OOC Post for paixaorpg; The rest of Hei's canon history from season 1.
Some years passed by as more organizations of high power began to use more and more contractors as soldiers and spies. The Syndicate was among the first, as they both put Hei and Bai through some extreme military training before moving them to South America as members of a team assigned investigate Heaven’s Gate, and killing the rival competition of contractors who worked for groups not part of the Syndicate. It was either to adapt or die out there.
From that very young age of eleven and ten onward into their teenage years, they were trained to be experts at stealth and killing. Hei went along to stay close to Bai, even though it pained him to do so. Into his early teens, he became the legendary Black Reaper among the other contractors, who fought using wires and knives without having to use his contract. Together Bai and Hei have met and befriended contractors such Havoc--a contractor who was also greatly feared for ability as well as her price--and the enigmatic Amber who had left a previous branch of government to join the Syndicate.
Heaven’s War intensified as both Bai and Amber discovered the Syndicate’s ultimate goal; to wipe out all contractors and Heaven’s Gate. They wanted an artifact from Heaven’s Gate called the Meteor Shard, a lens that could make all contractors lose control over their abilities and lash out at each other blindly. Bai did not want Hei in on this because overtime she felt loving endearment for her brother. For him to be taken out in the middle of this war would make her sad.
Hei had no idea what was going on. For one moment Bai was there, and then after the big flash of white light she wasn’t. Amber and very few contractors aside from Hei and Bai got out alive. Hei at age fifteen didn’t know how he got out of Heaven’s Gate or how it had vanished--only the fact that he now had Bai’s abilities and found her not there beside him.
Going back in the gate and searching for Bai was not possible, as he had no choice but to resume working for the Syndicate. Even if he wanted to, he knew he would not be able to quit the organization and live. Although at the same time while allowing them to use him, he could benefit from using them to find Bai. If he could just be there and keep both ears and eyes open long enough, he reasoned he might be able to find out what had happened to her.
Five years after Heaven’s War came to its bloody end; he had been transferred to Tokyo, working as one of the Sydicate’s top talented assassins and mercenaries. An ex-cop and detective of the police force and two others who were of abnormal abilities were part of the new team he was assigned to. Overtime, Hei reluctantly took a liking to Huang, Yin, and Mao. Yin most of all, since she was the youngest and still had a bit of innocence even though she expressed very little emotion like most human dolls did. Unlike Mao (another contractor who was a human soul in a black cat’s body) and Huang who he believed could look after themselves just fine, Yin was blind apart from her capability to send out surveillance specters over water. Hei instinctively knew she wasn’t capable of looking after herself for very long, and treated her as a younger sibling.
At the same time he created the cover identity of the socially awkward foreign college student known as Li Shengshun. This came in handy when he found himself a small apartment to stay in, room 201, after generating a bit of electricity to fix the old landlady’s TV. From then on he used this alias to help him carry out his various missions to the letter, unless he decided to act on his own.
A while after making adjustments in sticking to his new position in the Syndicate, he learned that Havoc (Havoc being her code name as Carmine was her real name) still lived. He was assigned to capture and take her to PANDORA (short for Physicalquantity Alternation Natural Deconstruction Organized Research Agency), a United Nations run organization of scientists and other personnel to study the phenomena of Hell’s Gate. However, Hei had other plans of his own. He kidnapped Havoc and interrogated her on Bai’s whereabouts, and what Amber’s involvement was. He broke her fingers with his bare hands as he suspected that she was hiding something from him. Havoc said she had no idea about what happened to Bai, and explained that after Heaven’s Gate had disappeared, she woke up in Europe unable to use her powers.
Havoc said that the same thing might have happened to Bai, and if she could go towards Hell’s Gate, she could remember something else.
By this point Hei was being pursued by his comrades and a small group of MI6 contractors, led by code name November 11th who had the ability to freeze liquids. As he evaded them, he took Havoc closer and closer to Hell’s Gate. But as Havoc neared the Gate, flashes of her memories began to return, and they worked to slowly tear her mind apart, as she was forced to remember the terrible things that happened during Heaven’s War.
Hei eventually said it was okay if Havoc didn’t remember. He told her that she didn’t have to be forced to go closer to Hell’s Gate, and that she could live as a normal human being. However, that was not meant to be as November 11th came and stabbed Havoc with an icicle he forged out of water he froze. Then Hei was rescued by Huang, Mao, and Yin.
Huang later berated Hei for acting so emotional and told him that Contractors should only do what they were told to do.
Hei didn’t have anything further to do with PANDORA until later on, when Huang issued the orders from up top to retrieve the Meteor Shard from the facility located at the very edge of Hell’s Gate-dangerously close for a contractor. The artifact lens was stolen and was assumed to be somewhere in the Gate itself.
On a bus ride on the way to the facility, Hei (as Li) met a girl who told him that, according to rumors, within the Gate it is possible to retrieve what you have lost.
Hei made it safely into PANDORA and took on a job part of the janitor faculty. They were responsible for making the research facility a safe and clean environment for all who worked there. He made contact with an insider who gave him necessary information, a young woman who was one of the scientists. He also met a good-natured scientist named Nick Hillman who shared Hei’s love of stargazing. Nick invited him to look at the stars from PANDORA’s roof, and when Hei looked through the telescope he was shocked to get a brief glimpse of the true sky. Nick told Hei that he had a little sister, and that she had always loved the stars and had wanted to be an astronaut. But she had been paralyzed, and now Nick was trying to find a way to bring the true sky back.
One night the girl who rode with Hei on the bus over to PANDORA was murdered. By her dead body her pair of shoes was placed upside down. The head janitor said Hei knew her, and he was interrogated for it. When the security found no evidence linking him and the girl’s death, he was released. Nick said he trusted Hei and never suspected him of murder.
Soon afterward, Hei was asked to take part in an experiment. The researchers were going to send a camera into the Gate itself, and wanted to measure the reactions of various people, since everyone seemed to experience the Gate differently. The remote camera entered the Gate, but an impassable crater soon hindered it. As the camera began to turn back around, Hei spotted something on the screen, something that terrified him-the image of his sister, splattered with blood. The researchers then located the Meteor Fragment, somewhere inside the Gate.
Plagued by that image, Hei reminisced of a time when he and his sister were together during a starry night as kids, looking for shooting stars. It soon turned to images of him standing in a large pool of blood, and another image of Bai covered in blood.
