As night settles over Frostvein, the last passenger train of the day arrives at the central station, situated beside the main harbor. The handful of remaining passengers step onto the platform and disperse quietly into the station's interior, where the primary inhabitants at this hour are beggars and laborers. A cool August breeze moves through the space, carrying with it the smell of the season mingled with the industrial bite of smoke from a nearby Dust refinery.
The station itself shows its age and its city's fortunes. The mosaics along its walls are partially chipped away, their images reduced to suggestions of what they once depicted. The glass panels covering the platforms have gone dull with neglect, barely translucent.
The trio step off the carriage and exit the station without pausing, moving in separate directions. Each has a Speakstone in their ear, Investigators already in position feeding them coordinates.
As Gustav reported, the targets are dispersed across the city. Four patrol alone. Two move together. Each is accompanied by a small contingent of subordinate gang members.
Lleuad has been assigned Axel. The others take whichever targets fall closest to their position.
— — —
Colette reaches her targets first.
On her way through a dark and empty alley, she produces three compact cannons and loads each one with Fire Dust. She emerges onto the main street to find the patrol ahead — Viggo and Henrik, surrounded by several other members of the gang, the street otherwise empty and quiet. The three cannons trail behind her, just outside her targets' sightlines.
The boys notice her. Her presence stops them — something in the way she moves, or simply in what she is, gives them pause. Colette smiles and raises a hand in greeting. The boys flush and wave back, uncertain what else to do.
When she is close enough, two of the cannons swing forward and fire. A large net erupts across the street, catching most of the gang members in the gap between her and the targets. In the confusion that follows, Colette seizes the third cannon, uses the force of its discharge to close the remaining distance in an instant, and drives a dagger into Viggo's chest with surgical precision — her Aura concentrated at the point of impact, bypassing the boy's shield entirely and destroying the Grimm heart beneath. All before he can mount a response.
Viggo reaches for her, his Semblance flaring in his hands.
She is already past him.
Some of the boys try to intercept her. She moves through them without engaging, slipping past each one.
Henrik, utterly paralyzed by the horrific, unimaginable sight of his fallen comrade, stares in sheer terror at Viggo's collapsing form. Acting on instinct, he pushes his Semblance to its limit — the street, the walls, every surface around him goes frictionless in an instant. He swings his crowbar at her, desperate.
Colette adjusts without breaking stride, letting the slick ground work for her rather than against her. She slides around him, comes up behind him, and the dagger finds its mark.
"Sorry."
She says it quietly, and means it. Then she is gone — into the dark of a nearby alley, out of sight before the residents peering from their windows have properly registered what they are looking at. Behind her, the gang scrambles toward their fallen leaders.
Sprinting through the alley, Colette glances back over her shoulder for a brief moment at the shouting children before tapping the Speakstone in her ear. "Viggo and Henrik eliminated. Next location."
— — —
Baojun finds Stellan not long after.
He approaches down the center of the slumbering street with his Jian already drawn, a cold blue hue running along the length of the blade, his immense frame making no concession to the darkness around him.
The gang members see him coming and ready themselves, the intimidation of his approach doing nothing to stop them from trying.
Stellan opens with a sustained barrage of compressed air projectiles, launching them in rapid sequence, each one capable of cutting metal.
Baojun steps around them. Not frantically — simply, as though the angles are obvious to him. He moves through the gang with his blade, cutting his way to Stellan without slowing, and ends it with a single clean stroke.
The survivors run. Windows open along the street. A woman's scream carries across the neighborhood, and then another, and the street that was quiet a moment ago is neither quiet nor asleep.
Baojun stands in the middle of it. "Target eliminated. Next."
He receives his coordinates and goes.
— — —
Colette finds Nils on one of the streets where the city's night life continues to operate, a scatter of residents and late-night pedestrians still present. He is moving with his patrol group, and she approaches them with the same unhurried ease as before — just another person passing in the night — waiting until she has nearly walked past them before she moves.
The attack comes from behind. Nils is already stepping clear of it before it fully develops, his Semblance having registered the threat long before it arrived. He distances himself and the rest of the gang closes around her, while the civilians nearby scramble back to watch from a safer remove.
"Did the Firelights send you?" Nils asks, his dagger clearing its sheath.
No answer.
Colette produces a set of shields and daggers and sets them orbiting her. She moves toward Nils directly, using the shields to deflect and redirect without engaging the others — pushing them aside rather than cutting through them, keeping her path clear.
Nils, confident in what his Semblance can do, meets her head-on. The Grimm cells surge across his body until he is entirely black, his form taking on the quality of something no longer entirely human. He fights well — his awareness of incoming attacks rendering conventional approaches useless, his speed keeping pace with hers. Colette lands hits, but the density of the Grimm cells and the boy's constant repositioning keep the Grimm heart out of reach.
She creates a large pistol mid-exchange, brings it to point-blank range, and fires.
The shot doesn't pierce — his Aura shield holds — but the force of it staggers him, one second of disorientation, no more. The dagger finds the Grimm heart in the space that opens.
Colette drops a ball of Light Dust on the street, the flash swallowing everything in white, and uses her floating shields as stepping stones to a rooftop. By the time anyone can see again, she is not there.
She taps the Speakstone. "Nils eliminated."
— — —
Baojun reaches his next target as Colette is finishing Nils.
The warehouse district is quiet. Gunnar's patrol moves through it at an easy pace until they find Baojun walking toward them from the other end of the street, sword out, expression unchanged.
The gang assembles to face him.
The moment Baojun accelerates into a heavy charge, Gunnar reads the danger and deploys his Semblance, fixing Baojun's attention entirely on himself and drawing every threat away from his comrades. The Grimm cells spread across his body as he braces, and the rest of the gang surges forward.
Baojun does not slow. He does not redirect. He drives straight into the crowd with the full force of his momentum, his sheer physical mass doing the work that any tactical adjustment would have taken longer to accomplish, scattering the boys in front of him like a wave breaking a barrier. The thrust that follows hits Gunnar with enough concentrated force to pierce straight through the armoring of Grimm cells and find the heart beneath.
"You protected your comrades well," he says. Then pulls his sword free and turns away.
The remaining gang members have not moved. They have watched Gunnar — who has not been hurt since the night his powers came in, through every fight since, against every gang in Frostvein — go down to a single thrust. None of them have anything left that functions as courage.
Baojun walks. No one intercepts.
"I'm done. Any targets remaining?" He says into the Speakstone.
"All confirmed except Axel," the Investigator replies. "We have no visual on him or Lleuad. Colette has ordered you to rendezvous at his location. You're closer — you'll arrive before her."
A dark, heavy frown forms on Baojun's face. Witnessing the terrifying shift in the giant's expression, a nearby gang member completely loses all strength in his legs, collapsing backward onto the pavement in sheer terror.
"Understood. Direct me."
He breaks into a run.