Begin Recording: 00:00:01:03
[AUDIO ONLY. FILE: SHIELD_3.47.Y]
A low hum. Wind outside. The dull thump of helicopter bdes. Something’s burning in the distance. The voice is grainy, but unmistakably calm. Mature. Worn down, not broken.
MORI:
“I don’t know if this will reach you. If it does… I hope you’ve already forgotten me.”
A pause. Static.
MORI:
“You always reminded me of the spring we never had. A blossom buried under ash. I knew even back then—you’d either destroy the world or save it.”
He ughs—just once. Hollow.
MORI:
“And maybe I deserved neither outcome.”
A sharp distortion. Then silence. Then—
Cut to bck.
?
His Name Was Mori
The first thing Kuroda did after being fired was book a one-way flight to Japan.
No one found it suspicious.
Except a few.
He left behind no letters. No goodbyes. Just a resignation slip signed in silence—and a b still reeking of scorched Tamashkii residue.
Two days ter, he was in Tokyo.
And he already knew who and what he was looking for.
It was raining the day Kuroda arrived.
Not the gentle kind. The kind that stabbed sideways, got into your shoes, made the whole world feel heavier than it already was.
Somewhere in a district just outside Tokyo, a boy who would never call himself a boy stood on the roof of an abandoned Setai storage facility, soaked, silent, and watching the sky like he was expecting it to fall.
The boy had been breaking into active and abandoned Setai sites for weeks now.
Old outposts. Sealed bunkers. Ghosted archives left behind after the Hero Society fell.
He wasn’t looking for enemies.
He was looking for answers.
To what the Setai hid.
To what Tamashkii meant.
To what came before the world went quiet.
People had started calling him a viginte. An elite.
He never corrected them.
Not because of power.
Because of control.
Because he never flinched when the world cracked.
Because his bde never moved unless it needed to.
Because when others broke, Mori didn’t bend.
That’s when Kuroda found him.
Not by accident.
Not by fate.
By design.
Kuroda didn’t introduce himself.
Didn’t need to.
Mori had already read files. Heard rumors. The scandal. The incident. The firing.
“U.S. research director terminated after unauthorized field testing.”
That was the headline. What it didn’t mention was the part about the volunteer who never woke up. Or the suppressed footage. Or the whisper that Kuroda hadn’t been fired.
He had been unleashed.
Kuroda stepped onto the rooftop like he had already owned it once before.
Dark coat. Gloves. Faint scent of burnt ozone trailing behind him. He stopped a few feet from Mori, studied the boy like a scientist inspecting a new species.
“You’ve got a nice vantage point,” Kuroda said.
Mori didn’t respond.
“You watched the raid,” Kuroda added. “From up here. Didn’t move. Didn’t assist.”
“It didn’t have anything to do with me,” Mori replied.
“They died anyway.”
Mori’s eyes didn’t shift. “That was their fault.”
Kuroda smiled. “You’re not a hero? I was told Japan had somewhat of a Tamashkii viginte running around and wrecking the ‘military’.”
“No. You must have the wrong guy.”
Kuroda stared at him as if he was looking into his very soul. “You’ve been breaking into old Setai records,” Kuroda said. “Killing agents. Digging for truths no one remembers how to bury.”
He stepped closer.
“If you’re looking for answers… I can give them to you.”
“Unless you’d rather just sit up here and ‘protect things’?”
Mori’s jaw tensed. “I don’t simply ‘protect things’. I do what I need in order to live.”
“Good answer,” Kuroda said. “Because I’m building something. Something that needs protection from the world. And the world from it. Something that needs life.”
He stepped forward, holding out a bck shirt with nothing but buttons.
“History used to call them Devourers. Warriors who knew nothing but violence and death. But I’m reworking that legacy. A rewrite, if you will. I’m calling it the Musabori.”
Mori didn’t take the shirt.
Not yet.
“What’s the purpose?” he asked.
Kuroda’s grin sharpened.
“To decide who gets to inherit the heavens.”
?
The Ghost in White
He had been waiting.
Kuroda said the Ju Setai wouldn’t try anything bold yet—not until they understood the power of the cores.
But Mori knew better.
They weren’t waiting. They were desperate.
So when the security lines tripped and the air tightened like a bde about to fall, Mori was already in motion—descending into the lower levels of the Musabori compound, cloak trailing, breath steady.
They came through the east wing.
A full Hoju strike team trying to obtain Kuroda’s work.
And at the front, Akira Aozora.
He didn’t need a name tag. Mori had read many files. And the presence—smooth, sharp, humming with precision—made it obvious.
He was their strongest card. The former ‘Sound Hero’.
So Mori did what shields were built to do. He did what vilins are born to do.
He stopped him.
The battle didn’t st long.
It should have.
