District 12 didn't sleep.
Even in the lowest gutters of the Backstreets, its veins throbbed with the artificial pulse of a thousand lives trying not to die. Neon signs buzzed and spat errant sparks into the night, their fractured colors bleeding across rust-stained alleyways like open wounds. Steam hissed from the pipe-veined walls, cloaking everything in a haze of filtered poison. The air reeked of copper, chemicals, and desperation.
It was a Tuesday. Which meant nothing. Time blurred when the sky was fake.
Footsteps tore through the smog. Fast. Panicked. Raw rubber scraping on wet concrete. A rhythm of survival.
A boy ran.
He couldn't have been more than sixteen. Too tall for his weight, too thin for the cold. His coat, cheap synth-fiber and stitched with the patch of a no-name Office-"Starwatch Investigations," the thread barely clinging-flapped wildly behind him, a tattered flag in hostile territory. Each breath carved frost into the night air, each step echoed against concrete tombs masquerading as buildings.
He was a fixer, technically. A grade so low it might as well have been a death sentence.
What was the job again? Some throwaway case buried at the bottom of a bored client's docket. "Unconfirmed Urban Myth." The kind of gig that got shuffled between interns until one was desperate enough to take it. A whisper about something lurking in the shadows where Enkephalin lines flickered and died. Another ghost story in a city built on corpses.
He had come for answers.
Instead, he found a knife.
Or more precisely-three men with knives. Organ peddlers, judging by the grease-stained aprons. They weren't subtle. They didn't need to be. This part of District 12 was an ecosystem of silence. Even the surveillance drones flew higher here, like birds skimming past a toxic lake.
"Stop running, little Office rat!" one of them bellowed.
The kid didn't stop. His legs burned. His lungs stung. But stopping meant dying, and dying meant getting harvested. Even a kid's organs fetched decent prices if you didn't mind the wear.
They chased him past puddles of irradiated runoff, past the burned-out husks of cybernetic limbs dumped like molted skin. The alleys twisted and narrowed like arteries, closing around him, guiding him inward. Deeper.
He turned a corner too sharp—slipped—caught himself.
His badge clattered to the ground. He didn't stop to grab it.
They laughed behind him, close now.
Another turn. A shriek of rusted hinges as he shoved through a bent gate. Trash scattered beneath his boots—bags of discarded synth-flesh and shattered lenses, oozing fluids that sizzled against the concrete.
Then—
A wall.
A dead end.
The alley terminated against a sheer slab of concrete, stained black with years of exhaust and blood that had never quite washed away. A single, dim lamp buzzed overhead, casting the scene in a jaundiced glow. The boy turned, chest heaving, eyes wild.
The three men slowed as they approached. No need to rush now.
One twirled a mono-scalpel lazily between gloved fingers, its edge catching the light with surgical promise. "Told you he'd corner himself," he said to the others, grin crooked and rotten.
The kid backed up until his shoulders hit the wall. No weapon. No implants. Not even a cheap shock baton. He had nothing but the badge he'd dropped and the bones in his body—soon to be someone else's, if they were lucky.
He swallowed hard. "You—You don't have to do this," he managed, voice cracking like a radio stuck between stations.
One of them laughed. "Kid, if I didn't have to, I wouldn't be here."
The scalpel clicked open.
"Now hold still. Or don't. We're not picky."
The lamp above them flickered once. Then again.
Suddenly, there was a shift in the air.
From the heavens, a man fell.
He landed with an explosive thud, a cascade of trash bags erupting in every direction as he hit the ground-then, impossibly, stood.
He was tall, his silhouette framed by the swirling mist of neon lights. His chest heaved with the weight of his landing, but his stance was wide, unshakable. A red cloak fluttered behind him like the wings of a fallen angel, only this angel wore the arrogance of a man who didn't fear death, because he knew how to fight it. His cape billowed in the wind, and his red sunglasses-scratched but still defiantly perched on his nose-hid eyes burning with untold defiance.
But the most striking thing was the katana strapped to his back. The hilt gleamed in the low light, as if it had seen a thousand battles and survived every single one. This man was no stranger to conflict, he was the conflict.
The hooligans froze.
He didn't look like someone you wanted to mess with. A seasonal fixer- to the hooligans, he had the look of someone who knew the underbelly of every district in the City, a professional mercenary who made his living off the dead and the dying.
The biggest of the hooligans, a burly man with a scar that stretched down his cheek, scoffed, but his voice trembled with unease. "Get out of here or we'll kill you."
The stranger scoffed back.
"Hey, Hey, HEY! In the hell...!" he roared, his voice like thunder, echoing off the walls of the alley. He stalked forward, his boots crunching on the wet pavement as if daring the world to stop him. Every step was filled with the arrogance of a man who wasn't going to back down, not ever.
The hooligans instinctively stepped back, eyes widening, unsure whether to stand their ground or flee. But the stranger didn't stop.
