I'VE ALWAYS hated the rain. I'm sure everyone at the Beach does; when you don't wear very much (if any) clothing, the sting of cold hits much deeper then it would otherwise. It brings winds and storms and turns the whole atmosphere rather unpleasant, to be honest. I'm sure I wouldn't mind it, if we had the benefit of 'warmth' and 'comfort', but here at the Beach, people are a bit paranoid.

Warmth means clothes. Clothes means conglomerates. And conglomerates mean Revocs.

So asking for those meager things – a blanket, a shirt, something to stop you from freezing your ass off – that's not treated as normal. No, that's something suspicious. Why do you need a blanket? So you can send off a coded message? Are you checking to see if there's any way for you to bug it so that way your superiors can home in on a location, and bomb the entire place to the ground?

So yeah. You get used to the cold. You can whine and moan all you want; it's encouraged among the foot soldiers, anyways. But higher up? You better nut up or shut up, there's no shipping out back home at the Beach. You enter, and you stay.And if you leave, then you've got a mission, or you're going to disappear. Names are off the books, you're not even on the parts of the grid that are offof it. Any connections to your family?

Gone. Erased. In the eyes of the rest of the world, the people at the Beach don't 'exist'. Parents, friends, relatives; all are either estranged, dead, or part of it. There's no privacy, no fun, and most of all no damn breaks.When you're part of an organization of terrorists, you don't get a chance to sit back and smell the roses.

Not unless you're burning them to ash.

I glanced out the window, fake as it is, showing a picturesque scene of a field and an apple tree. Hologram, naturally. The Beach is entirely underground, and there are fifteen feet of solid steel holding up the compound, deep down in the earth. But the rain – the rain causes the building to shake and makes my body shiver like I'm a little girl again, being taught how to hold my sword for the very first time.

My fingers absentmindedly danced across the guard of my sword, feeling that cold steel as I remember the very first thing I had learned - to be faster, not stronger. To be skilled, rather than a brute. I would always be smaller than my enemies would be, and that meant I would have to make up for it in ways that they wouldn't be able to guess. I didn't have the brute strength to do that - so instead, I had to be better.

I'd taken that lesson to heart – I was one of the quickest of the Beach's close combat operatives, even if my mid-long range was absolute shit. But I had backup for that, Beach operatives always paired off in cells of two. 'Two heads are better than one' is the reason they state, but there's always that underlying threat. If one of you betrays us, then the other will kill you. There are no close friends down here, more like acquaintances who aren't openly fighting. That was what it meant to live deep underground, seeing the same faces and the same scenery every day until a mission.

And this was my home. I lived for the Beach. I fought for the Beach. And I would die for the Beach, for all those who couldn't fight for themselves, or who didn't even know that a fight was going on. It's not like any of the conglomerates would openly state that we had stolen tech, or plans, or destroyed buildings. No, it was all industrial accidents and corporate sabotage. Only us and them knew the real answer, and it's not like either were willing to speak out.

This wasn't an open war we were engaged in. It was a silent war. The deadliest kind – where if you're compromised, you might as well kill yourself. It'll be a quicker death then if you're captured by Revocs - or worse, if the Beach gets you back.

I looked up at the steel ceiling, tracing the endless arches with my eyes. crisscrossing copper and iron interwove itself in between each arch; I heard the building sigh every time the lightning crashed onto it, and felt the wind beat down on my face from high above. The surface – that's where I'd dreamed of going as a kid.

When I'd gotten there, I'd realized something that nobody had the heart to tell me.

People lie.The surface wasn't beautiful, there weren't fields and flowers and there were no sounds of that happy, peaceful city that I'd heard so much about. It was a dark and dreary place, with constant clouds and gloom as the populace was subjugated by corporations and conglomerates who threw product after product at them. It was a world of 'consume or be consumed', both literally and metaphorically.

What use were you to Revocs, or Walmart, or Microsoft if you couldn't consume? You were dead weight on a dead world. Trash, to be thrown aside into the heaps of those that had been chewed up and spat back out by these behemoths that ravaged our culture and destroyed our individuality. If you ran out of the money that was given to you to spend on their products before the time was up, then it was time for you to leave. Back to one of the outer cities, where gangs reigned supreme and nobody had anything but the clothes on their backs.

And even those were a 'generous donation' from who else but Revocs. Even when you had nothing, you couldn't escape from them. Not unless you went outside of the ordinary options, and chose something else. Or had it chosen for you, like so many of us had.

