A delicate silence.
A torn off head.
The bystanders stared, their mouths agape.
And the Scorched Girl stood, silent and motionless
Her hair swayed gently in the stifled air, a remnant from the flash of movement a second ago.
On this day, on this moment, Sophie's legend began.
Blood dripped down her twin butterfly knives. She stared down at the shocked crowd in front of her. Just moments ago, the walls nearly vibrated with energetic stomps and shouts and screams.
Now, only silence remained.
Glasses of beer, wine, and blood lay strewn along the floor and tables. Some of them had been knocked over, yet no one attempted to turn them upright.
Not in front of the girl.
Sophie glanced downward. Her target was by her feet. His head had been cleanly removed from his body.
*Snap*
A single picture was taken, breaking the silence with a camera's shutter.
She looked around herself. A broken window behind her signified her mode of entrance.
Then two slices to the neck. Too easy.
It seemed these types of jobs were well suited for her, Sophie thought to herself. She flicked her knives shut absentmindedly.
With an exhale, she disappeared, leaving only a trailing outline of ash.
...
"Y-You, why did you come back so soon? Did you fail??"
A man whose appearance Sophie declined to memorize ranted at her on the open street, attracting the attention of numerous bystanders. His voice was shrill and desperate.
The only Office he could afford was hers, and as such he did not have high hopes of success.
"No, it is done." Sophie interrupted the man by showing her the picture on her phone.
The man stumbled backward, half frightened yet half morbidly joyous. He had never seen a corpse so closely before. Yet, he had asked for Sophie to create one.
"Impossible- It hasn't even been an hour!"
Sophie stuck her hand forward, palm up. The man flinched as the girl wordlessly asked for the payment.
She could have been the age and height of his daughter, if he had one.
Yet her eyes contained lifetimes of pain and decades of experience. All of which molded her face into an expressionless, doll-like countenance.
The man held a bit of shame in his expression as he took out a handful of bills from his pocket.
"Thank you for your service. Consider this a tip," he handed Sophie three twenty Ahn bills. "And- I'm sorry for doubting you."
Sophie watched as the man turned away and disappeared into the bustling street. She had already forgotten the man's name, yet his parting words brought a wrinkle to her nose. Apparently, low prices also had an unintended con in the Fixer market.
She didn't enjoy the man's doubting thoughts, yet a one hundred percent tip felt pretty good to her.
She pocketed the profit.
The girl opened her phone, searching for the next job through the heaps of texts on her phone.
Any client that could send her an approximate location of the target was accepted without hesitation.
She completed her tasks with mindless fervor; the slaughter took her mind away from her partner.
Sometimes she could finish two, three, even four missions in a single hour.
In the span of ten hours, she already had the blood of dozens on her hands, amounting to a little over two thousand Ahn in profits.
Of her profits, a good portion of them (perhaps a few hundred) were hidden in the pockets and folds of her dress, while the rest was placed in the husk-filled room next to Mei's.
Even day one led to massive revenue, more than Sophie's wildest estimates. Assassination was such a simple task for the girl's skills.
Her movements were erratic and unpredictable and allowed her to shoot forward with bursts of strength. [Bystander] also made it possible to enter restricted areas unnoticed.
Those two qualities made her a perfect candidate for assassinations.
Not even [Fourth Match Flame] was used that day, as her targets all took less than four attacks to dispatch.
By the end of the day, Sophie already began to notice the fruits of her frenzied efforts.
News traveled fast in the Backstreets.
At the moment, as the sun clipped into the earth, Sophie stood in the center of the Neon District. She posed motionless and silent, as still as a scarecrow.
Her lifeless pose obviously gained some attention from the people walking by, and soon a small crowd formed around her.
In front of Sophie was a blackboard sign that advertised everything about her and her Office bold white chalk. She had placed the sign there half an hour ago, promoting the Chimère Office with a public performance for whoever bothered to look.
Was she even breathing? It certainly didn't look so.
Her still, glassy eyes drew the attention of the passerby. The uncanny aura exuding from the girl served as an attractor to the human attention, male and female alike.
