Takeshi had fallen asleep in his chair, chin tilted toward the ceiling as if listening for a sound only he could hear.
A stub of graphite rested between two fingers, a thread for his map hung from the pin he'd meant to place.
The prosthetic lay on the bench beside him, quiet and open. He snored once - soft, surprised - then settled.
Raizen eased the door closed behind him.
The Underworks' night wasn't a real night, but it did a good imitation.
Raizen let the faint sounds fill his mind and slipped down a corridor that seemed like it had a dead end.
But it didn't. He slid past a hatch that only opened if you pushed hard enough
He came out in a room that had forgotten its use. It might once have been a storeroom, but nobody knows anymore.
A thick pillar reigned the room. The rough floor was clean only in a circle where feet had stepped a hundred times, around the pillar.
A single lamp sat high on a pipe - dim, but it was enough.
He wrapped his fists in torn cloth, pulled it tight with his teeth, and started to work.
Jab - snap, not shove. Cross - hip first.
He chased the pillar with combinations Kori had burned into him until they were only motion and not even strategy. Instinct.
His breath came in quick papers he signed without reading. Blood began to stipple the cloth at the knuckle, then thread through it.
He kept going anyways. That's what he was best at doing.
"Again."
He didn't say it out loud. He didn't have to. The word was already spoken by his movements.
The lamp buzzed. His shoulder ached but he couldn't care less.
His mind tried to hand him pictures - Hikari at the Maw, the barrel's dark ring against her temple, his mother's voice breaking on his name...
He refused them, one after another, until there were no pictures left and only the rhythm of hands, feet, breath, the way the world narrows to the next hit done correctly.
He didn't hear the hatch open.
Hikari leaned in the frame, small in the lamp's circle, smaller still in the Underworks' miles.
She watched him miss a breath and catch it on the next. She watched the way his shoulders squared against nothing anyone else could see.
She watched the cloth on his knuckles take on the color of poppies.
At first, she just stood there. Watching him.
Observing him. Flinching every single time he seemed to hurt his knuckles.
Then, she walked to him without announcing her steps.
He was too focused to feel her presence. His interrupted breath was the only sound in the room. Preparing a hit that would have made Kori smile and nod, he pulled his hand back.
Hikari stepped into his ring and slid her arms around him from behind.
The next hit never landed.
His fist halted an inch from the pillar and just remained in the air, suspended.
He stood caught between motion and stillness, even forgetting how to breathe.
Hikari rested her forehead between his shoulder blades. Her warm cheek found the seam of his shirt. He hadn't noticed how cold the room was until then.
She didn't say "you're scaring me!". She didn't say "don't break yourself!". She didn't say any of the things that would have made him put his armor back on.
"Please, Raizen. Rest." she whispered.
It wasn't a command. It was a quieter place she offered him. A safer place.
His hands fell to his sides, guard completely off.
She stayed where she was, holding him gently, as if one small gesture would break him.
"You're bleeding" she added after a long time, which was her way of saying "I care" without risking that he'd dodge.
He looked at his hands properly. Cloth cut through with rust-dark spots.
"Yeah" he said, with a laugh that sounded more like a cough. "But it's a price I'm willing to pay."
She let him go, but only enough to reach for his wrist. He didn't pull away. She gently took his hand and turned it. The lamp was dim, but enough to show all the bruises.
"You saved me..." she finally let the words out. "Earlier."
"I don't know…" he admitted. It felt like confessing something to a rock. "I didn't feel like… Myself."
"You felt like someone who didn't want to let me die" she affirmed simply. "That's enough."
He leaned his back on the pillar and slid down until he sat. The floor was colder down there, but he didn't mind. She crouched beside him and laid her head on his shoulder. Her hair fell like a curtain between him and the rest of the world.
They stayed that way for some time. Silent moments of pure understanding. His eyes fell shut without permission.
---
The forge woke at a different hour than everyone else. Obi was there, waking it up, arms full of intentions.
He shouldered the doors wide and the smell of old ash and steel ran out to meet him like a dog that loved his owner.
He flicked the light switches one by one, hoping that the lightbulbs won't blow up. Workbenches were covered in the kind of order that only looks like chaos to other people.
He dragged a long table to the center of the room, wiped it with an old rag that deserved retirement, and slapped a chalk line down its length.
"Right" he told himself. "We're building miracles."
He lined hammers by weight and temper across the bench: round, straight, a rubber one even he didn't know how it got there.
From a good-looking cabinet (the only good looking cabinet around) he brought two bars of steel that were not like the others - clean, straight, shiny, silvery, with the ring of good ore when he tapped them with a knuckle.
"Sing for me, sweeties" he said to each.
On the far table he cleared a space and laid out high-quality black leather for grips he grabbed the night before. Let's just say that the price tag made him wince.
He unrolled a huge sheet of paper and sketched without hesitating.
For Hikari: He paused. His pencil made circles for a minute, as if trying to tie ideas together.
Staff? Spear?
He let out a cheeky grin. "You know what? I'm going to do both!"
Time flew by as Obi started designing an abomination of a weapon, but still useful, practical and beautiful at the same time. Staff at one end and a blade at the other.
Then, for Raizen: a twin pair of blades that favored speed over show - straight spine, perfect balance. No spikes, no dragon heads, no useless lies.
A tool that wanted to go where his shoulders said. The sphere would live in the cores, not in the hilt - he wanted the cut to carry the song, not the hand.
The blueprints took more and more shape, as his mind was actively flooded with stupid – or purely genius ideas. He kept both.
Then he ran into a little big problem. The luminite sphere was one, and the blades were two.
After a lot of thinking, he made a very… Obi-like decision.
He was going to split the Luminite gem.
Into two perfect halves.
He was going to make the impossible behave.