No sirens. No speeches. Just a red stamp, a folded map, and rain that turned every ward line honest.
Yasaka called it an "audit." Kyoto prefers soft words for sharp work.
They split the city by shrines and storm drains—where water gathered, power did too. Alaudi took the north canal with Ren, Hibird, and Roll riding proud like a tiny warlord on a shoebox lid.
The talisman cranes weren't gone. They were smarter—ink washed once, crest trimmed, the "fold" worked into the paper grain. Cute. Still cheap.
"Don't touch," Alaudi said.
Ren had already stopped. "Same smell as last night. Bitter… like old coin."
"Metallic binder," Alaudi said. "Factory, not priest."
He let Sky Crown skim low. Not a flare—just a surveyor's blink. Lines lit: gutter to gutter, shrine gate to neighbor's lintel, crane to the hand that placed it.
Cloud held, steady weight on the world. Mist fluttered at the edges like bait.
The map in his head drew itself: three drop points, one courier path, one place that didn't belong—too clean for the alley it pretended to be.
"Corner shop," he said. "The one that sells 'local charms' that were printed last Tuesday in Osaka."
Ren wet his lips. "Plan?"
"Simple. We ask the paper who bought it."
He palmed the nearest crane. Cloud pressed—not tearing, not burning—just insisting the thing remember where its weight had been before it got here. Magic is terrible at lying about fingerprints.
Pictures rose: quick hands, ring tan line, a smudge of cafeteria curry, a cheap watch with a cracked face. Courier, not craftsman.
"Lunch-break runner," Alaudi said. "Office worker cosplay."
They followed the grid. Two lefts, one right, through the fish-stall steam and the old radio whining through rain. The corner shop blinked "blessings" in LED.
The bell chimed. A teenager behind the counter didn't look up from her phone. "Welcome! We don't haggle."
"We're auditing," Alaudi said.
She looked up, saw nothing to bully, and went pale. "I just sell what they give me!"
"Who's 'they'?"
"Boxes just… show up?"
"Wrong tense," Alaudi said. "Try again."
He set the crane down. Cloud spread into the wood, into the countertop glass, into the faint compressions of last night's box. The weight picture came back stronger this time. Same watch. Same curry. Same office-sweat.
Ren moved to the door, eyes up, stance low. Hibird clicked once and shut up. Roll drifted off like he'd just remembered a grudge.
The runner arrived on schedule, raincoat up, head down, cardboard in hand. He froze when he saw Alaudi, tried to pivot into a polite retreat, hit Ren instead.
"Hi," Ren said, too friendly, which is exactly how you pin a man between options.
The runner went for the easy mistake—shove and bolt. Alaudi let him choose it, stepped one pace sideways, and put Cloud where the ground had to be. The man's foot met "no," skidded, and he sat down on the floor with a dignity problem.
"I deliver," he blurted. "I don't ask!"
"Who pays?" Alaudi asked.
"App," the man said. "Same as groceries. Pick-up spot pings. I drop. I don't even— I thought it was… stickers?"
Ren took the phone, hands steady. "Can I?"
The man nodded too fast. Ren opened the app, scrolled. No brand, just a gray square with a smiling box. Dead-end, on purpose. But dead-ends leave dirt.
"Backtraces later," Alaudi said. "We start with the box."
He cut the tape. Inside: bundles wrapped in wax paper and string, crane-packs, a roll of "ward-friendly" double-sided stickers, and a false bottom that wasn't trying hard enough.
Under that: glass beads, eight of them, fogged with bad geometry. Dimensional buckles. You toss one and a room forgets which way a corner points.
"Souvenir shop stock," Ren said softly.
"Spectacle kits," Alaudi said. "B-tree nodes. Small folds everywhere until one big one clicks."
He looked at the teenager. She looked like she wanted to be anywhere else that had teeth.
"You're going to close," he said. "For 'inventory.' Put a note. We'll file the real one for you."
"Are we in trouble?" she whispered.
"You're in luck," he said. "You get to be useful."
They carried the box out like recycling. The rain loved them for it.
Yasaka's lieutenant met them two streets over, tails tucked out of the wet. She didn't blink at the beads; she blinked at how neatly Ren held the phone and the box.
"Chain?" she asked.
"Tap-and-go," Alaudi said. "Courier mesh. No central priest. They're renting small hands."
"Then we cut the mesh," she said.
"Quietly," Alaudi said. "Inspection notices. Fire code. Drainage violations. 'Random checks.' Make the nodes hold still while you look at them."
The fox's smile was all fang. "Paperwork warfare. Yasaka-sama will be delighted."
"People fear forms more than blood," Ren recited, deadpan.
"You're corrupting the youth," the lieutenant told Alaudi, fond and annoyed.
"He asked for a syllabus," Alaudi said.
They staged it that afternoon: five inspectors who were just youkai with raincoats and clipboards; three "safety checks" that were ward audits with better branding; one "neighborhood watch meeting" with tea and a stack of pens that cursed any hand that signed with malice.
By dusk, the courier mesh had a rash. By full dark, half the nodes paused. Spectacle hates friction. Money hates delays.
At nine, a van stopped in the alley behind the charm shop—same make as every cheap rental in the city, same sticker scraped off the bumper. Two shapes in caps hopped out and went to open the door. The door refused to be a door.
A4 notice: TEMPORARY CLOSURE FOR INVENTORY & DRAINAGE COMPLIANCE. Signed by three stamps. Stamped by three signatures. Wards woven into the bureaucracy like hair into a ribbon.
The taller one swore. The shorter one checked his phone twice, like reality owed him a refresh.
Alaudi stepped out of the rain.
"No refund," he said. "No returns."
They didn't try a fight. Professionals, smart enough to recognize a trap and live to be cowards. They backed off, got in the van, and bled into traffic. Not the Hero Faction teeth. Just their lips.
Ren let out the breath he'd been pretending not to hold. "So… we won?"
"We inconvenienced the right people," Alaudi said. "That's half of winning."
The lieutenant tucked the box under her arm. "The other half?"
"Making them think it's cheaper to be bored," he said.
Kunou skidded around the corner, raincoat too big, Rice Cracker Medal still tucked in her sleeve like a secret. "Did we do paperwork ninjutsu?"
"Yes," Ren said, devastated by pride.
Kunou beamed. "Mother says those are the deadliest."
They walked back under streetlamps that smeared into coins in the wet. Sky Crown tugged at Alaudi's ribs again—thread to thread, line to line. The grid you choose is a promise. He kept it loose, firm enough to hold, soft enough to let people breathe.
Back at the shrine, Ren wrung his sleeves and looked at the beads in the lieutenant's box.
"Can I… learn the 'ask the paper' thing?" he said.
"You can learn the attitude," Alaudi said. "Everything else is hands."
Ren nodded. "Hands I got."
Hibird pecked the A4 notice on the door and chirped like a seal of approval. Roll sat on the corner of the paper until the last drop of rain stopped trying to be relevant.
No parade. No proclamations. Just stamps that bit, corners that stayed corners, and a city that passed its own audit because someone made the forms hurt back.
Work tomorrow. Fights later.
Forms forever.