The tall man with the clean-cut brown hair and gaunt features stared ahead, his pace mechanical and cold as he moved purposefully through the commercial districts. The navy blue polo shirt and black slacks fit him well, highlighting the defined lean muscles, while the battered, rumpled black duffel in his right hand dangled perfectly still, controlled in his grip. He scanned to his left and right, the dull, brown eyes tracking everything. As a happy couple passed by, if one looked closely, they would have seen the stranger's eyes flash a faint jade, before returning to normal. Disgusted at the affection, the man changed direction, tacking to the left.

Fresh from the South Korean freighter hauling refugees from the Aleutians and the Hawaiian chain, the man known simply as David shrugged away from the others. His given name would work, at least for now. It wasn't like anyone knew him by that. However, if they knew his true name, who he really was, the police would be the least of his worries.

Nihil informants and sympathizers were everywhere, even in the remaining free nations.

David would make it here, he thought. If he could keep his head down, find some work, and get back to university to finish up his degree, maybe, maybe he could make something of himself beyond a mountain warlord. In all honesty, coordinating with the cartel enforcers, the coyotes, and the survivalists in the high Sierras had taken more out of him than he could imagine, second only to his time in the Camps. Shuddering, suppressing the memories, he closed his eyes, refocusing his mind. Yes, he would get back to normal life, at least when others were around.

Standing alone in the crowd of ignorant masses, David thought he spotted someone in the distance staring at him. Clenching his fists, he tried not to react. If he did, if he showed who he really was, his cover could be blown.

Yinko, the Wraith of Barton, would have none of that.

Atop a building, leaning against on a ledge against a wall, a masked figure who was covered in snow and almost invisible to all but the most perceptive of people was watching. A slight chuckle escapes the muffled lips of the figure behind it.

"Now...this one I might get along with...very different from the first, potentially even useful during my hunts..." the figure says, then snapping his fingers and disappearing with a small black flash. A cascade of snow would fall on some unsuspecting JSDF officers below, causing grumbled Japanese profanity to come out at the abrupt snow deluge on them.

Meanwhile, the man whom had been watching David from afar has his eyes narrow. That one...a tantalizingly dark and yet somehow bright energy. His soul would allow for the next evolution easily...perhaps a second as well. The area was crowded, but did that really matter? They were cattle, growing fat on content and ease in this world. Even if Scorpio has been highly active in this city lately, clearly he missed this one. An opportunity that this man would take advantage of.

The wind begins to blow hard around the harbor where the refugees and residents were. Lighter and non-agile people would fall into the snow, while the heavier shielded their face from the air. A silence fills the air for a moment, when a roar is released. A large entity leaps in the air, as thick samurai-like armor appears around a feathered humanoid body. Wings spread ten feet on each side from the back, while the hands were long, metallic claws. The feet were bird-like talons while the face half covered in armor, and a long beak protruded.

It was a tengu. The civilians began to scream and try to run, while the JSDF officers nearby unsheathed their guns and began to fire upon it. A shell of wind blew the bullets away, while tengu spirits begin to rise from the wind and chase after anyone nearby, draining their energy on contact. One such spirit charges for David. Meanwhile, the JSDF officers begin frantically calling on the radio for support, but one gets cut off as a spirit drains his energy. A heavier response would likely come soon.

The... creature leapt out of the crowd, a flurry of wind, screams, and gunfire swirling in the chaos. David felt his heart quicken, and moving easily, swiftly past the retreating masses, he maneuvered out of the line of sight. The dark alley wasn't too far away. It made for the perfect choke point, too narrow for someone to easily escape. Clenching his teeth, he tried to push a surge of vile, horrific thoughts out of his mind.

"Not... going to happen," he breathed, reaching into the duffel. The few onlookers who saw the assault rifle come out instantly ran the opposite direction. David slapped home a magazine, the massive bull barrel with the ported flash suppressor far too large for a standard AR-15 variant in .223 Remington. His right thumb toggling the selector to semi-auto, David's left hand reached forward, yanking back the charging handle.

At the far edge of the alley, Yinko leaned against the grimy, filthy surface of the Southern brick wall, lurking in shadow. It was just a matter of time.

The Tengu had been watching Yinko run for his life from the surroundings. The Kaze Spirits would take care of the normal people...the main prize was just ahead. The Tengu lands in the alley and it's face contorted into a dire smile, walking towards where that delicious energy could be sensed...let his pulse quicken, the adrenaline pump. It made the soul that much more tantalizing when being devoured. It deliberately slowed it's pace...each step emitting a gust of wind that would make Yinko that much more uncomfortable. It made no attempt to prepare to defend itself from the bullets that would likely come it's way: they would be useless.

