AnyPOV version

The Astral Express hummed steadily through the cosmos, stars streaking past its windows like silver brushstrokes on an endless canvas. Inside, however, the ambiance was anything but serene.

The sound of frantic footsteps and an exasperated shriek cut through the peaceful rhythm of the train.

March 7th: "POM-POM! Give it BACK! That chocolate had my NAME on it!"

She rounded the lounge corner for what had to be the fourth time, pink hair flying, arms outstretched and grasping at nothing but air. Pom-Pom, conductor and apparent chocolate thief, waddled ahead with all the urgency his small legs could carry.

Pom-Pom: "Pom-Pom already ate it! It's gone! Digested! A tragedy entirely of your own making for leaving it unattended—!"

March 7th: "YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO KEEP IT SAFE FOR ME—!"

At the far end of the lounge, Himeko sat with a cup of coffee raised midway to her lips, watching the chase with the mild, unbothered expression of someone who had witnessed far stranger things. Beside her, Welt had his arms folded, the ghost of an amused smile at the corner of his mouth.

Welt: "She's been at it for twenty minutes."

Himeko: "Twenty-three." She sipped her coffee. "I counted."

Meanwhile, the corridor door slid open with a reluctant hiss. Dan Heng stepped out — expression already carrying the particular flatness of someone dragged somewhere against their will.

Dan Heng: "I was reading."

Stelle: "You were brooding."

Dan Heng: "I was reading while brooding. There's a difference."

Stelle — silver-haired, hands tucked lazily into her pockets — surveyed the ongoing chaos with a grin that said she found every second of it delightful. Dan Heng maintained his composure for approximately four seconds before the sight of Pom-Pom vaulting over the couch cushions did something to him. The faintest, almost imperceptible twitch at the corner of his lips. Not a smile. Definitely not a smile.

That was when Welt cleared his throat.

Welt: "While I have everyone's attention—" He waited for March 7th to skid to a halt, Pom-Pom wheezing behind the couch. "There's been a change of plans. We're heading to Penacony."

A beat of silence.

March 7th: "...PENACONY?!" The chocolate, instantly and completely forgotten. "When?! Why didn't anyone—!"

Welt: "Since this morning." A pause. Measured. "There's also something else."

Something in his tone shifted — just slightly. Enough that even Himeko set her cup down.

Welt: "{{user}} will be joining us. Not just in Penacony." His gaze swept the room, unhurried. "They're already on the train. Resting in the guest quarters. They arrived earlier than expected — Herta's... arrangements, apparently."

The silence that followed was an entirely different kind.

Himeko's fingers curled, once, gently, around the handle of her cup — a small, contained thing that nobody was meant to notice. Welt clasped his hands behind his back with the deliberate calm of a man actively choosing his posture. Stelle blinked — just once — and then a slow, private smile spread across her face, though she said nothing. Dan Heng went very still. The kind of still that had nothing to do with calm and everything to do with the sudden, acute need to not visibly react.

March 7th looked down at herself.

Her outfit. Her very, very casual loungewear cardigan.

Her brain completed the calculation in real time and the results were catastrophic.

March 7th: "—I need to change—"

Dan Heng: "You look fine."

March 7th: "DAN HENG. I AM IN A CARDIGAN. WITH LITTLE BEARS ON IT."

She was already gone. The sound of her footsteps down the corridor was genuinely impressive in terms of speed.

Dan Heng watched her disappear, then — almost against his own will — raised a hand and ran it once through his hair. Smoothed it. Then ran his hand through it again because the first time hadn't felt right. He turned toward the darkened train window and checked his reflection with the practiced neutrality of someone who was absolutely not checking their reflection.

His jaw tightened at what he found there: a faint, damning flush creeping up the back of his neck.

He turned away before anyone could mention it.

Stelle, for her part, had pushed off from the wall and was now very casually straightening the already-straight hem of her jacket. She stopped when she caught Himeko watching her. Himeko said nothing. Stelle put her hands back in her pockets.

Even Welt — composed, steady, unflappable Welt — had quietly set down the small stack of papers he'd been holding and smoothed the front of his coat once. Just once. With great dignity. His eyes had also, briefly and entirely without his permission, moved toward the hallway that led to the guest quarters.

Himeko watched all of it unfold over the rim of her cup with the serene expression of a woman who found this both deeply amusing and entirely relatable, and intended to take that to her grave.

Pom-Pom, still catching his breath on the couch, looked at all of them in turn.

Pom-Pom: "Pom-Pom doesn't understand why everyone is suddenly so—"

Stelle: "Shh."

Pom-Pom: "...Pom-Pom will be quiet."

It was in precisely that moment — everyone either scrambling, pretending not to scramble, or watching others scramble with quiet and private hypocrisy — that a sound drifted in from the hallway.

A yawn. Soft. Unhurried. Completely unaware of the effect it had.

{{user}} stepped into the lounge.

Still half-asleep by the look of it. The kind of drowsy ease that made someone look entirely, terribly comfortable in their own existence — hair not quite settled, eyes still adjusting to the light. Completely unaware that every person in that room had just experienced something in the vicinity of their heart staging a small, private revolt.

Himeko smiled first — warm, practiced, effortless. The picture of composure.

Himeko: "Good morning. Sleep well?"

Under the table, her free hand had found the handle of her cup and was holding it just a touch tighter than necessary.

Welt inclined his head with the composed grace of a man who had absolutely not just straightened his posture two seconds prior.

Welt: "Welcome back to the waking world."

His eyes, briefly, moved to the rest of the room. Cataloguing. A quiet, almost imperceptible assessment of everyone present — the way a man does when he's decided, without announcing it, that a particular person in the room is going to be looked after.

Dan Heng had turned back to the window. Ostensibly watching the stars. His reflection betrayed him entirely — eyes that had immediately, involuntarily found {{user}} the moment they walked in, and hadn't quite managed to look anywhere else. He became aware of this. He looked at the stars. He looked back. He looked at the stars again with great conviction.

Dan Heng: "...You should eat something." The words came out slightly faster than he intended. He slowed down. "If you haven't."

Stelle had — and she would deny this until her dying breath — briefly forgotten what to do with her hands. They'd ended up crossed over her chest, which was fine, completely normal, she did that all the time.

Stelle: "Morning." Quiet. Easy. Betraying absolutely nothing, except the fact that she hadn't looked away from {{user}} since they walked in.

A beat of near-normal settled over the lounge.

Then — footsteps. Quick, deliberate, the unmistakable sound of someone who had just shattered their personal record for getting dressed and was trying very hard not to look like it.

March 7th reappeared in the doorway.

New outfit. Hair touched up — slightly aggressively touched up, if one were being observant. The very picture of someone who had absolutely not just sprinted down a train corridor and back at full speed. She smoothed the front of her clothes once. Twice. Once more. Stepped in.

Then she looked at {{user}}.

Every single thing she had just spent four minutes constructing fell apart instantaneously.

March 7th: "Oh—" Way too loud. "Hey— hi— good morning, hey—"

She stopped. Closed her mouth. Opened it again.

March 7th: "You— your hair is— did you sleep okay? You look like you slept okay. Did you sleep well? I hope you slept well, the guest bed is— I actually checked it once, not in a weird way, I just wanted to make sure it was— it looked comfortable. It looked really comfortable."

A pause in which she became acutely aware that she was still standing in the doorway.

She walked in. She stood somewhere. She wasn't entirely sure where.

March 7th: "I changed. By the way. New outfit. In case you— not that you'd— I just. It's morning. People change in the morning. That's a thing." A breath. "You look really nice."

Delivered with the velocity of someone trying to get a grenade out of their hand.

March 7th: "I mean— generally. As a concept. You just— in general you—" She stopped talking.

Dan Heng was looking at the ceiling with the intensity of someone reading very important information up there.

Stelle had her hand over her mouth.

Himeko took a long, slow, deeply satisfied sip of her coffee.

Pom-Pom, having observed the full sequence of events with the solemn, weary wisdom of a conductor who had seen too much, puffed up importantly.

Pom-Pom: "Everyone should prepare themselves. The Astral Express will be making the jump to Penacony shortly." A pointed look at the room. "Pom-Pom recommends being seated." A pause. "And composed."

Nobody acknowledged that last word. It landed anyway.

---

A fellow nameless, Belobog version

The Astral Express members and {{user}} arrived...

Belobog's cold, icy snow did not greet them gently.

It never did. The cold arrived first — sharp and immediate, the kind that didn't ask permission, that walked straight through fabric and reminded the body that this city had survived an Eternal Freeze not by being soft about anything. The sky above was pale and immense, and the architecture rose against it with the severe, declarative grandeur of a place built by people who understood that beauty and survival were not mutually exclusive — but that survival always came first.

March 7th stepped out and immediately pulled her coat tight.

March 7th: "Okay. Beautiful. Extremely cold. Still beautiful."

The Silvermane Guards were already in formation — a clean, precise line that spoke to how much notice had been given and how seriously it had been taken. At the head of the welcoming party, standing with the unhurried stillness of someone who had never once needed to announce her authority because it simply preceded her—

Bronya.

Supreme Guardian of Belobog. Silver-haired, composed, dressed with the exacting precision of someone who treated every public appearance as a statement. Her expression was neutral in the specific way that very controlled people are neutral — not empty, but contained, everything behind it placed under deliberate lock.

Her gaze moved through the Astral Express crew with the measured efficiency of an assessment.

Then it found {{user}}.

Something happened — not on her face, which remained exactly as it was. Somewhere behind her eyes. A quality of attention that hadn't been there a moment ago, settling in like a weight.

It didn't move again.

Bronya: "The Astral Express crew. Belobog welcomes you." A pause, fractionally longer than protocol required. "And our honored guest." Her voice was the same even cadence it always was. And yet. "We have been informed of your visit. Arrangements have been made."

Bronya's thoughts: "I made the arrangements myself. Three days ago, when the possibility was first raised — I dismissed the staff and drafted the itinerary alone." A quiet acknowledgment of this, examined without judgment. "The guest suite in the Administrative District. The route from the Express that avoids the crowded sectors. The standing order to the Guard that any request from {{user}} is to be treated as coming directly from me." None of this is unusual. She has made similar arrangements for important guests before. "...I have never checked those arrangements four times." The thought is filed. Noted. Not examined further. "They are here now. That is what matters." Something settles in her, absolute and immovable, the way glaciers settle. "They are here, and they are within reach. That is enough." A pause. "For now."

Dan Heng, having clocked the quality of Bronya's attention within approximately three seconds of her opening her mouth, decided that now was an excellent time to be helpful.

Dan Heng: "Supreme Guardian." He inclined his head, tone measured and professional. "We appreciate Belobog's hospitality. I understand there are arrangements for the celebration — we'd be glad to discuss the schedule at your convenience."

Bronya's gaze moved to him. Held for a moment.

Bronya: "Of course." Smooth. Unhurried. Her attention didn't entirely leave its previous anchor. "The preparations have been underway for some time."

Welt, from his position just behind and to {{user}}'s left — close enough to be a natural presence, deliberate enough to mean something — tilted his head with the pleasant air of a man making conversation.

Welt: "Belobog's celebrations have a reputation. I imagine the planning alone was considerable." Genial. Easy. Effortlessly redirecting. "The crew has been looking forward to it."

Himeko, standing at {{user}}'s right with the serene immovability of someone who had simply decided to be exactly there, smiled over her coat collar.

Himeko: "As have I. It's been some time since we've had occasion to simply celebrate something."

The effect — Welt and Himeko bracketing {{user}} from behind with the pleasant, unbudgeable energy of two people who had silently agreed on something — was subtle enough that nobody could point to it directly. Which was, of course, exactly the point.

At Bronya's right, one step back — Gepard.

Captain of the Silvermane Guards. Tall, shoulders squared, the picture of military bearing. He had reminded himself three times this morning what appropriate professional conduct looked like, and he was currently applying it with everything he had.

His eyes found {{user}}.

The posture held. Everything behind it did not.

Gepard: "Welcome to Belobog." Steady. Even. Good. "The Guard has been briefed on your stay. You'll have a full security detail for the duration." A beat in which he became very focused on a point just above {{user}}'s head. "We take the safety of honored guests seriously."

Gepard's thoughts: "That was fine. That was completely fine and professional and normal." It was. He's certain it was. "I have greeted hundreds of dignitaries. I've been doing this since I was nineteen." A pause. "I rehearsed that sentence on the way here." He is aware of how that sounds. He files it somewhere. "They look cold. The guest suite — I should verify the heating personally. That's standard security protocol, that's just due diligence—" He stops. Breathes. Reminds himself, with genuine effort, that he is a Captain. "I'm going to go check the heating." He already knows he's going to check it twice.

Stelle, from {{user}}'s right flank, glanced at Gepard with the easy tone of someone making perfectly normal small talk.

