In the quiet of her hotel room, Kasumi sat on the edge of her bed, the earlier storm of emotion subsiding into a cold, focused shame. Her hands were clenched into tight fists in her lap.
Idiot, she berated herself, the internal voice sharp and unforgiving. You thought you'd buried that for good. Why did you have to shatter like glass right in front of them? The memory of Pathro's restraining grip, his uncharacteristically gentle hug, was a brand of humiliation. She had become a liability, a complication in the mission's clean mechanics.
She took a sharp, steadying breath. They were forced to proceed without me. But I can't let my past poison the present. The mission still needs to be completed. Her spine straightened, a visible resolve hardening her features. I can still help. I have to.
A memory surfaced: Pathro and Toshiro's brief, urgent visit before they left. Pathro's voice, stripped of its usual theatricality: "We've identified their next target. We're going to get ourselves captured. Infiltration from the inside. If you need us... well, you'll know where to look." They had left their personal communicators with her, part of the student disguise and wore the stolen school uniforms. They had prepared for every contingency.
Except for her breakdown.
They left me their tools and a plan. And here I am, sitting in a hotel room. The self-reproach was immediate, but it was quickly routed by tactical logic. I can't follow them now. The moment they sensed for the girls' energy upon arrival and found nothing, it proved the base is shielded. Active life-signatures are hidden. So, if Pathro and Toshiro are the blade inside the heart...
A grim, determined light ignited in her eyes. ...I can be the distraction outside the body. Draw their eyes away. Create an opening.
She would not be useless.
Snatching her personal device from the nightstand, she activated it. "AI. Pull up the location and broadcast details of the most-watched news television station in Nigeria. The one with the widest real-time reach."
"Certainly," the neutral voice replied. A holographic map bloomed above the device, highlighting a complex in the media district of Lagos, complete with satellite uplink data and signal strength overlays. Kasumi studied it, her gaze unwavering. A plan, desperate and dangerous, began to crystallize.
---
Deep within the subterranean base, chaos was a slowly waking beast. One by one, the kidnapped students stirred from their gas-induced stupor, consciousness returning to the nightmare of cold metal cuffs and concrete walls. Disorientation swiftly curdled into panic.
"What's happening?"
"Where are we?!"
"Why are we tied up?!"
The screams and whimpers rose in a frantic chorus. Then, their eyes adjusted to the gloom and found the huddled figures against the far wall, the girls from Immaculate Girls Secondary School. Their brutalized state, the bloodstains and haunted eyes, acted like a physical blow. A fresh wave of terror crested. Some students screamed again, hysterical. One boy turned and retched violently onto the floor. Others hurled themselves at the featureless, thick metal door, pounding on it with raw, desperate fists. "Let us out! Please!"
Through the bedlam, Pathro remained a still point against the wall, observing. He waited for the first raw wave of panic to exhaust itself, for the sobs and frantic whispers to become the room's new background noise. Then, he spoke. His voice, calm and clear, cut through the din in their native language.
"As you can see, we're trapped. And even if this door vanished, there are armed guards in the corridor beyond, ready to fire."
The shocking normality of his tone drew every eye. A tall boy with a defiant glare was the first to challenge it. "What's with that tone? You sound like you don't care! And… I've never seen you before. You're not from Good Hope. I'd remember a foreigner."
"Where I'm from doesn't matter right now," Pathro said, his gaze level. "What matters is that if you want to get out of here, you will need to listen to me."
The defiant boy stood up, puffing out his chest. "Listen to you? What makes you think you can get us out? You're just a student like us!"
Pathro didn't argue. He simply brought his wrists together and pulled. With a sharp, metallic screech, the reinforced steel of the handcuffs deformed, stretched, and finally snapped apart, the broken halves clattering to the concrete floor.
A stunned silence blanketed the cell.
"What the hell?" someone breathed.
"Who are you?" a girl whispered, her voice trembling with a new kind of hope.
"That strength… You're a soldier," another student said, the realization dawning. "A Japanese soldier."
Pathro brushed the remaining cuff fragments from his wrists. "That's right. We were dispatched because the kidnapping rates here became an international concern. My team is here to dismantle the organization responsible."
A more cautious boy, who had been watching from the back, spoke up. "Wait. Can't they see or hear us in here? Cameras? Microphones?"
"I've already scanned the cell," Pathro replied. "They were confident they didn't need them. And to be fair, they were correct." He gestured to the unbroken door, the solid walls. "You weren't getting out."
The initial defiant boy's attitude had completely changed. "So… you're super strong. Can't you just smash your way out and get us?"
"I could," Pathro acknowledged. "If my only objective was your immediate extraction. But it's not. My mission is the complete destruction of this network. If I start smashing walls now, my cover is blown, and their leadership might scatter. We lose our chance to end this for good."
