[Complete] Ch 6.4 Is it Wrong for a Sword to Remain Sheathed Against Injustice?

Is it Wrong for a Sword to Remain 

Sheathed Against Injustice?

Story Starts

-=&&=-

Chapter 6.4

The Gale’s Justice

Demands a Stakeout

Earlier…

The textile district had swallowed them whole, spat them out somewhere near the fountain square, and now Ryuu found herself pressed into a gap between two buildings whilst her Goddess peered round the corner through dark spectacles that made her look like an escaped criminal.

"Report, Star Two. Any sign of pursuit?"

"Negative, Star One." Kaguya leant against the opposite wall, utterly composed despite having sprinted through four streets and vaulted a laundry line. "The high elf has abandoned the chase."

"I believe she was never chasing us to begin with," Ryuu deadpanned. "We were escaping so we wouldn't be seen."

"We cannot assume that. Riveria Ljos Alf is one of the sharpest minds in Orario. If she clocked us at the jagamarukun stall, our entire operation is compromised."

"She was buying fried potato dumplings for their Familia member, Star One."

"That is exactly what she would want us to think."

Ryuu closed her eyes and counted to five. The trench coat itched at her collar. The fedora sat too low on her brow, and every time she adjusted it, the brim flopped back down as though Arachne had personally engineered it to humiliate her. The spectacles pinched the bridge of her nose.

She had killed monsters. She had faced a Level 4 murderer in open combat. She had stood in the ashes of Rivira and helped with the rebuild.

None of it had prepared her for this.

"Star One," she said. "Perhaps we should reconsider—"

"Bunny." Astraea turned, lowering her spectacles just enough to reveal one starlit eye. "There is no reconsidering in deep cover. There is only the mission."

"…Understood."

"Wonderful." Astraea pushed the spectacles back up and produced a bag of jagamarukun from within her coat. Where she had been keeping them, Ryuu did not know and did not wish to ask. "Ration break. Two minutes. Then we proceed to the observation point."

Kaguya accepted a potato puff with one hand. With the other, she withdrew a wine glass from the depths of her own coat—an actual glass, stemmed, already half full—and took a measured sip.

Ryuu stared at it.

"Where did you—when did you pour that?"

"An agent never reveals her methods, Bunny."

"Do not call me Bunny."

"Star Three Bunny, then."

"That is worse."

Astraea raised a hand, and both of them fell silent out of sheer trained instinct. Their Goddess had also produced a wine glass from somewhere. She extended it towards Kaguya with grave ceremony.

"To the operation."

"To the operation, Star One."

The glasses met with a delicate clink that echoed down the alley like the tolling of Ryuu's dignity being lowered into its grave.

She watched them drink. Her Goddess—the divine embodiment of justice, the being to whom Ryuu had sworn her blade and her life—stood in a back alley in a brown trench coat, sipping wine through a disguise, on a mission to stalk their neighbour through the streets of Orario.

'This is fine. This is for a good cause. This will settle the matter of Emiya once and for all, and then everything can return to normal.'

The wine glasses clinked again. Apparently there was a second toast.

'Nothing about this is normal.'

"Right." Astraea handed her empty glass to Kaguya, who made both disappear into her coat in a single practised motion. "Status review. Star Two, walk me through the operational picture."

"Copy, Star One." Kaguya straightened from the wall. She had, at some point during the afternoon, stopped resisting all of this and begun to genuinely enjoy herself, which Ryuu found more disturbing than anything Evilus had ever done. "Person of interest designated Chef. Current status: unknown, presumed en route to rendezvous. Secondary contacts: two Guild employees, designated Wolf and Fairy. Their shift concludes in the late afternoon, at which point the three will proceed to an unknown location, presumably a dining establishment."

"And our objective?"

"Observe Chef in an unguarded social environment. Confirm or eliminate suspicion of hostile affiliation." Kaguya's mouth curved beneath the shadow of her hat brim. "For the peace of mind of a certain agent."

Ryuu's ears burned. "You could simply say my name."

"Names are a liability in the field, Bunny."

"Correct, Star Two." Astraea nodded solemnly. "Athena's manual is explicit on this point. Chapter three, section two: 'An agent who speaks a true name aloud has already failed.'"

"That manual was written by a goddess who spends her days arguing with Aphrodite about upholstery."

"That manual," Astraea said, "has kept us alive this long."

"We have been in no danger at any point today."

"That you know of."

There was no arguing with divine logic. Ryuu had learnt this over five years of service, and yet some doomed part of her kept trying anyway.

"Star One. The afternoon grows late. If we intend to reach the observation point before Wolf and Fairy end their shift, we should move."

Astraea's expression shifted—the playfulness folding away beneath something brisk and bright-eyed. She stowed the jagamarukun bag back into whichever expanded pocket her coat concealed and adjusted her hat.

"Agreed. Formation Delta. Star Two takes point, Bunny covers the rear. Move out."

Formation Delta, as far as Ryuu could determine, meant walking down the street in single file whilst pretending not to know one another—which would have been considerably more effective if all three of them were not wearing identical coats, identical hats, and identical spectacles, and if Kaguya had not resumed carrying her wine glass openly.