The female scientist who was Hei’s voice from the inside wanted to be there for him through the hallucination he experienced, and then began to interfere (to which he told her not to) as she was determined to find out the culprit who murdered the other girl he barely knew.
The rest of PANDORA meanwhile wanted to retrieve the Meteor Fragment, so they put together a recovery team with Nick on it. Nick told Hei that they would go stargazing again when he returned. Shortly after the team entered the Gate, an unknown assailant slaughtered the entire team. Camera footage showed that the murdered researches shoes had all been removed and placed upside-down. Nick was the only one who made it back alive.
When Hei talked to a wheelchair-bound Nick later on, Nick told him that he was going to quit his job at PANDORA. They said their goodbyes, but then that night Hei witnessed Nick going out into the restricted area near the Gate. The head of PANDORA security, suspicious, also followed Nick and pointed a gun at him. Almost immediately, Nick revealed himself to be a Contractor and killed the head of security-with electric abilities. He then removed the man’s shoes and placed them upside-down.
Hei slipped out from the shadows, revealing himself after seeing what had happened. Nick convinced Hei to trust him, and to believe him and in his dream of going back to NASA after handing over the Meteor Shard to whom he was working for. Hei, bitterly disappointed, told Nick that he had seen the Meteor Shard in South America and that many contractors died over it. Hei stated that everything Nick had told him had been a lie, and that contractors didn’t dream.
They fought but each of their electric abilities canceled each other out. Nick, who couldn’t believe it at first, said that it was as if they were cast from the same mold. The two carried the fight into the Gate itself, with no one taking advantage over the other. Then Hei saw another vision of his sister. When he was distracted Nick held a gun to his head. Without warning, the Meteor Fragment began to react. Nick tried to shoot Hei, but was blocked by the appearance of blue light in the shape of a girl.
Hei and Nick then found themselves in glowing, yellow realm. Nick suddenly aged rapidly backwards until he had the appearance of a child. They both then looked up to see the true stars. Realizing his dream had come true, Nick climbed aboard an imaginary rocket with his sister and took off into the heavens. When Hei awakened moments later, back in the Gate, and Nick had disappeared. Hei escaped the Gate with the Meteor Shard before PANDORA’s security could show up. He fled back into the city of Tokyo.
Days after that mission, the Meteor Shard was taken by MI6, and Hei then learned from November 11th that Amber was in the city. She had become a leader of a terrorist group of freedom fighting contractors that called themselves Evening Primrose ((EPR). After running off and evading November 11th as he drove speedily in his car, Hei went his own separate direction to search for Amber.
At his apartment, he found a note inside an envelope that said Amber had Yin with her, and where to meet. Huang offered Hei a lift inside the van who also knew Yin was missing. Once Hei noticed that they were going the wrong way, Huang said he was given orders to keep Hei and Amber separated from each other. Huang shot Hei in his lower leg with his magnum and Hei pulled back just mere seconds before shocking the ex-cop to death.
On the way to see Amber, he crossed paths with a boy who Hei had met before as “Li”. Maki, a kid who Li helped by getting a necklace that was stuck on a tree branch and tying the knot before giving it back to him. The necklace looked suspiciously like the kind Amber had given to him, prior to the incident that made Heaven’s Gate and most of South America vanish. Maki at the same time realized that the nice person he met named Li was Hei, who Amber used to talk about all the time. Maki admitted that he was jealous and the two started fighting. Hei swiftly cottoned on that Maki was a contractor.
November 11th called over to Maki that good little boys and girls should be in bed this late hour of the night. Hei took the chance to slip away.
As Amber and Hei saw each other after so long of an unsettling departure, Amber saw the makeshift bandage Hei made to cover his leg wound and rushed over to him in concern. Hei slapped her hand away. He made himself perfectly clear when he told her before he would kill her, he wanted to know what had happened to his sister. Amber smiled, and teased him with riddles. He felt enraged and slapped her hard across the face when she came close to touching him. Amber then said Hei would be able to see Bai again if he went with her.
Hei would have killed her for not telling him a straight answer if she hadn’t stopped time and got away, taking her right hand man (Amagiri) with her.
Things gradually settled down as Hei was given his next job, to keep tabs on a Yakuza gang who were expecting a girl who was a doll to be brought onto their turf. While undercover as a waiter, Hei as Li Shengshun first met Kenji Sakurai, an awkward but friendly person, a guy no one would suspect to be a Yakuza member. They met in the middle of a commotion caused by a Yakuza thug who didn’t want to pay for his meal. He punched Kenji then tried to beat up Hei who evaded and counter-attacked whenever the thug went at him.
Kenji’s boss of the gang then interfered and ended the fight. Both he and Kenji expressed their gratitude for saving Kenji from getting severely battered. The Yakuza gang leader gave Kenji some cash to have a fun night out with Hei. Dinner was a plus, but the idea of going to a night club and meeting girls wasn’t something Hei was interested in. All the while Kenji pleaded to learn some special moves from Hei, but Hei as timid Li in return kept saying he wasn’t all that great at kung fu.
Kenji’s bike broke down as they arrived near the apartment Hei stayed, and it began to rain. Hei invited him in. As he was getting some tea, a loud racket bellowed from beneath the apartment. He explained that his neighbors were always like that as Kenji wasn’t going to tolerate it. Hei and Mizuzu, the owner of the old apartments, later found Kenji with the noisy neighbors just moments after he kicked the door in.
After the tenants worked together to repair it, Mizuzu treated them to breakfast. As pleasant and peaceful this normalcy was, Hei knew he had to meet up with his Syndicate comrades. He had to leave knowing that a normal life was not to be-not while he still did a secret organization’s dirty work for a living and remained to search for Bai. He felt a silent pang of loneliness and sadness at this cold, bitter truth.
Mao and Hei were later sent out to the restaurant where Hei and Kenji after word had been received that the doll arrived in a private back room. They arrived to find a man who worked there unconscious, but Kenji and the doll were nowhere to be seen. The team then had no choice but to stand down and wait for further instructions.