He loomed over them now, his presence unbearable. The space between him and the thugs seemed to shrink. He was in their faces in seconds, a breath away, his eyes blazing with an intensity they'd never seen.
"Tell me where the hell I am, or I'll kick your stupid idiot ass to the underground." The stranger's voice was too loud.
The kid, still pressed against the wall, blinked in shock at the audacity of this stranger who had appeared out of nowhere. But despite his fear, the kid was quick-witted. His voice came out almost without hesitation.
"They were trying to get my organs. And you're in the Backstreet of District 12." The kid's tone was dry, like he'd already accepted that this was his fate—but Kamina's presence made him think again.
Kamina turned his gaze to the kid, pausing for a moment, before his eyes shot back to the hooligans.
Without missing a beat, Kamina pulled his katana with its sheath still intact in one motion, the blade gleaming in the dim light, and swung it. The first thug barely had time to react before the katana whistled through the air, striking him cleanly on the forehead.
The thug crumpled to the ground instantly, unconscious, his body hitting the pavement with a heavy thud.
The other two hooligans stood frozen for a split second, before panic set in. They turned tail and ran, bolting into the alleyways, disappearing into the shadows.
Kamina stood there for a moment, katana still in hand, surveying the scene. His grin never faltered, still as wide and cocky as it had been since he arrived.
"Well... that was easy," he said.
The boy blinked, his heart still pounding from the near-death experience, his body still tense with adrenaline.
"Thanks." The kid said, still wide-eyed, but his voice steady.
"Huh?" Kamina replied, wiping his blade off on his cloak, unconcerned. He glanced around, taking in the dilapidated state of the district, the rotting alleys, the flickering lights that barely kept the dark at bay.
The silence after the scuffle didn't last long.
The stranger stood tall, planting the heel of his boot on the unconscious thug's chest like a war trophy. He tilted his head back, hands on his hips, and let out a laugh so bold and echoing, it made the filthy alley feel like the top of a mountain.
"Listen up," he bellowed to the world that didn't ask, "You're lookin' at the man who kicks fate in the teeth! The badass rebel with a blazing soul hotter than a thousand suns!"
He jabbed a thumb at his chest, cloak fluttering with the motion. "I'm Kamina! The man who refuses to bow to destiny, death, or whatever the hell this trash pile is! Got that?"
The kid stared. Mouth half-open. Eyes wide.
"...What?"
Kamina turned to him, nodding once like he'd just answered a question no one asked. "That's right, kid. I fell outta the sky, and you better believe I meant to land like that."
The boy hesitated, then stepped forward, brushing the dust off his sleeve. He looked around the alley—still half-expecting more trouble to crawl out of the shadows—then met Kamina's gaze.
"…I'm Shmuel," he said. His voice was quieter now. "Fixer. Starwatch Investigations, grade 9. Still… as an intern, technically."
Kamina narrowed his eyes. "Fixer, huh?" The word rolled off his tongue like a punch he wasn't sure had landed. "Is that like… a healer? A blacksmith?"
Shmuel blinked. "Uh. No? We take on contracts. Bodyguard work. Case investigations. Asset retrieval. The usual."
"The usual?" Kamina echoed, frowning. "Kid, I have no idea what you just said. You're throwing words at me like they mean something. What the hell's a 'contract'? Or a 'case'? You chasing ghosts or something?"
Shmuel looked confused now. "You really don't know…? This is District 12. You're in the City. You know, the City? Controlled by the Head? Like, the old L corp used to be in this district before it collapsed, and there's an Enkephalin outage, so-"
"WOAH, woah, woah!" Kamina threw up both hands, slicing through the ramble like he was blocking an attack. "You're throwing more weird words at me than there are stars in the sky! Districts? Heads? Nests? What kind of twisted Gunmen-blasted labyrinth did I land in?!"
His face twisted into a half-grimace, half-smirk. "I just got done bleeding out after takin' on a monster the size of a mountain, yelling my guts out on top of a giant robot's face! Then I wake up here-in a sewer of a city where kids get harvested for spare parts like it's normal?!"
Shmuel blinked again, this time with something like pity. "...You died?"
Kamina tilted his head. "Guess so. Didn't stick, though. Spirit's still burnin'."
He tapped his chest, where a faint, unseen fire still roared behind every breath. "Guess the Great Beyond couldn't handle a man like me. So instead, it spat me into this place."
He looked around. The flickering lights. The dripping pipes. The silent, waiting alleyways. His brows furrowed.
"This 'City' of yours... it reeks of cages."
Kamina crossed his arms, expression hardening into something rare—seriousness.
"No sky," he muttered. "No wind. No sun. Just walls and smoke and scared kids being hunted for organs like animals."
Then the smirk came back, full force. "Well, too bad for this place. 'Cause Kamina ain't the type to sit still in a cage."
"...You're insane," the boy said softly.
Kamina grinned. "Damn right I am."