There was a string of murders in the recent months, entire family members were being numbered by the dozens and there didn't seem to be any end to them. From the streets of Miyama to Shinto, death reaped a red harvest. These killings were disturbing enough, but what made them odd were the ritual circles reported to have been drawn with the victims blood. A new cult, or an insane man? Well, business as usual for the casual layman, Fuyuki was a big city. Still, this incompetence of the police for letting this case drag on was enough for everybody to complain, and - not wanting to lose face - they peopled the streets with busy-body patrolmen. It was stifling our business, but we couldn't complain.

We decided otherwise when during the killing spree, one of our boys got targeted. He and his family were made to be just like the rest of them. But this being a gokudo affiliated family, it sparked a little interest from the public. Even the yakuza isn't safe from this man, who is he? must be the question most people asked back then. So, without wanting to lose face, The Old Man decided something must be done. So he peopled the streets of Shinto with eager young toughs led around the streets by their 'elder brother' to search for this serial killer. Of course, this didn't sit well with the officers, so sometimes, fights or chases would break out, and no progress would be made.

As suddenly as the killings started, it ended. Fuyuki breathed a sigh of relief, but it wasn't to last. As no killer was said to had been caught, many were still worried that this man or cult was only taking a break. Shortly after, cases of missing children sky rocketed in Fuyuki city. Instead of entire families, only young children were being taken, by means unknown.

During all that, I decided to take a taxi to the outskirt of the city one night, told the driver to wait when we reached the destination and then I headed deep into the forest. I had with me in the waistband of my trousers at the hip a .45 Colt, but I wasn't looking to shoot anything in that forest.

I unloaded the magazine and racked the slide and loaded the magazine in again. I pressed the blue-black barrel against my temple and pulled the trigger.

"Persona!"

The trees' limbs crashed like tidal waves as a fierce blue gale howled around me. A black dragon took shape in the swirling wind, it's wings were those of bats, spread out up to twelve meters; it's head was wedge-shaped, with bat ears, acidic, amber reptilian eyes, and the great snapping jaws like those of giant alligators. There was a keen intelligence behind those eyes as he regarded me - no simple beast at all.

"A trivial purpose to summon a god," his voice bellowed from a black depth.

"A good purpose as any," I said.

A rumbling came from his fiery maws.

"Take flight, Seth, and don't stray too far from your master."

He lifted his head proudly and looked away from me. The ground shook and waves of strong wind went scattering about and the trees were sent swaying and rattling as he launched himself to flight.

It took a while to make my way back to the taxi driver. He had this uneasy look about him when I got there, he knew of my profession, and he knew to pretend otherwise.

"Let's head back to the city," I said.

He looked at the faremeter and said, "It's-"

"I'll pay, let's go. You like to make money don't you?"

"Well, it's... you know, I..." his eyes were to the woods, boring into them as though some fairybook creature was calling to him. He was scared, suffice to say.

"You should worry about nothing, and do as you're told."

That shut him up, and he decided to do his job.

There was an eatery in the middle of the city. I had my dinner there while occasionally feeding my mind visuals coming from Seth, all the way up there in the night. I decided to take a walk after I had finished my meal and paid with the remaining money I carried with me.

Seth wheeled about each area of the city, his keen eyes were none the better and nothing on the ground could escape his sight.

I stopped at a corner of an intersection when suddenly came to Seth's view was a man leading a group of children by the hand.

The man had orange hair, flamboyantly dressed in a purple jacket draped over a white shirt, and light purple trousers. By his apparels I knew he wouldn't be affiliated with any local gokudo families, and I doubted that any out-of-towners would adopt his fashion.

The kids followed him obediently, never to break file and rank to play around the streets as most children their age would. About his wrist - the wrist of the hand that was leading away the boy and the other kids - was a silver bracelet and from it, faint lambent hues glowed from the metal unnaturally.

Seth kept his eyes on the man as he led the kids down under a flight of stairs toward a dark, unlit subway. I decided to hail a cab and paid the fare to get to where Seth was wheeling about. I recalled him back to my psyche when I reached the area.

I looked about the place, any indication of street names or stand out joints. I dialed captain Matsunaga's number.

"Yo!" answered a deep voice that sounded fitting for a man bigger than the captain's build. "What is it Yuki-kun?"

I told him the name of the street I was standing in and described the general area around and then said: "-send a car my way, I'm not looking to get back on foot. Also, prepare to send the police when you next get a call from me saying 'It's done'."

"What's this about?"

"You know what it's about."

"You sure?"

"Sure I'm sure."

"Don't do anything rash, if you get this wrong-"

"Then it's a child trafficker dead nonetheless. People would love us for this."

A deep breath and sigh came out distorted like a dying television from the other line. "You know this fuck's name?"

"I'm about to find out."

"Good. It's best that we pretend like we planned this whole thing out. Knowing his name is step one, if you can have a look see about their accomplices, scale of operation or anything of the sorts, then tell me all about it. If there's anything to this, then this'll be a big opportunity for us to raise our image."

My right hand snaked toward the Colt pistol, the veins in my arm burned with red hot wrath. "Sure," my voice came out steady as usual despite it all. "I want someone to take the fall for me."

