Everyday Stresses of Kazuki - Sci-Fi Action/Intrigue Webserial

"Down to business, as always, isn't that right?"

Archius smiled before tilting his head, shaking blood from his hands. Sitting down in front of him was a Blood Contractor, tied to a bloody chair, haemorrhaging blood and phlegm.

"I can give you the cure, you know? Neurotoxins aren't that deadly, mind you!"

"Gah!" The Blood Contractor gasped for air. "I don't know shit, Máwti!"

Ugh. Archius rolled his eyes, looking across the rundown apartment to another person, one of Archius' agents, his eyes. "Are you sure you've tried everything?"

The informant nodded, arms crossed. "Yes. I caught this one on security cameras." The informant had a security uniform on for some... random fucking shopping centre in the centre of District 94. "Matched the set you gave us... Though he did look slightly older. Now, payment?"

"That'll depend on what this little guy has... and right now... maybe the standard," Archius admitted, grabbing a rusty screwdriver from a tray next to him before jabbing it into the Blood Contractor's hand.

Clicking a button on the butt of the screwdriver unleashed an entire cocktail of drugs into the contractor's bloodstream.

They howled, screaming. "Please! I told you... Just... I don't know anything. When will you believe me?!"

Archius yawned before pulling out a pistol. Then, he placed a bullet into their head. The carcass slumped down.

"Yeah, half the standard."

The informant grunted. "Hey!"

"Be happy I'm giving you anything for this, maybe you can get the mistress something good?" Archius smiled. The security guard stared at Archius with a hint of fear. Archius smirked, but all smiles died as the door crashed open.

The informant shuddered slightly as a relatively short man entered... Jet black hair, golden bulbs... It's Kazuki!

"What is it?" Kazuki sneered, closing the door behind him.

Archius looked to the informant, throwing a makeshift database chip to him.

The informant glanced at Kazuki, who shot a curious look back. Gulping, the informant took the chip off the floor before leaving. Ugh... how annoying, Archius thought. "We snatched a Blood Contractor, but... they weren't of much use."

"So...? Is that why you called me here?"

"Hey, I gave you an excuse to avoid Eliza's scolding..." Archius walked across the apartment to Kazuki. "We need information, but you don't want me on the field. So... Let's eliminate that problem!"

"What?" Kazuki raised an eyebrow before slowly realising exactly what Archius meant. "Fuck. Fine... I'll accompany you. Next time... I'll get you an escort."

Archius smiled, walking over to the sink before washing his hands of the blood. Humming slightly, Archius dried his hands, patting Kazuki on the back before leaving. "My information network hasn't been as active as I'd like, so we'll be... finding new sources of information."

"What do you have in mind?" Kazuki followed behind. The two left the apartment, exiting out into a less glamorous section of Anagora's surface. Still, the worst of the surface was better than the best of the Sub-Levels. No elevators, so that was annoying...

"There's this clerk, bit of a nerd, works as a bureaucrat in national security," Archius replied. "I've done my homework; he has level two access clearance, which should be enough to get him into... some usable places."

Kazuki sighed as the two descended the stairs in the abandoned apartment block.

Just then, Archius noticed something was… off. He paused as he tapped Kazuki on the shoulder.

Like that, the two fell silent and stacked up against the stairs, slowly descending to the floor below. 'We're alone, right? You didn't choose an active… alive… fully functioning apartment block for interrogations, right?'

'Of course!' Archius snarled as he slowly took out his pistol, nearing the door leading to the hallways. Footsteps? 'What do your senses make of?'

'A set-up…' Kazuki snarled.

'I doubt it, I've vetted that informant a hundred times,' Archius rebuked the statement, but the idea was definitely there. 'Do you hear that?'

'Seven pairs of footsteps, heavily armoured, clad,' Kazuki replied, taking up point on the opposite side of the door. The air was thickening, as the desolate lights of the Anagoran suburbs shone brightly. 'Quiet?'

'No shit, suppressors on, let's hope they don't want a police response either.'

With that, the two screwed suppressors on their guns. Archius had a HAWK-65, a heavy-calibre ornate pistol, accompanied by his revolver. Kazuki, on the other hand, slide the receiver back on his SMG.