As Hei returned to his apartment, he saw that Kenji and the silent expressionless doll by the door and let them in. Kenji admitted to him that he loved this woman he rescued. Hei for once did not act like Li exactly. He tried to reason and talk Kenji out of this, going over facts that the doll felt nothing towards him, and couldn’t do much of anything to take care of herself, not even go to the bathroom alone. Kenji in spite of this said he felt he had to protect her from what foul things the Yakuza would put her through if she stayed with them.
Finally Hei relented and did some clothes shopping for Kenji while he stayed at the apartment. He encountered a member of the Tokyo police he met before in a previous mission as Li, who was close to suspecting him as the dangerous assailant BK201, chief Misaki Kirihara. As Li, he manipulated the truth a bit, saying that he was shopping for his friend’s girlfriend because he was too busy and it was the girl’s birthday. Hei as Li felt surprised when Misaki asked if he was going to wear those clothes, so he cleared up the confusion by that half-true story he thought up on the spot. After a little chitchat and farewells, he made it back to Kenji and the doll without incident.
Hei was shocked to find Yin in there when he got back, and at first thought that she had been ordered there to check up on him. That wasn’t the case, for Yin had started acting on her own intentions.. A good thing for Yin to be there too, so she could help the other doll change into her new clothes.
Yin went with Hei as they took Kenji and his love down to the nearest train station, but eventually Kenji and the doll were captured by the other Yakuza gang members. They were taken to a warehouse where the doll would be sold to someone and Kenji would be killed.
Mao had followed Hei and Yin and suspected that it might be a trap when a surveillance specter was sent, Yin saying that the doll was asking Hei to save Kenji. Then Hei looked to Yin and asked why she came to see him. Yin replied that she noticed that Hei was acting a little strange lately, a little off from his cold, rationalizing self. (Mao of course knew of other circumstances when Hei took action in an irrational, unorthodox manner got a contractor, and time and time again this fascinated him.)
Hei came to Kenji’s rescue, zapping the armed thugs unconscious without killing them and Kenji snatched his boss’s gun and told the gang leader to get in his car. Hei trailed some distance behind as they went back to the train station. Hei knew the gun Kenji had consisted of an empty magazine, and he knew that the gang leader knew-so he asked why. The Yakuza boss asked Hei if he ever had something he’d risk everything for and that he used to. Hei knew what he was talking about but he didn’t mention anything about Bai and walked away. The mission was soon aborted after that, now that Kenji and the doll were running away.
Hei and the EPR members eventually crossed paths again, Hei first recognizing Amagiri from the last time he saw Amber. He was in the middle of an assassination job to take out one of them named Alma, the head of a large group that represented one of the many types of religious worshippers of Hell’s Gate. Amber, this time, was not seen with the rest of her comrades. With the EPR was a mole sent by the Syndicate, Shihoko. She used to be in a loving relationship with Huang, years ago when Huang was still part of the Tokyo police.
Alma noticed Shihoko looking at the water specter Huang sent because he was worried about Shihoko. She said she never thought upon addressing Shihoko by an alias name would have bee able to see specters, or that she was a contractor. Hei at will produced electricity while hiding in the air vent to knock out the power of the building they were in, then made the move to get close to his target. Alma indicated that she wouldn’t put up a fight, and this made him hesitate, for he hadn’t expected that. Amagiri projected a heavy force of air towards Hei but he got away in time.
Amber’s right hand and Hei had gotten into another fight after Huang and him rescued Shihoko, but Amagiri never intended to kill him. He in fact offered for Hei to join EPR. Hei refused and evaded the attacks while intending to do the mission; kill Alma.
Alma called out to Hei and assured him it wasn’t a trap. Hei noticed that she looked a lot older than the first time he tried to end her life as she asked him why he was working for the Syndicate. She also told him that contractors weren’t all so different and anymore heartless from regular people. The one exception was contractors being more self-preserved than humans. This discussion made Hei question for the first time in his life on what he believed he understood and hated about most contractors. Before then, he saw them as lying, murdering monsters with no sense of guilt that were unable to dream.
Alma’s obeisance was growing older each time she changed the way she looked. For Hei, she used her power one last time, explained how she atoned for her past actions, how she chose to make a life for herself. Then died in her bed once she changed back.
Hei met up with Huang, Mao, and Shihoko at a hiding place far from EPR. Huang couldn’t bring himself to kill the woman he still loved, to follow these orders given to him because he screwed up by having Yin send down that specter. He gave Hei his gun, telling him to kill them both, but Hei didn’t want to do that. Mao got tense and said that this wasn’t like the time Hei helped Kenji, but Hei reminded his other comrade of the multiple times Huang had saved their lives. The humanly sentient cat then bailed, saying he wanted no part in this.
Hei helped Shihoko and Huang attempt to run from the Syndicate, but Shihoko knew that they would not succeed. Those who sent the order for Shihoko to be disposed of would hunt them down. She ran in front of an oncoming truck to sacrifice herself to save Huang, so that he could live.
Soon on the next job given to Hei, he crossed paths with EPR yet again when he confronted Wei Zhijun just after he planted a bomb in the American Embassy building, a contractor Hei had defeated on a previous mission way back before he had to go to PANDORA to retrieve the Meteor Shard. Wei said that he was so glad he joined up with Amber, because it gave him opportunity to see Hei again. They fought outside and a teleporting contractor of the EPR, Brita, had to interrupt and get Wei out of there.
Amber meanwhile was elsewhere around the American Embassy building, she found Mao high up in a tree and kidnapped him. Later, while Mao had to deal with being in captivity and learned shocking discoveries from the scientist EPR had captured, Hei briefly debated whether or not to rescue him. Eventually he decided to go, mainly because of the opportunity he could have for another chance to kill Amber.
Amber sent Wei Zhijun to slow Hei down as she and the rest of her freedom fighters began to flee from the building. Brita teleported into view and had to remind Wei of this. Hei then saw Amber a level above him and slid up to her on a wire. He demanded her of what she wanted, and what was left for her to take from him. The Meteor Shard in Amber’s small purse began to glow. The entire building they were in and everyone in it began to glow blue. The glow became brighter and brighter until Hei heard his sister’s voice call out to him. While he was startled, Amber got away. The glowing blue light that’s the matter restructuring power stopped completely.
Misaki Kirihara soon arrived on the scene to try and arrest Hei when Huang from behind her tossed a flash grenade on the floor in between them to provide escape.
