At the Department for Supernatural Sciences, Ryoko Oshiba’s superior, Myashiro, is rather cross with her for her lack of progress. Ryoko apologizes, citing faulty data. Katherine Pryde is no longer the innocent girl they’d been led to believe. Bringing her in will help, but they need to proceed cautiously. She fears Kitty already has suspicions about them. Miyashiro orders her to push Kitty as far as possible but to tell her only very little about the Dragon or the Path of Destiny. Has Ryoko informed her that the Path seeks Kitty’s death? That would only complicate matters, the agent replies.
(Kitty’s nightmare)
Kitty is running through Japanese streets, panicked about someone following her. She ends up in a dead end and finds she cannot phase, that indeed she is suddenly boxed in. All around her ninjas phase in, attacking her. Suddenly, she is swallowed by a mouth, falling, falling, while a man dressed only in a loincloth keeps on hitting a gong made of a human eye. Kitty still tumbles down, finally being swallowed by Ogun’s devil mask, while shouting that he cannot have her soul.
(reality)
Frightened, she awakes to the phone ringing. The person on the other end introduces himself as Oshiba’s assistant and wants to arrange a meeting between Kitty and his boss at Tokyo Tower in two hours, at the special observatory.
Still fazed by her dream, Kitty enters the bathroom and splashes some cold water on her face. She looks at her reflection in the mirror and finds herself staring at the possessed child that Ogun had made her believe to be when he brainwashed her. Frightened, she stumbles backward and tells her dragon she needs to get her head examined.
Some time later, Kitty finds herself in a crowded elevator on Tokyo Tower. She asks a woman for directions to the Special Observatory and is told that it is closed today. Kitty phases through the elevator door of the shaft to the Special Observatory and walks up. With nobody around, she lets Lockheed out of the bag, once again switching off the image inducer that disguises him as her cat.
Kitty takes in the view but quickly realizes they are not alone. Pretending that she isn’t noticing the ninjas closing in on her, she takes Lockheed’s leash - a chain - and suddenly attacks the men. Using the chain as an offensive weapon, she gives as good as she gets and slowly begins to take them out.
When they seem to have cornered her, she simply phases outside the platform’s glass windows into the air. Learned to fly yet? she mocks, only to find that several ninjas are jumping after her, only to fall through her. Luckily for them, they have parachutes though. Turning tail and running? What kind of ninjas are they? she shouts after them in annoyance.
Hearing cries of pain, she remembers Lockheed and shouts that they need one alive. One ninja flees into the elevator shaft and gets away. One more is left, though. Kitty threatens him with a sword and calls him a Hand bozo. The ninja retorts that they have nothing to do with those mercenaries. They only live to follow the Path. To frighten him, Kitty slashes off his mask. The man commends her skill. She truly is every bit the master they have been led to believe. Biting into a poison capsule, he announces that he enters the next reality, knowing he had the honor of dying before the Daughter of Demon. With that, he dies.
Later, after a shower, Kitty changes into her X-Man uniform and tells Lockheed to remain behind and guard the room. Breaking and entering is not something he is particularly suited for.
Later, at Section 83, Ryoko Oshiba is pushing files. Kitty suddenly phases in, startling the woman, as she demands to see the file on the Path of Destiny. Ryoko lashes out at Kitty, informing her she has no right to sneak in and spy on her that. What about her right to know what she has been dragged into? Kitty retorts. She accuses Ryoko of playing dumb and then explains that the Path of Destiny is not a sect of the Hand. She fought them today. They are less skilled than Hand assassins and there is nothing mystic about them. Hand ninjas go “poof” when they die. These Path didn’t. The Hand don’t speak whereas one of those Path guys got really chatty and called her “daughter of demon.”
Ryoko muses that then their theory about he Path of Destiny must be correct. They believe it to be a cult consisting of followers of Ogun, the ninja demon Kitty once called master. However, Kitty betrayed and killed Ogun. They believe that the Path now wants to kill Kitty in revenge. Startled, Kitty thinks to herself that she didn’t kill Ogun.
(flashback)
She recalls fighting Ogun on that rooftop that night and losing, being at his mercy. But they weren’t the only ones on the roof that night. Wolverine attacked Ogun in a berserker rage, destroying his sword. Wolverine put Ogun at Kitty’s feet and a sword into her hands, giving her the option to kill Ogun and get her revenge, but Kitty couldn’t. That’s when she won her soul back and when Ogun knew he had truly lost. In rage and shame, he tried to strike one final blow at her. Logan reached through Kitty who phased and plunged his claws into Ogun.
(present)
Ryoko snaps her fingers in front of the zoned-out Kitty. Kitty doesn’t inform her about hat small detail, just remarks that she doubts the Path of Destiny wants her dead. They were too cautious in their attacks, almost as if they didn’t want to hurt her. When she had them on the ropes, they did their best to escape. Clearly “fight to the death” was not part of the plan. They want to test her. But she doesn’t know for what yet. She intends to find out though.
Within Kitty’s hotel room, Lockheed hears a strange clicking noise. Alert, he searches the room and finally drags out an odd device with a timer attached to it from beneath the bed.
Leading Kitty outside the building, Ryoko remarks that Kitty has become entwined in this triangle of desires. Kitty wants the dragon. The J.D.S.S. wants the Path of Destiny. The Path wants Kitty. She has no choice but to see this through. Great, but she is the only one who might end up dead, Kitty points out sarcastically. As she gets in her car, she tells Ryoko to call her personally, not through her assistant. She doesn’t have an assistant, Ryoko replies. She kinda figured, Kitty remarks. Nevertheless, she is sure the other woman is still hiding something.
Later, Ryoko informs her superior, Miyashiro, that she only told Kitty as much as she needed to know. They wonder what the Path is after. The third man offers that the Path might know of a certain connection between… Miyashiro interrupts him with a snorted “impossible.” Ryoko points out that Ogun was believed to be an immortal. He could have known about the power he had in his possession. Then it is all the more imperative that they locate and retrieve Kurokaze, Miyashiro decides. If Pryde is the key that is going to help them unlock the door to their prize, then they have to use her before the Path does.
Back at the hotel, in front of her room, a woman asks Kitty if she smells gas? Kitty doesn’t think but is in for a nasty surprise as she opens her door. Inside lies Lockheed, draped around the device and unconscious. Desperately she tries to shake him awake, when a voice tells her that her pet is still alive. Which is more than she can hope for.
She turns to the windowsill, where a ninja with Ogun’s smiling demonface mask is sitting.
