Luke walked out of the building without his sword and looked at the destroyed gate, the cracked stonework, the clouds still visibly parted overhead.
"What happened out here?"
Ms. Kasami turned to look at him with the specific expression she reserved for situations that were entirely preventable.
"Don't." She looked at the gate again. Then at the clouds. Then back at Luke. "I hope your bank account is prepared for the repairs."
"Now, let's approach this as the mature adults we clearly are"
"Mature adults don't fight people we need to recruit."
Luke opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked at the clouds once more, as if they might offer something useful. They didn't.
Saito noticed Kagekami standing beside the car and looked at him with the expression of someone recalibrating.
"Why are you here?"
"I could ask you the same thing."
Ms. Kasami stepped between the two of them before the conversation could develop further and turned to Saito. "I apologise for the welcome. That wasn't how this was supposed to go." She gestured toward the entrance or what remained of it. "Would you come in with us?"
Saito considered this for a moment. Then she sheathed her sword and followed.
Ms. Kasami passed Luke on the way in and looked at him.
Luke smiled back at her with the serene confidence of someone who has decided that charm is a viable defense.
Behind them Luke watched Kagekami walk through the doors and thought She moved fast. Faster than I expected. His eyes moved to Saito. But who is she?
Ms. Kasami's office was high up, with windows that looked out over the city on one side and the Association's interior courtyard on the other. They sat Ms. Kasami behind the desk, Kagekami and Saito across from her, Luke leaning against the wall with his arms folded.
Ms. Kasami looked at Kagekami. "Are you comfortable telling us about your abilities?"
If I tell her everything, Kagekami thought, Darkness becomes a variable I can't control in this room. He held her gaze. "In time. I will."
She held the pause for a moment, then nodded and turned to Saito. "And you?"
Saito didn't hesitate. "My power comes from eternal flames. My sword channels it. I have three primary techniques Burning Blade Scorching Death, Burning Blade Dragon Slash and Burning Blade Dragon Halo. My strongest is Roar." She paused, then added, "That's what you saw outside."
Luke looked at the ceiling briefly. "There's a significant amount of burning involved."
"That tends to happen with eternal flames," Saito said.
Luke conceded this with a slight nod.
She stood her ground against Luke, Ms. Kasami thought, looking between the two of them. No S-Rank outside this room has managed that cold. And Kagekami took on the Queen. She kept her expression neutral. They're both extraordinary. And neither of them fully knows it yet.
The door opened.
Takomi walked in with the energy of someone who had seen something from a window and had questions.
"Who destroyed the front of the Association?" She stopped. Her eyes found Kagekami. "Wait." She pointed. "Aren't you the one who killed the Queen Ripper?"
Kagekami said nothing.
Another set of footsteps. Creed filled the doorway and his eyes found Kagekami immediately, the way eyes find things they've been looking for.
"The one who killed the Queen Ripper." His voice carried the particular tone of someone making a statement and an accusation simultaneously. "While the rest of us drained ourselves fighting her you appear from nowhere, land the finishing blow and walk away looking like a hero." He stepped into the room fully. "Let's find out what you actually are." His eyes didn't move from Kagekami. "Fight me. Right now."
"Nobody is fighting anyone," Ms. Kasami said.
Creed looked at her slowly. "Why do you get to decide what he does? He's not yours." He looked back at Kagekami. "He can make his own choices." A pause, deliberate and weighted. "So. What will it be?"
The room waited.
Kagekami looked at Creed for a long moment at the challenge in his posture, the history behind it, the very specific brand of provocation that is designed to make refusal feel like weakness.
"I accept," he said.
Creed smiled.
It's obviously a trap, Takomi thought, watching Kagekami walk toward the training hall. You absolute moron.
The training hall was built for exactly this kind of thing walls, floor and ceiling constructed from materials that had been specifically designed not to shatter under the kind of forces S-Rank Protectors produce when they stop being careful. The moment word spread through the facility that something was happening in there, the viewing chambers above filled quickly Rankers, staff, anyone within earshot finding a reason to be somewhere with a window overlooking the floor below.
Ms. Kasami, Saito, Luke and Takomi took their positions at the edge of the hall.
The fight began.
Creed moved first a straight line, no feinting, the kind of opening that says I don't need to be clever about this. His punch came in with the force of someone who has broken through walls and considers it a warm-up activity.
Kagekami moved. His kick came back immediately.
Creed caught his leg mid-extension and threw him across the hall with a single rotation. Kagekami twisted in the air teleporting at the last moment, redirecting, skidding back across the floor on his feet rather than his face.
Creed was already there.
