"Beep! Beep!" The sounds of an alarm rang through the empty apartment. A slap falls on the alarm, shutting it off. A fully awake Arima lays in his bed, shirtless. His apartment is empty, besides the mattress on the living room floor, a TV with game cartridges next to it, and a chair.
The hot water of the shower creates steam that boils through the holes of the bathroom door. Hot mist escapes as the kettle pours boiling water over the packet of instant coffee in his cup.
He opens his floor-to-ceiling glass window, revealing a balcony. He takes his chair from his living room to the balcony, sitting down on it as he holds his cup.
He looks into the sunrise as the air at this elevation is much fresher than below. This window of time was the only time he could find happiness, relaxation, and a break from his daily job. A moment where he could appreciate the humanity that resides in him and the humanity that surrounds him. Lights start to turn on as businesses open, people wake up and the hustle and bustle of central Tokyo comes to life.
Arima looks at his apartment, the mere scarcity of it. He had everything he wanted, everything he needed. Yet something was missing.
A vibration rings in his pocket, it's Urahara. "Yo, Urahara." Arima picks up the phone.
"Come to my office at 8:30, I've got someone I want you to meet," Urahara says over the phone. "You're being assigned a partner for your daily rounds."
"Really?" Arima's face lights up with happiness. "Thank you so much!" He's giddy as he's never had someone to work with, only under. His first partner.
Urahara hangs the phone as Arima's smile continues smiling, plastered on his face.
"Yo." Arima enters the office, dressed smartly in a suit and tie. "Can I take one of these?" Arima points to the giant crates of orange juice in the corner of the room.
"No, and your fly is unzipped." Urahara points to his pants from his desk.
"Oh- Shit!" Arima turns around, away from Urahara as he tries to zip up his fly, only to realise that his fly was never unzipped.When he looks up, he sees a person in the doorway, looking at Arima as he zips up his fly.
"Hi." The woman spoke with a shy yet cheery tone. She had a mole on her left cheek and her smile lit up the whole room. She had an orange bow tie on her hair with pins that kept her hair nice and neat.
Arima, before he could even process anything, turns his head around and looks at Urahara with an absolutely shocked face. "You never told me it was going to be a girl!" He mouthed to him.
"Arima, this is Mai. She's one of my associate's understudy, but due to unforeseen circumstances, she's currently overseas. As of now, and for the next few weeks, you'll be working with her as your new partner." Urahara ignores the face Arima pulls.
"Nice to meet you, Arima." She enters the room and extends a hand out to Arima.
Arima, having never spoken or talked to a woman in his life, continues smiling, airing Mai.
"Forgive him, he's not the social butterfly type." Urahara stands up. "You two lovebirds should get to know each other, you'll be tasked with patrolling for today."
"L-L-Lovebirds?" Arima is completely stunned at this point.
"Yes sir." Mai nods in understanding, completely ignoring the 'lovebird' comment.
"So, what got you into this business?" Mai and Arima are walking down the streets of Tokyo.
Arima walked next to Mai with a degree of space between them. "Me?"
"Yeah you, silly." Mai smiles. "Who else would I be talking to?"
"I don't know." Arima continues walking, even speeding up.
"What do you mean you don't know?" Mai raised an eyebrow. "Okay, I'll go first." She walks faster than Arima and stands in front of him, cutting him off in the busy streets of Tokyo. "Being a Poacher isn't everyone's go-to job, but for me it was." The whole world seemed to quiet down as Arima stared into her eyes. "You hear news every day of poachers being killed and brutally destroyed, but I'm not scared of that."
"Why not?" Arima looked down at Mai who was significantly shorter than he was.
"Because I'd already lost everything," Mai spoke with a cheery tone. "My parents were killed when I was young, I had to find a way to feed myself on the outskirts of Fukushima. I'd do any odd job I could find, cleaning up streets, picking up trash, or mowing lawns."
"But it never was enough, was it?" Arima spoke comfortably as if he were speaking to himself in the mirror. "Though you could get by, you'd still get hungry. You'd still be wanting more."
"Exactly!" Mai laughs. "That was when I met Maki who was on a business trip. She took me in as one of her own, training me to become a strong Poacher just like herself!" Mai raised an arm to the sky. "I vowed I'd never let another child's parents die for nothing!"
At that very moment, Arima knew what he was missing. What he had always wanted. It wasn't food, it wasn't shelter and neither was it money. It was someone he could confide in. Someone he could look to. Someone he could talk to. Someone he could love.
"What about you?" Mai pokes Arima in the chest, nudging him and snapping him out of his daze. "What made you want to risk your life every day?"
"I like the money." Arima, clearly flustered, replies. He'd never felt this way before. He'd never been interested in girls, in fact, the opposite. He was scared of interactions with the opposite sex. He'd only talk to them if he had to. He's never had romantic feelings for a woman, and for it to develop in a single moment? Arima didn't know what to do.
