The midday sun showed no mercy.
It hammered down upon the Nightblade Academy's Western Practice Yard — a forgotten stretch of cracked asphalt and stubborn weeds that had long since been abandoned by students with better sense. The chosen location felt less like neutral ground and more like an arena that had been waiting, patiently and without complaint, for champions worthy of its silence.
Today, it had finally found them.
At one point of the triangle stood Nadia Burns.
Her long, white hair seemed to drink in the sunlight rather than suffer beneath it, framing a face of sharp, watchful elegance. She did not fidget. She did not shift her weight. She simply stood, the way a drawn blade simply exists — purposeful, unhurried, and quietly dangerous. At her hip, the lacquered saya of her katana caught the afternoon glare in a single, clean line of reflected light.
Flanking her were her lieutenants.
To her left, Amy Edgeworth held herself in a state of constant, quiet readiness — the kind of stillness that was less relaxation and more a predator's patience, each breath measured, each glance deliberate. Her silver bat is on both her hands, steadying the object under her palms. To her right, Kirika Matthews wore a posture of studied nonchalance, her relaxed stance the elegant mask of a mind already three moves ahead, watching every angle without appearing to watch any at all. Both her pistols are in their holsters.
The Viper's Coil. Not hunters today. Arbiters.
From the north, footsteps arrived light and perfectly coordinated — the kind of synchronized movement that speaks not of rehearsal, but of trust built through years of shared struggle.
Wei Xiu walked at their head.
At eighteen, she carried herself with the composed, unhurried ease of a martial artist who had long since stopped needing to prove anything. Her hand rested loosely against the hilt of her dao sword — not a defensive gesture, not a threat, simply a habit so deeply ingrained it had become part of how she breathed. Her dark eyes swept the yard with calm assessment.
Beside her, Bao Ren moved with the coiled, compressed energy of something wound very tight and very carefully. Though only sixteen, there was nothing boyish in the set of her jaw or the way her butterfly swords rested, crossed, behind her back — as though placed there not for storage, but for quick retrieval. She said nothing. She rarely needed to.
Completing their formation, Hui Lin walked with a practiced, almost musical grace. The iron ring blades affixed to her forearms caught the stark light in brief, sharp flickers — silent promises that asked for nothing and offered everything. She kept her gaze forward.
The Crimson Daggers had arrived.
From the opposite end of the yard came the Grey Scythes, and they arrived the way a calculated conclusion arrives — with the quiet, inexorable certainty of something that has already been decided.
Vera Krauss led them.
At seventeen, she possessed the particular stillness of someone who had made peace with patience long ago. Her every movement was deliberate to the point of ceremony; her every glance carried the weight of an assessment already half-complete. Her sniper rifle was nowhere to be seen — expertly disassembled, meticulously concealed — yet its presence radiated outward through her focused, measuring aura like heat from a cooling barrel.
Behind her came Dmitri Volkov, whose broad frame needed no weapon to announce itself. The head of his sledgehammer crested his shoulder like a dark sun rising, its weight a fact the earth itself seemed to acknowledge with each step he placed upon it.
Alongside him, Elsa Brandt walked with the methodical calm of someone who had never once acted in haste and saw no reason to start. The length of metal she carried appeared, to the uninformed, to be nothing more than a harmless rod of iron. To those who knew better, the collapsible scythe it disguised was precisely the kind of weapon that rewarded underestimation.
They stopped.
Three factions. Three points of an equilateral triangle, precise as geometry, charged as a held breath.
No casual greetings passed between them. No polite nods. No courtesies.
The Western Practice Yard held only the dry heat, the distant sound of the rest of the Academy carrying on in ignorance, and the weight of what had not yet been said.
Because every leader present already knew.
The tremors had been unmistakable — felt through the careful, invisible networks each of them maintained across Nightblade Academy.
Sieg Brenner's ascent had been rapid enough to be startling, striking enough to be undeniable. And then Yumi Hasegawa's public confession to him had detonated across those networks like a stone dropped into still water, sending ripples outward until they reached every major player in turn.
The question was not what had happened.
The question — the real question, the one that had drawn rivals to forgotten ground and made enemies stand in proximity without drawing steel — was what it meant. And more importantly, what any of them intended to do about it.
The silence stretched between the three factions, potent and taut, weighted with veiled threats and unspoken calculations. Each leader watched the others across that charged expanse of cracked asphalt.
