"If there's one damned thing I've learned from this city, it's that once you expect something in return for a good deed, you might as well not do it at all. Politicians, businessmen, private military corporations… they're all the same. They pretend to care about this city so that they can get what they want. But what I hate more than anything else are the few self-centred cowards at the very top of Tokyo's food chain—who will use anything from anyone to justify the means to their ends." —Nishikino Maki

"You did what?"

Nozomi stared down the furious chestnut gaze of her advisor as he—admittedly—towered over her in her office. She raised a dark violet eyebrow in his direction. "I scheduled a conference with Izayoi and told him we knew what he was planning."

She had a feeling that Fujiwara was furious enough to reach over and shake her by the shoulders, but had the self-restraint not to want to land in front of a firing squad. "Why—What made you think that was a good idea?"

There were two answers to that question. One of them was the answer Nozomi was sorely tempted to give to her advisor, especially given how he had initially protested the idea of an investigation into Izayoi. The other, born from the tenuous, perhaps naïve, hope that she could have reached an understanding with him, was the truth—albeit a truth she did not want to voice aloud at the moment.

She closed her eyes for a brief heartbeat, shutting out her advisor's words before opening them again and fixing her emerald gaze on his livid features. If it weren't for the fact that she had less than an hour before she had be present for the conference with the private military corporations, Nozomi might've thoroughly enjoyed the process of getting on Fujiwara's nerves. "I merely believed that we could come to an understanding if I spoke to him in person," she finally replied.

"Instead, you gave him an opportunity to strike first," he retorted. "I thought you wanted to stop his attack on that hospital? Now you've given him the chance to do so before we can even gather a force to stop him."

Turning her head slightly in his direction, Nozomi gave him a small half-smile. "Did you really believe that I would call him without thinking of that first, Advisor? Security has already been deployed to the hospital in question, as well as the police department. Besides," she added, rather amused by how purple in the face Fujiwara was getting. "Izayoi will not strike the hospital first."

"What makes you so sure of that?"

Nozomi turned away from him as she faced the windows looking out into the district building's grounds. "Because he intended to hide his involvement in the attacks by hiring companies from another district, who were scheduled to arrive in Tokyo two days from now. I doubt they are still coming." When Fujiwara did not immediately reply, she went on. "Did you really think, Advisor, that the death of innocent victims is what Izayoi is after? No. What he wants is the public opinion of the Edenra victims—or myself, perhaps—to become so low that I will have no choice but to agree to the railgun module that President Tenjoin proposed in the last district meeting to wipe out the Ceresis in order to maintain my position. That will not happen if it comes to light that the one behind the terrorist incidents in Tokyo is him."

She heard him pace a few steps behind her. "And if he purchases an airplane ticket and tries to escape the district before then?"

The corners of her mouth quirked upwards in an anticipatory smile. "I think he'll find that it will be more difficult than he thinks it is for him to leave Tokyo."

Finally placated, Fujiwara glowered at her for a few more seconds before stuffing his hands into the pockets of his trousers. "Very well," he acquiesced finally, before his tone shifted into an accusatory one. "But you are to inform me before you schedule meetings like this again."

Settling back down at her desk, Nozomi watched as he turned on his heel and closed the door behind him with a snap. The one thing that she hadn't brought up in front of him was that she was sure Izayoi was not acting alone. Unfortunately, nothing in his files had turned up who he might've been working for—she suspected that Izayoi himself didn't even know. For him to plan two separate, hasty attempts to lower the public's opinion of the New Edenra Law meant that there was something in it for him. While she wouldn't have put that something past him to be money, she had a feeling that that wasn't it.

Oh well. We'll find out soon enough.

Nozomi picked up the phone on her desk, and picked out the number for her secretary from its display before placing the receiver to her ear. It rang only once before it was picked up, and she couldn't resist a smile when Koizumi's frantic tones came over the speakers. "T-Toujou-sama!" she squeaked. "H-How can I help you?"

"Please make sure that Kouchou informs everyone who attends the conference at the Defense Ministry that anyone who would like to decline the job is to leave immediately. Once they have heard what the job is, they will not be able to decline." She heard the furious scratch of pen on paper as Koizumi hastily scribbled down what she'd just said, and Nozomi paused, waiting for her to finish.

"O-Of course, Toujou-sama. Is there anything else?"

"No, that'll be all." Nozomi hung up; she decided that she needed to get some fresh air before she dealt with the issue at hand, even though the afternoon sun was sure to make the grounds outside hotter than ever.

Getting up from her desk and opening the door to her office, she sighed internally when her two ever-present bodyguards followed her; even if it was from a respectable distance, she would never get used to the fact that she would never truly be alone—at least, not in the true sense of the word.

