Gaston made his way to the Neo-Tokyo Branch of the Consortium after his chat with Janna. He wasn’t stopped on any streets. There were no traffic jams, no crowded sidewalks and most of the citizens were orderly while they headed to their work. Gaston had been stopped by local police officers, however. He had to show his passport, ID, and badge which made the police officers rather gentle on him after learning that he was contracted personnel of the UEDF and the Consortium of the Japan Branch. After that affair he bid the officers goodbye, continuing his leisure walk to the Branch Office.

Gaston stopped near the entrance when he arrived at the branch office to look. Some Breakers were outfitted differently than usual. They wore this combat armor under the jacket that they wore. Some of them even carried multi-function weapons on their hips and backs. There are four passages of the building. One is where the ordinary citizens enter and exit and the other two belong to the Breakers. Gaston lined up to one of the passages. In front of him was a breaker who carried a buster rifle that could fire bursts of plasma to melt the rockscale of a biomass entity. Behind him was a medium-height Japanese woman who carried two short shotguns and wrapped herself with two belts of ammunition. He was sure that they were heavy-caliber gauges.

Each of the breakers got scanned by this security staff officer who wore a T5-Gear Terminator Frame Exoskeleton Powered Combat Armor. The Security staff stood 6’5 tall and carried a multi-function rifle. Gaston showed his badge and his ID. “Good morning, Adjutant,” the security staff said. Gaston greeted back, placed his sidearm on the processing conveyor belt. After passing through a check, he took his sidearm, holstering it before continuing to the elevator. There was elevator music that played. When he arrived at the fourteenth floor of the building. He saw the officer workers carrying stacks of paper to their desks. Gaston wove through the pack of office workers, finally arriving at the office where Ayumi is.

Gaston knocked on her door. Ayumi heard him so he was told to go in. Inside, Ayumi was working on something. Gaston looked around the office. There were file cabinets behind Ayumi. On the side of the room were thick file folders that were organized into numbers and letters. On the left was a small table with a personal coffee maker and a box of instant coffee next to the leg of the small table. Plus next to the small table and coffee maker was a rather new desk with an office chair.

“Nice office,” Gaston said.

“It is rather disorganized. Don’t lie,” she smiled wearily.

Ayumi shifted the documents. She was comparing the two documents while taking down notes. Left of her desk was a scanner and on her right was a workstation with a black box attached to it. Gaston took a step closer and observed the black box. Ayumi noticed Gaston staring at the box.

“You keep your backups?”

“We have a local server, a cloud server, and this one,” she tapped her hand on the black box. “Branch policy ever since the accident in Siberia where all data was lost during a critical mass accident.”

“Heard of that one.”

“Yeah, you should have. Anyway, um, that should be your office right there if you need it.”

Gaston shifted his eyes to the desk. “Glad that I got an office here.”

“Well, the boss wants you close to me since I’d be handling the matters with the Babaika Company.”

Gaston's eyes stayed on her. Ayumi met his eyes, looked away, coughed, and wad a paper and threw it down a trash bin. The paper was shredded the moment it entered the bin. Gaston crossed his arms. His eyes remained on the desk and Ayumi.

“I guess we won’t be talking about such matters early in the morning.”

“We are still trying to determine. If it is them that means that they’ll find a way to sift through the data collection. These people are insane, and half of them are mutated by now. The Babaika Lions cooperating makes this much easier to do so. Nonetheless, just talking about them makes it hard to investigate them.”

Gaston nodded. He recalled that there was talk about how dangerous their minds were. How easy for them to be spooked by anything. These people being hard to find isn’t just about their powers. It’s their art of deception and paranoia that makes them dangerous. Even Janna reminded Gaston how dangerous these people are. Once they speak about something then there is a chance that they have detected it.

“We should take it slow. Constable Yu, is he going to help in uncovering them?”

“Constable Yu is perfect for the job. He had been on the case immediately”

“Good. I do my job but getting involved with a cult that promotes the destruction of the world upsets me. I don’t like the idea of even being near them.”

“Who doesn’t?” Ayumi tapped on her keyboard. “But that’s why we must take precautions when it comes to determining who our enemies are. The UEDF, the Consortium, and the AETF have placed them on the blacklist. If there is one that is trying to tamper with the data, then we need to root them out slowly, precisely, and concisely so that we’d remove the tumors before they could spread.”

“I agree to that. But Ayumi,” Gaston’s voice was deep, “I will cooperate on whatever is happening, but remember that I am just an Adjutant contracted to take care of minor disputes. I appreciate the desk, but please don’t forget the clauses on my contract.”

“Of course we won’t,” Ayumi said while nodding. Her fingers froze on the spot. “Gaston, do you know that you can make a pretty scary face?”

“I know. But I need to make a point where I stand in this matter. I am just a Freelancer, Ayumi. Oh, I do not dislike you personally.”

“I understand. It seems that I have taken a mile by giving you that desk.”

“No, it’s fine. I appreciate the gesture. I can use it as a temporary office, but I just like to point it out.”