Akira moved like a storm—Form activated in a whisper, drum pulses rippling through the corridors. Raikou. Even in close quarters, he almost disarmed Mori in the opening exchange.
Almost.
But that’s the thing about storms.
They burn fast. Pass by quick.
And Mori never burned.
The building exploded. The Setai made it out. All dead except one Akira helped getaway.
But Akira and Mori?
They lived. Mori dragged Akira, yelling, bleeding, into the Trial Chamber—the underground arena used to test subjects and break defectors. The same one Yumi would someday face.
The chamber wasn’t empty.
It never was—not when Mori walked in dragging someone that important.
Eyes lined the upper rim of the trial arena—agents, officers, enforcers.
All of them loud. All of them hungry.
“He brought a Hoju!”
“White shirt—look at that core!”
“He really dragged one in alive?”
Mori didn’t speak.
He tossed the boy forward like he was nothing—just meat for the grind.
But inside, he was watching. Studying.
Akira was already climbing back to his feet, breath sharp, knees shaking.
The crowd jeered. Mori just waited.
And then—
Drums.
The first beat cracked the walls. Tamashkii shimmered in the air.
Akira surged forward—pure instinct, speed, defiance.
He didn’t look like a soldier.
He looked like something the world wasn’t ready for.
And that’s when Mori moved.
Not to kill.
Just to stop.
Because the boy wouldn’t stop. Not until something broke. Not until he lost something.
So Mori chose the arm.
Blood hit the arena floor in a clean arc.
Akira dropped, gasping, Form sputtering, body trembling.
The crowd exploded. Cheers. Laughter. Some even called for the kill.
Mori turned his back.
Let them think it was done.
Later that night, after the arena emptied, Mori returned.
He stood in the silence, staring at the unconscious boy in a pool of red and dimmed silver light.
He should’ve finished it.
Kuroda would’ve expected that.
But he didn’t.
Instead, Mori lifted him.
Carried him out through a corridor none of the others had clearance to access.
He dropped him somewhere off the grid.
Left a faint trail leading away. Just enough for survival. Not enough for a trail back.
And walked away without a word.
That night, Kuroda named the new unit.
The Musabori Elites.
And Mori—their leader.
Their shield.
Their silence.
The Unbreakable One.
?
The Weeping Fme
It was te when he saw her.
The arena was empty. The floors had been wiped clean, but the blood was still in the air—clinging to the walls, to the silence.
Mori had returned, walking the corridors like he always did after a kill. Alone. Without purpose. Without pride.
He didn’t expect anyone to be there.
But tucked into the corner of the observation deck, hidden beneath the shadow of a broken column—
—A little girl was crying.
She didn’t notice him at first.
She sat cross-legged, clutching something in her hands. A ribbon? A charm? Her hands were shaking.
She was muttering under her breath.
“I’m sorry… I’m sorry…”
Mori watched from the dark.
She wasn’t injured. She wasn’t restrained. Just shattered in a way even he couldn’t diagnose.
It took him a moment to remember the name.
She was one of the test kids. Yumi Takahashi.
Part of the batch that made it through the reverb trials. Strong resonance. Stable enough to train.
But he hadn’t looked at her.
Not really.
Then he remembered something Akira had said to him mid battle. After the explosion, they were both wounded. Akira, even more so. But he still wouldn’t give up. He wouldn’t stop. And when Mori had asked him why, all he said was:
“The strong protect the future. That’s all we’ve ever fought for.”
At the time, Mori dismissed it as idealism.
But now, watching Yumi—barely thirteen, rocking back and forth like she was trying to hold her soul together—
He realized something:
She hadn’t broken yet.
Which meant she could still be shaped.
He stepped into the light.
Yumi flinched, trying to wipe her eyes before turning.
When she saw who it was—she froze.
Not from fear. From confusion.
“Why… are you here?” she asked.
Mori crouched down beside her.
He didn’t answer right away.
Instead, he looked out through the observation window, down into the same chamber where he’d maimed a Hoju hours earlier.
“I’m not good with names,” he said finally. “But I know yours. I know your file. I know what they expect from you.”
Yumi looked away.
Mori continued.
“But none of that matters. Because from now on… I’ll be the one who decides what you become.”
That was the day she stopped being an experiment.
And started becoming his legacy.
?
Musabori – Recon Site #12 – Late Evening
The compound was supposed to be abandoned.
It wasn’t.
Eight rogue Musabori defectors still held the pce—holed up, desperate, wielding Tamashkii that cracked the walls whenever they screamed.
Mori stood on a scaffold above, arms folded behind his back, watching.
He hadn’t brought a team.
He’d only brought her.
Yumi Takahashi.
Fifteen now. Taller. Sharper. The fire in her Tamashkii no longer flickered—it focused. Her core had unleashed her form, Kiyohime.
And she was already starting to understand it.
