Chapter 1: The Vagabond Ace.

It had been a few weeks after the large Away Mission to Aftokrator. While the Mission was considered a success, with them finding the C-rank agents and a few of Hatohara's Collaborator, they had even found Replica in Aftokrator labs. Tamakoma 2 had lost a member of their team in Hyuse. And with clues to the whereabouts of Chika's brother, they all wanted to continue their quest to A-rank. But while they are still a competent and very strong team, they were starting to slip in rankings against the other strong B rank squads.

"So, you would like to join our unit?"

"Um. Yes. I don't want to impose on you though so you can say no."

While they were planning for the next rank battle during their month break between rank wars after losing the most recent one. A visitor came to the Tamakoma dorms looking for Tamakoma-2. He was a tall teenager dressed in what appears to be casual clothes, a black padded jacket with a dark green undershirt and black pants, as well as dark black hair and light blue eyes. When asked what he wanted from them, he gave a hesitant reply of wanting to join their unit. This wasn't exactly the first time something like this happened, as one of the 2 B teams that went on the first big publicised away mission, and the only one with an open slot after. Several B and C rank Border members wanted to join their team to bank off some of that praise. Of course, with Yuma's side effect, they were able to deduce it quickly before any long-lasting harm, but these encounters left Osamu with a healthy suspicion.

"So, why us specifically?"

"Oh…I just…well, you're not the first unit I've tried to join. All I'm trying to do really is just trying to find a unit where I can fit in, that's really all there is." Osamu turned to Yuma who gave him a nod, so far, no lies.

"Is that all? You don't have any other reasons?" In response to the question, he tilts his head lightly to the side with a confused look.

"Yeah, why? Am I supposed to have another reason?" Osamu turned to Yuma again who confirmed the fact that he wasn't lying. Now this was a bit baffling, but it was a good sign to him being genuine. And, of course, having a new teammate for the next rank war battle would help greatly.

"Well, I don't have a reason to turn you away yet. How about you come in and we can talk me."

"Uh. Thank you very much. My name's Tadayou Ryouichi. Thank you for hearing me out." He walked inside the house and followed Tamakoma-2 into the living room. Osamu thought about the guy, the first thing he noticed is his personality. He's quite shy, he fidgets a lot with his hands and hesitates before speaking. He reminds Osamu of some of the people from his school, the quiet ones that like to keep to themselves in the corner because they don't think of themselves as good at socialising. The 4 of them sat down in the couches in the living room, with Osamu facing Ryouichi across the table.

"So, I would like to know a few things about you. Your position, trigger set, how long you've been in border, basic information like that." Ryouichi nodded, before placing his head upon his palm and thinking it over.

"Well, I'm 17 years old, my position is an attacker and I primarily use the Kogetsu as my weapon of choice. My main trigger has Kogetsu, Gen'you, Shield and bagworm. While my sub triggers include Scorpion, Raygust, Thruster, and a Handgun with asteroid bullets." That's an intriguing combination of triggers, Osamu notes, an attacker that both used all 3 attacker triggers as well as a Handgun. "I've been in Border for around 2 years now and a B-rank. I have quite a bit of experience with working in teams already, but I've never been really affiliated with a proper unit. Is that all you need to know?"

"Well, one last thing. Do you mind having a battle with Yuma here, so we can have a good read of your skills?" He gives a quick nod, Yuma gives a light grin at his acceptance. "Ok then, follow us to the training room. The two of you will fight there."

By the time they had gotten set up in the training room for the fight, other members of the Tamakoma branch joined them on the way. First was Yotaro on Raijinmaru, who was interested about the visitor and wanted to tag along to see how a possible recruit for Tamakoma would be like, in his words "I gotta make sure that any new members of Tamakoma has to be up to snuff." As they were passing the rooms, they attracted the attention of Shiori, who was interested in a possible new member of Tamakoma-2. Upon learning his name though, he mentioned a something strange.

"Oh, it's been a while since I've seen the Vagabond Ace in action." This phrase caught Osamu's attention but before he was able to ask, they had reached the training room. Inside was Kizaki and Konami, already doing some training together.

"Oh, hey! what are you doing here?" Konami asked, Kizaki also stopped with his training, seemingly interested in what they are doing.

