Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 986: Japan’s Hospitality

Aria smiled at Luna with every tooth in her head.

”Clip it,” Emily begged. ”Somebody clip it.”

”And the twins left their cameras in their wing tonight,” Leia mourned. ”The greatest content of my life, and none of it is going on the record.”

”Then everyone remember this forever!”

”You do know the stream skill records through our eyes, right?” Kaiden tapped his temple. ”It’s been rolling since the first course. I’ll cut you three the footage.”

The trio turned to him as one.

”Private POV files,” Leia whispered, reverent. ”Of this. Sir, I would commit crimes for that footage.”

”No crimes needed. Consider it an employment bonus.”

”Have I told you that you’re the best boss ever?”

”About a thousand times.”

”Make it thousand and one!”

Two plates later, Emily’s hands sank into her lap. The family she had guarded through a screen for three months was laughing all around her, close enough to touch.

A sleeve crossed her vision, and the High Shrine Maiden of Japan set a fresh plate in front of her with her own hands.

”The kitchen tells me you have not yet tried the eel,” Yunohana said, just for her. ”It would make them very happy.”

Emily accepted the plate with both hands and a bow to their hostess that nearly dipped her forehead into the soy sauce.

”Eat, Em,” Sarah said.

”I am emotionally eating!”

Between courses, Luna checked her interface under the table, put it away without typing anything, and rejoined the conversation half a beat late. Nobody caught it. The tuna was very good.

When the tea went around again, Nyx leaned into the lantern light and found their hostess down the length of the table.

”I’m going to ask the rude question, Lady Yunohana, so we can get it out of the way and it won’t linger over our entire stay. What does Japan want from us? No nation cooks like this for free.”

The plate war paused. Even Calypso paused her chewing.

Yunohana folded her hands and answered at once, softly.

”Everything about tonight is exactly what it looks like, Miss Cosmos. Japan would like your family to stay, and we will talk about any shape you can imagine for that.”

”You could join the Circle, and every door in this country would open for your family. You could remain Eclipse and migrate the guild. If the United States government blocks the migration, we’d gladly help you get established with a new guild you own, or if you’d prefer to become mercenaries once again, Japan is ready to offer you a blank check contract. If you imagine something else no charter has a word for yet, I will carry that to the council just as gladly.”

”...” That was a lot of words.

”Basically everything goes, huh...” Luna muttered, half in disbelief.

Somewhere down the table, a pair of chopsticks clicked down and stayed there.

Her gaze settled on Kaiden and stayed, warm and entirely unembarrassed.

”The world has watched you for three months, Lord Grey, Valhalla’s Sinners. I have watched you. And it is you Japan hopes to call an ally, far more than any charter.”

For a moment, nobody had an answer to that.

Across the table, Aria’s chopsticks went down without a sound, and Alice pressed harder into Kaiden’s side. Even the claiming felt outclassed tonight, and both of them knew it.

Kaiden studied her over the rim of his cup. ”The Americans have a word for evenings like this. They’d call it poaching.”

”My council spent an entire night making certain it would not look like poaching,” Yunohana agreed, and refilled his cup herself. ”It is poaching.”

”He is taken,” Alice informed the High Shrine Maiden, not moving an inch from her post.

Yunohana accepted the correction with a grave little nod to Alice.

Scarlet toasted her outright. ”I like this one.”

”She admitted it just like that?!” Leia was delighted and scandalized in the same breath.

Sarah had stopped chewing entirely. She looked from the High Shrine Maiden to Kaiden, then at her own phone lying dark beside her plate, and understood that she was watching two superpowers bid on the same man over dinner.

Emily leaned into Leia’s shoulder, pale. ”Are we supposed to be hearing this? This feels classified. Why am I hearing this?!”

Kaiden chuckled and shook his head. ”Then you’ll get the same answer I gave my girls on the plane. We came here to train and eat tasty food. Anything else that happens along the way is pure coincidence.”

”Then tonight I have fed the coincidence,” Yunohana said, satisfied, and signaled the next course.

”Speaking of training,” Kaiden said. ”What are we walking into tomorrow?”

”The Circle’s campus, first. Your recruits are already there, eating nearly this well.” A breath of humor crossed her face and settled again.

”After that, gates. The Gates seat keeps a list of forty-one dungeons past their clearance window, and has been advised not to bring it to dinner.”

”Bring the list!” Calypso was on her feet before anyone could stop her. ”Bring whoever keeps the list!”

”Which one’s the ugliest?” Luna leaned around her.