Placing a hand against the door, Archius waited for the shuffling on the other side to finish. 'What's the plan?' asked Archius.

'Krystalink the cameras, I'd prefer eyes on them.'

Archius took up the suggestion, activating Krystalink on his ICAPAD and peering at the cameras. The halls were desolate for the most part… 'Aha…' Archius smiled as he showed Kazuki a dozen roaming squadrons.

'Criminals or Blood Contractors?' Kazuki asked, eyes widening. 'I'll call for reinfo—'

'No, they're criminals!' Archius scoffed. 'Anagoran Gangsters…'

Archius smirked, which gave Kazuki all the justification he needed.

With that, Kazuki tugged a nanobot grenade from beneath his jacket. Slamming his boot against the door, it came tumbling down as he lobbed the grenade into it.

A metal spread erupted across the room before Kazuki rushed in, followed by Archius. The first squadron of gangsters was wiped out by the grenade, as steel mulched against flesh.

More teams barrelled forth from various hallways, firing across an indoor park towards the pair.

Kazuki dragged Archius into cover.

Suppressed bolts whizzed through the air all around.

Fools... These gangsters surrounded them from above and below…

No need to aim properly, Archius jested to himself.

The park below was nestled between the abandoned apartments, but… it'll be fine, Archius thought.

"Be gentle at least!" Archius sneered, placing several bolts in mobsters trying to outflank them. Crouching down and squeezing across, behind the parapet, Archius rushed to the corner.

With a clear line of fire, he blasted down the hallway, giving Kazuki a moment of respite from the gunfire. Kazuki rushed up, ducking and weaving beneath a fusillade of tracers.

A maze of scaffolding, ladders and walkways littered the interior park and the indoor balconies. Archius flinched from the gunfire, sighing before taking a precise kill shot.

A burst of blood from some criminal's neck was enough payment for the annoyance.

Bursting into one of the apartments, Kazuki breached through decrepit wall after wall, emerging from behind the gangsters.

Archius kicked forward, firing down the indoor balconies as Kazuki led the way.

Kazuki clambered up the emergency ladders, crashing into the forces above as Archius trailed behind from the floor below. Gunfire rained down upon him; the two took turns returning fire across the indoor balconies.

'I really should have packed more ammo for this!' Archius snarled. 'You have any sixty-five bolts?' Archius took cover near the stairs, hiding as bolts riddled the parapet.

Stolen story; please report.

'Sixty-five?' Kazuki groaned. 'That's overkill and you know that!'

Kazuki was dead right about that… But, so were the gangsters, as one rushed up the stairs, straight into Archius' line of fire… "Idiot." Archius rolled his eyes as the body rolled back down the stairs.

More criminals rushed up, only for Archius to gun them down. After the third criminal fell, a steel tingle rose. Grenades?! Archius weaved to the side, narrowly avoiding a blast of rocks and steel.

Looking up once again, Archius could see Kazuki scouring the floors and balconies. Walkways and scaffolding left behind were gunned down beneath him, but that didn't matter; the Arbiter merely kept up the pressure.

Crushing forward, Archius staggered up the ladder. 'Kaz, cover me!' Archius shouted.

'On it!' Kazuki stopped for a moment, taking cover behind a pillar before jumping up to another piece of scaffolding. From the high ground, Kazuki took several aimed potshots.

Criminals rearing forward to take Archius' head were gunned down as they tried to climb on after him. Casualties… twenty to zero! One more and they'll have a blackjack!

And… lookie there, Archius smirked, continuing to climb before reaching the floor above. Still, gunfire rained down on them. Criminals rushed across the scaffolding.

Archius placed bolts into the scaffolding pressure points.

With that, the scaffolding came tumbling down, screeching steel and planks muffled the gangsters.

'This has to be a setup!' Kazuki snarled.

Archius sighed. 'I'm not the only person with eyes on Anagora, and that bounty of yours is looking very fucking lovely by now!'

'If you can catch me in my sleep, it's all yours,' said Kazuki.

The continuous stream of muffled gunfire kept everything to a… relative calm. Criminals kept pouring in, rushing down the stairs and across half-working hover lifts.

