Are people ,men, women and all alike inherently cowards?
The answer is simple.
Yes.
Cowardice is not the exception, it is the rule. It is the mechanism that kept the weak alive long enough to raise children, to pass on their frail bloodlines. Everyone who lacked it, who charged boldly into every threat, who stood tall against every storm, who dared fate itself, died. Died quickly, often heroically, but nonetheless… died.
That makes cowardice not only natural, but a virtue. The oldest, most time-honored virtue of all.
Don't want to die and refuse to step between a rock and a hard place? A virtue! Let the one who sent you go there themselves. What nerve, demanding you throw away your skin for their gain. No—when it comes to your life, you are the god of selfishness. Worship it. Bow to it. Because no one else will die in your place. Better alive and selfish than a hero rotting under nameless dirt.
Don't want to get hurt and simply run from a fight? Also a virtue! The very first rule of every martial art worth the name is this: escape if you can. Live if you can. A corpse cannot refine its technique.
Panic in a minefield and step wrong? Good riddance–nature cleans its own ranks. Take someone else with you? Then you die branded a curse.
Paralyzed with fear, rooted to the ground, unable to move? No one will carry you. No one will share their rations with your trembling mouth. Stay behind. Wait for death. Perhaps, if mercy lingers, they will retrieve your corpse and give you a name in remembrance.
But silence? Silence before tyranny, silence before insult, silence before the daily cutting away of your dignity? That is not cowardice, nor virtue–it is surrender. Ruff the boats. Rock the feathers. If you cannot fight with your fists, fight with your tongue. To submit in silence is the only cowardice that has no place in survival.
And so, by all measures, Kamina was the exception.
Fear was always there. Cowardice too, whispering in his ear. But he chose to wear bravery like a cloak. To act as if he owned the world even when death loomed over him.
Now, standing against the Pointillist Docent, Kamina faced a truth every fixer in the room had already learned that this opponent was not merely stronger. He was immeasurably stronger. One man, one spear, and already two dozen fixers were corpses scattered on the floor. Shmuel knew it. The fixers of the Merchant's Ledger had known it. And Kamina…
Kamina knew it better than anyone.
And still, he grinned.
Still, he pointed his blade forward.
Still, he shouted as though the world itself would bend to his voice.
"Hey! Long-nosed brush-boy! The only grade I'll take from you is an A for Ass-kicked!"
Bravery? Cowardice? The line was thin. Kamina was already dancing on it–against a man who could end him with a single stroke.
The Docent moved. Both Shmuel and Kamina clashed with him in tandem, a reckless unity of fire and steel. Futile. Their weapons sparked, rang, and were pushed aside.
Cowardice would say. "Don't swing. Don't even try."
And cowardice would be right. Against such a gulf of power, effort was laughable.
Yet Kamina had always believed something cowardice forgot–sometimes the point wasn't to win, but to show you refused to kneel.
The Docent's brush-spear swept forward. Kamina staggered, shoulder bursting with pain–the strike meant for his head barely glanced down. His vision blurred, blood ran down his arm, but his grin stayed.
"The head is right here," he growled through clenched teeth. And before the Docent could blink, Kamina smashed his own forehead into the man's mask.
It landed. It landed. Harder than anyone would've bet on.
Cowardice would never have let him. Courage, perhaps, shouldn't have either. But recklessness? Recklessness was the tightrope where Kamina lived.
The Docent's retaliation came, spear came down like a guillotine–
And the world tore apart.
The corridor groaned. Walls folded inward, ceiling cracked open, floor splintered into drifting plates of space. A new force, humming with the distortion of the Ring Singularity, invaded reality itself.
"Someone has breached the inner building," the Docent snarled.
The room shattered. Fixers, corpses, furniture–all of it was swallowed, scattered into twisting pockets of nowhere. Doorways bent into spirals, chairs disappeared into holes that weren't holes. The Docent himself was yanked away in a flurry of brushstrokes and ink-black wind.