That was The Beach. Another option that wasn't previously mentioned, where you were the sum of your parts, not the sum of your pocket. It wasn't comfortable, it certainly wasn't pleasant, but it was better than dying like a rat in the streets with the rest of the unwashed, broken masses. It was a family, in a way, but not a nice one. It made you strong, it made you paranoid, but most of all, it made you free.

No more corporations. No more clothes made by machines for humans so deep in their routines they might as well bemachines. No more corporations and conglomerates bearing down on you everyday of your life, for the rest of your life, telling you what to do, what to wear, and how to live. There was kind of ecstasy in that sort of freedom, an unbelievable feeling that welled up inside me every now and then when I went on a mission, causing my fingers to curl tighter around my sword and a grin to cover myself. That was what it meant to be part of the Beach, to be so fucking free that you could do any and everything and still have more and more leftover.

It was invigorating to some, and a weight crushing down like a ton of bricks on others. I loved the feeling, but I had seen the downcast, gloomy looks in the cafeteria every now and then. They stared at me with dead eyes and asked me questions I couldn't answer.

"What is our purpose?"

"Why are we here?"

"Why do we exist?"

I never answered. Sometimes they stayed, taking the most dangerous missions and doing the tasks nobody wanted to. Other times, they killed themselves. And sometimes, they vanished. Just like the traitors and those who asked too many questions; carted off to God-knows-where in the middle of the night, never to be seen or heard from again. Ask about them, you'll be told not to ask questions. Ask again and you get your first warning - a talk from your superior officer about how important it is to show your loyalty to the Beach. Third time?

I've never seen anyone after they'd asked for a third time. They vanished, just like those they were trying to find. And the cycle repeated itself.

We didn't get many questions, to be honest. After one person you know vanishes without a trace, nobody really wants to be the next one; doesn't matter if they were lovers or best friends. Everyone's the same in the end, the most important person in their world is themselves. And I've never exactly been part of the disappearing acts, myself. Partner said I was too emotional for them, I'd get sappy and do something dangerously stupid.

I punched him in the face and told him I'd see him on our next mission. He can't talk to me like that, he's not Teach. He didn't show me where my hands went on a sword, or hold me when I slit my first throat, or tell me it was alright when I had to kill my first partner. What did it matter if he thought I'd do something stupid? He was just another face in the crowd, most of the time. It was just that sometimes he stood a bit further out, and told me that it was time for wetwork.

My partner and I don't click. We're not like two peas in a pod, or good friends. We don't eat lunch together and share secrets. We work together, and we're good at it. He's got the range to watch my back, and I've got the talent to make sure he can plant the explosives without getting interrupted.

Get in, get out. Nice and easy, just like the Beach wanted. We weren't the best they had, but I was confident we were high enough up there to be considered decent contenders.

I stood up, stretching my back to shake away the pain as I peeled myself off the cold wall I had been waiting on for at least an hour. It wouldn't do to look bad in front of the Council - they could make or break a member of the Beach, even this late in the game. And I had no plans on being broken.

A voice crackled over the loudspeaker, and I glanced up at the small black speaker located a little ways up the wall. That scratchy, nasally voice of our dear leader spoke in a long, whining hiss, a sound that was like nails on a chalkboard to my ears. "Enter, Operative RM23."

I walked towards the door, feeling a bit anxious about the utter lackof noise in the room. The Beach always had at least some noise, even if it was just the grunts of training. The only sound in my ears was the tap of my bare feet on the cold floor. It set me on edge, how the gray room completely silent once the loudspeaker shut off. I had it on good authority that I wasn't going to vanish - I was an excellent operative. I didn't ask questions, I didn't complain too much, and I did my job. I did it well, because that's what Teach had always told me to do.

The black doors were cold to the touch, and when my fingers brushed one they opened with a slow, grating sound as metal scratched against metal, making me wince until it faded away just as quickly as it came, and I hurried inside the room. Wouldn't do to keep our brave, noble council waiting, would it?

The doors closed behind me, and I was left in a pitch black room, slowly waiting for my eyes to adjust to the emptiness inside of it. I could see the outline of a series of chairs as I walked forward, hoping that I didn't trip or fall on anything as I attempted to blindly make my way to the center.

"Stop walking," a voice said, booming and loud in the quiet, dark room. I'd heard that when one sense was taken away, others grew sharper. I'd never had it proven so thoroughly though; the voice was so loud I immediately stopped in mid-step, completely frozen for a moment.