A whole damn convoy of the hover lifts was rushing between the indoor balconies. Machine gun fire ripped up the reinforced concrete, blasting away as both Kazuki and Archius were forced to keep their heads down.

'What do you have on you, any charges?' Archius asked.

'Light Detonation charges, it'll help us get through the walls,' Kazuki said. 'Rendezvous?'

'Loud?'

'Yeah... you think surface police will bother responding to a thud or so in an abandoned apartment block?"

'Fair enough, sure, just pass them along! Ain't nothing stopping you.'

To Archius' surprise, Kazuki followed through, jumping out of cover and onto a hover lift. Cracking his exospine, Archius saw a burst of blue energy thrust the Contract-Breaker across the block.

And just like that, Kazuki extended his head over the guardrail, throwing a few charges down at Archius. 'Catch.'

'I… I was fucking JOKING!?'

Archius caught the detonation charges, juggling them before retreating into an apartment. Criminals rushed in after him as Archius tipped over a steel table, hiding.

With a heated response, the charge drilled a bore directly above the criminals. Kicking the table forward, Archius rushed up, kicking off and grabbing onto Kazuki's hand, firing away with his other hand as he pulled Archius up.

'You know, we really need to do more field work!' Archius half-jokingly remarked.

Kazuki paused as the two made their way through the rundown apartments. Blasting through the roof, floors, doors and walls, the criminals kept up the pressure.

'If I let you do more field work, I might as well give you my sister's hand in marriage.' An essence of hyperbole and sarcasm hung from the venomous tongue.

Archius sighed. It was worth a shot, after all, he thought!

Continuing through the buildings, they hid from the machine gun fire, using Kazuki's plasma aspis shield and the walls to weather the storm.

A gangster tried to rush from above, scrambling down on scaffolding before tackling Archius. "Agh, fuck!"

Kazuki was pinned by bolts, but instantly placed a bolt in the criminal's head.

"Hey!" Archius snarled, kicking the corpse off him before wiping the blood from his cheek. "You got blood on my jacket! That's expensive, you know!'

'Sue me!' Kazuki jeered. Continuing upwards and through the apartments, the two kept moving, rushing away from the hover lifts and their machine guns.

Still, they were slowly losing ground… The rooftops were getting close, and muffled sniper bolts hammered down against them.

'What do we do about those hover lifts?' Archius asked, wrapping a few bandages around a few gunshot wounds he took – superficial, of course.

Kazuki peered down, covering Archius' retreat upwards with his SMG. Kazuki, on the other hand, was bleeding all over his limbs. A bolt even skidded past his cheek. However, he didn't seem nearly as bothered as Archius, as the two kept the gunfire up.

A thousand muffled cases littered across the floors, along with the give or take three dozen graves they filled today… or just one mass grave, either worked.

'My SMG's not strong enough to take them out,' Kazuki said. 'They're keeping their distance.' Peering out the door, Kazuki flinched from a bolt, bursting the plasteel door apart.. Fragmentation skidded past him.

'How many charges do we have left?' Archius asked, pulling the pin on a silent vacuum grenade and lobbing it down the hole from whence they came. A small rupture vibrated at inhuman hearing levels, erupting the floor below with extreme heat.

'Enough…' Kazuki murmured back.

Oh no. Oh fuck no! This was the start of one of Kazuki's VERY-VERY-FUCKING-AWFUL-SUICIDAL-IDEAS!

'I know you don't need it, but I'll remind you that I'M NOT MADE OF FUCKING STEEL!'

Kazuki nodded, placing his hand to his chin. He threw a few more breaching charges over. 'I'll commandeer one of their hover lifts. I need you to plant those near the top. Got it?'

Archius sighed, following through even though he knew this was a suicidal plan… for Kazuki, of course. Slinking a one-time Cloaking charge on himself, Archius disappeared… Casually walking past groups of criminals whilst cloaked, sticking gas detonators along the wall.

The charge ran out as Archius walked up a flight of stairs.

At least he was with Kaz, not Eliza... Archius remembered how annoying it was to guide Eliza at the start of the year... She had not earned his trust in such a lethal situation...

