Grace was still watching the blank screen where the livestream had been.
"He killed the Queen," she said. A smile was growing on her face slowly, the way smiles do when something genuinely surprises you. "He must be extraordinary. I want to meet him."
"There's a process to that," Dan said. "A Ripper identified him during the battle said he'd been killing them outside sanctioned operations. Kasami was already investigating something along those lines before the war." He looked at her. "You should speak to her first."
Owen stood up from his chair, the particular energy of someone who has been sitting still for too long and has found a reason not to. "We should all meet him together." The grin that crossed his face had nothing polite in it. "If he's going to become an S-Rank Protector he should come to us first so I can beat him to a pulp and see what he's actually made of."
Grace moved toward the door. She paused and looked back at Dan.
"Send a message to Kasami. Tell her the first S-Rank Protectors would like an audience. With all of them."
The healers had worked through the S-Rank Protectors efficiently. Luke and Creed were already gone by the time the last of the work was done Luke with his characteristic purposefulness, Creed without saying goodbye to anyone, which was consistent.
Ms. Kasami and Takomi shared a car back toward the city.
"I never thought there'd be someone that strong living right next to us," Takomi said, watching the road. "Right under our noses."
"Neither did I." Ms. Kasami looked out the window. "I cornered him with questions the moment I saw him." She paused. The warmth of the cave came back to her his arms around her, the darkness moving across her wounds, the steadiness of his heartbeat. She filed it carefully away. "Do you think I pushed too hard?"
Takomi looked at her. "We know his name and his face. We'll have a location by tomorrow. Don't worry about it."
"That reminds me." Ms. Kasami pulled out her phone.
It rang once.
"Ms. Kasami." Mary's voice was warm despite the hour. "I was wondering when you'd call."
"Have you..."
"Already done. I can send you his address whenever you're ready."
Ms. Kasami exhaled. "Thank you, Mary. Get some rest."
She put the phone away and leaned back into the seat and closed her eyes, letting the motion of the car carry her.
Kagekami appeared on his own doorstep.
From inside he could hear Sora her voice clear and slightly frantic, the particular energy of someone who has made a decision and is trying to execute it before they change their mind.
"Come on, Saito, we have to go he must be out there somewhere, he could be hurt."
He opened the door and walked in. "It's okay, Sora."
She spun around.
He looked the way people look after surviving something significant hoodie sleeves torn away, blood dried at his hairline, a scar across his chest still fresh enough to show the shape of what had made it. He was standing, which was more than could be said for several people who had been in that cave.
Sora crossed the room and wrapped her arms around him before he finished stepping through the door.
"I'm so glad you're home," she said into his shoulder. "Are you alright? Are you hurt? You look awful"
"I will be a lot less alright if you don't ease up on the ribs."
She loosened her grip slightly. He put an arm around her. They stayed like that for a moment.
Saito, from the other side of the room, allowed herself a small and private smile. "You've become strong," she said. Then "When did you learn to fire energy beams from your hand?"
Kagekami blinked. "How do you know about that?"
"There was a streamer," Saito said.
"LeoStreams," Sora supplied helpfully.
Kagekami closed his eyes. "The whole world saw it."
"Billions of people," Sora confirmed, with the tone of someone delivering news they find both terrible and slightly fascinating.
"That's going to be a problem." He opened his eyes. "Journalists. Everywhere I go. And once they find where I live" he looked at Sora, "They'll come here too."
Sora's expression shifted from fascinated to genuinely troubled. "I hadn't thought of that."
"There's nothing to be done about it now," Saito said. "It's already happened."
Kagekami nodded slowly and turned toward the hallway. "I'm going to bed. I'm exhausted."
He made it halfway down the hall.
Sora watched him go. Then she turned to Saito with the expression of someone who has just thought of something.
"Saito. He must be in a lot of pain after all of that. He probably can't even get his shirt off on his own." She paused for effect. "You should go help him."
Saito opened her mouth. "I yes, I should wait." She stopped. "I can't do that."
Sora looked at her with the serene patience of someone who has already won the argument and is simply waiting for the other person to realise it. "Aren't you two dating?"
Saito opened her mouth again. Closed it. Looked at the hallway. Looked back at Sora.
She went and knocked on his door.
No answer.