"Ah, well, someone wanted to join Tamakoma-2 and we wanted to have him fight with Yuma to test his skills because he's an attacker. His name is Tadayou Ryouichi." After being introduced, Ryouichi gave a bow to the two of them. Konami's eyes light up in surprise and Kizaki's face adopts a look of curiosity.

"Oohh… Someone is fighting with Yuma, huh? Well, as my student you better kick his butt." Yuma gave a confident thumbs up. "But Ryouichi, huh. That rings a bell in my head, but I can't quite put my finger on it."

"Don't you remember? He's the Vagabond Ace." Shiori takes the moment to interject, using the same strange title as before. Konami hits her fist against an open palm after hearing the title.

"Ohhhhh. Yeah. I heard of him. Now I definitely have to watch." At this point, Osamu had to ask. His confusion over this title of Vagabond Ace rising at every second. Before he gets a chance to ask however, Chika tapped him on the shoulders. She pointed inside and both fighters were staring at the camera, with Yuma waving towards him. Likely waiting for him to start the match.

"Right, well. Ryouichi and Yuma, for this battle, it'll be a best out of 3." Both combatants gave a curt nod before turning to face each other and pulling out their triggers.

"Trigger on." Both activated their triggers at the same time, while Yuma sports his Tamakoma-2 uniform, Ryouichi sports a featureless dark grey jacket with dark blue pants. They pull out their respective weapons, Yuma with a scorpion in one hand while Ryouichi holds a Kogetsu in his right hand and a Raygust in his second in shield form. They both stare each other down, taking notes of each other weapons and stance.

"Start!"

Upon Osamu's signal, the two of them rush towards each other. Yuma rushing towards him with the grasshopper while Ryouichi uses the thruster on the Raygust to launch himself towards his opponent. However, as soon as he's in range of Yuma, he thrust the Kogetsu through the Raygust's shield at him, the shield creates a small hole for the Kogetsu to go towards. Recognizing the immediate threat, Yuma creates a grasshopper to launch himself diagonally upwards away from the blade before using the grasshopper to zoom above and behind his opponent.

Ryouichi reacted quickly after realising Yuma's intention, turning off the thruster and changing the Raygust in blade mode, he leans forward to flip himself upside down before using thrusting the blade of the Raygust into the ground to use it to twist himself around. Just in time for him to intercept Yuma's attack with a slice of his Kogetsu. Yuma twists his body to knock away the attack with his scorpion, but despite that, the attack still goes through and he is cut in half with the slice.

The training room quickly healed away the injury and Yuma's body crashes into Ryouichi. As Yuma pushes himself off his opponent and gets back into position. Osamu ponders about the outcome of the battle, not only did he quickly follow Yuma's movement, he was able to slice through his opponent with the last attack, even with the scorpion that was supposed to parry it.

"Whoa! That was slick. I almost didn't catch that myself." It appears that Konami already figured out the trick behind the attack. Osamu was going to ask but was interrupted by Shiori telling him to start the second match. As he turns to check the training room, he sees that once again, Yuma and Ryouichi were in position. This time Ryouichi was holding a scorpion in his left hand instead of the raygust, while Yuma wields two scorpions.

"Start!"

The two of them start running towards each other, Yuma is the first one in range, he combines his two scorpions together into a single mantis strike. As the long winding blade launches itself at Ryouichi, he swings both of his weapons towards it. As Yuma manipulates the attack to wind around the attack range of both weapons, suddenly the mantis is knocked out of trajectory, even though the attack was far outside the range of a single scorpion and it wasn't in a position for the Kogetsu to hit it in the same slash. Yuma quickly disengage the Mantis to form his dual blades as Ryouichi has turned his Kogetsu into a downwards slash. As he holds one Scorpion above him to block the Kogetsu blade, once again the slash goes right through it. However, before it hits Yuma, it's deflected by the second Scorpion that Yuma uses to knock away the slash. A small grin appears on Yuma's face before it's wiped away as he ducks to dodge the Scorpion slash from Ryouichi's left hand before jumping forward and slashing through Ryouichi's chest.

