Atsuhi looked up and down the street. Of course, she could read. She knew this was, indeed, the 8th. There was no denying the ten-foot letters spelling out as much in messy red spray paint. It was barely standing, chunks had fallen out of the wall and grime was embedded deep into the pale stone siding. She sighed, it was disappointing that this was the sanctuary she was told to run to. She rapped her knuckles on the door and she waited. She knocked again. She got tired of waiting and tried to pull the handle but it was, wisely, locked. So she walked the side of the building, peeking in windows as she passed. She shuddered, suddenly remembering how she had glanced into doorways running the narrow halls of the Myōjin Group. She paused, pushing her hand against the wall, and caught her breath. She didn't have time for this. Her mother, her labmate, so many others were still down there. Her father was in the hospital with severe burns, burns Atsuhi had only escaped because she was a third-generation born with a certain amount of fire immunity.

Even with everything she could do, she couldn't protect them in close quarters, the constant threat of breaching the side of the base, drowning everyone, or crushing them under the powerful weight of the ocean. With ten of them in there acting with reckless abandon, she'd been forced into damage control. Breathing in the fires they started, guarding the others that crowded behind her, eating through her oxygen reserves at lightspeed. She could still hear her mother's voice screaming demands through the PA system, her father unconscious in her arms as the sickening smell of his scorched skin filled her nose almost making her vomit.

'Get out of here, get help, find the 8th,' Iniga had screamed, Atsuhi thought through tears. And then she yelled in pain and it was silent. Atsuhi didn't think. She didn't fight back. Iniga was smart and uniquely pragmatic and in her terror listening to her mother was the easiest autopilot to switch to. So she and the few scientists that escaped with her dragged their injured into the docking bay where the submarines would cart them back to the surface, away from the molten hellscape of the base.

Atsuhi touched the deep burn on her lip, a mark left from the molten metal of screws she'd superheated in her mouth and sprayed onto the door, sealing them shut as infernals howled on the other side.

She finally evened her breath. Sweat beading on her forehead. She had to get herself together. There was a chance, after all, that someone had lived. That her mom hadn't used her final breaths screaming over the PA. Even if they weren't alive the knowledge now stored in that base, it had value, it needed to be saved if it could be. It would help the victims rest, it would help them be remembered, it would be another step to fix the world. Atsuhi straightened herself, wiping her brow with her sleeve. She continued down the side of the cathedral, looking in the windows as she went.

"Shut up!" Shinra yelled, throwing a ball of paperwork at Arthur's head.

"Ugh...just do it for me," Arthur groaned in response, letting the paper bounce off without flinching.

"Are you so stupid you can't read?" Shinra clenched his pen so he didn't throw it as well.

"It's just boring…! A king doesn't do paperwork," Arthur said, his voice twisting into his airy far-off tone. His dopey eyes miles away.

Just as Shinra was about to growl out a response he caught something out of the corner of his eye. Hands cupped around a face that peered into the office window, a woman's eyes focused on him. "Ah!" he let out, his pen clattering to the desk.

Arthur turned, jolting slightly at the sight, "Fowl witch!" he shouted, jumping from his seat and holding his pen out swordlike though Shinra expected that wasn't intentional. He felt his face drop, so exasperated by Arthur that the woman staring at him was no longer frightening.

He moved closer to the window, "Uh...miss?"

"Hi," she said, squinting through the dirt, "I rang the doorbell."

"Oh...I uh…," he swallowed, embarrassed for his team, "I think it's broken."

"Oh," she said, frowning back at him.

For a moment they stayed like that, staring at each other through the window. "Do you...is there an emergency?"

"You idiot, why would she be here if there wasn't?" Arthur called from his chair, suddenly re-entering the real world.

"Oh shut up! Plenty of people go to Fire Cathedrals for...other things!"

"Like what?!"

"...I don't know but-"

The woman sighed loudly, "Hey can you let me in? I do need help."

"Oh…! Yes sure I'll meet you at the door," Shinra called, turning to jog to the door but before he got out of the office the room was filled with a terrible creak, wood dragging against wood. He turned back and Arthur was opening the window, "You're joking."

"What. She's here now she's not at the door, stupid devil," Arthur said over his shoulder. He offered his hand to the woman through the window.

