The morning spilled over Aegis Prime like poured gold. The city's spires caught the light and scattered it across the streets in bright ribbons, banners fluttering between towers with the faces of heroes printed ten stories high. The plaza around the dome swelled with people; vendors hawked glossy posters and glowing sticks; drones drifted like lazy fireflies, beaming interviews to every screen in the vicinity.
Asol stood at the edge of the flow and watched it move around him as oi tugged at his sleeve, grinning, while Kazuma (Fire Mode) trailed a step behind his hands sunk in his pockets with flames glimmering faintly along his forearms like restrained temper.
"C'mon!"
Aoi said, bright as the morning.
"It's pre-show day! This is when the heroes mingle! You'll see all of them up close!"
"Wonderful...A hurricane of ego..."
Kazuma muttered.
A crackle of blue ripped past them causing a short gust of wind tugging at Asol's jacket as a blur traced a circle on the flagstones and stopped with a skidding hiss.
The Fastest Hero, Blue Volt.
Blue Volt materialized mid-spin, hands lifted to catch the roar of his fans. He soaked it in, head high, a smile that said he'd earned the thunder and expected it. Photographers leaned over barricades. Children shrieked his name. He gave them a wink, then turned—catching Asol with a curious, playful squint.
"A new face huh? From the looks of it, you're not from this world."
He said, voice pitched to carry.
"Haha! Don't blink around here. If you blink, you'll miss the future!"
Aoi laughed.
"Blue, be nice."
"Well, I'm always nice to fans!"
He replied, thrusting a quick finger-gun at a nearby kid. Then to Asol, with a tilt of the chin.
"I know you're the one from the other world. The Savior slayer."
Asol kept his voice even.
"I'm no slayer. It was just a fight I survived to protect the people I care about."
Blue Volt's grin sharpened.
"That's the thing about surviving—it's slower than winning. And protecting the people you care about, I admire. However, you can only do so for so long."
He snapped into motion again, a comet streaking toward the press gauntlet, leaving the faintest scent of ozone causing the crowd to explode.
A shadow then fell over the plaza. Thunder rumbled from a clear sky. Every head turned. He walked like a storm given shape—broad shoulders beneath rune-etched mail, a hammer resting against his back as if it belonged there before he did. The air around him had weight. People pulled back instinctively to give him space.
The Norse Hero, Thor.
Thor stopped before a line of cameras, gaze tipped not to the lens but to the horizon, as if he were addressing something the crowd could not see.
"Aegis Prime!"
He exclaimed in his heavy accent.
"You honor those who stand for you. We honor the honor you grant."
Reporters pushed mics forward.
"You'll face Blue Volt in round one—"
Thor's mouth curved with the faintest flicker of amusement. His eyes, pale as hammered steel, slid toward the smear of lightning taking selfies fifty meters away.
"Speed is a child's trick when the sky itself obeys you. I will educate him!"
"Educate..."
Kazuma echoed under his breath.
"In other words: pulp him."
Aoi elbowed him, though she was laughing. From the colonnade's shadow, a figure watched the exchange with a stillness that drew the eye by refusing it. Their height indeterminate. Their Frame unfixed. Their outline blurred with small, unsettling shifts, as if the body hadn't quite committed to a shape.
They moved only their head, tracking Blue Volt, then Thor, then—abruptly—Asol. For the blink of a second, Asol saw his own height and posture ghost across their surface, like a reflection caught on a restless pond. Then it was gone.
The Adaptive Hero, 682.
"That one bothers me. It's quite unsettling."
Asol said as chills traveled up his spine.
"That was 682. The Adaptive Hero. They're good. They say he originates from a lab experiment gone wrong."
Aoi said softly as Asol briefly remembered Kazuma also being part of a lab experiment as well.
The plaza churned as heroes peeled off into different currents: autographs, interviews, handshakes with sponsors in lacquered suits. Providence's face beamed down from the largest screen, his smile a promise. The man himself was somewhere beneath this web of adoration—shaking hands, touching shoulders, blessing the event with his presence alone.
"Let's move!"
Aoi said, threading them along a service corridor that ran the dome's inner rim. The sound dimmed: the roar dulled to a hum; the flash of drones flickered into absence. They turned a final corner into a light-washed gallery lined by tall windows.
Providence stood alone at the far end.
