They were seated before the map table as if gravity itself had pulled them there. Light from the holo-grid washed their faces in pale blue; the city's bruise of violet glowed through the reinforced viewport behind them like a warning burned into the horizon. Papers were unnecessary — the tech could paint whole patrol routes in midair — but old habits were kept. Plans were felt rather than declared.
Mika's arms had been crossed from the moment they entered. Her posture was unreadable, but the edge in her voice made the air thin. "You should have been here earlier," she said, the accusation folded into a statement. It landed somewhere between leader and friend, and it lingered.
Apologies were offered, awkward and sparse. Ren's shoulders were hunched; Kaede stayed quiet, hands tucked into her sleeves, eyes flicking to the holo as if searching for missing pieces. Haru's jaw was loose, waiting. Eiji's hammer leaned like a sentinel; even Titan looked impatient. Zephyr lounged on a crate with a grin that didn't reach all the way to her eyes. Raijin stood by the wall, arms crossed, a storm held back but obvious in the tremor at his fingertips. His silence was louder than any sentence.
The briefing was started by Mika because it had to be. Orders were not given with ceremony; they were allotted brief and practical. The shadow monarch, Xytheon, had widened its reach overnight. Supply lines were frayed. Shelter seals were being tested. The holo pulsed, and routes of likely incursion were highlighted in jagged black.
"Luxira isn't here," Haru said, voice flat. It was not a rumor to be debated. It was a fact that made the grid shiver. Only the monarchs — the elder Kaiju with the old names and older knowledge — could be trusted to answer the rest, and none of them were contactable. Raijin's face tightened. He had been excluded from that circle; the knowledge of Luxira's tiny existence had been kept within a smaller, ancient council. That detail was not unknown; it was simply helpless.
A pause followed. The tech could not fabricate allies out of thin air. The plan that should have centered on Luxira's intervention could not be built around a ghost.
"Then we plan without her," Mika said. It was not defeat so much as necessity. Strategies were sketched in quick strokes: defensive nodes were to be prioritized around the shelters; mobile teams would run reconnaissance for sudden shadow blooms; the tech lab downstairs would be tasked with strengthening barrier harmonics as best as the limited power allowed.
Ren's hands were shoved deep into his pockets while he listened. "We can't just keep reacting," he muttered. "We need a move that forces Xytheon's hand." The words were small but the idea landed like a coin in a bowl. Someone had to bait a response, draw the shadow into a fight that could be measured and learned from.
"Baiting is risky," Mika warned. "We don't have the experience for orchestrated draws. We're still figuring out what our Hosts can endure." The truth was blunt: they were new. The tech that hummed beneath their feet could amplify, could map, could attempt to stabilize Kaiju signatures — but it could not make a host brave where their training had not yet reached, nor could it replace instinct forged in a hundred battles. The hosts had learned to wield, not to command; to sync, not to strategize.
Kaede's voice threaded into the room quiet and deliberate. "Then we make up for what we lack with what we have. Information. Movement. Masks." Her plan was small, incremental: keep the shelters sealed and supplied; send rapid scouts to verify barrier integrity; rotate the teams so none of them burned out. When a window opened, they would exploit it. When a pattern revealed itself, they would adapt. It was less romantic than a single hero's strike, but it was survivable.
The tech team, led by a woman with tired eyes and quicker fingers, produced schematics for temporary harmonics that could be set up within hours. The cost would be power — precious and dwindling — but the barriers could be shored up in choke points if teams were willing to pull the risk. A plan to defend rather than confront was favored as the safer baseline. Contingencies were drafted: if Xytheon tried a blunt push, reinforce; if it probed with shadows, isolate and counter with light-spark arrays; if it targeted mobility, make the city a maze.
Raijin's stance stiffened when the subject turned to monarch contact. "So the only counter we know of is Luxira," he said at last, voice low. "And she's absent. And the monarchs aside from me are the ones who know her." There was a brittle edge beneath his words — not just frustration, but the pinch of exclusion. He had the power; he lacked the thread of history. That omission was a small, sharp thing in his chest.
Mika didn't mince it. "We don't have Luxira," she said. "We don't have the luxury of waiting for legends to show up. We have people to keep safe." Her eyes swept the group, steady and sharp. "So we work. We scout. We shield. We trade secrecy for time."
A corollary plan was formed with practical brutality: send out two small teams at dawn. One to sweep the nearest districts for shadow niduses and report back in real time; one to seek out the remaining monarchs — not to summon Luxira outright, but to establish contact and learn what can be learned without tipping their hand. The hosts who would go were chosen by temperament: the quieter ones for the monarch-search, the bolder for the sweep. Training time would be stolen in half-hour bursts between shifts; drills would be repeated until motion became reflex.
Ren's suggestion for a diversion — something noisy and visible enough to draw attention but survivable — was folded into the overall plan. Kaede's modifications ensured the bait was layered with escape options. Zephyr offered to lead a reconnaissance sweep, her lightness traded for speed. Raijin bristled at the thought of a stealth role but did not refuse.
The map cooled. Decisions were cataloged and assigned. Every choice was threaded with risk, but the only alternative had been stasis.
Before they dispersed, Mika's eyes found Ren's. There was no scolding left in her expression — only the tired calculus of leadership. "We do this together," she said. "No solo runs. No pride." It was short, but it settled in the room like a verdict.