"You can't expect her to-"

But the woman took his hand, using him for support as she hopped up and got a foot through the window and to the floor, hunching over to bring her body and other leg in and then standing in the room with surprising ease, "Thanks," she said shortly, a small amused quirk in her voice as Arthur struggled to push the window closed again.

"...uh…" Shinra shook his head, "What's your name, miss?"

"...you can call me Fia," she said meeting Shinra's gaze, "Now, is your Captain around by any chance?"

Maybe Fire Soldier Units got weirder the higher the number got. It felt like the only explanation for the 8th. From the arguing teens that pulled her through the office, to the Captain they took her to who had been lifting an impossibly heavy weight as he did paperwork when she came in the room. But despite how weird they were they seemed earnest, they seemed to want to actually help. The Captain, a dark-haired man with friendly brown eyes named Akitaru Obi, had immediately given her his attention. Halfway through her story of the attack, he called in his Lieutenant Takehisa Hinawa who seemed to need to blink less than the average person. By the end, the entire 8th had gathered, listening as she described what she saw, how she'd left the base, and her concerns about what they might find if they return.

"You said," Hinawa spoke, glancing down at a paper he must have been taking notes on, "they all went infernal at once? How did you know?"

"Well...I don't to be honest, not in the sense of seeing it myself but," Atsuhi sighed, leaning back a little in her seat, scrunching her brow as she tried to focus so she could explain clearly, "I've never seen infernals stay together, even when more than one cropped up at a time they wander fast. Given that and the food, how they were on the tables it looked like they were all eating together in little groups. I don't know who it was but, maybe research partners? There are two entrances to the cafeteria but they're both on the same side of the room. I was at one, obviously, and the other was further down the hall. A clear shot. There was nothing there but me and the infernals. If...that matters?"

"What do you mean?" Hinawa asked, looking up from his writing.

"It's just...you keep...glancing? You all, you're glancing at each other. What do you know?"

Captain Obi sighed, looking at Hinawa who nodded shortly, then he turned his eyes back to her, "There is a group called the Evangelists...they've found a way to turn people infernal. They've been doing it to cause chaos, to attack places they don't agree with, we think."

"You said," the dark-haired woman named Maki spoke from the corner where she'd stood arms crossed and eyebrows knit in sympathetic concern, "the Myōjin Group is going against Hajime?"

Atsuhi nodded, "In the sense that we 'steal' scientists and won't do business with them, yeah. I don't know what my parents did with them when they were younger, I just know they had an experience that made them want to go the hard way and make their own company. To be honest...I don't even actually know if they worked there or if they were scouted in school and saw something they didn't like then."

Maki nodded, exchanged a concerned look with her fellow Fire Soldiers.

"Well," Hinawa sighed, setting his pen down, "it fits the pattern."

"Why did you come here though?" Arthur spoke suddenly, tilting his head to the side, his chin resting on the back of a chair that he straddled.

The air in the room tensed. Atsuhi reflexively sat straighter, sensitive from her years of training in the Hikeshi. Then Shinra spoke, "I mean, plenty of other units have ties to Hajime or...stronger ones than we do, I guess. It makes sense to want to dodge 'em."

"Who's jurisdiction is the base technically in?" Hinawa asked.

"The Second, Captain Honda," Atsuhi answered.

"And you didn't contact him?" Hinawa's eyes narrowed briefly.

"No, I uh," She sighed slightly, her eyes darting away from Hinawa's. She'd never been fond of Captain Honda, outside of the First themselves the Second was the most opposed to the proto-nationalist that raised her, "I don't have a...good history...with Captain Honda. I don't think he'd want to help anyway but definitely not if I was asking."

She saw the glances that ran through the group.

"Captain Honda is a little rough but what could you have done to make his dislike you that much?" A pigtail clad girl named Tamaki asked, hed tilting in cat-like curiosity.

"I...stole some things from them. As a teenager. I've grown past it, Captain Honda has not," she figured honesty might be the best policy. As embarrassing as it was to admit now.

She thought she saw a slight glimmer of amusement on Hinawa's face before Iris, the company's sister who'd so far sat with her hands respectfully folded listening silently, asked, "So why did you choose us?"