"You're not wrong. Besides the altruistic bullshit, being a Poacher does pay great." Mai turns around and continues walking.
Arima looks at her walking off into the distance, the sun shining on her as the deluge of people blends into one singular mass.
"We've got a lot of area to cover, let's not waste time standing around, okay?" Mai turns around.
"Yeah." Arima quickly catches up and continues walking by her side. "So, what are Chimeras?"
"What are Chimeras?" Arima looked over to Mai with a weird question. "You don't know what Chimeras are?"
"No, I do know what Chimeras are. But what are Chimeras to you?" Mai and Arima walked side by side, with time, Arima started to ease.
"Well, to me they're big bad creatures that feast on humanity's fears. The more feared an animal, the stronger a chimera." Arima said. "But I don't think that's all."
"What's more?" Mai asked out of curiosity.
"As much as they are a beast, they're animals too. They're just trying their best to survive in a harsh world where we humans have been the dominant species for years. They're just trying to reclaim the world that was once theirs." Arima commented, his eyes wandering off of Mai and into the distance. "They're animals. They're just... animaling, you know?"
"I do." Mai's smile slowly dissipated, yet she could understand where Arima was coming from.
"What about you?" Arima looks over to Mai. "What do you think of Chimeras?"
"I'm a Poacher, I came into this line of work to be a Poacher. I'm here to poach." Mai looks up to Arima with a serious look on her face. "I hate Chimeras. They took everything away from me and I'll do whatever it takes to take everything away from them."
As Mai says this, Arima pauses for a moment. "You're silly." Arima smiles, turning into a giggle before erupting into a laugh.
"What's wrong with you?" Mai slaps Arima but she needs to tiptoe to hit Arima, hitting him square in the face. "What's so funny?"
"Ow!" Arima laughs it off. "I just never thought this amount of aggression could come from someone so cute and tiny!" Arima, for a moment, completely didn't think before he spoke.
"Cute?" Mai looks up to Arima, who at this point, after realizing what he had said, had completely stopped laughing but kept his eyes shut. "You think I'm cute?"
Arima slowly opens his eyes and sees Mai standing there, red as a tomato as her cheeks puffed up. "Yeah, I do."
'Bang!' A giant cloud of smoke fills the streets of Central Tokyo as Civilians flee left and right. Arima and Mai lock eyes, knowing exactly what's about to commence. "It's a chimera!"
From the dust emerges a foul beast of poultry. A ginormous chicken with two heads, intestines spilling out onto the road as a car had crashed into it. It's two heads waved crazily in the air as it clucked about, a human hand hanging out of it's mouth.
As Arima was about to withdraw his axe, Mai places her hand on Arima's chest. "I got this one." She says calmly as she took out the gun on her belt. "As part of being an associate's understudy, you get to have your very own Chime!" She took out her gun, a small desert eagle that was golden in colour. Yet, it had a wild pattern running down the side of barrel, a pair of wings that covered the trigger.
The chicken saw Mai and Arima and instantly locked it's focus, running straight at them. The chicken's body mutated as blood splurted from its side revealing another head from it's intestines. "You spawn of Satan, meet your maker!" Mai pointed her weapon at the Chicken, pulling down the trigger as a golden bullet escapes from the grasps of the chamber.
The bullet soars through the sky, like an Eagle tearing through the clouds. It pierced through the chicken's main head, pulverising it's brain. However, as the bullet exits the chicken's head, it pivots mid air and shoots the chicken in the back.
"Chimes are weapons made of Chimera DNA!" Mai fires another bullet. Another bullet pierced through the chicken's stomach and both bullets collide midair to ricochet off one another. "I don't know how they did it but they've done made hybrid weapons! My desert Eagle was made from a feather of the Eagle chimera. It might just be a feather but it sure packs a punch when it's from an animal that fierce!" The bullets had torn a new hole through the animal and the roads below.
The chicken stops its moving as it's stomach explodes in guts and blood. A singular human crawls out and vomits out blood, having nearly been digested whole.
"First time?" Arima walks over the man who's clothes had all nearly disintegrated. "Get used to it." Arima grabs his hand and picks up him.
Mai goes over and inspects the Chimera's body.
"Poor chicken." Arima comments as he's covered in the chicken's digestive juices, carrying the man over his shoulder.
"Poor isn't the word I'd use." Mai takes out her pistol again and shoots it again in both of it's heads, really making sure of the chimera's demise.
"You must really hate Chimeras." Arima shrugs his shoulder, nearly throwing the vulnerable man over his shoulders.
"Its part of the job." Mai places her gun back onto her waist. "Hate is merely a motivation, you need an intent."
"Intent, huh?" Arima smiles as he watches Mai slowly cross over the chicken's carcass, taking pictures to send to HQ.