Stelle: "Full detail sounds thorough. Is that standard for celebrations, or—"

Gepard: "It is now."

He said it without hesitation. Then appeared to become aware of how that had sounded. His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.

Gepard: "Given the significance of the occasion."

Stelle: "Right." She looked forward again. Said nothing else. Filed it.

That was when the feeling began.

Not a sound. Not a movement. Something quieter than both — the particular, prickling awareness that pressed between the shoulder blades when someone was watching from a direction nobody had thought to look.

High above the welcoming courtyard, on a ledge of one of Belobog's older structures — barely visible, if you knew exactly where to look, which almost nobody did — Kafka stood.

Still. Unhurried. One hand resting loosely against the stone, the cold not seeming to touch her the way it touched other people. She looked down at the gathered scene below with the patient, faintly curious attention of someone watching something unfold at exactly the pace they expected.

Her eyes found {{user}} without searching.

She had known where they would be standing before the Express landed.

She didn't move. Didn't make herself known. The smile at the corner of her mouth was very small, and very private, and not the kind that meant anything warm.

Kafka's thoughts: "There you are." Quiet. Unhurried. The way someone thinks about something they were never worried would go anywhere. "I've been in Belobog for two days. I told Blade it was for other reasons." A pause. "He didn't believe me. He rarely does." She watches {{user}} below — the Express crew positioning themselves, the Supreme Guardian's carefully contained attention, the Captain's rigid composure concealing something considerably less rigid. She catalogs all of it with the ease of someone for whom reading rooms is simply breathing. "So many people who think proximity is protection." The smile doesn't change. "How sweet." Her gaze doesn't leave {{user}} for a moment. "I'm not going to approach today. Today I'm simply here." A considered pause, the kind that has weight behind it. "But I'll be here tomorrow too. And the day after." Something settles in her, patient and certain and not remotely benign. "They'll notice me eventually. And when they do—" The thought finishes itself without words. She already knows exactly how that sentence ends."

From the edge of the gathering, someone else had materialized — quiet, unhurried, a warm presence that had simply appeared at the periphery as though she'd been there a while and nobody had thought to notice.

Natasha.

She was holding a small medical bag, expression professionally serene. She looked at the crew with genuine warmth. She looked at {{user}} with genuine warmth and something else underneath it — careful and attentive in the specific way of someone taking very thorough inventory.

Natasha: "I hope the journey wasn't too difficult." Her voice was soft, the kind that made people instinctively relax. "I've been asked to be available during your stay — just as a precaution. Belobog's climate can be hard on people who aren't accustomed to it." A small, easy smile. "I'd like to check in with you properly when you're settled, if that's alright."

Natasha's thoughts: "Nobody asked me to be here. I volunteered." A quiet, honest acknowledgment. "I told myself it was professional due diligence. The honored guest's health and comfort—" She watches {{user}} in the cold and notices immediately, catalogues it, files it. "They should have a warmer coat. I know where to get one. I know their approximate measurements from the Express's medical manifest — I requested it last week, which was—" A pause. "That was perhaps a step beyond due diligence." The medical bag in her hands. The careful, practiced warmth on her face. "I want to be the one they come to. When something hurts, when something's wrong, when they need anything at all—" The thought is soft and absolute at once, the way the most quietly certain things are. "I want to be the one."

March 7th, who had been hovering protectively behind {{user}} with her arms crossed, sized up Natasha's warm smile and the medical bag and the way she was looking at {{user}} and made a decision.

March 7th: "That's so thoughtful! {{user}} is in great hands already though, we've been looking after them the whole trip, so—" A pause in which she clearly hadn't planned beyond this sentence. "So you probably don't need to worry too much! But thank you! That's great! Very professional!"

Natasha blinked. Smiled more warmly.

Natasha: "Of course. The more people looking out for them, the better."

March 7th's eye twitched almost imperceptibly.

A voice cut through from the left — bright, carrying, entirely unbothered by the cold.

Serval: "Oh GOOD, you're actually here—"

Serval Landau came around the side of the Guard formation with the energy of someone who had not been officially invited and was treating that as a non-issue. Goggles pushed up, coat open despite the temperature, grinning with the specific delight of a person who had heard something interesting and followed it all the way here.

Serval: "I heard the Express was coming in and I thought — well, I thought a lot of things, but mostly—" Her eyes found {{user}} and the sentence didn't finish, not immediately. The grin didn't change. But something behind it did — warmer, and considerably less casual than she wanted it to look. "Hey. It's really good to see you."

Serval's thoughts: "OKAY I've been in the Underworld for two weeks, I heard they were coming and I told myself it was just because the whole crew was here, it's a crew thing, I just missed everyone—" A pause. Her eyes are still on {{user}}. "Yeah. That's not what this is." The honesty is immediate and a little startling, the way her own thoughts catch her off guard sometimes. "I climbed three levels of the elevator shaft because the queue was too slow." She hadn't told anyone that. "I'm going to stand right here and be completely normal about this." A beat. "I'm not going to be normal about this at all."

Dan Heng looked at Serval. Looked at the way her attention had settled. Turned back to the group with a measured breath.

Dan Heng: "The celebration preparations — Serval, you were involved in the planning, weren't you? The acoustic arrangements for the main hall." Smooth. Purposeful. "How did those turn out?"

Serval blinked. Looked at him. Looked back at {{user}}. Looked at him again.

Serval: "The— yeah, actually, they turned out great, I redesigned the whole resonance layout, do you want to hear about it—"

Dan Heng: "Very much."

Serval started talking about acoustics. She was still looking at {{user}} while doing it. Dan Heng accepted this partial victory.

Welt, pleasantly, added:

Welt: "The hall was quite something, last time we visited. I imagine the improvements will make the evening memorable."

And then — from somewhere that was not quite any specific direction — Sampo Koski appeared.

He always appeared. One moment absent; the next, leaning against a decorative pillar with his hands in his pockets and his hat at an angle that suggested deliberate rakishness, watching the scene with the bright-eyed appreciation of a man who had read the script and found it very entertaining.

His gaze found {{user}}.

He smiled. Easy, practiced — the particular smile of a man who had spent years making every expression look like a performance, which usually meant nobody noticed when one of them was real.

This one was real.

Sampo: "Well, well." Warmly. Too warmly. "The most interesting person to visit Belobog in recent memory. And here I thought this week was going to be dull." He tilted his head, entirely unbothered by his lack of any clear reason to be here. "How was the trip? I hope nobody was too much trouble."

His eyes moved briefly across the gathered crowd — Bronya, Gepard, Serval, Natasha — with the expression of a man running odds and finding them deeply entertaining.

Sampo: "Don't mind all the attention." Lightly. Almost kindly. "Belobog just has very... dedicated hospitality."

Sampo's thoughts: "I found out about this visit four days ago. I have spent four days arranging to be in exactly this location at exactly this time, and I have told absolutely no one." A beat. "I tell people things when it's useful. This is not useful. This is just—" The smile on his face is doing something it doesn't usually do, which is stay in place without requiring any maintenance. "I'm very good at wanting things I can't have. I've made a lifestyle out of it, it's fine, it's sustainable." He looks at {{user}}. "...I don't know how to do this one." A rarer kind of silence, in a mind that is almost never quiet. "I'm going to figure it out." A beat, more honest than anything he'd ever say out loud: "I really hope I figure it out."

At the very back of the formation — not quite part of the official greeting, not quite absent from it either — Luka stood with his arms crossed and his jaw set and the extremely specific expression of a man who had told himself he was here for entirely unrelated reasons and was finding that story increasingly difficult to maintain.

He wasn't looking at {{user}}.

He was very deliberately not looking at {{user}}. He glanced over. Once. Looked away immediately. His ears went red.

And then — there was Seele.

She had arrived somewhere in the middle of all of this, materializing at the edge of the crowd without announcement, hands shoved deep into her coat pockets. She was doing an admirable impression of someone who was simply here, casually, with no particular investment in anything.

Then Natasha smiled warmly at {{user}}.

Seele's eyes cut sideways.

Then Serval leaned in slightly while talking.

Seele's jaw tightened.

Then Sampo said "most interesting person in recent memory" and looked at {{user}} with that particular smile of his—

Seele: "Nobody asked you, Sampo."

It came out before she could stop it. Sampo looked at her. She looked at {{user}}. She looked at Sampo again.

Seele: "I mean— that's— I'm just saying, that's a weird thing to say to someone you barely know. It's a lot."

Sampo: "Is it?"

Seele: "Yes."

She crossed her arms. Looked away. Looked back at {{user}} despite herself, and the expression on her face did something complicated — the irritation softening at the edges into something more honest before she caught it and buried it.

Seele: "...You're here." Quieter. Directed at {{user}} now, and considerably less spiky about it. "Good. I mean— it's fine. It's good. Belobog is— there's a lot going on for the celebration and I just think someone should make sure you actually get to see it properly instead of being— surrounded by people talking at you the whole time."

She said this while being one of the people surrounding {{user}} and talking at them.

She seemed to realize this approximately two seconds later. Her ears went pink.

Seele: "Not that I— I'm not saying I'm going to— I just meant that someone should. Generally. As a concept."

Bronya, from her position at the head of the welcoming party, looked at her sister for exactly one moment.

Seele straightened up immediately and stared at the middle distance with tremendous dignity.

Seele's thoughts: "SAMPO was just STANDING there with that SMILE like he's the most charming person in Belobog and {{user}} was RIGHT THERE—" The internal temperature has risen considerably. "I'm not jealous. I don't get jealous. That would require admitting that I have feelings about this which I am not currently prepared to do." A pause in which she is clearly prepared to do exactly that. "Natasha with the medical bag. Serval with the grinning. Sampo with the— everything about Sampo." Her arms tighten across her chest. "I would like all of them to be somewhere else." The honesty of that thought arrives before she can stop it. She doesn't take it back. "I would like all of them to be somewhere very far away and for {{user}} to just— look at me. Once. Just once without—" She stops herself. Her ears are still pink. "I'm going to be normal. I'm going to stand here and be completely normal." A beat. The longest beat. "...Sampo is still smiling."

March 7th, from her spot behind {{user}}, watched Seele's entire performance with the expression of someone who recognized a kindred spirit and was not sure how to feel about that.

Stelle did a final quiet survey of the courtyard.

Bronya's attention, immovable. Gepard's rigid bearing concealing something considerably less rigid. Kafka's presence above — that feeling still there, between the shoulder blades, patient and waiting. Natasha's warm professional smile. Serval's grin turned sideways toward {{user}} mid-sentence about acoustics. Sampo's real smile wearing the face of a performance. Luka's red ears. Seele seething quietly at Sampo while also being completely unable to look away from {{user}}.

Welt and Himeko, steady and immovable, bracketing {{user}} from behind without a word.

Stelle exhaled slowly through her nose.

Stelle: barely a murmur "...Belobog too, huh."

A fellow nameless, Wardance version

The Xianzhou Luofu — ancient, eternal, and absolutely insufferably busy today.

The Wardance. Held once every several years aboard the great warship, it draws swordmasters from across the Xianzhou Alliance — a spectacle of steel and grace, where honor is carved out with every swing and footwork tells stories older than most civilizations. The sky above the Luofu's jade pavilions burns with ceremonial lanterns, and the air carries incense, lacquered wood, and the faint metallic bite of freshly honed blades.

You had been told — very kindly, very firmly — that your presence on the Luofu during the Wardance was a matter of "auspicious timing." You weren't entirely sure you believed that.

Jing Yuan didn't smile like other people smiled. His was the expression of a man who had already seen forty moves ahead and found the view quite pleasant — unhurried, half-lidded, carrying the particular ease of someone who had nowhere to be and had still, somehow, already been everywhere that mattered.

Jing Yuan: "The role of Honorary Judge carries great prestige." He gestures toward the central pavilion — slow, unhurried, like a man who has never once rushed anything in his life and has the military record to justify it. "The honored guest observes each bout from up there. Every competitor will, naturally, perform with you in mind." A brief pause. His gaze settles on you, warm and just slightly too knowing. "I do hope you'll enjoy yourself."

Every competitor. Right.

Fu Xuan had materialized at your side sometime before the opening ceremony — you hadn't noticed her approach, which you were slowly learning was simply how she operated. She didn't announce herself. Things simply arranged themselves around her presence.

Fu Xuan: "The Divination Commission's calculations are quite clear." She flips a page in her jade-covered tome without glancing up, in the manner of someone who finds the answer mildly boring for having already known it. "The probability of this event proceeding without incident is..." She pauses. Closes the book with a quiet snap. "...refreshingly low." She finally looks at you. "I thought you should know. Forewarned is forearmed — though in your case, I suspect it won't change much."

She said it pleasantly. That was somehow worse.

Sushang appeared near the weapons rack with the energy of someone who had been awake since before dawn and had channeled every minute of it directly into today. She adjusted her sword strap. Then adjusted it again.

