Kage Kanda, third son of the Kanda line and 5th Dan Blossom Collector, watched the sacred orchard burn. Kage and his

mother had planted many of the trees that filled the valley below, each a representation of the Collectors who had fallen for

the honor of their clan. Collectors were the Stone Dog’s most instrumental tools in establishing their dominance in the City of Light.

And today their enemies were attempting to remove them from their rightful place.

         Fools, Kage thought as he looked through the scope of his Heron-Mark II. 

Augmented soldiers bearing the insignia of the Nizari, rushed through the blazing orchard as they

sought an escape. It had been a bloody day. The Nizari, rivals in the world of shadows and death,

dishonored themselves by striking at their student chambers.

Kage’s mother had been teaching the youngest in the ways of spiritual Ascension when they attacked.

The high caliber rounds used by the Nizari didn’t leave much to recover, though Kage had gone from room

to room in search of survivors. The only blessing was that his youngest brother, Akio, had managed to survive.

Kage found the thirteen year-old boy hunched over their mother’s body, a bloody knife in his hands and two

dead Nizari soldiers, a testament to his resolve.

Kage had told his sibling to flee, but the boy refused. It took several sharp strikes to quell the child’s outburst,

and soon after Akio obeyed. He would make a fine Collector, should he survive the rest of the night and learn to

control his emotions.

Says the hypocrite, Kage thought.

Once Akio was gone, Kage had carried their mother’s body out into the orchard. A waste of time, he knew, yet

rather than continue the fight, he was determined to lay her body beside her father’s cherry tree. Their mother

was not the first of their family to fall, nor would she be the last. Yet that didn’t stop the memories surfacing in

Kage’s mind, threatening to break his focus.

There was little sorrow in Kage, even as he set the orchard ablaze. Sorrow was only a distraction. Blossom Collectors

were trained to remove emotion from combat, allowing them to enter a state of calm until service ended. He could

feel the pain stirring within and knew that his concentration might break should he provide an opening.

        Thankfully, the arrival of a pair of Nizari soldiers drew Kage’s thoughts away from the image of flames consuming

his mother’s skin. Seeming to have lost their team in the inferno, they made a run for the open path left to them. When

the lead soldier spotted the dead bodies along it, a moment of hesitation arose. Kage put both down with brief squeezes

of the trigger. 

Two more burnt offerings for the fallen.

        The Nizari soldiers were mere grunts in the conflict that spanned the low valley and Kage waited for his true target

to reveal itself. Of the six Collectors stationed here, only three remained, which meant only one thing; a Gallu was

roaming the premises, hunting what Collectors still lived.

Yet another reason to burn the orchard. 

Gallu detected their prey through heat signatures. While Collectors were trained to lower their body temperature

through extensive and oftentimes extreme training exercises, the Gallu could attune itself to lowered body temperatures

in order to find them. They excelled in specific target removal and had clearly been given orders to hunt those of his creed.

Kage didn’t need to check in with Etsuko and Hanako to know they were nearby. They had been in the same cadre

growing up. Each class bonded with their fellows, sharing a spiritual link they developed during the Ascension process,

allowing them to sense each other.

        A team of Stone Dogs emerged at the entrance of the path where Kage had set his trap. A good sign he thought, realizing

that their arrival meant the conflict was coming under control. 

        “The beast stirs near the entrance,” Hanako said with quiet confidence over their coms. “Moving to

engage.”

        “Allow the Dogs to distract it and I will join you,” Kage said, tapping the retraction tab on his rifle. The weapon

transitioned into a compact rectangle that mag-locked to his hip and he rose from concealment.

Kage felt no pang of remorse for the Stone Dogs. Life was but the passing of a cherry blossom floating on the

currents of time. The Stone Dogs would die regardless, and it was better to use their passing as a distraction than

waste their sacrifice. 

“On my way,” came Etsuko’s baritone voice.

Good, Kage thought. Three Collectors might stand a chance against the abomination, although it was far from

a guaranteed victory. 

As Kage rushed down the hillside, he could already hear the shouts and gunfire as the Stone Dogs engaged.

Knowing they would only buy a minute at most, Kage activated the quick-twitch amplifiers within his body. Immediately his

heartbeat accelerated to match the overdrive requirements.

Kage tried to clear his mind for the trial to come, yet as he moved along the hidden paths, sticking to the shadows around

the burning cherry trees, he could not escape his mother’s face. The life of a Collector was a cold existence. In his time, he had

collected hundreds of blossoms in his life. There had been so many, in fact, that he had forgotten all but the first few deaths

by his hand.

Yet in the early years of his childhood, a time when it was only Kage and his mother, bits of joy remained only to assail

him now. Small kindnesses, hidden sweets and soft words. The smell of his mother's hair and the calm, soothing caress of her

touch were but a handful of moments where Kage felt something other than duty.