They were waiting.
Waiting to see who would be the first to speak — and in doing so, reveal the hand they had come here intending to play.
The suffocating silence stretched.
The only sound was the distant, indignant squawking of gulls that had strayed too far inland, their calls drifting over the academy walls like complaints from another world entirely. No one moved. No one spoke.
Then Vera Krauss did.
"Heard the news, Nadia?"
Her voice cut through the tension the way a well-placed shot cuts through still air — cold, deliberate, and arriving before anyone had quite registered the trigger being pulled. Her gaze was unsettlingly level as it settled on the white-haired leader across the yard, devoid of any emotional flicker, measuring without warmth.
"About Hasegawa." A brief pause. "Her very public... confession."
She did not elaborate. She did not need to. The name Sieg Brenner went unspoken between them, yet it occupied the silence that followed with the weight of something far larger than two syllables ought to carry.
Nadia Burns stirred at last.
The response was almost insultingly minimal — a single, dismissive flick of her long white hair, as though the question were a mild inconvenience rather than the opening volley of a carefully orchestrated meeting. When she spoke, her voice was smooth, almost languid, carrying beneath its surface a quiet current of contempt that did not bother to announce itself.
"I've heard."
She let that sit for a moment before continuing.
"Frankly, it's just Yumi being Yumi. Far too naive, that girl — completely hot-headed and impulsive." The faintest curl touched the corner of her lips, not quite a smile. "She doesn't understand the first thing about a real relationship, if she thinks parading around like that makes any actual difference."
Behind her, Kirika and Amy held their silence like shields, their expressions mirrors of their leader's quiet disdain — unmoved, unreadable, offering nothing.
It was Wei Xiu who spoke next.
Her voice carried the particular quality of someone who had never once needed to raise it to be heard — a quiet authority that resonated not with force, but with the weight of deep roots and careful thought. When she spoke, ancient tradition and strategic foresight moved beneath her words like currents beneath still water.
"Naive or not," she said, "the message is clear."
Her eyes, normally tranquil as a mountain lake before a storm, had sharpened. They swept slowly across all three leaders, leaving no one unexamined before she continued.
"Hasegawa is attempting to bind the new student beneath Scarlet Bloom."
The words landed with the quiet finality of a door being closed.
"Our scouts have reported his abilities." A beat. "Impressive. Too impressive." Her gaze settled, briefly but pointedly, before moving on. "A talent like that being absorbed by a single faction — particularly one led by a variable as unpredictable as Yumi Hasegawa — unbalances everything. The original equilibrium of Nightblade Academy was designed for four gangs. If a fifth, wild element is simply absorbed by one without consensus..."
She did not finish the sentence. She didn't need to. "Everything shatters."
The word shatters fell into the silence and did not echo so much as settle.
Beside their leader, Bao Ren and Hui Lin stiffened almost imperceptibly — two still figures growing incrementally stiller. Then, as Wei Xiu's final words faded into the dry heat of the yard, Hui Lin shifted her weight almost unconsciously, and the iron ring blades on her forearms answered with a soft, deliberate clink.
The truest form of agreement she knew how to offer.
The true agenda of the summit had finally been spoken aloud. It hung now in the open air between the three factions — no longer an unspoken weight, but a declared one.
Somehow, that made it heavier.
A frigid certainty settled into the air between them, colder than the midday heat had any right to allow.
Vera Krauss turned her head.
Her unnerving gaze shifted from Nadia to Wei Xiu with the slow, mechanical precision of a scope finding a new target — and in the space between one leader and the other, something passed without words. A silent understanding, clean and absolute, the kind that required no negotiation because both parties had already arrived at the same conclusion independently.
"Agreed."
Her voice was flat. Stripped of warmth, stripped of affect, stripped of everything that might have made it sound like an opinion rather than a verdict.
"For the established order to endure — for the balance among the four forces to persist —" her pale eyes did not waver "— Sieg Brenner must be removed from the equation. He is too disruptive an element to be allowed to consolidate under any single banner."
Behind her, Dmitri and Elsa offered no words. They didn't need to. Their silence was its own form of
agreement — dense, immovable, as final as stone.
Wei Xiu nodded slowly.
There was no satisfaction in her expression, no eagerness. Only the grim, unadorned weight of a conclusion she had already made peace with before arriving.
"The Grey Scythe and the Crimson Dagger concur."