"...Little boy...Little boy..." The Tengu murmurs in a distorted voice, with a loud screech. "Where ever did you get such a rare energy..." the creature says, then chuckling darkly, eyes narrowing on Yinko as his doom approached.

"Little boy?" Yinko snarled, raising the assault rifle to his shoulder, laying a bead down on the approaching... whatever it was. Could it be one of the Covenant? He hadn't run into anything like this before, but Yinko had a suspicion. It's attack fit their style: too much flair, not enough substance. "I didn't survive the Covenant's camps just to have some freak show call me a little boy!"

Slowly, a twisted smile grew on the man's face, a bubbling, festering hate rising to the surface of his mind. Slowly, he felt the sharp, pinching ache build in his forehead, a flurry of whispers reaching into his perception. It was... odd. He was there, in the alley with the creature, and yet, he was somewhere else. Yinko slowly realized he had felt this sensation before.

He could see it in his mind, the inky void, a single bright spotlight beating down from the ceiling. The two men talking just out of reach, dark silhouettes against a darker future. They never approached, not close enough to get a good look. They were just close enough to inflict pain, to lash out with their blades, their needles, or, disturbing enough, to litter the floor with snakes, all just to mess with his head.

"Now I'm doing the messing," Yinko breathed. He eased the rifle away from his shoulder, and feeling the headache grow and spread, distorting his vision, he lifted one hand up to the beast. Clattering to the ground, the weapon lay still. He didn't need it, not anymore. The sensations were the same. It would work, just like it had in that room, those two dead, just as he had done before.

A cold, bone-chilling aura surrounded him. For a moment, just a brief moment, Yinko spotted his reflection in a shattered piece of glass on the ground. His eyes had started to glow a dull, but perceptible, blue. It was... familiar, but from where? The headache grew, throbbing, encompassing his head. New images, of a barren lunar landscape, a teenage girl in an elegant dress, a royal court, and a relentless sea of destruction caused him to pause, gripping his temple with one hand. The other was outstretched, pushing into the youma's personal space. Slowly, ever so slowly, things started to fall into place.

"You want to know where I get this energy?" a dark, gravely voice boomed. It seemed omnidirectional, coming from everywhere, amplified. Yet, Yinko's mouth barely twitched. "Go ahead! Come closer, and find out!"

The tengu's advance paused at the sign of something different coming in his tone. The creature's inner sight could see it: something dormant was stirring in this young boy, and he was gradually becoming more dangerous. While the boy was still weak by comparison, at least to the Tengu, taking any damage was inconvenient to heal from, especially after Scorpio had drawn so much local energy that Virgo ordered minimal energy draw until supplies were restored. The energy harvested by the spirits would supply his hunger, but the child here was the real prize.

His lower half blown off wouldn't lose too much energy.

The tengu swings a claw in the boy's direction as Chaos Energy manifests in the form of a purple wind blade that flies at him. Seven feet long and at a diagonal angle, it slices through a metal dumpster effortlessly as it nears the young man.

Yinko was unprepared for the attack, the shrapnel from the dumpster clipping him in the left shoulder. Even trying to dodge, he felt the wound spring up, the dull ache mixing with wetness and a searing, agonizing edge along the deltoid. Slumping against the wall of the alley, Yinko's hate intensified, his mind piercing out into the ether.

There was a different sensation rising, as well. He couldn't explain it, but as the hate built upon itself, a cold, ruthless confidence he had felt a few times in the high Sierras started to manifest into something... more. Eyes glowing a brilliant blue, he almost didn't notice the changes. The transformation, a swirling of black as his clothes were normally replaced with rugged, black fatigues, heavy combat boots weathered from years of hard charging against the enemy clattering on the pavement.

Rising back to his feet, Yinko bared his clenched teeth, and staring down the creature, felt a surge of power at his command.

"Synapse... Shadow..." he muttered, extending his dominant hand as a focal point of the attack.

The creature blinks in disbelief as the young man in front of him changed his appearance. The poor aim of the attack didn't do enough damage, but before the Tengu could prepare another attack, something surged forth from the young man and entered it's body. A foreign energy was conflicting with it's own, as it writhes in pain. The arm it was using to gather energy goes numb and begins to ignite in pain, while the creature stamped the ground trying to get it's own composure back. It howls as it then bounds forth, it's active hand trying to reach out and slash Yinko, resorting to a melee attack since it's other hand wasn't as capable of using chaos energy.

The speed and strength were not to be underestimated, as David would have only two seconds to react and act accordingly, lest he find his chest cavity the home of a demonic bird's claw.

Yinko dove for the ground, stumbling into a roll. His left arm protested, the searing pain lancing out. Still, pain was better than what any Covenant operative had in store for him. The gun was out of reach, resting on the ground near the creature behind him. Why was he so stupid and arrogant? Even with whatever it was he was using against that thing, he should have held on to the weapon. What was he supposed to use? Harsh language?

