Demonic Po*nstar System

The night’s footage had run on every network in the country until dawn, the crawl on Kaiden’s forearms toward the boss room, the spur punching through his hip, the pincer closing on a foreign family holding a Japanese town’s door.

Somewhere before sunrise, the nation’s gratitude had turned around and gone looking for its own government.

The Circle’s public phone lines went down twice before six. A petition demanding accountability for the gate’s poor scouting gathered four hundred thousand signatures overnight, every line of it in immaculate formal Japanese.

Outside the Circle’s Tokyo headquarters, a crowd assembled at first light and simply bowed at the building, in silence, in rows, which unnerved the security detail far more than shouting would have.

The morning shows asked the same four questions on a loop. Who thought it was a good idea to assign the honored guests of Japan to such a badly scouted gate. What if Kaiden Grey took it personally? Why did honored guests bleed for a Japanese town with one squad in support. Who answers for this.

At the Moon-Thread estate, breakfast was held until noon, and the family ate it in the long room off the veranda with the pond throwing light on the ceiling.

Alice and Alexandra arrived last, hand in hand, scrubbed and rested, looking nothing like the two casualties who had been carried up a corridor the night before. They found Kaiden at the same moment, and two bright smiles aimed themselves at him from the doorway.

Rin Sonoda arrived as the teapots emptied, folder in hand, and her bow to Kaiden held its regulation depth on visibly no sleep at all.

"My lord. Ladies." She straightened to parade rest. "My section monitors foreign broadcasts. Since midnight, every screen on my wall has been domestic. I have been asked to brief you before the afternoon council."

She opened the folder and read the numbers flat, keeping her voice level by procedure.

The jammed phone lines.

The petition count.

The silent bowing crowd, which her office had classified, for lack of an existing category, as an incident.

"And at six this morning," she said, "the Gates seat submitted a letter of resignation to the council. The Kawanami rating came from that office."

The room went still around the rice bowls.

"That’s the wrong man to lose," Kaiden said. "Has the council accepted it?"

"It convenes at two." Sonoda’s eyes came up from the folder. "Lady Yunohana is already on her way here, my lord. She wished to speak with you before it sits."

...

Yunohana took tea with him on the veranda an hour later, and poured it herself before the staff could reach the pot.

"Lord Grey. The council sits at two. Before it does, I came to say again that the fault-"

Kaiden lifted his cup toward her, easy. "You said it yesterday. And I answered it from the bottom of a dogpile. I say there’s no need for a round two."

"Japanese apologies come in courses, my lord." The ghost of a smile crossed her and was gone. "This is merely the third. I have about nine in me."

He set the cup down. "Then let me ask for something. The Gates seat sent your council a letter this morning. When it reaches the table, I’d like the council to refuse it. That is, unless he’s had multiple infractions before."

Yunohana watched him over her tea and said nothing, so he laid the reasoning out plainly.

"The file rated Kawanami exactly what ten years of gates taught it to rate. The dungeons broke recently, bringing with them a new norm of weird monsters and situations that we’re still adjusting ourselves around."

"And your squad was never too little. Captain Asakura’s people knew that valley house by house, and their knowledge saved the operation twice before their spears did."

For a while, the only sound was the pond.

"The council rarely refuses the Shrine seat," Yunohana spoke up at last. "The letter will be refused."

"Much appreciated. The rest of it, the petitions, the crowds, the overworked phone operators being harassed, that’s my mess. It’s my fans doing the shoving, so I’ll ask them to stop myself."

He rubbed the back of his neck. "Somehow. It’ll be the first time I’ve had to tell people to stop harassing politicians. It’s weird being on this side for once."

Yunohana released the most ladylike of graceful laughs, mouth hidden behind her sleeve. Then, she replied, "They will not like you less for it, that much I’m certain of. But please hear me also, Lord Grey. Yesterday you called this a part of the trade. I have thought on it, and I decline."

"A trade is closed and forgotten. What Japan watched you pay for Kawanami will not be forgotten, and amends will be made, properly, in this nation’s own manner. Refusing them would be its own insult." Her eyes came up to his, soft and entirely immovable. "So I ask you not to try."

Kaiden observed her for a good long moment, then sighed.

"...Then I’ll lose this one gracefully."

...

He went live from the veranda steps that afternoon, alone in Aria’s feed, sitting in a plain shirt with his bandaged forearm on his knee.

The viewer counter detonated.

- Guildless Dave: He’s alive!! Confirmed sighting!

- Old Awakener: The petition reached my prefecture’s office in forty minutes. I signed it twice.

"So." Kaiden scratched his cheek. "I hear some of you have been quite busy recently."

The chat achieved a velocity no moderator on the planet could have read, let alone managed.

"I’ll just say it without beating around the bush. I’d like you to leave the Shogunate Circle and the Japanese government alone."

"Yesterday went the way it did because an intelligent and sneaky monster spent a long time building a trap, and it cheated the oldest gate law we know. Boss monsters stay inside, defending the core."

"The people your anger is landing on are the wrong ones. The Twelfth Garrison put their bodies between that thing’s guns and mine."

"Their captain asked for the most dangerous job in the square, out loud, and her medic sewed a man’s shoulder shut under fire. That’s who works for the government you’re flooding with complaints."

He looked into the feed for a moment, then added, honestly, "The bowing at the headquarters can also stop. Security doesn’t know what to do with you."

The chat took his words to heart with the discipline of a nation and the reading comprehension of a fandom.

By late afternoon the Circle’s phone lines were jammed again, wall to wall with formal apologies and thanks. The petition site relaunched itself as a gratitude campaign carrying the same four hundred thousand signatures.

Three breweries announced they would be sending the Twelfth Garrison a year of drinks, and the crowd outside headquarters stopped bowing, turned around, and bowed at the rest of the country instead.

Sonoda delivered the update at the estate that evening, reading from her folder at parade rest while the family ate dinner around her.

"The phone lines are considered recovered, as Legal has withdrawn all concerns. The Gates seat’s letter was refused the moment the council sat, unanimously."

A page turned. "And the Media seat calls today’s broadcast the most successful in the guild’s history. He formally requests to know whether Lord Grey intends to stay."

"What a stupid question," Kaiden grinned. "Why would I leave the land of opportunity?"

It was time to level up using Japan’s remaining dungeons!