They'd been beaten.
Rentaro shook his head, grim, then turned to Satoru.
"That guy you caught the first time we met. He showed up."
"Oh, the one with the mask?"
Satoru blinked, rubbed his chin, thought it over, and it clicked.
The masked one whose prosthetics he'd wrecked. Some flair to him. Weak, though.
"He's Civil Security too?"
"No. He's after the Legacy of Nanase Village, and he plans to use it to 'destroy' Tokyo."
Rentaro's brow drew tighter around those last words.
If that artifact reached the wrong hands, the whole city went under.
"So you fought him?"
Satoru rubbed his chin, understanding settling in. "If it's him, then with your level of strength, I'm not sure you'd match up."
He was thinking of that Repulsion Shield, so close in principle to his own Limitless Cursed Technique.
Weaker than Limitless, sure, but strong enough. More than enough for a room full of Civil Security.
"Plenty of people jumped in. We all surrounded him, and you saw how that ended."
Enju spread her small hands, gloom all over her face.
She'd thought she wasn't weak. Ordinary Gastrea, ordinary Civil Security, no problem.
Measured against this, though, the gap yawned open.
The man Satoru had handled like a toy, squeezing him around at will, had stood against a dozen top-ranked operatives without breaking rhythm and swept them aside. That strength was frightening.
So how strong did that make Satoru? Enju muttered it inwardly, awe and curiosity mixing in the look she gave him.
No wonder he crushes Gastrea like ants.
"Shame. If I'd gotten here sooner I might have run into him."
Regret colored his voice. He wouldn't have minded another round, to see whether repaired prosthetics meant a better fight.
"By the way, were his prosthetics fixed this time?"
"Fixed. No sign of damage at all. Identical to before, maybe more responsive."
Rentaro nodded slowly, wariness under the words.
What those limbs had done stuck with him, and it made the threat clearer.
"Easy, then. There can't be many places capable of that kind of repair."
Satoru smiled, relaxed, sure of himself.
"And I broke a lot of it last time. Repairs like that would be difficult and expensive. Tracing it wouldn't take much."
Rentaro's eyes lit at that, a door opening where there'd been a wall.
He'd been stuck on how to chase the man at all, and one sentence had handed him a lead.
True enough.
Repairing prosthetics like those wasn't a matter of walking into an electronics shop.
The engineering ran deep. It demanded specialized equipment and specialized people, and the price would be astronomical.
Even with Sumire's help, the raw material cost alone strained him, and that was before labor fees.
"That's a direction. We need to find him fast."
Urgency ran under Rentaro's seriousness.
Tokyo's survival hung on it. He couldn't afford to slip, not before that artifact was secured.
"If he gets to the Legacy of Nanase Village first, the consequences don't bear thinking about."
"Relax." Satoru clapped his shoulder, casual, trying to bleed off some of the tension. "That guy rides entirely on what his prosthetics do. Strip that away and he's not much."
"Personally, I'd put him against a Stage 4 Gastrea and call it a coin flip."
The masked man could swagger in front of Civil Security. Put a real Gastrea in front of him and he'd fold.
"Anyway, look at the time. None of you have eaten, right? Come on, let's go up and grab something."
His defeated opponent from last time occupied no space in his head at all. Lunch, on the other hand, did, and he extended the invitation warmly.
Honestly.
If satellites weren't so scarce, if spotting a Stage 5 Gastrea early were possible, he'd have gone looking already.
The absolute ceiling of this world. Monstrous strength, nothing that could stand against it.
This whole mess counted as an opportunity.
If the operatives stopped the masked man and kept the artifact out of his hands, fine.
If they failed, he'd get to see for himself what a Stage 5 Gastrea amounted to, and stretch his limbs in the process.
Rentaro's head was full of Kagetane Hiruko and nothing else. Food didn't register. He wanted to start hunting.
Satoru gave him no room to refuse, grabbing his arm exactly as Kisara had grabbed his, and hauling him toward the stairs.
"Stop chewing on it. Eat first, chase later. You need fuel to run a manhunt."
His grip left no options. Rentaro gave up struggling and let himself be towed.
Kisara, Enju, and Sumire traded a look, shook their heads, and followed.
The elevator was cramped with all of them inside.
Kisara, Rentaro, and Enju kept at it the whole ride, working out how to run down Kagetane through the prosthetics lead.