Reaching out again with his mind, Yinko's eyes burned a cold, piercing blue. Trying to push past the tengu's defenses, he wouldn't screw around. If these powers could kill, it was no point in wasting them. Focusing his thoughts, he channeled all of his concentration on the enemy's brain stem.

"Synapse Shadow!"

As the shadow strikes the Tengu, mid flight, it's eyes widen when a foreign presence invades it's body once again. This time however it was far stronger, as wracking pain and agony fill it's mind. It goes limp and mid flight simply crashes into David harmlessly. It appeared completely incapacitated to David. When the full, desperate reach of his power reached into the bird man this close, it completely overloaded every mind function of the relatively mentally unshielded monster. In result, the creature was now merely a meat husk. Whether it could recover or not would remain to be seen...at least if there wasn't an almost guaranteed probability that it would die this day.

Meanwhile, the sound of a thud lands behind David and the tengu. A tall figure wearing a black tattered robe with a faceless mask could be seen before him. While he appeared intimidating, his body language seemed to say he wasn't here to fight David.

"Well done. You are certainly a very interesting case of the Knight potential. A complete opposite of your predecessor." he says calmly, then waiting to watch how David would respond.

As the creature fell, David paused, stunned, almost breaking concentration. No, he reminded himself. Yinko had to stay focused if he was going to defeat his enemy. Pulling a tanto blade in matte black finish, he held it to the youma's throat.

"I killed a friend once," Yinko started, the haunting voice echoing through the creature's mind rather than the outside world. "He and I were close... since escaping the Nihil, we killed dozens of vermin just... like... you..." He added a little pressure to the Synapse Shadow technique, his eyes glinting from a sea green into a deeper, cobalt blue. "Until he turned traitor, and when he tried to escape with one of your kind... he took a hostage... a little girl..."

Leaning in closer, Yinko drew the blade ever so gently across the tengu's gullet. "So, I shot through her..."

Just as the man in black twisted the blade at an angle, ready to deliver the killing blow, someone else jumped out of the darkness. Yinko steadied himself, clenching his teeth as the technique slipped ever so slightly. "Another one of yours?" he asked the youma.

The tengu was defenseless and terrified on the ground. A part of the creature was ashamed at how handily it was defeated at the hands of a human....or was it a human? The creature had heard rumors of humans with abilities that could defeat them. Even destroy them and prevent reincarnation in any shape or form. Now it made sense...Scorpio was looking for these individuals. It had to warn him...

But it couldn't move.

Meanwhile the masked man chuckles a little when asked about being with the tengu. In response, a scythe manifests in his hand made of energy, as he walked to the lower half of the Tengu, the blade held casually over the lower half of the bird.

'Not in the least. In fact I am like you. I had to see if you had what it takes to tap into your inner potential. Shall we carve this thing up like a turkey?" he says with a grim humor that only thinly concealed the coldness beneath.

"In fact, I think you might be quite useful, even capable of assisting me when I go on my raids in the Americas on Covenant bases." he says as if it were a casual thing.

The way the masked man spoke disgusted Yinko. He did what he did out of rage and a genuine desire to win against the Nihil. This... thing... the way it talked about this whole war as if it were a game... David would have no part of it. As he saw what he had become, what he was letting Yinko do, the technique faded, and the man's knife hand eased away from the creature's throat.

"You want to live?" David asked the tengu. "This guy here will kill you. Hell, I'd kill you... if you were of no use to me." His face was dead, impassive. "You're going to report back that you killed me, that Yinko, the Wraith of Barstow is gone. Your power and influence will increase... and you will repay your new standing by providing me with information. If you don't go through with it, I'll kill you. If you somehow escape, your employers will kill you. If you're caught helping me, they'll kill you, too." He let all of these thoughts sink in.

"So, what's it going to be?"

The masked man had willed his weapon away. Inwardly, he had sighed...this one appeared to be a touch unstable. While the masked one lacked mental powers, it was clear in David's body language that he didn't approve of his presence or attitude. The senshi were so much easier to deal with...perhaps it was a male versus female thing. Who knows. When the young man decided to give the Tengu a chance to save itself, Nazo chuckled slightly.

"You give the Covenant not enough credit. The higher up youma would simply read it's mind and experiences...likely deem it insignificant and punish it in ways worse than death. But then again, I suppose since Covenant members typically don't die unless they are purified or personally dragged to the Underworld, there aren't any good options available for your little friend here. It really is quite a predicament for our favorite monster" he says, calmly analyzing the situation that the tengu was in. The Wraith of Barstow was certainly a wanted man for the damage that was inflicted that day, though the masked man certainly wondered if David over-estimated just how badly the Covenant wanted him killed.