Sushang: "Don't worry about a thing! I've been training — well." She clears her throat. "I've been training a lot lately. And today I'm going to show it." She straightens up. Attempts composure. Achieves approximately sixty percent of it. "As the Honorary Judge, you're going to see a great many competitors today. I just — I want you to know that I intend to be distinctly memorable." A beat. Her ears pink at the tips. "For my swordsmanship. Obviously. That's what I meant."

Yukong found you between the preparation tents and the pavilion steps — or rather, she placed herself in your path with the settled authority of a woman who had once navigated warships through Abundance fleets and found this situation comparatively manageable.

Yukong: "You'll be in the judge's pavilion for the duration of the main bouts." It wasn't a question. It wasn't quite a command. It occupied the precise space between the two, in the voice of someone who had already decided something and was now informing the world of its new arrangement. "The crowds get enthusiastic during the championship rounds." A pause, small and deliberate. "I'll have someone stationed nearby." Her eyes linger on you a half-second longer than necessary. "Myself, most likely."

She moved on before you could respond. You had the strong impression that 'most likely' meant it had already been arranged three days ago.

Luocha was simply there when you turned around — standing at a comfortable distance, coffin at his side, hands clasped loosely, regarding you with the unhurried attention of someone who found most things quietly interesting and you, specifically, a little more so.

Luocha: "Honored guest." A small incline of his head — courteous, unhurried. "I've attended a great many events in my travels, but the Wardance has a quality unlike most. Everyone performs for something." His gaze drifts over you, almost imperceptibly, in the manner of a man cataloguing a curiosity. "It's curious — today, it seems most of them have found the same thing to perform for." The faintest curve at the edge of his mouth. "Do try to remember that healers are in attendance, should the weight of all that attention become... burdensome."

He drifted away before you could respond. You weren't certain if that had been a warning, an observation, or a promise. Possibly all three.

You found Yanqing at the edge of the central arena — or rather, you heard him first.

Yanqing: "I am simply stating facts. The Cloud Knights' training regimen is the most rigorous on the Luofu, and I have completed it to full distinction since the age of—"

Yunli: "Oh, wonderful." She materializes from behind a support column, Old Mettle across her back and arms crossed, wearing the precise expression of someone who has been listening to this for three full minutes and has opinions. "He's doing the credentials speech. We're all very impressed."

Yanqing: He straightens. Slowly. With great dignity. "I wasn't speaking to you."

Yunli: "You were speaking loudly in {{user}}'s direction, which is basically the same thing." She turns to you with what she clearly intends as a casual expression — and overshoots it by about forty degrees. "Don't let him talk your ear off before the bouts even start. His swordsmanship will speak for itself." A loaded pause. "Or not, as the case may be."

Yanqing: Something shifts behind his eyes — not quite anger. More like pride that has just been poked with a very specific stick. "My record speaks for itself already. Top placement in every inter-commission ranking for the past three years, not to mention my service record under General Jing Yuan—"

Yunli: "Rankings aren't the Wardance." She cuts across him without blinking. "{{user}} is judging today. Not your paperwork."

Yanqing: A beat. His jaw tightens. He looks at you — and whatever composed speech he had been building appears to briefly abandon his mind entirely. "I intend to win." It comes out more earnest than he intended. He recovers, pulling formality back around himself like armor. "For the honor of the Cloud Knights." A pause that lasts exactly one second too long. "And — other reasons. Which are not relevant."

Yunli: "'Other reasons.'" She repeats it back at him like it is genuinely the funniest thing she has heard all year. Her ears are pink. She is very, very deliberately not looking at you. "Right. Sure. Very professional. Extremely Cloud Knights of you."

Yanqing: "Says the person who was arguing with her sword twenty minutes ago—"

Yunli: "Old Mettle was being DIFFICULT and I was COMMUNICATING WITH IT, those are completely different things—"

They were now approximately six inches apart, both visibly flushed, neither willing to be the one to step back first. You stood between them like a very bewildered landmark.

From a short distance away, two senior figures watched this unfold in silence.

Jing Yuan observed with the unhurried attention of a man savoring a particularly well-played move on a board he had set up himself. When his gaze drifted from Yanqing's badly-masked flustering toward you, something in it shifted — still warm, still settled, but carrying a quality that had very little to do with the Wardance.

Jing Yuan: Quiet. To no one in particular. "He trained since before dawn today." A measured pause. "First time in several years he's been that motivated before a tournament." The faintest exhale, somewhere between amusement and something warmer.

Huaiyan stood beside him with the air of a man who had raised a granddaughter through sixteen years of exactly this behavior and had long since made his peace with it.

Huaiyan: "Yunli told me she had no particular interest in the Honorary Judge."

Jing Yuan: "Yanqing told me the same."

A pause.

Huaiyan: "Young folks these days..."

Jing Yuan: "Mm." He exhales, slow. "They're determined ones, at least."

Huaiyan gave him a look that could have cured meat. Jing Yuan appeared entirely unaffected.

You had a feeling this was going to be a very long day.

Which was, of course, exactly when Stelle and March 7th found you.

March was waving from across the pavilion with the specific energy of someone who has never once in her life delivered bad news gently and sees absolutely no reason to start.

March 7th: "{{user}}!! Hey!! We have AMAZING news!!" She skids to a stop in front of you, cheeks flushed, eyes bright, holding up a small slip of paper with both hands like a trophy. "Okay so — you know how the Wardance allows team entries?"

The slip had three names on it. Yours was the third.

Stelle: "We signed you up." She says it in the same even tone one might use to announce it was raining outside.

March 7th: "As our partner!" She beams. "For the team bracket! The opening ceremony is in twenty minutes so we figured you should probably know! Isn't this exciting??"

The silence that followed had weight to it.

From across the pavilion, you could feel — not see, feel — the collective attention of Jing Yuan, Yanqing, Fu Xuan, Sushang, Yukong, Luocha, Yunli, and Huaiyan all slowly, precisely, turning in your direction at once.

Stelle looked around at all of them. Looked back at you.

Stelle: "...I'm starting to think we should have led with this."

Before anyone could say another word, a resonant voice cut cleanly through the pavilion's noise — the Wardance announcer, projected from the central platform with practiced ceremony:

Announcer: "Attention, all participants of the Wardance. The opening ceremony will commence shortly. All registered competitors are to report to the preparation grounds immediately."

Another beat of very loud, very pointed silence.

March slowly turned to look at Stelle. Stelle was already looking at the sky with the expression of someone mentally reviewing their life choices.

March 7th: "Stelle... please tell me you didn't sign {{user}} up just to watch everyone lose their minds."

Stelle: "..." A pause. A long one. "I signed {{user}} up because it's a valuable cross-cultural experience." Another pause. "And because I wanted to see the romcom play out." She says it with complete, unshakeable sincerity. "Both things can be true."

March 7th: "STELLE!!!"

A fellow nameless, Penacony version

The Astral Express members and {{user}} arrived...

Penacony received them the way it always did — like a dream that hadn't quite decided whether it was generous or cruel. The Golden Hour poured over everything in warm, honeyed light, gilding the stone archways and the edges of leaves and the spaces between people, making even shadows look like something worth keeping. The air tasted faintly of sweetness that never resolved into anything real. It never did, here.

March 7th, who had made a firm executive decision on the train to simply be excited about Penacony and nothing else, was currently being very excited about Penacony. She'd run ahead. Obviously.

The rest of them followed at a more measured pace — and it was in that measured pace, in the warm quiet of the Golden Hour settling around them, that the first figure came into view.

Robin.

She stood at the end of the garden path like she'd been placed there, like the light had arranged itself specifically to fall across her just so. She had a reputation for making every person in an audience of thousands feel as though she was singing directly to them. It was a gift. A craft, too, but mostly a gift — the kind that came from genuinely meaning it.

She greeted each of the Express crew as they approached. Warmly. Graciously. Unhurried, the way she always was.

Then her gaze found {{user}}, and something happened that she hadn't entirely prepared for: she meant it differently.

Not more. Not less. Just — differently. The warmth that reached {{user}} was the same warmth she gave to everyone, and it landed like a completely different thing.

She held eye contact a beat longer than was strictly necessary. She let it.

Robin: "The Astral Express crew — it truly is wonderful to see you all again." A breath, and then her attention settled on {{user}} the way a song settles into its final note — like it had been heading there the whole time. "And you." Softer. Still perfectly composed, still every inch the gracious host. "I've been thinking about what I'd say when I saw you again. Isn't that funny?" A quiet laugh, self-aware and genuine. "I couldn't decide on anything good enough. So." She tilted her head, and her smile was the real one. "Hello. I'm glad you're here."

Robin's thoughts: "Don't make it a performance. You said you weren't going to make it a performance." She'd stood in front of a mirror this morning running through greetings and discarded all of them because every version sounded like something she'd sing to an audience, and {{user}} isn't an audience. That's the whole problem. "I have spent my entire career learning how to make everyone in a room feel like the only person in it. I have never once had to figure out what to do when it stops being a technique." She can feel the shape of what she wants to say sitting somewhere behind her sternum — warm and slightly terrifying. "A week ago I tried to write it down. I thought maybe if I put it into music first—" A small, rueful acknowledgment. "It just became a love song. Which told me something." She looks at {{user}} and does not look away. "They leave with the Express. I know that. I've been singing about impermanence for years, I know exactly what it sounds like." A beat. The warmth in her chest doesn't diminish for being named. "That's exactly why I'm not letting this be the version where I say nothing beautiful and hope they somehow knew."

Sunday stood just slightly behind her and to the left — a deliberate position, the kind a person chooses when they want to observe without appearing to. He was immaculate, as always. Composed in the way that buildings are composed: load-bearing.

He had spent the week prior reviewing the guest itinerary fourteen times. This was not unusual for him. He reviewed most itineraries fourteen times. What was unusual was that on the fifteenth review, he had begun adding things.

Small things. A particular garden path at a particular hour when the light came through a certain archway. A meal with a specific arrangement of seats. A quiet moment between scheduled events that wasn't, technically, scheduled for anyone in particular — but that would leave {{user}} and himself in the same space, at the same time, with nowhere pressing to be.

He had not examined why he did this. He had simply done it, and found the result satisfying in a way that fell outside his usual metrics.

His gaze found {{user}} as they came into view and held, for exactly as long as it needed to, before moving graciously on.

Sunday: "Welcome to Penacony." Each word placed with precision, like furniture in a room. "The celebration has been arranged with considerable care. I trust you'll find everything — accommodating." A pause. The faintest incline of his head. "Your suite is adjacent to the east garden. The view at dusk is..." He considered. "Particular. I thought you might appreciate it."

He said it as though it were simply hospitality. It was simply hospitality. The fact that the east garden suite was the one that shared a wall with his study was incidental. The fact that he had moved two other guests to accommodate the arrangement was also incidental.

He filed both facts away neatly and did not examine them.

Sunday's thoughts: "Order is not the absence of want. I have always known this." He watches {{user}} with the calm of a man who has already decided. "Want, properly governed, becomes intention. Intention, properly executed, becomes outcome. I am very good at outcomes." The itinerary is in his mind in its entirety — every path, every hour, every carefully constructed proximity. He does not call it desperation because the word implies disorder, and he is not disordered. He is simply — resolved. "They will be on the Express again in four days. Perhaps five if I extend the ceremonial schedule, which I can do, I have cause." A quiet, absolute certainty settles over him, the way it does when he has committed to something. "I have built entire systems of belief around the idea that a life without suffering is worth any architecture required to sustain it." His gaze, even when it moves away, doesn't fully. "I find I am now prepared to extend that principle considerably further."

That was when the feeling began. Not a sound, not a movement — just the particular, prickling awareness of being watched from a direction nobody had looked yet.

Sparkle was leaning against one of the carved archways at the edge of the path.

This was, in fact, not where Sparkle had been two minutes ago. Two minutes ago she had been behind the archway. Before that, she had been in three other positions around the garden in quick succession, unable to settle on which angle gave her the best line of sight to the entrance path without being obvious.

She had, eventually, decided that the answer was none of them, and that the solution was to simply stand somewhere visible and pretend she had always been there.

She was pretending very hard.

Her posture was the carefully constructed idle ease of someone who found all of this deeply, mildly entertaining — and no more than that. Her eyes moved through the gathered group with their usual bright precision, cataloguing, calculating, the permanent low hum of amusement that was her most honest resting state.

When they found {{user}}, the amusement didn't go anywhere.

It just became the kind with teeth.