He watched as she dropped from the roof without hesitation, nding in a crouch that barely stirred the dust.
The first defector lunged.
Yumi’s sai moved once.
Clean. Efficient. No wasted breath.
She ducked a counter-bst without looking. Pnted her foot. Slid under the second defector’s attack—and severed his core strand with a single upward cut.
As for the rest…..
It was over in eight seconds.
She stood in the center of the compound, breathing quietly, her sai at rest.
Not shaking.
Not smiling.
Just… ready.
Mori watched from above, unseen.
There were battles you fought to survive.
And battles you fought because someone made you believe you could win.
He knew which kind this was.
He closed his eyes for a long moment.
Even if I fall, he thought, she won’t.
Then he turned, letting the shadows swallow him, and left her to walk back alone.
?
Heaven Between Breaths
He hadn’t been sleeping well.
Not since the Akira incident. Not since he spared the boy and lied to Kuroda’s face. Not since he started watching Yumi train in silence, like she carried a fme she didn’t know how to use.
He would sit on the edge of his bunk at night, stare at the Tamashkii core dangling from his bracelet, and just… breathe.
Trying to feel something.
Trying to remember what he was protecting.
And then one night, it happened.
He didn’t just see it—he felt it.
A pulse.
A beat that didn’t belong to this world. It started in his spine, climbed to his throat, then spilled out through his core in a silent fre of resonance.
The core on his bracelet glowed—not red. Not blue.
White.
The room folded.
Light became texture. Sound became color. His breath slowed as the world cracked open—and the air around him shimmered like a thread being plucked from the veil itself.
Then—
Silence.
And Mori stood in a pce no one had ever described to him.
Because they couldn’t.
Because no one who had been there ever returned with the same words.
He was in the Chūkan Yūrei.
And it was beautiful.
The ground didn’t exist—it was a floating yer of memory, stitched together by glowing brushstrokes that moved when you blinked.
The air was weightless but dense, like walking through emotion made solid.
Ten gates stood in a perfect circle above him—each pulsing with a different kind of silence.
And in the center…
A tree.
Blooming. Still. With leaves made of crystal and wind.
Mori didn’t move for a long time.
He didn’t need to.
Everything he had ever wanted to understand was here.
Everything he had thought mattered felt smaller now.
The war. The Setai. The Musabori. Even Kuroda.
Eventually, the light overwhelmed him.
He colpsed.
And when he woke up, he was back in his room.
No scorch marks. No signal alerts.
Just the faint glow of his core…
…and the ripple in the air as a man in a dark hakama like robe stepped through. The robe beared the kanji for Ten on its back.
The ripple closed behind him.
Mori sat upright, still groggy, his pulse echoing in pces that weren’t physical.
The man who stepped forward looked human. But only barely.
Tall. Pale. Long bck hair that went down to his waist like woven silk, not a strand out of pce. Eyes that didn’t blink—just watched. His voice came before his lips moved.
“Mori. You saw it.”
Not a question.
Mori didn’t answer. His core was still humming faintly on his wrists.
The man stepped into the light.
Ayase.
The name came unspoken—lodged into Mori’s mind like it had always been there.
“That pce… it was marvelous,” Mori said finally. “What was that—”
“The Chūkan Yūrei.” Ayase nodded. “And it’s waiting.”
Mori stood.
He wasn’t afraid.
He was curious.
“Why me?” Mori asked.
Ayase stepped forward, the ripple behind him gone now, like it had never existed.
“Because you resonated without guidance. Because you stepped into the sacred without being called—and survived it.”
He looked at Mori’s Tamashkii core, still glowing faintly beside the bed. He gave a slight disgusted look but Mori paid it no mind.
“You’ve seen the truth. Kuroda never will.”
Mori’s expression didn’t change.
“He studies the soul. Experiments with it. We carry it. You carry it,” Ayase continued. “And yet… he wants the power you already hold. He’ll keep building until the world burns.”
“You want me to stop him?”
“I want you to surpass him.”
Then he spoke of the elders.
Of the ten voices that banced realms unseen.
Of a pce among them.
“And what does that look like?”
Ayase’s voice didn’t rise—but it felt like a whisper inside the skull.
“A pce in the center. Among the Ten. Not a weapon. A gate.”
“An elder?”
Ayase nodded.
“If you protect the veil, it will remember you.”
Mori didn’t answer right away.
But inside, he had already made the choice.
He would reach the Chūkan again.
Not as a visitor.
But as someone who belonged there.
And if Ayase wanted bance?
Mori would bring it.
But on his terms.
With his people.
With his country.
?
The Contingency
The Musabori war room was dim, lit only by the central feed and the low pulse of ambient Tamashkii humming from the walls.
Mori stood at the head of the table, gloved fingers resting on the edge. He hadn’t spoken yet.
Around him, the Musabori Elites waited.