"What? No killing, you hear me? Out of the question! A killing of a child trafficker is still murder, we can't justify that. We can't justify cutting the cops off of a possible lead for a bigger case."

"We can with this guy, if he's who we think he is and not some unrelated case. None of this stuff speaks 'international' anyway - it's all strictly domestic."

"No, take him alive. Beat him if must be, not too much though, he has to be able to speak at least, so he can spill whatever he knows to the cop if he even knows anything, they'll be grateful to us for that. So grateful in fact that they might just get some detectives and patrolmen off our backs."

"Sorry, but I just couldn't play it like that."

"Yuki-" I hung up my phone and made my way towards the subway entrance and went down the dark flight of stairs and turned on the phone's flashlight as I made my way in the darkness.

The trafficker had gotten an hour start, and it wasn't likely that he had left any trails. I cocked and dry-fired my pistol against my temple and summoned Juno.

She was this tall woman about two-and-a-half meters tall dressed in a red velvety dress. Her lower body was a clear crystal sphere, while her face was white blank safe for the two pair of red eyes at each sides of her face and the one seated vertical in her forehead. And sprouted from her lower back were giant peacock-feather-shaped metal ornaments to compliment her form. Originally, she was Yamagishi Fuuka's Persona, and I had only gotten my hands on her familiar until my second wind in Fuyuki city.

Juno spread her arms wide and looked up. In the darkness above and around and us, there was nothing, but her detection field blossomed then, and many forms took shape in her mind's eye, and all of their present location was marked in her mind's map. I followed it the best I could.

It took some time, but I made it to the sewers. I had my nose behind my elbow pit the whole traversal down that long dark tunnel. For a sewer, it was more bearable than I thought it would be, but it was still a sewer.

I stopped then and turned off my phone's flashlight and pocketed it. I couldn't see them, but faintly, their oppressive prescene could be felt. I knew they would be past just the bend ahead per Juno's detection earlier, and I had once more cocked my Colt auto-loader.

By the pull of the pistol's trigger, with the barrel against my skull, thither manifested in the swirling blue gale was Saint Michael the Archangel. His hair was short and black, his skin was bronze and so were his wings - except for the front color of the feathers - and donned over body was a gold muscle cuirass and in his hand was a black spear.

A sharp whistle cut the darkness as he flourished his spear and crouched for a dash. Then off he went, launched forth with a speed greater than any missiles.

Crackling thunder echoed in the dark. Bolts of lightning flashed so brightly as to do away all the darkness. So numerous and with quick succession did they resounded that as though a machinegun was going off.

I ran forth in that darkness, in the thunder and the flashing lighting. The stench of sewage began to give way to the smell of burning carrion.

I stood where Michael stood, among a black mass of demons - things of tentacles connected to a mouth filled with shark teeth. No head, no eyes, no upper or lower body, just tentacles and a mouth. Someone manufactured these things by some esoteric dark arts, an abomination to the natural world.

Blasphemer, Michael said in my thoughts.

You sense any more of them down this path?

Enough to build a wall.

Where could their master be?

Follow the corpses that I shall leave in my wake.

A thunderstorm swept pass the sewer passage, smells of charred body swelled in the air. I ran behind the storm in a steady jog with gun in one hand and phone in the other, following the corpses in his wake.

As sudden as he had attacked, he stopped. Feeling no more of my spiritual energy being used, I decided to check what he had saw to make him stop. Through his eyes I saw a man dressed in a dark robe. His eyes were wide, bulging, as though they could fall out of the sockets at any moment. His hands were thin, bony, and looked sharp enough to butcher pigs with. Michael had his spear point pressed against the man's chests ever so gently.

By Michael's senses, I could tell that the man held great magical power within him and I could also tell that there were none other unknowns in that chamber. Michael turned his head to the right to let me see. There, our man of the evening, flamboyantly dressed as he was previously, this time he stood with bloodied hands while holding a scalper before the corpse of a child nailed against a concrete beam with her organs still connected to her lay on the table. Behind her, were other corpses whom met the same fate.

I ran for their location. When I got there, my thighs and ankles were throbbing from the exertion and I was breathing fire out of my lungs.

The two men were without words, they were transfixed by the Archangel. A quivered breath came from the bug-eyed one, "You!" he exclaimed in amazed revelation "You are an angel! So that means-!" he gasped in a large amount of air like a puffer fish. "He has sent you to stop me!?" he clutched his robes at the chest tightly, almost tearing into them.

The spear pressed forward gently, the madman squeaked.

"H-hey, mister," said the other one, "wh-what's going on?"

"God has come to punish us Ryuunosuke. Cruel, cruel God has made manifest his will through this angel to slay us!"

"Enough of all that chatter!" I cut through all that nonsense. "Ryuunosuke, aren't you?" I addressed the other man.

"U-uh, yes? And mind you, it's Uryuu-san to you, got it? I don't even know you or nothing!"

"I'll call you as I damn well please. You're going to answer my questions, straight and true. And don't try and be cute, my blood's too hot for it."