"Operative RM23. Partner to TK78. Members of the cell, RM101TK. You have successfully completed 53 sabotage missions, 27 ambushes, and your cell holds the record for most successful rescues, currently seven above cell JC148MB."

I clicked my tongue, my eyes narrowing. Didn't know that those two had been so hard at work lately. I'd have to talk to my Partner about that after this; we can't be getting caught out by Jirai, of all people. That was just embarrassing.

Whispers bounced around the room, and I caught strands of syllables and words; never enough to put anything together, of course. That was how the Council worked, they were trying to keep me off-guard, catch me on my toes, so that they would see how I reacted. I wasn't having any of it, straightening smartly as I stood alert, my hand jumping up to salute an invisible man as I stared at nothing at all straight ahead. "Yes sir! We're very proud of our work, sir!"

"Good, very good," the man responded, his voice deep and low, like the rumble in a dragon's stomach. "You show much promise, RM23. More so than most of our… lesser, candidates."

Candidates? I chewed the inner part of my lip with some apprehension. The last time I'd heard of candidates, Teach had ruffled my hair, and told me it was no big deal.

That was five years ago.I hadn't seen him since.

"RM23, you are hereby assigned your mission. You are to enter a deep cover operation at Honnou City. If you see AK46, you are not to speak to him. You are not to be seen around him. You are to investigate him, and discover if he is compromised."

A pause in the speech. I felt a bead of sweat roll onto the hand that now felt so rigid against my forehead.

"And if so, you are to eliminate him." The sound of paper shuffling was all I could hear. There were no whispers. Of course there weren't; they were all staring at me.

It was a test. Of my loyalty to the Beach, of my resolve for it. I clenched my jaw, standing all the straighter, even as my heart pounded in my chest. "Understood sir. If… if AK46 is a threat, I will try my very best to eliminate him."

Ha. As if I could. I'd heard the stories, and there was little to no chance that if he'd turned traitor, I'd be the one being eliminated. Teach was the best of the best. He could do it all - close range, long-range, espionage, all-out attacks - he knew everything. And he'd taught me everything.

A bead of sweat trickled down the back of my neck. What kind of test was this? Teach wouldn't go traitor, he was so close to the center of the Beach that I joked he'd been borna nudist. And he'd winked at me, ruffled my hair and told me that I was the one who was born that way.

That man had turned traitor? I doubted that with every fiber of my being. My gut, my heart, my head, all of them screamed that this was a lie, and that the Council was trying to test my desire for promotion, or something.But the lack of answer, the murmur of approval that echoed around the chamber told me otherwise. This wasn't a test, or a joke, as if the Council could telljokes. This was as real as the leather sticking to my back, and the weapon at my side.

A bundle was thrown at me, and I caught it automatically. It was soft to the touch, and I froze as my fingers rubbed it - silk. Where had the Council even acquired this? It was hard enough for those in cities to acquire clothing of this quality, let alone anyone who was as deep underground as we were.

"This is a deep cover operation, RM23. You are to be enrolled at Honnouji Academy as a transfer student. You are not above average, you are not below average. You are not inclined to any particular club, unless approached first, at which point you will think about it and join if it will aid you in our goals. You are, in a phrase, normal. Is that clear, RM23?"

I swallowed the lump in my throat, shoving the throbbing in my chest deeper inside. It wouldn't do to be discarded now, not when I was already assigned the mission. That would mean reassignment, and worse, reprogramming. Can't have an at-risk operative with sensitive information. "Crystal, sir."

I unbuckled the leather, letting it fall to the ground. It was time to change. I had to get reaccustomed to the feeling of clothes of this quality, and the feeling of wearing clothes at all. I stopped for a moment, and chastised myself in my head, but didn't pull off the glove that Teach had given me before he'd left. It was stupid. Sentimental. But I couldn't pull off that damn red glove, and left it on my hand as I threw on the shirt and pulled up the skirt, listening with one ear as the Council member continued speaking.

"Remember, you are no longer RM23. If discovered, you will deny all knowledge and slit your own throat upon capture. You are a non-entity in Nudist Beach until you return."

A pause, as I fastened the buttons on my skirt, placing my weapon in a silver case.

"Is that clear, Matoi Ryūko?" I looked up at the man, so dimly visible in the dark room, my eyes finally adjusting to the light.

"Perfectly," I said with a drawl, a slow grin growing on my face. As I waited impatiently for the door to open, the case thrown over my shoulder, I turned back for a moment. "Oh, and I'm not just any old operative. I'm the Woman with the Scissor Blade. I don't fail missions."

