One week since the Watcher.
Twenty-three days remaining.
The patrol route took us through Kuoh's industrial district - empty warehouses, rusted fences, the kind of place where stray devils liked to nest. Perfect territory for ambushes. Perfect territory for uncomfortable silences.
Mira walked two meters ahead, never closer. Always maintaining distance.
"You're staring again," she said without turning around.
"Observing."
"Same thing."
We'd had this conversation three times now. It never went anywhere.
I watched her move through the shadows - careful, precise, never brushing against anything she didn't need to. Her gloves were thicker tonight. Reinforced. I'd noticed she changed them every few days, wearing through the material faster than normal fabric should allow.
She's always touching things. Just not living things.
"The Sixth is cautious," my Fragment observed. "Experience breeds caution."
Three years of running. I'd be cautious too.
"Tell me about your Fragment," I said. "Not the mythology. The rules."
Mira stopped walking. For a moment I thought she'd refuse - she'd deflected every personal question since joining our patrols - but something in her posture shifted.
"Consumption," she said. "Not Copy. Not Adaptation." She turned to face me, and in the dim industrial lighting, her expression was carefully blank. "I can't touch anyone safely. Everything I touch, I devour."
"Devour how?"
Instead of answering, she reached into her jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. A stray devil contract - low-level, the kind Rias's territory generated by the dozens.
"Watch."
She pressed her bare palm against the paper.
The effect was immediate. Where her skin touched, the paper darkened. Discolored. Then it began to dissolve - not burning, not tearing, just... unmaking. In three seconds, the contract was ash. In five, the ash was gone.
Nothing left.
"Organic matter converts to energy," Mira said, pulling her glove back on. "Inorganic matter just... disappears. I can't control what gets consumed. All or nothing."
That's why she can't touch anyone.
"The Sixth was always hungry," my Fragment murmured. "Where I copy, it destroys. Where I grow, it consumes."
"What happens if you touch a person?"
Mira's expression flickered. Pain, quickly suppressed.
"The same thing. Faster, because living tissue has more energy." She looked away. "I found out when I was fifteen. Before I knew what I was. Before I understood the price."
She didn't elaborate. She didn't need to.
Someone died.
"Many someones, most likely. Isolation is a learned response."
We continued the patrol in silence.
The industrial district stretched ahead - vacant lots, collapsed buildings, the bones of a manufacturing economy that had moved overseas decades ago. Good territory for monsters. Good territory for thinking.
"Different Fragment, different rules," I said finally. "Yours destroys. Mine copies."
"Incompatible siblings." Mira's voice was flat. "The Architect's pieces weren't meant to work together. That's why the Restoration wants to reassemble - they think unity will bring back the original nature."
"Will it?"
"No. Extraction kills the host, and the Fragments scatter again. They've been trying for millennia." A bitter smile. "Different cult, same failure. But they keep trying."
"Because they think this time will be different?"
"Because they're fanatics. Fanatics don't learn."
My wrist ached - the twelve-pointed star pulsing with cold awareness. Twenty-three days. The Watcher watching. The countdown continuing.
We're all running from something.
The attack came without warning.
One moment the warehouse ahead was silent. The next, metal screamed - rusted panels tearing apart like tissue paper, corrupted by something I couldn't see.
"Agent," Mira hissed, pulling me behind a support pillar.
A figure emerged from the collapsing structure. Male, middle-aged, wearing the plain clothes that Restoration agents favored. His hands glowed with sickly orange light.
Everything he touched corroded. Steel beams turned to dust. Concrete crumbled. The warehouse continued its slow-motion collapse around him.
"Agent Eleven," my Fragment identified. "Designation: Rust. Decay manipulation."
Great. Just what we needed.
"Fragment users," Rust said, his voice carrying across the destruction. "The Core and the Sixth. The Watcher was right - you are together."
"How did you find us?" Mira demanded.
"The marks." He smiled, a predator's expression. "All Fragment users carry them. All can be tracked, given time." His attention fixed on me. "The Core especially. Your brand burns brightest of all."
The scar on my wrist flared hot. The Watcher's gift - a tracking device I couldn't remove.
They knew where I was all along. They were just waiting.
Rust attacked.
His power reached out in waves - invisible decay that ate through metal and stone. I dodged left as the pillar I'd been hiding behind crumbled to powder.
"Stay mobile!" Mira shouted. "His power needs contact time - don't let anything touch you for more than a second!"
Good advice. Hard to follow when the entire environment was trying to fall apart.
I called Light Lance - efficiency at 67% now, enough to matter. The golden spear formed in my hand as I rolled behind another structure.
"You can't fight me with light, Core," Rust laughed. "Everything corrodes. Everything decays. Even your precious abilities."
He wasn't wrong. I could feel his power in the air - a wrongness that made my copied abilities feel brittle. Unstable.
The Echoes don't like this.
"His power accelerates entropy. Copied abilities are less stable than native ones - they decay faster in his presence."
Perfect.
I hurled the Light Lance anyway. It struck Rust's shoulder, piercing through - but as I watched, the wound corroded. Flesh knit back together as decay ate away the damage.
"I told you." He pulled the dissolving lance from his body. "Everything returns to dust."
"Keep him busy!"
Mira's voice came from above. She'd scaled a still-standing structure, positioning herself for something I couldn't see.
I didn't question. I moved.
Dohnaseek's combat instincts took over - assessment, positioning, misdirection. I couldn't hurt Rust, but I could distract him. Light Lance after Light Lance, each dissolving before it could cause permanent damage, but each demanding his attention.
"You're only delaying the inevitable," Rust said, tracking my movements. "The Watcher wants the Core. I'm just here to soften you up."
"Thanks for the warning."