Despite the heat, she found the garden relaxing, as usual. It gave her a little bit of space to think about issues that weren't currently pressing down on her shoulders like it might've weighed the world. I… didn't ask for this. But there wasn't ever another option for me. I wasn't born to question the world I lived in. I was born to keep the status quo.

Nozomi wasn't sure if she regretted her choice to inherit her father's position. On some days, she was half-convinced the day she'd agreed was the worst decision she had made in her short twenty-five years of life. On the others, she remembered the way her father had ruled Tokyo as its primary politician: the things he had done and the laws that he had enacted—and her own desire to create the change that she wanted to see.

Her thoughts were interrupted when she heard a familiar voice in the corner of the garden. She spotted a head of long, blonde hair—tied into its customary ponytail today—leaning against a column past the leafy branches of a low, wide-boughed maple, speaking to someone over the phone. In spite of the balmy summer weather, Eli was dressed in all black, from her tank top down to her boots.

While Nozomi didn't intend to eavesdrop, she was speaking in a voice that carried over the sound of insects and birds in the lack of a breeze.

"You're… definitely doing this, then?" she heard her ask. There was a pause as the person on the other end of the line said something.

"No, I'm fine," she answered after a few moments, although from the way her body tensed ever so slightly as she said the words, Nozomi didn't think so, at least judging from her body language. "I… still have to try. Even if the result isn't the answer I'm looking for. You said it yourself, Umi—I'll regret it more if I did nothing, knowing I had a chance to do something."

They had arrived at the topic of her younger sister. Nozomi knew enough about the situation to understand the gist of what Eli was talking about. She had meant to ask her about it, but somehow, the act sounded intrusive, even in her head. Because… in the grand scheme of things, I don't really know her that well at all. Especially since it didn't turn out the way she wanted it to.

If truth was told, Nozomi knew she shouldn't have been surprised at the outcome. Edenra victims had been marginalized and oppressed by the rest of Tokyo for nearly a decade—her first visit into the outskirts of Tokyo was enough to tell her that anyone who lived there for any amount of time would've inevitably adopted that vicious mindset no matter when they had become a victim themselves.

Even when I offered to find her sister for her in exchange for her skills, I didn't know for sure it would end up like this. She had had her suspicions, though, when Ayase Alisa's record in the city's database did not extend past February 2026. That's why I tried to warn her. Sometimes, the answers we want to find most are the answers we have the hardest time accepting. Her gloved hands tightened ever so slightly into a fist as Nozomi recalled her past, before she forcibly shoved it out of her mind.

On the other side of the leaves of the carefully trimmed maple, Eli listened to the phone for several long minutes before she spoke again. "Because most people are selfish and ungrateful," she unflinchingly stated at last. "The sad truth is that they usually need a terrible experience to make them appreciate what they had, but it doesn't take long for most of them to forget about it. We don't forget why things ended up like this because we're constantly being reminded of it every single day, but we're not most people. I've worked for plenty of people like him in the past. He sits up in his office all day and he makes more money ordering people around for an hour than I do in a month, just like he used to do before all of this ever happened. Do you think he really knows— or even cares—what Tokyo was like in October 2022?"

Unexpectedly, ice crept over her limbs as Nozomi listened to what Eli was saying. Is that how she really sees us? Mildly surprised that she found the prospect bothered her more than she thought it would, she turned to walk away.

I suppose… I'll just have to ask her about it the next time I see her.

Umi lowered the phone from her ear as she hung up.

Icy rage pounded through her veins as she repeated what Eli had just told her over the phone to herself. "How dare he…" she muttered furiously under her breath. She felt restless; her fingers itched to grab her bow off its hook on the wall and against her better judgment, she wanted to storm over to the downtown office that Izayoi worked from that very moment, even though she knew it would be nothing less than suicidal for her to go alone.

"What?" Maki was settled on her favourite chair; she had been staring up expectantly at her for the entire duration of the phone call as she twirled a lock of dark red hair with a finger, the suspicious, worried expression on her face darkening with every response. "I know that look, Umi. What did she say?"

"Izayoi Tetsu was the one behind Samejima's murder," she ground out. The redhead raised an eyebrow in an expression of fleeting, disgusted surprise, but Umi wasn't done yet. Anger made her tone harsher than she had intended it to be as she continued. "That's not all. He had plans to bomb the university hospital where all the riot victims were next."

There was a brief pause that lasted perhaps a quarter of a second.

