A Certain Average Fixer

Chapter 5: Unexpected Recruitment

The ceiling of Sera’s apartment had never looked so oppressive. She had been lying in bed for three hours, the blankets twisted around her legs, her tablet glowing face-down on the nightstand. The Grey Sky Solutions thread was still burning on FixerNet, she knew it without checking, because her brain refused to stop replaying every post, every argument, every infuriating reply. The Hana account’s cold verification. middle_finger_cutie’s unexpected agreement. Ciel Phantom’s casual blessing. And at the center of it all, that single flat response: “I have jobs to do.”

It was not the words. It was the complete absence of performance. Every other Fixer on the forums, from the Grade 9 hopefuls to the Grade 1 veterans, had some kind of persona. They defended themselves, they cultivated reputations, they engaged with fans and critics alike because that was how you built a name in the City. But this Gray person had simply stated facts and walked away, as if three hundred strangers debating his existence was weather happening to someone else. He had not even bothered to be offended. He had just shrugged, digitally, and gone back to work.

Sera rolled onto her side and pressed her face into the pillow. The thing that gnawed at her was not anger. It was envy. She had spent years analyzing Fixers from the safety of her apartment, writing detailed breakdowns of combat styles she had only ever seen in footage, arguing about office rankings with the confidence of someone who had never thrown a punch. She could tell you which Grade 5 in District Eight was underrated and which Grade 2 in District Four was coasting on reputation. She had built an entire identity around knowing things about Fixers. But she had never been one. She had never held a real blade. She had never felt the weight of a client’s fear pressing down on her shoulders. Everything she knew was secondhand. She was a scholar of a world she had never touched.

The idea arrived fully formed somewhere around four in the morning, when the sky outside was still black and the city hummed with the distant sound of Sweepers finishing their work. It was a stupid idea. She knew it was stupid even as it crystallized in her mind. She would join Grey Sky Solutions. Not as an observer, not as a commentator, but as a real Fixer. She would see for herself whether the reviews were legitimate, whether the former coworkers’ strange testimonies were exaggerated, whether the quiet operator at the center of the storm was genuinely unremarkable or secretly something else. And if she was going to do it, she would do it properly. She would walk into the Hana Association herself and start from the very bottom.

The decision felt insane, and she told herself so several times while she lay there. She had zero combat experience. Her job was at a small shipping logistics company in District Twelve’s Nest, where her primary physical exertion was carrying coffee back from the break room and occasionally lifting a box of printer paper. She had never been in a fight. The closest she had come to violence was watching leaked combat footage and arguing about it on forums. Her hands were soft. Her reflexes were untested. The idea of actually applying to become a Fixer was absurd. It was the kind of thing a bored Nest kid might fantasize about before coming to their senses and going back to their comfortable life.

But the more she turned the idea over, the more it felt like the only honest thing she had ever considered doing. She could not spend the rest of her life critiquing a world she refused to enter. That was cowardice disguised as expertise. If she was going to claim she knew what made a good Fixer, she should at least understand what it felt like to hold the blade herself.

Dawn came slowly, gray light seeping through the blinds. She got up, showered, and stood in front of her closet for a long time. Most of her clothes were Nest-standard: clean lines, soft fabrics, colors that were muted but expensive. She owned several pairs of shoes that cost more than a month’s rent in the Backstreets. She owned a coat that had been imported from District Eight’s textile houses. None of it was appropriate for what she was about to do. She eventually settled on the most practical outfit she could find: sturdy pants that she usually wore for weekend walks, a long-sleeved shirt that was at least durable, and boots that had seen maybe three actual walks and zero Backstreets streets. She looked at herself in the mirror and saw a woman who was about to make the worst decision of her life. She did not look away.