---A few weeks later---
The Rust Room had found its rhythm again - mornings no longer paused for bad news, after weeks, if not months.
The rigs stretched and clicked as they warmed. Behind the thick glass, on Mina's usual monitors, rows of numbers blinked awake one by one.
Kori stood at the center, chain-knives wrapped loose at her wrists. A handful of assassins-in-training had drifted in and found reasons to linger near the rail. They tried to look busy. They watched anyway.
Raizen and Hikari stepped onto the floor together.
Their Luminite weapons, the real ones this time, answered the light with a soft pulse. No show, just a clean, steady glow.
Raizen rolled his shoulders once and let his weight drop into the floor. Hikari brushed her thumb along the spine of her blade, then set her feet in a stance so small it almost wasn't a stance at all.
"You've gotten better these last few weeks!" Kori said. "That's how it should look."
Mina tapped a screen. "Again? They already cleared high on every rig last week."
"Verification, not proving" Kori said.
A ripple moved through the trainees. High meant the machines stopped being fair.
"That's them! The pair that ran all high clean!" Some whispered
The floor broke into segments with a low hum. Panels rose and fell by fingers and hands. Pillars slid out of nowhere, then back. Targets snapped out of the walls, flashed red, and disappeared before eyes could get bored. The old ropes shivered once and waited.
"Warmup" Kori smiled.
They moved like people who had already done this, and were here to do it right again. The first minute was footwork only.
Raizen's steps were the same ones he'd been drilling for months, but the edges had been sharpened. He cut corners off his own bad habits and left them on the floor.
Then panels dropped without warning. Targets filled the room with quick circles of light.
Raizen's blade instantly found them, short and honest. Hikari's blade hit them too, but she started swinging a split second before they were truly dropped. Mina glanced over the rim of her monitor and squinted. The speed of everything happening was almost chaotic.
"Numbers?" Kori said - her normal eye not being able to keep up. She didn't want to use her Chasmis. It tired her way to much.
Mina let the pen fall onto the desk. "Eleven point eight percent. Eleven point nine. There's a spike - twelve point one, twelve point two - holding, holding! Ah, back to twelve flat."
The rigs cranked up. Rods and targets swung wide and high, forcing body and balance into arguments. Platforms slid. The targets changed their rhythm - now low, now high, now swinging at the same time.
Raizen cut through, blocked, pivoted, cut again.
Then he ler out a wide smile. Hikari didn't. Her eyes measured everything to make sure she didn't waste any second.
"Enough" Kori said, smiling. "Now let's try sparring."
She unwound one chain with a flick, then another. But then, she changed her mind.
"You know what? This time... Not me. Each other."
A hum rolled through the room. Even Mina sat forward.
Raizen and Hikari against each other.
First contact was soft - a test. Steel met steel and slid rather than clashed. They stepped out, reset, stepped back in. Raizen set a rhythm. A really fast one.
Not too much, just enough to see if Hikari would leave her own. She didn't.
Her blade clipped his guard and slid toward his wrist; he let it, dodged and gave back a move he'd been waiting to use for some time now.
Hikari's eyes were surprised. But she moved out of the way before getting hit.
Other trainees gathered, silently watching. A few stood on the far edge of the floor without crowding.
People who'd spent months thinking they were fast watched Raizen move with a pace they couldn't keep up with
Hikari's edge always showed itself in the last minute. It always did when she forgot she was holding back. Not this time though. She didn't need to restrain her movements.
But Raizen's guard was solid, too.
Some blocks came from the wrong hand, but they came.
Kori didn't smile, but her eyes got a shade warmer. She sometimes screamed or grunted: "Now! his balance is off!"
Or " Push, her guard is open! Come o1n, you could have gotten her with that, Raizen!"
Mina looked at her the way a mom looks at her small daughter when she's making two bugs fight.
"You're way too invested into this, Kori!" She laughed
"Come on, you have to give it to them! Look how much they've changed! Another point to my teaching skills, hehe!"
Raizen pressed on with a tight pattern that forced Hikari to answer on his rhythm. Hikari answered - only to somehow find the perfect counter swing every time.
His blade parried every time, turning every block into a counterattack.
They lasted seven more minutes. Sweat ran into Raizen's eyebrow and made his left eye sting.
