A van pulls into the empty lot off of a backstreet in the middle of the night.
Some shady guys start walking up on it. "That's him." one of them says.
Hashimoto Ryoto steps out of the driver's side in all black. He walks to the back where the rear access is. He nods to one of the men. "You got my money?"
The men grin. The one in front looks at the back of the van. "Product comes first. I wanna make sure it's...legit."
Ryoto frowns. "That's not how this works. That's not how I, work. Now where's the money?"
The man reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a gun. "Cough it up already if you wanna live to see tomorrow."
Thunder sounds in the background. It starts to rain.
Ryoto looked up. "It's been raining a lot lately..."
The man with the gun frowns. "Did you not hear me?!"
pow!
Ryoto takes a deep breath. He removes the crunched up bullet from his forehead. "I really try you know? I'm supposed to be a changed man. But people like you really get on my nerves!"
wham!!
Ryoto suddenly hits the man with an uppercut to the chin. He's taken off his feet and hits the ground without another sound.
Ryoto proceeded to knock out the rest of the men there with him.
He headed back to the car with a backpack full of money that he picked off of them. "See? Now you don't get what you want AND you lost all your money. Pssh, lowlifes."
He drove off.
--
Somewhere else in Tokyo, two guys in ski masks are guarding a safe on a rooftop.
One of them yawns. "This is boring work. Why was I called here anyway?"
The other one nudges him in his side. "Don't talk like that! Do you have any idea what's in here?"
He shakes his head no.
"It's one of the shards! Do you know how much one of these babies are worth? Millions!!"
Saki is standing on top of the safe. "Oh, thanks for clearing that up for me, I wasn't sure if I had the right place."
The men looked behind them. "It's them! Sakugami!!" They held up their rifles, about to shoot.
Before they could, Saki throws a small syringe into each of their necks. "Honestly, who do you two work for? Such low security for a shard. This is basically free."
The thugs drop the guns and flop to their faces.
Saki jumps off the safe and cracks the code. She opened the door and took out a silver briefcase. "Thanks for the gift boys!"
Unintelligible moans were heard from the two of them.
Saki gracefully jumped off the edge of the building.
--
Yumi walked into a vault. She picked up a silver briefcase. "So this is a shard? I wonder why these are so expensive."
An alarm sounded throughout the building.
"Uh oh, they know I'm here!"
She started running out.
Yumi ran out of a secret entrance in the wall and came out into the dining room. She was in a mansion. All of the floors were checkered black and white.
Heavy steps could be heard from her right. "Find her!! She's in here somewhere!! It's a black haired woman!!"
Yumi hid under the dining room table. The men ran into the room. "She's been inside the vault!!" "Damn it, how did no one see her?!!"
Yumi dared not move. She held her hand over her mouth to control her breathing.
Another man walked into the room with long silver hair. He sniffed the air. "I smell a rat."
He looked at the table. He lifted his leg up, then down on it, breaking it in half.
Yumi quickly moved from underneath the table before she could be hit. She looked at the man who attacked her. He had on all white clothes with a flower logo on his back.
"You're...!" Yumi exclaimed.
The man glared at her. "Hand it over."
Yumi looked at the briefcase in her hand. She squeezed it tighter. "No!"
"Tch. You're making this hard for me girl. This doesn't have to get messy."
"What's so important about this anyway, isn't it just a jewel?" Yumi asked.
He laughed. "Just a jewel? You wouldn't be trying to steal it if it was just a jewel." He pointed at the case. "That right there is one of the sacred shards of the Spirit Realm. It holds immense power that you couldn't dream of. That's why it's worth so much."
The other masked men held rifles up pointed at Yumi. She looked up at the red lasers beaming on her forehead.
The silver-haired man kept his hands in his pockets. "Now. You can hand over the case and I'll let you leave alive. Or, you can get your brains blasted out right here and I'll take the shard from your lifeless corpse."
"I have no choice then." Yumi said.
"That's right. So what will you choose?"
"Yuki-onna!" Yumi turned into a white cloud of snow and flew along the ceiling and out of the room.
"She's an esper!!" one of the gunmen said.
"How bothersome." the silver-haired man said. His skin turned dark gray and his hair turned black. His eye color went red. "Shikkan."
Black sludge quickly covered the floors and walls of the house. It chased after Yumi's snow. But before it could catch up to her, Yumi was already out the door. She went back to her human form and started running.
Black smoke flew out of the door and quickly formed in front of her. The smoke formed the man's body until he was solid again. Yumi stopped in her tracks.
"So you're the snow woman. Miyazaki Yumi. I've heard a lot about you. You're from Sakugami. Well allow me to introduce myself. I am Nishiyama Kazuya of Byakuren. My family is the owner of that shard. So this is the last time I am going to ask nicely for you to hand over the case."
Yumi looked around her.
Kazuya smirked. "And don't even think about pulling that snow cloud out again. I'm faster than you."
The gunmen came out of the house and surrounded Yumi from behind.
Kazuya raised his eyebrows and held his hand out.
Yumi hesitated. She wondered if the shard was worth risking her life over. She could tell that Kazuya was a world above her in terms of power. But she couldn't just leave the shard in his hands.
The sound of an engine roared in the distance.
Everyone watched as a motorcycle drifted into the street and knocked all of the gunmen over.
The woman on the motorcycle flipped up the visor on her helmet. "Hop on!"
"Akane, right on time!" Yumi hopped on the back of the bike as Akane sped off.
Kazuya turned into a giant plume of smoke. "Get back here!!"
It didn't take long for him to reach directly overhead of the motorcycle.
"He's gonna catch us!" Yumi said.
Akane flipped her visor back down. "I've got this."
She revved up the motorcycle even more. As it went faster, the engine grew quieter until it could no longer be heard. It then turned invisible along with Yumi and Akane.
Kazuya immediately lost track of them. He couldn't see or hear them anymore. He went to a rooftop to return to his normal form. "Damnit! Sakugami...they got away. How bothersome."
Akane weaved between cars and buses.
"Where is Kouta and the others?" Yumi asked.
"Kouta is with Taku. I was with them too, but he told me to come get you instead, just in case. We hit the motherload with one of Red Factor's underground bunkers. Took billions of yen out of it. But on our way out the TPD started chasing. They'll be okay though. Just a patrol unit."
Yumi frowned. "Wait, billions?"
"Yeah, it's a whole lot of cash. This is the most successful job we've done yet."