The change in Kafka Hibino was subtle, but to the trained eyes of the Anomaly Tracking Unit, it was seismic.
It wasn't a physical transformation. He still looked like the same perpetually tired, slightly-too-old rookie. But he moved differently. His walk had a new, grounded economy of motion. When he sparred in hand-to-hand sessions, his clumsy, desperate brawling was gone, replaced by a brutally efficient, if unrefined, fighting style. He would take blows that should have staggered him and barely flinch, his pain tolerance having been pushed to inhuman levels.
The ATU agents whispered. They didn't understand it. They saw a man evolving at a geometric rate, his learning curve a vertical line. They attributed it to the mysterious "bio-suit," a convenient black box to file away all the impossibilities.
Only Hoshina and Kikoru knew better.
"He's being trained," Hoshina said one afternoon, as they watched Kafka from an observation deck. Below, Kafka was systematically, and for the first time, holding his own against three combat drones at once, evading their strikes with a newfound, ghostly fluidity. "Rigorously. By a master. At night."
"Sovereign," Kikoru replied, her voice low. "His private lessons."
"He is being forged into a perfect weapon," Hoshina mused, his fingers drumming on the railing. A flicker of professional jealousy mixed with tactical appreciation crossed his face. "I just hope he remembers who he's supposed to be aiming at when the forging is done."
Kafka, for his part, was living a strange, exhausting double life. By day, he endured Hoshina's grueling ATU drills, learning teamwork, strategy, and military discipline. He meticulously filed reports on Blackwing's abilities, carefully curating the data he provided, painting a picture of a powerful but still-limited weapon. He became an expert at the poker face, at the carefully constructed lie.
By night, he was in hell. He was torn apart by Beru, whose lessons were becoming increasingly esoteric, teaching him to function with phantom severed limbs or while his senses were being psychically assaulted. He was systematically dismantled by Igris, who was now teaching him how to fight with improvised weapons, how to read an opponent's breathing, how to kill with a single, perfectly placed blow.
He was becoming lethal. The soft, clumsy edges of Kafka Hibino were being ground away, leaving behind something hard, sharp, and dangerous.
And Blackwing was growing with him. The sentient power, linked to his now-disciplined mind, became an extension of his will so perfect he no longer had to think. When he needed a shield, it was there. When he needed a blade, it was already formed. When he needed to disappear, the shadows welcomed him.
Then, the new mission came.
It wasn't a Kaiju subjugation. It was a ghost hunt.
"For the last three weeks, we've been getting reports of… strange activity in the abandoned sector of the Defense Force R&D labs," Hoshina explained, the holo-table in the ATU nerve center displaying a blueprint of a sprawling, underground complex. "Power surges from decommissioned reactors, internal security systems activating and deactivating on their own, garbled data transmissions."
"Ghosts?" one of the agents quipped.
"Worse," Hoshina said, his expression grim. "The Architect."
The room went silent.
"We don't think he's physically there," Hoshina continued. "But our analysts believe he's found a way to interface with our old, unsecured networks. He's a digital ghost, probing our firewalls, searching our archives. He's a data-miner. He's looking for information."
"Information on what?" Kikoru asked.
"On us," Hoshina said, zooming the map in on a specific, high-security vault within the R&D complex. "Specifically, on our Numbers Weapons. Their creation, their power sources, their weaknesses. He's studying his competition. And his ultimate target, we believe, is this: Vault 7."
A new file opened, showing a grainy, black-and-white photo of a man in a lab coat—Isao Shinomiya, Kikoru's legendary father.
Kikoru stiffened.
"Your father's final project, Kikoru," Hoshina said gently. "Numbers Weapon 10. The first Kaiju weapon designed from the ground up not with a Kaiju core, but with a fully artificial, experimental power source. Its combat data is purely theoretical, but if the simulations are even half-correct, it is the single most powerful weapon humanity has ever built. If the Architect gets that data…"
"…he'll know how to build a counter-measure," Mina Ashiro finished, stepping into the room. Her presence commanded immediate attention. "Or worse, he'll know how to replicate it."
Her gaze swept over the ATU, finally landing on Kafka. "This is a stealth mission. The R&D complex is a maze of automated defenses and sensitive experiments. We can't go in guns blazing. We need a small team. Quiet. In and out. The objective is to get to the central server room, upload a new counter-virus designed by HQ, and purge the Architect from our systems."
Her eyes narrowed. "The problem is the area is flooded with residual Kaiju energy and automated security systems that are now likely controlled by the Architect. The path to the server room will be a death trap. That's where you come in, Private Hibino."
Kafka straightened up. "Ma'am?"
"Your shadow-phasing ability," Mina stated, the words sounding strange and clinical. "Can you pass through solid matter?"
The question caught him off guard. In the dreamscape, he had passed through spectral soldiers. But a solid wall? He looked inward, a silent question to the sentient power within him. He felt an affirmative hum from Blackwing. Possible. High energy cost. Risk of atomic destabilization if control is lost.
"Theoretically, yes, ma'am," Kafka answered truthfully. "It's… unreliable."
"Today, it needs to be reliable," Mina said, her tone absolute. "Hoshina, you'll lead a two-man team: yourself and Hibino. The rest of the ATU will provide remote support. Get in, upload the virus, and get out. Do not engage any physical threats unless absolutely necessary. Your primary enemy is the ghost in the machine."
An hour later, Kafka and Hoshina stood before the colossal, sealed blast doors of the abandoned R&D sector. The air was cold, stale, and smelled of dust and ozone. Warning signs plastered the door, declaring the area a biohazard and structurally unsound.
"Ready to go ghost hunting, rookie?" Hoshina asked, drawing his blades. He wore a lightweight, stealth variant of his combat suit.
Kafka nodded, his own heart pounding. This was a completely different kind of mission. He couldn't just punch his way through this. It required a finesse he was only just beginning to learn.
"Let's go," he said, and Blackwing flowed over him, forming not a heavy suit of armor, but a thin, sleek, skin-tight layer of black energy that melded with the shadows of the dark corridor. It was a stealth suit. Silent. Efficient.
"There's no power to the door controls," Hoshina noted. "The Architect has the whole wing on lockdown. It's up to you, Hibino. Show me that trick you learned in the garden."
This was it. His first real test of his new, esoteric abilities in the field. He placed a hand on the five-foot-thick durasteel door. He closed his eyes, focusing his will, calming the energy inside him into a single, sharp point.
Phase.
The response from Blackwing was instantaneous. The physical world seemed to lose its solidity. He felt a dizzying, non-euclidean shift as his atoms were coaxed to pass between the atoms of the steel. For a terrifying, eternal second, he was one with the door, a man-shaped ghost trapped in a cold, metal sea.
And then, he was through.
He stumbled out into the pitch-black corridor on the other side, his body tingling, every nerve on fire from the strain. The world snapped back into sharp, solid focus. He looked back at the sealed door. Hoshina was not there. Of course. It had worked.
'Phase successful. High energy drain detected.' Blackwing's new, silent consciousness reported in his mind, a piece of tactical data he now inherently knew.
He turned his attention to the keypad on this side of the door. As instructed, he placed a small device over it, and with a series of quiet beeps, the massive door slid open, allowing Hoshina to slip inside.
Hoshina looked at him, then at the door, then back at him. His expression was a mixture of profound shock and barely concealed glee.
"Oh, the things we are going to do with that ability," the Vice-Commander whispered, his mind already spinning with a hundred new, terrifying tactical possibilities. "Let's move. The Architect knows we've knocked on the door. The welcome party is about to start."
They were inside the haunted house, and the ghost now knew they were there.