Not that she needed the additional publicity, anyway.
Whispers darted across the street, even more feverous than the times when the Hook Office executives pass through.
Everyone was whispering the same thing.
That girl, who had no achievements or past prior to this day, had assassinated over twenty individuals in less than ten hours.
In fact, more than a few videos of Sophie's capabilities were already on Tube and the Hana Forum, whether from grainy security footage or shaky phone recordings.
Sophie had made her mark, and her reputation reflected it. A three meter radius of space was formed around her.
Her Fixers had also debuted with an Urban Myth "Eight Armed Millers". Their success supplemented the meteoric rise of their employer, the Chimère Office.
And thus, back to Sophie.
The reports from other Fixers flooded the girl's Hana profile with achievements.
All of this, Sophie was only partially aware of. Her eyes regained their clarity, and she gave a polite bow to the observers of her little scarecrow act.
Then she grasped the sign in front of her, disappearing into the alleyways.
...
Having years and years of experience being an Abnormality in the Ruins, Sophie knew the importance of establishing a unique identity for herself.
That was the true reason she worked so intensely today, and also why she stood still in the center of the Neon District for over an hour.
After all, it was the power of her traumatic death that gave Sophie the title 'Scorched Girl'. She knew better than anyone the process by which she built her identity, to become feared even in the Ruins.
Before the System found her.
But would Sophie still be known as 'Scorched Girl' in this life, when her [Fourth Match Flame] had not been revealed?
Her mind drifted as she knocked on Pete's door. In her hand, she held a box of cake which she bought from a random dessert shop for thirty Ahn.
The door opened, coupled by a noise of shock.
"May I enter?" Sophie held the box in her arms.
Aiko shivered as Sophie stepped forward. A slight smile formed on the expressionless girl's lips.
Tears blurred Aiko's vision. She answered Sophie with a hug, pulling her through the doorway with pleasure.
They ate cake afterwards.
…
Asher and Little Red, likewise, had spent their entire day accepting tasks and promoting Little Red's reputation.
Being an independent mercenary meant the requests that they received were far more brutal in nature. Little Red was not a Fixer, so there were no reservations regarding torture and mutilation.
One such example was now.
The sky was deep red, the color of crimson spilt blood. In about two hours, night would set in full.
But before then, Asher had a task at hand.
"-!!!" A scream, muffled by a cloth gag, was wrenched from a figure slumped on the dust-paved road. The woman who screamed was now missing a hand; the bloody appendage lay limp in Asher's hand.
"It is done." Little Red spoke, stashing the hand in her cloak.
Asher looked around himself. Stunned silence surrounded him. He had mutilated a woman outside. Publicly. On the main road.
This was the difference between a Fixer and a mercenary.
"Cease, devil!" A voice called out, full of righteousness. A Fixer charged out from the crowd, her mist blue hair disheveled with haste.
Asher's eye twisted into a grin as they stood against each other.
"Why would I do that?"
Before the Fixer could respond, Asher blinked forward, shattering the woman's shinbone with a sweeping low kick.
The Fixer let out a noise of pain, flipping a few times in the air before planting into the ground.
Asher stepped on her broken leg, eyeing the Fixer's desperate expression.
He scoffed, disappearing into the alleys. Left behind him was a woman without a hand, and a broken Fixer.
The crowd slowly faded away, leaving the two of them to fend for themselves.
...
On this day, Section 12 obtained two new topics of discussion.
The first was the Chimère Office, which had gained enough prominence to become relatively famous. Especially its Captain, an assassination specialized Fixer of which Section 12 had rarely seen before.
The second was another rising star, known only as 'Little Red'. Not much was known about her except for the brutal aftermath she left behind her wake.
Unintentional or not, her title, 'Little Red', instantly reminded both Fixers and Syndicates of the Red Mist, one of the strongest Colored Fixers the Hana Association had ever ranked.
The color correlation between the two names led to numerous theories, most of which leading to a fame starved individual looking to gain some cheap notoriety.
But the sheer brutality of Little Red's works remained unquestionable.
And so, Section 12 was once again filled with new discussion.