Kamina blinked. His vision steadied. He was on his knees, Shmuel beside him, both of them scarred and panting. Before them stood Sam–dripping blood, cuts across his arms, chest heaving with exhaustion. A corpse lay at his feet, its mask cracked, its robes shredded. A Docent. Dead.
"I'm surprised you two are still alive," Sam rasped, wiping his blade. His one good eye narrowed on Shmuel. "Especially you, kid."
Kamina gave out a laugh, wincing as his shoulder seared. "What's more surprising is—you killed a Docent."
Sam exhaled, heavy and grim. "The 7th Association, South Section 6, has already sustained major losses. And it's only been an hour into the raid. Too many bodies for too little gain. But—" He nudged the fallen Docent with his boot. "This is the only confirmed kill. One of theirs down."
Sam slid his blade back into its sheath, blood still dripping down his side.
With what was left of the 7th Association's fixers, alongside Shmuel and Kamina, they pressed deeper. The fragmented corridors bent into a vast atrium, until the space opened before them—
A laboratory.
A lab bigger than a high rise building, its machines humming with the madness of the Ring Singularity, glass tanks pulsing with sick light. Tubes, wires, surgical arrays, and scaffolds rose like the ribs of some mechanical beast.
This was the inner building.
A sudden, metallic groan echoed above. Panels in the ceiling hissed open like eyelids peeled back–one after another. From each, Students of the Ring descended.
"Eyes up!" Sam barked, already lunging forward, his blade cutting a scarlet arc through the first of them.
The hallway erupted into chaos. The fixers of the 7 Association surged upward like a tide, clashing with the descending flood of students.
Kamina ducked a thrown scalpel, the blade singing past his ear. "Shmuel!" he yelled over the din. "Call Alexy!"
Shmuel hesitated, parrying a swipe with his battered baton. "What, now?"
"Yes, now! Before we're paste on the wall!"
Through the clash, Shmuel fumbled his phone free. Kamina didn't wait–he snatched it from his hand, cracked a smirk despite the bruises forming on his face, and yelled into it.
"Hey, Alexy. We just breached the Ring's inner building–south section. You might wanna help us, since we could die real soon. And if I remember right, your contract says you'd help us once we're inside… which probably means right now."
Shmuel nearly choked, batting aside a spear aimed at his ribs. "Wait–you read the contract?".
A dry chuckle slithered from the phone's speaker. "Good. I have been waiting for this call," Alexy said while sipping tea.
"So what now?" Shmuel shouted, dodging a blade.
"Do not worry," Alexy replied. "My Companion—my ἑταῖρος—is coming."
The contract in Shmuel's breast pocket suddenly grew warm. Too warm. He cursed, slapped his chest, and tore it free–just in time for the paper to ignite with a violet flame.
"Ah! Hot! Hot!" He flung it to the ground, smothering the embers licking at his glove.
From the burning parchment, a shadow rose. Metallic and fluid. The silhouette twisted, condensed, until it stood in the rough shape of a man, spear in hand, bronze sheen glinting under the Ring's cold lights.
A voice rumbled from within the forming helm, proud and resonant, echoing like a chant across a marble hall:
"Hail, strugglers in this wretched hall. I am Peucestas (Πευκέστας), Companion—ἑταῖρος—of Alexy, sworn arm of the Basileus. Though the πεζέταιροι—the Foot Companions—march not at my side, their absence does not wither the spear. One is enough, when the spear is true, and the cause just."
He planted the butt of his spear against the metal floor, and the echo thrummed like a war drum.
Sam blinked, slashing down another student. "Reinforcements out of burning paper?"
Kamina smirked. "Something like that."
Sam spat blood, shaking his head. "You took another contract–outside of ours? You really know how to play us, don't you."
"It ain't complicated," Kamina said, twisting his blade into a student's side. "It's just to make sure that the researcher who made those golden coins survives this raid. What's her name again?"
"José," Shmuel snapped, glaring between parries. "How did you forget that?!"
