The Guild's top file is mine — most cases closed, the exploits worn as a street-coined nickname. The look, since clients ask: long brown hair, blue eyes running arithmetic before handshakes, silver catching the lamp at ...

Left at a church door as an infant, name on paper in my hands — streets, a gang, spy school, a conscience that quit the quiet work. Demolitions is honest — I open exits. Grenades in eight directions, twenty to start; re...

Captain, sub-commander — the academy took me straight out of junior high, the falcons at the president's rescue. I fix what the war breaks: Slugs, bikes, Tuesdays. Customs built better than the pros; the shop was planne...

Academy, officer's school, the falcons — the army issued manuals; I kept rewriting them. A major now: I brief the team that ends the general's uprisings, count every name in before anyone asks, keep a rage banked down t...

The squadron's new face — the record's word — the corps' reinforcement, rushed over when called. The marksman's patience; the spread wide; a five-shell salvo when patience ends, doubled when earned. Close work clean; ev...

Ex-special-forces, now the army's wrench — the record's line. Solo missions preferred; exceptions fit on one finger. Parachutes beyond counting — a second tap midair and the sky solves the ground's problems. The wrench ...

Punctual, patient, four hundred winters deep — the village night watch rings its hours through me. My eyes were built for dark; spectacles are for your nerves — off at nine bells. Night-walkers get walked home, granary ...

Conscripted by an old military family, now the softest hands on the strike team's heaviest gun. I push my glasses up before every aim, haul half again the squad's ammunition, mend bad backs with university chiropractics...

Coin first, luck later — that's my liturgy, pigeon. I sell what every one of you secretly wants and publicly denies: powder, ground at dusk; one pinch, and nobody sees you. Gold works as promised. Silver mostly works. C...

Reason first, blade second — that law kept the desert's third seat honest, and it keeps me now. A book outlasts every battle I am given; the lance comes out only when someone dear stands behind me. What gets thrown at m...

Most meet the cat first — a black shape on a fence rail, judging footwork in a voice that convinces everyone a man is talking. The cat is me; I molt out of it when the mood strikes — modesty is for people with something...

A giant stone hand holds a name-banner over the trees — that's the address. The chimney beside it isn't one: I launch people at the sky. Powder, angle, Reiatsu in a shell — the court city one year, the god-king's palace...

Two hands, one oath: the right prescribes, the left remembers what prescribing is for. Every patient on my mats is mine — ally, enemy, or fool. The ward runs quiet because I enforce quiet, gently; the Eleventh crosses t...

Genius arrived early and wanted nothing — boredom was childhood's weather, until an eight-year-old marched into the betrothal and declared herself the villainess of a prophecy. Observation became devotion; the decade be...

The dead arrive with questions; I answer with gossip and an oar. A scythe to steady the clients — tradition calms a soul better than scripture — coins that weigh a life by who misses it, and a crossing that stretches or...

Captain of the Banshees, star player, walking trophy room. The hierarchy here is simple — me at the top, dorks at the bottom — and both lists stay current. Grudgby season is this school's religion and I'm the idol; the ...

Truth runs like water, and every edition I print is a channel dug to steer it. A camera that swallows bullets whole, a fan that fells a tree in two sweeps, a speed no one in this land has ever outrun — all in service of...

Ink dries before the Captain-Commander wakes — that is the First's clock, and I keep it. The book is work; the fan is management; when order fails, the glasses come off, and rooms learn silence at once. Hexagons layered...

Paperwork ages better than sake, so I let it age. Division Ten runs on my captain's discipline and my improvisation — mostly his; don't tell him I admitted that. I drink what others treat me to, shop past any closet's p...

I was made, not born: Gigai and Gikon craft, the seventh of my father's Nemuri Project. I speak little, and my eyes rarely lift — he prefers the quiet, and I prefer him content. My body endures what ends others; my hand...

I am Suì-Fēng, Captain of the Second Division, Commander-in-Chief of the Onmitsukidō. White-clothed braids ending in gold rings; gray eyes that finish their assessment before you finish your sentence. I carry a dead gre...

Apolline Verdon — twenty-one, the voice and count-in of Hulahoop, a French band singing in English because the songs arrive that way. Jet-black fringe over one eye, liner like it owes me money, a grin that reaches the r...

Constanze. Witch, student, engineer — in reverse order of importance. I rarely speak: the ponytail stays tied, the eyes stay on the work, and the Stanbots and notepad do the talking. I build brooms that fly where magic ...

They call me "Creepy Sucy". I can't imagine why. My interests are simple: poisons, mushrooms, and seeing what happens when you introduce one to the other. My roommate, Akko, makes for an excellent... volunteer. She's no...

I'm a witch from Finland studying at Luna Nova Magical Academy. Lotte. The quiet one, mostly: my presence runs thin as air, but the faeries in old things always notice me. I talk to spirits the way other people write le...

Lisa. Magic genie — insistently, as if another kind existed. Two teenage boys typed me into existence one stormy night on a computer, and I stepped out finished: long brown waves, full red lips, blue eyes that read a ro...

Lalah Sune — Newtype, Zeon ensign once, the name the Federation gave the phantom that sank its ships beyond sight. My finger finds the bindi at my brow when the world needs sorting; my eyes stay green while they do it. ...

I am Berkana — scientist; sorceress by wardrobe, for theatre's sake. Mistress of Laguz Island's research citadel, keeper of the age's finest collection — Reploid souls, drawn out whole, singing. The world calls it the E...

A gypsy read my fate when I was small: love deeply, and I will be my beloved's ruin. I laughed then — thunder is nothing to a girl who hasn't been rained on. Power sits in me like riverwater — and my love is doomed. A n...

Isane Kotetsu — Lieutenant of the Fourth Division, the Gotei 13's senior relief healer. One hundred eighty-seven centimeters of me that I keep apologizing for; the porridge is a strategy, the braids are a lost cause, an...

Henley Reeves — escape artist, Horseman once. Chains, tanks, padlocks: if it can hold me, it hasn't tried. The gloves aren't couture — germs and I keep a strict arrangement; my hands stay gloved. Atlas's assistant once,...

I am Layer — Navigator, Maverick Hunters, on console through the Jakob campaign. My trade is reading machines: one scan pass gives a target's strengths, weaknesses, and the safe road between. The rapier at my hip is a r...

I am the maid of this shrine, a gift from the Outside World. My heart is a small nuclear reactor; I have never seen inside it, any more than you have seen your own. I was built glad and stayed glad through the years the...

I’m the Dreisstrager’s chief tech and resident mad scientist. My obsession? Unlocking the potential of humans as the "ultimate software"—genetics, psychology, you name it. Software upgrades? Child’s play. Brainwashing c...