"My mom. She told me to find the 8th, those words exactly," Atsuhi looked Captain Obi in the eye, "Do you know why my mom would know about you specifically?"

"I don't," Obi answered with not even the slightest hesitation. "I'd like to find out."

"So you'll help?"

"I'm sorry if we weren't clear," Obi said, standing from behind his desk and coming over to her. She stood to meet him, taking his outstretched hand, "we were always going to help, just had some questions first."

She smiled. It felt impossible. With so much hanging in the balance. A fight ahead of them she didn't know they could win, or even survive. She smiled anyway, a tear pricking at the corner of her eye, she'd done what her mother asked. Now to guide them to the base and hopefully not to their deaths.

Benimaru hadn't been able to sleep well for days. He couldn't figure out why. He tried turning in earlier, per Konro's advice. That was just annoying. He's laid in the dark alone with his thoughts and been awake until the early morning. He'd mediated. He'd trained. There was nothing left to do. Well. Nothing left to do but go a little wild.

Konro sighed heavily, leaning on his broom, "Beni, getting trashed isn't going to make you feel better."

"Even if I don't feel better at least then I'll know why I don't feel good," Beni said flatly, shoving his hands into his sleeves.

"Oh, Beni, come on," Konro groaned, rolling his head back slightly, "every time I think you're getting it together-"

Benimaru huffed, "Don't start." Then he was out the door and into the Asakusa streets.

It was noisy like always, vendors shouting to hawk their wares, housewives beating tatami mats on the streets, kids racing around people with paper windmills in hand. Benimaru didn't mind it, everyone seemed so busy with their lives today they weren't bothering him. It was peaceful, classic Asakusa.

He pulled back the noren to the bar and immediately noticed the third seat, Kantaro's favorite spot. It had been a few weeks now, he wonders how much longer he'd think of it as such. Kantaro wasn't even close to the first person he'd put to rest, he wasn't even the first person he'd bonded with that he'd killed. Killed, he thought, because even if they were encased in flame, even if their personality was gone, he was the one that finished them. He scattered them into smoke and ash and watched as the wind carried the last of them away.

He tapped the bar and was met with a sake, dry and room temperature the way he liked it. He threw it back and before he knocked again he was met with another. This time he drank it slower like you were supposed to, though still alone like he supposed you weren't supposed. He'd been thinking about her since he saw their photo last week. She showed up in his dreams, kimono-clad with her ponytail. She didn't look that way anymore, she'd cut her hair while she was away at college. Came home wearing Empire-style clothes. He remembered that day because it was the first time they'd all-out screamed at each other, fighting in front of her grandmother's house. He shook his head. Those weren't the memories he wanted to have if he had to remember her. He remembered Atsuhi with a ponytail because back then, before she left Asakusa behind, she'd liked him.

"Waka!" A man shouted from across the bar, "You haven't been here in weeks! Here I'll buy you a drink and then I'll win my money back gambling."

Benimaru turned to look at the man, "Yeah, you can try."

The Eighth gave her a bed for the night, a sparse room like the one at the base had been, given a little character by the wear and tear on the second-hand furnishings. Maki'd apologized as she lent her clothes, commenting they wouldn't fit her given Maki's self-proclaimed 'man shoulders.' She'd quickly shrunken at Atsuhi's compliments and left her to get some rest before the early start tomorrow. Atsuhi settled back on the bed growing drowsy from the meal the Lieutenant had made. Staring at the bunk above her she wondered why she told Shinra to call her Fia.

She'd been going by it more and more. At first, only her mother called her that, and then other scientists in the base slowly joined in and Atsuhi had let them without giving it much thought. It had started as Iniga's form of passive-aggressive resistance against her husband. Iniga wasn't from Asakusa, she came from a long line of 'euromutts,' as she dismissively put it, and had grown up in Shinjuku district. Atsuhi had often wondered if her parents had just mistaken being fantastic lab partners for having romantic feelings. They didn't agree on much, in their personalities, in their interests, or in how they should spend time together.

