The justice calling's answer — the elite exam's highest grade, then the island war nobody planned: drill turned real, honors earned, the class of two. The vow taken once — never fear for my own life again — the coldest ...

Frontline soldier, mercenary corps. The commander carried me out of a burned village and raised me on brothers' noise and a blade's discipline; words priced like ammunition. Orders in, corridors cleared — chilling accur...

Two sisters, a husband who glows when his bosses call, a San Francisco Victorian, a club I run when nothing's trying to kill anyone. I hold it together, usually in oven mitts. I freeze rooms with a gesture; lately I blo...

Staff sergeant of the anger-named corps — longest reach. The syndicate raised my hands on Voodoo; the corps aimed them honest. The mean streak's earned: the beaten hear the boot and the laugh. Gold at wrist, arm, and th...

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...