By: Daiyu Tang
Warning: This article contains references to traumatic sexual abuse as well as injuries and death. Reader discretion is advised. The article also contains photography which has been edited to reduce impact, but never-the-less could be traumatic. The Observer’s Editorial view is that without these photos, we risk trivialising impact and thus preventing change.
It’s one of those moments dear reader, where I tell you about horrors. These ones, I witnessed first hand and while I don’t have all the background yet I believe it’s one of these Hathian horrors that stains our town just as the blood of a dead man stayed under my fingernails for scrub, after scrub after scrub.
A Bloody Beach
I was walking the Batterie Beach shoreline just after 2:30am, hugging the shadows where the boardwalk’s sickly lamps and the funfair’s gaudy lights cannot easily reach. I should say that to get you the Observer, I work weird shifts and sometimes towards the end of the shift, when we are sending the paper out to our stockists I need a walk.
Walking the beach, I heard a sound you don’t mistake once you’ve lived in Hathian for long enough: the quiet, animal keening of someone who’s run out of ways to be brave. Someone who has been ‘given’ more than they should have to ever take, or a friend unable to help, just observe.
On the sand I saw a woman, who I have chosen to keep anonymous for now, unconscious, grievously injured and half-cradled by another woman, who was later identified to me as ‘Raven’. It became clear that having first been afraid that Raven was the attacker that she had actually already called 911 and was doing her very best for the woman lying at the edge of the surf.
The EMTs from the FDH took time; and for all of us they likely felt like years. I kept my distance, shot photos through the wind and salt, and made a choice that will irritate some readers: I didn’t publish those beach photos in full. You don’t turn a person’s worst night into a backdrop. What you see above is all that is needed, but no less.
The Pursuit
Raven saw me as the paramedics loaded the woman. I was there, watching like a ghost. It’s my job and I’m not meant to get involved, although often I find my heart demanding I help people. Here though, there was no help I could render.
Raven approached and told me, tight-jawed, not to run the images. It was a fair request that I have tried to meet half-way. But before I could engage more I found that she was running towards her motorbike and I needed to decide what to do. Clearly, this story was heading in two ways. One was to the HGH for the injured woman. One however was to be found following Raven. I choose pursuit. The HGH didn’t need distractions when trying to save someone.
My bike was not as fast and my skill was less so I almost lost her. The wrong shoes, worse roads, no helmet, all the stupid things I do for the Observer when story outruns sense.
It turned out that her destination was Aftershift, the whisky Bar by the FDH. Inside, Detective Juno… Badge, gun, the whole official bearing. He had a man, subsequently identified as ‘Sven Larsson‘ at a table with a whiskey of his own. I peeked through windows and because I had arrived later found that Raven was already heading inside.
I did not know then what I know now from discrete inquiries. Apparently Larsson is the father of the woman from the beach. But even without this knowledge, right at that moment, I did not need to know that to read what was written across Raven’s face when she stepped through that door with an axe in her hand.
“Put the axe down,” Juno warned her, weapon drawn, voice steady. “Don’t test me!“
It appeared that Juno knew something of this Larsson, who it seemed was offering to come to the station with Juno to discuss matters, likely relating to the woman on the beach. He was un-cuffed and unnervingly at ease, playing philosopher… “We’re all monsters in our own way,” he told the room. Some men love to weaponize the word “monster.” It makes their choices sound like weather instead of will.
Earlier, according to witnesses, he’d threatened a bystander who identified herself as a CU law student and appeared to be on Tiktok filming the whole thing. Despite threats she kept filming anyway, latte to camera in one disassociated from danger motion. Her perhaps foolishness has however thankfully helped me with this article in seeing and hearing more than I managed myself.
Collision Course
What happened next will argue itself out in court and in bars across Hathian. Here is what I saw and heard, from the doorway:
- Raven advanced, voice shaking with fury: “How dare you call yourself her father?”
- Juno levelled his sidearm, offered her a route to the station: “You can follow. But he’s coming with me.”
