They chose a café across the street because coffee shops are neutral ground where monsters don’t follow and managers respect a good shield leaned near the door. The barista had seen the ribbons, the haori, the weapons; he simply made four matcha lattes and a black coffee (Raina), slid a plate of anpan across (on the house), and pretended not to hear Kana negotiating with her foam gauntlets about whether they were allowed to operate cups.

“After this,” Raina said, opening a weather app like it could tell the future, “I’m filing for a scope grant. The silenced clappers might let me write quiet holes.”

“You already write quiet holes,” Kana said, mouth full. “You’re poetry.”

Miyu carefully unspooled a single Hygieia Thread, bound it back up, and tucked it away like a talisman. “I’ll test it on synthetic,” she said. “Not on people.”

“On me if you need to,” Anastasia said.

Miyu’s eyes flicked up, startled and fond. “You’re not synthetic.”

Anastasia tipped her head, flirtation warm as steam. “I can be very compliant if a doctor tells me to rest.”

Kana made a strangled sound. “Get a room,” she said, and then, because she was Kana: “Get a gym.”

Raina’s phone buzzed. She read, brows arching. “IGA Research. They’ve been correlating yesterday’s Twin Bells and today’s Inversion. Harmonics are making shapes around us. Not random.”

“Meaning?” Ootori had joined them, taking her coffee black and her news without sugar.

Raina scrolled. “Meaning someone—or something—learns. The gates tested our curtain at the bay, then tried to wrap us in curtains today. And failed.”

“Imitation as evolution,” Miyu said. “If it can’t beat a wall, it tries to be a wall and get invited in.”

Ootori nodded once. “Then we will be very disciplined about what we teach in public.”

Anastasia set her cup down. “We’ll also be generous,” she said. “Because cities survive on shared tricks. We didn’t win because we had a secret. We won because we had good manners and better friends.”

Kana raised her latte. “To manners.”

Raina clinked. “To friends.”

Miyu touched cups, hesitant and brave. “To chiffon cake.”

Anastasia smiled. “To Tokyo.”

Her phone buzzed with a quiet, personal ping. A message from Dr. Fujimoto: We have a small staff break room with a terrible kettle and good mugs. If you ever want a place that isn’t a café to sit for ten minutes… it will be unlocked for you. Also, we found this under a plant— [photo: tiny bell clapper, etched with a heart] —is it yours?

She typed back: It belongs to all of us. Keep it somewhere it can ring for something nice. Also, please, more staff.

A reply: Working on it. Thank you for speaking softly and carrying a ridiculous shield.

Kana peered at the window, where the reflection showed four people who looked like themselves again and not like the math a city needed. “So,” she said. “Training later? I want to practice punching curtains.”

“Consent first,” Miyu said, deadpan.

Raina barked a laugh. “We’re trending again. #Wardwalk. Also—oh no—#MarryTheTank is back.”

Kana immediately reached for her phone. “I can manage this. I will like all the posts and then challenge anyone in the comments to a friendly pushup contest.”

“Please do not menace the internet,” Ootori said mildly.

Anastasia set a reminder to send a fruit basket to Kinuta General herself, this time labeled. For staff who told the clock to wait a minute until the monsters were gone. She attached a note: We promise to keep the hallway clear.

Her HUD pinged one more time:

[PERSONAL BOUND — OPEN]

City’s Aegis unlock condition 3/3 can be satisfied with a vow made and recognized by witness.

Prompt: Do you accept Tokyo as charge? (Y/N)

She didn’t hit Y yet. She wanted to say it where the city could hear—maybe at the bay, maybe at Shibuya crossing, maybe under a lantern where a child had stopped being scared because a woman with a shield had said hello.

“Dinner?” Raina said, standing.

“Training, dinner, and then cake,” Miyu said, sounding like she liked being a person with a schedule that included normal things.

“Cake twice in one day,” Kana said, awed. “We are gods.”

Anastasia rose, lifted the Aegis, and felt the comfortable pull of the day’s work follow. “No,” she said, and her smile held the softness and the steel of someone who had already decided how tomorrow would go. “We’re people. We just stand very well.”

Outside, a breeze moved down the street that had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with a city exhaling. Somewhere, a bell rang for a good reason—shift change, a discharge, a healthy heartbeat.

Suncrest stepped into the light, already talking about money and mop-up and how to make Raina’s scope more quiet than it already was. They moved the way a good sentence reads—inevitable and satisfying—and Tokyo, their patient and their lover and their employer and their home, kept time.