Hinata Haibara's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

Hinata arrived at the evacuation perimeter on foot, her breath still sharp from the run. The stranger had followed her the entire way from the arctic crater, silent except for the rhythm of their footsteps behind her. The perimeter was marked by shipping containers stacked three high, forming a wall between the downtown chaos and the rest of the city. The stranger walked past her without a word, heading straight for a pole-mounted set of binoculars positioned at the barrier's edge. They adjusted the lenses with practiced precision, then stepped back. "Look," they said. Hinata pressed her eyes to the metal and the creature came into focus six blocks away. It moved on too many legs, its body shifting and reforming as it crawled between buildings. The stranger pulled a notebook from their coat and flipped it open, pages covered in sketches and timestamps. "It doesn't multiply randomly," they said, tapping a diagram. "Only when struck with dispersed energy. Blunt force, fire, electrical attacks—anything that spreads across its surface triggers the split. But a single point of impact, concentrated enough, goes straight through without activating the response." Hinata's hands went cold. They'd been studying it. Counting its divisions the same way they'd counted her blasts. The stranger closed the notebook and met her eyes. "Your magic fires without warning. You said so yourself three days ago when you put a hole through that apartment building. If you miss the center mass by even a meter, you'll hit it dispersed and turn one creature into twenty." The truth settled in her chest like ice. They weren't here to help. They were here to see if she'd fail again, and this time the whole city would watch.