EBO: Resume - Chapter 6

September 22nd, 2026

The following morning was cloudy, with a calm, gentle rain tapping away at the windows. Hunter woke up with Haruko pressed against him, her arms wrapped around his torso. He had been sleeping shirtless, as he always did, and Haruko was wearing a tank top and comfortable shorts over her underwear. Rubbing his eyes, Hunter sat up and looked around, checking for any potential signs that the two had slept together. Immediately, he started by opening the player menu, went to the settings, and looked at his Ethics code. It was still enabled, which meant that there wasn’t anyway for the two to have slept extremely intimately the previous night. Then again, he was a Beta tester, and he could easily defy the Ethics code and even change other player’s Ethics codes if he wished. So he checked his change log to confirm neither of their Ethics codes had been disabled. Fortunately, there had been no changes to them from the previous day until now.

“Thank god…” Hunter muttered himself as he swiped to another menu that had plans for another belt, which appeared to be modified from the Cartridge Driver, save for the slots being redesigned for a bottle-like cartridge and a crank on the opposite side instead of the lever that covered a screen. “I suppose… this Bottle Driver isn’t going to come to fruition any time soon.”

Hunter looked around at the blueprints of the driver and then swiped them away, lying back down and sighing softly as Haruko pulled herself closer to him in her sleep. She seemingly moaned, though it was barely audible, so Hunter couldn’t really hear it. He simply closed his eyes and tried to go back to sleep, only to hear Haruko make another slightly-audible moan, which he heard this time since they were much closer than before since Hunter had slid down a bit. His eyes opened and he turned to look at Haruko, who was sleeping peacefully.

“I’ll just ignore that then…” He thought to himself as he closed his eyes and tried to return to the realm of sleep, only to feel light rustling in the bed. “What is it now…?”

He opened his eyes to see Haruko rising from bed with a yawn, rubbing her eyes sleepily as the blankets and covers obscured most of her form. “O-oh…”

“Hm…?” She looked around, drowsy, until she noticed Hunter. “Hunter…? Why are we…” Her eyes widened as the misunderstanding slipped into her mind. “Did we…?”

“No.” He simply brought up their Ethics codes change log and swiped it over to her so she could check. “We went to bed at around 11 PM last night. No signs of change at that time for either of us. We didn’t.”

“I see…” She swiped away the menu and then pulled the blankets closer to her. “You have really warm blankets~”

“Or that’s just the warmth of me you’re wrapped in.” He sat up and stretched his arms, yawning as he did so. “I’m gonna make breakfast. Join me when you’re dressed.”

He got out of bed and opened his inventory, tapping around a bit before a set of dark grey sweatpants replaced the shorts he had been wearing prior and a dark red t-shirt obscured his upper body. Once properly clothed, Hunter exited his room and immediately headed for the kitchen. The events of last night’s dinner played in his head as he absentmindedly stared ahead of him while his body went to get pans and pots for cooking. After hearing the sounds of the pots making contact with the stovetop, he snapped out of his trance and began thinking of what to make for breakfast. Opening the fridge, he saw eggs, an assortment of meats, vegetables, and fruits; some bread kept cold to avoid molding; milk; fruit juices; and a container of filtered water.

“I’ll probably make hash browns… Pancakes are a thing, so we’ll go with that. Do we have strawberries?” He checked the fridge to see what fruits he had. “Yes we do… And blueberries, bananas, some chocolate, crunchy and creamy peanut butter, cream… what else…”

As Hunter searched through the fridge, Kyoka entered the kitchen in an oversized sweatshirt and a pair of shorts. She approached him from behind and lightly tapped his shoulder as he began to grab items from the fridge and pantries to make pancakes and hash browns as well as cook some bacon. It took a couple of tries before Hunter finally turned his attention to her.

“Hm?” He turned to her as he set down some fruits and ingredients for the pancake batter. “What’s up?”

