They staged a quick street reset—cones realigned, scorch zones chalked for municipal crews, brief statements recorded for the Imperial Gate Administration (IGA). Suncrest was known for doing the little things right: polite bows, clear comms, a smile for the baker whose morning rush had just been interrupted by a lizard the size of a bus.

The guild van rolled up as they were wrapping. Their chapter emblem—a rising disk behind a shield—gleamed on the side. Inside were towels, electrolyte drinks, and the kind of silence that follows sudden adrenaline.

Anastasia opened the rear and handed out canned barley tea, the motherly act so effortlessly woven into command that none of them ever found it patronizing. “Sip,” she said. “Hydrate. Then HQ.”

“HQ?” Raina asked, already tapping notes into her rifle’s maintenance app.

Anastasia glanced toward the bay. Storm clouds were gathering fast, darker than the forecast. The hairs along her arms lifted. “That felt like a tester,” she said quietly. “Gates don’t usually throw a Silver *first*. They build.”

Kana scowled. “You think a Gold is coming?”

“Possibly,” Anastasia said. “And if it’s Gold, we’ll need the Coalition.”

Gold meant a monster roughly **10,000x** a normal human. Even S-tier hunters measured that gap with respect. Golds were city-shakers. Mythic was a word you tried not to say into a Tokyo wind.

The van hummed into traffic. Suncrest HQ occupied the upper floors of a refurbished office tower in Shinjuku—a blend of sunlight and fiber optics, break rooms that smelled like miso soup and printer toner, glass walls alive with map overlays and bounty ledgers. Guild culture *mattered* in this era. Good guilds coordinated. Great guilds shared.

As they entered, pings popped across the alliance board. *Silver spike in Yokohama.* *Bronze swarm in Saitama.* *Nagoya requesting healer exchange.* The world talked to itself now, and in that noisy conversation was survival.

Guildmaster Ootori met them at the ops floor—gray hair in a low bun, eyes sharp. “Shibuya looks clean. Good work,” she said. “But we have a problem. Two new portals have just registered a harmonic in Tokyo Bay.”

“Harmonic,” Miyu repeated, eyes narrowing. “Synchronization between gates.”

“Exactly,” Ootori said. “Either poetically or stupidly, the sensors are calling it *Twin Bells*. If they resonate at the wrong frequency, we could see a compound spawn—one gate reinforcing the other. Gold-class probability has ticked up to 62%.”

Kana rubbed her palms together. “That’s a lot of yen.”

“That’s a lot of city,” Raina countered, though her fingers danced on the map with eager precision. “Coalition pinged?”

“We’re on a shared channel,” Ootori said. “Dragonspear, Cloud Ladder, and East-Ward are rolling. I want Suncrest on anchor.” She looked at Anastasia. “I want *you* on anchor.”

Anastasia inclined her head, calm as prayer. “Of course.”

Ootori’s gaze softened, the way a commander looks at her best shield before every storm. “I know you’ll say yes. I also know you’ll worry about the kids behind the tape before you worry about your own bones. S-tier you may be; Gold still chews S-tiers for lunch if they’re alone.”

“I’m never alone,” Anastasia said, and glanced at her team with pure affection. “I have a sniper with a surgeon’s hands, a healer with a lion’s heart, and a brawler who thinks sunlight is a personal challenge.”

Kana saluted with a grin. Miyu tried to look unflustered and failed. Raina’s mouth tilted, pleased.

Ootori nodded once. “Briefing in ten. Loadouts tailored. Coalition push in thirty. We’ll try to pull the fight to the breakwaters. Less population density; more room to fall back.”

“Understood,” Anastasia said. “We’ll be the wall.”

“*You* will be the wall,” Ootori said dryly. “Everyone else will be clever scaffolding.”

