Zenless Zone Zero: The Front Line

Chapter 1: Review

PART ONE: CONNECTIONS

Chapter 1: Review

Even with the expectation of some mysterious person coming to her door late at night, she was still taken aback when she answered the knock at her door and found a man wearing what appeared to be a modified motorcycle helmet that covered his entire face.

Was this really the man he commissioned on InterKnot?

He had on a long purple jacket with black stripes, a dark tactical vest covering his chest and black cargo pants. His gloved hands held up a small cardboard box. Through his white helmet, he spoke with a voice that sounded filtered rather than muffled.

"I've brought the materials you requested." He stated simply.

"Oh...th-thank you...I said in my DM for you to just leave it on the steps." She then recalled.

"These materials are too volatile to be left unattended for too long. Considering the nature of your experiments, it would be best to take them inside and put them in the fridge right away." He recommended.

"I-I see...thank you. Um...here," She took the box from his hands. "I'll send the payment to your account right after I set this down."

"Have a good night." The man in the helmet said, closing her front door for her.

"You think she's gonna pay right away?" A secondary voice asked curiously.

"She better." The man responded...

After finishing his delivery for the night he went straight home, using a ladder propped up against the back of the building to climb into the second story window. Once he was inside and the door was shut, he took off his helmet and jacket.

"What's got you in such a sour mood tonight, Shion?" The secondary voice coming out of his helmet asked him as Shion set him down on the nightstand by his bed to charge.

"There weren't supposed to be so many Ethereals in the area we scoped out. I don't like getting into unnecessary battles just because." Shion answered, brushing his fingers through his hair and shaking his head.

"Well I mean it's been awhile since we put that training to good use, am I right? That's what we train for!"

"Manami, I train so I don't have to fight." Shion said with a sigh, sitting on the edge of his bed and taking his boots off.

"You ripped that off from a movie."

"A book actually. Those are a lot more useful." Shion commented snidely.

"If you were worried about fighting you wouldn't go into the Hollows anyways, Mr. Philosopher." Manami teased him in return.

"It's not the fighting I'm worried about." Shion said as he slid his cargo pants off. He looked down and saw that he had a few bruises on his legs from dealing with the Ethereals.

"Looks like it's time to bust out the pain cream again." Manami commented.

"And the anti-corruption meds. I'm feeling a little heavy in the chest." Shion added, removing his shirt and revealing some more bruising on his arms and shoulders.

"I don't think that's the Ether corruption, buddy."

"Touche," Shion shrugged. He crouched down to pull his med bag out from under his bed. He set it down next to him on the bed and opened it up. He reached inside and pulled out ointment and bandaging to help soothe his pain.

"Give me a minute to wrap myself up and then we can go through the review."

"You should be getting rest." Manami suggested, now expressing more concern.

"Just because I'm human doesn't mean I can't deal with a little pain. It's fine." Shion brushed it off, holding one end of the bandaging with his teeth and bringing the other end around his upper bicep. Once it was suitably wrapped, he tucked the other end to keep it in place.

"I always feel bad that I can't help you with that." Manami commented.

"Don't worry about it. You wouldn't know how to do it right anyways," Shion said with a faint smile to try and lighten the mood. "When we get the money together, we can see about building you a new body...eventually."

"You could sound a little more optimistic when you say that."

"Oh don't give me that. You know I mean it," Shion said before efficiently finishing up the last wrapping on his leg. "Okay, time to go into review mode. You ready?"

"I'm always ready." Manami answered.

With that, Shion put his helmet back on. He took in a deep breath and waited for Manami to bring up the playback footage from the mission he had just finished. Even though everything was recorded in first person POV, Shion still liked to go through everything.

"That lady we dropped the package off was kinda cute." Manami brought up.

"Not my type. Let's just go over the Ethereals. I wanna see if there was anything I missed." Shion expressed.

"Anything you missed...?" Manami asked while rewinding through the footage to right before Shion was attacked by Ethereals.

"Yeah...little further before...little before...stop. See that? There they are in the distance. They were tracking us and I didn't realize it." Shion pointed out.

"Well to be fair, you were busy digging up the Ether materials off of those shattered crystals." Manami said.

"They don't wait for you to be ready. We need to be more vigilant. Can you add this to your pattern recognition software? The sooner we know a pack of Ethereals are coming towards us the better." Shion requested.

"Already done. I gotta get better at watching this stuff too. Sorry about that." Manami apologized.

"Not your fault. Can't prepare for what you don't know is coming. That's why we review." Shion reminded him.

"Look at you learning from your mistakes. Such a human thing to do." Manami joked. Shion scoffed at this.

"I wish it was," He commented before adding, "It'd be better to not make any mistakes at all."

"Well you might want to invest in turning yourself into an AI too, boss." Manami joked.

"Riiiight riiiight...ugh. We can leave it at that for tonight. I'll go over the rest tomorrow," Shion decided, taking the helmet off and setting it back on the nightstand to charge once again. "I really need sleep."

"I think that would be a great idea. Did you read that in a book too?" Manami joked.

"Very funny. G'night, Manami." Shion waved then turned and laid back in bed. He pulled the blankets over him and turned onto his side.

"Night man!"

Shion let out a tired yawn and closed his eyes, doing his best to let his body relax. He could feel his muscles struggling to let go of the tension within. He sighed and tossed and turned for awhile, annoyed with the fact that he was struggling to fall asleep.

"...Manami?"

"I got you, boss."

Without another word, Manami began to play the ambient sounds of light rain and thunder from within the helmet, just loud enough for Shion to hear it without the sound disturbing him. Shion nodded to himself in approval then repositioned himself in the bed.

"Thanks buddy. G'night." Shion said again, allowing himself to slowly be whisked away in the white noise.

"Night!" Manami replied once more before going into silent mode...