Chapter 2: Into The Unknown

When Kentaro finally stirred, it felt like his brain had rebooted mid-crash. His vision blurred, swimming in static, blinking rapidly as the world around him slowly came back into focus.

Not sky. Not sun.

A ceiling, cold, metallic, gleaming faintly with strips of LED white. Foreign. Too clean.

He wasn't outside anymore. He was lying flat on something soft but sterile. A bed?

No… not a bed. A slab.

The last thing he remembered was flames, chaos, rifles aimed at Rin.

Now, silence… and the ceiling staring back at him like an interrogation lamp. Sound crept in next, like a radio frequency being tuned.

"Vitals stable."

A voice. Sounding like a female. Distant, as if it were echoing underwater.

Kentaro's head jerked to the right…

A woman stood by a nearby console. She hadn't moved a muscle since he'd awoken, only her eyes shifted, locking onto his, like she had been waiting for the exact millisecond of consciousness. She wore a white lab coat, no badge, no name, no expression.

Cold. Professional.

When she realized he was awake, she didn't speak. She turned, precise, like a machine, and walked toward a glass door on the far wall. The heels of her boots clicked in eerie rhythm against the floor. She reached the panel beside the door and entered a passcode.

HSSSSSSK.

The seal released, and the door parted like it was letting in a secret.

She stepped through, gliding.

No words. No smile. Just… the echo of her presence disappearing down a corridor Kentaro couldn't yet see.

And all he could think was.

Where the hell am I now…

Her shoes made no sound against the metal floor. Her long, white coat didn't sway; even the fabric obeyed her presence. As she neared, Kentaro finally saw her face clearly. Her face was smooth, unreadable. Almost too calm. But it wasn't kindness in her eyes. Nor suspicion. She looked at him, the way someone stares at a problem they already solved... and just wants to confirm the result.

"Hey Kantaro, I'm Haruka. Haruka Kurobane."

Kentaro stared at her for a second, blinking only once. 

As she stood right next to him, she wasn't tall. Her presence made her seem that way. Her golden brown hair was tied in a high looped ponytail, smooth and precise. Thin frame glasses rested on her small, button nose, but she did not need them, they were a habit.

A signal, " I am calculating." they seemed to say

Her voice was soft. Not shy, but measured. Every word chosen like a surgeon picks tools. Her face barely moved when she spoke. That's what made it eerie, almost as she'd practised being human... and just so happened to be good at it.

Eventually, Kentaro snapped out of it before sitting up and replying.

"Um.. hey there, it's actually Kentaro, not Kantaro, and, where are we?"

He said, questioning everything.

Haruka looked at him, unsure if she should tell him or leave it to 'Her'.

She took a seat at the end of his 'bed', before slightly adjusting her glasses as if trying to buy herself some time to figure out what she had to say.

"Ren," Haruka began, her voice low and measured, "I'd explain everything-" she paused, adjusting her glasses with a crisp click, " but you wouldn't believe me… not until someone you trust tells you."

She locked eyes with him, intensity simmering in her gaze. Kentaro's heart skipped, and he dropped his head, exhaling in frustration, until something snapped.

"Tenka," he blurted out, bolting upright as if electrified. Haruka flinched, surprised by his sudden shift, but before she could speak, Kentaro rushed on.

"There was a girl with me, dark reddish eyes, black hair. S-she was right next to me, w-with everything falling apart. Is she… is she okay?" Words tumbled out in a nervous rush. Haruka hesitated, then reached out and flicked his forehead, soft but firm. Kentaro jumped, bewildered.

"What was—?"

Haruka ignored the question and brushed her glasses back into place. Her voice dropped to a gentle reassurance. "Tenka is alive, Ren. And everyone else in that classroom… they were saved."

Relief washed over him, and he exhaled in a shaky sigh. "I'm so glad…"

"But," Haruka's tone darkened, "not all came back unharmed." Kentaro's relief hardened into confusion as he recalled the collapsing ceiling.