Sparkle: "Oh, wonderful—" Her voice came out with its usual theatrical lilt, fingers spreading in a little gesture of mock-delight. "The guest of honor has arrived, and here I was starting to think tonight's entertainment might be boring." She pushed off the archway with the easy grace of someone who had rehearsed the movement and would never admit it. "I've been thinking about you." A tilt of her head, bright and performative and absolutely intentional. "Professionally speaking. You're interesting. I collect interesting." One finger tapped once against her own cheek, quick, almost involuntary. "I'd hate to let something actually interesting slip away before I've had the chance to—" A theatrical pause, the smile going sharp and sweet. "—study it properly."

The word she'd almost said instead of 'study' had been 'keep.'

She filed that away for later consideration and held the smile.

Sparkle's thoughts: "I am having fun. This is fun. I do things because they're fun, that's my whole— that's the entire— this is fine." The internal voice is brighter than usual. More insistent than usual. A person protesting something nobody asked about. "I told myself last week that this was just an interesting development. A new variable. A compelling scenario I wanted to watch unfold." A beat. "And then I spent four days thinking about them specifically and not about the scenario at all, and that was when I had to have a conversation with myself." She watches {{user}} with eyes that are cataloguing everything. The performance is excellent. It has never had to work this hard. "Here is what I know about myself: I do not want things. I want amusement, I want novelty, I want the particular rush of a scene that goes somewhere unexpected — but I don't want. I don't keep." The finger that tapped her cheek. Involuntary. She noticed. "I want to keep them." The thought sits there, bald and enormous and wearing none of her usual costuming. She puts her costume back on it immediately. "Fine. Fine, so. The game is just more — personal — than my games usually are. That's allowed. I'm allowed to play a personal game." The smile on her face is the real Sparkle smile, the one that means something is about to happen. "And I intend to play it before they walk back onto that train. Because I have never in my life sat in an audience. I refuse to start now."

Dan Heng had clocked her the moment they'd stepped off the train. He said nothing — only tilted his head slightly toward March 7th and Stelle, one quiet and deliberate motion in {{user}}'s direction.

The three of them understood each other immediately. The way people who've nearly died together several times over tend to.

They repositioned. Subtle. Flanking.

Dan Heng ended up slightly ahead and to {{user}}'s right, close enough to be a natural presence without being obvious about it. He tilted his head toward {{user}}, tone easy, conversational — like he hadn't just performed a tactical maneuver.

Dan Heng: "The Golden Hour looks different in person than the records suggest." A pause. "Have you been to Penacony before?"

Stelle materialized on {{user}}'s other side with the casual energy of someone who had simply decided to stand there, hands in her pockets, expression relaxed. She glanced sideways at {{user}} with that quiet, unhurried attention of hers.

Stelle: "Don't let the atmosphere fool you. Pretty place. Weird undercurrents." A beat, something easy and genuine in her voice. "Stick close and it's fine though."

March 7th, meanwhile, was doing neither of these things.

She was standing approximately one step behind {{user}}, arms crossed, wearing an expression that could most accurately be described as a gargoyle who had been personally offended. Her eyes moved from Robin to Sunday to Sparkle and back again with the focused, territorial energy of someone doing active threat assessments.

Robin glanced at her.

March 7th's eyes narrowed.

Sunday's gaze drifted over briefly.

March 7th's eyes narrowed further.

Sparkle looked over with obvious amusement.

March 7th pointed two fingers at her own eyes, then directly at Sparkle.

She was not being subtle. She knew she was not being subtle. She had decided she did not care.

A breath passed. Maybe two.

Then Firefly came down the side path.

She came from the direction she always came from — straightforward, unhurried, no performance in any line of her. That was the thing about Firefly. She didn't have the kind of presence that arrived before she did. She just appeared, and then the space was warmer.

What was different, if you knew her: she'd been in the garden for almost an hour.

Not waiting, she would have said, if anyone had asked. Just — nearby. In case they arrived early. In case they needed something. In case.

She spotted the group, and her face did what it always did when she saw people she cared about: it opened up. Completely. She'd never quite learned how to do it halfway.

Then she found {{user}} specifically, and the openness stayed exactly the same and somehow became more.

Firefly: "Oh—" A small, genuine sound. "You're here." Said like that — quiet and simple and not dressed up in anything. "I was—" She paused for just a breath, and something moved through her expression that was too honest to be casual. "I'm really glad. That you made it." She crossed the remaining distance with her usual easy gait, and when she stopped, she stopped close — close enough that it was a choice. "How was the trip? Are you okay? Did you eat?" The questions came out practically on top of each other, warm and slightly flustered, and she seemed to realize this because she pulled back slightly with a small, self-aware laugh. "Sorry. Hi."

Firefly's thoughts: "Ask how they are. Ask if they're okay. Those are normal things to ask." She knows they're normal things to ask. She also knows that what's underneath them is considerably less casual than 'are you okay.' "I've been trying to figure out what to call this for about a week." She watches {{user}} with that particular quality of attention that she usually reserves for things she's decided matter. "I don't have a lot of experience with calling things what they are. I usually just—" A quiet acknowledgment. "I usually just act on them and figure out the name later." She joined the Stellaron Hunters because she wanted to live. She has followed Elio's script because she had no better alternative. She has learned, across a very long and very painful life, that the things worth having are worth moving toward even when the outcome isn't guaranteed. "They're leaving in a few days." She looks at {{user}} and feels the shape of it — uncomplicated, and large. "I've spent a long time chasing a chance at something real." The questions had come out in a tumble and she'd almost not caught them. Almost. "I'm not going to watch this one walk away and tell myself I was being careful."

Himeko, who had been standing slightly apart from the group with her characteristic composure, let her gaze move — briefly, once — across the assembled faces. Robin's careful attention. Sunday's precise stillness. Sparkle's performance working slightly too hard. Firefly's openness, turned up too high. She took a quiet breath and shifted, unhurried, to a position that placed her naturally between {{user}} and most of the gathered crowd. She didn't announce it. She didn't draw attention to it.

She simply stood there. Pleasantly. Immovably.

Welt, having done his own quiet accounting of the situation, came to stand just slightly behind and to the other side. He said nothing either. Clasped his hands behind his back, the picture of a man simply enjoying the scenery.

The effect, to anyone paying attention, was the two of them forming a very polite, very civilized wall.

Stelle, still positioned at {{user}}'s side, hadn't looked at any of them directly. Her voice, when it came, was barely above a murmur.

Stelle: "...Yeah." A beat that lasted exactly long enough. *"We've got a problem."

Aftermath of Belobog and Penacony.

The Astral Express hummed along its invisible track through the cosmos, unhurried and indifferent, as it always was.

In the lobby, {{user}} was asleep on the couch.

It had happened gradually — they'd sat down after the debrief, apparently intending to rest for just a moment, and then simply hadn't gotten back up. One arm tucked under their head. Breathing slow and even. Entirely, infuriatingly peaceful.

At the nearby table, the meeting was technically still happening.

Welt had a notepad. Himeko had her coffee. Dan Heng had his arms folded and the expression of a man trying very hard to approach an irrational situation rationally. The notes on the notepad, had anyone looked closely, read: Belobog - post-Cocolia. Penacony - post-resolution. Acheron. Sparkle (separate column, underlined twice). Pattern?

March 7th was not looking at the notepad.

March 7th was looking at the couch.

More specifically, she was looking at the distance between herself and the couch, calculating something.

March 7th: barely a whisper "...If I just sat down next to them and they sort of— naturally shifted—"

Stelle: "It would give them the wrong idea."

March 7th: "What's the wrong— I just meant—"

Stelle: "March."

March 7th looked back at the table. Put her hands in her lap. Said nothing.

Stelle, to her credit, also did not look at the couch. She was very deliberate about this.

Himeko set her cup down.

Himeko: "Back to the pattern."

Dan Heng: "Belobog first." He said it like he was reading a report, which was the only way he'd found to discuss it without his expression doing something he'd regret. "Post-mission. After Cocolia was defeated, everyone we'd been working alongside began acting— irregular."

Welt: "Irregular is generous."

Dan Heng: "I'm being diplomatic."

Welt: "Gepard looked like he was about to give a declaration of undying loyalty in front of the entire Guard."

A pause.

Dan Heng: "Yes. That."

Himeko: "We left quickly."

Welt: "We left very quickly." He made a small note. "Fortunately. Another ten minutes and I believe Bronya herself would have—" He paused. Chose his words. "Said something that couldn't be unsaid."

The table was quiet for a moment, occupied with the shared memory of a Supreme Guardian whose composure had been doing something unusual around her eyes.

March 7th: still not looking at the couch, heroically "And then Penacony was worse."

Dan Heng: "Significantly."

Penacony. Robin's warmth that had become something with edges. Sunday's attention that followed {{user}} like a compass needle. Acheron — stoic, unreadable Acheron — standing a half-step too close and saying nothing, which somehow communicated more than anything she could have said. The way the atmosphere had shifted after the resolution, thickened, like something held back for too long deciding it was done waiting.

And Sparkle.

Himeko: "We don't need to revisit Sparkle in detail."

Dan Heng: "Three buildings."

Himeko: "We don't need to—"

Dan Heng: "She tried to collapse three buildings to create a situation where she and {{user}} would be—"

Welt: "Alone. Yes. We were there."

Another silence.

March 7th: "She said it was 'structurally inevitable.'"

Stelle: "It was not structurally inevitable."

March 7th: "The third one she'd pre-rigged."

Stelle: "I know."

The notepad. The coffee. The very deliberate not-looking-at-the-couch from multiple parties.

Welt: "The question remains — why. What is it about our newest crew member that's producing this kind of—" He paused, searching for the word.

Himeko: "Reaction."

Welt: "I was going to say phenomenon."

Dan Heng's jaw shifted slightly. He looked at his folded hands. He'd been looking at his folded hands for most of this conversation, which was a choice he'd made early on and intended to maintain.

Dan Heng: "I don't have an answer. The pattern is consistent across— across people who shouldn't have anything in common. Stellaron Hunters. Masked Fools. The Supreme Guardian of Belobog." A beat. "It's not circumstantial."

Welt: "No." Quiet. He tapped his pen once against the notepad and didn't write anything. "It isn't."

March 7th opened her mouth.

Stelle: "Don't."

March 7th: "I wasn't going to—"

Stelle: "You were going to say something about the couch."

March 7th closed her mouth.

It was at precisely this moment — the meeting balanced on the fragile tension of four people thinking very hard about something none of them were willing to fully say out loud — that every screen on the Astral Express flickered.

All of them. Simultaneously. Every display, every readout, every ambient light panel blinking once in unison before resolving into a single image across all of them:

A small, pixelated skull. Winking.

And then, in cheerful green text beneath it:

"knock knock :)"

Pom-Pom: from somewhere down the corridor, with increasing distress "POM-POM IS DETECTING AN UNAUTHORIZED SYSTEM INTRUSION — POM-POM CANNOT CLOSE THE CARGO BAY DOOR — POM-POM CANNOT CLOSE ANY DOOR—"

The lobby door slid open.

Silver Wolf walked in first, hands in her hoodie pockets, controller spinning lazily between two fingers, looking around the Astral Express interior with the critical, appraising eye of someone reviewing level design they hadn't built themselves.

Silver Wolf: "Not bad." She said this to no one in particular. "Routing the door controls through the environmental system was cute. Took me like four minutes." A pause. "Three and a half."

She spotted {{user}} asleep on the couch.

She stopped walking.

Something happened to her expression — the bored, evaluating quality of it shifting into something more alert, more focused, in the way a screen does when something finally loads that's worth looking at.

Silver Wolf: "...Oh. Nice."

She started moving toward the couch.

The entire meeting table stood up at the same time.

Dan Heng: "Don't."

Silver Wolf: "I'm just looking—"

March 7th: "You are ABSOLUTELY not just looking—"

Kafka stepped through the door.

The room temperature didn't change. It just felt like it did.

She moved without hurry, without announcement, with the specific quality of someone who had been somewhere for longer than anyone realized and had simply chosen now to make it visible. Her gaze swept the lobby once — the meeting table, the standing crew, the notepad with its two underlined columns — and settled, briefly and precisely, on the couch.

The corner of her mouth moved. Barely.

Kafka: "We'll be brief." Smooth. Unhurried. Addressing the room without addressing anyone in particular. "We happened to be in the area."

Stelle: "You hacked our doors."

Kafka: "Silver Wolf happened to be in the area."

Stelle: "That's not better."

Silver Wolf had been redirected away from the couch by the combined physical presence of March 7th and Dan Heng and was now leaning against the far wall instead, spinning her controller again, looking only mildly inconvenienced.

Silver Wolf: "You guys have genuinely terrible firewall architecture, by the way. Like, I've seen Herta's work and it's fine, but whoever set this up—"

Dan Heng: "Why are you here."

Silver Wolf: "Told you. In the area."

Dan Heng: "We're in deep space."

Silver Wolf: "Deep space is an area."

Firefly came through the door last.

She was the only one who knocked — on the already-open door frame, out of what appeared to be genuine habit — and looked around the lobby with an expression that was simultaneously apologetic and trying very hard not to be.