Her sharp eyes found Nadia's and held them without apology.
"An unaligned force of his caliber cannot simply drift into the orbit of Scarlet Bloom. That would constitute an unprecedented accumulation of power." She let the word unprecedented hang in the hot, still air for a deliberate moment. "And unprecedented power does not merely invite imbalance. It guarantees strife."
Nadia Burns said nothing immediately.
A slight furrow appeared between her brows — the smallest concession her elegant composure would permit, the only crack in the smooth, languid facade she wore like armor. Whatever argument had formed behind her eyes, she bit it back.
Swallowed it whole.
She was outnumbered. More than that, she was outweighed — facing the combined political and strategic gravity of both the Crimson Dagger and the Grey Scythe pressing down on one side of the scale. An open objection would not be a negotiation. It would simply be noise.
She recognized this with the quiet, practiced clarity of someone who had survived long enough in Nightblade Academy's hierarchy by knowing exactly when a battle was already decided.
Wei Xiu's gaze hardened further. It did not leave Nadia's face.
"The Viper's Coil cannot remain neutral in this endeavor." Her voice carried no cruelty, but no softness either — only the unbending quality of something that had long since calcified into fact. "This disruption threatens us all equally, Nadia Burns. Your cooperation — or at the very least, your non-interference — is not optional."
Behind Nadia, the shift was subtle but unmistakable.
Kirika Matthews and Amy Edgeworth moved — barely, almost imperceptibly — and in the brief, darting glance they exchanged, something flickered. Worry, tightly leashed. They understood the architecture of power in this academy perhaps better than anyone, and they could feel, with the instincts of those who had navigated it for years, exactly how little room their leader had left to maneuver.
The silence that followed was the longest of the afternoon.
Nadia held Wei Xiu's gaze. A second passed. Then another. The gulls called somewhere beyond the walls, indifferent and far away.
Then, with a nod so small it was almost an insult — curt, almost imperceptible, carrying within it the weight of something being swallowed rather than surrendered — Nadia Burns acknowledged the inevitable.
Her hands, which had been loosely clasped throughout the exchange, tightened.
Not in defeat. In resolve. The particular, iron-edged resolve of someone who has just accepted that a difficult decision must be made and has already begun deciding how to make it on her own terms.
She did not speak another word.
Her elegant bearing remained perfectly, stubbornly intact as she turned on her heel — a single, clean movement, carrying within it all the dignity of someone who intended to make absolutely clear that she was leaving, not being dismissed. Kirika and Amy fell into step behind her instantly, their footsteps synchronizing with hers as though pulled by the same invisible thread, the three of them moving south in perfect, wordless unison.
The Viper's Coil melted back into the shadows of the academy grounds.
Their departure left a silence that rang.
It was the silence of forced acceptance and deliberate distance — an answer that was not quite agreement, a compliance that was not quite willingness. They had heard the verdict. They had acknowledged it. But they would not stay to participate in what came next.
Wei Xiu watched them go.
Her expression revealed nothing. Not satisfaction, not regret — only the impassive stillness of someone who had expected exactly this outcome and found no comfort in being right.
Vera Krauss did not watch at all. Her focus had already moved, quiet and inevitable, to the steps that would follow. There was nothing sentimental in her posture, no moment of reflection. The decision had been made. Sentiment was someone else's concern.
The die was cast.
Somewhere across the academy grounds, Sieg Brenner continued whatever he was doing — training, perhaps, or simply existing in the ordinary way of someone who did not yet know that the weight of three factions' calculations had just quietly, irrevocably, settled upon his shoulders.
Through no fault of his own, he had just become a target.
The gulls called again over the academy walls.
No one listened.
Meanwhile, far removed from the calculated maneuvering of faction leaders and their cold political chess games, an altogether different sort of crisis was unfolding — the deeply personal, deeply mortifying kind.
Yumi Hasegawa was pacing.
Back and forth, back and forth, her boots clicking a sharp, irritated rhythm against the hallway floor. Her long black hair, streaked with crimson, swayed with each agitated turn. The wild smile that usually graced her lips had been replaced by something far less charming — a scowl that could curdle fresh milk. Beneath her Scarlet Bloom bomber jacket, her uniform was immaculate, but the girl wearing it was anything but composed. The utility belt at her waist clinked softly with every step, the throwing knives and kunai rattling like a quiet warning to anyone foolish enough to approach.
