In the Marché des Enfants Rouges, the oldest covered market in the city, Aris doggedly walks through it. Reality checked his mind out as any ideas of paving his way in life smouldered away. Then he felt a tap at the back of his shoulder. he slowly looked behind and found a familiar face.

"Told you I'd be seeing you later." Elise greets. "After all, we are intertwined by fate," she said in a ghostly voice.

His face softens. "I guess you did. Wasn't expecting same-day delivery though." He says, offering a cheap chuckle.

Elise continued to ask about his days, but Aris kept the conversation brief, attending orientation, meeting the teacher, and then deciding to go to the market to find something to eat. However, Elise wasn't having it. "Seems like there's a bit more to the story. Is it something you want to talk over some drinks?"

"I don't drink." Aris wants the topic to end.

"Not even water?" Elise gives a trolling grin.

Aris scoffs, "You know what I mean." A humoured smile creases. "Y'know what, not even water."

"Well, aren't you quite the Tardigrade? Next, you're gonna tell me breathing is optional?"

"You're telling me it's not?"

The banter bounced between the two as they began to talk while walking, Aris's smoulder doused for the moment, and Elise saw a chance to ask about his day again.

"My professor turned out to be my godfather," he says finally. "Who I didn't know I had."

"That's—wait, what?"

It spills out: the public call-out, Malcolm's disappointment speech, the interrogation about why he's really here.

Elise's expression hardens. "Sounds like someone who thinks people are tools."

"Yeah." Relief in his voice. "You ever feel like you're just playing a role someone else wrote?"

"Every day." Her tone shifts, bitter. " Watching people with power rewrite reality to suit themselves, calling it justice, and if they're ballsy enough, their ‘divine right’. That bull why I'm in criminology." She catches herself. "Sorry, didn't mean to—"

"No, I get it." He waved away her apology.” It's more than what most,” me included, “are willing to do. It's nice having someone uplifting like you."

"It isn't really cause of some virtue, I just want to spite them all using their devices against them, at least that's the idea."

"'If not for others, then at least do it yourself,' that's what my mom would say."

Elise hummed thoughtfully over the quote, her attention momentarily drifted to a kite stall, "How curious."

Her phone buzzes. Then his. Then everyone's around them. The market fell silent, with only the ambient sound of traffic murmuring in the background. Elise goes pale like an unadorned marble statue, scrolling frantically.

"Elise?" he said softly.

She looked up at him, quickly locking her phone screen. "Just work drama. Nothing I can't handle." But her hands were still shaking.

"Work drama that's making national news?" he pressed gently.

"It's—" a dull sensation settled in her head "—complicated." She continued walking, clearly wanting to end the conversation. “It doesn't concern you."

"It concerns you," he said, firmness in his voice, "and that's enough for me."

She stopped, looking back at him with something between frustration and gratitude. "You don't underst—" she caught herself, "It's not something you'd want to get involved in."

"Helping me understand isn't me involved in whatever you're up to."

"I can't." Her voice was barely a whisper, shocked by his absolute trust. "It'll just drag you into this mess." Her jaw tightened, and she looked away, as if the words themselves were painful to say.

"What if I want to be dragged in?"

She looked at him for a long moment, "Why would you want that?"

"Because," he said simply.

Elise looked at him, almost awestruck. She shook her head in resignation, unable to speak.

"We don't have to pretend it's nothing," he continued, surprising himself with his directness. "If you want to talk, I'll listen. If you want to be alone..." He paused, realising he didn't want to leave her. "Then I'll respect that too." His words are faint.

"Okay, don't oversell yourself." A small, genuine smile broke through. She pulled out her phone. "Give me your number. In case I need that help you're offering."

They tapped phones to exchange contacts.

"I should go," Elise said, already stepping toward the metro entrance. "I need to figure out what this means."

"If you need anything—"

"I know where to find you now." She glanced back once, then disappeared into the crowd.

Aris stood there, the notification still glowing on his phone: INTERPOL COMMISSIONER RESIGNS AMID SEVERAL SCANDALS.

The sun sets across the city, Lyle walks through the crowded Art Deco city centre, a cacophony of scents from the train station plaza permeates the atmosphere, bringing a homely scent to the urban space.