Yunohana laughed softly behind her sleeve. ”Tomorrow. The backlog will not run out on you, I promise.”

Bastet set her cup down with a small click. ”Your law,” she said to the High Shrine Maiden, level and quiet. ”The one your Diet passed for us monsters. What does it permit?”

”Whatever any person may do. You may sign contracts, own land, hold your own bank accounts, and be heard in a court.”

Yunohana met her eyes and held them. ”You are not guests of the law here, Lady Bastet. You live here, for as long as you wish.”

”...A sensible nation,” Bastet ruled quietly.

Alexandra was writing again. The napkin had run out of room somewhere around contract law.

”Can I buy a mountain?!” Calypso demanded, already half out of her seat.

”If one is for sale.”

”Cally, no,” Nyx said.

”Cally yes!” Calypso spun on Kaiden, horns first. ”Darling, we’re buying a mountain!”

”I thought my mother told you not to pamper us,” Kaiden said, tipping his cup at the spread between them.

”Not needlessly,” Yunohana corrected. ”I found every course tonight to be necessary.”

Kaiden laughed, and then the humor settled into plain honesty.

Somewhere between the tuna and the tea, he had stopped waiting for the catch he’d been bracing for since the veranda.

”Thank you. You answered us in eleven minutes, and you had guards on my mother’s fence before our wheels left the runway.”

At last, the High Shrine Maiden’s composure wavered, and the smile that escaped it was small and glad.

”Eleven minutes,” she said, softer than anything before it, ”was mostly the translation. My colleagues struggle with English.”

Nyx watched the exchange and filed it away, every word of it.

As the last plates cleared, she folded her hands over the table’s edge.

”One more thing before I release you all to the bathhouse, Lord Grey. When the council met about your welcome, the Blades seat spoke exactly one sentence the entire night.” She poured him a final cup. ”’Wake me when we reach the training.’”

Kaiden sat up straighter, appetite plain on his face.

”You reach it tomorrow, right after breakfast,” Yunohana added serenely.

”If they’re strong, I’m fighting them first!” Calypso declared.

”Like hell you are, horns. I’m faster,” Luna shot back, and the squabble carried the room for the rest of the evening.

Nobody in the family was listening for sedans anymore.

...

On the far side of the planet it was seven in the morning, and the front office of the Eclipse compound was handling its first international incident of the day.

Down the hall, the Bureau’s audit team was opening box thirty-one of the receipts and had just requested a third pot of the acceptable coffee.

The call came through the main line at one minute past the hour. On it, a man introduced himself as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, holder of a title with four more nouns in it, and asked for the Regent.

Ms. Rook confirmed that the Regent was available and set the call onto the desk speaker. Then she sat down where she could watch.

Vespera drew the morning’s security report in front of her and read it while the man delivered his opening statement. It ran three minutes. The words partnership, continuity, and valued appeared four times each, and Doug, listening from the doorway, kept the tally on his clipboard.

”Madam Regent,” the Deputy Assistant Secretary finally landed, ”the administration would welcome your assistance in facilitating an early return of the guild leader, in the spirit of the accord’s continued-”

”Submit the request in writing,” Vespera said.

The line went quiet for a moment.

”...Of course. To which office should we address-”

”The Guild Leader’s.”

”And where can correspondence reach Mr. Grey at present?”

”Tokyo,” Vespera said, and took her time with the word.

Doug made a small sound and turned it into a cough.

”Madam Regent, perhaps I have been unclear,” the Deputy Assistant Secretary tried. ”You hold authority over guild operations. Surely a request from your office would carry the appropriate-”

”The Regent runs the compound,” Vespera said, turning a page of the security report. ”The Guild Leader does not answer to her.”

”The Bureau is holding our organizational chart as we speak,” Ms. Rook supplied pleasantly from across the desk. ”Box four.”

”The administration would view an early return very favorably.”

”Noted.”

There was a longer silence. Somewhere in Washington, talking points were being consulted, and they had no page for this.

”Then, at minimum, may I tell the Secretary that Eclipse remains committed to the partnership?”

”Eclipse is committed to everything it signed,” Vespera said, and ended the call with one finger while he was still assembling his thanks.

Across the desk, Ms. Rook flipped to the next item on her list, entirely unsurprised.

Vespera had thirty-one boxes of receipts down the hall, a State Department script in her ear, and her son’s family an ocean beyond the reach of both. By her standards, the call counted as recreation.

The phone rang again before her tea had cooled, and the caller identification ran longer than the last one.

Vespera picked up her tea and let it ring.