"That bastard," Maki hissed, the fingers of both hands curling into fists on the surface of her desk, a look of abhorrence crossing her face as she stood. "Why?" she burst out. She took a few steps forward angrily, stopping just short of the gurney Umi had been leaning against while she had been speaking on her phone; bowing her head slightly, her right hand came down in a slam against its corner. "Exactly how the hell did he plan to do this?" she asked between gritted teeth.

"He hired mercs from another district," Umi replied grimly, understanding all too well how Maki was feeling at the moment. "The police weren't able to crack Samejima's phone—that's why nobody knew about any of this until now."

Maki gave her a sideways glance underneath red bangs. "Eli did?"

She nodded. "She traced his last calls to someone in Kyoto who was Izayoi's business partner. Toujou-sama ordered an investigation, so she decided to look in his personal files to see if there was anything else incriminating."

The redhead's stiff, angry posture relaxed by a tiny margin as she straightened. "So…"

"Apparently, Toujou-sama tried to talk to him. She told him he had twenty-four hours to give himself up to the district before she took action. But… It didn't work, so now, she's holding a meeting at Defence Ministry."

"That woman is crazy," Maki muttered under her breath. "I don't see how Eli thinks she's even sane enough to lead this district. Talking to people like him?" Revulsion decorated the last syllable of her sentence. "She shouldn't have even bothered and just sent a firing squad to his office the moment she found out. What did she think she could do, talk him out of it?" She narrowed her amethyst eyes at her last sentence thoughtfully. "Or maybe… she was trying to give him an out because he basically funds half this city's construction. Who's to say he isn't running off to the airport now?"

Umi remembered what Eli had told her. "No. She's locked down the airport so the mercs that he hired can't come into Tokyo. But he… is still planning to make a stand against her."

There was a snort from Maki. "For what? He must be as insane as she is if he thinks he can outrun her in Tokyo, then." She looked up at Umi. "You're going, I take it? Is that why Eli finally decided to call you after a few days of pretending we don't exist?"

A slight frown twitched at the corner of her mouth at the way Maki dismissed Eli's behaviour, but it paled in comparison to the fiery determination that burned at the bottom of her resolve. "Of course I'm going," she stated far more calmly than she felt. "The hospital he wanted to bomb is where both you and Kotori work. That's…" She wanted to say 'unforgiveable', but somehow, the word seemed too tame in comparison to the anger that clenched a frigid fist around her heart.

The redhead finally released the edge of the metal gurney as she shoved it away from her; stalking back toward her desk, she sat back down on her chair with a huff, pressing the fingers of both hands against her closed eyelids in a gesture of frustrated anger. "Guess I can't stop you," she muttered. "People like him give me aneurysms. The sooner we weed them all out of Tokyo, the less toxic this city's going to be."

Checking the time on her phone, Umi noted that she only had a few hours left before Toujou's appointed twenty-four hours of notice. "I better go," she mumbled, picking up her bow and her half-empty sheath of arrows.

"Already?"

She shook her head. "If I want to ensure tonight goes well, I should go pick a few things up from Rin." Her stock of arrows was lower than she would've liked it to be, and since there were unlikely to be Ceresis in the middle of Tokyo, Umi wanted to make sure she had a variety of other options to choose from in the likely case that she ran into some bodyguards or mercs.

In response, Maki pinched the bridge of her nose, but nodded once before she removed her hand from the upper half of her face as Umi turned to go. Her fingers were on the door handle before Maki spoke up again. "By the way… how did Eli sound over the phone?" Her tone was curt and dismissive, as if it had been an errant thought, but there was a hint of concern underneath it.

She thought about it for a moment. "Considering what's happened, she sounds better than she did." Umi winced a little at the memory; she had known for a long time that Eli did not like to share her feelings—or even her true thoughts about certain matters—a habit that made her dangerously prone to mood swings and shutting herself up in her room, refusing to speak to anyone while she deliberated her decisions over and over in her head.

But Umi had never seen her more emotionally distraught than the morning after the three of them had returned from their disastrous trip to Tokyo's outskirts. In the pretense of giving Eli some space, the two of them had huddled in the corners of the apartment that the blonde wasn't occupying, trying to decide how to best approach her. It had taken a considerable amount of effort on Umi's part to restrain Maki from snapping out of frustration.

In truth, all of them were hurting, but none of them knew how to express it—and certainly not in a way that would benefit the person that was hurting the most.

Something had inexplicitly changed, though, when Umi had returned home the day before and found their apartment empty. She had almost been tempted to pull out her phone and call Eli then and there, before she remembered that the gesture, while well-intentioned, would not be taken well. It had bothered her a little that Eli had not returned home after dark fell, knowing there were precious few places that were actually accessible for her, and she had fervently hoped that Eli hadn't done something stupid that she would undoubtedly regret had she been in a better mindframe.