Nobody approached.
"The absolute nerve of that man!" she hissed, spinning on her heel to face her two lieutenants. Her amber eyes blazed. "Making such vile assumptions! As if I would ever — as if we were — ugh!"
She couldn't even finish the sentence. The memory of Sieg Brenner's lazy, unbothered eyes flicking up at her from the rooftop floor — catching a glimpse of black lace, then having the audacity to comment on her thighs — and then, as if that weren't enough, assuming that the relationship Mio-nee had described to her was something entirely different from what her elder sister had actually meant —
Yumi's face turned a shade of red that clashed terribly with her crimson highlights.
"I want to forget that conversation ever happened," she announced, with the grim finality of someone declaring war.
Ayaka Daidoji, her shoulder-length pink hair bouncing with barely-contained energy, clapped her brass-plated fingerless gloves together in rapid succession. Her brown eyes sparkled with the kind of enthusiasm that was either deeply endearing or deeply exhausting, depending on the day.
"But Yumi-samaaa! That was ages ago! Besides, we had a terrible day already — did you see Serena-san's face during that English grammar pop quiz? She actually frowned!" Ayaka gasped theatrically at her own words. "Anyway! What we need right now is a distraction! And I know the purr-fect place!" She pressed her gloved hands to her cheeks, practically vibrating. "There's a brand new cat café that just opened near the West Gate! Fluffy cats, warm drinks, zero perverted commentary from rooftop strangers!"
Beside her, Serena Whitaker — long brown hair neatly tied back, saber resting perfectly still at her left hip — allowed herself the smallest, most restrained smile imaginable. It lasted approximately one and a half seconds before her expression returned to its usual composed gravity. Still, there was an unmistakable flicker of something warm in her green eyes.
"Ayaka raises a valid point," Serena said evenly. "A change of environment would be beneficial. I have also... heard they keep Maine Coons." A pause. "Exceptionally well-behaved ones."
For Serena Whitaker, that was essentially a declaration of unbridled excitement.
Yumi looked at the barely-suppressed delight on Ayaka's face, then at the carefully-disguised delight on Serena's, and let out a long, suffering exhale through her nose.
"Fine," she muttered. "But if anyone says anything even remotely inappropriate, I am removing their tongue with a dull butter knife. Are we clear?"
"Crystal!" Ayaka beamed.
Serena nodded once. "Understood."
The Black Cat Café was, to its credit, an excellent antidote to existential mortification.
The moment the trio stepped inside, the warm scent of roasted coffee and the soft, rumbling chorus of purring wrapped around them like a comfortable blanket. The lighting was gentle and golden, the furniture was plush and inviting, and cats of every conceivable shape and size lounged across cat trees, window perches, and the laps of delighted patrons. The soft padding of paws on wooden floors punctuated the quiet murmur of conversation.
Yumi's scowl began, almost involuntarily, to soften.
A woman with kind eyes and an easy smile approached from behind the counter, wiping her hands on her apron.
"Welcome! Sit anywhere you like — I'll come take your order shortly." She smiled warmly. "I'm Henrietta Brenner, the owner."
Serena blinked. Something crossed her expression — a brief, quiet flicker of recognition, like a word sitting just at the edge of memory. "Brenner," she murmured, almost to herself. "That name..."
She filed it away for later examination.
Before she could pursue the thought further, however, Ayaka went completely silent.
That alone was alarming.
Ayaka Daidoji did not go silent. Ayaka Daidoji filled silences the way water filled a glass — naturally, immediately, and completely. Yet there she stood, mouth slightly open, brown eyes wide as saucers, one trembling finger pointed toward the far corner of the café.
"Yumi-sama," she whispered. Her voice had lost every drop of its usual boisterousness. "Serena-san."
She swallowed.
"...Look."
They looked.
Nestled deep in a plush armchair in the shadowed corner of the café, half-buried beneath a small dynasty of cats, was Sieg Brenner. A particularly fluffy black cat had made itself comfortable on top of his head, wearing him like a throne. Several more were curled contentedly in his lap. Others pressed their heads lazily against his legs, demanding attention he provided with the calm, unhurried patience of a man entirely at peace with the world. His expression was one of absolute, infuriating tranquility.
As though sensing their stares, his hand paused mid-stroke along the purring cat in his lap. He raised it slightly, his eyes drifting over to them with the kind of casual ease that suggested he was mildly surprised but largely unbothered.
