"Ah, you're up, Director Hotsuin," a tall woman said, coming in through the kitchen door with bits of leaves and vine tendrils clinging to her uniform and a blue flower stuck behind one of her ears, courtesy of one of the flower girls – Dr. Otome's daughter, although she didn't look anything like her.
"Commander Izuna," the young man said, nodding in acknowledgement.
"I think we should talk." As Izuna watched calculation appear in his eyes, she remembered that the first time she'd seen him, she'd wondered if he and Naoya were related somehow. Since it looked like he was trying to find some way to dismiss her, she added, "Off the record."
Was he just glancing at Hiro, or Naoya as well? It was an improvement to see him value someone's opinion besides his own, even though as it turned out, it had been a waste of her forces to try to protect that tower. And the lives of thousands of surviving Japanese citizens: she'd just died with them.
Naoya ignored him, still slumped over the counter. She was sure he wasn't actually feeling that bad: when Naoya was unhappy he made it very clear. He was probably just avoiding conscription for flower-hunting or setting up chairs under Amane's direction. To be fair, he'd been up late last night and pulled an all-nighter the night before that. Not the kind of all-nighter Izuna had, going crazy fielding calls from everyone and their dog. Gardening.
She was sure he would have taken charge of the flower-gathering expeditions to make sure they didn't damage 'his' plants if he didn't abhor group activities or was in a mood to troll Amane Kuzuryu. Was he irritated with her because she'd missed his last attempt to annoy her?
Personally, she hoped this dysfunctional faux courtship continued as long as possible so she didn't have to worry about him ever having any kids.
"Can I come with you?" Hiro asked her, after looking at Yamato.
"Sure, if he doesn't mind?"
"Why would I?" Yamato wondered. Oh, he hadn't wanted to share information with her, but Hiro was actually intelligent and worthy of Yamato's company.
And he might be able to help.
"Alright, then." She nodded towards the door.
There were so many people around everywhere that it was hard to find a good place to talk. The jungle didn't have much visibility, had flower hunters in it and Yamato scowled at the idea of going in there. They weren't the only people walking towards the beach and when they got there they found Hiro's parents, among others, enjoying the sun or playing in the waves. A scowly, kind of short silver-haired boy (Keita, was it?) wearing dark blue swim trunks was standing on a dune with his arms folded. Someone had written Lifeguard with an arrow pointing to him in the sand in front of his feet and jammed a beach umbrella into the dune next to him so he got some shade.
"How did that happen?" Yamato wondered.
"He finally figured out that you get stronger by protecting other people," Hiro answered, voice quiet enough Keita couldn't hear it over the crowd. "Well, think about it."
Hn. "Training never does mimic a crisis very well, and intelligent people don't find themselves in many emergencies." While fools could be counted on to get themselves in trouble. The pressure of those days had pushed Yamato to his limits: he hadn't worked as hard to protect Japan because he hadn't cared as much about the fallen, ungrateful country, even though it was his family duty and obviously failure would reflect badly on him. "But why are you happy with this when he's clearly not doing his job?" Yamato looked at Airi and a man with very strange hair she was attempting to drown.
"Airi and her dad are fighting, they're not in danger." Both of them were skilled enough that Airi's father wasn't in any real danger of being drowned.
"And Keita does hate others stealing his fights, doesn't he." Yamato nodded. Airi was an ally, so it was obvious whose side Keita should be on, and if Airi succeeded in drowning the man, then one more person who had attempted to spy on JPs and violate several national secrets acts would be silenced.
"There," Izuna said, pointing at the boathouse by the side of the dock and walking briskly over to it. Seeing Hiro remove his shoes, Yamato paused to do the same, immediately noticing how that reduced the amount the sand dragged at his steps.
Izuna knocked at the door briskly before going in, just in case anyone was changing in there. "Alright," she said, sitting down on the side of the boat after pushing it a little to make sure it wouldn't slide around. "The good, the bad or the ugly?"
"You mean news?" Hiro asked, leaning back against the door, his white jacket and jeans somehow looking celestial instead of normal next to Yamato's black and bronze formal uniform.
Right. At her nod, Yamato asked, "What qualifies as 'ugly?'"
"Someone took photos of you two cuddled up together on the beach last night and somehow hacked the JPs server to anonymously e-mail them to most of us, except Naoya and Yuzu."
"Atsuro," Hiro knew right away. "The photos aren't really his kind of prank, but the hacking would be." He frowned. "Normally, though, he'd know that leaving Yuzu out would just make it more obvious. Oh, right." Bachelor party last night, Atsuro talking Saiduq into startling people like that… Yeah. Probably not his brightest evening.