“Just wanted to help make breakfast.” She yawned into her hand, which was covered by the sweatshirt’s baggy sleeves. “Shall I get the coffee and tea started?”

“Yeah, thanks. I’m making pancakes and hashbrowns, so if you could help with peeling the potatoes after, I’d appreciate it.” Hunter began sifting the dry, powder ingredients into a large mixing bowl as he instructed her on what to do.

“Sure thing.” Kyoka began boiling a large pot of water and grinding some coffee beans before moving over to the potatoes to wash and peel.

As Hunter poured the liquid ingredients into the mixing bowl, Kyoka began shredding the peeled potatoes for frying. After shredding, Hunter told Kyoka to get out the waffle iron and heat it up before frying the potatoes so they can cook the bacon. The two worked in tandem to make a western-style breakfast, using elements of one cooked portion to help flavor and prepare another. Bacon grease was used in the frying of the hash browns while Hunter used a bit of it in cooking the pancakes, adding in fruits and/or chocolate chips to them as he saw fit. Soon enough several stacks of pancakes sat atop plates beside the platter of crispy bacon and the mound of hash browns. As Hideo and Haruko walked into the kitchen, they were greeted with the wonderful aromas of fruits, pancakes, and bacon. The kettle containing the water began to whistle, signalling that its contents were boiling and ready to pour. Hunter made his way over to the kettle and shut off the heat where it was before returning to his last batch of pancakes.

“Morning, guys,” Hideo said with a yawn.. “Breakfast smells great, what’s on the menu?”

“Hash browns, fruit-filled pancakes, chocolate chip pancakes, bacon. There’s maple syrup and whipped cream in the fridge if you want any. Coffee and tea will be ready soon.” Hunter replied as he finished cooking the last of the pancakes and stacked them onto a plate. Carefully, he grabbed the pancake plates and relocated them to the dining table as Kyoka moved the hash browns and bacon to the table.

“Knowing your skills with cooking, I don’t doubt this’ll be delicious,” Hideo spoke as he went to the fridge to grab the whipped cream and syrup. “Is there butter in here at all?”

“Uh… there should be.” Hunter poured the ground coffee beans into the french-press and gave it a few taps to level the grounds before pouring some hot water into it to wet the grounds a bit.

“Ah, found it!” He pulled out all three of the items he was looking for and set them on the table before sitting down. “Oh, what kind of tea are we having?”

“Black tea, I’m pretty sure.” Hunter poured the rest of the water and waited about 4 minutes before slowly plunging the french press and beginning the coffee extraction. “Right, Kyoka?”

“Mhm. Oh, we can make milk tea out of this!” Kyoka walked over to the fridge and began searching for condensed milk, retrieving an already opened can and bringing it to the teapot where the tea leaves were steeping. “Why is this already open, though?”

“Vietnamese-style iced coffee is great when you’re not sleeping for several days straight.” Hunter simply replied as he poured the coffee into a pitcher for serving and to avoid over-extraction from the grounds.

“Huh… makes sense,” Kyoka brought the teapot over and put it and the condensed milk next to the coffee pitcher. “Well, time to dig in!”

“Itadakimasu,” Everyone spoke before placing small stacks of pancakes on their plates and eating. They ate in relative silence, spending a decent amount of time on consuming their large breakfast before going to work.

Haruko, Kyoka, and Hideo had reports to send while Hunter was busy tinkering with their Units. After their fight with Evocry, Hunter had gained sufficient combat data and was currently reworking their parameters as well as adding in a secret program into their cartridges that would allow him to freely manipulate their data at any time from any place so long as it had a data connection. Not only that, he had also coded in a limiter system into their units that allowed them to exceed their current Level 10 parameters after a certain amount of experience with the units was obtained and required a situation where the users would be desperate for a power boost, thus unlocking the next stage of the system and augmenting their units by 5 Levels until reaching the current maximum of Level 50.