Huang later announced that November 11th had been killed and taken out a number of other agents with him, including the head of Novermber 11th’s MI6 unit known as Decade. Mao looked up at Huang, surprised to hear of this, for Amber had told November 11th that he was going to die and she knew it. From there, Mao revealed what Amber had told him-that EPR had intended to stop the Syndicate from destroying Hell’s Gate by replicating what had happened in South America to prevent the Syndicate from wiping out all the contractors and dolls worldwide. Hei fumed and left, not wanting to believe that Amber was some crusader of justice. Ever since the end of Heaven’s War, he had seen her as an awful person who had betrayed him, their colleagues, and Bai.
Hei started going over everything that happened during Heaven’s War in his head, wandering around the city of Tokyo aimlessly until he crossed paths with Misaki Kirihara who invited Li to eat out with her. They had dinner and friendly conversation and then went out to batting cages to smack around a few balls. (Clumsy Li swung and missed, mostly.) They talked some more, about the city of Tokyo, a rumor of the old stars they did not believe in, and a tiny bit about Hei’s sister and that they were in a warzone before he had come to Tokyo. As Li, he only mentioned very vague details and let Misaki fill in the blanks on what might have happened to her, because around after five long years he still didn’t know what happened to Bai.
Parting on good terms, and remembering what Misaki had talked about being used and exploited and that she ought to follow her instincts when she started to think too much.
Feeling a little better after having a nice night out with Misaki, he was heading back to his apartment. Mao caught up with him on the way and told Hei not to go home. Soon all was revealed that the Syndicate had decided to eliminate Hei and his unit. A gravity user contractor had been sent to take care of that, but soon they were rescued by none other than Wei Zhijun. Wei told Hei to relax, because he wasn’t there to try and kill him this time but through a favor Amber had requested. Wei was to help them find a way into Hell’s Gate underground.
Huang in his black van drove Mao, Yin, Wei, and Hei for as far as he could towards an abandoned subway tunnel, and then decided to stay behind as a decoy before any Syndicate agents could stop them.
Meanwhile in the old empty subway tunnel, Wei led Yin, Mao, and Hei towards a wall and started another battle with Hei. Wei said that no other contractor could defeat him until Hei did, scarring half of his face and humiliating him. This irked Mao, for a contractor to say he was humiliated he was not the typical kind of behavior of any other contractor.
Hei stabbed a knife deep into Wei’s chest to stop him once and for all. Wei smiled and said in sick amusement that Amber knew that the fight would end like this. Mao was just bewildered and asked why Wei would go through with it when he knew he would lose.
Wei said, "Don’t you get it? The rules changed. None of us make sense anymore.” Then he turned to Hei and grinned. “Your move, BK201.”
Wei Zhijun’s power was to splatter his blood on an object of person and snap his fingers to burst his targets apart. Wei, his whole body covered in his blood, snapped his fingers, and sacrificed himself to blow open a hole in the wall that led Hei and his comrades into Hell’s Gate.
EPR had acquired a network of dolls and activated specters as beacons to guide the way, but the scientist Amber had under their captivity helped to make them go away. The Syndicate then severed Mao’s connection when he had used his hacking skills (his human mind’s stored into a computer chip lodged in the cat’s head to keep his spirit alive) to break into their server. Mao had been there too long and "died".
Yin and Hei met up with Amber near the core of the Gate, who had used up her power a number of times that she looked to be five or six years old but sounded mature for that age. Hei began to see the truth and started to take interest in what Amber was explaining about her reasons for fighting the Syndicate. She explained about Bai changing from being so rational (one of the first of contractors to start evolving) to having concerns as to what being in Heaven’s War and all that time protecting her was doing to her brother. Amber admitted that she felt the same way about him, and that it was a lot safer for him to stay in the Syndicate or else he might have died a lot earlier.
Amber said that in order for Hei to meet with Bai again, he had to release her power to alter the matter within the Gate to make it impenetrable so the future of all contractors would be secure. That would mean sealing up most of Japan too, and Hei cared not only about what happens to Yin, but to all the ordinary citizens of the country. He knew the normal people would die, and he could not do that. And Amber had told him when he hadn’t realized himself that Bai had fused with him, and why he had no price when using her powers.
Amber used the Meteor Shard to seal off the Gate on purpose, for the sake of all contractors but mostly for Hei’s own good since he was so intent on not following through on what she had planned out. Hei was back in that yellow realm he once was in before, with Nick Hillman, but appeared as his eleven year old self. He was turning back to normal as Bai saw the truth as to what had happened to Hei, with each life he took out and of course knew how much he loved her.
Along with them in that strange realm were all the people, contractor and human alike, that Hei knew who were dead. Including November 11th, Nick Hillman, Havoc, and Amber who looked as Hei had known her during Heaven’s War. November 11th, Huang, and Mao all realized that he was acting like a contractor and regular human during all that time they knew him.
Amber tried to help Hei on having everything he ever wanted, but he just couldn’t let so many innocent lives in Japan take the fall because of his own dreams of seeing the true stars and being at Bai’s side. Hei embraced Amber, knowing now that she meant well for him but his own damaged heart ached for all those innocents as well as much as it ached for him to be reunited with his sister. Amber warned him that if he chose to save everyone, there would only be more confusion and he would have to keep killing as long as the Syndicate would remain on his heels. Hei didn’t voice any objections to that, and said his goodbyes to everyone.
For a middle road decision once Hei and Yin escaped from the Gate as Amber turned back time with the last of her power and disappeared. He altered the Anti-Gate particles in the machine system the Syndicate had put together to destroy Hell’s Gate. The particles no longer existed. Hell’s Gate remained standing. No one was wiped out.
Yoshimitsu Horai, one of the top influential members of the Syndicate, had been choking Misaki Kirihara as Hei rushed in Black Reaper getup to the rescue. He was about to kill him when Misaki told him not to do it.
As Hei was fleeing the scene, Misaki cried out, “Wait--Li, please!”
Hei turned to glance at her, his voice coming out flat and cryptic through his mask. “The man you know as Li is gone.” He left her to handle Director Horai who he slammed to the floor unconscious.
Within the next few days, Hei packed up what few belongings he had and moved his apartment-in a hurry since the Syndicate knew this was where he used to stay at. As he was on his way to meet with Yin someplace safe in order to leave Tokyo behind, he thought he saw Misaki out of the corner of his eye, talking to landlady Mizuzu and he hardly stopped walking as he could hear running footsteps behind him.
