"What do you mean by that?"
Darkness laughed long and genuine, the sound rolling through the void in every direction. "You don't even know who you are." He shook his head slowly, wearing Kagekami's face wearing an expression Kagekami had never put on it. "What a shame." He turned away. "But don't trouble yourself. The stronger you become the more will reveal itself. The truth has a way of finding people whether they look for it or not."
The void began to dissolve at the edges.
Kagekami sat up in bed and waited for the headache to pass. It took a minute. Two. Then the pressure behind his eyes retreated to whatever place it lived between visits.
He looked at the empty space beside him where the blanket had been folded neatly.
She's already up. Probably in the kitchen with Sora doing something that smells incredible.
He pulled himself through a quick workout, washed and dressed, and came out into the hallway. Sora was standing at the far end of it, facing the living room, wearing the particular smile of someone who is very pleased with a situation they had some hand in engineering.
"Hey. Where's Saito?"
"She left a while ago." Sora didn't turn around. The smile didn't move. "We have a guest though."
"A guest?"
He walked down the hallway and turned into the living room and stopped.
Ms. Kasami was sitting on his sofa. She looked up when he appeared and smiled pleasantly.
Kagekami stood in the doorway.
What the hell.
Saito walked through the city with her blade strapped to her side and her mind already on what came next. The Dragons Fang Association grew on the horizon as she approached vast, imposing, the kind of building that announces itself before you reach it.
Four S-Rank guards stood at the gate. One of them noticed her coming and nudged the man beside him.
"Look at her."
The second guard looked. His eyes found the sword. "She's armed!" He was already moving, all four of them converging on the gate with weapons raised before Saito had taken another three steps.
"This is a restricted area. Turn around. Now."
Isn't this where people come to register for Ranks? Saito thought, looking at the guns pointed at her.
The shadow arrived before the sound did.
Something vast passed over all of them a darkness that had nothing to do with clouds and then the ground behind Saito shook with an impact that sent two of the guards off their feet. Dust rose. The guards scrambled upright and looked.
A Dragon.
It had landed directly behind her enormous, scaled, its weight settling into the earth with the comfort of something that goes where it chooses. Its split pupils moved slowly across the scene. Found Saito's sword. Then found Saito.
It growled low, resonant, a sound felt more than heard.
Saito looked at it over her shoulder. The Dragon looked back at her. She held its gaze without moving, without adjusting her footing, without showing it anything at all.
The Dragon held the stare for a long moment. Then it spread its wings and lifted away, disappearing over the rooftops as suddenly as it had come.
The guards stared at the space it had occupied. Then one of them pointed at Saito.
"She's working with it!"
Saito turned. "What?"
They opened fire.
She was already moving stepping between the first volley, deflecting two rounds off the flat of her blade with a precision that required not thinking about it, closing the distance in the same motion. Her sword swept in a controlled arc and the guns came apart in their hands barrels separated from stocks, mechanisms split, every weapon rendered into components simultaneously. The guards stood disarmed and slightly bewildered.
Saito lowered her blade and looked at them.
"I am not working with anyone," she said patiently. "Everyone needs to calm down."
"What is all this noise?"
Luke stepped through the main doors, double-bladed sword already in hand, squinting at the morning light with the expression of someone who had been hoping for a quieter start to the day. He looked at the four disarmed guards on the ground. Then at Saito. Then at the neat piles of separated gun components.
"Someone decided to attack the country's stronghold," he said, almost to himself. "Alone, by the looks of it. Bold choice."
"Your guards attacked me first."
Luke looked at her. Then at his guards. Then back at her. "Playing victim won't save you." He rolled his shoulders and his grip shifted on the sword into something more serious. "Nothing will, actually."
Saito looked at him. The corner of her mouth moved.
"Prove it," she said.
"I'm going to enjoy this."
They moved at the same time Luke vanishing from his position with the practiced ease of someone for whom speed is as natural as breathing, reappearing at Saito's back with his blade already committed to the strike.
The blade met hers.
Luke disengaged and reset, his expression shifting into something more attentive.
She blocked that, he thought. Nobody blocks that cold.
He looked at her properly for the first time.
"Interesting," he said.
Saito said nothing. She was already reading him.
Ms. Kasami looked up when Kagekami appeared in the doorway and smiled. "Good morning."