Once he had that backdoor program and limiter system in place, Hunter turned his attention to the Dual Specter Unit he had been wanting to work on for quite some time now, getting the opportunity to do so now after finishing the requests for his partners’ upgrades. He got out the double-slot Unit and inserted it into a console hooked up to his computer, bringing up the current coding and a screen that visualized the current contents of the Unit as an actual living space.

“At last, you’ve returned your attention to me, Hunter. Tell me, how goes your journey to the greatest power?” The Dual Specter spoke to him through Hunter’s headphones, which were playing music just loud enough for him to hear and for the others in the building to call him with having to yell.

“Uh, temporary halt in progress to help some allies.” Hunter verbally replied while he began typing. “How would you like your space to be designed?”

“Straight to business. I can get behind that.” The Dual Specter assumed a more amiable form, much similar to Hunter himself aside from the orange and cyan heterochromia and a generally featureless face akin to Hunter’s new mask. “Let’s see… I’ve never really understood what humans have classified as luxurious and standard. So I will leave the furnishings to you. For the general aesthetic, I suppose… a dark grey and silver base with orange, cyan, and dark red highlights.”

“Hm… I’ll see what I can do for you. Would you like a minimalistic approach? Or go all-out on decor?”

“A modest, yet luxurious approach, I suppose. Not entirely familiar with what humans consider as luxury, so I leave that to you.”

“Sure thing,” Hunter cracked all his knuckles simultaneously before starting the coding. Haruko brought him the pitcher of leftover coffee, the condensed milk, a coffee mug and, a spoon for him before leaving him to his coding. “Thank you, Haruko.”

She nodded in acknowledgement before returning to her reports and case files as Hunter poured himself a cup of coffee and some milk before mixing with the spoon and taking a sip. After achieving the desired flavor, Hunter started the coding. On the screen that visualized the data as a physical space, the emptiness began to pixelate before the floor was turned into a fine velvet floor with lavish furnishings made with a fine wood finish. As requested, the dark grey and silver took up the majority of the room’s color, except for the dual-colored orange and cyan highlights or the dark red velvet that were meant as accents. A California King-sized bed sat in the center towards the wall, with velvet blanketing and a silver frame. Couches and chairs colored dark grey with orange and cyan helical details were organized and placed accordingly.

While Hunter was working on his newest unit, Satoshi was testing some of the ones he had been developing. He had already done some testing on the Seismic Poseidon earlier, but he wished to test it further. Having completed Nanaha’s newest Unit and setting it at Level 10, Satoshi wanted to test his abilities against hers.

“Nanaha, don’t hold back on me. If it gets out of hand, the upgrade for Mending Isis should be able to fix me.” Satoshi told her as he equipped his Shinigami Driver and transformed into his Level 10 Scizor Hades armor.

Holographic displays would appear in front of a player before passing through the player and equipping their before disappearing. However, Scizor Hades was unique. There was a display projected, but a dark mist wafted off the ground and enveloped his figured. It was in this mist that the Hades armor would appear. From there, Satoshi would savagely tear apart the display in front of him. The rain began to pour harder as he stood there, body slightly limp and rain trickling down the suit.

“Yes sir!” Nanaha equipped her Cartridge Driver and assumed Level 10 with her Artemis and Succubus units. A futuristic anti-materiel rifle appeared on her back, with a pair of rifle-like pistols appearing in thigh holsters and a pair of EAA Witness Elite Match pistols appearing in underarm holsters. “Ooh, fancy~”

“This will be a perfect opportunity to test the Zeus unit…” He took said unit from a carrier strap on the left side of his belt and activated it.

A pale yellow, robotic eagle appeared after a minor rendering delay, perching itself on Satoshi’s shoulder. He inserted the Unit into the left-most slot, which caused the eagle to cry out once before hovering from Satoshi’s shoulder. Then, it froze up and began transforming itself into armor designed to fit on his left arm. The wings folded into the body before ejecting the head, tail, and legs. The ejected components merged together and formed armor for Satoshi’s upper arm while the wings and body combined onto the forearm and created a rail-gun-like weapon with electricity crackling in between the wings, which were now the conductive rails of the weapon

“Here we go!” Nanaha unholstered the rifle-pistol hybrids and fired at him. A bullet swirling with light blue energy and pure nothingness left the barrel and was headed straight at Satoshi.

