Yurui The Cursed One

At four in the morning, Miracle Inc. security force HQ hallways belonged to people like Captain Uden.

The endless corridors were empty enough that every strike of her boots against the polished floor carried well ahead of her, bounced from the walls, and returned a fraction of a second later. During the day, these same halls crawled with officers, researchers, clerks, executives, and whatever other species of overpaid parasite the corporation had managed to invent a position for. Now there was nobody around to obstruct the undeniably impressive view of the luxurious interior.

Uden slowed as she passed beneath one of the enormous windows overlooking Miracle City.

Moonlight spilled across pale stone and dark glass, glinting off the silver trim lining the walls. Even after all these years, she still found herself looking into the distance, as if longing for something. Somebody had spent an obscene amount of money making the headquarters beautiful. For a rare moment of peace, Uden could appreciate the results of all that lavish spending without having to wonder how many poor souls got extinguished just so that some suit could put on a bunch of overly fancy decorations on the wall.

Her reflection followed her across the glass.

Deep silver colored hair fell almost to her waist, painstakingly brushed before she'd left her quarters yesterday morning. Medals and insignia decorated the breast of her dark purple jacket, each one sitting perfectly aligned in even rows. The uniform had been tailored for her personally.

Even her boots were custom-made for her by a team of professional shoemakers. Working for a mega corporation certainly had its perks.

A funny thought, considering that by seventeen Uden had already managed to fuck her life almost beyond repair. She had been born poor, certainly, but never destitute. There had always been food on the table, a roof over her head, and enough to get by. What there hadn't been was money for much beyond that, and Uden had never been particularly good at accepting that some things weren't meant for people like her.

So she took the matters into her own hands. Whatever she couldn’t afford, Uden took by her own power. At some point, she wasn’t even going after things she needed or wanted, she simply started going after things that were out of her reach just for the heck of it.

If I can’t afford it, I’ll take it.

That was her motto, her way of life. The only principle she ever adhered to

Even back then she knew that she couldn't keep living that way forever, but knowing something and acting on it were entirely different matters. There had been a freedom in those years that she still remembered fondly—the thrill of doing whatever she pleased, taking whatever she wanted and trusting herself to deal with the consequences afterward.

Eventually, though, the consequences had caught up with her.

The little freedom she had managed to carve out for herself was stripped away, and the future ahead of her narrowed into a handful of increasingly unpleasant possibilities. Then, just when she had started running out of hope, Miracle Inc. offered her a way out and back into the limelight.

An agent position at Miracle Inc.'s security forces.

Now, Uden was used to calling Miracle Inc. operatives various slurs on a daily basis, and they certainly weren't her favorite kind of people. On top of that, given her past, the offer came with various conditions and limitations, and yet Uden hadn't been in any position to complain. Whatever restrictions they placed on her, they were still offering something nobody else was willing to give her anymore: a way out.

So she took it.

To her own surprise, Uden had never regretted the course her life had taken. If anything, she had embraced it wholeheartedly. Miracle Inc. had given her money, status, comfort, and opportunities she never could have imagined having before. And yet, every so often, she would find herself standing by a window and reminiscing about those wilder years, full of wistful fondness as she looked at the cityscape outside.

She didn’t miss the poverty or the mundane life that filled the hours between her little adventures, but some feral part of her still longed for the hunt.

There had been something intoxicating about moving through the world with nothing to lose, taking what she wanted and trusting herself to outrun whatever came chasing afterward. Miracle Inc. had given her almost everything she'd once wanted, but as it turns out, some instincts were harder to bury than others.

Caged or not, a tiger was still a tiger. You could give a predator warmth, food, and every comfort in the world it could ever need, but sooner or later, some part of it would still long for the hunt.

Her gaze lingered on her own reflection for another moment before she resumed her walk. There were executive officers above her, directors above them, and ultimately one chair at the head of the entire corporation. Whether she ever reached that final chair hardly mattered yet. The important thing was that there was always yet another goal to chase, another floor climb.

And climb she would, until somebody finally stopped her from going any higher. When that day came, she promised herself she would be satisfied with how far she had made it instead of immediately searching for some way to break through the ceiling. She would take it as a sign to slow down, step back, and finally enjoy the fruits of her labor. After all, she had never really had the chance to enjoy the finer things in life.