As Hiro's frown deepened, Yamato started to smirk. "How is that ugly?"
Izuna and Hiro both started at him, although Izuna was clearly thinking, 'that explains a lot,' instead of being startled. During their meetings, she'd never once caught Yamato glancing at her or Makoto's breasts. As a career soldier, she'd been forced to accept the reality that as hard as the men around her tried to be professional (and they'd damn well better succeed when it came to their conduct), men, especially young men, lost IQ points the closer they came to breasts the way Izuna herself lost her innate discipline and composure and had to resist the urge to use baby talk the closer she came to a kitty-a cat. Imagine if half the people she knew were carrying around a pair of adorable little baby kittens, and she wasn't allowed to pet or stare at them, on pain of pain.
Yet Yamato seemed unaffected, meaning he was either gay, had evolved an immunity to that debuff, had so many IQ points it didn't make a noticeable difference, or the stick up his ass was so big it didn't leave any room for a libido.
What Yamato was actually thinking was that when the girls saw those pictures, they would stop trying to take Hiro for themselves. He was lucky that Hinako, Makoto and Otome clearly considered themselves too old, while Airi wasn't going to do anything more than crush, Io was still a little too shy and worried about breaking their new friendship to have the courage to make a move & Fumi, the only one among them that he considered intelligent enough to be an opponent, was clearly assessing Hiro's cousin instead for his potential as an acquisition, one that would advance her interests.
As for the others, Ronaldo was too old and tactless: it would be easy to goad him into saying something that would make Hiro tell him to leave Yamato alone. Age wouldn't stop Joe, who lacked any sort of sense, but he was about to be married and was the sort to do something foolish and make his wife keep them apart out of reasonable jealousy. Daichi and Hiro had spent enough years together that the relationship they had was clearly the sort natural to them, Keita wouldn't want to show weakness the way wanting to hang around someone that much would and Jungo simply wasn't bright enough to be competition.
He'd been correct in his earlier assessment that now that the crisis was over, the only one trying to take Hiro away from him would be Al Saiduq. Still, while the opportunity those photos presented was interesting, was Hiro at all interested in men? If he was, Yamato should learn how to use that angle. If not, it would still be useful for deterring half the competition.
Sex had always sounded disgusting, but so had okonomiyaki. Yamato already had profiles of a half-dozen young women with various supernatural powers on his desk, mostly ones from the three other great devil summoner clans of Japan. He was sure the higher-ups considered the amount of inbreeding there an advantage, since it made it more likely their children would inherit a good amount of the Hotsuin power. Looking at a family tree of a single one the four clans didn't make it obvious, but they were breeding for power, after all. Computer model the four together, and what a tangled web they wove. The last time an outsider's child was considered part of the core clan instead of forbidden training and watched carefully to see when they would turn to the dark was one of the Kuzunoha, a 'Nagi' who had the good fortune to be adopted by her uncle, the current Genrin, who still had to take her outside the country for training. And the Kuzunoha were one of the more liberal clans.
It was rather pleasant to think of certain people's reactions to the idea that he had no interest in being their prize stud, let alone marrying a clan heiress and allowing the Hotsuin powers, knowledge, prestige and legacy to become simply a part of their clan's.
Izuna cleared her throat, recognizing plotting when she saw it. If anything, it was reassuring to see that Yamato just saw this as an opportunity to screw with people instead of either wanting revenge or wanting that boy… Damn, they were both little boys, weren't they. Yamato was even the younger of the two. She needed to remember that Yamato wasn't Naoya, that the boy was a boy and that his training as an adept and leader meant there were plenty of other things he hadn't learned. There wasn't an ancient looking out through those eyes, just someone too smart for his own good.
Smart and angry.
"The bad news is, they want you back yesterday."
"What?" he asked her, eyes narrowing. "You don't mean for debriefing, do you." Or criminal charges.
"The Dragon Stream and the towers saved the world, or at least protected a handful of Japanese cities long enough for your officers," and new volunteers, "to save the world. That proves that your ancestors were right: they're vitally necessary to Japan and they should serve their other purpose as well."
"Their other purpose?" Hiro asked the two of them.
"Having the towers built, hiding such a large structure under the Diet Building: the seals that protected us against the Void and the Septentrions – they were at least weakened inside the seals – were designed to shield against 'the power of the stars.' That's why the Japanese government allowed the Hotsuin all the resources and access they needed to complete the projects, and why we still have a part of the government as our personal fiefdom. The end of the Cold War made the seals and the Hotsuin less important, otherwise JPs would have been able to mount a better defense against the Shomonkai." This wasn't amused speculation the way Yamato's prior thoughts had been: there was nothing funny about this. "The threat of the septentrions is over, or will be. But North Korea, China, other projects: they're not going to allow JPs to close down, are they." Not right after they'd proven their worth against a far worse test.
