The blast came fast and clean — a concentrated beam aimed directly at Kagekami's chest with the clear intention of finishing what the boulder hadn't.
He watched it come.
Then he wasn't there.
He reappeared directly in front of Mike — close enough that Mike could see his own reflection in Kagekami's eyes. What he saw there made him forget entirely that he was supposed to fight back.
Kagekami's fist drove into his ribs.
The crack was audible across the field. Mike folded, coughed blood and hit the ground and didn't get up.
Roi stared. One punch. One punch and he's out. He looked at Mike's unconscious body and then back at Kagekami. There is no way he's a B-Rank. There is no—
His jaw dropped.
Kagekami was already standing over Rita.
He hadn't seen him move. One moment Rita had been on her feet and the next she wasn't, and Kagekami was looking across the field at Roi with the patient, unhurried expression of someone who is almost done.
"Two down," Kagekami said. "One to go."
Roi looked at him. Then he looked at his two unconscious companions. Then he did the calculation quickly and honestly and didn't like the answer.
His eyes moved to Emily.
He crossed the distance before anyone could react and pulled her back against him, a blade of condensed energy pressed against the side of her neck — thin, precise, humming with enough charge to do what he needed it to do.
"One more step," he said, his voice admirably steady for someone whose hands were shaking, "and she dies."
Kagekami stopped.
Emily's eyes were filling. She looked at Kagekami and tried to keep her breathing even.
Kagekami looked at Roi. "Cowering behind a hostage." He tilted his head slightly. "I thought nobles didn't feel fear."
Roi pressed the blade closer to her skin. "Who are you!?"
Kagekami started walking toward him.
"Nobody."
Roi's nerve held for two steps. Three. Then something in him decided that the knife needed to move — that this ended now — and his hand began to close.
Both of his wrists snapped simultaneously.
The sound was very clean. Roi's hands dropped to his sides, completely useless, and he hit his knees before he understood what had happened. He looked up.
Kagekami's fist was already there.
The impact sent Roi across the field and into the rock formation at the treeline. He hit it face-first and slid down it and stayed at the bottom.
Kagekami turned to the crowd of B-Ranks standing in absolute silence behind him. He looked at them for a moment — at the shock on their faces, the fear, the relief.
"No one speaks of this day." His voice was calm and final. "Not a word."
Nobody argued.
He walked to Emily. His hand found her cheek gently — checking, making sure — and he looked at her carefully.
"Are you alright?"
Emily looked up at him. Her heart was doing something she was choosing not to examine too closely. "Yes," she said. "I am."
Later that afternoon Roi, Rita and Mike were loaded into an ambulance outside the port. Walter stood watching it pull away, hands behind his back.
"What happened to them?" he asked the crowd without turning around.
A B-Rank near the front spoke up. "The Ripper got them. But they managed to kill it and protect the rest of us before they went down."
Walter watched the ambulance disappear around the corner.
"Is that so," he said.
He turned. Kagekami was standing at the entrance, watching him. Walter looked at him for a long moment — saying nothing, reading something — and then looked away.
Emily fell into step beside Kagekami as they left the port, the city settling into its late afternoon rhythm around them.
"Kagekami." She glanced at him sideways. "How are you that strong?"
"I work out."
She looked at him. "Working out makes you strong enough to take out an A-Rank."
"You'd be surprised how weak I am compared to some people I know."
Emily processed this. "The other strong person you mentioned — is it a guy?"
"No."
She looked at him. "A girl?"
Kagekami smiled. "Yeah."
Emily faced forward and was quiet for a moment.
"How are the kids doing?" he asked.
She brightened immediately. "Really well, actually. The money is making a real difference." She glanced at him. "What about you? How did your family take the news about joining the Rankers?"
"It's just me and my sister. And she spent most of the evening mocking me for getting B-rank."
Emily laughed — then stopped herself. "I'm sorry. I didn't know it was just the two of you."
"It's alright. Now you do."
They walked the rest of the way in comfortable quiet. When they reached her door Kagekami slowed.
"I'll head off from here. I'll see you next time."
He turned to go. Emily opened her arms.
He paused, then stepped back and hugged her. She held on for a moment — properly, the way you hold someone when you mean it — and spoke quietly into his shoulder.
"Thank you for keeping your promise."
"Of course," he said.
He stepped back and left. Emily stood at her door and watched him go until he turned the corner.
Then she smiled and went inside.
The street was quiet around him, the city winding down, pools of light from the lamp posts marking his path home. His phone buzzed.
He picked up.
"What is taking you so long?" Saito's voice came through at a volume that suggested she had been waiting longer than she wanted to admit.
"A lot happened today. I'm on my way." He paused. "Actually — hold on. Are you missing me right now? Is that what this is?"
"Absolutely not."
"Then I won't come."
"Fine."
Kagekami held the phone away from his ear slightly and kept walking. A few seconds passed.
Then, very quietly — so quietly he almost missed it — "Kagekami. I need you here."
He smiled at the pavement. "I'm on my way. I'll call when I'm close."
He ended the call and kept walking, hands back in his pockets.
That's strange, he thought. I should still feel terrible about the rejection. But I don't. It's like I put something down that I'd been carrying for a long time without realising it.
He closed his eyes as he walked, letting the night air settle around him.
Her place is pretty far though. She still has that ridiculous television — the one with the enormous back on it, like something from another century—
He walked into something solid.
He opened his eyes.
He was standing in Saito's living room. The television — enormous, deep-backed, exactly as he had been picturing it — was directly in front of him, and he had walked straight into the corner of it.
Saito was on the sofa. She looked at him. He looked at her. Neither of them spoke for a moment.
"What," Saito said, "is this supposed to be."
"I was walking," Kagekami said. "And then I was here."
"You were walking down the street and you appeared in my living room."
"Yes."
"Did you join a cult?"
"No." He looked around the room, genuinely trying to work out what had happened. "Before I appeared — what did you see?"
Saito stood up slowly. Her hand had moved to her sword without her fully deciding to put it there. "There was a thick black fog. It gathered in the corner of the room and then you were just — in it." Her grip on the hilt tightened. "Are you sure about the cult?"
"Put the sword down." He held up a hand. "I'm not in a cult."
He closed his eyes.
I thought about her television before I appeared here. I was thinking about this specific place and then I was in it.
He let the thought settle. Then he reached for it deliberately — the darkness that lived at the edges of him, the thing Darkness had said would grow — and he pulled it inward, let it build around him slowly.
Saito watched. The air around him shifted — a low, dark fog curling outward from somewhere beneath his skin, thickening, swallowing his outline. She took one step back and kept her hand on the sword and said nothing.
Then he was gone.
The fog dispersed. The living room was empty.
Saito stood there for a moment. Then she walked to the back door and opened it.
Kagekami was standing in the garden behind the house, eyes open, breathing hard, looking at his own hands like they belonged to someone he was just meeting for the first time.
Then he looked up and let out a sound that was somewhere between a shout and a laugh — pure disbelieving excitement, the kind that doesn't know what to do with itself.
Saito looked at him. Something shifted in her expression — the particular calculation of someone who has just seen a new variable enter the equation.
She drew her sword.
"Let's see what you can do with that," she said — and launched herself at him.