Archius glanced over at Kazuki.

He hand-signalled to him, suppressing a few assault teams across the apartment block. Archius felt the clicky-clicky noise in his head as he detonated the charges.

Instantly, the few criminal fireteams trailing behind Archius were torn to shreds. Shrapnel shattered the criminal resistance, all whilst the building barely shuddered.

Amidst the slowing gunfire, Kazuki jumped onto one of the hover lifts, spinning around. Instantly, hundreds of bolts were blasted in all directions. Kazuki silenced their gunfire with each opportunity.

Rendezvousing once more, the two breached onto the roofs. There was a small electricity and communication hub across the roof…

Archius and Kazuki approached, kicking down the door to find… the informant… "Yikes."

Though not for the informant, but for whoever the informant was beating the shit out of.

"Damn." Even Kazuki was surprised.

The informant, some security guard, had beaten the living shit out of two gangsters. He heaved for air as he looked up at the pair. "I think you should shower before seeing the missus."

The guard scoffed before chuckling.

The guard pointed to the gangsters. "This is gang territory… I'm ex-Navy spec-ops, these fuckers don't hold a candle to the Sub-Levels… or the Imps."

That was true, Archius thought. "But did you betray us? Did you betray me? You know very well I reward good associates…"

Archius pulled his muzzle out, kicking the informant across the small room and into the wall.

"Now then… finally willing to admit it?"

Kazuki looked at a laptop active in the small rooftop room. No active police responses, abandoned areas of the surface make great dens for criminals, too, so it made sense.

"He's good," Kazuki said. Kazuki pointed to the laptop. "They were after my bounty… Emiya still refuses to take it down... Someone's still funding it, huh?"

Archius peered over at the computer. "Fuck me, amateurs are willing to do anything these days!" Archius walked away for a moment, giving Kazuki the space to help the informant up.

Then, Kazuki gave them a firm handshake, and another slab of standardis. "For your… continued loyalty and perseverance."

The informant took the money, and that was that. Turned out it really was just amateur gangsters and a criminal band looking for Kazuki's bounty.

"What did you even do to get on the radar this time?"

"Traffic stop," Kazuki replied, recalling from his database. "Must have been a beat cop. I'll give you the details later."

Archius smiled and nodded.

The night was full taking hold, and even in the dead-ends of the suburbs nothing was drawing breath.

A shuttle was awaiting them in the alleyway nearby.

"So… this clerk you were talking about?" Kazuki inquired.

Oh, yeah, that was the topic before this whole debacle.

"Expected level three or four? Please, I was level three, that's for agents. I'm good, but someone from above will notice if I pick up one of their agents."

"A bribe here and there works wonders," Kazuki stated. "Greases the gears nicely."

Sitting down in the shuttle, Kazuki extended a hand out for Archius. Archius held his hand up, taking out a cigarette, lighting it, and smoking it.

"Don't get too addicted," Kazuki snarled.

"Hey, we don't live long either way," Archius shot back. "We'll be in an endless cycle of bribing people, that's just a jack-in-the-box I don't want to open. This clerk, however? Well... they can listen into field agent chatter, help with reports... You know such."

"Mind if I join in?" Karl asked, peering back into the passenger compartment.

He took out his own pack of cigarettes. Yoller-Hollow Diamonds? Fucking hell, Karl knew his cigarette brands well.

However, Kazuki shot him down. "I don't want this shuttle smelling like a crytera den. We're not killing any police officers here..."

Karl rolled his eyes before turning back to the wheel. Archius took one last puff before throwing the cigarette out.

"So, where to?" Karl asked. "And you two took your sweet time, jeez, you two look awful!"

"We were ambushed," Kazuki replied. "They've been dealt with…"

"Fuck me, you should have called!" Karl scolded Kazuki.

Archius tapped his ICAPAD, hidden beneath his sleeve. "Here," he said, showing the location to Karl.

The two cleaned themselves up, covering their wounds and changing their jackets.

At least Archius could trust in Kazuki, he thought. Trust is a commodity in their market, a luxury worth its weight in armies and fleets.