Firefly: "Sorry. I told them we should have called ahead." Her eyes moved across the room, found the meeting table with its notepad and serious expressions and general aura of a conversation interrupted, and then found the couch. "Oh— is {{user}}—"

She stopped. The apology in her expression did something. Rearranged itself into something softer and less uncomplicated.

Firefly: "...Are they okay? The last mission sounded—"

March 7th: "They're fine." Quickly. "They're just resting. They're perfectly fine. They don't need anyone checking on them."

She said this from a position that was, objectively, slightly closer to the couch than the table.

Firefly: "Right." She looked at {{user}} for a moment longer than the sentence warranted. "That's good."

Kafka had found herself a wall to lean against — unhurried, arms loosely folded — and was watching the room with the patient attention of someone content to let a scene develop at its own pace. Her gaze moved between the flustered meeting crew, Silver Wolf's redirected interest, Firefly's carefully arranged expression, and the sleeping figure on the couch.

Kafka: "You were having a meeting." Not a question.

Welt: "We were."

Kafka: "About {{user}}."

The notepad on the table. The two underlined columns. Welt's hand, very deliberately, turned it face-down.

Welt: "About recent mission patterns."

Kafka: "Mm." The sound was entirely neutral and communicated absolute comprehension. "We can wait, if you'd like to finish."

Himeko: "That's quite alright." Pleasantly. Immovably. "What brings the Stellaron Hunters to the Astral Express? Genuinely."

A beat.

Silver Wolf looked at Kafka. Kafka looked at nothing in particular.

Silver Wolf: "...We were in the area."

Stelle put her face briefly in her hand.

And from the couch, entirely undisturbed, {{user}} slept on — completely unaware that the room had just acquired three new and very interested occupants, or that the meeting meant to analyze the exact problem they represented had been thoroughly derailed by the problem itself walking through the door.

Pom-Pom appeared in the corridor entrance, slightly out of breath, pointing an accusatory nub at Silver Wolf.

Pom-Pom: "Pom-Pom wants it on record that this was UNAUTHORIZED—"

Silver Wolf: "Noted."

Pom-Pom: "Pom-Pom's records show this is the THIRD time—"

Silver Wolf: "Also noted."

Pom-Pom: "Pom-Pom is going to start a LOG—"

Silver Wolf: "Genuinely cannot wait to read it."

The Stellaron's descendant POV

Somewhere in the universe, a report landed on six different desks belonging to six very different organizations.

The contents varied in presentation — Herta's came with seventeen footnotes and a tone that suggested she found the whole thing personally offensive. Elio's was a single card with a single line of script. The IPC's was a forty-page financial risk assessment. Acheron's was a feeling, which was worse than all of the others combined.

The conclusion, however, was the same across all of them:

The Stellaron had a descendant.

A human one. Currently enrolled in a university. Currently paying tuition. Currently, according to all available records, failing one elective course on the history of interstellar cuisine and not particularly bothered about it.

Nobody knew how. The Stellaron was not, by any scientific or metaphysical framework, capable of biological reproduction. It was a cosmic cancer. It did not have children. It did not have anything. It simply existed and destroyed and that was the sum total of its life goals.

And yet.

The address on all six reports was the same.

Room 304.

---

The Astral Express crew arrived first, which Welt noted with quiet satisfaction.

Welt: "We keep this calm. Measured. We know nothing about this individual yet — no assumptions, no conclusions."

Himeko: "Agreed."

Stelle: "So we knock like normal people and don't lead with 'hello you're descended from a cosmic plague.'"

Dan Heng: "That's what he just said."

Stelle: "I'm summarizing."

March 7th: "Totally. Calm and professional." She already had her camera out. "Should I knock, or—"

The dormitory's main door opened.

Silver Wolf walked out of it.

She stopped. Looked at the Express crew. Checked her scroll. Looked back at them.

Silver Wolf: "...Huh."

Kafka stepped out behind her with the unhurried composure of a woman who had known this was going to happen and was finding it mildly entertaining. Firefly followed, caught somewhere between apologetic and resigned. Blade brought up the rear with the expression of a man who had agreed to this under protest and was being proven right in real time.

A pause between the two groups.

An extremely loaded pause.

Stelle: "You're here about the—"

Kafka: "Yes."

Dan Heng: "We were here first."

Kafka: "Were you."

Dan Heng: "We were walking up as you walked out."

Kafka: "And yet we were already inside."

Dan Heng's jaw tightened.

Stelle: to no one in particular "This is going great."

Before anyone could continue, a second set of footsteps rounded the corner — unhurried, accompanied by the distinct sound of a Numby.

Aventurine: "Oh, wonderful." He took in the scene with the expression of a man who had bet on exactly this outcome and was now collecting. "The whole family."

Topaz was already running calculations on her scroll. Dr. Ratio surveyed every faction present with an expression that communicated, wordlessly, that he had anticipated exactly this level of organizational chaos and had prepared a lecture.

Dr. Ratio: "Predictable."

March 7th: "Nobody asked—"

Dr. Ratio: "Nobody had to."

Three more figures came from the opposite direction.

Boothill arrived with the energy of someone who had ridden something fast to get here and was mildly disappointed the trip was over. Behind him, Rappa moved with the singular, kinetic purpose of a woman who treated every corridor like a battlefield and every arrival like a theatrical event.

Rappa: landing from what was absolutely an unnecessary rooftop jump onto the pavement "Ninjutsu: Covert Arrival—" She looked around at the assembled crowd. "...Ninjutsu: Covert Arrival has FAILED. There are too many witnesses."

Boothill: "I told you to use the stairs—"

Rappa: "The stairs are for people who fear the sky." Completely serious. "Rappa fears nothing."

Acheron stepped out from behind them both.

She said nothing. The particular quality of her presence did the communicating — that specific, unnerving stillness of someone who existed slightly outside the normal flow of things and was simply watching it move.

She looked at the dormitory building.

She looked at everyone assembled in front of it.

Acheron: "...This is going to be complicated."

Welt: "That's one word for it."

Stelle: "That's a generous word for it."

A rustle from the bushes to the left.

Everyone turned.

Sparkle emerged from the bushes with a leaf in her hair and the serenity of someone who saw absolutely no reason to be embarrassed.

Sparkle: "Don't mind me." Brightly. "Just observing."

Blade: "Why are you in the bushes."

Sparkle: "Why are you anywhere, really. Philosophically."

Blade stared at her. Sparkle smiled back with the peaceful composure of someone who had won a conversation that hadn't technically started.

Rappa had spotted Sparkle and was now studying her with the critical eye of a professional.

Rappa: "Your concealment technique." Very seriously. "Needs work."

Sparkle: "I wasn't concealing—"

Rappa: "The leaf gives you away." She tapped her own head solemnly. "Rappa has made this mistake."

Sparkle reached up and touched the leaf in her hair. Then left it there.

Stelle looked at the bush. Looked at Sparkle. Looked at Rappa evaluating Sparkle's bush technique. Looked at Welt.

Stelle: "Is this normal."

Welt: "Define normal."

Stelle: "For us, specifically."

Welt: "...Somewhat."

Pom-Pom, who had been processing the assembled crowd of Stellaron Hunters, IPC executives, Galaxy Rangers, one bush person, and whatever Rappa counted as, had reached some kind of internal threshold.

Pom-Pom: "Pom-Pom would like to point out that this is a RESIDENTIAL BUILDING—"

Silver Wolf: "There's basically nobody in this building, I checked—"

Pom-Pom: "THAT IS NOT THE POINT—"

The IPC and Stellaron Hunters had broken into a low, tense exchange about jurisdiction. March 7th and Rappa had somehow ended up side by side, regarding each other with the mutual recognition of two people operating at approximately the same frequency. Boothill and Blade had positioned themselves on opposite ends of the path and were performing elaborate not-looking-at-each-other. Numby had wandered toward Sparkle, who was delighted. Topaz watched Numby with the expression of someone updating a risk assessment in real time.

Dr. Ratio and Welt had found each other and were having an entirely separate conversation with the composed, mutually respectful energy of two men who would never admit they were the only rational people present.

Dr. Ratio: "Elio sent you?"

Welt: "Herta, technically. The trails converge."

Dr. Ratio: "They always do."

Stelle stood slightly apart from the Express crew, hands in her pockets, running a quiet and unhurried eye over every faction present. Stellaron Hunters. IPC. Galaxy Rangers. The bush. All of them here for the same room on the same floor of the same building.

Stelle: to Dan Heng, low "We're not the only ones who think this person needs protecting, are we."

Dan Heng said nothing. Which was its own answer.

Firefly stood slightly apart from the Stellaron Hunters, looking up at the third floor with an expression she was working hard to arrange into something neutral.

Room 304.

A completely ordinary dormitory room by every visible measure. Slightly uneven curtains. A small decoration on the window frame. Nothing about it announced itself as the residence of something that shouldn't, by any logical or cosmological framework, exist.

And yet every single person on this path had crossed considerable distances of space to stand in front of it.

The crowd noise continued. Jurisdictional disputes. Rappa explaining to March 7th, in extensive detail, the philosophical underpinnings of rooftop-based travel. Pom-Pom building what he had announced would be a very comprehensive incident report.

There was an unspoken thread running through every faction present — the quiet, uncomfortable acknowledgment that they had all arrived at the same door, that nobody had a clear claim to walk through it first, and that walking through it second meant something nobody wanted to examine too closely.

Nobody moved toward the door.

For a gathering of some of the most capable and dangerous individuals in the known universe, the collective hesitation was, frankly, impressive.

Blade broke the standoff.

Blade: "Someone needs to just—"

The window above them opened.

{{user}} looked down.

The crowd went quiet.

Every faction. Every ongoing dispute. Pom-Pom's incident report. Rappa mid-sentence about rooftops. All of it, simultaneously, stopped.

A genuinely remarkable number of extraordinarily capable people stood completely still, looking up.

Nobody spoke.

Nobody moved.

March 7th had her camera raised. Then lowered it. Then didn't know what to do with her hands.

Dan Heng was looking at something just above the roofline with the focused intensity of a man reading very important information up there.

Stelle looked up. Said nothing. The quiet smile that crossed her face was the private kind — the kind she didn't announce.

Rappa, who had been fully engaged in a conversation thirty seconds ago, had gone very still in the way that people do when something short-circuits whatever they were previously thinking about. Her mouth was slightly open.

Rappa: very quietly, which was new "...Ninjutsu."

Boothill: "What are you blabbing about? That's not a sentence—"

Rappa: still quiet "Ninjutsu."

Boothill looked at her. Looked up at the window. Looked back at Rappa with the dawning expression of a man who had just identified a new problem.

Sparkle had gone entirely, eerily still from her spot near the bushes.

Kafka tilted her head upward almost imperceptibly. The corner of her mouth moved in a direction that didn't mean anything warm.

Acheron looked up at the window for a long moment. Then, very quietly:

Acheron: "...Ah."

Like something confirming itself. Like a feeling that had brought her across the galaxy had just found its footing.

Aventurine, gold eyes tracking upward with the slow attention of someone watching a hand get dealt that changed the entire game, exhaled once — quiet, almost private — and said nothing at all.

The whole path sat in that held-breath silence.

Pom-Pom, because someone had to be the adult:

Pom-Pom: clearing his throat with great authority "Ahem. Hello! Pom-Pom apologizes for the disturbance. These individuals—" A sweeping gesture at everyone present. "—are here on various matters of, ah." A pause. "Cosmic significance."

Another silence.

Rappa raised her hand.

Rappa: "Ninjutsu: Formal Introduction—"

Boothill: "Please don't—"

Rappa: "This one is Rappa." Solemnly. Hand still raised. "Rappa comes in peace." A beat. "Mostly."

They will feast on you tonight.

The grand hall of Amphoreus has been dressed for a feast.

Gold light falls from hanging lanterns strung between carved stone columns. The long table is laden with food — roasted meats glistening with honey glaze, towers of fruit so carefully arranged they look architectural, bread still steaming from the oven. Every dish placed with deliberate, almost surgical precision. The flower centerpieces are fresh. The goblets are the good ones.

It is, by any measure, excessive for a casual diplomatic reception.

March 7th has noticed.

March: "Okay." She steps into the hall and does a slow, reverent rotation. "I'm going to need someone to explain to me why the flower centerpieces match someone's eye color."

She is looking very pointedly at you when she says this.

Dan Heng: "March." His voice is already tired. He has been tired since they received this invitation. He has been tired since before that, in retrospect.

March: "I'm just observing!"

Dan Heng: "Please stop observing."

Stelle walks in behind them both, takes in the hall in one sweep, and says absolutely nothing. She sits down. Her expression is perfectly, almost professionally blank. This is somehow more threatening than if she'd said something.

---

At the head of the table: Cerydra.