Yasuke, leaning on the far wall, smoke curling around his wrist like it answered only to him.
Tenzan, arms folded, eyes half-lidded like he was trying not to break the table with his thoughts.
Katsuro, pacing. Restless. His knuckle-bdes extended, retracted, extended again.
Raigo, massive and unmoving in the corner, head low like a beast half-asleep.
Jin, seated backwards in a chair, grinning slightly to himself as he flipped a coin with Tamashkii threads.
And Shigure, silent, sharpening one of his six bdes even though it was already clean.
None of them spoke.
They didn’t need to.
Not until Mori did.
He raised one hand.
The dispy shifted.
Footage pyed: a bck shadow darting across rooftops, his body folding into the dark like he belonged to it.
Ryuko.
Yasuke stepped forward.
“He’s getting stronger.”
Mori didn’t blink.
“He doesn’t follow rhythm. Doesn’t move like any of us.”
Yasuke nodded. “I’ve tried to track his steps. Can’t. Every time I think I’ve figured out what he’ll do, he does the opposite. It’s like watching someone fight their own reflection.”
Shigure scoffed. “He’s unstable. I don’t care how talented he is, if I can’t predict him, I don’t want him behind me in a fight.”
Tenzan muttered, “He moves like a shadow. Even I lose track of him sometimes.”
Jin flipped his coin and caught it mid-air. “Or maybe he’s just smarter than all of us.”
Raigo growled softly. “I don’t trust ghosts. I like enemies I can punch.”
Katsuro didn’t say anything.
He just looked at Ryuko’s image—and smiled.
Mori watched the feed. Ryuko shifted through the dark—silent, precise, unreadable.
Mori’s voice cut through the tension.
“Can any of you control him?”
A pause.
Then Yasuke, again: “No.”
Mori nodded.
“Then we use him.”
They turned to him.
Yasuke frowned. “How?”
Mori’s gaze didn’t shift from the screen.
“Send him to the Setai.”
Katsuro’s eyes widened, “You’re joking.”
Mori didn’t hesitate, “Tell him it’s recon. Let him believe he’s feeding us intel. But in reality…”
He trailed off, letting the silence expin the rest.
Yasuke crossed his arms tighter. “You’re saying we send our wildest card to the enemy? Hope he doesn’t flip?”
Mori’s voice stayed level.
“If he flips, it’ll be the Setai’s problem. A beast’s prey is prone to proximity.”
Raigo interjected, “Then why not kill him?”
Mori paused for a beat. Then he spoke, “Because he’s useful. He frightens you?”
Yasuke hesitated. “Yeah. He does.”
Mori turned from the dispy.
“Then we don’t leave him on the board.”
“We move him.”
No one questioned it.
Not because they agreed.
But because they knew better.
When Mori gave orders, the room shifted around them. The best thing to do was to just shake your head and get the job done.
?
The Message
Begin Pyback – FILE: SHIELD_3.47.Y
[A VIOLENT BOOM. As if an explosion just went off. AUDIO – STATIC,THEN SETTLES]
MORI:
“I don’t know if this will reach you. If it does… I hope you’ve already forgotten me.”
A pause. The hum of helicopter bdes fades in, soft and distant.
MORI:
“You always reminded me of the spring we never had. A blossom buried under ash. I knew even back then—you’d either destroy the world or save it.”
Another beat. A breath.
MORI:
“I don’t know if my way was ever the right one. Kuroda wants to flood the world with the cores—open the floodgates and force the world to resonate, or break trying.
I only want it for Japan. A return to the origin. A cleansing, not a crusade.”
He sighs, just once.
MORI:
“But maybe we’re both fools—men reaching for godhood under the guise of purpose.
Maybe none of it will matter.
But a shield doesn’t bend for what might matter.
A shield stands where it must.
And if Japan has any right to the Chūkan… then I will make sure they see it.”
A low, bitter chuckle.
MORI:
“Even my own bde couldn’t decide — half fme, half frost. Just like me — split between two futures I could never fully hold.”
MORI:
“Funny, isn’t it? I never saw myself as a hero. I wasn’t like Ancient. He believed in light. I only believed in control.”
A gust of wind. The sound of boots on concrete.
MORI:
“But you… you weren’t built for control. You were built to choose. And I’ve seen you’ve chosen this Watari boy… And maybe—”
Another voice cuts through faintly—indistinct, approaching.
MORI (quieter now):
“…maybe that’s what a shield is for.
Not to stand forever.
But just long enough to let someone else pass through.
Or let someone hold that shield up with them…”
A long silence.
Then—
KURODA:
“I expected better from you, Mori.”
The file ends. There’s no goodbye. No resolution.
Only the sound of the wind…
…as the Unbreakable Shield turns around and steps into the night.
?
End of The Unbreakable Shield