Hei turned a corner and walked in through an entrance gate that led to someplace he hadn’t expected to turn up in. Paixao...
From that very young age of eleven and ten onward into their teenage years, they were trained to be experts at stealth and killing. Hei went along to stay close to Bai, even though it pained him to do so. Into his early teens, he became the legendary Black Reaper among the other contractors, who fought using wires and knives without having to use his contract. Together Bai and Hei have met and befriended contractors such Havoc--a contractor who was also greatly feared for ability as well as her price--and the enigmatic Amber who had left a previous branch of government to join the Syndicate.
Heaven’s War intensified as both Bai and Amber discovered the Syndicate’s ultimate goal; to wipe out all contractors and Heaven’s Gate. They wanted an artifact from Heaven’s Gate called the Meteor Shard, a lens that could make all contractors lose control over their abilities and lash out at each other blindly. Bai did not want Hei in on this because overtime she felt loving endearment for her brother. For him to be taken out in the middle of this war would make her sad.
Hei had no idea what was going on. For one moment Bai was there, and then after the big flash of white light she wasn’t. Amber and very few contractors aside from Hei and Bai got out alive. Hei at age fifteen didn’t know how he got out of Heaven’s Gate or how it had vanished--only the fact that he now had Bai’s abilities and found her not there beside him.
Going back in the gate and searching for Bai was not possible, as he had no choice but to resume working for the Syndicate. Even if he wanted to, he knew he would not be able to quit the organization and live. Although at the same time while allowing them to use him, he could benefit from using them to find Bai. If he could just be there and keep both ears and eyes open long enough, he reasoned he might be able to find out what had happened to her.
Five years after Heaven’s War came to its bloody end; he had been transferred to Tokyo, working as one of the Sydicate’s top talented assassins and mercenaries. An ex-cop and detective of the police force and two others who were of abnormal abilities were part of the new team he was assigned to. Overtime, Hei reluctantly took a liking to Huang, Yin, and Mao. Yin most of all, since she was the youngest and still had a bit of innocence even though she expressed very little emotion like most human dolls did. Unlike Mao (another contractor who was a human soul in a black cat’s body) and Huang who he believed could look after themselves just fine, Yin was blind apart from her capability to send out surveillance specters over water. Hei instinctively knew she wasn’t capable of looking after herself for very long, and treated her as a younger sibling.
At the same time he created the cover identity of the socially awkward foreign college student known as Li Shengshun. This came in handy when he found himself a small apartment to stay in, room 201, after generating a bit of electricity to fix the old landlady’s TV. From then on he used this alias to help him carry out his various missions to the letter, unless he decided to act on his own.
A while after making adjustments in sticking to his new position in the Syndicate, he learned that Havoc (Havoc being her code name as Carmine was her real name) still lived. He was assigned to capture and take her to PANDORA (short for Physicalquantity Alternation Natural Deconstruction Organized Research Agency), a United Nations run organization of scientists and other personnel to study the phenomena of Hell’s Gate. However, Hei had other plans of his own. He kidnapped Havoc and interrogated her on Bai’s whereabouts, and what Amber’s involvement was. He broke her fingers with his bare hands as he suspected that she was hiding something from him. Havoc said she had no idea about what happened to Bai, and explained that after Heaven’s Gate had disappeared, she woke up in Europe unable to use her powers.
Havoc said that the same thing might have happened to Bai, and if she could go towards Hell’s Gate, she could remember something else.
By this point Hei was being pursued by his comrades and a small group of MI6 contractors, led by code name November 11th who had the ability to freeze liquids. As he evaded them, he took Havoc closer and closer to Hell’s Gate. But as Havoc neared the Gate, flashes of her memories began to return, and they worked to slowly tear her mind apart, as she was forced to remember the terrible things that happened during Heaven’s War.
Hei eventually said it was okay if Havoc didn’t remember. He told her that she didn’t have to be forced to go closer to Hell’s Gate, and that she could live as a normal human being. However, that was not meant to be as November 11th came and stabbed Havoc with an icicle he forged out of water he froze. Then Hei was rescued by Huang, Mao, and Yin.
Huang later berated Hei for acting so emotional and told him that Contractors should only do what they were told to do.
Hei didn’t have anything further to do with PANDORA until later on, when Huang issued the orders from up top to retrieve the Meteor Shard from the facility located at the very edge of Hell’s Gate-dangerously close for a contractor. The artifact lens was stolen and was assumed to be somewhere in the Gate itself.
On a bus ride on the way to the facility, Hei (as Li) met a girl who told him that, according to rumors, within the Gate it is possible to retrieve what you have lost.
Hei made it safely into PANDORA and took on a job part of the janitor faculty. They were responsible for making the research facility a safe and clean environment for all who worked there. He made contact with an insider who gave him necessary information, a young woman who was one of the scientists. He also met a good-natured scientist named Nick Hillman who shared Hei’s love of stargazing. Nick invited him to look at the stars from PANDORA’s roof, and when Hei looked through the telescope he was shocked to get a brief glimpse of the true sky. Nick told Hei that he had a little sister, and that she had always loved the stars and had wanted to be an astronaut. But she had been paralyzed, and now Nick was trying to find a way to bring the true sky back.
One night the girl who rode with Hei on the bus over to PANDORA was murdered. By her dead body her pair of shoes was placed upside down. The head janitor said Hei knew her, and he was interrogated for it. When the security found no evidence linking him and the girl’s death, he was released. Nick said he trusted Hei and never suspected him of murder.
Soon afterward, Hei was asked to take part in an experiment. The researchers were going to send a camera into the Gate itself, and wanted to measure the reactions of various people, since everyone seemed to experience the Gate differently. The remote camera entered the Gate, but an impassable crater soon hindered it. As the camera began to turn back around, Hei spotted something on the screen, something that terrified him-the image of his sister, splattered with blood. The researchers then located the Meteor Fragment, somewhere inside the Gate.
Plagued by that image, Hei reminisced of a time when he and his sister were together during a starry night as kids, looking for shooting stars. It soon turned to images of him standing in a large pool of blood, and another image of Bai covered in blood.
The female scientist who was Hei’s voice from the inside wanted to be there for him through the hallucination he experienced, and then began to interfere (to which he told her not to) as she was determined to find out the culprit who murdered the other girl he barely knew.
