The room was dim, silent except for the low hum of the city beyond the window. Kaizu sat motionless at his desk, the soft creak of the chair the only sign of life. Dust clung to every surface the shelves, the books, the floor. Papers were scattered across the desk like fallen leaves. He hadn't allowed anyone to touch this place, not since his first day as Captain. To the outside world, he was the face of military strength, but here, here he allowed himself to be a man.
No fancy furniture. No golden seal of the Federation. Just a dented chair, a scratched desk, and a single window that overlooked the battered old training yard, now cracked, its walls scorched from the last attack.
The silence was comforting, familiar.
Kaizu leaned back slowly, a quiet hiss escaping his lips as the movement pulled at the bandages wrapped tightly around his chest. His black shirt stuck slightly to the wounds beneath, damp from fresh sweat. He hadn't fully healed from the radiation after the Power Source incident, but pain was a language he understood. He sits after hearing those questions, thinking about it.
His gloved fingers brushing across a small mountain of untouched reports that had waited patiently for him these past two months. The weight of his absence was heavy not just in the paper stacks, but in the unread warnings, the unresolved disputes, the pleas left unanswered.
Then,knock, knock, Soft. Two times. No hesitation.
only one person entered like that.
Skye.
She walked in without ceremony, wearing an old gray hoodie from their training days. The sleeves were rolled up awkwardly, one arm still in a stiff cast from Borarah's brutal assault. Her hair was tied back in a messy knot.
She didn't speak at first. She just looked around the room and made a face.
"Still haven't let anyone clean this dump?" she muttered.
Before he could answer, she tossed a data tablet onto his desk. Dust flew up like smoke.
"You look terrible," she said, arms crossing over her chest.
Kaizu picked up the tablet, his fingers trembling slightly. For a moment it wasn't war. It wasn't politics. It wasn't even duty. Just two people who had bled on the same training floor many years ago, who had once fought over food, and now fought to save what was left of a broken universe.
Skye didn't sit down. She leaned against the wall and waited while Kaizu flicked through the reports.
"While you were sleeping," she said softly, "the universe didn't wait."
He scrolled slowly. Clashes on the Naser and Karkian borders, a rebellion in Sector 9.
A sacred temple bombed in the 4th Universe.The usual chaos. Nothing he hadn't expected.
But then his fingers stopped. A headline burned on the screen like a scar
"Jaya Temple Destroyed, Destroyer Faces Unknown Entity In Final Duel"
The attached image was grainy, but the figure in it... the shadowed figure standing calmly among the flaming ruins... it was enough to make Kaizu's body go still.
He dropped the tablet. It hit the desk with a sharp thud, skidding across the papers.
Skye's voice broke the silence. Low. Certain.
"You know who that is."
She wasn't asking. Kaizu said nothing.
His mind was already elsewhere, years back when he was just a child running barefoot through jungle and ash, temples burning behind him. He could still feel the heat, hear the screams, the strange metallic voice calling his name as fire rained from the sky.
He closed his eyes.
Flashes of a face he had tried to forget.
Eyes that didn't blink. A voice that didn't belong in any world.
Skye was watching him. She saw the tension in his jaw, the way his hand moved to his mouth shaking. He coughed once. Blood stained his fingers. He wiped it away quickly, pretending it wasn't there.
"Old story," he said finally.
Barely more than a whisper. Skye looked at him for a long moment, but she didn't push.
A Flians, a slender, bird-like creature with silver feathers and hollow eyes glided silently across the office and placed a steaming black liquid near his hand. It wasn't coffee. It was Skyrind, a bitter drink brewed only on the outer moons of the 4th Universe. Notoriously addictive. Often served to the broken. Or to those who break others.
Kaizu took a sip without hesitation. The heat bit at his throat, but he welcomed it. He had grown used to its bitterness. Perhaps even relied on it.
Skye, his trusted Commander his friends after all. She watched him with eyes that had learned to read beyond the surface.
"They kept piling while you were gone," she said, motioning toward the files. "I filtered the unimportant ones. These are the ones that matter."
Kaizu gave a small nod, already flipping through the first case. His eyes scanned quickly, practiced. Names, planets, conflicts most of them familiar. He stopped at a report stamped in red: Naser Karkian Border Dispute.
He let out a short breath. "Them again."
"Same issue," Skye said. "Same moon."
The Naser and Karkian planets neighbors by misfortune sat at the southern edge of the 2nd Universe, brushing the mouth of the Void. They were ancient rivals, not because of ideology or culture, but because of proximity. The cause of their most recent clash? A single moon. Not one of the eight they already shared four orbiting each of their worlds but the ninth. A stubborn satellite that drifted motionless between them, as if taunting them both. Neither gravity claimed it. Neither side surrendered it.
"Speak to them," Skye urged, "They respect your presence. Perhaps you can calm this before it spreads."
Kaizu didn't look up from the page. "It's useless. Unless one of them bends, it will always return to this."
He remembered the last time he stepped into the conflict. He had brokered a fragile agreement each faction would claim half of the moon, rotate seasonal governance, share resources. It was a compromise. But not a cure.
Something deeper burned beneath the surface of their war. Something no treaty could fix.
Kaizu signed the order and passed it back. "Send someone to investigate. I want updates. Daily."
"Should I call Magma?" Skye asked.
He raised an eyebrow. "Isn't he still locked inside the GF research wing in the Void?"
"He is. Working on the Null Pulse project. Could take weeks to pull him out."
Kaizu didn't hesitate. "Then send Cracky."
Skye blinked. "You trust him with this?"
"I trust him to piss both sides off equally," Kaizu replied, leaning back with a slight smirk. "Sometimes that's all it takes to distract them from each other."
She smiled faintly. "Noted."
The file disappeared from his table, another war delegated to another pair of hands. Kaizu picked up the next report. And the next. There were thousands. But only a few would ever make it to this desk.
And only he could decide what mattered..