"Oh," Sieg said. "It's you three. The Scarlet Bloom girls."
Silence.
Yumi's eye twitched.
The cat on his head blinked slowly, yawned, and went back to sleep.
The silence that followed Sieg's casual greeting lasted approximately three full seconds.
Then Yumi Hasegawa's brain caught up with her eyes.
"Y-you?!"
Her amber eyes were wide enough to swallow the entire café. Her slender frame, which had only recently been vibrating with agitated energy, now locked up entirely — a statue of pure, unadulterated shock wearing a Scarlet Bloom bomber jacket. The blush that had barely begun to fade from their earlier rooftop encounter came roaring back with a vengeance, crawling up from her neck like a brushfire racing toward dry timber.
"What are you doing here?!" she managed, her voice caught somewhere between disbelief and the kind of outrage that precedes property damage.
Sieg, entirely unbothered, raised his mug and took a long, unhurried sip of his coffee. The black cat, now relocated from his head to his shoulder, twitched one ear at the commotion and went back to sleep.
"Henrietta's my cousin," he said simply, as though this explained everything. "She gets overwhelmed running this place on her own, so I help out when I can." A brief pause as he glanced down at the three cats currently competing for real estate in his lap. "Also, free coffee and unlimited cat cuddles. Objectively a good deal."
Behind the counter, Henrietta Brenner looked up at the mention of her name, her kind eyes settling with warm curiosity on the three new arrivals.
"Oh! Sieg, you know these girls?"
"Mm." Sieg set his mug down and gestured in the vague, unhurried way of a man who had absolutely calculated what he was about to do. "The cheerful one with the pink hair and the fingerless gloves is Ayaka Daidoji." Ayaka, still attempting to process his existence, pointed at herself in a daze. "The quiet, serious one is Serena Whitaker." Serena gave a measured nod, already filing something away behind her green eyes. "And this one —"
His gaze landed on Yumi.
"— is Yumi Hasegawa." He picked up his coffee again. "My girlfriend. She confessed to me during class earlier. Said she wanted me to become her lover."
He took a sip.
The café continued to hum pleasantly around him, entirely indifferent to the social catastrophe he had just detonated.
The color that erupted across Yumi Hasegawa's face was nothing short of spectacular. It blew past pink, bypassed red entirely, and settled somewhere in the vicinity of a volcanic emergency. Her hair seemed to bristle. Her amber eyes became twin points of white-hot fury. Her hand was already moving toward her utility belt when —
THWACK.
The sound of a rolled-up order list making firm contact with the top of Sieg Brenner's skull rang out through the Black Cat Café with the crisp clarity of divine judgment.
The black cat launched off his shoulder. Coffee sloshed dangerously close to the rim of his mug.
Several nearby cats scattered. Sieg's hand flew to his head as he twisted around, eyes wide in genuine affront.
"Ow! What the — what was that for?!"
Henrietta Brenner stood over him with the rolled order list still in hand, her kind smile entirely replaced by the expression of a woman who had been dealing with this particular cousin for a very long time. She planted one hand on her hip. The other still held the weapon.
"Don't you 'what was that for' me, Siegmund Brenner." The full name landed like a second strike. "What kind of behavior is that, trying to mortify a beautiful young lady the moment she walks through my door?"
She turned to the trio, and the sternness dissolved instantly into warm apology. "I am so sorry about him, girls. He means well, truly. He's just fundamentally incapable of behaving like a normal human being in social situations."
The cat that had fled Sieg's shoulder sat three feet away and stared at him with what could only be described as quiet disappointment.
Sieg opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Rubbed his head.
Ayaka Daidoji, who had been heroically, magnificently, strenuously holding herself together, lost the battle. The giggle that escaped her was quickly muffled behind a brass-plated glove, but her shoulders shook with the effort of containing the rest. Her brown eyes sparkled with the pure, uncomplicated joy of watching someone else get into trouble.
Even Serena — composed, unflappable, professionally stoic Serena Whitaker — had to press her lips into a very firm, very deliberate line. The corners of her mouth betrayed her anyway. Just slightly. Her green eyes, however, were absolutely twinkling.
Yumi, meanwhile, had used the momentary chaos to drag herself back from the volcanic edge. She straightened, chin lifted, and arranged her expression into something resembling composure. It was an impressive performance. The hand near her throwing knives was slightly less convincing.
