Tsujiko

On the night the ground shook beneath The Great Panda City, it was not an earthquake. It was Tsujiko. The mission was simple observation: a Cult of Kaze cell meeting near the cherry groves. But a familiar face in the crowd, a ghost from a life they had buried, was enough to splinter their focus. They don’t remember the heat, only the silence that followed and the scent of burnt bamboo. When the Panda Council reviewed the incident, their gazes were cold. They no longer saw an agent, but a faulty armament. Every mission since has been a tightrope walk over a volcano. The shades are not a choice; they hide the faint glow that betrays the building pressure. The war paint is a ritual of containment. Others see an unreadable operative. Tsujiko knows they are just one bad memory away from becoming an apology.