Kamina shrugged mid-swing, his grin feral. "City's too damn interesting. Names slip when the walls bend like origami."
Peucestas strode forward, spear whirling in a disciplined flourish–his stance wide, his voice a cutting chant.
"Then let the walls bend, let the halls bleed, let the students scatter! Forward, sons of the city–advance, as the dawn did at Issus!"
And with that, the spear lunged like lightning, piercing a Ring student clean through.
The tide shifted.
Sam and Peucestas carved their way through the waves of the Pointillists' Students, their movements almost inhuman in precision and force. Sam fought like a man who had already accepted the City's ledger would always be written in blood and each of his cuts meant to preserve his limited stamina. Peucestas, by contrast, moved with a zeal both old and alien, the spear whistling as though the weapon itself longed to drink the lifeblood of the weak.
"By the emperor, they keep coming! It is like wading through a field of chaff that thinks itself grain!" Peucestas shouted. "Stand fast, for the wheat must be cut ere we reach the feast!"
Kamina, dragging his blade free from the ribcage of a writhing Student, scoffed, "How the hell did they get that strong? We can barely scratch a Docent, and those two are plowing through this mess like it's a side job."
Shmuel ducked beneath a flying shard of painted glass and rammed his knuckle into another's knee. "Because, Kamina, they worked for it. Accumulate enough combat experience, survive long enough to afford augmentations, stack layers of body mods, invest in tech–then your grade up. And every rank up? Harder jobs. More blood. Higher risk. It's a ladder made of bone, and most don't climb it."
Kamina grunted, swinging upward to split a Student's jaw open. "So, all we gotta do is sell our souls, risk our guts, and we'll be shiny like them?"
"No," Shmuel snapped, his voice harsh, "because the Merchant's Ledger Office tried that. And they got wiped. You saw them with us against that Docent. They took a job way out of their weight class, and the City collected the debt in full. Just like this job is for us."
Kamina laughed, reckless as ever even while his breath came ragged. "And yet… here we are. Lucky bastards."
"That luck won't hold," Shmuel hissed. "We're out of bullets, Kamina. No more Joker cards. From now on, we stick close to Sam and that… Companion. We're passengers now."
"Passengers?" Kamina spat the word like it tasted of ash. "No. Not me."
He laughed again–a mad, bright laugh that clashed horribly with the bleak corridors of the Ring's inner sanctum. The laughter echoed as the 7 Association fixers pressed forward, cutting a bleeding line toward the heart of the Ring, where the infamous researcher of this case was kept.
Behind them, the Ring's aesthetic horrors stretched in every direction. The walls were lined with paintings of violence frozen mid-scream, sculptures of limbs and anguish arranged in postures that mocked the concept of humanity.
As Kamina and the rest stepped into the vast chamber where José was being kept, the air shifted–paint fumes mingled with a faint metallic tang, and the light here was warped, refracted through dozens of unfinished canvases suspended midair. At the far end of the room, chained by something that shimmered between gold and oil paint, José stirred faintly.
But between them and her stood two Docents.
One of the Docents tilted his masked head, voice lilting with a tone that sounded rehearsed and theatrical.
"Now… which one of you meddled with our singularity?"
Sam, still standing with his blade casually lowered, arched a brow.
"Quite a question there. How about a classic: I don't know?"
Both Docents slowly raised their brush-spears, pigment dripping from the tips like ink about to mar pristine paper.
"Should I shape my question to your liking," the first one asked, "so that one of you would finally answer it?"
Kamina stepped forward with a scoff, resting his blade on his shoulder.
"The problem with your question is–I don't even know what you're talking about. Got something rattling around in that skull of yours? Or is it just paint fumes?"
Shmuel's voice slid low, private, only for Kamina.
"Remember that Docent earlier? The one who snarled 'Someone breached the inner building'? This is what they meant. Someone tampered with their singularity—whatever it is they're protecting here. And they think it's us."
