The storm had not ceased since the night before. It clung to the city like grief, soaking every steel girder and flickering sign of Tokyo's Grand Line with ghostly reflections.Rain whispered against the cracked tiles of the park's underground service tunnel. The four figures — Akio Hukitaske, Rumane, Hikata Yakasuke, and Detective Mizuhashi — walked silently, the weight of their discovery from beneath the Grand Line still lingering in the air.
The smell of the tunnels had changed. It wasn't just rust and mildew anymore — it was oil, smoke, and something metallic.Something new.
"Smells like gunpowder," Hikata muttered, pulling his jacket tighter.Mizuhashi crouched, fingers brushing the wet floor. "Someone's been here recently. Look at the prints — heavy boots, long stride. Not security."
Rumane's flashlight swept across the tunnel wall. Symbols had been etched into the concrete — looping designs of chains and spirals, with red paint dripping like blood. Her voice came low. "It's a message… or a warning."
Akio said nothing. His mind was elsewhere — haunted by the emerald crystal he'd recovered last night. It pulsed faintly in the vial attached to his belt, glowing like a dying heartbeat. The Helix still breathed. Somewhere, its ghost was watching them.
Then, faintly, over the drip of water and hum of the underground pipes… came the sound of metal dragging across metal.
Chhhrrn… chhhhrrnnn…
A rhythm — slow, deliberate. Chains.
Hikata's body went tense. "Please tell me that's you polishing your sword, Akio."
Akio unsheathed the Black Poison Blade, its dark sheen glinting faintly in the flashlight's glow. "No."
The sound grew louder, echoing from deeper down the tunnel. Then came another noise — the distinct click of a lighter. A flare of orange flickered in the dark, catching smoke and rain mist.
And from that smoke stepped a stranger.
He moved with the slow, rolling gait of someone who didn't care whether he was late to his own death. Chains hung from his coat and boots, dragging behind him like the ghosts of his sins. His long black jacket shimmered with the rain, weighed down by steel, and a massive hat — wide as a shadow and draped in dangling links — hid most of his face.
But the faint glow of a cigarette cut through the darkness beneath the brim. The smell of burnt tobacco mixed with ozone and smoke.
When he spoke, his voice came like a tremor between accents — half-British, half-Australian, entirely off-kilter, every syllable wavering between a laugh and a sigh.
"Well, now…" He exhaled smoke that swirled like mist. "What do we have here? Trespassers. Rain rats in my underworld."
Mizuhashi stepped forward, gun drawn. "Identify yourself. Now."
The stranger tilted his head slightly, cigarette glowing. "Mate calm down, Names don't mean much when the dead whisper 'em back, kiddo. But for formality's sake…" He bowed slightly, the chains clinking. "Doctor Akanuki Valda Dezalkei. Formerly Yaka Lab. Currently, the caretaker of the new world."
Rumane's eyes widened. "Yaka Lab? You're with the remnants?"
Akanuki chuckled low, his voice distorting through the echoing tunnel. "With them? No, no, no. I am them. The flesh that remembers. The hands that rebuild. The mind that refuses to rot."
Hikata swallowed hard. "This persons insane."
"Madness is just intelligence that's run out of patience," Akanuki murmured, lifting his head. His eyes — gray as storm clouds — met theirs. "And patience, my dear friends, ran dry when your little team set fire to our paradise."
Akio's voice was steady. "The Helix Project was not paradise. It was a nightmare."
Akanuki laughed — a dry, shaking laugh that ended in a cough. He flicked his cigarette to the floor, the ember dying in the water. "Nightmares are the only dreams that last, moron. You killed our lab, burned our brothers, and now you walk through our ashes pretending you're the hero. Tell me, how does it feel — carrying ghosts in your pockets?"
Akio's grip on the sword tightened. "If you're rebuilding the Yaka Lab, I'll end it again."
The scientist smiled, the corners of his mouth twitching beneath his soaked mexican shaped hat. "You'll try. But you see…" He reached into his coat and pulled out a small device, flickering with red light. "…this time, the world isn't watching you burn it down. It's helping me build it back."
The device beeped once. Somewhere deeper in the tunnels, machinery began to hum — old turbines awakening, vents releasing steam in bursts of white hiss.
Rumane's voice rose sharply. "He's activating something!"
Before she could move, Akanuki swung his arm. A steel ball, attached to a chain that gleamed like wet lightning, whistled through the air and slammed into the wall beside her, splitting the concrete like paper.
The shockwave knocked Hikata to the floor. "Holy—! He's packing heavy!"
Mizuhashi fired twice. Akanuki's coat swayed like smoke — the bullets hit chains instead of flesh, sparks scattering.