"How? I saw them get crushe-"

Haruka got up and stepped toward the glass door, voice soft with purpose: "You'll need to ask the commander."

Her lips curved into a reassuring smile, but already the door was sliding shut. Kentaro called out:

"The commander?"

She paused, just before disappearing into the steel corridor beyond. 

"Everything will make sense soon," she promised, her voice fading. "Rest now. The commander will meet you later."

The door hissed closed. Kentaro sat in silence, his mind racing.

He glanced down. His left leg bore a faint scar, the memory of Rin's kick. Gingerly, he poked it. No pain. Not anymore. The fact it healed surprised him, but encouraged him too. He swung his legs off the edge and rose unsteadily. The glass door at the room's end stood silent, unassuming, but behind it lay answers waiting in the wings.

This is when he decided to take in his surroundings of the room he found himself in.

It was spotless

Too spotless.

The walls were smooth and silver white, almost glowing with a bright light that was on the roof, which had no clear source of electricity like a wire. Apart from the glass door, which also acted like a window. There were no other windows, no clocks, just a faint hum of energy running through the unseen circuit. Kentaro continued to walk until he got to the door, and unlike Haruka, the door wouldn't open for Kentaro. He tried to see if he could slide it open by pulling the door sideways, but it would not budge. So with nothing else left to do, he turned back around, now facing his bed. 

The bed he'd woken up from wasn't a bed per say; it was more like a platform, padded just enough to avoid a lawsuit.

Clear panels glowed faintly in the ceiling. Everything about the room felt like it was meant to observe, not to heal. ''What the hell, how does she expect me to sit here with nothing to do. At least some manga would've helped." Kentaro whispered to himself.

For the next hour, Kentaro paced the sterile, featureless room, a tight loop that was beginning to feel more like a cell than a recovery ward. His thoughts spiraled endlessly, chasing the same impossible questions.

Rin.

Who was she, really? What was her goal? Her smile hadn't left his mind since she vanished, haunting, half-playful, half… desperate. But it wasn't just that expression. It was her voice. That final whisper before everything went dark.

"If you want to save me…"

The words repeated over and over. Had she truly said that? Or was it some misfired neuron, his mind grasping at fiction?

"If she did want me to save her… then how?" he muttered aloud to no one, as his feet traced the same squeaky arc across the polished floor. "What the hell am I even supposed to do?"

Each time he thought he was calming down, another flash of her revolver, or that swirling red energy, surged back into his head. His hand briefly touched the faint scar on his leg. Proof she was real.

And then there was Tenka.

For a moment, he stopped walking.

Was she okay?

His memory played the image of her face before the ceiling caved in. He hadn't seen her since. Haruka had said she was safe… but Kentaro couldn't shake the worry tightening in his chest. Tenka wasn't just some childhood friend. She was the only constant he had. The only person who really—

He shook the thought off.

After another few laps, his legs finally gave out. He collapsed onto the edge of the plain white bed with all the grace of a sandbag, elbows to knees, head sinking into his hands. A long breath dragged out of him. No matter how hard he tried to ground himself, this place, this new reality, his mind kept circling back.

Rin's voice. That look in her eyes.

And Tenka, somewhere out there, carrying truths he still didn't understand. The weight of it all pressed in like fog. Thick. Suffocating. And growing heavier by the second.

Then he heard a hiss.

The glass door slid open. Kentaro's head shot up. Eyes locked forward, tense, and on alert.

No surprise.

It was Haruka.

She stood at the threshold, gaze sharp and locked onto him. She didn't speak. Didn't blink. Just entered the room, soundless, ghostlike, as if the floor itself refused to acknowledge her steps. The same ice-cold aura she'd worn like a second skin earlier was still there, untouched. She stopped halfway between him and the door, perfectly centered. Still silent.

Kentaro stood up. He was ready to unload. What was Rin? What happened to Tenka? What the hell's going on with the colle-

But before a single word left his mouth, Haruka calmly raised one hand and pushed her glasses up with her index finger. 