"I'm coming in," she said, and opened it.
Kagekami was lying on his bed, flat on his back, still fully dressed, staring at the ceiling with the focused vacancy of someone whose body has given notice that it is done for the day.
Saito walked over and stood beside the bed. "You're still awake."
He sat up slowly the kind of slowly that tells you exactly how much everything hurts and looked at the floor. "Yeah."
"Are you in pain?"
"Everything hurts," he said simply. "I pushed past my limit again. Every part of me knows it."
Saito looked at him. She thought about what she was about to offer and whether it was a good idea and how she felt about it and filed all of that away for later.
"Kagekami."
He looked up.
"I can give you a massage. If that would help."
He looked at her for a moment. Something in his expression softened. "That would help a lot. Thank you."
He managed his shirt with difficulty and lay face down on the bed, head turned to one side. Saito sat beside him. She reached out and placed her hands on his back.
She paused.
He's stronger than me now, she thought, feeling the difference in him the density, the muscle developed beyond where she remembered it, the evidence of eleven months of training that had never stopped. When did that happen.
She began.
I should join the Rankers, she thought, working slowly and carefully through the damage. I'll go tomorrow. First thing.
She kept her expression perfectly neutral and said nothing about any of it.
In his mansion on the edge of the city Creed sat alone in the dark, the livestream paused on his tablet frozen on the moment the beam left Kagekami's hand, the Queen's expression caught mid-realisation.
He looked at it for a long time.
Then his hand closed around the tablet and it crumpled like paper.
He set the fragments down carefully on the arm of his chair.
"You made me look weak," he said quietly, to the empty room, to the frozen image that no longer existed. "In front of the whole world." He leaned back and looked at the ceiling. "Watch yourself, Kagekami. The next time we're in the same room watch yourself."
Ms. Kasami's apartment was quiet.
She had replayed the same moment four times now the dust cloud, the two void-like points of light, the Queen's claws already moving and then Kagekami simply being there. Between her and it. His hand closing around the Queen's wrist. The ground cracking under his feet.
She set the phone face down on the bedside table.
She pulled her knees to her chest and lay on her side and looked at the wall in the dark.
If he hadn't been there, she thought. The thought had a shape to it now specific, real, the kind of close call that the body takes longer to process than the mind does. That blow would have killed me. There's no version of that moment where it doesn't.
She closed her eyes.
"Thank you," she whispered. Not to the room. Not to anyone in particular. Just into the dark, in the direction of wherever he was. "For saving me, Kagekami."
She stayed with that for a moment. Then sleep found her.
Kagekami opened his eyes in the void.
He was already on his feet before he had fully arrived some part of him had learned to land ready. He looked around the familiar dark. The water beneath his feet. The vast, patient silence.
Then he found Darkness.
Or rather Darkness found him.
The figure stepped forward into what passed for light in the void and Kagekami went still. He had known, intellectually, what Darkness looked like now. He had seen it in the dream before. But seeing it again didn't make it easier to process.
His own face. His own hands. His own build but carrying something ancient and weightless in the posture, the way very old things carry themselves differently from young ones.
"You," Kagekami said.
Darkness kept walking toward him.
Kagekami held his ground until the last moment then Darkness was behind him, the space between them simply ceasing to exist, and the kick connected with enough force to send Kagekami across the void. He skidded across the surface of the black water and came to a stop.
Darkness appeared in front of him.
The punch caught him square in the face.
Kagekami hit the water flat and lay there for a moment. The water didn't ripple. It never did.
He stood up.
"I have had enough of your crap," he said.
He teleported directly in front of Darkness and drove his fist into the face that was his own face. Darkness's head snapped back. Before he could recover Kagekami teleported behind him and hit him again the same punch, the same force, landing clean.
Darkness straightened up slowly. He touched his jaw. Looked at his hand.
"Can a simple handshake not suffice?" he said.
Kagekami stood across from him, breathing hard, fists still raised. "Why do you look like me?"
Darkness looked at him for a long moment. The ancient patience in his expression didn't change. Then he smiled and it was Kagekami's smile, wearing something that Kagekami's smile had never worn.
"Because I am you."
The void held the words.
Kagekami stared at his own face staring back at him and said nothing.
The silence stretched out in every direction with no end in sight.