Invidia Headquarters

Hachigen sat at his desk, contemplating the delicate balance between light and shade cast by the window's Venetian blind. The morning's daylight trickled through the narrow slits, and appeared to slow even more as it met the heavy tobacco smoke that filled the air. Tutting at himself for getting so easily distracted by the room's shadowy topography, he turned back to the letter on the desk before him.

"Fucking stupid banks. Can't even get the name of my Team right." He withdrew a pen from his breast pocket and use it to scrawl a curse word across the page. Then, tucking it into a return envelope, he placed the letter on the top of an empty out-tray. "Maybe it's time to get an extension..."

Opening the door and slipping through, a stranger appeared before ex-Fang King Hachigen. "Hello again, Kommiku-san. Nice to see you after all these years." The stranger ignored Hachigen's terrified outburst and walked towards the desk, taking the seat across from the Rider.

"Is that a bank statement I saw you scrawling on? Something not worth taking the time to pause over?"

Hachigen shrieked in panic as the stranger walked through the door. He shrank away from the slippery voice as it squirmed around his throat, throwing his arms up around his head. The voice was familiar, although the face was not.

The stranger's voice had been haunting him for years; whispering gently into his bleeding ears as he lay strapped to a wall, waking him from dreams as he fell asleep on an empty bus. The previous owner of the familiar voice had been known to change his appearance from time to time, but never to such a degree. Although, time may not have been kind, and a lot of time had passed.

Hachigen realised that the stranger had stopped talking, and he found his voice again. "You shouldn't be here! If they see you, I'm dead! Hang on a minute, you're dead! How did you escape from the-"

"Shut up." snapped the stranger. "Who do you think you are, talking to me like that?" He reached into his jacket and unholstered his pistol, aiming it at Hachigen's head, continuing to shout. "You know what? You talk to me like that again, I'm gonna mother-fuckin' kill you, bitch! Get up off that floor! If your mother could see you, you think she'd be proud? Proud o' her lil' boy, snivelling in the corner?"

Hachigen lashed out with his foot, his AT clunking against his desk-chair and sending it spinning into the stranger's path. He kicked again, this time against the air, sending a fang curling through the smoke and exploding the chair into a shower of splinters. Scrabbling at the carpet tiles as he rose to his feet, Hachigen fled towards the door, screaming as he went; "Fuck you! My life is just getting back on track!"

"You aren't going anywhere, Hachigen." Throwing a large piece of the chair into Hachigen's path, the stranger chuckled as the ex-Fang King hit the floor. "You know you need to join us. We can fund your rise, Kommiku-san. We can help you to gain back the Bloody Armor. In the mean-time, however, how would you like something to help you practice?"

Having fallen face-first into the floor, Hachigen's nose bled profusely. Trying to stem it as his curiosity took hold, all that fell from his throat was; "Whu' oo 'ou 'ean?" Adjusting his hand's position on his face, he continued in a more fluent manner; although the mixture of rage, fear and curiosity still made his grammar similar to that of a seven-year-old. "What have you got, sir, uh ... that can help ... the, uh ... practice, uh ... that you spoke about earlier in your, uh, soliloquy?"

Laughing as he walked towards him, the stranger re-holstered his pistol and knelt beside Hachigen, lowering his voice to a whisper. "You're straight to the point these days, Hachigen. I'm not sure if I like that side of you." Rising to his feet, the stranger removed a rucksack from his back that Hachigen could have sworn hadn't been there moments before.

"During the years that you squandered away your reclaimed youth, some of us were busy rallying support from nearby regions. Whilst all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, that's not necessarily true if the work you do is the work you love. Personally, I love confidence tricks. I get a certain thrill from swindling rich scientists out of money, and they seemed to be throwing it at me. And not just money, either - property, shares..." He stopped rifling through the bag to roll his eyes at Hachigen. "...you have no idea how much money there is to be made from the science of Air Trek." Finding what he'd been looking for, the stranger zipped up the bag and swung it back onto his shoulder. He placed a small card on the desk and walked towards the door, pausing as he reached it. "You should find that drive again, Hachigen. I think I preferred the driven young man you became in the War."

"The War changed me. You know that." Hachigen shifted himself onto his knees, then used the wall to stand. He glided across to the table, his back turned deliberately to the stranger. "You took away my family and my youth. I had to reclaim both from the scraps of myself that you left when you discarded me. My family now loathe me an amount comparable only to my hatred for the Trophaeum. They disowned me during my breakdown. My youth I never fully reclaimed - there was only so much innocence a 15-year-old man could fake, and only so many times he can use the War as an excuse for the misery he inflicts upon those around him in the name of that Lost Youth."

Picking up the card from his desk and reading the two printed lines, he scoffed. "Is this some kind of fucking joke? You think I can take this seriously after everything you just told me?" He turned angrily, his face contorting with rage. His leg curled upwards as he spun, unleashing another devastating Fang towards the door. The doorway was empty, and the energy pummeled the wooden door into submission, cleaving it in two. Screaming like a lunatic, he swept the piles of paperwork from his desk to the floor, smashing his fists onto the bare laminated chipboard before slumping back to the floor.

"I fucking hate you," he whispered to the empty room. "Why did you have to come back? Have I not given you enough of myself?" He once more looked down at the card in his hand, sneering as he read the words aloud.


Sighing, he picked himself up and tidied the office, sitting down once more at his desk. "I suppose I should start recruiting then. A one-man team isn't really a team, after all..."