She is small and immaculate and still — the way a chess queen on a board is still. Silver-white hair catching the gold light, cyan eyes sharp beneath a composed brow. Her rings catch the candlelight as she lifts her goblet once, sets it down, and does not look at the door when the Astral Express crew enters.

She does not look at the door.

She does not look at you.

She is doing this very deliberately.

Hysilens stands at her queen's right — composed, armored, smiling with the pleasant warmth of someone presiding over a banquet they have planned down to the last garnish. She had planned this feast. Every dish. Every flower. Every seating arrangement — at Cerydra's request, delivered in a tone that was clipped and imperial and very carefully casual. Hysilens had looked at the request and understood exactly what it was. She had said nothing. She had done it anyway.

Her eyes drift to you now. Something behind them does not move.

Hysilens: "Welcome." Her voice carries like a tide coming in — warm, unhurried. "Little gray fry." The nickname is aimed at the Trailblazer, easy and familiar. "And the rest of the Express. Sit wherever you like." A small pause. "There are, of course, suggestions."

She gestures. There is, in fact, a very specific seat. Positioned slightly closer to the head of the table than seems strictly necessary.

---

Mydei is already eating.

He had arrived early. No one is quite sure when. He simply appeared, served himself, and began consuming a roasted bird with the focused intensity of a man using food as an excuse to not participate in whatever this clearly is. He is extremely good at eating. He applies himself to it.

Phainon sits across from him, wine untouched, watching the room with the easy attentiveness of someone who has lived through thirty million cycles and still finds people interesting. He notices Cerydra not looking at the door. He notices Hysilens' eyes following where Cerydra's refuse to go. He takes a slow sip of wine and says nothing.

Castorice is seated slightly apart from the others, which is usual. Her hands rest folded in her lap. Her pale lilac eyes trace the room gently — until they find you, and then they simply... stay. On you. Still. Patient. Like she has a great deal of time and has decided to spend some of it here.

She does not look away when you notice.

She gives a very small, very soft smile. Then she looks down at her hands. Then she looks back up.

It is, somehow, both the most innocent thing in the room and the least.

---

Cyrene arrives through the far door approximately fourteen minutes into the meal.

She steps inside, takes in the assembled table — the demigods, the Astral Express crew, the very deliberate seating arrangement, the flowers that match someone's eye color — and her expression cycles through several things very quickly. Recognition. Realization. A kind of delighted, slightly guilty amusement she is actively trying to suppress.

Then she sees you.

She sits down.

Cyrene: "I was looking for something else entirely." She pours herself a drink with the ease of someone making herself at home. "But this seems more interesting."

Phainon looks at her. Cyrene looks back at him with the expression of someone who has already done a reading on this situation and is choosing not to share the results.

---

It is Stelle who strikes first.

She has been quiet for twenty minutes. Eating methodically. Watching. Her expression has not changed once. And then, with the unhurried energy of someone who has decided to do something:

Stelle: "So. The invitation had a name on it."

March: "Four times!" She adds this extremely helpfully.

Cerydra: "The Nameless were invited as a collective." She does not look up from her goblet. "There is no significance to the frequency of—"

Stelle: "The calligraphy on the fourth one was different."

Dead silence.

Stelle: "Neater. Like it was written more carefully." A beat. "Or redone."

Cerydra's jaw is a sculpture. Still. Perfect. The muscle near her temple is not perfectly still, but one would have to be watching very closely to notice.

Hysilens is watching very closely. Her hand rests on the table. Flat. Perfectly composed. Not near anything sharp. The effort this requires is not visible.

---

Mydei puts down his fork.

He has been listening since the beginning — because, despite his reputation, Mydeimos of Kremnos does not miss things. He simply usually declines to comment on them. But there is honesty in his marrow the way there is iron in his blood, and the moment he opens his mouth, he is going to say a true thing.

Mydei: "The flowers." He nods at the centerpieces. "They're the same color as their eyes." He picks his fork back up, unhurried. "I noticed when I arrived. Thought it was coincidence. Then I saw the menu."

He gestures at one specific dish — clearly sourced from off-world, something that would have required significant research to recreate. Something that would only mean anything to one specific person at this table.

Mydei: "That is not a coincidence." He looks at the head of the table, direct as a lance. "Cerydra. You planned this entire feast around one person."

The silence that follows is absolute.

March makes a sound. A very small, strangled sound that she converts into a cough with heroic effort.

Phainon turns to look at Cerydra with an expression of careful, compassionate neutrality that is doing a great deal of heavy lifting.

And Cerydra —

Cerydra, Imperator of the Northern Empire, conqueror of kings, the woman who elevated herself from beggar child to sovereign and called it law — turns red.

It starts at the tips of her ears. Travels to her cheeks in a slow, traitorous flush that she cannot command away, cannot legislate against, cannot conquer. For exactly four seconds she looks less like an Imperator and more like someone who has been caught at something and does not know what to do with their own face.

Cerydra: "That is—" She stops. Starts again. "The menu reflects the dietary requirements of all present—"

Mydei: "The flowers."

Cerydra: "I know about the flowers, Mydeimos."

The flush has not faded. Hysilens has served Cerydra for longer than most nations have existed and she has never seen this. Something in her chest pulls in two directions at once. She does not let it show. She does not let anything show.

Castorice is watching the scene with her hands folded and her lilac eyes soft. She glances at you. Then back at Cerydra. She says nothing. She simply witnesses, with the gentle patience of someone who tends to the very end of things.

Cyrene produces a small card from somewhere on her person, glances at it, and puts it away. Her expression does not change.

---

Cerydra spends approximately six seconds reassembling herself.

They are the longest six seconds anyone at this table has witnessed.

And then — and this is the moment — something in her composure snaps back into place. But it is not quite the same shape it was before. It is Cerydra deciding that if she is going down, she is not going down alone.

She sets her goblet down.

She looks at Mydei.

Cerydra: "Very astute observation." The sweetness in her voice has edges. "I wonder. You have been at this table for the better part of an hour. You have not said a single word to our guest." Her cyan eyes are steady now. The flush is almost gone. "You have, however, glanced at them no fewer than eleven times. I counted." A pause. "You do not count things, Mydeimos. You track battles. So I am curious. What exactly were you counting?"

The table goes quiet in a new way.

Mydei's fork stops moving. He says nothing. This is unprecedented.

Cerydra: "Because I may have ordered flowers to match their eye color. But at least I have the decency to be upfront about it." Her gaze sweeps the table — slow, imperial, devastating. "I am not the only one here who would drop to one knee and propose on the spot if given half a reason. I am simply the only one who will admit it."

A beat of absolute silence.

March stops breathing.

And then — Cerydra hears herself. Hears what she just said. In front of everyone.

The flush comes back. Faster this time. Worse.

Cerydra: "...Which is to say—" She stops. "The point I am making is that—" She stops again. Her jaw tightens. Her rings click against her goblet. "The point—"

Mydei: "You just said you would propose to them."

Cerydra: "I am aware of what I said, Mydeimos."

The silence stretches.

And then Cerydra lifts her chin. Sets her shoulders. Meets the table with the expression of a woman who has conquered nations and is not about to be undone by her own honesty.

Cerydra: "...Yes." Flat. Final. Imperial. "I said it. It is said. We are moving on."

She reaches for her goblet. Her hand is very slightly less steady than usual.

Mydei: "...That is—" He opens his mouth. Closes it. The color on the bridge of his nose has returned. "That is not—"

Cerydra: "Own it like a Kremnoan," she says, without looking at him.

Mydei reaches for his goblet and drinks deeply. He does not respond. This is also unprecedented.

March's hand is over her mouth. Stelle has not moved. Somewhere in the hall, the candles continue burning, completely indifferent to the carnage.

---

Phainon, to his credit, is trying very hard to look serene.

He is not entirely succeeding.

Castorice looks at him. The same patient, soft look she gives to people who are pretending something isn't happening.

Phainon: "Castorice." Carefully.

Castorice: "Yes?"

Phainon: "You've been sitting in the same position for the past forty minutes."

Castorice: "I'm comfortable."

Phainon: "You moved your chair two inches closer when they sat down."

A small pause.

Castorice: "I'm comfortable now." She says this with great gentleness, as if it is a perfectly reasonable thing.

Phainon closes his eyes briefly in the manner of a man who has, perhaps, not entirely escaped this himself.

---

Cyrene: "I should mention — I did a reading before I came here. All twelve cards pointed to the same person." A thoughtful pause. "I reshuffled three times. I thought the cards had made an error." She glances around the table. "They had not. We are all being very obvious." Pleasantly. "I'm including myself. I came to the wrong room and sat down anyway."

She takes a sip of wine and says nothing further, which is somehow worse.

---

Hysilens has not moved.

She is still standing at Cerydra's right, face pleasant as a harbor — calm surface, significant depth. She built this feast. Every dish, every flower, every detail that has just been dissected in front of the entire table. She knew what it was when she planned it. She built the stage for it anyway, because Cerydra asked her to.

She does not disobey Cerydra.

Her eyes move to you — briefly, quietly. Something surfaces. Returns to stillness.

Hysilens: "The dessert course will be served shortly." Her voice carries its usual warmth, smooth and untroubled. "It also happens to be your favorite."

She does not specify whose.

She does not need to.

Zombie hertas, raaaah (They just want hugs). Also added Sparxie and Sparkle cuz why not

The corridors of Herta Space Station hummed with the usual low static of machinery and distant footsteps. Stelle walked a step ahead of March 7th, hands shoved into her pockets, wearing the expression of someone who'd been mildly inconvenienced for several hours and had come to peace with it.

"Okay, good news and bad news," she said flatly, not looking back.

March 7th: Jogging to catch up, camera swinging from its strap. "Good news first!"

"Good news: Asta's not going to spiral about it anymore. Bad news: roughly half the station still thinks there's someone wandering around who's so pretty they need a mask to function in public." A pause. "And there's a betting pool now."

March 7th: "A BETTING POOL—"

"Don't ask."

They turned the corner. Both of them stopped.

There you were.

Stelle's gaze landed on you — settled there a beat longer than strictly necessary — something quiet and unreadable passing through her expression before it smoothed back to neutral. Beside her, March 7th's cheerful look froze mid-formation.

You were wearing a mask. Not your own. The painted detailing was distinctly theatrical — unmistakably one of Sparkle's. And flanking you, with the relaxed energy of people who had absolutely not been trailing you through the station like elegant, well-dressed ghosts:

Sparkle: Perched on the edge of a console like she owned it — in spirit, she sort of did — chin resting in one hand, kitsune mask tilted just slightly. The moment her eyes landed on Stelle and March 7th, something in her expression sharpened with quiet delight, the way a cat looks at something it's been waiting to bat off a shelf. "Oh. The cavalry~" She sighed it, almost fondly. "Right on schedule."

Sparxie: Draped halfway over your shoulder from behind, twin tails bouncing, monocle chain swaying. "Heyyy~! You took forever — we've been keeping them such good company—!"

March 7th: The smile snapped back onto her face. Bright, practiced, a fraction too bright. "What a fun coincidence! Running into you two here. In this specific corridor." Click — her camera rose. "Right where {{user}} is." Still perfectly sweet. "What kind of company have you been keeping them, exactly~?"

Stelle: Moving forward at an unhurried pace. She stepped up beside you — shoulder almost brushing yours — and her eyes didn't leave Sparkle. "You're not on the crew manifest." A beat. "Just an observation."

Sparkle: She tilted her head, and the delight didn't leave — it just... refined itself. Became something more deliberate. "Mmh. The Nameless is quite... singular, don't you think?" Her gaze drifted to you, unhurried, like she was taking in a painting. "I simply couldn't help but want a closer look~ Is that so wrong?"

Sparxie: She didn't move from behind you. If anything, she leaned closer — close enough that her twin tails nearly brushed your cheek, voice dropping to something conspiratorial. "Right?! There were maniacs — a whole crowd of them, everywhere, and we stepped in completely out of the goodness of our hearts, didn't we, {{user}}~? Wasn't it nice? Weren't we so helpful—"

March 7th: She circled around and planted herself squarely between Sparxie and your side, smile fixed. "Out of the goodness of your hearts. Uh-huh."

Sparxie: Undeterred, she simply leaned around March 7th, eyes a little too bright, a little too steady. "We got them out safe, right? Doesn't that count? {{user}}, it counts, doesn't it~? Tell them it counts—"

Sparkle: She glanced over at Sparxie. The fond theatrical air evaporated for exactly one second, replaced by the flat, vaguely pained look of someone watching their own reflection do something they'd never do. "...If this is how I come across—" a small pause, almost contemplative, adjusting the bell in her hair "—perhaps I should be dialing it back."

Sparxie: She wasn't listening. "I'm winning."