"I know you have a lot of questions..." She said, her voice was soft, but carried an edge like steel hidden under silk. "But right now, I need you to follow me. Once we reach our destination, you'll get the answers you're looking for."

Kentaro scowled. He opened his mouth to argue. Too late. She was already turning around.

"Tsch... guess I don't have a choice." He muttered, trailing behind her toward the door.

As they exited the room, the hallway beyond was shorter than he expected, barely twenty feet long. But at the end stood two absolute units of men, dressed in all-black fitted shirts that clung to biceps the size of Kentaro's hopes and dreams.

He leaned in close and whispered under his breath, "Damn... they got muscles on top of muscles."

Haruka's head snapped toward him in a fluid, robotic motion. No expression. No blinking.

"Don't say that near them. They'll make you drop the soap."

The delivery was dead serious.

Kentaro froze. Eyes wide. Forehead instantly sweating.

"Roger that, ma'am. No jokes. Got it. Loud and clear."

They passed the muscle mountains without a word exchanged. The next hallway was nothing like the first. Long, narrow and seemingly endless. No windows. Just panel after panel of dull silver metal, lit by a soft, recessed lighting. It gave the illusion of walking through the inside of a machine.

The floor was weirdly soft, like it absorbed pressure with every step, muting sound. But what truly got under Kentaro's skin wasn't the silence. It was as if the entire hallway felt like it was holding its breath. 

But things finally changed when Kentaro saw it. A towering door at the end of the seemingly endless corridor. Unlike the sleek, clinical glass that had sealed his earlier cell, this entrance was heavy, metal, and intentionally oversized. Twin doors at least double the height of a man stood like silent titans, locked in place by magnetic seals that pulsed faintly red. The size wasn't just for aesthetics; it meant something. Where the commander was, Kentaro guessed, power followed and intimidation by design. Haruka stopped a few paces short of the door. She didn't knock. She didn't call out. She simply adjusted her glasses, slowly, precisely, and muttered without turning back.

"Don't speak unless she addresses you first. She doesn't tolerate dead air or noise without weight."

Then, the doors parted with a deep, mechanical thump followed by a hiss of pressure release. Cold, conditioned air swept out like a breath held too long. 

The doors hissed open, not into the cavernous war room Kentaro imagined, but into something much tighter.

A command nest.

The space was circular and sunken, almost like a miniature theatre built from glowing panels and metal veins. The ceiling was low and curved inward, lined with fibre-optic strips pulsing a faint crimson-teal rhythm, like the room itself was breathing.

Cables ran like vines across the floor and walls, some neatly managed, others clearly shoved aside in a rush. Half the terminals flickered with real-time data, while the other half displayed idle screens that someone definitely forgot to update. There were mugs with sarcastic quotes, stale snacks, 

a scattered deck of cards on one console and for some reason, a pair of cat ears resting proudly on a control panel.

"This... is where they run the world from?" Kentaro whispered to himself.

At the centre of the room, six officers manned their station in a curved line around a glowing holo-core. Each one looked like they belonged to a completely different anime-different attitudes, uniforms tweaked against regulation, each with a distinct vibe.

Despite the chaos, they worked like clockwork.

And overlooking it all, on a raised ledge that commanded silence without asking for it, stood her.

Tenka. 

Hair tightly tied back in a combat bun. Coat crisp, heels planted like a general before war. One hand behind her back, the other gently looping the now-familiar crimson thread around her pinky- slow, deliberate, hypnotic.

"I need a full breakdown on her chart. Also, I was his chart during the incident. Make sure it's detailed, no mistakes people." She ordered, her voice cutting clean and sharp.

The room shifted into motion like a well-rehearsed performance. All six officers responded in perfect timing, no verbal acknowledgement needed. Kentaro stared. It wasn't just that she was commanding.

It was. That she made it look effortless.

Then, without looking at him, Tenka spoke again.

"You can close your mouth now, Kentaro. You're not catching flies. Yet."