Henrietta gave her order list one final, meaningful tap against her palm before tucking it away. "Now then." She smiled at the girls as though nothing had happened. "Please, make yourselves comfortable! We have fresh-baked cookies, wonderful coffee, and the finest purr-therapy in the city."
She gestured to an empty table nearby — conveniently close to where Sieg had been sitting. "Enjoy yourselves!"
She swept back behind the counter with the brisk efficiency of someone who had long since made peace with the chaos her cousin generated.
Sieg, meanwhile, was carefully extricating himself from the remaining pile of cats. They voiced their displeasure in a series of soft, aggrieved chirps and grumbles as he untangled himself with the practiced ease of long experience. He straightened, mug in hand, and crossed the short distance to where the trio stood.
Ayaka was still quietly vibrating with suppressed amusement. Serena had restored her neutral expression with impressive speed. Yumi was watching him with the eyes of someone calculating exactly how many butter knives she had access to.
Sieg leaned in slightly, dropping his voice to a low murmur pitched only for the three of them.
"Yeah. What she said. ...Sorry."
The word came out with the slightly stilted quality of a man who didn't deploy it very often.
From behind the espresso machine, without even looking up, Henrietta's voice cut cleanly across the café.
"I can't hear you, Siegmund."
His shoulders dropped. He closed his eyes. He took a breath.
"I said I'm sorry!" he called back, at a volume that turned heads from three adjacent tables.
"Much better!" Henrietta replied pleasantly.
The black cat, which had crept back and was now winding around his ankles, purred in what seemed like agreement. Sieg looked down at it with an expression of profound betrayal.
When he returned his gaze to Yumi, however, the teasing had gone out of it entirely. His voice settled into something quieter, more direct — stripped of performance.
"But seriously." His eyes held hers, steady and unhurried. "Don't go around saying things like that, Hasegawa-san. People hear what they want to hear. And what they heard today is going to cause you problems."
Yumi met his gaze for a long moment. The fury in her amber eyes flickered — not gone, but banked, buried under something that looked a great deal like exhaustion. She exhaled slowly through her nose. Crossed her arms over her chest. Looked away.
"Just forget about it," she muttered. "It's not worth discussing."
"Yumi-sama."
Serena's voice was quiet, but it carried the particular weight of someone who had already worked through the implications while everyone else was still reacting. Her green eyes had sharpened again, moving between Yumi and Sieg with measured deliberation.
"While it is fortunate that this misunderstanding has been... partially clarified between the two of you," she began, choosing each word with surgical precision, "the other factions will not share the same context. Your public declaration, combined with Sieg-san's rather memorable display on the rooftop, will be interpreted." A pause. "Unfavorably. Particularly if it appears that he is now operating under Scarlet Bloom's banner."
The comfortable warmth of the café suddenly felt a little heavier.
Sieg said nothing. His expression was unreadable.
"Oh, don't worry yourselves about all that!"
Henrietta's voice sailed cheerfully over the counter, entirely unprompted, with the timing of someone who had absolutely been listening to every word.
She pointed at Sieg with a knowing smile, the way one might point at a weather vane and announce rain. "It'll work itself out! You see, Sieg's greatest weakness has always been that he simply cannot say no to a cute girl in distress." She clasped her hands together warmly. "I'm sure he'll protect you all just fine!"
The silence that followed lasted one beat.
Then Sieg inhaled sharply, inhaled the wrong way entirely, and launched into a coughing fit that sent a fine mist of coffee into the air above him.
"Henrietta!" he rasped, red-faced, slamming his mug down harder than intended. Several cats bolted. A patron at a nearby table relocated their scone. "What the hell is wrong with you?!"
"Language!" Henrietta called back, serenely, without turning around.
The black cat climbed back onto his shoulder, dug its claws in with quiet enthusiasm, and purred directly into his ear.
Ayaka Daidoji had completely given up. She was laughing freely now, pink hair bouncing, one hand over her mouth and the other clutching Serena's sleeve for structural support. Even Serena had abandoned the battle. The smile was small, and carefully contained, but it was undeniably there.
Yumi Hasegawa stared at the sputtering, cat-laden, thoroughly humiliated Sieg Brenner.
Slowly, against every instinct she possessed, the corner of her mouth twitched upward.
She turned away before it could become anything more than that.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)