The rest of PANDORA meanwhile wanted to retrieve the Meteor Fragment, so they put together a recovery team with Nick on it. Nick told Hei that they would go stargazing again when he returned. Shortly after the team entered the Gate, an unknown assailant slaughtered the entire team. Camera footage showed that the murdered researches shoes had all been removed and placed upside-down. Nick was the only one who made it back alive.
When Hei talked to a wheelchair-bound Nick later on, Nick told him that he was going to quit his job at PANDORA. They said their goodbyes, but then that night Hei witnessed Nick going out into the restricted area near the Gate. The head of PANDORA security, suspicious, also followed Nick and pointed a gun at him. Almost immediately, Nick revealed himself to be a Contractor and killed the head of security-with electric abilities. He then removed the man’s shoes and placed them upside-down.
Hei slipped out from the shadows, revealing himself after seeing what had happened. Nick convinced Hei to trust him, and to believe him and in his dream of going back to NASA after handing over the Meteor Shard to whom he was working for. Hei, bitterly disappointed, told Nick that he had seen the Meteor Shard in South America and that many contractors died over it. Hei stated that everything Nick had told him had been a lie, and that contractors didn’t dream.
They fought but each of their electric abilities canceled each other out. Nick, who couldn’t believe it at first, said that it was as if they were cast from the same mold. The two carried the fight into the Gate itself, with no one taking advantage over the other. Then Hei saw another vision of his sister. When he was distracted Nick held a gun to his head. Without warning, the Meteor Fragment began to react. Nick tried to shoot Hei, but was blocked by the appearance of blue light in the shape of a girl.
Hei and Nick then found themselves in glowing, yellow realm. Nick suddenly aged rapidly backwards until he had the appearance of a child. They both then looked up to see the true stars. Realizing his dream had come true, Nick climbed aboard an imaginary rocket with his sister and took off into the heavens. When Hei awakened moments later, back in the Gate, and Nick had disappeared. Hei escaped the Gate with the Meteor Shard before PANDORA’s security could show up. He fled back into the city of Tokyo.
Days after that mission, the Meteor Shard was taken by MI6, and Hei then learned from November 11th that Amber was in the city. She had become a leader of a terrorist group of freedom fighting contractors that called themselves Evening Primrose ((EPR). After running off and evading November 11th as he drove speedily in his car, Hei went his own separate direction to search for Amber.
At his apartment, he found a note inside an envelope that said Amber had Yin with her, and where to meet. Huang offered Hei a lift inside the van who also knew Yin was missing. Once Hei noticed that they were going the wrong way, Huang said he was given orders to keep Hei and Amber separated from each other. Huang shot Hei in his lower leg with his magnum and Hei pulled back just mere seconds before shocking the ex-cop to death.
On the way to see Amber, he crossed paths with a boy who Hei had met before as “Li”. Maki, a kid who Li helped by getting a necklace that was stuck on a tree branch and tying the knot before giving it back to him. The necklace looked suspiciously like the kind Amber had given to him, prior to the incident that made Heaven’s Gate and most of South America vanish. Maki at the same time realized that the nice person he met named Li was Hei, who Amber used to talk about all the time. Maki admitted that he was jealous and the two started fighting. Hei swiftly cottoned on that Maki was a contractor.
November 11th called over to Maki that good little boys and girls should be in bed this late hour of the night. Hei took the chance to slip away.
As Amber and Hei saw each other after so long of an unsettling departure, Amber saw the makeshift bandage Hei made to cover his leg wound and rushed over to him in concern. Hei slapped her hand away. He made himself perfectly clear when he told her before he would kill her, he wanted to know what had happened to his sister. Amber smiled, and teased him with riddles. He felt enraged and slapped her hard across the face when she came close to touching him. Amber then said Hei would be able to see Bai again if he went with her.
Hei would have killed her for not telling him a straight answer if she hadn’t stopped time and got away, taking her right hand man (Amagiri) with her.
Things gradually settled down as Hei was given his next job, to keep tabs on a Yakuza gang who were expecting a girl who was a doll to be brought onto their turf. While undercover as a waiter, Hei as Li Shengshun first met Kenji Sakurai, an awkward but friendly person, a guy no one would suspect to be a Yakuza member. They met in the middle of a commotion caused by a Yakuza thug who didn’t want to pay for his meal. He punched Kenji then tried to beat up Hei who evaded and counter-attacked whenever the thug went at him.
Kenji’s boss of the gang then interfered and ended the fight. Both he and Kenji expressed their gratitude for saving Kenji from getting severely battered. The Yakuza gang leader gave Kenji some cash to have a fun night out with Hei. Dinner was a plus, but the idea of going to a night club and meeting girls wasn’t something Hei was interested in. All the while Kenji pleaded to learn some special moves from Hei, but Hei as timid Li in return kept saying he wasn’t all that great at kung fu.
Kenji’s bike broke down as they arrived near the apartment Hei stayed, and it began to rain. Hei invited him in. As he was getting some tea, a loud racket bellowed from beneath the apartment. He explained that his neighbors were always like that as Kenji wasn’t going to tolerate it. Hei and Mizuzu, the owner of the old apartments, later found Kenji with the noisy neighbors just moments after he kicked the door in.
After the tenants worked together to repair it, Mizuzu treated them to breakfast. As pleasant and peaceful this normalcy was, Hei knew he had to meet up with his Syndicate comrades. He had to leave knowing that a normal life was not to be-not while he still did a secret organization’s dirty work for a living and remained to search for Bai. He felt a silent pang of loneliness and sadness at this cold, bitter truth.
Mao and Hei were later sent out to the restaurant where Hei and Kenji after word had been received that the doll arrived in a private back room. They arrived to find a man who worked there unconscious, but Kenji and the doll were nowhere to be seen. The team then had no choice but to stand down and wait for further instructions.
As Hei returned to his apartment, he saw that Kenji and the silent expressionless doll by the door and let them in. Kenji admitted to him that he loved this woman he rescued. Hei for once did not act like Li exactly. He tried to reason and talk Kenji out of this, going over facts that the doll felt nothing towards him, and couldn’t do much of anything to take care of herself, not even go to the bathroom alone. Kenji in spite of this said he felt he had to protect her from what foul things the Yakuza would put her through if she stayed with them.