And with that, I left the steel halls of the Beach, and headed to a surface where rats roamed and humans ravaged.

The first thing that hit me was the stench; like tar and corpses mixing together in a vat of acid, that sizzling smell that burned my nostrils and made my eyes water. It left a bad taste in my mouth, like vomit that you had to swallow back down, a stench that made me gag the instant it started to waft downwards. The surface was anything but 'nice', it was a vestige of a bygone time. Where there were once brilliant, shining buildings, there was only the wreckage left behind - a vast plain of dilapidated homes and the old foundations that had once held them up. Even then, I could imagine that it had looked nice, at one point.

If not for the trash. There was a reason the Beach hadn't been discovered - we hid in the least likely place of all. The Pits. Nobody went to the Pits unless they had to, to scavenge for the remnants of food or clothes, or even a bit of cloth for a blanket. This was the dumping grounds for everyone. Conglomerates, corporations, rich snobs - they left everything they no longer wanted here, and liked to pretend it didn't exist. There were miles of the stuff, and no one to manage it. The perfect hiding place for an organization like Nudist Beach; you could search the Pits for weeks and not find any sign of human life.

I stepped off of the platform that took me up, idly watching the clean steel vanish behind the vat of trash and waste that was above the Beach's hideout, before turning to face my surroundings. It was quieter than the last time I'd been here; darker as well. Pitch as black as the smokestacks that huffed and puffed with all their might lazily floated in the air like a smog, and I lifted a hand to cover my mouth, unless I wanted to die before I could even find a bus out of this miserable place.

I slowly trudged through what felt like miles of garbage, shuddering every time I felt my new shoes squish against something soft, the trash sometimes towering higher than I could see. I'd imagine it would have been colorful at one point - all the trash mixing together to create some revolting looking monstrosities - but now, now it was nothing but grays and blacks. Rain poured down, making my clothes stick hard against my skin, and I knew they were collecting grime and dust just by virtue of being around this stuff.

Good. A grime-covered girl with a disgusting case wouldn't attract much attention on a bus - if anything, I'd be avoided for fear of 'contaminating' my betters. It didn't make me feel any less disgust, watching as the mud and trash slowly began to stick to my clothes and skin. I almost idly dragged the silver case that held my weapon across the enormous heaps of waste as I walked, watching the muck accumulate far too quickly as I made my way for the one area of the Pits that was 'technically' open to the public. It would take a bit of time; after all, the Pits was an enormous area, constantly growing - I could see trash being dumped even as I walked, mountains of old toys and secondhand clothes thrown out because something newer was coming out.

A squeak came from below me, and my eyes glanced past a small bear that had been tossed aside - or something that had once been a bear, at least, although now it resembled a dying animal more than anything. With fur that had once been brown instead of that disgusting, faded white of old things, with two ears instead of half of one. With eyes, rather than a hole where the stuffing was poking out.

I kept walking, but now my eyes were more focused, having adjusted to the rancid stench of the Pit. An old, broken watch was hanging off the edge of a steering wheel, still brightly flickering until I ran my case past it, and watched it fall to the ground, knowing that it would be slowly covered by more watches as time went on.

The Pits would exist until there was no longer a 'need' for the Pits to exist. As long as there were conglomerates, there would be the Pits. This was a place for old and broken things that had nowhere else to go, everything that was casually tossed aside by the populace.

I grabbed an old, worn black jacket off of the top of a pile, shrugging it on, my lip curling as I felt the warm wetness of the inside settle on my skin. It had a zipper, and that meant it would make me look different then I would in Honnou City. I wouldn't be 'the dirty girl from the Pits', because once I washed off the dirt and grime, I would be one of them. The consumers, who had the honor of actually being in a city, rather than out in one of the many districts of Kanto or Osaka. It was a distinction that many missed, being so caught up in the stench of their own wealth to realize what that meant.

The districts didn't have many shops. Not much of a place to buy products, to consume whatever was spat out. In their own arrogance, they fell prey to the hands that fed them, that clothed them and owned them. Thinking themselves above being controlled like so, they bought the products. They ate conglomerate food. They slept in conglomerate beds. They played in conglomerate parks. Was it any wonder that they were so completely and utterly owned by these corporations? By Revocs and its ilk?

Of course not. It was ridiculous to think anyone could go through their lives without once encountering, and thus consuming, one of the behemoths of our 'culture', as loathe as I am to call it that. They were everywhere, and the moment you thought you were safe is when they caught you off-guard, and you were eaten with the rest of them.