He blinked. "Huh? I-i wasn't-"

Tenka slowly turned to face him. That calm, unreadable stare pierced right through whatever comeback he thought he had. The thread looped once more.

"You're two steps behind and twelve questions too late. Don't worry. You'll catch up eventually." 

Kentaro, with a straight face, stared at the side of Tenka's face, wondering. "Who is this girl? Is she the Tenka that I know?" 

Tenka, feeling his eyes, gave him a quick glance of a commander trying to intimidate the newcomer. Before narrowing her eyes at him, then continued to focus her attention towards the screen in front of her.

"Tsch... yeah. Good to see you too." Kentaro muttered, scratching the back of his head.

From one of the nearby consoles, a voice chimed in. 

"Ayo, don't sass the Commander on your first tour newbie," said a grinning officer, lanky mismatched eyes, coat unbuttoned, and badge flipped upside down.

Tenka didn't even glance at him.

"Shogo Nara, if you speak again while I'm talking, I'll rotate your chair 360 degrees until you black out!"

Shogo raised both hands innocently.

"Just trying to welcome the fresh meat."

Haruka placed a calm hand on Kentaro's shoulder and leaned in close, too close.

Her voice dropped to a whisper, flat and precise like she was reading from a danger manual.

"Listen. Try not to get too friendly with Shogo."

She paused, eyes subtly shifting to the left like a trained assassin. Kentaro, still new to the game, mimicked her movement exactly, but with all the grace of a kid cheating on a test.

Mistake.

Shogo, who had been facing the monitor screen, snapped his head around like a cursed animatronic.

"YOO, why we whispering?"

"I heard my name and I felt spiritually summoned."

Kentaro flinched.

Haruka didn't move. She just sighed.

"Ignore him. If you feed attention, he multiplies."

Shogo was already walking over, arms wide like he was approaching an old war buddy.

"Renny-boy! Finally getting the briefing, huh? Did she give you the 'don't trust the sexy vice captain' speech?"

He slapped Kentaro's shoulder hard enough to dislocate a ghost, then turned to Haruka.

"You're looking emotionally unavailable today. Love that for you."

Haruka adjusted her glasses without blinking.

"I'll put cyanide in your tea."

"Kinky."

Kentaro stared at them, unsure if he should laugh, run, or file for psychological evacuation.

"This is your team." He thought

"How do these people have jobs here and what the hell do they do?"

"Shogo, You Dumbass! Stop messing around. I need you to get me my coffee." 

Tenka shouted, clearly annoyed with the fact that Shogo wasn't doing anything useful.

"YES, MISS RIGHT AWAY!" 

Shogo sang out. His voice sounded like a teenage high school girl trying to act all sassy like.

"You've got to be kidding me," Kentaro muttered, not even trying to hide his disdain. Haruka, with her blank expression, would sigh. "She got him in a tight leace, if you can't tell."

Kentaro had seen a fair few clowns in his time, class clowns, office jokers, even that one guy who barked at pigeons outside his part-time job. But none of them came close to Shogo Nara.

Shogo wasn't just a joker, he was a 6'1 slab of walking contradiction. Built like a security door, dressed like a guy five seconds from getting kicked out of a nightclub, and he somehow is still the vice commander, if the team supposedly keeps everything and everyone in order.

His uniform was more 'suggested' than worn. Collar popped, jacket slung over one shoulder like a cape and boots untied on purpose- 'for speed', he claimed, but Kentaro didn't buy it. 

No one did.

Shogo's black hair was always slightly unkempt, like he'd just rolled out of a tactical nap. His cat-like eyes carried that strange mix of 'I'm flirting' and ' I might punch you.' A look that didn't so much reassure as threaten with charisma. In a mere few seconds, Shogo blitzed through the command room doors with the energy of a man proposing on live television and dove into the Halcyon kitchen. Mugs clattered, steam hissed. An emergency coffee grinder was probably violated.

Then-

" Here you go, my Lady."

Shogo returned, bowing dramatically with a tray held like a wedding proposal, one steaming cup of pitch black coffee balanced perfectly in the centre.

