Aquila swallowed her mouthful of ramen and sighed happily. Sitting around the table with her, the others, now all washed up and changed into their spare clothes, ate in sullen silence.

    “I’ve missed this,” Aquila said, taking a sip from the cup of coffee beside her ramen bowl. “This really is the best ramen place in Tokyo.”

    Cap raised an eyebrow. “I think this is the most relaxed I’ve seen you in days.”

    “This place always cheered me up,” Aquila stated. “Good food, good company...and after a couple of months, we were bringing in so much business from the other cosplayers, they started letting us eat for free. This became our favourite place to meet and talk strategy.”

    “Seriously?” Kasumi asked. “You just sat in the open and planned your war in front of everybody?”

    Aquila nodded. “They thought we were producers or actors practicing lines or something.”

    Kasumi stared at her in disbelief.

    Aquila chuckled. “Kasumi, some of them handed us spec scripts. Most of them were awful.”

    “So if this is your favourite place to sit and plan,” Cap said, “would I be right that we have one?”

    Aquila grinned. “In fact, I think we do. We’re going to find the sort of hotel we always like to stay in so that Natsuki has a chance of finding us, and then tomorrow morning we’re going to go looking for Natsuki.”

    “I don’t know how you can do this,” Sayori declared, glancing at Aquila, Kasumi, and Cap. “All those people in that town...and Natsuki missing...how can you three be so...so...relaxed?”

    “Because we’ve seen far worse,” Cap replied. “Once you get behind the lines and you’re safe, you have to relax, decompress, and just not think about it. It seems callous, and perhaps it is...but, it’s how you stay sane in a war.”

    Aquila took a deep breath and added, “And we are in a war.”

    “Okay, fine,” Sayori said. “But why aren’t we going looking for Natsuki now? She’s out there, lost and–”

    “And she is more likely to find us than we are to find her,” Aquila stated. “Our first priority has to be establishing a base of operations where she can find or at least contact us, and blending in so that both sides of this war don’t. If either side catches us...it won’t be good. If we want to find Natsuki and get out of here in one piece, we need to be strategic.”

    “I get where you’re going with the hotel,” Yukari said, poking at her remaining noodles. “Natsuki knows we’re going to come looking for her, and that way we’ll be in the sort of place she’ll expect us to be. But, Tokyo is huge. How are we supposed to find her without any way to contact her?”

    “Simple,” Aquila declared, holding up a piece of shrimp in her chopsticks. “I use my powers.”

    All of the others exchanged concerned glances. Finally, Sayori said, “Wouldn’t that bring Balthazar right to us?”

    Aquila grinned. “I’d have to create an entire story world for him to notice that we’re here.”

    Kasumi stared at her in shock.

    Aquila leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Think about it. Natsuki fell through the information stream by accident – none of my powers were used. The only energy signature we left in the world we were in was Kasumi’s sketchbook and a mass departure, and he is not going to be able to tell the difference between them. All he’ll know is that we all left the story world. And since he knows that we’re trying to get away, he’s certain that the one place we will never come is here. He’s not looking for us here at all. For the first time since this started, I am completely free to act.”

    Cap looked at Aquila, and then Yuri, and grinned. “We actually have the advantage!”

    Aquila nodded with a smile. “I can use my powers to detect our kind, and I’ve got a pretty reasonable range. So, we leave a message at the hotel in case Natsuki finds it, get a phone that’s connected to the local network so that she can call us from the hotel, hit the streets and we use Cap’s super eyesight to check out every single one of our kind from a distance. If we find Natsuki, we grab the first secluded spot we see and I create a world with no paths leading to it right beside the one we just came from, and we continue on our journey. And if Natsuki finds the hotel first, we just meet up and create the new world there. So long as we can stay under the radar of both sides, which should be pretty easy since we’re dressed like everybody else here and all we are doing is looking for Natsuki, the only risk to us is at the end, and by the time Balthazar notices it and gets there, we’ll be gone.”

    Yukari grinned. “Nice!”

    Aquila bowed her head. “Thank you.”