I smile, feeling the freshened air through my teeth as I see the bus stop in the distance, around two hundred feet away from the entrance to the Pits. I stopped for a brief moment, inhaling a deep breath as that stench of the old and thrown-out faded away for a clean scent.

It was still raining, and I heard my feet go splat as I walked towards the bus stop, the rain washing a bit of the grime away, but not enough to make me look anywhere near 'clean'. I was still what would easily be misconstrued as a scavenger in the wastes between districts; it was perfectly acceptable for me to get on a bus. I was wearing clothes after all. That meant there was no way I could be part of Nudist Beach, at least according to those who could choose whether or not I would be allowed to ride the bus.

As I stood next to a single signpost in the middle of a wasteland of concrete, I stared up at a sky filled with dark and gloomy clouds, feeling the rain plaster my hair against my face. My lips twitched for a moment, as I could almost hear Teach's voice telling me what all those lights, so far off in the sky meant. The princess, the dragon, and the archer - all those beautiful, shining stars that I would never be able to see again, behind the black vats of smoke and ash that the factories bellowed out as easily as clouds moved through the air.

"Hope you're doing alright Teach," I murmured to the sky, closing my eyes as I leaned against the sign, feeling more than a tad annoyed by the unending rain, and how it made my jacket stick so closely to my skin. I could almost feel the revolting inside latching onto my arms. "I don't think I'd be able to carry out what they wanted, if you've turned on us."

It was quiet for a time, the only sound in my ears the endless spatter of rain as it hit the ground. I hated the rain. Hated it like I hated Revocs. Like I hated my father. It was cold, wet, and chilled you to the bone. No matter how hard I tried, I could never muster that love of the rain Teach had, that joy he felt when it rained. He said that the rain was a cleansing thing, and that one day it would come and wash away all our foes away, and leave only the bright dawn of a new day behind it.

I could never bring myself to believe that. Nothing was ever that simple, there was only the weight of your sword on your back and the strength of your arm. That was how you changed the world - not by waiting for a miracle, and hoping someone would save it for you. It was by our hands the world would live, and by ours that the world would die. There was no middle ground or room for an argument, that was just the way it worked. It baffled me how someone as idealistic as Teach could get so far in an organization like Nudist Beach, of all things.

The distant rumble of an engine made my eyes jolt open, and I stood upright, peering into the distance as the rain poured down in the midst of the storm, and the wind whipped around me like a knife at my throat. The screeching of tires, and that smell of metal and smoke that accompanied the bus roared at me, and a hiss of heat blew into my face as the doors open, and I peered up at the driver.

He was more of a thug than a man. A bus driver had to be, after all, when you criss-crossed all over Japan and went from cities to the Districts all the way out to the Pits. When you were way out in the middle of nowhere, people didn't give a damn whether you lived or died. He had a vicious looking scar that almost made his face look like it had been cut in half, and wore a hat that showed hints of grey hairs underneath. He wasn't clean shaven, but he didn't have a beard either, it was one of those haphazard cuts that you normally see on teenaged boys, or people who just don't care anymore.

"You a scavenger?" His voice was coarse and low, like sandpaper to my ears. "Got any good loot?"

I shook my head slowly, trying to look regretful as I pulled out the most useful piece of equipment I'd ever gotten from The Beach - an identification card. It didn't say much, just my name - Matoi Ryūko - my age, and my occupation.

Oh, and of course, my identification number, which registered me as an upstanding citizen of society to the enhanced eyes of public servants. The bus driver briefly looked down the card, before he raised an eyebrow.

"You're transferring? To Honnouji? You must be smarter than you look, kid. Better off, too." He handed it back to me, jerking a finger towards the back. "Go all the way down there. Don't want your smell scaring off any potentials, got it?"

I nodded, hefting my case over my shoulder once again as I made my way to the very back of the bus, sitting down next to a window as I felt the metal hum underneath my feet and begin its trek. There weren't many people on the bus right now, especially not when we were this far out. It would fill up once we got closer to the cities, and then it would be bursting when we were finally heading to Honnou City.

The window was covered a thin film of rain drops, slowly cascading down till they hit the metal that was between the glass and the frame of the bus itself. I shivered a bit, suddenly feeling the cold deep to my bones in my wet, dirty clothes and closed my eyes, letting the lull of the bus rock me to sleep.

It was a long way to Honnou, after all.