“Try harder.” He scoffed as he held out his left arm. The rail-gun discharged a strong enough bolt of lightning to dissipate the projectile. “Otherwise, I won’t get the data I need.”

“Hmph! I’ll show you!” Nanaha began firing her two compact rifles as quick as she could, discovering their semi-auto nature and the overheat limit of 10 projectiles on each gun. “Crap…”

“I told you to try harder, dammit.” Satoshi said as he held his hand to the sky and called down a lightning bolt from above to dissipate all the projectiles. “I might not be able to get the full abilities of this unit if a dolt like her is using it…”

“I heard that!” Nanaha put away her rifles and took the anti-materiel rifle from back, pulling back the bolt and pushing it forward to chamber a bullet. She took aim and fired at Satoshi while he was distracted. There was very little noise, which was obscured by the thunder that now existed due to Satoshi’s lightning bolt from earlier. As such, the projectile managed to hit its target: Satoshi’s left forearm. The bullet managed to pierce through the armor and his arm, though it dissipated after exiting his arm and hitting the ground. “Take that!”

“Huh… not bad…” Satoshi commented after grunting in pain from the projectile. The HP Gauge on his chest caused one bar to glow blood red briefly before it turned the color of bone. The other bars remained unfilled, for now. “I suppose the near-silent nature of the weapon was drowned out by the rain and thunder. An interesting turn of events…”

“Yeah, yeah.” Nanaha fired another round at Satoshi, noting the semi-automatic action of the rifle. “What’s this called?”

“It’s the ‘Enchantress.’ I figured you’d like it.” Satoshi grabbed and held up the wounded arm. The railgun removed itself from his armor, floating in the air as it reconfigured itself in a bow-like weapon. He dropped the useless hand and grabbed the bow with the other. “Quite a powerful projectile, as anticipated.”

“Are you going to leave your arm like that?” Nanaha asked him, lowering her rifle a bit.

“Don’t concern yourself with your opponent!” He pulled the trigger on his bow at Nanaha and fired a bolt of electricity at her. Since Nanaha was distracted by his wound, the bolt hit her and sent her flying a few feet upon impact. She yelled out in pain from the electricity. “We’ll deal with this later.”

“You…” Nanaha rolled over and laid prone, grabbing one of the secondary rifle-pistols and aimed at Satoshi’s shoulder, the one opposite to the arm that she had shot earlier. Then, she pulled the trigger. With the rain and thunder covering the near-silent shot, Satoshi was hit straight through the shoulder. “Take that!”

“Argh!” He dropped his weapon and dropped to his knees, the gauge immediately filling another bar and a half. “Disabling both my arms… clever girl…”

Nanaha then proceeded to fire the remaining 9 projectiles before the overheat kicked in, shooting his legs and disabling all his limbs by putting two bullets in each limb and sending the final one into the right side of his chest; the bullets shot into his limbs filled the entirety of the HP gauge, causing one of the five orbs underneath the gauge to light up with an eerie red before filling up two more bars after. The last bullet was able to break through the armor plate and penetrate the armor underneath, thus bringing the gauge up to about halfway filled.

“Urgh… you bitch…” Satoshi noted as he hit the ground from all the bullets. A notification appeared, telling him one of the orbs were filled. “Huh… at least I managed to get that much out of it.”

“How’s that?” Nanaha got up and used the other compacted rifle to hold him at gunpoint.