    “I hate to say this, but I do see a problem,” Kasumi said. “If it’s still the way it was when my family went on vacation to Okinawa in 2016, to get hotel rooms we’re going to have to give them our home addresses, which is fine so long as everybody remembers theirs – but Cap is a foreigner, which means he’s going to have to show them his passport.”

    Aquila smile faded. “Oh.”

    “Do you have one?” Yuri asked Cap.

    “I don’t think anybody would believe mine if I did,” Cap replied. “I was born in 1920. And I originally fell to Earth from another dimension as a boy, so I’m not even sure that the birth certificate my adoptive parents got me would hold up to scrutiny in the first place...if I still had it at all.”

    “So what if we get the rooms without Cap there, and then he joins me in mine?” Yuri said, clinging to his arm.

    Kasumi shook her head. “If we’re trying to avoid arousing suspicion, sneaking a foreigner into a hotel seems rather risky.”

    “And we need him there for protection, if nothing else,” Sayori said.

    “Wait a moment,” Yuri said. “Is it foreigners, or just visiting foreigners who have to show them a passport?”

    Kasumi blinked. “I’m not sure.”

    Cap shrugged. “The easiest thing is probably to just to turn on the charm and say I lost my passport and I’m waiting for the replacement from my embassy.”

    “But then we might have to explain why you’re travelling with us,” Kasumi said. “We’re five Japanese women with a foreign man who lost his passport. That might attract attention.”

    Yukari chuckled.

    “What?” Sayori asked, staring at her.

    “We look like his harem,” Yukari said.

    Sayori closed her eyes, a pained look on her face. “Please don’t even joke about that.”

    Aquila looked at Cap and Yuri with a wide grin. “You’re fiances.”

    Cap blinked. “Sorry?”

    “You and Yuri are fiances, and you moved here to be with her two years ago,” Aquila declared. “That would make you a resident of Japan, right?”

    Kasumi nodded. “That might work. Everybody would believe it from you two.”

    Yuri blushed.

    “That’s a bit further than I was ready to go at the moment,” Cap said, glancing at Yuri. “Can’t we just say we’re together and leave it at that. It’s true, after all.”

    “You’re ‘shipping’ us,” Yuri declared. “We’re already dating – he accepted my love confession! I’m not going to leave him for some other man. You just want to see us get engaged for real!”

    Aquila kept grinning. “Maybe just a bit.”

    “Face it, Yuri,” Yukari said. “You’re so lovey-dovey with Cap these days that it’s more believable that you’re engaged than just dating.”

    “Yukari’s right,” Kasumi said. “Your story world was an exaggeration of reality. If this Japan is anything like mine, and it probably is, schoolgirls don’t wear miniskirts and couples who aren’t married don’t show much affection in public beyond holding hands. Engaged to a foreigner who doesn’t know any better, that we can get away with. You might not be comfortable thinking of your relationship as going that far yet, but at least you won’t have to be paranoid about accidental indiscretions in public, which would attract attention.”

    “Are we going to need to get Yuri an engagement ring to sell it?” Cap asked.

    Kasumi blinked. “That’s a really good question. Japanese couples don’t tend to use them, but you’re not Japanese...and they are the custom in America, aren’t they?”

    Cap nodded. “In my country it’s seen as important. Kind of a public declaration that you’re off the dating market, to a degree.”

    “If Yuri agreed to marry you, would you give her a ring?” Aquila asked Cap. Beside him, Yuri’s blush got deeper.

    Cap nodded again. “Buying her an engagement ring would be one of the first things I’d do. It’s traditional to offer it as part of the marriage proposal.”

    Aquila finished off her ramen and coffee. “That settles it, then. Cap needs to buy Yuri a ring before we find the hotel.”

    Cap leaned forward. “I’m really not comfortable pretending to be engaged when I’m not,” he whispered.

    Aquila shrugged. “You could always propose to her and make it real,” she whispered back. “I’m sure she’d say ‘yes’. But if we want to stay under the radar, this is the best we’ve got. Now, chin up and look happy.” She raised her voice and called out to the counter, “Excuse me, we need to find a nice three or four star hotel. Also, our friends here just got engaged, and this silly American absolutely insists on getting his fiancee a ring. Might you know an affordable jeweller nearby?”