Once again, the training room heals the damage off, but this time, it's Yuma's win. Ryouichi gives a light sigh when he sees his opponent quirk, realising that Yuma has probably figured out the trick behind his attacks.

"I see, so that's how it works. He's using Gen'yo to change the shape of his blade to make it go through weapons and help defends." Osamu explains, realising the trick behind it too after seeing it a second time. Chika lets out a light 'Oh…' of surprise while Reiji nods to confirm his hypothesis.

"Gen'yo isn't used much due to how Senku is considered a better offensive trigger for Kogetsu, because of its longer range and better offensive power. However, Ryouichi is one of the best users of it, able to bend and change the shape of his blade quickly on the fly to pass through defences and help with parrying. It's part of what makes him so terrifying at close range. Even if Yuma's seen through the trick, it'll still be tough to fight against it." Osamu nods, after seeing it in action, he can definitely see why. A technique that both allows for an offensive edge and a defensive countermeasure, unless one was using something with a large enough defensive range like a large shield or a raygust, it'll be tough to defend properly at close range.

Yuma gives a light grin as he puts away the scorpion in his left hand. Now that he knew the trick behind the attack, he had a better idea of how to fight against it. Ryouichi meanwhile changes his sub trigger back to a Raygust in shield mode. At Osamu's command, they both started running towards each other. Yuma triggers grasshopper to start bouncing around his opponent quickly by using the pinball technique. Ryouichi looks around him frantically and is only barely able to dodge the blade of the scorpion.

He then appears to calm down before standing still, keeping an eye on Yuma's movement but not as frantically as before. Yuma takes the opportunity to strike him from behind again using the grasshopper but just before he reaches him, Ryouichi quickly starts the thruster on his raygust to backhand Yuma with the shield.

But the retaliation is a failure, Yuma made a grasshopper pad in the way of the raygust shield to bounce the trajectory so that it's launched upwards. Leaving his opponent wide open to be taken out with his scorpion blade. The attack is considered fatal, and the last round goes to Yuma. As the training room heals off his opponent's wounds, Yuma jumps off Ryouichi's body and starts walking to entrance. While Ryouichi pulls himself up and follow behind him.

As the two of them made their way outside, they are greeted by the other members of Tamakoma. Konami highfives Yuma before ruffling his hair, praising him for the battle. Shiori pats Ryouichi on the back and starts trying to initiate conversation with him while Ryouichi tries his best to respond despite his lacking social skills. Osamu walks up to Yuma and taps him on the shoulder.

"So, what did you think of his skills?" Yuma gives a light grin before giving his answer.

"Oh, he's good. If I hadn't already fought Ko multiple times, I might have been hit by that final shield bash. He also somehow managed to follow me and retaliate while I was bouncing around him with the grasshopper. Definitely worth having on our unit." Osamu nodded, but there was one final thing he had to check before he felt confident about letting Ryouichi join Tamakoma-2.

"Uh, Konami, Reiji. Can we talk in private for a second? Yuma, Chika, you might want to come along with this too." Konami gave him a look of confusion but gave him a thumbs up while Reiji just gave a simple affirmation through nodding his head. Both Chika and Yuma also nodded, and they all followed Osamu outside the training room into the hallway while Shiori kept trying to converse with Ryouichi.

"Ok then, why do you keep calling Ryouichi the Vagabond Ace?" Reiji and Konami share a worried glance before Reiji opens his mouth to explain.

"Well, Tadayou Ryouichi is a bit infamous in border, he's known for asking to join a variety of different units. But around a week after joining these units, he quits." Osamu shares a worried look with Chika and Yuma upon hearing that. "Now, from what I heard, I don't think he's doing it to be malicious. He's asked and joined a variety of units of different skill levels, but he's quit every single one of them. While some he's stayed on longer then others. He always quits in the end, he's been called the vagabond ace for this trend of drifting from unit to unit and also because of good he is, as you've seen."

"Has he given a reason for quitting?"

"Well, according to what I've heard. He's always given the same reason, 'I'm sorry, but I don't think you're the unit I'm looking for. I feel like I belong in your unit.'" Osamu adopted a look of intrigue as he ponders over those words. "In the end, I don't think it'll hurt for you to let him join your unit. Just keep in mind his reputation when you do so."

