He might have been discussing the weather rather than ending lives.
"Not quite. They've still got Mechanized Soldiers under them, and Civil Security too. Pair those with Initiators and you're looking at something well beyond ordinary people."
Sumire stretched, and the lab coat that already fit her too well pulled tighter across her curves. She picked up the coffee from the table, popped the tab, and took a sip. Her tone stayed lazy, carrying the precision particular to researchers and a thread of amusement underneath.
The augmentation tech behind those Mechanized Soldiers held no mysteries for her.
Rentaro Satomi's surgery had been her own work, after all.
"Someone at Rentaro's level is on the light end of the scale. Less modification, weaker across the board."
His conversion rate sat under forty percent. Most of him remained human flesh.
The soldiers the military raised in secret ran past seventy.
Everything but the brain and core organs replaced with Varanium prosthetics. Strength, speed, resistance to damage, all of it a tier or two above what Rentaro could manage.
"So if you're measuring every Mechanized Soldier against him, you're wrong by a wide margin."
She stretched again and sank deeper into the sofa, eyes bright with laughter, fixed on him without blinking.
The curiosity spilling out of that look barely fit inside her face.
To her, the man was a walking research specimen of the highest order.
She wanted to pull him apart cell by cell and study every piece.
"No, no. You've got me backwards."
Satoru waved a hand, a teasing grin surfacing, something playful crossing those pale blue eyes.
"When I say ordinary people, they're included."
Light as air, as though the point were too obvious to belabor.
In his estimation, unmodified civilians, hundred-percent conversions, Civil Security officers, Initiators, all of them collapsed into one category once measured against him.
None of them could touch a finger of his regardless.
He shrugged, the picture of indifference.
Another pull of cola, then he pushed the glasses back up his nose, hiding those beautiful eyes and whatever sat behind them.
The distinctions genuinely didn't register.
He'd faced Cursed Spirits that broke cities. He'd stood across from someone like Reinhard van Astrea.
People who'd bought a little strength with metal parts didn't separate themselves from anyone else in his eyes.
They weren't even qualified to make him take it seriously.
Sumire's next words died in her throat. Fair enough, she supposed.
She blinked, then laughed at herself and shook her head.
She'd nearly forgotten. This was the man who'd flipped the top floor off the Holy Residence with a lazy gesture, who caught missiles the way other people caught tossed keys.
However strong those soldiers got, they were paper in front of him.
Her whole explanation amounted to lecturing a marine biologist about the impressive fish in a garden pond. Ridiculous.
While the three of them waited, his phone rang.
The office went quiet.
Only distant traffic drifted up from the street below, and the slurp of Betty working her juice box.
The bright chime cut through it.
He checked the screen. Not a call from anyone in particular. A mass alert, pushed to every Civil Security operative in the region.
Eyebrow up, he fished the phone out and swiped it open.
The idle look faltered as he read.
"Hm?"
Surprise colored the sound.
"What is it?"
Betty stopped swinging her legs and glanced up, curiosity on her small face.
That expression didn't cross his face often.
"Sounds like they found the Stage 4 Gastrea."
He kept reading as he said it, still offhand, but with something settled underneath now.
"They found it?"
Her eyebrows rose.
The thing had run off with the Legacy of Nanase Village, and every police unit and military patrol in the Tokyo Area had spent days chasing nothing.
Now, results, and fast.
"Not bad for efficiency. Even the leadership must smell a threat this time, otherwise they'd have dragged their feet for who knows how long, going by habit."
Sumire sat bolt upright and leaned in, head craning toward his shoulder, eyes on the screen, a knowing smile forming.
She'd studied those men for years.
As long as the danger stayed at a distance from their own necks, they stalled.
Mobilizing that many operatives and that much military hardware cost real money.
Finding the target this quickly and blasting it out to every operative in the region meant one thing: the man beside her had scared them witless an hour ago.
Terrified of another incident, terrified of losing their positions, terrified of losing their heads.
She tipped her head closer to look.
Her hair brushed his arm, carrying the faint smell of disinfectant and lab reagents.
"So? Want to go take a look? You do count as Civil Security. You're entitled."
Encouragement ran through her voice, and the expectation in her eyes made no effort to hide itself.
She'd been waiting to see him fight properly.
What he'd done in the Holy Residence was a warm-up, a scrap of nothing. It revealed almost nothing worth recording.
Watching him against a Stage 4 Gastrea, though. That would be a windfall for her work.
"That..."
He dragged the word out and tossed the phone back into his pocket.
Fingers scratched at the back of his head, and his face arranged itself into something like reluctance.
Anyone with eyes could see he hadn't given it a moment's real thought.
Leaning back into the sofa, he said, "Doesn't grab me much."
