Takomi looked at the door Grace had walked through and then looked at Kagekami with the expression of someone putting pieces together.
"She came all the way here just to see you," she said.
Luke looked at Kagekami. The look had several layers to it, none of them particularly warm.
Kagekami said nothing.
An S-Rank appeared at the training hall entrance. "Ms. Kasami. The journalists and news crews have arrived at the front."
Ms. Kasami looked at Kagekami. Then at Saito. "Follow me."
"Where are we going?" Kagekami asked.
Ms. Kasami smiled the kind of smile that means the answer is already decided. "Shouldn't everyone know that we have two new S-Rank Protectors?"
Kagekami went still. He looked at her. Then something in his face shifted quiet, genuine, the particular expression of someone receiving something they had been working toward for a long time without knowing if it would ever arrive.
Saito looked at him sideways. Then she followed Ms. Kasami without a word.
The journalists were already clustered at the Association's front balcony, cameras raised, the general atmosphere of people who had arrived expecting a story about a destroyed gate and were sensing something considerably larger. They fell quiet when Ms. Kasami appeared at the podium.
She let the silence settle. Then she spoke.
"Today is a momentous day for this country. Not only did we eliminate the Queen Ripper I am proud to announce the two newest additions to our S-Rank Protectors."
The doors behind her opened.
Saito walked out first. Then Kagekami.
Every camera in the crowd turned simultaneously. The flashes came in a wave.
"Ms. Saito and Sir Kagekami," Ms. Kasami said clearly, "are our newest S-Rank Protectors."
At school Sora was sitting alone on a bench, chin tilted up, watching the clouds move. The morning was quiet and she was letting it be quiet.
"Sora!"
She turned. Lily was running toward her across the yard, phone extended, expression somewhere between exploding and imploding.
"Look. just look"
Sora took the phone.
Reporting live from the Dragons Fang Association the renowned S-Rank Protector Ms. Kasami has announced two new additions to the country's S-Rank Protectors. Their names: Sir Kagekami and Ms. Saito
Sora stared at the screen.
He did it, she thought. The pride arrived before anything else warm and immediate and completely his. He actually....
She stopped.
She looked at the second name again.
"SAITO!?"
Lily grabbed her by both arms and jumped. Sora jumped with her. The two of them cheered in the middle of the school yard without caring at all who was watching.
Emily watched from her living room, one of the children asleep against her side, the television casting light across the room.
The smile came slowly and stayed.
In her car Grace held her tablet, the announcement still on screen, the camera settled on Kagekami at the podium. She looked at him for a long moment.
A thought moved through her mind and she let it pass without finishing it.
For now.
The journalists descended the moment Ms. Kasami finished speaking.
"Was the Queen Ripper as straightforward as it appeared."
"Sources are saying she was already weakened before you engaged her."
"What does it mean to you personally to become an S-Rank Protector at your age"
Kagekami raised one hand, gesturing for patience. He took a breath. He opened his mouth.
Then he took one step back and was gone.
The journalists blinked at the empty space where he had been standing. Then, collectively, they turned to Saito.
Saito looked at the cameras. Looked at the crowd. Looked at the space where Kagekami had been standing ten seconds ago.
She vanished.
Luke walked up beside Ms. Kasami and watched the journalists stand in bewildered silence in front of a podium that now held no one.
"Lively bunch," he said.
Takomi pressed her lips together to contain something.
"I'm going to my office," Ms. Kasami said. "I'll see you both later."
He ditched me. Saito walked through the city with the focused energy of someone with a specific destination and a specific grievance. In front of every journalist in the country. He just left. Her jaw set. He's at home. He has to be at home. And when I find him I will make absolutely sure he understands what a hard lesson feels like.
Ms. Kasami's office was quiet when she reached it. The kind of quiet that is correct for an office. She reached for the door handle.
A sound from inside. Something dropping. Then the careful sound of something being placed back where it had been found.
She opened the door.
Kagekami was standing at her desk, both hands on a mug he had very clearly just knocked over and was in the process of repositioning with the focused care of someone hoping the evidence might disappear.
He looked up.
"I this was the first place I thought of," he said.
Ms. Kasami looked at the mug. At him. At the mug again. Then she walked to her chair and sat down.
"So you teleport to wherever you're thinking of," she said. "That's a remarkable ability."
"I can go if I'm in the way"
"You're not." She said it simply, without ceremony. "It gets very quiet in here. You're welcome to stay as long as you like."