Finally Hei relented and did some clothes shopping for Kenji while he stayed at the apartment. He encountered a member of the Tokyo police he met before in a previous mission as Li, who was close to suspecting him as the dangerous assailant BK201, chief Misaki Kirihara. As Li, he manipulated the truth a bit, saying that he was shopping for his friend’s girlfriend because he was too busy and it was the girl’s birthday. Hei as Li felt surprised when Misaki asked if he was going to wear those clothes, so he cleared up the confusion by that half-true story he thought up on the spot. After a little chitchat and farewells, he made it back to Kenji and the doll without incident.
Hei was shocked to find Yin in there when he got back, and at first thought that she had been ordered there to check up on him. That wasn’t the case, for Yin had started acting on her own intentions.. A good thing for Yin to be there too, so she could help the other doll change into her new clothes.
Yin went with Hei as they took Kenji and his love down to the nearest train station, but eventually Kenji and the doll were captured by the other Yakuza gang members. They were taken to a warehouse where the doll would be sold to someone and Kenji would be killed.
Mao had followed Hei and Yin and suspected that it might be a trap when a surveillance specter was sent, Yin saying that the doll was asking Hei to save Kenji. Then Hei looked to Yin and asked why she came to see him. Yin replied that she noticed that Hei was acting a little strange lately, a little off from his cold, rationalizing self. (Mao of course knew of other circumstances when Hei took action in an irrational, unorthodox manner got a contractor, and time and time again this fascinated him.)
Hei came to Kenji’s rescue, zapping the armed thugs unconscious without killing them and Kenji snatched his boss’s gun and told the gang leader to get in his car. Hei trailed some distance behind as they went back to the train station. Hei knew the gun Kenji had consisted of an empty magazine, and he knew that the gang leader knew-so he asked why. The Yakuza boss asked Hei if he ever had something he’d risk everything for and that he used to. Hei knew what he was talking about but he didn’t mention anything about Bai and walked away. The mission was soon aborted after that, now that Kenji and the doll were running away.
Hei and the EPR members eventually crossed paths again, Hei first recognizing Amagiri from the last time he saw Amber. He was in the middle of an assassination job to take out one of them named Alma, the head of a large group that represented one of the many types of religious worshippers of Hell’s Gate. Amber, this time, was not seen with the rest of her comrades. With the EPR was a mole sent by the Syndicate, Shihoko. She used to be in a loving relationship with Huang, years ago when Huang was still part of the Tokyo police.
Alma noticed Shihoko looking at the water specter Huang sent because he was worried about Shihoko. She said she never thought upon addressing Shihoko by an alias name would have bee able to see specters, or that she was a contractor. Hei at will produced electricity while hiding in the air vent to knock out the power of the building they were in, then made the move to get close to his target. Alma indicated that she wouldn’t put up a fight, and this made him hesitate, for he hadn’t expected that. Amagiri projected a heavy force of air towards Hei but he got away in time.
Amber’s right hand and Hei had gotten into another fight after Huang and him rescued Shihoko, but Amagiri never intended to kill him. He in fact offered for Hei to join EPR. Hei refused and evaded the attacks while intending to do the mission; kill Alma.
Alma called out to Hei and assured him it wasn’t a trap. Hei noticed that she looked a lot older than the first time he tried to end her life as she asked him why he was working for the Syndicate. She also told him that contractors weren’t all so different and anymore heartless from regular people. The one exception was contractors being more self-preserved than humans. This discussion made Hei question for the first time in his life on what he believed he understood and hated about most contractors. Before then, he saw them as lying, murdering monsters with no sense of guilt that were unable to dream.
Alma’s obeisance was growing older each time she changed the way she looked. For Hei, she used her power one last time, explained how she atoned for her past actions, how she chose to make a life for herself. Then died in her bed once she changed back.
Hei met up with Huang, Mao, and Shihoko at a hiding place far from EPR. Huang couldn’t bring himself to kill the woman he still loved, to follow these orders given to him because he screwed up by having Yin send down that specter. He gave Hei his gun, telling him to kill them both, but Hei didn’t want to do that. Mao got tense and said that this wasn’t like the time Hei helped Kenji, but Hei reminded his other comrade of the multiple times Huang had saved their lives. The humanly sentient cat then bailed, saying he wanted no part in this.
Hei helped Shihoko and Huang attempt to run from the Syndicate, but Shihoko knew that they would not succeed. Those who sent the order for Shihoko to be disposed of would hunt them down. She ran in front of an oncoming truck to sacrifice herself to save Huang, so that he could live.
Soon on the next job given to Hei, he crossed paths with EPR yet again when he confronted Wei Zhijun just after he planted a bomb in the American Embassy building, a contractor Hei had defeated on a previous mission way back before he had to go to PANDORA to retrieve the Meteor Shard. Wei said that he was so glad he joined up with Amber, because it gave him opportunity to see Hei again. They fought outside and a teleporting contractor of the EPR, Brita, had to interrupt and get Wei out of there.
Amber meanwhile was elsewhere around the American Embassy building, she found Mao high up in a tree and kidnapped him. Later, while Mao had to deal with being in captivity and learned shocking discoveries from the scientist EPR had captured, Hei briefly debated whether or not to rescue him. Eventually he decided to go, mainly because of the opportunity he could have for another chance to kill Amber.
Amber sent Wei Zhijun to slow Hei down as she and the rest of her freedom fighters began to flee from the building. Brita teleported into view and had to remind Wei of this. Hei then saw Amber a level above him and slid up to her on a wire. He demanded her of what she wanted, and what was left for her to take from him. The Meteor Shard in Amber’s small purse began to glow. The entire building they were in and everyone in it began to glow blue. The glow became brighter and brighter until Hei heard his sister’s voice call out to him. While he was startled, Amber got away. The glowing blue light that’s the matter restructuring power stopped completely.
Misaki Kirihara soon arrived on the scene to try and arrest Hei when Huang from behind her tossed a flash grenade on the floor in between them to provide escape.