"Oy, oy, who do you think you are? Think you can just barge in here and tell us what to do? Gilles-san, use your cool power or something and blow this guy away! He can't just come in here, where we practice our fine arts and crafts and just tell us what to do right? I mean, who is he to say what he said? He knows nothing! A plebian, daring to voice his opinions on things beyond him!"

"Ryuunosuke..." Gilles muttered. His voice shivered on the verge of tears. Michael tilted his head to the side, eyes squinted, preparing for something foolish about to happen.

"That's right! So God thinks that he can send an angel to stop me!? What nerve! What audacity!" he then clutched his head with the sharp fingers. "A-a-a-a-h-h, you've taken her from me once and you shall do so again after showing her to me!? Cruel, cruel God you are! What have I ever done to deserve your ire!? Have I not served you faithfully!?"

The pressure of the air grew heavier, things in the dark came crawling on slimy, wet appendages by the multitudes. From whence they came, I could only guess. At once, they bounded high through the air and at once, a shower of black blood jetted from their split bodies as Michael cut the air with his swift spear-work. To finish them all quickly, he stabbed the butt of the spear into the ground and thrust an open hand forward. Jets of blue lightning flashed in the dark, and once more the smell of burnt carrion wafted through the air.

Gilles's mouth was agape, syllables came from it and formed nothing coherent. Michael pressed his spear into Gilles' sternum and pushed until he lay on ground and kept him there. I turned to Uryuu Ryuunosuke with my .45 leveled at him and racked.

He dropped the scalpel from his hand. "That," his voice quivered, "that was-"

I squeezed my pistol and it roared and spat out a fireball. Uryuu folded inward and jumped sidewise. They usually would do that when shot in the stomach.

"Ugh," he moaned, "a-a-h..."

I pressed my foot on his nape and kept his face to the ground. I shoned my phone's light at his wrist with the bracelet and then lighted the other wrist, moved the light up and saw red strokes of a strange tattoo marked the back of his hand.

"What are these mark?" I said.

"H-huh?" Uryuu said. "I- I don't know..." he continued drunkenly. "Damn, I didn't think that... I didn't think that it'd feel this way. It's kinda nice... a little numbing maybe, but it's kinda nice. Mmmm."

"Ryuunosuke..." Gilles said. I turned to him.

"What are these marks?" I said.

His eyes went wide, his jaws gritted tightly and quivered as they ground together.

"Now's not the time to not say."

Michael pushed in the spear just until the tip gently prodded his heart. Gilles' breath hitched, and he then groaned in pain. "A-a-a-a-h, I will not! To hell with you!"

I hadn't the patience for torture, so I unloaded my pistol and dry-fired it in-between my cheekbone and jaw. The dimensional glass shattered, and out came Nandi, a nut-brown bull decked in colorful accoutrements, mount of Shiva, guardian of beasts. He snorted and shook his body as he cast a spell, Marin Karin was what I had in mind. With Gilles kept to the ground and in great hurt, his mental faculty should be easily affected by the spell.

It took a minute, but we had him when his eyes were glazed like glass and had lost all colours in them. Whatever questions I had for him, he answered all with no hesitation.

Gilles de Rais was his name, and from a far away time he travelled to our modern day. He was summoned by a ritual performed by Uryuu Ryuunosuke. All the killings were then made clear. Why was he summoned? Gilles himself said it was for the Holy Grail, while Uryuu said nothing of such. Gilles also said he had no use for the Holy Grail anymore after he had laid eyes on Joan of Arc.

What was this Holy Grail and how were they to obtain it? Gilles explained flatly and corpse-like that the Holy Grail was an omnipotent wish granter of one wish. And to obtain it, seven Servants and Master must do battle in the Holy Grail War until only one pair is left. The Servants were divided into seven classes and each Master was paired with each class. The classes were: Saber, Archer, Lancer, Rider, Caster, Berserker and Assassin.

Gilles de Rais was Caster, and his Master was Uryuu Ryuunosuke, with the red strokes on the back of his wrists being the Command Seals that could bind a Servant towards an absolute order that will be completed regardless of conditions.

I knew enough.

Michael thrust his spear all the way through and burned Caster with his lightning until he was ashes. I loaded and racked my pistol, pressed it against Uryuu's ribs, beneath the armpit, and fired. His body jumped suddenly, and stiffened.

"Are all the kids all right?" I said to Michael.

"Three of them are dead, the rest are all unconscious, as far as my senses could tell."

"Let's go."

I found a car waiting for me once I got out of the sewer. The driver was my junior by the name of Sakagami Gen, who was dressed in only jeans and t-shirts. He made to get out and greet me.

"Get back in the car," I said and he checked his movement and got back in.

I got in the rear passenger seat, took my phone out, dialed my captain's number and waited for him to pick up.

The lines connected, I said: "It's done."

"Hmm," he then sighed heavily. "Safe travels."

I snapped my phone shut and pocketed it.

"What's all this business about, Makoto-san?" Sakagami said.

"You know where one of our safe houses is?"

"I've been told," he nodded.

"Drive me to one."

"Is the situation serious?"

"I'm trying to stop it from getting anymore serious. Drive."