I launched myself from cover - not attacking, just moving. Kiba's footwork, Koneko's threat assessment, everything I'd borrowed working in concert to keep me one step ahead of the decay.
And then Mira dropped.
She fell from her perch like a hunting falcon - silent, precise, aimed directly at Rust's exposed back. Her gloves were off. Her hands were bare.
She grabbed his arm.
[FRAGMENT #6: CONSUMPTION]
[USER: Mira Kagami]
ABILITY: Devour
- Cannot be turned off, only controlled
- Requires physical contact
- Organic → converted to energy
- Inorganic → destroyed
- Cannot selectively consume (all or nothing)
- Cannot consume other Fragment users (system rejects)
- Extreme energy buildup requires periodic release
SIDE EFFECTS:
- Perpetual isolation (no touch)
- Hunger-like cravings
- Energy overload can cause berserk state
FRAGMENT PERSONALITY:
"The Sixth was always hungry."
"Where I copy, it destroys."
"Where I grow, it consumes."
"Incompatible siblings. But united enemies."
[ALLIANCE STATUS]
Mira to MC: "I won't let them take you."
MC to Mira: "We survive together or not at all."
```
What happened next would haunt me.
Where Mira's hands touched Rust's flesh, light blazed. Not destruction - conversion. His arm blackened, crumbled, became ash and energy that flowed into her.
He screamed. Tried to pull away. But Consumption didn't work on schedules.
"No - " Rust's voice cracked. "This isn't - I'm not - "
"You came here to collect us," Mira said. Her voice was flat. Empty. The voice of someone doing something terrible because the alternative was worse. "You don't get to be surprised."
The decay spread. Arm to shoulder. Shoulder to chest.
I watched a man dissolve into ash and light, his body consumed by the Sixth Fragment's hunger. In ten seconds, he was gone. Nothing remained - not clothes, not weapons, not even dust.
Just Mira, standing in an empty lot, her hands glowing with absorbed energy.
She didn't move for a long moment.
Then she pulled her gloves back on, methodical and precise. The glow faded from her skin, but I could see it still - energy humming just beneath the surface, barely contained.
"That's Consumption," she said. Her voice was still empty. "Different Fragment, different rules. Yours copies. Mine destroys."
She killed him. Dissolved him completely.
"Efficient," my Fragment observed. "If horrifying."
"How do you handle the energy?" I asked. "That was a whole person."
"Carefully." She flexed her hands inside the gloves. "The Fragment processes most of it. The rest... I have to release periodically. Or it builds up. Causes problems."
"What kind of problems?"
"The kind where I can't control what gets consumed." She met my eyes, and I saw something raw there - old pain, old guilt. "I've done terrible things because I couldn't release in time. That's why I run. That's why I never stay."
Three years of running. Three years of killing anyone who got too close.
I thought about my own isolation - the secrets I'd kept, the distance I'd maintained. But at least I could touch people. At least I had the choice.
Mira didn't have that choice.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"Don't be." She started walking, heading back toward the academy. "It's the price. All Fragment users pay something. You paid memories. I paid contact."
But at least you can still hold someone's hand.
Her words from before echoed back. Understanding flooded through me - genuine empathy for someone whose burden was similar to mine, but in some ways so much worse.
We walked in silence for a while.
The industrial district gave way to residential streets, then to the familiar grounds of Kuoh Academy. Rias would be waiting at the ORC - we were overdue from patrol.
"I've been running for three years," Mira said finally. "You're the first Core I've met."
"Why Kuoh?"
"The Restoration tracks Fragment users through their marks. But you - you're different. Your Fragment is the First. The Core." She glanced at me. "I hoped... maybe if I was close to you, your signal would drown out mine."
"Hide in my shadow."
"Something like that." She shrugged. "It worked. For a week. Then the Watcher found you anyway."
"And now you're stuck here."
"I'm not stuck." Her voice softened slightly. "I'm... choosing. For the first time in three years, I'm choosing to stay somewhere."
She came hoping I could hide her. She's staying because she found something else.
"The Restoration wants you most," Mira continued. "I'm just bonus. But together - together we might actually survive."
"We survive together or not at all," I said.
She almost smiled. "Yeah. Something like that."
The ORC was warm and bright after the cold industrial night.
Rias looked up as we entered, relief visible in her expression. The others were there too - Kiba reviewing reports, Akeno serving tea, Koneko eating chocolate in the window seat.
"You're late," Rias said. "Trouble?"
"Restoration agent. Agent Eleven." I moved to sit across from her. "Designation Rust. He's... no longer a problem."
"Mira?"
"Mira."
Rias's eyes found the other Fragment user, who had stopped just inside the doorway. Uncertain. Waiting for permission or rejection.
"Sit down," Rias said gently. "You're one of us now."
Mira moved to an empty seat. Koneko, without comment, pushed a plate of snacks in her direction.
Mira looked at the food. Didn't touch it. Couldn't touch it - not without consuming the plate along with the snacks.
"I've never stayed anywhere this long," she admitted. "They always find me."
Rias exchanged a look with me - understanding, determination, the kind of silent communication we'd developed over months of shared crisis.
"Then we don't let them find you," Rias said.
"The Sixth as ally," my Fragment hummed. "Acceptable. For now."
I didn't like that "for now." But I'd learned not to trust anything my Fragment said anyway.
The night continued.
We debriefed. Shared information. Made plans for the next patrol, the next defense, the next day of survival. Twenty-three days remaining. Rust was down, but more agents would come.
And somewhere in the between-spaces, the Watcher watched.
Mira sat in the ORC, looking at the snacks she couldn't eat and the people she couldn't touch. Isolated even in company. Alone even surrounded by allies.
But she was here. She was staying. And that meant something.
We survive together or not at all.
The Fragment agreed. The alliance held.
For now.