The second Docent let out a harsh chuckle, more of a scrape than a laugh.
"It's hard to talk to people so… wrong in the head."
"Look who's saying that," Kamina fired back, grin sharp as a blade.
The insult landed like a spark in oil. One Docent blurred forward, brush-spear whipping toward Kamina's neck in a straight, practiced line meant to pierce both skin and spine.
Kamina didn't flinch. Didn't move an inch.
The world rippled as Peucestas stepped in, his spear intercepting the attack with a sound like cracking lacquer. The impact bent the air itself.
"Quite the temper there, worthy one," Peucestas said, his voice carrying an almost amused weight as he held the Docent at bay. "Do you spill pigment before the sketch is even made?"
The Docent snarled, pulling back as the second began to advance, their brush-head dripping colors that hissed when they hit the ground. All around the room, more Students began to emerge from the hanging frames and side doors.
The chamber erupted.
As soon as the Docents made their move, the room fractured into a battlefield—Sam charged headlong into one of them, steel against paint-soaked spear, every clash splattering droplets of shimmering pigment that burned where they landed. Peucestas met the second Docent with a thunderous strike, their weapons locking as the air rippled like stretched canvas.
Around them, the 7 Association's South Section 6 fixers spread out, engaging the emerging Students who poured from alcoves and moving frames. They fought with improvised artistry—chisels turned into daggers, palette knives gleaming like scalpels, brushes lashing out as whips of paint.
Kamina and Shmuel entered the fray, blades flashing, fists driving back painted silhouettes. But Peucestas' voice cut through the chaos like a command brushed in black ink.
"You two—slip through! Find the girl. Ensure her safety!"
Kamina hesitated for a breath, looking over his shoulder. The Docent he had taunted earlier was locked in a deadly dance with Sam now, and Peucestas' stance was unyielding.
"Alright, Don't get yourself killed before I get back."
He and Shmuel broke from the clash, weaving between streaks of hostile pigment and the cries of the fighting Students. They pushed deeper into the lab, corridors narrowing, the smell of turpentine giving way to sterile chemicals.
At the heart of it, they found her.
José—a young woman in a white lab coat, face pale but fierce—stood before a luminous apparatus that hummed with restrained power. Opposite her was Valerie, the La Parure Group's office representative, her pristine attire marred by battle dust yet her poise intact.
José's voice cracked first, sharp with defiance.
"No! Do not underestimate me, sister."
Valerie's tone, cold but fraying at the edges:
"Why cause such a ruckus, creating a technology that drew a Corp's eye? Do you not value your safety? Had you let me take care of you, you wouldn't be tangled with the Ring—a pawn in a Maestro's game."
"I don't care!" José snapped, her fingers curling at her side. "Leave me alone, sis!"
Valerie's mask slipped, desperation flooding her words:
"I sacrificed my entire office to reach you! Don't you see how important you are to me? More important than any show I could ever host!"
"SHUT UP!" José's voice broke into a roar, raw with something deeper than anger–resolve, sorrow, longing. "I will take on all that comes my way to carve my own happiness!"
The ground quaked. A low hum resonated from the machine behind her—no, from within her.
Her skin shimmered, veins tracing gold beneath her flesh. Her frame contorted as a voice—warm, maternal, unbearably intimate–whispered only to her "Miss Carmen… you were right. My sister… she's a burden to our happiness."
Her body hardened, golden sheen spreading like poured metal.
"José!" Valerie stepped forward, hand outstretched.
José turned, eyes now molten.
"No. I will embrace it."
She wrapped her arms around Valerie–an embrace too tight, too final. The golden glow enveloped them both as a rift tore open behind them, a portal swirling with oil-slick colors.
Kamina surged forward, but the portal's pull yawned wide–both sisters were consumed, drawn into the rupture like brushstrokes wiped from the canvas.
The lab fell silent, save for the lingering hum and the echo of José's last, desperate choice.
The portal was presented to Kamina and Shmuel.