Kasumi checked her watch and resisted the urge to sigh. It was almost 4:00 by the time they got out of the jewellery store and made their way to the hotel. Now there was a line. Behind her and Aquila, Cap and Yuri stood together, Yuri leaning on Cap while she examined the diamond ring on her finger. Behind and to the side of them stood Yukari and Sayori.

    400,000 yen. Almost a tenth of the money they had arrived with. Kasumi shook her head. It had better sell the illusion. At least when Cap and Yuri did finally decide to get engaged, they’d already have a ring for her to wear.

    “What?” Aquila asked softly.

    “Just the money,” Kasumi said. “I should have figured out that would be an expense, and then we could have brought more to begin with.”

    “You worry too much,” Aquila said. “We’ll be long gone before that’s a problem.”

    The couple ahead of them started their registration. Kasumi looked back at their group. Somehow, the person her eyes kept resting on wasn’t Cap, or Yuri, or Yukari, but Sayori. Kasumi frowned. Maybe it was time to deal with that.

    “Name, miss?” the hotel clerk asked, snapping her back to reality.

    “Ah, yes,” Kasumi said, stepping up to the desk with Aquila. “My name is Kasumi Agawa, and we need a room for two for one week.” Kasumi gave the clerk her parent’s Tokyo address. “We’re paying with cash.”

    “And your name?” the clerk asked, looking at Aquila.

    “Aquila,” Aquila replied.

    “Is that your family name or given name?” the clerk asked.

    Aquila blinked in confusion.

    “Her family name is Agawa, just like mine,” Kasumi stated. “The address is the same too.”

    The clerk thanked her and handed them their room keys. Aquila beamed Kasumi a smile as they stepped away. “Aquila Agawa. I like the sound of that.”

    Kasumi shrugged. “If Cap and Yuri can pretend, we can too.” She frowned. “Although, we have to pretend we’re sisters. This country doesn’t really do same sex marriages.”

    Aquila blinked. “What? Why?”

    “My name is Yuri Nakano,” Yuri said at the counter. “We need a room for two for a week. My address is...”

    Kasumi shook her head. “It’s...it’s not important. We don’t live here, and nobody’s really going to care anyway.” Her eyes wandered back to Sayori.

    “But it’s stupid,” Aquila said.

    Kasumi looked back at her and smiled. “I know.”

    “I’m Matthew Markham,” Cap said to the clerk. “I’m with her.”

    “I’m going to need to take a copy of your passport,” the clerk said.

    “Are you sure?” Cap asked. “I moved here two years ago to be with Yuri. Doesn’t that make me a Japanese resident?”

    “Oh, please don’t turn him away!” Yuri cried. “My fiancé lost his passport last week, and we can’t find it anywhere. And we contacted the American embassy for a replacement, but they’re being really slow.” She held up her hand. “You see this engagement ring he got me? I really want us to get married at Tokyo Daijingu Shrine, but he won’t agree until he sees it for himself, and that’s why we’re here.”

    “I live with her, if that helps,” Cap said.

    Aquila chuckled and whispered, “And here I thought Yuri was the one we’d have to worry about.”

    “Okay, I’ll get you your room keys,” the clerk said.

    “Can you take care of the room and the arrangements for Natsuki?” Kasumi asked.

    “Sure,” Aquila said. “Sayori?”

    Kasumi nodded. “It’s as good a time as any.”

    “I guess we’d like a room for two as well,” Sayori said to the clerk as Cap and Yuri headed for the elevator, Yuri on Cap’s arm. “With separate beds.”

    “I think I saw a bar over there,” Aquila said, pointing. “You should be able to get some privacy there. Hand me your pack and I’ll get it upstairs.”

    Kasumi handed her pack over, and then waited for Sayori and Yukari to finish registering while Aquila headed to the elevator.

    “Sayori,” Kasumi said, intercepting Sayori and Yukari as they started towards the elevator. “Let’s get a quick drink. ‘Team mom’ to ‘junior team mom’.”