Huang later announced that November 11th had been killed and taken out a number of other agents with him, including the head of Novermber 11th’s MI6 unit known as Decade. Mao looked up at Huang, surprised to hear of this, for Amber had told November 11th that he was going to die and she knew it. From there, Mao revealed what Amber had told him-that EPR had intended to stop the Syndicate from destroying Hell’s Gate by replicating what had happened in South America to prevent the Syndicate from wiping out all the contractors and dolls worldwide. Hei fumed and left, not wanting to believe that Amber was some crusader of justice. Ever since the end of Heaven’s War, he had seen her as an awful person who had betrayed him, their colleagues, and Bai.
Hei started going over everything that happened during Heaven’s War in his head, wandering around the city of Tokyo aimlessly until he crossed paths with Misaki Kirihara who invited Li to eat out with her. They had dinner and friendly conversation and then went out to batting cages to smack around a few balls. (Clumsy Li swung and missed, mostly.) They talked some more, about the city of Tokyo, a rumor of the old stars they did not believe in, and a tiny bit about Hei’s sister and that they were in a warzone before he had come to Tokyo. As Li, he only mentioned very vague details and let Misaki fill in the blanks on what might have happened to her, because around after five long years he still didn’t know what happened to Bai.
Parting on good terms, and remembering what Misaki had talked about being used and exploited and that she ought to follow her instincts when she started to think too much.
Feeling a little better after having a nice night out with Misaki, he was heading back to his apartment. Mao caught up with him on the way and told Hei not to go home. Soon all was revealed that the Syndicate had decided to eliminate Hei and his unit. A gravity user contractor had been sent to take care of that, but soon they were rescued by none other than Wei Zhijun. Wei told Hei to relax, because he wasn’t there to try and kill him this time but through a favor Amber had requested. Wei was to help them find a way into Hell’s Gate underground.
Huang in his black van drove Mao, Yin, Wei, and Hei for as far as he could towards an abandoned subway tunnel, and then decided to stay behind as a decoy before any Syndicate agents could stop them.
Meanwhile in the old empty subway tunnel, Wei led Yin, Mao, and Hei towards a wall and started another battle with Hei. Wei said that no other contractor could defeat him until Hei did, scarring half of his face and humiliating him. This irked Mao, for a contractor to say he was humiliated he was not the typical kind of behavior of any other contractor.
Hei stabbed a knife deep into Wei’s chest to stop him once and for all. Wei smiled and said in sick amusement that Amber knew that the fight would end like this. Mao was just bewildered and asked why Wei would go through with it when he knew he would lose.
Wei said, "Don’t you get it? The rules changed. None of us make sense anymore.” Then he turned to Hei and grinned. “Your move, BK201.”
Wei Zhijun’s power was to splatter his blood on an object of person and snap his fingers to burst his targets apart. Wei, his whole body covered in his blood, snapped his fingers, and sacrificed himself to blow open a hole in the wall that led Hei and his comrades into Hell’s Gate.
EPR had acquired a network of dolls and activated specters as beacons to guide the way, but the scientist Amber had under their captivity helped to make them go away. The Syndicate then severed Mao’s connection when he had used his hacking skills (his human mind’s stored into a computer chip lodged in the cat’s head to keep his spirit alive) to break into their server. Mao had been there too long and "died".
Yin and Hei met up with Amber near the core of the Gate, who had used up her power a number of times that she looked to be five or six years old but sounded mature for that age. Hei began to see the truth and started to take interest in what Amber was explaining about her reasons for fighting the Syndicate. She explained about Bai changing from being so rational (one of the first of contractors to start evolving) to having concerns as to what being in Heaven’s War and all that time protecting her was doing to her brother. Amber admitted that she felt the same way about him, and that it was a lot safer for him to stay in the Syndicate or else he might have died a lot earlier.
Amber said that in order for Hei to meet with Bai again, he had to release her power to alter the matter within the Gate to make it impenetrable so the future of all contractors would be secure. That would mean sealing up most of Japan too, and Hei cared not only about what happens to Yin, but to all the ordinary citizens of the country. He knew the normal people would die, and he could not do that. And Amber had told him when he hadn’t realized himself that Bai had fused with him, and why he had no price when using her powers.
Amber used the Meteor Shard to seal off the Gate on purpose, for the sake of all contractors but mostly for Hei’s own good since he was so intent on not following through on what she had planned out. Hei was back in that yellow realm he once was in before, with Nick Hillman, but appeared as his eleven year old self. He was turning back to normal as Bai saw the truth as to what had happened to Hei, with each life he took out and of course knew how much he loved her.
Along with them in that strange realm were all the people, contractor and human alike, that Hei knew who were dead. Including November 11th, Nick Hillman, Havoc, and Amber who looked as Hei had known her during Heaven’s War. November 11th, Huang, and Mao all realized that he was acting like a contractor and regular human during all that time they knew him.
Amber tried to help Hei on having everything he ever wanted, but he just couldn’t let so many innocent lives in Japan take the fall because of his own dreams of seeing the true stars and being at Bai’s side. Hei embraced Amber, knowing now that she meant well for him but his own damaged heart ached for all those innocents as well as much as it ached for him to be reunited with his sister. Amber warned him that if he chose to save everyone, there would only be more confusion and he would have to keep killing as long as the Syndicate would remain on his heels. Hei didn’t voice any objections to that, and said his goodbyes to everyone.
For a middle road decision once Hei and Yin escaped from the Gate as Amber turned back time with the last of her power and disappeared. He altered the Anti-Gate particles in the machine system the Syndicate had put together to destroy Hell’s Gate. The particles no longer existed. Hell’s Gate remained standing. No one was wiped out.
Yoshimitsu Horai, one of the top influential members of the Syndicate, had been choking Misaki Kirihara as Hei rushed in Black Reaper getup to the rescue. He was about to kill him when Misaki told him not to do it.
As Hei was fleeing the scene, Misaki cried out, “Wait--Li, please!”
Hei turned to glance at her, his voice coming out flat and cryptic through his mask. “The man you know as Li is gone.” He left her to handle Director Horai who he slammed to the floor unconscious.
Within the next few days, Hei packed up what few belongings he had and moved his apartment-in a hurry since the Syndicate knew this was where he used to stay at. As he was on his way to meet with Yin someplace safe in order to leave Tokyo behind, he thought he saw Misaki out of the corner of his eye, talking to landlady Mizuzu and he hardly stopped walking as he could hear running footsteps behind him.
Hei turned a corner and walked in through an entrance gate that led to someplace he hadn’t expected to turn up in. Paixao...