Tenka didn't even look at him.

"Hmph. Took you long enough." She muttered as she snatched the cup from his tray with royal disdain.

She sipped once.

Paused.

Turned her head slightly.

Then.

"YOU ABSOLUTE MORON! WHO TOLD YOU TO BRING ME BLACK COFFEE?! I HATE BLACK COFFEE!"

It happened in less than a blink. Her right leg snapped forward, faster than light, faster than logic- and then drove straight into Shogo's stomach with the force of an orbital cannon.

BOOM.

Shogo rocketed across the room, slammed into the far wall, and vanished in an explosion of concrete dust and emotional regret. The entire base shook as if the building itself said, "Damn."

Kentaro stared in silence.

"Umm.. Is he dead?" he whispered to Haruka, daring not to move even a centimetre in case the sudden death was contagious.

Haruka didn't look up from her tablet.

"No, Ren. He's very much okay. He may look like an idiot, sound like an idiot... act like an idiot... but he's actually our second strongest fighter behind the commander."

Kentaro squinted.

"...Lies. There's no way. Sure, he's got the muscles, but-"

"COMMANDER, I THINK IT'S HOT WHEN YOU KICK ME WITH SUCH PASSION AND DOMINANCE!"

A voice echoed from the smoking crater, sounding aroused from this whole ordeal. Then slowly, a hand reached out, brushing aside the rubble. And like a character out of an action movie, Shogo emerged through the haze looking like a gremlin rising from the ashes. His shirt torn, grin intact, and aroused by near death.

Kentaro's soul left his body for a moment.

"You're kidding me," he muttered.

The Kick was like a god tier finishing move from an anime protagonist. The kind of attack you're only supposed to use once per season, and even then, someone dies.. But, this man just tanked it and started monologuing. 

Shogo casually dusted himself off and approached Tenka again, despite her eyes still glowing with rage.

"Forgive me, my queen. My ignorance has fouled your elegant tastebuds. Allow me to redeem myself with a new Brewww..." He paused, taking in a deep breath.

"This Time, with Millllk." He groaned, exaggerating his final word while bowing.

Deeply, too deeply…

Tenka raised a single hand and pointed at the wall like a judge passing sentence.

"NO, I REFUSE, GUARDS!"

The massive double door at the back of the room burst open, and smoke rolled in like the finale of a game show. Behind the smoke and doors, two hulking bodyguards stepped forward, shoulders wider than the room, dressed in tight black shirts with sunglasses indoors.

Kentaro's brain broke in real time.

"Are... are those the guys from earlier...?"

Haruka, Still looking at her tablet.

"Yes. Don't say anything weird near them," she said with a bland tone.

Kentaro, without thinking, would open his mouth

"Why Not-"

He stopped himself, remembering that one thing that Haruka had told him back when they first walked past them.

Shogo, suddenly panicked, screamed.

"NO NO NO NO NO!!, NOT THEM PLEASE I'M STILL SUFFERING FROM LAST TIME, ANYTHING BUT THE DROP THE SOAP BRIGADE!"

The bodyguard cracked their knuckles. One of them, whose arms looked genetically engineered to crush planets, took a single step forward, each step causing the floor to crack beneath his boot.

They walked towards Shogo, who now had his back against the wall with nowhere to run, and like out of some sort of movie, they grabbed each arm and dragged him, letting his legs slide across the floor.

"PLEASE, COMMANDER I'LL MAKE YOU A CARMEL MACCHIATO NEXT TIME, JUST DON'T LET THEM DO THIS TO ME."

"THEY HELD ME IN THE SHOWER FOR THREE DAYS!"

His voice going unheard, Tenka didn't give a glance at him or give him any response to his plea and cries for forgiveness until those cries began to fade away slowly.

Till it was no longer there...

Kentaro still stood in the same place as he had been. He had blinked twice. 

"This place is insane," He muttered.

"Welcome to Halcyon," Haruka muttered, still looking at her tablet, before walking away and heading towards the kitchen...