He had shed the cape for a simple white shirt and dark slacks. Without the suit he was wearing as a hero, he seemed… sharper. As if nothing he was wearing could soften how precisely he fit into the world. The sun lit a clean edge into his profile. He didn't turn when their footsteps approached. He didn't have to.
"Aoi."
He said, warmth cresting his voice. He faced them, the change in expression immediate and genuine.
"Still dragging these two through every bright corner of the city?"
"Yes!"
Aoi chirped and flew into a hug that Providence absorbed with a laugh. He clapped Kazuma's shoulder with familiar weight; the flames along Kazuma's arms guttered shyly, then hid. Providence's gaze settled on Asol at last.
Up close, the man's presence still pressed at the air like altitude. Asol felt it under his ribs—the slow roll of something vast—then a deliberate easing, like a hand lifting from a wound. The same experience he had yesterday with the hero.
"I forgot to tell you this yesterday and I apologize for not being at the home, but I thank you."
Providence said.
"On behalf of many who can't."
"You don't need to."
Asol said as he held the man's eyes.
"I didn't win. I survived."
Providence's head tipped, and a small smile creased the corners of his mouth as he stepped closer, the gallery suddenly too narrow.
"May I?"
Asol felt the old instinct coil—refuse, deflect, break contact—but he nodded.
Providence reached for Asol's prosthetic. His fingers didn't touch the metal; they hovered, as if sensing heat. Asol felt the arm stir—the circuits breathing, the sigils beneath the skin of alloy whispering faintly. The nausea bloomed again and Providence… doused it. Like pinching a vein.
"I couldn't help but notice yesterday but... an Adamantium arm?"
Providence said, almost to himself.
"It's a ritual metal that originates from this world. To think that one has molded it into such a shape. Color me impressed."
"Thank you."
"It was just an observation."
Providence's tone gentled.
"You carry too much in silence. It makes you efficient, but it also makes you brittle."
"The world doesn't slow down. At every corner lies danger. Because of that, I've lost friends and family."
Asol replied.
"You speak the truth."
Providence's eyes were very clear.
"But even blades require oil."
He released the air around the arm; the humming receded.
"You were probably born in a world much like this. I can't imagine losing your home to the external forces that are the Kaijus. I hear your job in the KAC is to manage Idols like my sister."
The hero, Providence, gestured towards the windows.
"Here, us heroes pretend the breaking is entertainment just as idols in your world maintain purity."
"That pretending and purity keeps them from panic."
Asol said.
"And sometimes, it keeps us from truth."
Providence said, smiling without humor.
Silence bled in for a heartbeat. He took half a step back, letting space exist again.
"We'll speak again, Asol Ansaldo. After you've seen the ring from the floor. I'm curious what you'll think of our saints when the lights are brightest."
He turned to Aoi then, and the warmth returned, so easily it was almost performance and almost not.
"Lunch? I have ten minutes before I bless another parade float."
They chatted as they walked. Asol trailed a step, path drawing him toward an open door and a breath of cool air.
The inner garden hid between rings of the dome: a narrow courtyard of water and stone, soundproofed by design, the city's clamor reduced to a whisper beyond the trees. Sunlight laced the surface of a rectangular pool. Wind curled through bamboo and turned prayer-chimes with soft, thoughtful clicks. He recognized this place to be the same place he met the Enlightenment Hero the day prior.
Bodhi sat at the water's edge, legs folded, hands cupped loosely as if holding a bird. He faced the pool but watched nothing. The world seemed to settle around him to match the pace of his breathing.
Asol halted without meaning to. No one else was here. Or, more precisely: people passed the archway beyond and none of them looked inside. Their eyes slid off the garden the way water slides off oil.
"You again?"
Bodhi smiled without opening his eyes.
"You carry dreams like luggage."
"You have a talent for saying uncomfortable things comfortably."
"A mirror is a comfort if the face is honest. You come to me again, yet this time you come bearing a nightmare?"
Asol was taken aback even though he shouldn't have been.
"I don't know what I saw..."
Asol admitted. The words felt like rocks pried from his chest.
"There were bodies. Everything was destroyed. Everything was in ruins. I saw the corpses of my friends and their dying expressions of desperation."
"Prophecy is rarely a map. It is a weather report. You dress accordingly and still get wet."
"Then why show it at all?"
"So you bring an umbrella."
Asol almost laughed as it came out thin.
"You were in it."