Sumire leaned into a corner, silent, eyes on her tablet, thinking something through.
Satoru propped himself against the opposite wall with his eyes shut, indifferent to the discussion, a man with no stake in any of it.
The doors opened on the top floor and he stepped out first, heading straight for Seitenshi's office.
The others trailed him inside, and stopped short.
The room ran wide and bright, elegantly finished, floor-to-ceiling windows opening onto the whole of Tokyo, sunlight pouring across the floor.
At the center of it, Seitenshi sat behind her desk working through documents.
Formal white clothing, hair loose over her shoulders, composed and poised. The same woman they'd seen on the conference room screen.
They'd known she and Satoru were close. They'd heard he came and went from this office as he pleased.
Still, seeing someone who existed for them mainly on television standing there in the flesh left them without a word to offer.
Rentaro and Kisara straightened without thinking, faces respectful. Enju packed away her usual bounce and turned model-quiet. Sumire kept her calm, though her eyes flickered.
"Come in, all of you. Treat it like home, don't stand on ceremony."
Satoru waved them forward, walked to the sofa, dropped into it, and helped himself to the juice on the table, twisting the cap off and drinking.
Sprawled and loud against all that polish, and nobody was going to say a word about it.
Seitenshi looked up at the noise, and her face softened into a smile.
"Mr. Gojo, did you only just arrive?"
"Yeah. If I'd come earlier I might have caught the guy in the mask."
He tipped his head back, drained the bottle, set it down empty, and smiled faintly.
That thread of regret still ran through it.
Her expression dimmed, guilt and worry crossing it.
"I heard a number of Civil Security were hurt just now. Several took critical injuries. They're still being treated."
Her voice went quiet, concern sitting under it. She'd called those people together. She'd put them in front of that.
"Lady Seitenshi, we already have a direction for tracking Kagetane Hiruko."
Rentaro stepped forward with a slight bow, steady in his conviction.
He didn't want her carrying the worry, and he wanted her to know they'd have the man soon, and Tokyo kept safe.
She raised her eyes to the black-haired boy, something relieved in them.
Once he'd laid out the prosthetics lead, she turned to Satoru.
"Mr. Gojo, what do you think?"
His strength she knew. His judgment she trusted. His read on this mattered.
"Hm?"
He raised an eyebrow, unbothered. "Whatever works. No need to agonize over it."
"Stage 5 Gastrea show up or they don't. Either way it won't be a problem."
Absolute confidence ran under the ease, the tone of a man for whom nothing arrived that couldn't be handled.
"I'm here. Don't worry."
Head tipped back, smiling faintly, and that confidence spread through the room and caught on everyone in it.
Seitenshi's shoulders came down, and the smile returned to her face.
With him standing there, nothing felt insurmountable.
"Right, how are the drones and the research facility coming?"
He swerved the conversation to the things he'd actually asked her for, offhand about it.
Both mattered more to him than any manhunt.
"The drones are calibrated."
She nodded, a trace of amusement on her face, pressed a button on the desk and spoke a few words into the intercom.
Two staff members came in shortly carrying black cases and set them carefully on the coffee table.
"These are the drones, post-calibration."
She rose, crossed to the table, gestured for the cases to be opened, and turned to Betty.
"They pair with a phone for control, and they'll register a voiceprint for voice commands. There's a remote and an onboard chip as well, everything included."
"Miss Betty, use them however you like. They're built to be convenient."
While she was still explaining, Sumire moved in, pulled on gloves, opened a case and started examining the contents.
Her hands worked with practice, her eyes narrowed on each component, a low running mutter under her breath.
"Newest model. Clean, too. No extra hardware bolted on, so the security holds."
She looked up and gave Seitenshi an approving nod.
"The onboard software needs a closer inspection though. I want to be certain there are no gaps that cause problems later."
"Of course. If you have any requirements afterward, modifications are possible. I'll assign technical staff to work with you."
Seitenshi nodded, agreeable.
She knew Sumire was a professional with high standards for equipment, and she intended to meet every request she could.
"The site for the research facility has been settled as well."
Something satisfied entered her voice.
"We've arranged an abandoned middle school."
"There's ample space for whatever instruments the work requires, and no issues with the wiring. We've already begun converting it into somewhere suitable for both living and experiments, exactly as you specified."