"What did you hope to achieve by letting this go to the public while we deal with this internally? Now you've forced a commissioner to tender his resignation prematurely," a commanding voice scolds Lyle over the phone.

Lyle takes a leisurely browse at the trinkets stall amidst the conversation, an amber charm catching his eye. He turned it over in his fingers, examining each facet while his superior ranted, "The only thing I'm forcing us to do is act. We don't need all the extra time just for someone to turn whistleblower and have Trafalgar as the interim anyway, better to deal with it while we can keep control of the story." A clover, embalmed by the amber, was counted to have four leaves in asymmetry. He set it down without purchase. "As a bonus, getting myself out of the picture would stop the syndicates from knowing I've gone kaput. Keep appearances and all that." He spoke with the casual confidence of someone who had already won the argument.

"There is immense strength in being underestimated. Your overreach took that potential leverage from us."

Lyle picked up a small wooden figurine, a reference mannequin, testing its weight, adjusting the figure's pose. "It's only leverage if we understand what is happening; until then, it's a burden at best." His voice carried an edge that made the vendor glance up nervously. "Besides, with Trafalgar at the helm of Agency Nichts, I'm sure Anais would appreciate some fresh company." He placed the figurine back where he'd found it, posed with its hands clutching its head in panic.

The silence stretched long enough for Lyle to examine three more trinkets before his superior's frustrated exhale crackled through the speaker, having nothing to say to his flippancy, cutting the call. Seeing the vendor's nervousness, he made an apologetic gesture.

Inside the station, the whirring of departing trains and metallic screeches of arrivals create a symphony of urban transit. Waves of commuters surge through the metro's vertical circulation like blood through arteries. Lyle weaves between clusters of lost tourists, their babel of languages masking his conversation as he orders his ticket and calls Trafalgar.

A youthful groan echoes through the speaker, "Just text us, gardener."

"Congratulations on the promotion!" Lyle disregards the complaint entirely, his voice cheerfully oblivious as he collects his ticket to Munich. "You're now the commissioner of not just one but two agencies."

"What are you talking about?" Trafalgar's irritation sharpens. "Isn't ICJ in the middle of damage controlling your—"

"Check your email," Lyle interrupts, making his way toward his terminal. "I'll wait."

Trafalgar's voice went faint as they called out to their sibling to check the email. As siblings, they resisted, and the line went quiet, except for the sound of typing, then clicking. Lyle counts the seconds—one, two, three—before Trafalgar's sharp intake of breath.

"Etwas am Hals haben," their tone rises, but exhaustion in their voice is unmistakable. "They want me to run both agencies? And clean up the mess you made?"

"It's only temporary," Lyle says helpfully. "Just until they find someone else," positivity emanating from him. "Whenever that may be..." he says it in a whisper loud enough to be heard.

Deep breaths could be heard from the phone's speakers. "We don't have time to fuel your antics. We have to prepare. Goodbye."

The call ended with a decisive click, leaving Lyle staring at his phone in the echoing station. He pocketed the device and checked the station clock; there were minutes until his departure.

The platform buzzed with travellers hauling luggage and checking departure boards. Lyle moved through them with practised ease, his ticket already in hand. The Munich Express sat waiting, with diagonals of pearl-white and lapis-blue livery gleaming under the sun's dimming light.

He found his first-class seat and settled into the window. Other passengers filtered in: a businessman with a laptop, an elderly couple sharing a crossword puzzle, a young woman with noise-cancelling headphones. For the most part, the cart remained sparse.

With the click of the brake release, an electric whirr reverberated through the cart chassis as the train began to move, soon becoming a hum. The platform slid past his window, then the city's outskirts, and finally the open countryside.

Lyle pulled out his phone and scrolled through the news coverage of the scandal. Headlines about corruption, investigations, and resignations. His handiwork was already being featured in every major outlet. He set the phone aside and watched the landscape blur past.

He let out a sigh of exhaustion and sank into his seat, leaned back, and closed his eyes, trying to centre himself.

But even in meditation, his mind felt blank and hazy, a mockery of the vividness his power had once provided. The girl who had somehow severed his connection to his abilities, the scandal he'd used to mask his deficiency, his upcoming plea to the one person who might understand what had happened to him, it all swirled together in an exhausting spiral.