The night before Empires End, Tokyo did not feel like a city at all. It felt like a machine someone had shut off and forgotten to restart.
Kyōki Piero stood on the rusted fire escape outside the Cyber Reavers’ hideout, one boot resting on the rail, the other heel grinding against flaking paint. Blovid curfew sirens had fallen silent hours ago. Shibuya’s usual neon riot was muted, puddles reflecting half-dead signs instead of crowds.
The AAPW Death Match Championship hung off her shoulder, heavy as guilt. The skull-and-wings plate still carried brown flecks of old blood, some hers, some not. Distant traffic noise drifted up like a memory.
Her cybernetic eye clicked as it zoomed in on a distant rectangle of glass—the Imperial Hotel Tokyo. A pale HUD framed it. In the corner of her vision, a window opened: surveillance footage from earlier. Cassie Hurst sat cross-legged on white sheets, phone to her ear, the city behind her looking like a postcard from a world Kyōki did not believe in.
The image jumped: the door bursting open, Colton with the long cardboard box, Cassie’s face shifting from anger to confusion to something raw when she saw the bat.
The HUD highlighted the inscription on the wood in red: The Vain 0ne.
Kyōki snorted softly.
Kyōki Piero: Daddy sent you a barbed love letter across the ocean. How romantic.
She let her head rest against the cold brick and watched thin drizzle drift through the alley light.
Kyōki Piero: “Stuck like bad stitches,” you said, Vanity. Stuck in Blovid lock-up. Stuck in a country that is not home. Stuck under Mudcock’s thumb while your man tucks in your nephew and tells him Aunt Cassie is saving the world.
Her lips slid into a slow, crooked grin.
Kyōki Piero: You wrestle this Death Match so you can leave Tokyo.
She tapped the faceplate of the belt with two fingers, listening to the metal ring.
Kyōki Piero: I wrestle this Death Match because Tokyo never let me go.
For a moment, the hum inside her—Skirnov’s wires and steel and secrets—rose in pitch. The Reaver’s eye glitched, red light stuttering, briefly overlaying the hotel window with targeting brackets.
Kyōki smiled wider.
Kyōki Piero: You want this skull so you can board a plane. I keep it because it’s the only thing that ever chose me back.
She laughed into the empty night, high and bright, letting it bounce off the concrete until it sounded like someone else’s voice.
The War Room: An Hour Later
The bunker felt smaller than it had before the Ronin Rumble.
Monitors lined the walls, showing grainy replays and glitching static. Old match notes were still scrawled on the whiteboard—names crossed out, arrows pointing to nowhere, ghosts of strategies that had not saved them.
Takeshi Nomura stood at the center table, hood down, arms folded. The pale blue of his cybernetic eye reflected off the glass top as he watched Cassie’s RP on one of the main screens. The image froze on the bat in her hands.
Yuriko Ikeda leaned against a pillar, cybernetic fingers tapping an impatient rhythm against her bicep. Yoshinobu Koshimoto occupied a corner like a load-bearing wall, arms taped, shoulders filling the space.
Kyōki hopped up onto the edge of the table, the Death Match belt across her lap, bare heels kicking idly over the side.
Takeshi hit play.
Cassie’s voice filled the room:
Cassie: “We can’t out-speed the Redline Reaver. We have to out-survive her. We have to make her use up that Agility and Speed until she has nothing left but chaos…”
He paused the video again. Silence settled.
Yuriko Ikeda: She did her homework. That’s more than most of AAPW ever bothered with before they walked into barbed wire with you.
Kyōki tilted her head at the screen, eye tracking the bat, the burned-in name.
Kyōki Piero: She named it. “The Vain One.” A pet bat. Barbed wire blankie. Daddy issues on a stick.
Yoshinobu’s voice rumbled from his corner.
Yoshinobu Koshimoto: That “pet bat” put people in the hospital when her father swung it. She knows what the hell she’s doing in this kind of match.
Takeshi nodded once, eyes still on Kyōki.
Takeshi Nomura: She’s not walking in blind. She knows your strengths. Knows your numbers. She quoted your attributes like she was reading a scouting report.
He looked at her directly.
Takeshi Nomura: And she’s right about one thing. You live in the redline. You burn fuel faster than she does.
Kyōki rolled her eyes and flopped backwards onto the table, folding the belt under her head as a pillow.
Kyōki Piero: Aww, boss is worried about my cardio. I thought Skirnov installed a bigger tank.
