Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 983: Confused Circle

Back when Kaiden Grey’s plane was still crawling across the Pacific at hospitality speed, the lights on the top floor of the Shogunate Circle’s Tokyo headquarters had been burning since the previous morning.

The Circle had been running Japan’s dungeon lines for the better part of a decade.

In the first chaos years of the mana apocalypse, when the private guilds broke against the overflow one after another, the government gathered the survivors and fused most of them into a single body under a single charter.

Six seats ruled the result and gave the guild its name: Blades, Gates, Treasury, Ministry, Media, and the Shrine. Between them they commanded more awakened than most armies, and they answered to the Diet, mostly, when it asked nicely.

Courting letters went out to every promising foreign guild, as they always had. It was tradition, it was polite, and nearly every recipient in the Circle’s history had declined with matching politeness.

The Sinners wrote back asking for dates.

The reply landed on a quiet morning, Tokyo time. The High Shrine Maiden answered it herself. Her answer took eleven minutes, and it promised a great deal more than the letter had offered.

Then she informed the council.

The Shrine seat commanded more than the charter ever wrote down. Faith, to begin with: the shrines had held the country’s spirit together through those years, and millions still prayed where the High Shrine Maiden bowed.

Nobody argued with a colleague like that, so the council had spent the hours since making her promise come true.

By two in the morning, the emergency session had given up on looking dignified. Aides moved at a jog, ties hung loose, and the long table grew a skyline of binders, cold teacups, and one seating chart for a welcome banquet that kept changing size.

”Every broadcaster in the country has requested the landing feed,” the Media seat said, scrolling with both thumbs. ”Also forty international networks. Also the palace asked, unofficially, whether the family watches sumo.”

”I have forty-one gates past their clearance window,” the Gates seat said, to nobody who was listening. ”Forty-one. And seemingly the only guild on the planet with capacity to spare is about to land on our soil to train.”

The United States had put its share of the global outbreak down fast. Most countries were still fighting for their continued existence or had come out of it limping, and Japan was one of them.

The crisis in Japan had passed. The awakened who ended it were still paying the bill, half of them holding the backlog and the rest recovering from wounds taken during the outbreak.

”Which is why nothing about this visit can look like poaching,” the Ministry seat said, pressing two fingers to the bridge of his nose. ”The Americans are already asking questions through back channels.”

”It is poaching,” the Media seat said.

”Of course. But it must not look like it.”

The Blades seat had contributed one sentence all session, and it had been ’Wake me when we reach the training.’

The problem, the Ministry seat finally admitted, was not the schedule.

”We know how to host summits. We know how to host disasters.” He pushed his cold tea away. ”I have no idea what we do with someone who said yes.”

Proposals followed. The Media seat wanted the family on a prime-time variety special within the week, and the Gates seat wanted them inside a gate by their second morning, paperwork already in hand.

”We could gift him a castle,” the Treasury seat offered.

”A castle,” the Ministry seat repeated.

”He lives in a fancy palace, I heard. Why not?”

This grave matter cost the room a quarter hour of debate.

The seating chart, on its ninth revision, quietly grew a wing.

Yunohana Tsukikage had arrived from Kyoto after midnight, folded her hands, and listened.

Then the agenda arrived at hospitality, and the Treasury elder, undiscouraged, cleared his throat again.

He had served the Circle since the charter was signed, and he took his time, entirely certain he was about to be helpful.

”There is a custom, old and reliable. When a great lord honored a house with a visit, the house sent the finest women under its roof to see to his comfort.”

He settled back in his seat.

”Our guest keeps five lovers openly. The dossier calls him, what was the phrasing.”

”’A charismatic polygamist with pronounced exhibitionist tendencies,’” the Ministry seat read from the intelligence summary, and held the folder a little further from his body.

”A kinky womanizer,” the Media seat translated, thumbs still moving. ”In plain words. So the councilor’s idea is at least aimed at the target.”

”Just so. The man’s tastes are documented. Select beauties worthy of Japan, brief them properly, and let the arrangement be made with taste.”

Several seats nodded along, because on paper it was generous, traditional, and completely insane.

For questions about the man himself, the Circle had exactly one expert in the building.

Analyst Rin Sonoda ran the Overseas Broadcast Analysis Section, four people and a wall of screens tasked with watching foreign awakened media for strategic developments.

For the past three months, nearly every strategic development on Earth had been Kaiden Grey.

She had briefed from the foot of the table since the session convened, precise, formal, and invisible. At the word ’arrangement,’ her pen stopped moving.

”With respect, councilors.” Her voice held level for exactly one more sentence. ”Please withdraw that idea.”

The elder blinked at her. ”Analyst, hospitality of this order is-”

”An insult!”

The level part was over. Sonoda came around the end of the table so every seat could see her face, and her voice climbed the whole way.

”You have read his file and learned nothing! The planet has watched that man love these women on live broadcast, every day, for three months, and there has never been a scandal.”

”There are fan archives logging every time he has ever looked at a woman who is not his. The logs are basically empty! I would know, my section checks!”

”When the Americans put their accord in front of him, he stopped the signing, on every feed on Earth, and he sat there and would not touch the pen until his two monster lovers were written in as people. And this council wants to greet that man with, with a stranger in his bedroom?”

Her palms cracked down on the tabletop.

”Send a woman to his quarters at night and you will have insulted him. The five women he loves. The Lady Regent watching from America. And the, the headline, the whole planet gets the headline!”

She had to drag in a breath to finish.

”Japan looked at the most loyal man alive and offered him a whore. I can write it for you in advance.”

”Most loyal...?” The Ministry seat scoffed. ”I doubt-”

”The Shrine supports Miss Sonoda’s analysis,” a soft voice said then, almost musical in its tone.

”Lady Yunohana!” Sonoda’s eyes brightened.

The High Shrine Maiden rarely voiced herself at this table, content to let her colleagues grind through the business of the country.

Nobody in the chamber moved. Somewhere down the long table, a teacup was set down very carefully.

The backing down began at once. The Ministry seat discovered an urgent page in the intelligence summary, and two seats that had nodded along with the elder’s custom found other things to look at, as if they had been on the analyst’s side from the start.

”It was only an idea,” the Treasury elder said at last, waving one hand as if clearing smoke. ”I said it out loud, that is all. Nothing was submitted.”

Debating the gifting of women opposite two of them was a battle the old man wanted no part of.

”Withdrawn.” And he offered the analyst a slow, seated bow.

Yunohana unfolded her hands, and her voice stayed soft enough that the chamber leaned in to keep it.

”None of the clever things, please. That family crossed an ocean to train, to eat well, and to be free of one tiresome government for a while. We will not hand them ours. They will stay at my family’s estate, we will be hosts worth liking, and that is all.”

She let the plan settle for a breath, then turned her gaze down the table to the analyst still recovering her posture.

”And the Circle will speak to Lord Grey through my voice, so he is never juggling all of us. Analyst Sonoda, I’d like you to assist me.”