Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 1007: Tired Heroes

The convoy that had brought Kaiden’s family into the valley that morning carried them back out of it that night, and the guardrail above the cordon was lined again.

The evacuees had stood at that wire that morning to plead.

They stood at it now to bow, hundreds of them in the dark with their phone lights raised in place of lanterns, and they held the bow while the cars rolled past at walking pace.

The joint feed was an hour dead by then. Kaiden had ended it with a thought when the Shogunate formally took over the site. Whatever the guardrail was doing, it was doing it for no camera.

”They’ll hurt their backs,” Kaiden murmured at the window.

”Let them,” Aria said from the seat across, watching the lights slide by. ”You bled for their homes, Kai. A bow is the least of what they want to give you.”

”We did,” Kaiden corrected. ”Stop making it out to be as if it was only my doing.”

Aria remained silent for a moment, then smiled. ”I should’ve known you’d say that. But I disagree.”

”All we did was hold down the entrance,” Nyx joined, lifting an energy bar out of a holder with telekinesis, peeling it open, and tossing it into Kaiden’s mouth.

”...” Kaiden chewed, eyeing his space babe who blew him a kiss. Then he gulped and shook his head. ”You make it sound easy. You held back a high level boss monster. If not for you doing that, I’d have been killed, plain and simple.”

The Moon and Space Valkyries exchanged a glance, giggled, then kissed Kaiden’s cheeks in perfect sync.

Alice slept through all of it in his arms, where she had been since the gate. The girl weighed less than his greatsword.

Alexandra lasted twenty minutes past the cordon.

She spent them working down the row with gauze and antiseptic from the convoy’s kit, lecturing Luna about infected knuckles in the gentle voice she reserved for scolding.

She went out mid-sentence, upright, wipe still in hand.

Calypso caught her by the collar and laid her out across the bench seat like laundry.

Luna and Bastet were already gone against Calypso’s other arm, Luna’s mouth open and drooling on a demoness who did not mind. Half the convoy had not made it far past the cordon awake.

”Casualty report: three more down,” Nyx purred. ”And the group chat has opinions. Scarlet says the race was rigged, her town didn’t come with a door boss, and she demands a rematch on the next valley.”

”Tell her she can pick the gate.”

”She already picked. She sent a map pin and eight knife emojis.”

”...That woman is crazy. I am exhausted,” Kaiden sighed.

”Just block her number. She’s been warming up to Kai too much,” Aria decreed, hugging him close possessively.

...

The Moon-Thread estate’s gates stood open at eleven that night, and the staff stood inside them in two full ranks with every lantern along the drive lit.

The engines shut off, and the silence did what an hour of road could not: Luna sat up with a line of drool still connecting her to Calypso’s arm, and Bastet uncurled beside her, pretending to have been awake for the entire drive.

The head housekeeper’s bow to Kaiden did not waver when she saw what climbed out of the cars, the blood-stiff armor, the bandaged forearm, the two women being handed out asleep. Her voice did.

”Welcome home, my lord.”

”The Lady asks your forgiveness for not receiving you herself,” the head housekeeper went on. ”She remained at Kawanami with the column, cleaning up the scene.”

”I know. She apologized for it herself.” Kaiden gathered Alice into one arm and Alexandra into the other, a sleeping woman resting against each side of him.

His stomach grumbled, loudly enough to carry across the drive. ”Could you prepare some food for us?”

The head cook stepped out of the rank and bowed. ”Already done.” He had a victory banquet standing in three courses, and behind him the ranks dissolved into lantern-carrying and door-sliding ahead of the battered column.

”Start on the food without me,” Kaiden told the girls. ”I’ll be right down.”

He carried the two sleeping girls up the corridor without effort, behind a maid who slid each door open ahead of him and vanished before thanks could find her. The widest bed in the guest wing had already been turned down.

He laid his sister down on the far side of it, then Alexandra beside her. Even unconscious, she had her hands folded neatly at her waist, on duty in her sleep.

He put them in the same bed because he knew neither would mind, and that both might be pleasantly surprised to wake up next to each other.

These were his two who never got the door.

When the nights ended and the girls pulled him away laughing, Alice and Alexandra were the ones the door closed in front of. They had built a friendship out of that hallway, waffle recipes and childhood stories traded on the other side of it.

Today the hallway had held everything up.

Alexandra had stood in an open square eating a dungeon’s artillery with her arms spread so the whole line could fight without dying. Alice had gone down into the dark with him and burned herself to the wick keeping it off his back.

The heroes of the day, out cold before anyone could tell them so.

”Thank you for today,” he whispered to them both. ”I hope you know you aren’t the leftovers of this family.”

He paid the first installment of Alice’s after-bill while she was in no state to collect it, one slow headpat, and she turned toward his palm in her sleep. Alexandra received one as well.

By the door he looked back once. Alice had already solved the distance between them and was asleep on Alexandra’s shoulder.

As he left, in the dark, a pair of eyes opened.

”I know, Kai...” Alexandra whispered tenderly, and hugged Alice.

...

Down in the long room off the veranda, six people conducted violence against a midnight banquet.

Kaiden ate the first plate without noticing Aria had built it for him, and the second without noticing she had rebuilt it. His body had spent the whole descent paying out of its own reserves, and now that the fighting was over it demanded everything back at once.

Calypso matched him course for course out of principle, loudly. Luna worked through an entire bowl of rice with her eyes closed.

”You’re asleep,” Nyx laughed.

”I’m chewing, aren’t I?” Luna mumbled, eyes staying closed.

Bastet took her third helping at a stately pace, as if quantity and elegance had never once been enemies.

The head cook watched the destruction from the doorway as his life’s work was, at last, properly understood.

”My compliments to the kitchen.” Kaiden raised his chopsticks toward him. ”Everything is delicious.”

The cook bowed to Kaiden and withdrew, standing visibly taller than when he had arrived.

...

The bathhouse, an hour past midnight, was steam, lantern light, and casualties.

Luna went down asleep against the cedar wall before her second boot came off. Calypso ferried her in and out of the water on one arm, scrubbed her, rinsed her, and set her down none the wiser.

Bastet washed the dried blood out of Kaiden’s hair herself, unhurried, her tail curled around his wrist like a second hand. ”Master fought beautifully,” she said against his ear.

When the soak was done, Aria unwound the field dressing over his hip, her mouth pressed thin, and dressed the wound fresh.

Alice, the family’s healer, was asleep two corridors away, so the man who had killed a dungeon got antiseptic and gauze like any other human.

”Tomorrow you sleep until noon,” Aria announced, tying off the wrap.

”Yes, Ma’am.”

He wasn’t one to argue, especially feeling that some rest would do good for all of them.

...

Morning came up over Kawanami on cranes and cargo trucks.

Shogunate work crews moved down the main road in lines, loading the chimera’s shed plate onto flatbeds slab by slab. Surveyors strung tape across the collapsed chutes, and the cordon’s barrier came down in sections.

The evacuees walked their own streets ahead of the paperwork.

On the riverfront, the old man who ran the hardware store rolled his shutter up on weeks of dust and started sweeping his step without a word.

Japan, meanwhile, had not slept.