"And it would really help if you three had another teammate, losing Hyuse really hit you had. And who knows, maybe you'll be the one to finally ground this vagabond ace." Konami jumps in to give her two cents on the situation, Osamu nodded after hearing their advice before turning to Yuma and Chika.

"What do you two think?" Yuma placed a hand on his chin before giving his answer.

"I think we should have him. It wouldn't hurt to have someone as good as he is on our unit and if he quits in the end then that wouldn't affect us too much. He wasn't lying when he stated his reasons for joining the unit and I'm interested in him now."

"Well. I think it'll be fine too. I don't think he means any harm and if the two of you are fine with it then we should just let him join." Osamu nodded.

"Right, then I'll let him join for now and see how things turn up later." Reiji nodded while Konami gives a thumbs up. He walks back inside the training room with the rest following to see Shiori still conversing with Ryouichi. She appears to be talking about the Yatsuhashi unit while Ryouichi has given up talking and just nods quietly along with her words instead. Osamu waves Ryouichi over, instead of walking over right away, he appears to be trying to interrupt Shiori. But every time he tried to opened his mouth to do so, he shut it soon after and continued listening. After a bit, Osamu just walked over and tap Shiori on the shoulder.

"Excuse me, I need to talk to Ryouichi." Shiori gave a thumbs up and walked away while Ryouichi gave a sigh of relief.

"Thank you, I didn't know how to ask her to stop." Osamu gave a small sigh too, it appears his social skills are worst then he first thought. That was a problem he would need to deal with later.

"You're welcome. So, I've talked it over with the rest of Tamakoma-2 and they said it'd be fine if you were to join our group." Ryouichi's mouth turns into a happy smile upon hearing it. "However, if you don't mind. It'll only be like… A trial period for now. If you were to properly join our unit then there would be some problems with how you must join Tamakoma and transferring out of HQ. So, it's better if we have a trial period of sorts to see how you fit in before we make that kind of decision."

Ryouichi appears to think it over for a bit before nodding. Osamu gave a small smile and held out his hand. "Right, welcome to Tamakoma-2. We're glad to have you on our side." Ryouichi reached out and grabbed his hand before giving him a light handshake.

"Thank you for having me on your team. I'll try my best."

"So that's the situation, Jin. You have any advice?" Osamu had finished recounting his experience with Ryouichi to Yuichi Jin. He had invited him to a noodle shop for some advice on Ryouichi, hoping to gain more information about him and whether his strange reputation and title of the 'Vagabond Ace' would affect the team. Jin slurped down some of his noodles before giving a sly smile.

"Well, I'll tell you that you shouldn't get too attached to him. Sorry to say but he's not sticking around with Tamakoma-2 for too long." Osamu gave a sharp nod, he wasn't too surprised to hear that after hearing the story about him from Kizaki earlier. But he is disappointed that the unit will be losing another useful member. "In fact, it's very unlikely he'll even officially join Tamakoma-2, so I say to keep that in mind during your group training. It might be hard for you, but I think you can make it through the next rank wars without him." Osamu let out a disappointed sigh, he hoped that he would be able to keep Ryouichi on his unit until the next rank wars, but at least he was already accounting for that problem beforehand. And Jin confirming his fears makes it easier for him to plan around it.

"Well, thanks Jin for affirming some of my problems."

"Ah, no problem. All for my precious Kohais, you even graciously brought me out for Lunch so how could I ever refuse." Jin starts slurping up the rest of his noodles down, leaving Osamu to ponder about the next rank war. However, his thoughts are interrupted when Jin suddenly interjects.

"One last word of advice. If you're going to continue aiming for A-rank to join the next away mission, then I advise for you to keep an eye out for Ryouichi. My side effect tells me that if you want to keep rising up in the rank wars then one day, he'll be a roadblock in your path. And a particularly troublesome one too." Osamu gritted his teeth and nodded, he was hoping that wouldn't be the case and that they'd be able to make it through the next rank wars without something like that occurring.

"Thanks again, not what I wanted but guess I now have time to plan." Jin nodded again before finished up his noodles. He left the shop with a casual of his hands and Osamu was left to ponder by himself about his unit, the future to come and the strange 'Vagabond Ace' now on his team.