"Then what?" the cautious boy asked. "You can't just stay in here."
"I don't plan to," Pathro said, a strategic edge entering his voice. "But I need to move without raising a full alert. Fortunately, they follow a schedule. Guards come to check on each cell and escort small groups to the lavatory. It's been nearly an hour since they sealed us in. They'll be here soon."
The boy who had first challenged him, now looking at Pathro with something like awe, swallowed hard. "So… what do you need us to do?"
A slow, determined smile touched Pathro's lips. "Now you're asking the right questions."
---
Almost precisely an hour later, a electronic chime sounded, followed by the heavy clunk of a locking mechanism disengaging. The solid metal door slid open a few inches, but the exit was still barred by a thick pane of bulletproof glass set in a secondary frame. A guard's masked face appeared on the other side, his voice tinny through the intercom.
"Ah, awake at last. Listen up. The boss doesn't like his cells smelling like a latrine. We're allowing ten of you at a time for bathroom privileges. So, who wants to—"
"AGHHH!"
A blood-curdling scream of pain cut him off. One of the students, the previously cautious boy, was curled on the floor, clutching his stomach, his face contorted in agony. His friends immediately clustered around him, cries of alarm filling the cell.
"Hey! Move back! All of you, get away from him!" the guard barked, his protocol overriding caution. He slammed a button on the wall. The bulletproof glass door hissed open. Both guards rushed in, weapons raised. "Back up or we will fire!"
The students scattered, creating a path. As the first guard reached the "ailing" student, his boot scuffed against something metallic. He glanced down. A pair of severed, mangled handcuffs lay on the floor.
"Hey, are those—?"
The question ended in a soft grunt as Pathro's hand, moving like a piston, struck the side of his neck. The guard crumpled. His partner, sensing movement, started to pivot, his finger tightening on the trigger. He never completed the turn. Pathro was already there, a phantom in the chaos, delivering another precise, silent strike. The second guard fell like a sack of grain.
The students, acting on Pathro's earlier, hurried instructions, lunged forward and caught both falling bodies, easing them to the floor without a sound.
"Good work," Pathro whispered, the eye of their improvised storm. "Now, phase two."
Working swiftly, he and the tall, formerly defiant boy stripped the guards of their black uniforms, masks, and weapons. In moments, two new "guards" stood in the cell, their features hidden. Pathro looked at the remaining students, their faces a mix of fear and fierce hope.
"I'm going to lock you back in," he said, his voice firm but not unkind. "It's for your safety and the mission's success. I promise you, this door will open for good, and soon."
The disappointment was palpable, but it was tempered by trust. They had seen his power, his control. They nodded, shuffling back.
As Pathro moved to secure the door, one of the younger girls spoke up, her voice small but clear. "By the way, sir… what's your name?"
The honorific, coming from someone his own age, gave him a slight pause. Behind the black mask, a genuine, hard-edged smile appeared. He finished sealing the cell, then turned the opaque visor toward them.
"Pathro Kitsimoyo," he said, the name a quiet vow in the sterile air. " a Japanese soldier." With a final nod, he and his new impromptu partner melted into the corridor, two shadows disappearing into the belly of the beast.
Pathro moved through the sterile corridor, the boy a tense shadow at his side. "Stay close, and follow my lead," Pathro murmured from behind the mask. "We're not out of this yet."
As they turned a corner, two guards from a different sector approached. One eyed them curiously. "Hey. No one needed the facilities in your cell?"
Pathro shrugged, keeping his voice casual, mimicking the bored cadence he'd heard. "Not a single one. I guess the poor kids are still too scared."
The other guard let out a low chuckle. "You must have really spooked them. They'll figure it out. Nature always calls." He thumped his chest.
"Indeed," Pathro replied. "A shame they'll have to hold it for another hour. Rules are rules."
"Right. Well, come with us. We've got cargo to move."
"Right."
They fell into step behind the other two guards. As they walked, Pathro's eyes catalogued everything behind the mask's tinted visor. Row upon row of heavy cell doors lined the corridor. He let out a low whistle, feigning awe. "Still gets me every time. Look at all this. The boss must have sunk a fortune into this place."
"Tell me about it," the lead guard agreed. "Money's no object for this operation."
Pathro leaned in slightly, pitching his voice with a note of conspiratorial worry. "Makes a man think, though. Nigeria's under Japan's strategic defense umbrella. Aren't you worried about their soldiers sniffing around?"
The guard snorted. "You must be new-new. Rumor is the boss has this whole place wrapped in some kind of tech or... something. Makes us invisible to their fancy sensors. They'd have been all over us by now if not."
Pathro forced a laugh. "Smart guy. Rich and clever. Had me sweating for a minute, thinking about those cocky bastards dropping in."