Uden had, in fact, reached that ceiling once already. It happened when Maevis was promoted to director.

From that point onward, Uden understood there was only so far she could climb through competence alone. Physically, she might have surpassed Maevis years ago, but that hardly mattered. Strength was only one kind of value, and no matter how powerful Uden became, she doubted she could ever make herself half as useful to Miracle Inc. as that woman was.

In a strange way, realizing that had been liberating. For the first time since joining the corporation, there was no obvious next rung demanding her attention. She could stop watching every promotion, stop calculating who needed impressing, and simply concentrate on running her squad.

Mostly. Every now and then, the same thought returned to her head.

If only Maevis weren't there.

If only…

Strangely enough, Uden never resented her. Their relationship had always been perfectly amicable, and Uden respected the woman far too much for something as petty as that to ruin her impression of her. The issue was what the director's position represented, rather than the woman herself.

Directors effectively maintained their own little courts within the executive board, and Maevis already had hers fully formed. There was no realistic chance she would make room for Uden, while the other directors had long since filled their own circles with executives loyal to them. Under different circumstances, Uden liked to think she would have earned a seat years ago. Instead, she had found herself trapped beneath a layer of corporate bureaucracy where vacancies were painfully rare and opportunities to move higher were rarer still.

And that made perfect sense. Why would anyone give up a position like that? Executives were paid better, worked safer jobs, and could leave the dangerous fieldwork to people beneath them. A seat only opened when someone retired, moved higher, or died, which meant that no matter how much one distinguished themselves, the path upward was completely clogged.

Eventually, she'd been forced to swallow the bitter truth, so she had learned to live with it. There was little point poisoning herself with resentment over something she couldn't change, especially when captain of a Miracle Inc. Security squad was hardly a consolation prize. Most people would have killed their parents to get a shot at her place. All Uden had to do was convince herself that she was satisfied with where she was and what she had.

Not that any of that mattered anymore. Things had changed. Maevis was gone, and for the first time in years, several positions above Uden had opened up at once.

She wasn't greedy enough to set her sights on Maevis's former position. Director was still well beyond her reach, and she knew it. A seat on the executive board, however, was another matter entirely.

That she could take without too much trouble.

It was almost embarrassing how quickly the old restlessness came back.

She had missed this. The planning, the waiting, the quiet certainty that there was something ahead of her worth reaching for. It wasn't quite the same kind of hunt she'd known when she was younger, but the feeling was close enough to wake that old part of her again.

The thought stayed with Uden as she continued down the corridor, until the time on a display beside one of the doors caught her eye and dragged her attention back to the morning ahead.

4:17.

In less than four hours, most of the Ninth would be standing in her office.

She had known the confrontation was coming before she left headquarters. The squad had been growing steadily more hostile toward Alysa for months, and as much as she tried to soothe it over, the things were finally reaching the boiling point. And Uden was well aware that there would be no soothing things over this time. The squad was dead set on getting rid of Alysa, no matter what it took. Some of them were even willing to resign over it, which irritated Uden more than she cared to admit. Such tantrums were entirely unwarranted, and to risk positions they had worked so hard to earn at Miracle Inc. over something like this bordered on absurd.

It was almost enough to make her blood boil, but Uden knew better than to let her emotions take over. Emotions didn't win wars. Cold, calculated planning did, and that was a lesson she had learned the hard way. Despite the common misconception that she was little more than a brute because of the nature of her powers, years of experience had made Uden far more cunning and calculating than most people gave her credit for.

She had taken a few days off for precisely that reason: to come up with a proper plan of action before the situation spiraled any further. The goal was simple enough—to put an end to the rebellion before it could do any lasting damage.

Whatever happened, Uden intended to come out on top.

Removing Alysa was never going to be part of the consideration. Not now, and certainly not with several executive positions suddenly open. Alysa had become far too important for what Uden intended to do next.

Uden rubbed at the dull pressure building behind one eye and kept walking. She was exhausted, several days behind on work, and by eight in the morning, half her squad would be standing in front of her demanding Alysa’s head.

Well, they could demand all they wanted, but if they thought a threat of resignation was enough to make Captain Uden bend down, they were in for a rude awakening. She wasn’t one to be trifled with, and it would appear that the world was overdue for another reminder of what happened to people who dared to cross her path.