Fellow Operatives,
Those of you who have been Awakened for quite some time have no doubt heard of The Katana at least once in passing. For those of you who haven't, perhaps a brief explanation is in order. You will hear more of this artifact over the next few months, ich glaube.
The Katana is a powerful weapon that came into my possession in a most interesting way. About a year ago, The Merovingian came across some information that indicated a new and important shipment had arrived at the Ikebukuro docks only to be immediately stolen before it could reach Bishop Imports. Curious about what this shipment was, The Merovingian had a few Operatives from a faction known as "Chaos Theory" during the days of the Iterator phase of The Matrix. These Operatives discovered that the shipment was found by an Exile named Lecher and his exploration team in one of the Archive Constructs. Lecher, living up to his namesake, understood the value of the item he had found and sought to sell it on the black market. Allowing The Katana to gather dust on a shelf in one of the Ueno Towers was not exactly something that would get Lecher enough funds to indulge his, well, lecherousness.
Placing the sword on a secret auction, he received a considerable bid from a crew made up of what we now know as Cypherites but were then only known as "Masked Men". To be honest, back in those days I mistakenly believed that they worked with Morpheus as they frequently attacked those who were trying to disarm the fallen Zionite Captain's code bombs. Ah well, excuse my nostalgia.
Operatives from multiple Organizations and on multiple phases of Mega City made valiant attempts to find The Katana but, eventually, PacketBurner- a Merovingian Operative of The Codemasons (currently on the Syntax version), prevailed, securing The Katana and then fleeing Lecher's offices moments before a Zionite team arrived on the scene. Trusting me to relay this weapon on to The Merovingian, PacketBurner gave possession of The Katana to me. But I did not relay it. Instead, I fielded the false story that I had been attacked en route to the drop-off point assigned by a squad of the Masked Men who stole the weapon. A desperate search was made for this squad but turned up no results, obviously, as they had not actually attacked me.
Why did I take The Katana for myself? To destroy it. No one should have its power. If The Merovingian had managed to gain possession of the verdammte Schwerte, he would have killed Morpheus (which he did anyway). But he would not have stopped there. Eventually, The Matrix would have been worse off than if Agent Smith had defeated Neo and ruled The Matrix. Life as a victim of a virus is terrible, do not get me wrong. But it is still life. A bad life is better than no life. And so that is why no one may take The Katana. Because if they do, they will not resist temptation until there is not one of us left.
I believe I know how to get rid of The Katana. But I require help. It will be a long process but a worthwhile one.
The first step to take, meine Freunde, is to interrogate a suspect that the Mega City Department of Police has kindly taken into custody for us. Yokuhitsu. He was found in a rather odd state in the Sakura Construct. I believe he has strong connections to The Katana and to a web that will need to be destroyed in order to prevent The Katana, and whoever would seek to wield it, from destroying all of us.
The interrogation of the subject will take place Tuesday, August 15th at 1500 Mega City Time. Umbrion of the Mega City Department of Police, the Questioning Officer for this interrogation, will notify you shortly with the address of the station where Yokuhitsu is being held. I would ask that you be present to field your own questions and lend your interpretation of his answers. He tends to speak quite... cryptically at times. Help The Matrix or help yourself. Either way, you will likely not want to miss what Yokuhitsu has to say.
Mit freundlichen Gruessen,
Austrian