"This stays between us," the guard said, lowering his voice, "but I heard the boss is a soldier. Or was. Used his own abilities to cloak this place. Never seen him myself, though. He's a ghost."
Pathro's mind raced. A soldier. That tracks. The funding, the tech, the operational security. But which nation? And why this? He kept his tone light, greedy. "Must be rolling in it. I hear soldiers pull down serious pay."
"You're not wrong," the guard grunted. "But the boss... he spreads it around. You know why this whole thing stays quiet in Nigeria? Money flows to the right pockets. He helps people. Does more with his dirty cash than those pristine soldiers do sitting on their clean salaries, if you ask me."
The words landed with unexpected weight in Pathro's gut. It was a twisted, horrifying perversion of a truth. Soldiers were defenders of a system; they weren't social workers. Their isolation was a necessity, but it created a gulf. This monster was exploiting that gulf, wrapping his butchery in a warped cloak of charity.
They arrived at a new sector. The air grew noticeably cooler. The guards ahead pulled on white coveralls from a rack. Pathro and the boy followed suit. "Freezer section," the guard explained. "The whites help with the chill."
"Considerate," Pathro muttered, the word ash in his mouth.
The door hissed open. A wave of frigid, antiseptic air washed over them. The room beyond was a vision of sterile, clinical hell. It was blindingly white and orderly. Not with furniture, but with rows of clear refrigeration units. Inside them, suspended in coolant, were human organs. Hearts, livers, kidneys, lungs, each labeled and cataloged with chilling efficiency. A wholesale warehouse of stolen life.
The boy beside Pathro froze. A choked gasp escaped him. He clamped a hand over his mouth, his body shuddering violently.
"Hey. You alright?" one of the guards asked, turning.
"He's gonna be sick," Pathro said flatly, stepping slightly in front of the boy. "First time in the freezer. It gets some people."
The guard jerked a thumb. "Bathroom's there. Don't puke in the clean room."
The boy stumbled away, retching. Pathro turned back to the nightmare landscape. His blood, already cold with fury, turned to ice. Organs. They're not just kidnapping. They're harvesting. This soldier... he's a parasite. A butcher.
Through a transparent wall in an adjoining chamber, he saw the source. An operating theater. A young girl, perhaps sixteen, was strapped to a table. Her uniform was torn at the shoulder. A doctor in scrubs was preparing a syringe.
Pathro's world narrowed to a single, white-hot point.
He moved.
The two guards with him were unconscious before their bodies hit the floor, felled by two brutal, precise chops to the neck.
The reinforced door to the operating theater was designed to keep sound in and contaminants out. It was not designed to stop a focused blast of pure kinetic force from a soldier's kick. The lock assembly shattered inward with a deafening CRACK.
The two doctors spun, eyes wide with shock above their surgical masks. The one with the syringe fumbled, dropping it.
Pathro saw the girl's terrified eyes lock onto him. He saw the sterile instruments laid out for the vivisection to come.
The Law of Zutra descended upon him.
It was not a sound, but a sudden, profound absence. A silencing. The constant, vibrant hum of his Meta-Energy—the power that could level city blocks—was instantly snuffed out, locked away, reverted to its inert, primal state of Life Energy. The universe itself judged his intent and found it murderous, or rather the ultimate law above all soldiers imposing its ultimate restraint.
If a soldier was regular and simply relied on his powers, it would have been a disarmament. For Pathro, it simply removed the artillery. He was still a weapon honed by years of brutal training in martial arts. His speed, strength, and technique were bone-deep through the extreme trainings after gaining powers. Even without meta energy, he was functionally super human.
The first doctor scrambled for a panic button. Pathro closed the distance in a blink. He didn't throw a punch. He executed a maneuver. A forearm like an iron bar slammed across the man's throat, crushing his larynx with a sickening crunch. As the doctor gagged, clawing at his neck, Pathro grabbed the man's head and, with a sharp, vicious twist, broke his neck. The body slumped, a sack of useless meat.
The second doctor screamed, a high, thin sound of pure terror, and lunged for a bone saw. Pathro didn't let him reach it. He intercepted the charge, his hands moving with lethal economy. One hand seized the doctor's wrist, snapping the radius and ulna bones with a clean, terrible snap. The other hand, fingers rigid as steel spikes, drove upwards under the man's jaw, through the soft tissue of the mouth and palate, and with a final, brutal surge of force, into the base of his brain.
The scream cut off. The doctor's body spasmed once and went still.
Silence rushed back into the room, broken only by Pathro's own controlled breaths and the faint hum of the freezer units. The scent of blood and antiseptic filled the air. He stood amidst the carnage he had wrought, the Law of Zutra a heavy, silent cloak around him. He was powerless to destroy a planet or even a city. But he was more than capable of delivering two very specific, very final judgments.