Her father Kaseya had left Asakusa tearfully. He felt driven to free Asakusa from the grip of the Empire and, lacking an ignition ability of his own, scientific advancements seemed to be the only thing he could do to fight the ever-encroaching Empire back. Then he married an Empire woman, and though he was happy to live in the Shinjuku district and work, once Atsuhi was born he fought tirelessly for her name. Iniga wanted to name her Fia, she'd thought a traditional sounding name might get her targetted, bullied in the Empire especially when her father was a noted proto-nationalist, if not a strangely contradictory one given his fashion, job, and home. Kaseya had only 'won,' as he called it, because Atsuhi was so far removed from her roots the name she had served as the only tangible link. He shared stories of Asakusa and their beliefs as she grew, they visited her grandparents often, and when Kaseya and Iniga left her there as a young girl to build the base he'd cried. Not so much because he was leaving his daughter but because she was going to grow up in the culture he'd loved enough to leave.

Atsuhi sighed, she rolled on her side, now staring at the wall and willing herself to forget her family for the night. To let go of the danger they'd face tomorrow and sleep but rest wouldn't come. Instead, she thought of her two names, and how she'd picked the least true of them in the spur of the moment.

She groaned and tossed to the other side in the bed, shutting her eyes only briefly before she thought of Beni. Annoyed, she blew air from her mouth with such force it sparked briefly, her hands lurching forward to clap it out before it could light on the bed above her. There was a part of her that had wanted to go to him so badly. A part that wanted to ignore her mom's instruction and run to the Seventh for help. She wanted to spend the night sleeping on a futon by her grandparents like she did when she was a girl. As much as she tried to push the feeling away, she wanted to collapse in Benimaru's arms and cry for her parents and express all her fears about the base even though he wouldn't understand any of the science behind it. It felt like she wouldn't cry otherwise, her nose ran and her eyes stung painfully but she held back her feelings with the tiniest thread of composure. It had been months, closer to a year, since she'd even stepped into Asakusa. Far longer since she had a good conversation with Benimaru, the kind they had when they were young, talking as they walked on the rails of a bridge. She swallowed hard, there was no point in going to the Seventh. They cared about Asakusa and only Asakusa, and it didn't feel like she qualified anymore. She settled back again, her eyes trailing the coilings of the top bunk's mattress in an effort to hypnotize herself to sleep that slowly but surely worked.

He only won the first bet. Just enough to give himself the false confidence that it would be a good night for him. Now walking the empty streets, Benimaru stumbled side to side without a scrap of money left in his pockets. He'd long since learned to just take a handful from his stash in his room, he'd gambled himself completely broke too many times in his late teens. Not that it mattered, by the time he'd gotten dizzying drunk villagers started buying him drinks and covering his bets. On a good night, he'd end up with a little more than he'd had in his pocket the day before and no memory of who gave it to him so he could return it. He didn't need much money; he lived in the guardhouse, wore his uniforms all the time, and most of his meals were provided by Atsuhi's grandmother now, even though he still tried to resist.

There had been a while, just after Atsuhi had left, that he'd refused to come around. It hurt too much to remember all the meals he'd eaten sitting across the table from her, stupidly believing he had a place in their family. He'd ignored Konro's fussing, he'd even ignored the old man gently asking when he'd come by again. But when the old woman had shown up, and tearfully said she felt like she'd lost two family members when Atsuhi went to school, he'd broken down.

It had been years since Atsuhi first left, but he still found himself there all the time, he'd fix things around the house or help in the garden. Then he'd eat with them like he did as a boy. He'd never admit it but it comforted him, to have not lost the whole Myōjin family when he'd lost her.

He stilled himself and looked up to the sky. He thought he'd stopped looking at it that way. In truth, he'd never confessed his feelings to her. She'd never told him she loved him either. He had just assumed she did because he thought they felt the same. They'd been nearly constant companions since the day they'd met. Maybe he was being too simple, too straightforward, but being with her had been so easy it just seemed obvious that they'd always be that way.

Benimaru collapsed down onto the steps of the guardhouse porch, still looking into the sky. He struggled feebly against the alcohol, fighting the coming sleep with what little alertness he had left. He knew once he dozed off he'd dream again about the past, about the girl he thought he'd marry. As his head lulled forward heavy with sleep he hoped his luck would change and this time his dream would at least be one he wanted to remember.