"Or you believed I was."
Bodhi said, finally turning his head. His eyes were not luminous, or bottomless, or anything but human, and still Asol felt pinned like a moth under glass—gently, inevitably.
"Your Aura bends toward paradox. That makes you appropriate to difficult roads."
"Appropriate..."
Asol echoed.
"Like a tool?"
"Like a guest who knows when to take his shoes off."
"Is this world unsafe?"
Bodhi's smile thinned, not unkindly.
"All worlds are. Some are merely better at costume."
Aoi's voice carried from the corridor, bright and real.
"Asol! There you are!"
Asol turned and when he looked back, the water rippled, and the stone was empty.
Aoi slid into the garden with a tray balanced on her hands—rice, broiled fish gleaming with glaze, a slice of something that caught the light like a jewel. Kazuma (Fire Mode) ducked under the lintel after her, his flames tamped down to the ember-thin lines he wore indoors.
"You missed the free sweets! But I stole you something better!"
Aoi said as she handed a bar of chocolate wrapped in a plastic with her brother's face plastered onto it.
"As always..."
Kazuma said, dry. Then, to Asol, side-eyeing the pool.
"You spacing out again? Talking to a ghost?"
"I was talking to—"
Asol paused. The explanation curled away on its own.
"Never mind..."
They ate in a soft loop of quiet. Aoi filled it with small, bright things: a story about a fan who'd sewn a cape for a cat she used to have; a vendor who only took payment in songs; how Providence used to burn pancakes before someone decided Number One should not be allowed near a stove. Kazuma snorted into his tea and pretended it was a cough.
When the plates were clean, the afternoon had begun its slow tilt into gold. The plaza was swelling again, pre-show concerts gearing up around the dome's exterior, the sky corrugated by long banners pulled by airships.
"Come on!"
Aoi said, standing.
"There's a rehearsal flyover for the opening ceremony. You should see it."
They moved through the tunnels to a narrow balcony that jutted over the arena's mouth. From here, they could see almost everything: the latticework of the dome, the concentric terraces of seats, the floor with its configurable plates currently set to cracked basalt—dramatic even empty.
The air thundered: a formation of armoured fliers knifed across the opening, smoke trailing in choreographed arcs. Drones scattered like starlings, then regathered into a rotating emblem. The city's cheer rode the sound like a cresting wave.
"Listen to that..."
Aoi said, hands wrapped around the railing.
"I know it's all flashy and over the top—but when I was little, the first time I heard it I thought: Maybe it's okay to believe!"
Asol watched her face in the light.
"Believe in what?"
"In the idea that we can be more than what tried to break us!"
She said simply.
Kazuma shifted, the line of his jaw easing.
"And in breaking what thinks it can't be broken."
Asol's prosthetic flexed at his side, the sigils along it dim as sleeping coals. For a moment he let the city's sound trip over him, a tide he neither accepted nor refused. Somewhere beneath the roar, he could still hear the soft click of Bodhi's chimes. Somewhere behind the banners he could still feel the cold wind claw of the dream.
Night undid the day slowly, relighting the city in neon and procession flare. By the time the rehearsal ended, the plaza had converted into a festival—lantern strings suspended like constellations, food steam rising in fragrant clouds. Music bled from every corner, different songs sharing a tempo you only noticed if you weren't drinking.
Aoi and Kazuma were drawn to a pop-up stage where a trio of heroes played at being a band. Asol lingered a step back from the crowd, watching. A child trotted past in a foam hammer almost as big as he was, cape dragging, cheeks sticky with sugar. He tripped, laughed, and a stranger—someone's father, someone's fan—swept him up without missing the chorus.
Asol let himself smile, thin and surprised, and felt it fall a heartbeat later.
Maybe I've been to paranoid of this world? If Fujiwara were here, I bet she would've loved it! Perhaps if i did better...
He drifted away from the press of bodies to the dome's outer ledge. The city stretched in tiers of light to the horizon. The stars above Aegis Prime were different—whiter, colder, as if polished nightly. In a bed on a different world, a girl with a voice like silk slept without moving. He pictured the lilies on her table browning at the edges if he left them too long.
Behind him, the festival surged. Ahead, the arena waited with a patience that felt like hunger. Tomorrow, the lights would rise. Tonight, the city breathed in—bright and blinding—and somewhere, very softly, the prayer-chimes counted the breeze.