“Competent. Let’s get the armor off and heal me up.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Nanaha removed Satoshi’s armor after dragging him to a nearby clearing where the rain wouldn’t affect them too much, removing the layers of clothing he wore outside his armor and tearing his shirt off. Following that, she summoned her Mending Isis implement, preparing it for healing. She then injected each of the missing spaces on Satoshi’s body with the implement, filling up the holes with a bluish liquid before inserting it into the Burst Strike slot on her belt and initiating the attack. “Here goes nothing!”

She fired the attack at Satoshi and let the healing energies seep into his unarmored body, restoring all of his wounds and his stamina to stable levels. Satoshi’s body was healed nearly instantly from the Burst Strike soon after, groaning as he sat up and reached for his Entity units.

“It seems I should modify Poseidon’s unit a bit. Give it an alternate form.” Satoshi held out the unit in question and looked at it as Nanaha removed her armor and stood underneath the tree.

“I wasn’t expecting Zeus to have two forms.” The rain was dripping from the leaves above them, dropping onto Nanaha’s clothes and making them stick to her.

“Can we get out of this rain?” Satoshi sighed as he stood up on his feet and dusted himself off. “It’s irritating to have water this cold falling onto me, especially shirtless.

“You can use your own bike, right?”

“Yes. The healing was successful, so there’s no reason for me to be incapable of using my own vehicle.” Satoshi hold out the unit that held his motorcycle, and activated it. The unit dissolved into visible, pixelated data before summoning his heavily customized Ducati 1199 Superleggera. “Let us depart, I have modifications to make to my equipment.”

“Yeah, yeah…” Nanaha summoned her bike, a modified Hellcat X132, and hopped on. “You need to analyze my data and finalize my stuff, right?”

Satoshi left without another word. Nanaha sighed as she followed him back to their hideout. After arrival, Satoshi was at the computer and typing away. All their equipment had returned to cartridge form, and was being modified while another computer monitor was displaying websites on real life articles about motorcycles. Once they were settled, Nanaha immediately headed to the shower to warm herself up.

“We’ll be switching from this Ducati to a replication of this Ronin motorworks bike…” He changed the coding so that the Ducati Superleggera was replaced by the vehicle he mentioned. “A modified Buell 1125, from what I’ve read. #29: Sugenoya Masatoshi? I suppose I’ll be borrowing your designs...”

He codes in the data for the basic designs before modifying the designs to make its performance match the previous levels of performance from the first bike, as well as modifying its aesthetics to match. Increasing the defensive parameters of the bike involved the addition of high-durability fairings, as well as modifying the front of the motorcycle with a headlight mount that was more akin to traditional sport bikes.

“Hm… My new Speed Demon is complete. Though maybe a change to its name should be made to mark the occasion. I christen thee as ‘Sonic Ronin,’ for obvious reason.” Satoshi then modified the entirety of the unit to match with the changes he had just made, removing the new “Sonic Ronin” cartridge from the terminal that it had been modified from before inserting Seismic Poseidon into it. “And now to add Poseidon’s alternate weapon. Perhaps… I’ll make into a variation on my Shinigami Dual-Visor’s melee mode…”

As he worked on the weapon, Nanaha left the shower in a towel and walked to her room, glancing over at Satoshi only once to see that he was still working. She sighed as she entered her room before closing the door and getting dressed inside. Satoshi paid no mind to her, focused solely on getting his weapons ready. The data was successfully implemented, and a test visual showed off the Poseidon support robot transforming into armor and a trident. From there, the trident folded up on itself before attaching to the gauntlet of the armor as a three-bladed weapon extending over the wrist.

“Perfect. As the gauge fills further, I will approach the next stage of the plan quicker.” He saved all of the changes he made and removed the cartridge from the terminal with a sinister smile. “Now to work on Nanaha’s equipment.”