Yuriko pushed off the pillar and walked over, jabbing a finger at the frozen image of Cassie and the bat.
Yuriko Ikeda: Listen. She’s going to do exactly what she said. She’s going after your knees and your spine. Shin breakers, back work, slow suffocation. That Black Sheep submission of hers goes straight into the lumbar. You let her hit that three or four times and Bloodline Implosion is gone. Your back will lock before your feet leave the buckle.
The fingers of Kyōki’s augmented hand twitched, servo-motors whining softly. For a second, something dark flickered behind her smile.
Kyōki Piero: She wants to turn me into ground traffic. No airspace, no tornado DDT, no pretty splashes. Grind the gears until the Redline Reaver starts coughing smoke.
She sat up slowly.
Kyōki Piero: I respect it. That’s what I’d do to me.
Takeshi stepped around the table, his voice low.
Takeshi Nomura: She’s fighting for home. Fiancé in Texas. Kid who calls her Aunt. A father who finally mailed her the family crown. Every bump she takes tomorrow is a down payment on that plane ticket.
He held her gaze.
Takeshi Nomura: What are you paying for?
The hum under Kyōki’s skin surged. The Rumble loss flashed behind her eyes—the empty hands, the way the crowd’s noise had felt like laughter.
Kyōki’s smile flattened.
Kyōki Piero: I’m paying for Tokyo not to forget us.
She slid off the table, the belt still in her grip.
Kyōki Piero: Ronin Rumble, we walked in upgraded and walked out empty. AAPW bled and UW still walked out with the momentum. You know what that makes me now?
She thumped the belt.
Kyōki Piero: A souvenir they’re expecting to ship across the ocean so Vanity can pose on Instagram and cry on a plane.
Yoshinobu shifted his weight, the servos in his reinforced legs whining.
Yoshinobu Koshimoto: She’s still dangerous. Sentimental doesn’t mean soft. Sometimes it makes people more vicious.
Kyōki flashed him a quick, sharp grin.
Kyōki Piero: Oh, I want her vicious. I want her to swing that bat like she’s trying to hit a home run straight to Dallas.
Yuriko grabbed a marker and turned to the whiteboard.
Yuriko Ikeda: Then listen. She wants your legs and your back? You take her hands and her eyes.
She drew a quick box for the ring, marking Xs at the corners.
Yuriko Ikeda: Every time she reaches for that bat, you make her pay in fingers. You slam her hand in a chair. You stomp her wrist on the apron. You wrap her knuckles in barbed wire and give her a choice—let go or leave skin behind.
She circled the center of the “ring.”
Yuriko Ikeda: And her eyes? No augmentations. No HUD. Flood her with too much. Glass dust, blood, light tubes, strobe off the Tron. Three threats at once so she never sees the fourth.
Kyōki’s cybernetic eye whirred, recording the board, overlaying it with her own counters and angles.
Kyōki Piero: Hands and eyes. Take the vanity away from Vanity.
Takeshi pointed at the belt on her shoulder.
Takeshi Nomura: You don’t try to out-grind her. You make her believe she’s grinding you down. Let her think the plan is working. Give her your limp, give her your winces. Then, when she spends everything she has on that one perfect bat shot and Sundrop…
He smiled, thin and humorless.
Takeshi Nomura: …you’re still standing.
Kyōki nodded slowly. Her eye glitched again—brief static, a whisper that sounded disturbingly like Skirnov sliding somewhere under her thoughts.
For a heartbeat, her expression went blank.
Then she laughed.
Kyōki Piero: Guess I’ll just have to make sure I fall down in all the right places.
She headed for the door.
Yuriko called after her, tone softer than usual.
Yuriko Ikeda: One more thing. She went to Kami’s dojo this morning.
Kyōki paused.
Yuriko Ikeda: She called. Asked politely. Apologized for what she did to Hara. Promised to stay on the far mat so he wouldn’t have to see her.
Kyōki’s head tilted.
Kyōki Piero: She hurt him and then used Kami’s kindness to get mat time.
Yuriko’s expression hardened.
Yuriko Ikeda: Don’t drag them into your mind games out there.
Kyōki gave her a bright, innocent smile that fooled no one.
Kyōki Piero: Me? Never.
She pushed through the door, her voice drifting back down the hallway.
Kyōki Piero: But if she says their names first… I won’t waste the opening.