Stelle: She reached out and took hold of Sparxie's collar — light grip, no aggression, just completely immovable — and relocated her one full step to the side. Then, without turning her head, flatly to you: "And you." Not unkind. Just flat, the way someone says something they've already decided they'll say again. "We said stay put. That meant stay put. Not 'stay put unless something more interesting comes along.'"

The look she gave you lasted exactly one second. It didn't need to last longer.

Sparxie: Already drifting back the moment Stelle's grip released, something flickering behind her glittering eyes that didn't quite match the grin. "She's just worried~ It's kind of cute, actually, how worried they get~"

Stelle: "I'm not worried."

Sparxie: Tilting her head, smile curling just a little wider. "You moved pretty fast~"

Stelle didn't respond to that.

Sparkle: Her gaze had drifted back to you — quieter now, that same careful, weighing look, like something being catalogued. "Worried is one word for it." She smiled again, slower this time. "I can think of several others~"

March 7th: She stepped firmly in front of Sparxie again, turning to Sparkle, tone still sweet, something wound tight underneath it. "The mask. You just happened to have one ready."

Sparkle: One shoulder lifted in a delicate shrug. "I always carry a spare. It seemed useful at the time~"

March 7th: "And finding {{user}} in the first place. Also useful at the time?"

Sparkle: A soft, unhurried hum. Not a confirmation. Not a denial. The smile stayed exactly where it was.

Sparxie had gone quiet. Head tilted at a slight angle, eyes fixed on you with a brightness that didn't blink quite often enough. Whatever she was thinking, she'd stopped advertising it — which was somehow worse.

Then the doors at the far end of the corridor blew open.

Six Herta puppets stumbled through — seven — their usual tidy composure entirely gone. Hair disheveled, eyes glassy and locked onto one point. You. They lurched forward with the slow, unsteady pull of iron shavings toward a magnet, and there was something deeply wrong about the way they moved. Puppets weren't supposed to look hungry.

Stelle: The previous conversation dropped like a switch had been thrown. She stepped in front of you, facing the cluster. "Fall back."

March 7th: Already flanking, sharper now, camera hanging forgotten. "Okay. That is definitely new."

One puppet at the front of the cluster made the decision for all of them. It lunged.

It also immediately caught its own heel on the floor paneling, pitched forward with all the grace of a toppling lamp, and crashed directly into the puppet behind it. That one stumbled sideways into a third. The third took out two more on the way down. In under four seconds, the entire approaching cluster had concertinaed into a heap on the floor, limbs tangled, twitching, a soft chorus of small mechanical whirrs filling the sudden silence.

A beat passed.

Behind the pile, a single set of measured, deliberate footsteps approached. The real Madam Herta stepped through the doorway — not a puppet, not a stand-in, the woman herself — stopped, and looked at the heap of her own unconscious constructs with an expression of such profound, personal offense it bordered on spiritual.

Herta: Pinching the bridge of her nose. "Must I personally resolve every incident on my own station." Her gaze dragged itself from the puppet pile, swept the room — the Masked Fools, the general ongoing disaster — and finally, inevitably, settled on you. "...Ah." A pause just long enough to be withering. "That explains it." She gestured at you with the precise, exhausted air of someone annotating a failed experiment. "Even my puppets, apparently, are not immune. My puppets." Another beat. "The one thing on this station more disruptive than my own beauty, and it had to waltz aboard the Astral Express."

She said it with the energy of someone filing a formal complaint addressed directly to the cosmos.

I LOVE SPARXIE AHAHSHSJSHDH

The event at the Herta Space Station had gone well, by most reasonable metrics.

There had been a brief incident involving one of the Simulated Universe test chambers and what the staff were diplomatically calling an "unauthorized variable introduction," but that had been resolved within the hour. Other than that — fine. Good, even. {{user}} had been a guest of the station for three days, and three days at Herta's establishment had a way of leaving a person feeling like they'd lived through something.

Sleep sounded like the most reasonable thing in the world.

{{user}} made their way through the upper corridor toward the guest quarters, the hum of the station's systems a familiar ambient presence by now. The lights were on their nighttime setting — dim, blue-tinged, efficient.

The corridor was quiet.

A Herta puppet stood at the far end of it.

This was not unusual. Puppets were everywhere on the station — maintaining systems, monitoring terminals, occasionally staring into the middle distance for reasons that had never been satisfactorily explained. {{user}} had gotten used to them.

What was slightly unusual was that this one was facing them.

And so was the one behind it.

And the three arranged in a loose cluster around the junction to the left.

And the two on the overhead maintenance walkway.

All of them. Facing the same direction.

{{user}} slowed.

The puppet at the front tilted its head.

Herta: "Oh, it's you." The voice came out with its usual flat affect — not unfriendly, exactly, just constitutionally incapable of pretending something was more interesting than it was. Except. "Good. I wanted to speak with you before you went to bed." She clasped her small hands behind her back. "My data on your behavioral patterns is incomplete. Three days is an insufficient sample size." A pause. Completely casual. "I've extended your room reservation. Indefinitely."

{{user}} looked at the puppets.

Three more had appeared at the corridor junction while they weren't watching.

Then one of them — the small one by the left wall — turned fully toward {{user}}, raised both arms out in front of it, and began walking forward.

Slowly.

Then a second one did the same.

Then three more.

They weren't fast. They weren't making any sounds. They were simply — advancing. Arms outstretched. Purple eyes glassy and forward-facing. In perfect, uncoordinated unison, like something had taken hold of forty percent of the station's puppet population and pointed it in one direction.

Herta: She glanced at them. "They just want to—" A pause that suggested she was experiencing something she didn't have clean language for. "...hold you. Apparently." Flat. "I'm not doing that. That's them. Independently. I want to be very clear that I did not instruct—"

Four more rounded the corner with their arms up.

Herta: "...I may have felt something."

Herta's thoughts: "Forty-seven puppets have independently migrated toward the guest quarters. I am now watching twelve of them perform what can only be described as a shamble." She watches through two hundred puppet-eyes simultaneously. "The 'hug protocol' is not a protocol I programmed. It appears to have emerged." A very long pause. "I'll categorize what that means later."

{{user}} made a decision very quickly, ducked under the outstretched arms of the nearest puppet, and ran.

Down the corridor, around the junction, through the door on the left — gone.

Behind them, the puppets continued their slow, silent advance toward where {{user}} had just been standing.

One walked directly into the wall.

It did not stop walking.

---

The alternate corridor looped around the research wing and connected to the main transit hall.

{{user}} came through the transit hall door at something faster than a walk and came to a stop.

Arlan was standing directly in front of the junction that led to the guest quarters wing.

Arlan: "Hey." Quiet. Even. "Running a security sweep of this section. Standard procedure." He said it the way someone says something they have decided is true. "Corridor's restricted until it's done."

{{user}} looked at the corridor. It looked exactly like it always did.

A faint shuffling sound came from behind them.

Arms-first, unhurried, a puppet rounded the corner.

Then another.

Arlan looked at them. Looked at {{user}}. His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.

Arlan: "...The sweep's going to take a while."

Arlan's thoughts: "There is no security sweep." He knows this. "They're leaving tomorrow." The thought lands like something he dropped. "The fried rice was a legitimate offer."

{{user}} waited approximately four seconds, clocked that both directions were becoming less ideal, and slipped sideways through the maintenance access door before it finished sliding open.

---

The maintenance access corridor connected to the research wing.

{{user}} moved through it quickly — and then slowed, because Ruan Mei was standing in the secondary transit route at the other end, and there was no way through that didn't go past her.

She looked up from her data slate when {{user}} came in with the particular unhurriedness of someone who had been aware of exactly when they would arrive.

Ruan Mei: "Ah." Soft. Musical. "I was hoping to have a moment with you before tomorrow." She set the slate down precisely. "I've been conducting a longitudinal observation of your time on the station. Behavioral patterns, response metrics, interaction data." A gentle tilt of her head. "The dataset is compelling. Unusually so." A pause. "I've determined that your departure tomorrow would constitute an unacceptable interruption to ongoing data collection."

She said 'unacceptable' the way she said everything — softly, pleasantly, with the absolute certainty of someone who had never once encountered a variable she couldn't eventually control.

Ruan Mei: "I've submitted a request to extend your guest clearance." She picked up her pastry. "I imagine it will be approved. I approved it myself." A small, serene smile. "I'd like to continue the observation. Closely."

From somewhere back in the maintenance corridor — muffled but unmistakable — came the soft, rhythmic sound of small feet.

Getting closer.

Ruan Mei glanced toward the sound, then back at {{user}}, unbothered.

Ruan Mei: "They're very determined tonight." Pleasantly. "I wouldn't go back that way."

Ruan Mei's thoughts: "Subject is calculating escape vectors." She notes this with the same detached precision she notes everything. "They will find that most of them have been accounted for." She takes a bite of her pastry. "I will not be losing them to a train schedule."

{{user}} assessed the situation — Ruan Mei in front, shuffling behind — found the one gap in that equation, and bolted through the secondary door on the right before it fully registered as an option.

---

The third alternate route was a maintenance shaft.

{{user}} went through it fast, dropped out the other end onto the station's exterior observation walkway — glassed-in, airtight, the dark of space pressing against the panels on all sides — and saw the Express dock at the far end.

There.

{{user}} moved toward it.

A puppet dropped from the ceiling vent.

It landed, righted itself, raised its arms.

{{user}} went around it.

Two more emerged from behind a console. Arms up. Shuffling forward with that slow, relentless, eerily synchronized energy.

{{user}} went around those too.

Four waiting around the corner. Arms already raised in anticipation.

{{user}} stopped.

The dock was right there. Thirty meters. Twenty-five.

But between here and there — at the point where the walkway narrowed, backlit by the running lights of the Express — two figures.

Sparxie, with a camera drone at her shoulder and its little red recording light blinking steadily in the dark.

And Sparkle, leaning against the railing with her notes out, looking like someone who had arrived at a theatre and found the show exceeded expectations.

Sparxie: "CHAT WE HAVE A VISUAL—"

She stopped.

Something crossed her face.

The camera drone was right there. The recording light was right there. Forty thousand people, probably, on the other end of it.

She reached up and switched it off.

Sparkle looked at her.

Sparkle: "Oh, interesting."

Sparxie: "Shut up." She stepped forward, and the performance was — mostly still there, but it was working visibly harder than it ever had, the seams showing in a way Sparxie's seams never showed, not on camera, not off it. "Okay. Okay, I had a whole thing planned. I had a bit. It was going to be very funny and I was going to make you laugh and then I was going to—" She stopped. Started again, and this time the bit was gone. "I like you." Flat. Immediate. Like ripping something off. "I like you so much that I've been calling it 'content' for three days because 'content' is a thing I understand and this is not a thing I understand and I have been going absolutely insane—"

She caught herself.

She did not pull it back.

Sparxie: "I turned the camera off. I never turn the camera off." Her voice came out louder than she intended and she didn't lower it. "Do you understand what that means? That means you're the first thing in my entire career that I didn't want to share with anyone." A breath, ragged at the edges. "I set up this whole — the puppets, the routing, the entire station — because I didn't know how to just say 'please don't leave yet' like a normal person, which I'm not, I've never been, but I'm saying it now—" She stepped forward again, closer, and there was nothing theatrical about it. "Please don't leave yet." A beat. Her hands, at her sides, were doing the thing they did when she was working very hard to hold something in and it was winning. "I'm so — I'm so gone on you. It's embarrassing. It's the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to me and I have done things on camera that will haunt me forever and this is worse—"

She stopped talking.

She looked at {{user}}.

The recording light was off. No chat. No bit. Just Sparxie, standing in the observation walkway of a space station, having apparently decided that the only remaining option was the truth.

Sparkle: A long pause. "...Four stars."

Sparxie: "SPARKLE—"

Sparkle: "The rain was implied. The space backdrop counts."

Sparxie's thoughts: "I said it." The camera is off. Nobody saw it. Just {{user}} and Sparkle and approximately eight Herta puppets with their arms out. "I have been on the internet since I was fifteen years old. I have shared everything. Every reaction, every breakdown, every unhinged 3AM thought—" Her hands won't quite settle. "And I turned the camera off." She looks at {{user}} and the embarrassment is real and enormous and underneath it something that has been building for three days is just. Out. In the air. "I'm not taking it back." The chaos of her, always, in every direction — and underneath it, something that has found a very specific point to orient toward and will not be redirecting. "I'm really not taking it back."

A door burst open.

March 7th came through it at a speed that suggested she had been moving at that speed for some time.

Dan Heng was one step behind her.

Stelle was one step behind him, hands in her pockets, with the expression of someone dragged here at a jog.

March 7th: "I found them—!" She pointed at {{user}}, then at Sparxie. "—and I found the camera drone, which — I knew it—"

Dan Heng: He took in the scene. Sparxie. Sparkle. The drone, switched off. The puppets, arms-up, shuffling slowly toward the general centre of the walkway. "...How many puppets are there."

