A divided soul. She just turned 18, she's just discovered boys and melon soda and Hello Kitty for the first time, and she has only killed two people this week. But the week is still young, and they were probably bad people.

    Meet Setsuko (pronounced SETS-ko,) a sheltered young runaway just starting out in life. She's also a scarred and hunted fugitive with deadly skills who has carved a bloody swath through the underworlds of five countries.

    If only she could remember how she did it.

    The unwanted child of a Yakuza Oyabun and a Chinese prostitute, the little girl who came to be known as Sato Setsuko was found in a cardboard box in Kowloon's Walled City, just before that notorious slum was dynamited.

    According to Interpol records, she may have been only three when she was taken in by the sinister Japanese Ninja clan/cult knwn as the SanRingu, or "The Three Rings." She became the special protegé of the mistress of the SanRingu, the woman known only as Hatsue.

    On her 18th birthday, the young apprentice discovered her mistress's evil plans for her and escaped with a set of armor and a sword powered by nano-technology, verging on magic. She gravitated to Tokyo, where she used the skills of forgery and deception she had learned in the SanRingu-Jo to enroll in Hibiya High School in Chiyoda-ku.

    Now, alone in a strange world with its own intrigues and warring clans, this young ninjna must also fight a lonely battle against an intimate enemy, her own divided nature.

    The SanRingu did more than raise her and train her, they programmed her to kill on their mysterious mental command, a command she cannot disobey.

    Yet.