Ayumi nodded. Gaston didn’t talk about the desk further since it would just be nitpicking to her. Gaston didn’t enjoy fighting. He hated the idea of fighting and even if he does fight. It would be likely to protect himself or defend a friend or co-worker. He didn’t want Ayumi to misunderstand what his contract entails him to do. So it was better to put his foot down before any expectations were placed. The Babaika Lions were already a big responsibility.

***

Gaston’s main job was to monitor any transaction done by the Consortium and the Babaika Company Lions. This means that he had to make a detailed observation and analysis of their spending and their performance when in Japan. From what he could gather from the Babaika Lions, most of them were already patrolling the countryside of Japan, hunting down biomass entities. Most of the entities they hunt are Type-1 and Type-2’s.

From the data log that their operations monitoring officer had sent. Most of the reports were coming from their Grunts who are making their topography survey. Jakob Stoll who had updated his status on their system’s log was on the ports of Japan. Neo-Tokyo Harbor and the Port of Tokyo and to organize a vessel fleet to help them in their undersea mining operations.

“Undersea mining operations,” Gaston recalled. “I heard that the dives near Okinawa had started to transmute into ichorium. Experts had always suspected that Ichorium can be formed through split-realm anomalies. Split-realms are not perfect and sometimes these monsters are bisected by their split-realms. The pressure under the sea then freezes the Ichor, turning them into Ichor. Ichorium does look like a crystal.”

It was something that he had to learn in orientation. Lately, Gaston had been paying attention to anything that was related to his job. After his hellish experience in an abandoned split-realm that had somewhat mirrored Kyiv. He had been eager to listen to any information about split-realm or breakers. Jakob Stoll was trying to hire subcontractors to carry their equipment and ferry the items back. The operation would be guarded by Babaika Lions. They would be guarding against South-East Asian pirates that have decided to rob Ichor from container ships. There were quite a lot of them lately that most of the PMC’s profit from hunting down pirates in South-East Asia and around the Indian Sea. Even the Babaika Lions were not going to risk any attack from these pirates.

Although the assault and auxiliary ships can roam land, sky, and seas. They couldn’t possibly open the rear of their ships and deploy the equipment, so they had to require water-based ships instead of the current era ships that can do jumps and arrive within five minutes in any area of the world. Although to do the jump they would require five million credits worth of propellant to do so.

Hilda Valeria was not active unless it concerned any fighting entities above Type-4. From the GPS logs that the company had allowed him access to. She was somewhere in Hamamatsu where their base should be located. From what he gathered from a quick search, it was a coastal area in Honshu. Gaston wondered why she was in that place, but accessing the satellite coordinates of their assault ship, they were using the Hamamatsu Airbase.

“Are they using the Hamamatsu Airbase?” Gaston asked loudly.

Ayumi shifted her eyes to him. “Ah, yes, since they needed somewhere to land. Most of the airbases are filled with ships now so they were allowed to occupy a part of Hamamatsu Airbase.”

“And the government allowed it?”

“They have jurisdiction.”

“This is a museum, right?”

“It was until they allowed landings on it. VTOLS and Ships are capable of vertical movement so they allowed it. Lady Romanov is quite interested in Hamamatsu and their branch should be in that area. Ah, did you just check their location?”

“I did. It looks like they are not branched in Neo-Tokyo.”

“There are no decent buildings here. Not to mention that most of the areas have been renovated and constructed over the years so the plot of land here could be costly. Not to mention that they would have no privacy.”

“They are also near the coast so they could transport their equipment over the sea. Hmm, they have a ship anchored at Gamagori City’s Mikawa Port.”

Gaston joined his fingers. “They sure aren’t staying silent about this,” Gaston accessed their database. On the screen were their ships and their assets that were in Japan. Gaston tried to access further information, but the moment he tried to access their assets in Europe. He was immediately given a restriction.

“That figures,” Gaston leaned back. He opened the terminal and was about to login into UEDF’s website when there was someone who contacted him through his AR-module. He answered. “Hello?”

“Ah, Lady Romanov, you called?”

“Did you forget your appointment with Yumina?”

“Ah, yes, I was supposed to educate her about split-realms and the likes?” he repeated.

“Yes, I'd rather have her start now. You should be wasting your time there reading our daily and hourly logs. You do know that it has been annoying me ever since you decided to sign in your credentials?”

“Apologies, just doing my job.”

“Boris will come and meet you in Hamamatsu Station. Can you go there? Do you know the way?”

“I’ll ask the Secretary.”

He hung up before the Lady could. He turned to Ayumi. “What’s the best train to Hamamatsu?”

“Going to educate the rookie?”

“It is protocol and they’ll miss out on their subsidies from the Consortium and UEDF if they don’t let their newbies attend these kinds of things. She’s on probation and it would work better if they are educated. Most of the Breakers are uninterested in learning these matters that they have to make this protocol.”

“Good luck then,” Gaston said,

Ayumi sent a link on his device. He went out of the building and took the train headed to Hamamatsu.