Such kindness was swept away as Kage came upon the remains of the Stone Dogs. Kage slowed as he noted the piles of

dehydrated dust, intermixed with scattered limbs and gore, which gave evidence of their fate. The Gallu stood at the bottom

of the staircase leading into the orchard. A black silhouette made up of tiny hexagonal plates, several of which were dulled

and cracked from small arms fire, formed into the curved shape of a woman. Standing without struggle, it held the last Stone

Dog off the ground, hand punched clean through the man’s chest to grip his spine. The Gallu’s head ticked to the side as it

evaluated its recent kill, then the hexagons making up its body opened, revealing a pulsating cylinder that made up its power

source as it drew the body into itself. The crunch of bones followed as the hexagons closed, a high pitched whirring that sounded

like a scream indicated the Gallu was consuming its prey, using the bio-energy from the body to repair the dulled and damaged

hexagons while the dehydrated remains of the man filtered out of the vents in its back as dust.

Kage pulled a shock lance from hip and drew the monofilament wakizashi from the other. 

He had faced a Gallu once before and knew that, unless gauss rifles or weaponry of a higher magnitude were available, small

arms fire would be useless. It was better to override its systems with a shock lance then skewer its core with a blade to negate its

regenerative properties.

The Gallu let out a mechanical groan as it watched Kage with void-like eyes.

Kage could not hope to match the creature’s speed, even with the modifications to his own body. He would have to anticipate its

movements if he hoped to survive long enough for his companions to arrive.

When the first hexagons of its body began to shift, Kage was already thrusting the shock lance forward. There was another

mechanical shriek as one moment it was twenty paces away, and in the next it was upon him. Kage’s shock lance grazed its side,

the electrical blast that followed knocking it off center even as Kage threw his body backwards, narrowly avoiding death as the

hexagons of its arm transitioned into a claw that raked across his chest, ripping through the body armor he wore and cutting the

flesh beneath.

Kage hissed and was moving back in an attempt to keep the Gallu in front of him. The Gallu transitioned forms as it approached,

darting from one edge of his vision to the other as it attempted to find an opening. There were two options it could take, and Kage

was very much aware that he only had enough time to pick one to defend. He could sense his companions nearing his location,

but they wouldn’t arrive before the second attack.

Kage feigned a misstep, concealing the lance thrust as an attempt to right himself in hopes that the Gallu would take the

bait. If he was wrong, it wouldn’t matter for he would be dead. Unfortunately, it spotted the deceit shortly after taking the bait, and

such was its speed, it managed to swing a multi hinged limb with its momentum, whipping into Kage’s shoulder with an audible crack as the bone of

his sword arm snapped.

He only felt the initial agony as pain inhibitors within Kage’s body flooded his system with narcotics. Kage rolled with the hit,

barely managing to keep his feet from the sheer power of the strike. Then his companions arrived and the Gallu, ready to pounce,

pulled back and created distance.

The Gallu returned to its feminine shape and regarded the three. Another deep moan issued from somewhere within it, for the

creature had no mouth to speak of.

“Well done,” Hanako said, shock lance and wakizashi at the ready.

Etsuko held a crackling naginata, his powerful frame set in a defensive stance as he nodded his agreement. 

“Strike together,” Kage said, testing his sword arm.

It didn’t move as it should have, and Kage knew he would need to throw his body into any strike he made. The pain was dulled

for now, and while using his arm in such a manner might never allow it to heal

properly, it was better than death.

Or worse, failure.

The Gallu remained in place, but its limbs spread out into several multi-hinged blades that slowly rotated as it watched them. 

Meanwhile, Kage engaged every adrenaline amplifier and body modification he had. Doing so would take years off his life, but then

Blossom Collectors didn’t live long. He could sense his companions do the same and, in the next moment, the three Collectors rushed

their target.

The engagement that followed ended in seconds, but the frozen moments in between were filled with violence.

Kage was the slowest of the three, his movements slightly dulled by the narcotics in his system. Hanako met the Gallu first,

her wakizashi a blur as it deflected most of the blades that descended upon her. The rest drove deep into her body, but not before her

shock lance landed in the Gallu’s thigh, temporarily immobilizing it. Etsuko was next, his naginata cut in half by the other limb as the

Gallu's blades punched through his chest. But Etsuko was a powerful man in his own right and managed to drive the bladed half of his

crackling weapon into its collar. The monofilament edge drove toward its core until the side of the Gallu opened and engulfed part of

Etsuko’s torso inside itself, killing him instantly. 

Kage felt their deaths in his mind as the last of his cadre passed from this plane of existence. The loss threatened to break

his calm, but Kage was a true Collector, and drove onward. Wounded as it was, his shock lance landed true, opening the creature’s

torso to reveal its core.

Whipping his broken arm forward, feeling the bone in his arm grind and tear muscle, the tip of his wakizashi drove into its

central core. The Gallu screamed, an electronic wail of disbelief and agony as its systems shut down. Before its life could end,

however, it kicked Kage squarely in the chest. His ribs and sternum cracked under the impact, sending him skidding across the ground.

Laying there, struggling to breath even as the various systems in his body attempted to keep him alive, Kage found himself

watching the burning blossoms drift across his vision as the wind carried them overhead.

Kage’s breathing slowed as his eyes fixed on one of the burning cherry petals floating in the air. His mother’s voice called to him from

somewhere in the growing darkness. Then Kage’s soul joined the blossom as it danced on the breeze of time, his duty complete and honor intact.