The punch to the gut connected before Kagekami had fully reset, driving him into the wall hard enough to leave an impression in it. Kagekami peeled himself off it slowly, one hand pressed against his stomach, and looked up.
Creed laughed. "Is this truly the person who killed the Queen Ripper?" He spread his hands. "Disappointing doesn't begin to cover it."
Outside the Association a black car came to a quiet stop.
Grace looked at the building through the window at the split clouds still visible above it, the destroyed gate, the general evidence of a morning that had gotten away from everyone involved. She got out.
"What a mess."
She felt the fight the moment she stepped inside not heard it, felt it, the way certain people feel power the way others feel changes in weather. She followed it.
In the training hall Creed circled Kagekami with the unhurried patience of someone closing a door.
"I know everything about you," he said. The words came out with a specific deliberateness chosen, placed. "Where you live." A pause. "Your sister."
Kagekami went still.
Creed grinned. "Do you think she could handle what happens next?" He laughed full, satisfied, the laugh of someone who has found the exact right place to press.
The change in the room was immediate and total. Every person in the viewing chamber felt it before they saw it a pressure, a darkening, something that had nothing to do with the lights. Kagekami's aura moved outward from him like a tide changing direction, the air around him deepening to something that wasn't quite visible but registered in the chest.
He started walking toward Creed.
He's too angry, Saito thought from the edge, her hand tight around her hilt. Creed did this on purpose.
Kagekami appeared in front of Creed and the punch came with everything behind it the darkness, the rage, the full weight of what had just been threatened.
One hand stopped it.
Not Creed's hand. A hand from beside them appearing between the two of them with a calm and absolute finality, catching the punch without bracing, without shifting weight, without doing anything except being there.
Grace looked down at Creed.
The hall went completely silent.
"You disgrace yourself," she said. Her voice was quiet and even and somehow more cutting for it. "Using personal information in a fight." She looked at him the way someone looks at something they expected better from. "Leave."
Creed looked at her hand. At her face. At the room full of people watching him.
He left. The door didn't close gently behind him.
Grace released Kagekami's fist.
He looked at her. She looked at him. Then she said, very quietly, at a volume designed for exactly one person,"Even better in person."
Kagekami blinked.
Ms. Kasami crossed the hall and reached her in a few strides. "Grace." The warmth in her voice was genuine and immediate. "What are you doing here?"
Luke and Takomi had both stopped moving. They had the particular stillness of people in the presence of something that recalibrates their understanding of scale.
"She's just a woman," Saito said, looking between them and Grace with mild confusion.
Luke turned to look at Saito slowly. She must live under a rock, he thought.
Takomi found her voice first. "Just a woman." She looked at Saito carefully. "You are looking at the strongest S-Rank Protector in the world. There is no equipment built by human hands that can measure what she's capable of."
Saito looked back at Grace. Looked harder. I can't feel anything from her, she thought. No power signature. No presence. Nothing. That's...that's not possible.
"Twenty years ago," Luke said, still looking at Saito with the expression of someone explaining something fundamental, "a Titan of destruction called Goddan razed three cities. Dan and Owen fought it for six hours. When Grace arrived" he paused, "it disappeared. We still don't know exactly what happened."
I've heard the rumours, Saito thought. A person so powerful that Rippers don't approach her territory. Monsters reroute around her presence. I thought it was exaggeration.
She looked at Grace again.
It wasn't.
"I came to speak with Kasami," Grace said, her eyes already moving away from Ms. Kasami and finding Kagekami across the hall. "But mostly I came to speak with you."
Kagekami met her gaze for approximately one second before looking at a point slightly to the left of her.
Damn, he thought. She's hot
Grace's phone rang. She looked at it, then back at the room with the expression of someone genuinely inconvenienced by good timing. "I have to go." She moved toward the door, passing Luke and Takomi, and paused beside Saito.
She looked at her for a moment at the sword, at the way she was standing, at something less visible than either.
"Another sword user," she said. The smile that followed was small and specific. "I expect great things from you."
She reached the entrance and looked back one final time. Her eyes found Kagekami across the length of the hall.
"I'll see you soon." A beat. "Kagekami."
Then she was gone.
The hall was quiet for a moment.
Ms. Kasami looked at the door. Then at Kagekami. Something in her expression moved briefly before settling back into its usual composure.
Saito hadn't moved. She was still looking at the entrance with the focused stillness of someone whose understanding of something has just been revised completely.
Just standing in the same room as her, she thought. I felt it. Not power something older than power. She looked at where Grace had been standing. She's not human. Whatever she is... she's not human.