Age of Eclipse- Legacy of A Storm Rider, The Lens & Black Dream Hole
The neon signage of Shinjuku’s lower levels blinked in a jagged, erratic rhythm, casting long shadows across the rain-slicked asphalt. It was past midnight—the hour when the lines between Tokyo's various underground factions usually blurred into violence.
Tonight, the air felt different. Thicker. Charged with a strange, cosmic static.
The Gathering
Genji Amano leaned against a rusted guardrail, his oversized yellow jacket damp from the drizzle. He was munching idly on a soggy convenience store bun. "Hey, Karasu," he mumbled, his voice dropping into his lazy, childlike tone. "Are you sure this is the place? Ban said the client was supposed to meet us twenty minutes ago. I’m hungry, and my data says there's a limit to how long a person should wait in the rain."
From the shadows of a narrow alleyway, Karasu shifted. The dark feathers of his signature coat seemed to absorb the ambient light, and his lacquered mask gleamed. He didn't look at Genji. His gaze was fixed upward, toward the rooftops.
"Patience, Lightning Lord," Karasu murmured, his voice a smooth, dangerous purr. "The scent of our quarry is close. But we aren't the only predators hunting tonight."
Right on cue, a harsh, mechanical screech echoed from the concrete overpass above them.
A figure dropped from the sky, executing a flawless, predatory roll upon landing. The wheels of his customized Air Tracks sparked violently against the pavement. It was Ikki Minami—the "Baby Face" of the AT world—grinning like a lunatic, his hands shoved deep into his pockets.
"Yo! You the guys looking for the weird shard?" Ikki popped a wheelie, spinning on a dime to face the two GetBackers. "Because if you're trying to muscle in on the Team Kogarasumaru turf, you've got another thing coming. The wind belongs to us tonight."
Genji blinked, his eyes widening. "Whoa! Rollerblades! Do they have lights in the wheels?"
"They're Air Tracks, you spikey-haired idiot!" Ikki snapped, though he looked secretly pleased by the attention.
Before Karasu could weave a deadly lattice of his explosive strings to teach the intruder a lesson, a sudden, blinding flash of pink and gold light erupted from the center of the intersection. The ambient smog of Shinjuku was instantly displaced by the scent of fresh cosmos and a strange, chime-like melody.
A Cosmic Intrusion
Standing atop a concrete barrier, silhouetted against a massive, glowing crescent moon that shouldn't have been visible through the storm clouds, was a girl in a white and blue sailor suit, her long blonde twintails flowing impossibly in the breeze.
"In the name of the Moon, I will punish you!" Usagi Tsukino—Sailor Moon—announced, striking a dramatic pose. She pointed a white-gloved finger at the trio. "Holding secret meetings in the dark, looking incredibly suspicious, and wearing... are those real feathers? That's animal cruelty! And you on the skates, it's way past your bedtime!"
The three underground veterans stared at her. The silence stretched for five agonizing seconds.
Genji slowly transformed into his chibi caricature form, his eyes turning into tiny dots. "Uh... is she a cosplay girl? Did Ban hire her?"
"She possesses a volatile spiritual signature," Karasu said, his fingers twitching beneath his sleeves. "Fascinating. A light so bright it begs to be snuffed out."
Ikki just scratched his head. "Look, lady, I don't know what kind of street gang 'The Moon' is, but you're ruining my entrance."
The Clash of Elements
The fragile peace shattered instantly. The ambient static Genji had felt earlier wasn't a natural storm—it was a localized distortion in the atmosphere, tracking a corrupted, dark energy shard that Usagi had been chasing across dimensions. And right now, that energy was reacting to Genji's inherent electricity.
"Give it up!" Usagi cried, sensing the dark energy spiking around them. She raised her Moon Stick. "Moon Gorgeous Meditation!"
A cascade of shattering glass-like light surged forward.
"Whoa, incoming!" Ikki dug his line-overs into the asphalt, utilizing the Moonstruck Numberless Grappler technique. He created a localized vacuum wave, deflecting the concussive burst of cosmic magic upward, shearing off the corner of a nearby skyscraper. "Hey, watch the jacket!"
Karasu moved like liquid shadow. With a flick of his wrists, barely visible micro-filaments spun through the air, forming an intricate web around Sailor Moon. "Let us see how beautifully you burn, little bird," he whispered, invoking his Tears of the Phoenix.
"Don't touch her!" Genji’s demeanor flipped instantly. The goofy, bun-eating teenager vanished, replaced by the cold, imposing aura of the Emperor of Thunder.
The sky tore open. A massive bolt of blue-white lightning crashed down, striking Karasu's strings and sending a massive voltage arc directly through the web, vaporizing the explosive trap before it could detonate. The sheer electromagnetic pulse (EMP) sent Ikki’s Air Tracks into a digital frenzy, the motors whining as the internal gyro-stabilizers fried.
"Hey! My regalia!" Ikki yelled, skidding sideways and barely catching his balance on a guardrail.
An Unexpected Truce
Usagi, terrified by the sudden apocalypse of lightning and exploding shadows, dropped to her knees, covering her head. "Wahhh! I want to go home! Mamoru, Tuxedo Mask, anyone, help! These guys are monsters!"
Genji paused, his eyes reverting to normal as the electricity dissipated around his jacket. He looked at the crying girl, then at Ikki, who was aggressively swearing at his ruined skates, and finally at Karasu, who was calmly resetting his mask.
"Hey..." Genji walked over, his chibi form returning as he offered Usagi the remaining half of his soggy bun. "Don't cry. Are you hurt? I didn't mean to scare you, I just didn't want Karasu to blow you up. He does that sometimes."
Usagi sniffled, looking up through tear-filled eyes at the ridiculous yellow jacket. She looked at the bun, then at Genji's surprisingly kind face. "You... you're not a minion of the Dark Kingdom?"
"I'm a GetBacker," Genji smiled proudly. "If you lost something, we recover it. 100% success rate!"
Ikki rolled his eyes, sitting on the curb as he pulled out a mini-wrench to fix his wheels. "Yeah, well, if your 'recovery service' involves frying my ride, you owe me a new set of ceramic bearings, sparky."
Karasu faded back into the dark alley, his interest waning as the chaotic energy signature stabilized. "The curtain falls," he murmured, vanishing into the night air like a dispersing flock of crows. "A disappointing climax."
"So," Usagi said, wiping her face and standing up, her tiara gleaming under the streetlights. "You guys recover things? Can you help me find a way back to Azabu-Juban? I think I took a wrong turn at a dimensional distortion near the arcade."
Genji grinned, sparking a tiny, harmless arc of electricity between his fingers. "Sure! But it'll cost you. Do you have any cash? Or better yet... more of those shiny moon cakes?"
Soundbites from Get Backers, Sailor Moon, Air Gear, Ronin Warriors , Tenchi, Deltora Quest, Gundam Wing
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