"You're talking about atomic bombs? But stars are powered by fusion, not fission!" Hiro looked startled, a very odd look on him, especially since Yamato hadn't been there to see Al Saiduq appear behind Hiro over and over. To be fair, Al Saiduq hadn't understood what Hiro and Daichi were objecting to because he hadn't understood that they were capable of not knowing that he was there, watching over them, shifted into the dimension of the records or not. He'd told the Shining One that since they allied, he was always with him, hadn't he? Then there was that time he'd tried to lead the way to something through what amounted to hyperspace, and when Daichi pointed out that they couldn't see him and couldn't follow him, just taken Daichi's arm and pulled him along entirely casually. Saiduq would still be doing the same thing if his home dimension existed, Hiro knew, because it was his home dimension, after all. In retrospect, it was odd that the other septentriones hadn't traveled that way, although thank goodness they hadn't because it would have been impossible for JPs to defend the towers if the septentriones could just walk right past them.
Maybe the others hadn't understood the concept of not being seen any more than Saiduq did? If Saiduq wasn't aware he was vanishing, then why did it happen?
Had some ancient Hotsuin ancestor told Alcor to disappear and stop staring at him (at least visibly) the way Hiro had told him to stop appearing like that? Had Alcor somehow gotten the impression that it was polite to not interact with the level of reality humans perceived when he wasn't planning to interact with people?
Well, right now there wasn't any point in thinking about it, since Alcor had stopped doing it (maybe the demon body didn't do it automatically) and Hiro had Yamato to worry about, too.
"Most powerful bombs only use fission to set off a fusion reaction: it's the fusion that creates most of the blast," Izuna told him. "Think of plutonium as like gunpowder: the gunpowder gets it moving, but it's the bullet that does the damage. And I'm told the seal wards off both of the nuclear forces?"
"The weak nuclear force as well as the strong, yes," Yamato said, frowning. "They're not going to let me go, are they?" he admitted to himself, only able to do so at all, let alone say it aloud, because Hiro was here.
Izuna didn't need to answer that. Not when he was such an important national security asset. Not when the seals had been recreated by a septentrione, even if one that was allied with humans (certain humans, or a certain human, at least) and needed to be checked over. "If all else fails, they can bring certain charges and I bet it would take them a long time to get to trial." Meanwhile, if Yamato wanted to be under house arrest instead of in a common cell, a pretty young man like him?
Given the killer instinct she could see in his eyes, the first convict to try anything would be looking at a long hospital stay at the least. If Yamato had managed to get his hands on a weapon already, and she had no doubt he would? Not to mention it would take him about five seconds to piss off whatever Yakuza were running the place. Typical teenager in this, at least: he had issues with authority, clearly, even when he was the authority.
She didn't think he was enough of a sociopath to have the time of his life fighting for his life until they had to put him in solitary like that. Not after fighting demons: they'd be too tame by comparison.
"So… what's the good news?" Hiro asked her, hoping for something that would cheer Yamato up. Again.
Orange eyes gave the young man a long, measuring look. "At this point, I'd say that you are."
"What?" Hiro asked her. Seriously? Why even pretend that there was good news if she wasn't going to tell Yamato… Well, alright, telling Yamato that he had allies and should ask for help probably would have been telling Yamato something he didn't know, when he didn't even realize that the people of JPs adored him. Stern but fair: he didn't ask anything unreasonable of anyone and then blame them when they couldn't do it. Promotions were earned, and any supervisor who misused their power would quite likely never work in Japan again. During the crisis, he'd worked himself just as hard and put himself in just as much danger as any of them. The impromptu funeral speeches when he died were all true, and Daichi, Io and many of the others hadn't worked for him for years.
To Yamato, they were just his minions, and he looked after them because to do otherwise would be stupid. If anything, he treated them as he would have liked to be treated, without demands that were unreasonable of idiots (or children) and without pretending he cared or trying to be over-controlling.
They knew where they stood with him, and if where they stood was under his heel? That was the reality of being a boss, and at least they could count on him not to grind them down into the dirt. His people were his people, and he looked after them. If he spent their lives, at least it would be on something worth the price.
Or at least something Yamato considered worth the price. Like a utopia, for the world to be remade into a paradise where everything was fair, where the most able would rise to the top, and only a fool would fail to look after their underlings.