They moved out with the same silence they'd come in with. The base settled into a quiet whirr of preparations: batteries were rerouted, comm channels were opened on low power, and the little things that kept people alive were doubled. Outside, the city's wound pulsed like a held breath. Inside, a ragged, earnest kind of hope was patched into the plan.
Luxira remained a silence at the edge of the discussion — named, necessary, and absent. The hosts were left to the one thing they could control: their next steps.
Preparations were stripped down to essentials and executed with a brittle efficiency. Batteries were reallocated, comm channels were set to whisper, and the hum of the lab grew into a steady, purposeful noise. Tasks were parceled out with clipped clarity — who would check harmonics, who would run the sweep, who would stand watch — and each assignment was accepted with a quiet that sounded like agreement rather than conviction.
At dawn, the city smelled of dust and cooling ash. Teams moved like shadows through streets half-swallowed by ruin. Zephyr led the reconnaissance squad, light and precise; she slipped between collapsed signs and fractured storefronts, mapping safe lanes with a grin that had become all business. Ren rode beside her when speed was needed, careful and watchful, the white of his hair paling in the pale sky. Kaede stayed closer to the barriers, hands steady on the instruments, her face composed though her eyes were sharp.
Haru and Mika took the monarch-search route — quieter streets, older districts where rumors of elder Kaiju had once lingered like incense. Their pace was measured; each doorway was treated like a question to be asked cautiously. Haru's katana rested against his shoulder, more for habit than show, while Mika scanned the skyline with the kind of restraint bred by command.
Eiji's team was assigned the choke points. His hammer seemed too big for the rubble-strewn alleys, but it was wielded with a deliberate caution that matched the plan: defend; delay; draw the shadow into measurable space. Titan shadowed him like a second heartbeat, hulking and patient.
Communications were thin and coded. Attempts to contact the other monarchs were sent on low-power loops and left to the static of the airways. Replies were sparse, if they came at all. When a response was received, it was fragmented — an old voice clipped by interference, a syllable that meant presence but not help. The absence of Luxira was felt as a cold in the throat; it shaped every choice without ever being named again.
Encounters were small at first: a street gutter blooming into a tendril of shadow that dissolved when light arrays were applied; a storefront where whispers pooled into shapes and were scattered by Zephyr's breezes. Each skirmish was cataloged, its pattern logged and fed back to the lab. Data, not heroics, was what was being amassed — the slow, stubborn work of learning an enemy by its scratches rather than its roars.
Training was folded into action. Half-hour drills were executed between sweeps; a sequence of movements rehearsed until they could be performed with the mechanical coolness of habit. Synchronization exercises were done in cramped alleys beneath dangling power lines; Raijin and Ren practiced timing until sparks and breath and motion matched not as a show but as a safety net. Kaede taught a defensive weave that used the environment as armor; Mika ran tactical rehearsals that were merciless in their honesty.
Moments of quiet were rare and therefore heavy. When they came, they were spent in small, honest ways: a cup of water passed without words, a hand briefly on a shoulder, a shared look that threaded tiredness and resolve. Laughter was not banished but rationed — a sharp relief that flared and then faded, useful only to keep the edges of exhaustion from fraying into something worse.
On the second night, a pattern surfaced. The shadow probes were not random; they traced the same arc across three mapped sectors, like a predator testing a fence line. The discovery was not triumphant — it was a tool. With it in hand, the bait was refined. A diversion was scheduled: a visible energy flare intended to lure a probing tendril out into the open where it could be studied, contained, and, if necessary, countered.
Zephyr volunteered for the visible role and was allowed only after Mika's reluctant nod. She moved with reckless grace, flaunting the flare in a way that was meant to be noticed. The shadow came, curious and thin at first, then thickening as it reached for the light. It was smaller than the monarch's true form, its edges jagged and hungry. It struck and was met with light arrays and Kaede's fieldwork, then corralled by Ren and Raijin, who pulled their sync close and held the line. The engagement was not a victory; it was an education. A map of response time, a list of vulnerabilities, a measure of how a host's breath could be counted on under pressure — those were the prizes won.
When the tendril finally receded, it left behind residue that the tech team hurried to analyze: shadow echo patterns, energy signatures that suggested a thinking intelligence rather than a mindless force. The lab fed the results into the holo-grid; patterns bloomed like new constellations. It was far from Luxira's answer, but it was a foundation.
Back at the base, the mood was taut but steadied by the small gains. Each scrap of data was treated like currency. Luxira's absence was still a dark gap, acknowledged without being argued with; strategy had become scaffolding built from necessity rather than certainty. The hosts had been new at the start of the morning; by nightfall, they were more than that — not veterans, but less green, their reflexes slightly honed, their decisions a touch surer.
Mika's evening order was simple: rotate shifts, preserve power, keep data flowing. "We can't win on legends," she said once more, voice low in the humming lab. "But we can survive on practice and persistence." The words held, heavy and practical.
Outside, the portal pulsed like a wound that would not close. Inside, the group gathered what they could — information, courage, small, stubborn hope. Luxira remained unnamed in the work; her presence was a gap that could not be filled. For now, the hosts had to be enough. They would be the architects of the next step, building from the brittle materials at hand until something stronger could be made.