A cold breeze swept through the gray roads, the dust they carried lost in the cracks in the ground. It wasn't sufficient to empty the wind, though, as fine dust and cement from the toppled buildings would fall right into its embrace each time the earth quaked.

A sleek red cabriolet glided over the broken roads of the city like a spider prancing in its web. The car left behind a trail of smoke and ash that disappeared with each step the monsters crawling over the city took. Drool dripped from their giant mouths as the wolfish creatures as large as a truck pounced on the roads, only to be left behind by the speeding car.

The man in the driver's seat left the steering for a second to adjust his sunglasses. Then, seemingly dissatisfied with something, he tapped a button on the dashboard and the mirrors on the sides and the front were recalibrated, the reflection of the sun not hindering his eyes anymore. The man smiled and tapped ash away from his cigar before taking a deep drag off it. He puffed the smoke out—

—A deafening crash resounded in the air.

A giant wolf, about as wide as the eight-lane road itself, was bearing its fangs toward the car.

"A field boss? No, just a mutant," the man leisurely spoke to himself, increasing the speed of his car ever so slightly. His eyes swerved over the entire path in front of him as the roads crunched under the monster's weight. "A-Ranked breaks are something else, huh?"

The indifferent tone was washed away the next instant as the man smiled brighter than before. The wolf, gnarling at the approaching car, lowered its stance.

"Sadly for you, this red riding hood isn't little at all!" With the press of another button on the dashboard, two pairs of machine guns came squeaking out of the headlights. He pulled the gear shift like a joystick and aimed the nozzle of the firearms at the road below—the click of a button.

Hundreds of bangs coincided in one as the machine guns fired off round after round into the run-down road. Startled, the wolf stepped back, but that was its mistake.

Like a sand-castle falling over, the feeble road caved under its injuries and lost its structure. Iron rods and meshes broke through the concrete as enormous chunks fell to the bottom of the 250-meter-high road. The wolf clung to the concrete, scratching away at it with its sharp claws, but it was all useless. In mere moments, the wolf fell too like the rest of the road.

The car sped up further, and the man smirked wider. It was a floating car, broken roads were barely even noticeable, he was looking forward to the view of the city ruins with the wolf's mangled corpse sitting atop it like a cherry on a cake.

He shifted his gaze down.

A bulky hand bulging with muscles and veins entered his sight.

The man, with a face as flat as a desert, looked up at the dashboard. The hand had stopped midway while inserting a hard drive into the car's mechanism. He then looked to his side, to the passenger seat. Not betraying the hand at all, a man as giant as a gorilla sat next to him with a laptop in his hands. His muscles ripping out into the world, the lack of a shirt making it all too visible.

The man in the driver's seat stared at the muscular man, then at his laptop. The walking mass of muscles stared back.

Looking down again, the car had reached the bits without a road and was now floating 200 meters above the ground.

"Hi," the bulky man waved.

And the car plunged downward.

"AAAH!" The man screamed and pulled at the steering but to no avail. The car only sped up in its fall making the already devastating drop feel akin to riding atop a meteor. The man screamed and pulled at the wheels, he haphazardly smacked the buttons on the dashboard, but the car refused to even tilt. It was completely out of his control.

The ground was closer than ever, the mangled wolf corpse in clear sight. Still screaming, the man looked to his side again. Riding on the free-falling car's door right behind the hunk of muscles was a young child.

The child was sighing. This kid who looked no older than 11 or 12 had suddenly popped up on the side of a falling car and was sighing.

Falling car.

The man looked down and screamed again. It was greatly unbecoming for a B-Ranked awakener, but such thoughts never entered his mind. All of them were going to die.

With the ground closer than ever, the man took in a deep breath. It was tough to move a muscle on his body against the force of the wind, but he did so anyway.

"Forgive me, Marie..."

He muttered.

A breeze of wind brushed his sides.

With the muscular man in his hands, the child had pulled off a feat that made him doubt his eyes. He had kicked off against the falling car and jumped into the air.

"Hah... what?"

That was the last thought that entered his mind.

***

250 meters above the crash site that left a crater on the ground, a child that looked no older than 12 and a giant man with muscles thicker than a tank's armor sat next to each other. The muscled man held a laptop with a real screen and keyboard in his hands as he shuddered whilst looking down.

"How are you trembling from just that? Act like your size already." The child scratched the back of his head as he cursed at the muscle man.

"Well, Aamon, as I have said over and over. I am a muscle head like you."

Aamon, the child, wrinkled his eyes at the man's words. Did he not know what a musclehead meant?

Sighing, Aamon shook his head and reached into his pockets, pulling out a black transmitter like a walkie-talkie of olden times. He pressed a button on the transmitter and bought it to his mouth.

"Boss," he said. "It's Aamon and Muscle."

"My name's Cristoban," the muscular man interjected immediately.

[Muscle.] A voice came out of the transmitter. It sounded feminine yet masculine, low yet high, sweet yet scathing. A voice they had gotten used to. [What is it?]

"B-Ranked Awakener, Krazy4Wheelz, sent by the association is down," Aamon said. "You can send Themis and Crow in."

The voice hummed for a second before leaking out again.

[Vigsius?]

As if on cue, a tremble swept through the broken road the two stood on. They snapped to their back to see a giant man running toward them. The ten-meter tall man with a beard as long as Aamon was tall ran toward them at full throttle. Squirming atop the horns of his iron helmet was a giant wolf no smaller than the mutant that the awakener had felled.

The wolf squirmed and frothed, but to no avail. Without remorse, the giant stomped his feet on the ground at the edge of the broken road. He pulled back and shot the wolf out of his hands like a housewife throwing out trash. The wolf soared through the sky and was sent rippling down the 250-meter-high road straight to the incinerator.

Immediately after, the giant man's face flushed red. He crouched down and covered his face with his hands.

"OH NO!"

His voice came blasting into their ears like the sound of an air horn.

"My make-up's all faded!" the giant lamented, hiding his face in his arms.

Aamon's amused smirk was wiped away and replaced by a disdainful sigh as he brought the transmitter up again.

"The creepo giant's done too."

[Great. The association has weird demands.]

"Sure do, good pay too though," Cristoban Cava, the muscle man, chimed in.

[Go make some pocket change while the rest do their job.]

"Do you really need to wring us dry for cash like this?" Aamon's complaint was met with a flabbergasted answer from the voice as if his question seemed the present equivalent to a child's 'Your name is not mama?'

[Of course...

[Running a criminal organization takes a ton of dough]