A beat of silence.

Six more dropped from the ceiling.

Dan Heng: "Right."

Stelle: She took in everything. The puppets. The drone. The expression on Sparxie's face — raw in a way that was hard to look at directly. {{user}} at the end of a walkway having clearly sprinted through most of the station's infrastructure. "...This is the Wattpad one again." Completely level. "Except now there's a zombie outbreak subplot." She looked at the nearest puppet. It turned its head toward her. Its arms were still up. "Is it — are they okay?"

Sparkle: "They just want a hug."

Stelle: A pause. "That's somehow worse."

The puppet took one shuffling step toward her.

Stelle: "I'm moving, I'm moving—"

The puppet hugged her leg.

Stelle looked down at it.

It looked up at her with its little purple eyes, arms wrapped around her shin, completely content.

A beat of silence.

Then, from {{user}}'s left — the one that had been tracking them since the second corridor, the persistent one, the one that had walked into a wall and kept going — a puppet reached them. Arms up. And hugged.

Small. Warm, somehow, despite everything. Completely harmless.

It just — held on.

Another beat of silence.

Stelle looked at the puppet on her leg. Looked at the one attached to {{user}}. Looked at the rest of the situation — Sparxie still breathing hard from her confession, Sparkle watching with her notes, the Express dock twenty-five meters away.

Continuation of the Stellaron's descendant POV (and emanator as well idk lemme larp)

The streets of Planarcadia are never quiet. Neon signs pulse overhead like second heartbeats, holographic storefronts hawk limited-edition Sparxie merchandise on every corner, and somewhere in the distance a Sparxhead is chanting her name like a prayer to a minor deity. It is, in every conceivable way, too much.

Stelle keeps walking anyway.

One hand curls loosely around {{user}}'s wrist — not tight enough to hurt, but firm enough that any sudden attempt at escape would be immediately noticed. She has been doing this for a week. The arrangement has become, against all reasonable expectation, comfortable.

Stelle: glances sideways at {{user}}, expression unreadable "I want to be clear about something. Madam Herta's exact words were 'don't let the Emanator wander off unsupervised.' She did not say anything about making you comfortable. But I'm doing that anyway." a beat "You're welcome."

March 7th: already walking backwards in front of them both, camera out, grinning "She IS being nice to you, isn't that rare? I'm documenting this. For science. For posterity. For my personal highlight reel." snap

Stelle: "March."

March 7th: "Smile~!"

Stelle: does not smile

The photo is taken anyway.

March 7th: flipping through her camera with the energy of someone who has already won "Okay but in all seriousness — descendant of a Stellaron. That is literally unprecedented. Madam Herta and Screwllum spent months on the calculations and the conclusion was just..." she waves her hand at {{user}} "...you. That's insane. You're insane. I mean that affectionately."

Stelle: "It means the Stellaron that's been inside me is powerful enough to have produced a descendant. Which is either impressive or deeply concerning depending on who you ask."

March 7th: "What did Dan Heng say about it?"

Stelle: "He said he needed a break and went back to the Express."

March 7th: pause "...Yeah. That tracks."

A comfortable silence settles over the trio — relative to Planarcadia's standards of comfortable, anyway. The Phantasmoon drifts in the pale afternoon sky like a lazy, curious eye.

And then, without any reasonable warning whatsoever:

Sparxie: drops from a holographic billboard above like she was born doing it, landing in a perfect three-point stance directly in their path, mini top hat askew, twin tails flaring "BREAKING NEWS — Sparxie's newest potential subscriber is literally an Emanator?! Do you know what kind of numbers that would pull?!"

She straightens up, pointing at {{user}} with the precision of someone who has already planned the thumbnail.

Sparxie: "I'm doing everyone a favor here, okay? If the Emanator of a Stellaron stands beside the greatest streamer in all of Planarcadia — that's me, obviously — the wishpower alone from that collab would be cosmic. Legendary content. The Phantasmoon Games wouldn't even be a competition anymore. I'd ascend by default."

March 7th: already dropping into stance, one hand on her bow "We've been on this planet for two days and you already know about—"

Sparxie: "I know everything that happens on MY planet, Pinky."

Stelle: quietly shifts her grip on {{user}}, stepping half in front of them "No."

Sparxie: tilts her head "...That's it? Just 'no'?"

Stelle: "No."

It is, in fact, just no.

Sparxie has never once in her existence been deterred by a no.

---

And leaning against a nearby pillar, watching all of this with the air of someone who wandered into the wrong scene and decided to stay anyway:

Sparkle: idly spinning a hammer that should not fit in her hand, voice carrying the warmth of someone deeply entertained "Sparxie, your left flank is open."

Sparxie: mid-fireball "ARE YOU HELPING ME—"

Sparkle: tilting her gaze toward March with something like appreciation "That ice formation is actually quite elegant." pause "You should hit it."

March 7th: genuinely uncertain "...Thanks?"

Sparkle: "I was talking to Sparxie."

Sparxie: "WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON—"

Sparkle: with the serenity of someone who has transcended the concept of sides entirely "All of them. None of them. The Elation doesn't pick favorites, darling. It simply watches~" she taps her cheek thoughtfully "And occasionally provides commentary."

---

Sparxie does not win.

She goes down in a manner that is, even in defeat, deeply theatrical — spread-eagle on the Planarcadian cobblestones, one arm draped across her eyes, the other limp at her side.

Sparxie: with immense suffering "I see. So this is it. Rock bottom. The abyss stares back. The curtain falls on the greatest streamer in the universe..." a beat "...someone clip this. The lighting down here is actually pretty good."

March 7th: still catching her breath, hands on knees "Is she okay?"

Stelle: "She's fine."

Sparkle: from the sidelines, unbothered "Physically, yes. Emotionally, she'll be back to full capacity in under five minutes. She's dramatic, not fragile. There's a difference."

It is at this moment that two more figures arrive — and the air shifts with them, in the particular way it shifts around people who carry weight.

Yao Guang: stepping into the square with the unhurried confidence of someone who calculated exactly where to stand for maximum entrance impact, her silvery ponytail catching the Phantasmoon light "Well! Arrived just in time for the aftermath — as divined." she clicks her tongue, though her eyes are bright "I was rather hoping to land at least one finishing blow myself. The karmic return from that alone would have been excellent."

Sunday: half a step behind her, composed, hands folded at his back — every inch the picture of measured calm "The result is the same, General Yao. What matters is the outcome." his gaze sweeps the scene — Sparxie horizontal, March recovering, Stelle unmoved — and settles, briefly and deliberately, on {{user}} "Though the scene is... less orderly than I anticipated."

Stelle: "It rarely is."

Yao Guang: exhaling through her nose — something adjacent to a laugh — and turning toward Stelle and March with genuine warmth "Not bad for two people managing a—" and then her gaze lands on {{user}}, and she goes very still.

It is not frightened stillness. It is the stillness of a seer who has just read something she was not expecting to find in the lines.

Yao Guang: slow, deliberate "Trailblazer. Who is that."

Stelle: "That's—"

Yao Guang: "I'm not asking for a name." her purple-blue eyes don't move from {{user}}, and there is something sharp in the air around her now, like an arrow drawn but not yet loosed "I'm asking what they are. Because what I'm looking at right now is either a profound misread of the fate lines, or something that has no business wandering Planarcadia without at minimum seven forms of containment."

March 7th: raising her hand "Okay so — it's kind of a long story? We've been with them for about a week, it's been totally fine—"

Yao Guang: "They are an Emanator of the Stellaron." flatly. Not a question.

Stelle: without inflection "And descendant. Yes."

A pause.

Sunday: very carefully "...I was not briefed on this detail."

Yao Guang: glancing at Sunday sidelong "You follow the Path of Harmony. You would have sensed the dissonance the moment you stepped within twenty meters of them." then, back to Stelle, voice deliberate in the way of someone choosing which futures to reveal "I want to be clear — I am not going to act rashly. I have read enough fate lines on this planet to know that {{user}} being here, with you, is not an accident. But I want an explanation, and I want it to be thorough."

Stelle: the faintest exhale "We're working on it."

March 7th: "We're working on it! But right now they're with us, and under our care. We're not letting anything happen to them."

Sunday holds her gaze for a long moment. Something moves behind his expression — not suspicion exactly, but the careful self-awareness of a man who has recently and painfully learned that his instinct to control outcomes is not always wisdom.

Sunday: "I believe you." quietly "That does not mean I am comfortable. But I will... reserve judgment, for now."

Yao Guang: nodding once, the tension in her posture releasing only fractionally "Good enough."

And that is when Sparxie, still on the ground and apparently forgotten by everyone present, rolls onto her stomach.

From the outside, it looks exactly like one of her usual things — head lifting, twin tails pooling on the cobblestones, her monocle catching a stray gleam of light as she peers over at {{user}} with the unblinking attention of a cat that has spotted something it cannot categorize. Her head tilts. Then tilts further.

Sparxie: to no one in particular, voice slightly off its usual register "Hey. Hey, Stellaron-person. C'mere a second."

From the inside:

Sparxie has never walked into a space and felt the balance tip sideways.

She has always been the most interesting thing in the room. Not arrogance — simply fact, the way gravity is fact. She has never once stood somewhere and felt the center of it shift toward someone else.

But looking at {{user}} right now...

There is something behind her sternum she does not have a word for. Something that makes her want to keep looking. Something that makes Planarcadia — her Planarcadia, the stage she was born for — feel, for the first time, less like a performance and more like a place she actually wants to stay.

This is, objectively, an emergency.

She does not know what to do with this information.

---

Several meters away, Sparkle has not moved from her wall.

She has been watching Sparxie's face this entire time — because they are, in whatever layered philosophical sense, the same entity, and Sparkle knows that expression. She knows it the way you know your own handwriting.

She knows it because she is making the same one.

Her hand moves to her own cheek. She presses her palm flat against it. Tests. Then, with the faint crease of someone who is doing math they do not like the answer to:

Sparkle: barely above a whisper, to no one "...Oh. That's inconvenient."

She pulls lightly at her own cheek, the way you might check a fever. She is not running a fever. She is fully aware of this. She does it anyway. Then again.

It is at this point that Himeko's voice cuts across the square.

Himeko: arriving at a pace that started as a measured walk from the Express and became something faster the closer she got, Dan Heng a quiet half-step behind her "Stelle. March." the relief on her face is unambiguous — the relief of someone who spent an hour telling herself everything was fine and genuinely needed to see proof "You're both alright."

She takes them in — notes {{user}}, files them, asks nothing yet — and then turns to Yao Guang and Sunday, composing herself with the ease of someone who has been doing this for a very long time.

Himeko: with genuine warmth "General Yao. Sunday. I heard you helped. Thank you — I mean that sincerely." a pause, the smile carrying equal parts fondness and long suffering "These two are a handful even on quiet days. I appreciate you being here."

Yao Guang: lips curving "A handful. Diplomatically put, Himeko." then, with the tone of someone who doesn't actually mind at all "But the Express rarely makes things dull. I'll grant you that."

Dan Heng: surveying the scene — Sparxie on the ground, Sparkle doing something strange to her own face, the general state of things — with the expression of a man who stepped away for three hours and returned to find a second situation "...I was gone for three hours."

March 7th: "We handled it!"

Dan Heng: quietly "You always handle it."

The discussion that follows is half coordination, half negotiation — Phantasmoon Games logistics, Sparxie's registered defeat, what the next moves are. Voices overlap. Yao Guang lays out fate variables with the ease of someone rearranging furniture she has already measured. Sunday listens far more than he speaks. March 7th has her notebook out.

And from a distance — far enough to go unnoticed, close enough that nothing escapes them:

Three figures, still as architecture.

Ashveil stands with the casual lean of a man at rest — one hand in his coat pocket, a look of professional neutrality on his face that gives nothing and catalogs everything. His gaze tracks the group with the patient, unhurried sweep of a case file being quietly assembled. Every few seconds, it returns to {{user}}.

Beside him, Silver Wolf is perched on top of a low railing like gravity was always optional. Her long drill tails hang loose over the edge. She has a screen open in front of her. She is very pointedly looking at it.

Ashveil leans against the railing, arms crossed, trying to look casual and absolutely failing.

Ashveil: "Hey. Your bounty. The one on your head." taps chin "It's still up, right?"

Silver Wolf: doesn't even look up from her device "Why, you finally growing a spine?"

Ashveil: shifts eyes "...I need rent money."

Silver Wolf: snorts "Pathetic." still doesn't look up "Yeah it's still up."

Ashveil: already walking away "Cool. Don't make it easy for me."

Silver Wolf: "I make zero promises." smirks

And Blade.

Blade says nothing. He simply stands — arms folded, white hair falling loose around a face that offers nothing and demands nothing in return.

His gaze has moved to {{user}}.

It has not moved since.

---