The ops floor brightened as guild windows opened. Contracts updated. Hazard pay escalators clicked into place. Across the city, phones buzzed gentle alerts: **COALITION RESPONSE DRILL: PLEASE AVOID TOKYO BAY.**

Suncrest kitted for waterline combat—grapnels, anti-corrosion sprays, tether lines with smart reels. Anastasia swapped to a hydrophobic overlay on her shield and clipped a flotation seal under the Aegis’ rim. She tied her hair tighter and looked—briefly—at her reflection in a glass panel. She practiced a smile not for the cameras but for the frightened people who would look to the person with the biggest shield and ask, without words, if this is survivable.

“Captain?” Miyu hovered in the doorway, one hand tracing a nervous circle on her sleeve. “About—tea. After the bay. If we are not… bleeding.”

Anastasia reached out and lightly touched Miyu’s knuckles, a reassurance that felt as natural as breath. “After the bay,” she promised. “No matter how the day goes, we end it with something sweet.”

Kana leaned in with a stage whisper. “If you two get married before I do, I’m suing.”

“You can be the ring bearer,” Raina said. “You already carry heavy things.”

“Rude!” Kana said, delighted.

The coalition convoy streamed down the Bayshore Route: guild vans, emergency vehicles, drones skimming like silver dragonflies. The sky wore an evening face at noon. On the horizon, two points glowed—dull at first, then increasingly insistent—as if the sea had grown eyes.

At the seawall, three guild banners rippled. Dragonspear’s captain—a slim woman in a crimson coat—raised two fingers in greeting. East-Ward’s heavier infantry checked couplings and anchors, their commander barking cadenced counts. Cloud Ladder’s wind-casters floated tethered like friendly kites.

Ootori stepped onto a makeshift dais assembled from shipping pallets. “Coalition,” she called, voice bright and precise through a dozen comm meshes. “We’ll stage in three rings. East-Ward in the second, Dragonspear on strike, Suncrest anchors first line. When those gates fully express, we expect Gold potential. Our metrics say Mythic is statistically unlikely.”

At that word—*Mythic*—some eyes flicked to Anastasia. Mythic meant **50 times an S-tier**, a number best handled with prayer and evacuation drills. She didn’t flinch. She simply sank her shield into the stone and tested the footing.

“Goddess,” Dragonspear’s captain said as she came to stand beside her. “I’ve admired your work. You make holding look like an art form.”

“Thank you,” Anastasia said, and meant it. Compliments were threads; she knotted them carefully. “I admire your team’s cuts. We’ll make space for your tempo.”

“You flirt like you breathe,” the captain said, amused.

“I also block like I breathe,” Anastasia replied in the same tone. “Which would you prefer I demonstrate first?”

A laugh rippled along the line, easy, human, exactly the kind that keeps panic from blooming in the ribcage. Then the sea *hummed*—a harmonic that vibrated in the joints. The twin lights widened, green and gold. Water sloughed back from concrete as if politely giving room.

**COALITION ALERT: GATE MANIFESTATION — TWIN BELLS — CLASS RISING… GOLD PROBABILITY: 78%.**

Anastasia lifted her shield.

“Everyone,” she said over open comms, voice mother-soft and unshakeable. “Breathe in for four. Hold for four. Out for four. We’ll buy the time we need. We’ll make this safe. On me.”

The gates unfurled like two enormous flowers, and the first shapes in their throats were not wolves or boars. Something *taller* uncoiled; scales like lacquered armor; antlers like living kelp.

A rumble moved through the coalition, half fear and half joy, because there was always a thrill when the world tried to end and you realized, absurdly, you were being *paid* to stand against it with your friends.

Anastasia set her boots. The wall, again. The Goddess, again. Kind and unyielding and a little in love with every terrified stranger behind her.

“Suncrest,” she said, and their three names answered as one: “With you.”

She smiled into the roaring wind—the calm at the heart of it.

“Then,” she said, and the gates cried open.

“Let’s make Tokyo money today—and keep Tokyo whole.”