Yamato had the position as head of JPs because of his birth. He had the power instead of just being a figurehead because he'd fought for it, taking down every individual that tried to control him until he ran into the system itself, Izuna knew. The same system Izuna ran up against every once in awhile, but she had an advantage. With Babel destroyed, the power that ran the summoning server had joined with the King of Bel.
That was what Naoya had demonstrated last night – what the difference between even the most advanced analog spellcasting and his programs was. His programs that wouldn't work without the authorization of the King of Bel.
Al Saiduq, Alcor, had created an alternative, but one that relied on the Akasha. The Akasha, the Throne of Heaven, he'd just destroyed, nearly dying with it. The Hotsuin had worked to create a blend of technology and demon summoning starting when computers still used vacuum tubes: the seals that bound Shiva and the others had been redesigned in the 1950s. Their programs still relied on a personal contract with the head of the family and drew on the dragon stream for power: once the ecosystems that fed the dragon stream had been wiped out, except for five cities? If it weren't for the Nicaea app, JPs summoning demons to defend the seals would have drained the seals of power until they became useless. Still, they hadn't been capable of generating computerized sacrificial rituals allowing 'skill cracks,' much less allowing humans to use demonic abilities like that. The Kuzunoha summoning system was based on paper seal tubes handed down through the family: no one but the family could use them and trying to take one apart to reverse engineer the design would destroy it. Even they couldn't cast and swap around spells as freely as app users could, but needed to borrow the power of a specific demon, after convincing that demon to loan it to them.
In order for the JSDF to be able to effectively fight demons, they needed Naoya's program. The relative slowness and inefficiency of the Hotsuin program meant they wouldn't stand a chance against an app user or a Kuzunoha, both of whom could summon near-instantly.
In order to use Naoya's program, they needed the goodwill of the King of Bel. Whose little brother had just befriended Yamato.
Even if Yamato didn't seem to have figured this out, the other one had. "Good luck," she told Hiro, shaking her head. Then she stood up, smirking. "I'll leave you two alone."
"What was she talking about?" Yamato asked once she'd shut the door behind her.
Hiro restrained the urge to sigh. "Alright. You've probably heard of this thing called friendship, right? And you probably think it's a lot of nonsense, because people harp on about it… Oh, right, not to you." Why would they. "And you wouldn't have watched those kind of shows. I bet they only let you watch educational programming." The more he thought about why Yamato was the way he was the worse it got. Like Al Saiduq appearing behind him. Once was, well, it happened, twice made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, twenty was will you stop doing that! "It's pretty clear that you didn't have any friends before. Ever. At least not real ones. But you've definitely got one now. Me." And Makoto would definitely be one once she got past the fact that Yamato was her boss, but Hiro wasn't going to try to explain subtleties like that now. "You didn't have a real family, either. But what friends and family are supposed to do, although of course people are people," he wasn't going to try to sell Yamato a fairy tale, "Is have your back. So let's go find my brothers, and maybe Saiduq, and figure out a way so you don't have to go back if you don't want to."
"You'd weaken Japan's defenses against nuclear arms for the sake of…" for my sake, "a 'friend?'" That was just as ridiculous as that word itself was.
"If that's what you want, then yes," Hiro told him. How to explain this? He wondered again. "Remember how you said that if we did your merit system, I might overthrow you, and you wouldn't mind that?"
Yamato nodded, waiting for Hiro to make his point.
"I think that was because you trusted that I would do the right thing. That you could rely on me to do the right thing. That I wouldn't do anything to you without a good reason, screw up the world you wanted or stab you in the back," win without it being fair or right, use Yamato's trust against him. "And I trusted you to tell us what to do even after you revealed that you wanted a world of merit and you knew that we might not necessarily." Yamato hadn't found a way to send them to their deaths. Or no, there was a lot more do it than that. "Look, do you want to go back, or do you want to find another way?"
"I don't want those fools to control me."
"If you don't want to go back, then I don't want you to either, because you're my friend." Freedom, Hiro realized, and once again thought about how Yamato, Ronaldo and Al Saiduq had all wanted the same thing, in the end, although Al Saiduq was a bit more realistic, really. He'd known that freedom for humanity wouldn't necessarily lead to a paradise, but at least that world would be the world they built, and they'd have every chance he'd managed to give them. "Why don't I just show you what friends are for, so you can see for yourself," he said, and held his hand out.
Despite all this talk about friendship, of all the inane things, Yamato still took it. Both because he wouldn't back down from a challenge and because this was Hiro, who had more than proved himself.
"Right," Hiro said, and nodded, blue eyes meeting Yamato's grey. "Now let's go give them hell."