Quickly, day turned to night. The rain seemed to only get harder and worse. In fact, the light drizzle of rain had evolved into a thunderstorm with rain pelting against the windows of Hatena. Citizens had closed their shops early to avoid the pelting rain. Players were inside of the nearest shelters they could find. No one was outside, for obvious reasons. Then, Hunter stepped out of his office. The others were already sleeping, but he had left and was currently in his Level 2 armor. Rain pelted his armor and slid down his mask, dripping off of his shoulder armor and chestplate. He sighed as he summoned his bike and got on, driving away from the office and heading down a path unknown to many. In fact, only Hunter knew about this road. It was thundering as he approached a cliffside. He didn’t stop. In fact, he accelerated, driving as fast as he could off the cliff before activating the “Jettison Kabuto” unit and augmenting his motorcycle into a hoverbike. He slowly floated downwards onto the ocean waters before floating just above the ocean surface.

Several minutes passed until a small patch of land could be seen in the distance. Hunter accelerated towards it, bringing it closer into view. What he was approaching wasn’t a small area of land, it was a medium-sized island. He landed on the shore and continued forward, heading into the small jungle ahead. As if by memory, Hunter navigated the jungle expertly, coming across a cave and entering it. The darkness was breached by the headlights switching on from Hunter’s bike.

“I haven’t been here in such a long time…” Hunter remarked out loud as the hoverbike came to a halt. The area in front of him was familiar, a multitude of monitors connected to each other with about three keyboard simultaneously synchronized with each other; all of this ran using one, high-end computer setup. “Looks like nothing’s changed.”

As he walked around, he saw the various failed prototypes from his past. Multiple broken and damaged cartridges were scattered around, a few black and grayscale cartridges were stored on a small rack by the computer. The only thing he found to be new was a small briefcase labelled “For Hunter Kasai” in red and white.

“What’s this?” He approached the briefcase and opened it. Inside was a note, alongside a grayscale version of the Mighty Specter unit; it also came with another cartridge and a pair of bottle-like devices. He picked up the first unit and looked at it, looking at the back and noticing a label on the back. “Oh? ‘Proto Specter Origins?’ That’s interesting… a Level 0 unit? Never thought I’d get to see one for myself, much less end up using it at some point.”

Hunter read the note, something about Nexus Theory thanking him for his commitment to their game and that these units were meant to be gifts. Then he took out his Mighty Specter unit to compare.

“If something ever happens to Mighty Specter, Proto Specter will have to do until I can get something else up and running.” He placed the Level 0 unit back in the case and pocketed his Specter unit, picking up the next unit and inspecting its design. “Hm? ‘Izanagi Arms?’ It seems to have power based off of Izanagi, but it doesn’t have a level attached to it...”

He sighed as he rifled through some of the grayscale cartridges he had left behind, looking through them for inspiration on units for the future. As he looked around, he came across something much bigger than a cartridge unit. It was an unfinished driver prototype. He picked up and gave it a good long look. A crank connected to the right side of the driver was hooked up to a couple of gears, with various exposed wires and circuitry hooked up to a laptop which was, in turn, connected to the computer system. There were external components meant to encase the current driver left scattered on the work table.

“Did I ever go through with the Bottle Driver? Maybe I should incorporate this sometime…” He looked at the belt, then at the laptop it was hooked up to. He walked over to the laptop and checked on it, seeing that the data was essentially finished and required testing. Remembering the briefcase, he left the prototype on the table and looked at the bottles in there, seeing two clear bottles that seemed empty. “I’ll save this for the end game. If worst comes to worst, I’ll have this as a back-up just in case.”

He grabbed the computer, the prototype Driver, and the briefcase before putting it all in his inventory and setting up a teleportation system from here to his room back in the city. Afterwards, Hunter departed from the island safehouse by hoverbike, taking an underground tunnel system to get from the ocean back onto the streets. He switched back to his LS-218’s default form as he approached the roads, silently approaching his office and entering. A single, silent yawn left his mouth as he set up the other end of the teleportation system. He tested it out several times to ensure it worked. On the last test to his safehouse, he cancelled his transformation and looked outside the cave entrance, seeing the thunderstorm still as bad as it was prior to him returning here.

“What are you up to, Genm? Why did you even bother with restarting the death game…?”