Hands laced behind his head, all motivation drained out of him.
A Stage 4 Gastrea sounded impressive. To him it barely rated as an oversized Cursed Spirit, nowhere near Special Grade.
Hardly worth the trip.
"Too weak?"
Understanding in her tone, and a refusal to let it go.
"A bit. Besides, with that many Civil Security teams involved, shouldn't be a problem, right?"
Still unbothered.
Enough operatives, enough hardware, one Gastrea. Ample, by his math.
Nothing there needed him.
"I wouldn't count on it. This fight happens outside the Monolith."
Her voice sharpened.
She set the coffee can down, the lazy slouch draining away, replaced by something rigorous.
She knew exactly what lay beyond that boundary.
Gastrea paradise. The things roamed everywhere out there, Stages 1 through 3, and the odd concealed Stage 4 among them.
Fighting in that territory and fighting inside the Monolith's protection weren't the same activity.
She pulled out her own phone and started digging.
Fingers flew across the screen, opening encrypted channels one after another.
It took her almost no time to find what she wanted.
Her fingertip stopped. Her eyes moved across the text and narrowed.
"Intelligence says it was spotted twenty kilometers past the Monolith."
Weight settled in her voice.
Twenty kilometers. Far outside any protection the Monolith offered, and outside the range where ground forces could reasonably support anything.
"At that distance ground units are close to useless. The only option is airlifting Civil Security in by helicopter."
The land beyond the Monolith had been chewed to ruin long ago.
Roads gone, bridges collapsed. No armored column could push through at speed.
Force the issue and the convoy would be swarmed the whole way, bleeding people the entire distance.
Helicopters, then. Drop the teams on target, finish it fast, extract immediately.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk. No ground support means those operatives are going to take losses. Such a shame about the Initiators, girls that young..."
She layered pity over every syllable.
Underneath it sat something else, small and eager, that she almost managed to bury.
She knew this was the one argument that would move him.
The Initiators were girls of about ten.
Gastrea virus in their blood, strength no adult could match, and the world despised and feared them and used them as equipment.
Missions like this one killed them at rates nobody wrote down.
She shook her head with practiced regret and let out a sigh, playing it to the back row.
Someone who didn't know her might have believed the performance.
The idleness left his face. A hooked finger dragged the glasses down to his chin, uncovering eyes that were clear and very deep.
Then his hand came out, broad palm settling on top of her head, applying enough pressure to turn her face toward his until she had nowhere to look but into them.
Close enough now that each could feel the other breathing.
"Just say what you want. This saintly routine is hard to sit through."
Amusement in it, and certainty.
He understood the woman well.
Kind enough underneath, in her way, but most of her waking hours belonged to research and experiments. Grieving over strangers wasn't in her repertoire.
The act meant she wanted something.
"What's that supposed to mean, saintly routine?"
Her eyes went wide with injured innocence, and she smacked his hand off her head.
"Am I some kind of monster to you?"
Round-eyed, cheeks puffed, the very portrait of a woman wronged.
"Not that. You just don't strike me as the type."
Laughter under his words.
He sank back into the sofa and pushed the glasses up his nose, hiding the eyes that saw through everything.
He shifted, hunting for the most comfortable angle, and let the cushions swallow him.
"Research matters more to you than any of this."
Total confidence.
He'd worked it out long ago. Nobody carried an obsession with science the way she did.
Anything connected to her work, she'd throw everything else away for.
"So talk. What's actually going on in your head?"
Sumire rolled her eyes. "You act like you know me inside out. Your sense of boundaries is terrible."
She shot him a sour look and drank her coffee, covering for having been read so easily.
"That said."
The turn came fast, and a smile spread across her face.
Every trace of irritation and embarrassment vanished, replaced by pure eagerness.
"You're right, obviously."
Straight admission, no cover.
"Look, something this big. Let's go watch."
Coaxing now, and a little wheedling.
She leaned forward, eyes locked on him, braced against a refusal.
"Those kids fighting alongside Civil Security, doesn't it get to you? So small, and they're the ones sent at Gastrea."
The regret came out theatrical again.
This time, though, some of it was real.
Obsessed with her work or not, she'd watched too many Initiator children die in the field. It hadn't left her untouched.
"And the main thing..."
She drew it out, meeting his eyes, her own flickering.
Then, with a sheepish laugh, "I want to see more of how you fight."
There it was, finally. Embarrassment on her face, and beneath it a hunger she couldn't disguise.
"Now we get to the real reason."
His mouth curved, the smile knowing and a little wicked.
Exactly as he'd figured. The woman wanted to watch him fight so she could feed the results into her research.
He tugged at the corner of his mouth and laughed.
The grin came out dazzling, boyish and mischievous, and behind it the calm of someone who saw straight through you.