And then he was moving.
Despite the weight of his weapons and coat, Akanuki lunged forward with terrifying speed. The four multi-bladed swords strapped to his back flared out like wings as he drew two, spinning them in his hands with the precision of a machine.
Akio met him head-on, blades flashing — Emerald Healing clashed against steel, sparks and raindrops dancing midair. The echo filled the tunnel like thunder.
Their fight was brutal, a storm made of steel and will. Akanuki fought with the strange, staggering rhythm of someone who no longer cared about pain — every strike laced with raw despair and chaotic beauty.
"You think you destroyed us!" Akanuki shouted between swings. "But all you did was bury the seed! You and your friends — the fools who played gods and then ran from the garden!"
Akio blocked, twisted, countered — his eyes sharp, focused, but burning with quiet rage. "We didn't run. We chose to live."
Akanuki laughed again — the sound hollow and wet. "And I chose to remember!"
He kicked Akio backward, chains lashing across the air like serpents. Hikata dove in, pulling two vials from his belt.
"Akio! Incoming!"
He threw one — the glass burst in midair, releasing a burst of emerald vapor. Akio inhaled the mist and felt the surge flood his veins. His blades glowed — twin arcs of black and green light that roared through the dark.
He dashed forward, slashing in a cross. Akanuki caught one strike on his chain, but the second tore through his coat, splattering blood across the wall.
For a heartbeat, the scientist froze. Then he smiled.
"Good…" he rasped. "Good. You do remember how to kill."
Mizuhashi grabbed Rumane's arm. "Get back! He's stalling!"
And he was. The device in Akanuki's other hand pulsed faster now, beeping wildly.
"Do you know what Yaka 8056 stands for?" Akanuki said, his voice trembling with a mix of madness and pride. "It's the code for resonance. The moment when water meets ash, and both remember what they once were."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Hikata barked.
"The rebirth of the Lab," Akanuki whispered. "Through sound. Through memory. Through blood."
He slammed the device into the ground.
The tunnels erupted in light — pulses of sound waves blasting through water lines, shaking the very walls. The air shimmered. Every metallic surface began to vibrate with a low, humming tone.
Rumane clutched her ears. "He's using sonic frequency to reactivate the lab's dormant systems!"
Akio stumbled, the sound cutting through his gut like needles. Akanuki stood in the center of the chaos, arms spread, laughing through the distortion.
"This is it! My requiem! My song of rebirth!"
Then, in one swift motion, Akio threw his sword like a spear — the Emerald Blade piercing the device dead-center. The explosion of light and steam threw Akanuki across the corridor, chains snapping.
When the dust settled, the humming died. The tunnel went still, except for the drip of water.
Akanuki lay against the wall, breathing raggedly. His hat had fallen off, revealing eyes darkened by exhaustion and regret.
Akio walked toward him, blade drawn but silent.
The scientist gave a weak, broken smile. "Heh… still the same eyes. You think you're saving the world. But it's always just another lab, isn't it? Another experiment waiting to fail."
Akio knelt. "You had a choice. You could have stopped this."
"I did stop it," Akanuki whispered. "Once. But they never let me forget. So I built it again — not for glory… but because I missed the noise."
The rain above them echoed faintly through the broken ceiling. Akanuki's cigarette, somehow still lit, flickered out beside him.
"I built monsters to forget my own face," he said softly. "You kill monsters to forget yours. We're both drowning in the same water, kiddo."
Akio's expression faltered — not pity, but sorrow. "Maybe. But only one of us is still trying to swim."
He stood, turning away. Rumane and Hikata watched silently as Mizuhashi radioed for cleanup teams.
Behind them, Akanuki's voice came one last time, thin and frayed.
"You can't stop it, you know… Yaka 8056 isn't a place. It's a code… for the mind. It's already awake."
His eyes closed. The chains stopped jingling.
Only the rain remained.
As they climbed back toward the surface, Hikata broke the silence. "You think he was telling the truth? About the code?"
Mizuhashi didn't answer immediately. "If he was, it means the Helix didn't die with him. It changed form. Became something new."
Rumane brushed water from her hair, her voice quiet. "Then maybe the real war's only beginning."
Akio looked up toward the faint neon sky, the light refracting through the rain. In his hand, the emerald crystal pulsed once, faintly, as if answering the words.
He whispered to himself, barely audible:"Then we'll be ready."
The wind carried the scent of smoke and steel, mingling with the endless rain. Somewhere in the distance, the echoes of the Helix's song began again — faint, but alive.
And deep within the tunnels below, unseen machines hummed in the dark, listening.
TO BE CONTINUED...