Kagekami sat down across from her. For a moment neither of them said anything and it wasn't uncomfortable.
"You seem like someone who's genuinely good to be around," he said.
She looked at him. "What makes you say that?"
He thought about it honestly. "When I joined the Rankers people with higher ranks treated me like I didn't belong there. It was a lot." He looked at his hands. "But when I found you in that cave and we talked, even briefly" he paused, "I felt lighter. Like I'd forgotten about all of it."
The colour that moved into Ms. Kasami's cheeks arrived without her permission and she made a note to address that later.
"I've never met anyone as selfless as you," she said. "You stepped between me and a killing blow without hesitating." She held his gaze carefully. "It must have been my rank that made you do it. The position."
Kagekami looked at her.
"I couldn't care less about that," he said.
The directness of it landed without warning. Ms. Kasami looked at him at the complete absence of performance in his expression, the simple honesty of someone who means exactly what they say and has never learned to dress it up and felt her cheeks do the thing she had just made a note to address.
Kagekami smiled. Quietly. To himself, mostly.
Outside the office the city went about its business, entirely unaware that two people were sitting in a room together and one of them had just made the other forget, briefly and completely, that there was anything difficult about the world.
The restaurant was quiet and expensive the kind of place where people come to be seen or to have conversations they don't want overheard. Creed sat alone, working through his meal with the focused displeasure of someone whose morning had not gone the way they intended.
A figure sat down across from him.
He looked up.
She wore a mask that covered her entire face smooth, pale, with the single word Amber written across the left cheek in a careful script. Nothing else. No expression to read, no face to place.
Creed set down his fork. "Who are you?"
"Nobody important." Her voice was unhurried. Warm, even. "Just a great admirer. My entire family admires you, actually." She folded her hands on the table. "The astonishing S-Rank Protector Creed. The shield of this country. In the flesh."
Creed said nothing. He picked up his fork again.
"You show people what true strength looks like," she continued. "What real leadership is. You always have." A pause precise, deliberate. "At least, you used to."
He looked at her.
She stood up slowly, smoothing her jacket. "Lately all we see is a sheep cowering in a wolf's shadow." She held his gaze through the mask for a moment longer than was comfortable. Then she walked away.
Creed watched her go. He looked down at his hands.
The moments came without invitation Ms. Kasami in the cave, the association, Grace's hand stopping his mid-air in front of everyone, Kagekami's name being announced at the podium. One after another, each one carrying the particular weight of public humiliation.
His fist came down on the table.
The table didn't survive it.
He left without finishing his meal.
The woman in the mask walked into an alley three streets over and kept walking. Behind her, unhurried, three men followed tracking her with the casual confidence of people who have done this before and found it straightforward.
One of them whistled.
She stopped. Turned around.
The one who had whistled came forward, pocket knife already out, holding it with the practiced laziness of someone who considers this work. "Everything you've got. Now."
She reached into her bag without hesitation. Pulled out a stack of cash substantial, bundled, the kind of amount that changes the temperature of a conversation.
She held it up so all three of them could see it clearly.
"Whoever beats him up gets all of this."
She was looking at the other two when she said it.
They looked at each other. Then at the stack. Then at the man with the knife.
He started moving his blade between his fingers, watching them. "Seriously?"
They pounced on him.
She watched the proceedings with her arms folded and her head slightly tilted, the mask giving nothing away. When it was over she put the money back in her bag.
"Pathetic," she said quietly. Not to anyone specifically. To the situation. "You had an opportunity to improve yourselves. Instead" she gestured at the general scene, "This."
The two men who remained standing looked at her. Then at the money. Then at her.
They started walking toward her.
She turned and walked away at a completely unhurried pace.
"Make it painful," she said.
Four men stepped out of the shadows around them.
The black car was already waiting at the alley entrance. The butler had the door open before she reached it. She got in. He closed it. Got in himself. Started the engine.
"Ms. Lynix." He glanced at her in the mirror. "Where to?"
"Apex."
She looked out the window as the city moved past at the storefronts, the crowds, the screens still displaying the Dragons Fang Association announcement on loop. Sir Kagekami and Ms. Saito. The footage of the Queen's defeat. The livestream clip that had been replayed approximately one billion times in the past twelve hours.
She watched it play on a screen they were passing and thought about Creed sitting alone in a restaurant with his hands on a broken table.
Let's see what you'll do next, she thought. How far you'll go. What you're willing to become.
I'll be watching, Creed.