Hikari's breath was faster but quieter.
Then, Raizen's sword ever so slightly pulsed. He saw the small opening it was trying to warn him about.
Then, with almost supernatural speed, re rewrote his weapon's trajectory, and barely made it.
Raizen's blade stopped centimeters from Hikari's neck.
Kori lifted a hand. "Stop."
Silence swallowed the room for a few seconds.
Mina pushed her chair back and read the monitors. "Average sustained multiplier twelve point zero two" she said. "Spikes to twelve point five on Hikari's side. Twelve point four on Raizen's. Minimal drift. No overload. You didn't break my room. Thanks for that."
Kori walked to them with a towel and handed it to Raizen first. New habit. He passed it to Hikari first. Old habit. She wiped her forehead and gave it back.
Kori's eyes ran over them. "You're at twelve. That's way more than enough for what you're aiming at. The entrance exam, I suppose.
It's not at all the best you can do, and I hope you know that. It just means your bodies finally listen to the stones at the speed your heads always wanted. Don't chase the next number like it will fix your life. You'll get it by doing the same old boring work."
Raizen sighed "good enough for me"
Kori turned her head toward the rail. "All right. Show's over. Let's say I taught you all of the basics. And I gotta give it to you – you two kind of mastered them"
Kori looked back at the pair. "Last adjustments" she said. "If there's anything you want to recalibrate, do it now. After this, you don't get me in your ear. You get strangers who don't care about your names."
"You've both run every rig on high" Mina said, more to herself than to them. "You've held twelve without frying. Honestly… you're ready!"
Kori didn't disagree. Which, from Kori, was better than a trophy.
She added one last thing. "When you walk into the Lotus, don't try to impress anyone. Be hard to knock down, and quick to surpass others."
"We won't forget" Raizen said.
Hikari slid her blade home and tied the strap.
"When is the call for the exam?" she asked.
"Soon" Kori said. "You'll hear it. It's loud, and it doesn't wait."
Mina cleared her throat. "No hero training tonight. If I catch either of you back here, I'm locking the doors and telling the rigs to chew. Yes, Raizen. I'm talking to you." She said, after throwing a very meaningful look.
Raizen almost smiled. "Alright, alright. We're done for today."
They left the Rust Room without ceremony. One last time.
Raizen looked at the hidden door closing, Mina waving behind it1
The Underworks greeted them with its usual noises - pipes hissing, someone arguing about bread, cart wheels squeaking in protest.
The city was itself again. But more relieved. Like it breathed easier after the Moirai were gone.
Following Hikari's small request, they climbed to the Tangle.
Up here the air moved slower. The noise below blurred into something distant. Raizen leaned on the rail with both forearms. Hikari stood next to him, close enough to touch elbows.
They didn't talk for a while. They didn't need to. Hikari stood there, looking at the lanterns with a spark in her eyes, stealing glimpses of Raizen's face when he wasn't looking.
She loved the small lights.
"Well? Everyone says that we can do it" Raizen broke the silence.
Hikari let out a faint smile. "Yes... Twelve percent should be enough..."
"So... Tomorrow...?" Raizen asked.
"Or the day after, we don't really know" Hikari answered. "Soon enough."
He exhaled looked down at the blades at his side. The Luminite pulsed, as if it wanted to match the beautiful lights.
"We'll walk in and pass that exam" he said. "No matter what."
Hikari looked at him with an amused expression.
"We'll walk out too. Not sure who's going to get his back smacked first!" she laughed.
"Yeah, we'll see about that" Raizen smiled, and turned his head back towards the golden lights.
The Rust Room had done it's job. It taught them what it could teach.
The rest would be decided somewhere that didn't know their names.
Yet.
Hikari leaned into Raizen's shoulder just a little.
"Do you think Takeshi... Would be proud of us?" she asked with a soft voice.
Raizen didn't look away from the lights.
"He already was."
The quiet stretched… Then broke.
A deep horn rolled through the city - one long, resonant note that made every pipe tremble. It seemed to come from everywhere at once.
The summons. Lotus Academy's call.
Hikari smiled first.
Raizen did too.
"Looks like tomorrow came early"
They looked at each other, a look that said "we're ready."
Two sparks.
Ready for the world above.