- Larsson taunted, then pitched calm: he’d “walk in” uncuffed with the detective. (Editor’s aside: Walking alleged predators to the station without cuffs in a city that eats its own is a choice. It sets a tone that betrays predators with predators)
- Raven lunged… Juno intercepted with a headlock and a throw, trained hands doing what they’re capable of doing.
- Raven went down, but came up with a revolver, hand shaking, eyes blown wide with grief and rage.
- Juno fired first, striking her arm….
- Raven’s shot fired anyway…
Larsson took that round to the chest. He staggered, smiled a strange little smile, and bled onto the floorboards of Aftershift as he was swiftly taken to the afterlife.
Aftermath at Aftershift
A bar staff or manager, Lila, fast-thinking and steady hit 911 on speaker, stripped back the man’s shirt, and did something only street triage and horror shows teach you to do… She found the wound and put pressure where it mattered. I tossed her my trauma kit and moved to tourniquet Raven’s arm. Juno kicked Raven’s gun away and, yes, called her a “belligerent cunt” as he pinned her throat with his boot to keep her off the dying man. (Editor’s aside: I’m not tone-policing a cop during a shooting; I am noting the record. Words matter, especially when everything else is screaming.)
Raven still tried to crawl to Larsson, hissing that she’d “closed the case” for the detective and, if he lived, she’d “find him again“. The Tiktokker slipped out the back with her footage intact and HPD radio traffic crackled: two shot, scene secured, medics requested.
I took photos. I also swore. Then I shut the camera and pressed gauze and did the thing you do when you can’t be only a witness.
Causes That Cannot Be Justified
Raven’s rage did not spring from just anywhere. In the bar, Larsson as much as admitted to “teaching [his daughter] a lesson.” Raven accused him, flatly and repeatedly, of rape. Juno referenced orders from “the inspector” and indicated charges would include kidnapping and assault at minimum, with further medical evaluation to define the rest.
Do I know the whole of what happened between father and daughter? No. Do I know enough to be sick to my stomach? Yes. (Editor’s aside: Hathian is full of men who call harm a ‘lesson.’ Stop grading them on a curve.)
“Amatsu-Mikaboshi gave me the power to do this. The Amakage guided my fingers.”
Raven
Raven was quoting Japanese myth… I wondered what beliefs were driving her and trust this helps a little for our readers:
Amatsu-Mikaboshi (天津甕星): Often rendered as ‘the August Star of Heaven,’. Mikaboshi appears in early myth lists as a primordial, sometimes malign, star deity. One reference simply calls him ‘the kami of stars who existed before the Kotoamatsukami‘. For good order, the Kotomatsukami were the first Gods in the Shinto religion.
Editor’s Note: The term Amakage (天影), roughly translated as ‘heavenly shadow’, does not appear as a widely recognized deity within traditional Shinto texts. It appears here, as far as I can tell, as a personal or spiritual reference used by Raven, possibly alluding to a shadowy or chaotic force she believes guides her actions. Its use reflects a more personal interpretation of mythology, blending elements of what appears to be her spiritual belief and vengeance…
Bodies & Outcomes
By dawn I could confirm this much for you:
- Sven Larsson was pronounced dead from a gunshot wound to the chest.
- Raven Mizuki survived a gunshot wound to the arm and significant blood loss. She was transported in serious condition to HGH and I assume from there will go to HPD for what she has done.
- Our beach victim survived her injuries from the beach incident and was hospitalized. Her condition is guarded; details are private and should remain so.
Detective Juno left with blood on his face that wasn’t his… HPD will write their report; HPD Internal Affairs will ask its questions. They should also ask why a suspect this dangerous was being negotiated with ‘as equals’ and what planning surrounded that choice of Juno to meet the suspect in a bar, without backup. That is not a judgment on the split-second trigger decision that caused Raven to be shot; it is an accountability question about everything that led to it…
To our readers: if the word “monster” is doing a lot of work in your head right now, let it. Then ask who taught it to you and whether you, or others you know perpetrate it. We must, together, stop this cycle of abuse and death.
If you or someone you know has experienced sexual violence, HGH and local advocacy groups can connect you with confidential support.