Kagekami looked at her sitting on his sofa. Looked at Sora beside her, perfectly composed, as though an S-Rank Protector dropping by unannounced before breakfast was a completely ordinary Tuesday.
He sat down across from them and said nothing, because nothing immediately useful occurred to him.
Sora had produced a plate of cupcakes from somewhere and set them on the table between them with the quiet confidence of someone who knows that cupcakes solve most situations. Ms. Kasami picked one up and examined it with genuine interest.
"They look incredible." She smelled it. "They smell incredible."
"I made them extra special," Sora said, with appropriate modesty.
Ms. Kasami bit into it. Something in her expression changed in the way that only really good food can change a person's expression involuntary and unguarded. "Sora. These are amazing."
Sora beamed and helped herself to one.
Kagekami sat across from them and watched the two most important people in his immediate vicinity bond over baked goods and tried to locate his bearings.
Ms. Kasami turned to him, cupcake still in hand. "I'm sorry for arriving without warning. But we need to talk." She took another bite. "Can you escort me to the Dragons Fang Association? We can speak properly there."
"We don't mind at all," Sora said. "Right, Kagekami?"
"Right," Kagekami said. "Yeah. Of course."
He excused himself and went to change.
She came here, he thought, pulling on his jacket. She knows where I live. Which means she knows everything or enough. There's no point hiding anymore.
He came back to find the living room conversation had deepened considerably in his absence. Sora was leaning toward Ms. Kasami with the focused energy of someone who has found an unexpectedly excellent conversational partner, and Ms. Kasami was listening with genuine attention rather than polite tolerance, which was either very good or very bad depending on what Sora was saying.
Sora noticed Kagekami in the doorway, leaned slightly closer to Ms. Kasami and whispered something.
Ms. Kasami looked up at Kagekami.
A slow smile spread across her face.
Kagekami looked at Sora. Sora looked at the ceiling.
Nothing good, he thought. Nothing good at all.
They said their goodbyes at the door. Ms. Kasami turned back to Sora with a warmth that hadn't been in her face when she arrived.
"Thank you for the cupcakes. I had a wonderful time."
Sora waved from the doorway. "Come back whenever you like!"
They got into Ms. Kasami's car. The city moved past the windows as the driver pulled into traffic, and for a moment neither of them said anything.
"You get along well with Sora," Kagekami said.
"She's lovely. And an extraordinary baker." Ms. Kasami looked at him sideways. Then she looked at her hands for a moment, choosing her words. "Kagekami." She looked back up. "Thank you. For what you did in the cave. If you hadn't appeared when you did." she paused, "I wouldn't be in this car."
"You're welcome," he said. Then, simply and honestly, "I wouldn't want to see you hurt."
Ms. Kasami looked at the road ahead. The warmth of his arms in the cave came back to her unbidden the darkness closing her wounds, the steadiness of him. She filed it away with the careful discipline of someone who files things away for a living.
A few minutes later the Association appeared on the horizon.
The driver slowed. "Ms. Kasami." His voice had a quality to it. "There appears to be a situation at the gate."
Ms. Kasami looked up.
Luke was in the air.
Not flying launched, rising in a wide arc above the Association grounds with his double-bladed sword in hand and a grin on his face that belonged on someone having the time of their life. He reached the apex of his arc, looked down at the figure below him and called out, "You're something else, you know that? My whole body is alive right now" he stretched mid-air, rolled his shoulders, pointed the blade down at her "which means I'm going to enjoy finishing this."
Saito stood below him, barely containing the thing rising in her chest that was not quite excitement and not quite fury but lived somewhere between the two. Her sword was alive in her hand channelling everything she had into it, the blade glowing a deep and ominous red that pulsed with each breath she took.
She raised it above her head.
The air changed.
She brought it down.
A hand closed around her wrist.
The energy discharged upward instead straight through the cloud cover, splitting it cleanly from horizon to horizon, the gap in the clouds impossibly straight and impossibly wide, daylight pouring through it at an angle that had no business existing.
Everyone within a quarter mile went still.
Ms. Kasami lowered her arm slowly. She looked at the clouds. Then she looked at Saito.
"LUKE!."
Her voice carried the particular frequency of someone who has had a long morning and would like answers immediately.
"Where. Is. He."