in one shot” the conductor boasted.

  “Oh, nevamind, he's just an arrogant fool” Genevieve said deadpan, in her heavy southern accent.

  Suddenly, the tentacle lanced itself at her, slamming into her stomach, and forcing her into a wall. But she grabbed hold of it, and refused to let go.

  Genevieve gritted her teeth, keeping her massive gun braced against the wall as the tentacle thrashed beneath her grip. “Finally,” she growled, voice low but confident, “its about time we conductors get to show off what we're made of.”