Whatever had changed, it was probably for the best.

"Good," Maki swivelled around in her chair until she was facing her line of samples that she'd left on a gurney she was using as a desk. Behind her, Umi noted that there weren't many incubators that were still in use—a prospect that was usually followed up in a week or two by the redhead complaining about how much she hated dealing with the laboratory technician that doubled as her supplier. "It's about damn time she stopped moping around and figured out what's important and what's not."

Umi allowed herself a small smile at Maki's caustic tone; the affectionate aspect behind it was not lost on her as she turned to push the door of the lab open with one shoulder.

The setting sun cast an eerie scarlet glow on the ruined buildings of the outer district as Umi carefully stepped past the piles of rubble, intent on avoiding the retuning rumble of military vehicles in the near distance as she made her way to Rin's store.

Swerving around the loud throngs of bounty hunters and mercs alike that were occupying the dusty path lined with haphazard storefronts, it took her longer than she would have liked to reach her destination. Lifting the burlap flap, she poked her head in only to find the orange-haired woman speaking to another customer. Not wanting to seem impatient nor wanting to reveal what she was looking for, Umi dropped the flap of fabric and leaned against the side of the wall just next to the entrance to wait, wondering if Rin had seen her over the man's shoulder.

Whatever the man was buying, it took him nearly ten minutes to come to a consensus with Rin before he left, stuffing something underneath his coat and giving Umi a furtive glance as he passed her by the doorway. She heard a call from within. "Umi-chan, I know nyou're lurking out there!"

Shaking her head a little, Umi let herself in.

Rin had her elbows on her counter, the backs of both hands resting on her chin as she approached. "What can I do for nya today, Umi-chan?"

"You wouldn't happen to have any steel arrows, would you?" she asked, looking around the small store at the collection of weaponry Rin had hanging off the walls.

The orange haired woman gave her a very cat-like grin as she hopped off her stool. "I sure do, but whaddnya need them for, Umi-chan?" she called as she disappeared into the back storage room, tailed by one of her cats. "This isn't for some plan to finally shoot Satou in the back, is it?"

"No, it is not!" she snapped instantly.

Rin started to laugh, and she was still laughing when she emerged from the shadows of her back room, a quiver of arrows slung over one arm. "Umi-chan," she giggled, "have you ever heard of a joke?"

Knowing that she would only embarrass herself further if she were to reply to that particular question, Umi crossed her arms over her chest.

Still stifling her giggles, Rin set the quiver of arrows down on her countertop. "Really though, Umi-chan, why do you need these?"

Clearing her throat, she took a step closer to the other woman as she lowered her voice. "I have a job to do tonight."

"Ah." There was a moment of hesitation, as though the orange-haired young woman was debating whether or not to say something, before she opened her mouth again. "So Umi-chan, did you find out… what I asked you about last time?"

She had completely forgotten. In light of everything that had happened over the past week, it had completely slipped her mind. Umi felt her fingers tighten ever so slightly. "I'm sorry, Rin," she admitted. "There's… Some things have happened over the last week, and I didn't get a chance to speak to her about it." It was only half the truth; while she trusted Rin and disliked lying on principle, Umi did not think it was necessary—or even appropriate—to divulge in what had happened.

Rin gave her an apologetic, understanding hazel gaze. "It's okay, Umi-chan, I know she's busy. My dad's been bugging me about it, that's all." She made a face. "He said the government wouldn't tell him anything, even though he's such a big backer of the military."

Unable to comment on that particular statement, Umi took the quiver of arrows off of the countertop, and was about to turn to go when Rin tugged on her sleeve. "Speaking of Eli-chan, there's something else, Umi-chan." The quieter volume of her voice combined with the strange hesitancy in its tone made her feel slightly uneasy as Rin leaned in a little closer.

She raised an eyebrow as the other woman continued.

"A few nights ago, someone came into my store and asked for Eli-chan's number."

Jerking her head up in surprise, Umi stared at her. "What? Who was this?"

Rin held up both her hands in a gesture of confusion. "I don't know! I thought it was really weird, because Eli-chan never comes out here… Unless you count that one time when she and Maki-chan came looking for you, and that was a really long time ago."

"Do you remember what they looked like?" she demanded. A chill seemed to have settled on her limbs; despite the heat outside, Umi could feel cold sweat lingering around her shoulder blades.

The orange haired young woman considered it for a moment, putting a finger on her chin as she thought. "Uhm... it was dark, so I couldn't really see much of her face or her clothes. But she had really long blonde hair, and she was using a flower hairpin to keep her bangs off her face. Does that sound familiar to you, Umi-chan?"