They drew stares. A fruit vendor watched them pass with his mouth slightly open. Two children pointed. A cat tracked their progress from a windowsill with what Ryuu could only describe as judgement.

'Blend in,' the manual had said. 'The finest agent is the one no one remembers.'

Every single person on this street was going to remember them until the day they died.

They wound through the commercial quarter, and the buildings grew taller as they neared the city's heart. Ryuu lifted her gaze past the rooftops. Babel rose ahead of them, its pale immensity swallowing the late afternoon light—the tower, the Dungeon beneath it, and the Guild headquarters crouched in its long shadow. Somewhere in that building, Rose Fannet and Sophie were finishing their shift, entirely unaware that they had been assigned code names by a goddess.

Kaguya slowed at the mouth of a narrow alley two streets from the Guild plaza and raised a fist. Ryuu recognised the signal from page twelve of the manual: halt and converge. She hated that she recognised it.

They filed into the alley. It was a cramped, forgettable sliver of space between a cobbler's shop and a shuttered warehouse—laundry lines overhead, a scatter of empty crates, a single door set into the warehouse wall.

"Gode—" Kaguya caught herself, coughed once, and recovered. "Star One. We are approaching the objective. The Guild lies two streets ahead with clear sightlines from the plaza's edge."

"Excellent work, Star Two." Astraea took up position against one wall, and Kaguya mirrored her against the other, and somehow both wine glasses had reappeared. "However, the person of interest may not have arrived yet. We should not commit to the plaza prematurely. An agent exposed too early is an agent wasted."

"Copy, Star One. Wolf and Fairy end their shift in the late afternoon. We have time to establish position at leisure."

"Then we hold here and finalise the approach." Astraea swirled her wine. "Star Two, your assessment of the plaza?"

"Three viable observation points. The fountain benches offer proximity but poor cover. The café terrace offers cover but requires purchasing beverages."

"We shall require beverages regardless. What is the third option?"

"A jagamarukun stall on the plaza's western edge."

"…Star Two." Astraea's voice dropped to something reverent. "You are telling me the finest observation point also sells jagamarukun?"

"The Fates smile upon the righteous, Star One."

"They do. They truly do."

The glasses clinked a third time.

Ryuu stood at the alley's mouth, keeping watch because someone had to, and let the absurdity wash over her. The strange thing—the thing she would never admit aloud, not under torture—was that her Goddess looked happy. Genuinely, radiantly happy, in a way Ryuu had not seen since before the casualty reports began arriving weekly. Whatever this farce accomplished regarding Emiya, it had already accomplished something else entirely.

'Perhaps that was the true purpose all along.'

She was still turning that thought over when something moved at the edge of her vision.

Ryuu's hand went to her hip before she remembered her sword was concealed beneath the trench coat. She turned, weight shifting, gaze sweeping the alley—

The warehouse door stood ajar.

It had been closed a moment ago. She was certain of it. And from the dark gap between door and frame, a single hand extended into the fading light.

It beckoned. Slowly. Deliberately. One curling finger at a time.

Ryuu stared at it.

The hand continued beckoning.

She looked up and down the alley. Empty. She looked back at the hand. It was still beckoning. It had seen her see it, and it was content to wait.

"Goddess. Kaguya—"

"Ahem."

Two sets of dark spectacles turned towards her in perfect unison. Ryuu felt heat crawl up her neck. Even now. Even with a disembodied hand summoning them into a dark warehouse, the protocols held.

She exhaled through her nose.

"…Star One. Star Two."

"Go ahead, Bunny."

Ryuu gestured towards the door. The hand, as if sensing its audience had grown, beckoned with renewed enthusiasm.

The wine glasses vanished. Astraea and Kaguya exchanged a look—a long, silent exchange that Ryuu could not follow, spectacles angled towards each other, some entire conversation passing between goddess and samurai without a single word. Then Astraea nodded once, sharply, and raised her right hand.

She clasped it at the base with her left. Her index and middle fingers extended together, pressed flat. Her thumb pointed skyward. She held the peculiar shape close to her chest, elbows tucked, and pressed her back against the alley wall.

Ryuu had no idea what it meant. It resembled no hand sign from the manual—she had read all forty pages, twice, under duress—and it resembled no elven gesture, no adventurer's signal, nothing. It looked like her Goddess was pointing at the door in the most needlessly elaborate fashion possible.

Kaguya, without hesitation, copied it exactly. Fingers extended, thumb raised, back to the opposite wall. The two of them began advancing on the door in tandem, sliding along the brickwork step by careful step, their strange pointed hands leading the way.

They paused. Both heads swivelled towards Ryuu.

Two blank, spectacled stares. Waiting.

"You cannot be serious."

The stares did not waver.

"That gesture means nothing. It is not in the manual. It has no function. You are simply pointing at the door with extra steps."

Astraea's stare acquired a quality of divine disappointment. Kaguya's acquired a quality of profound, personal judgement, which was somehow worse.

Ryuu looked to the heavens. The heavens, as was their custom of late, offered nothing.

She sighed, clasped her right hand at the base, extended two fingers, raised her thumb, and pressed her back to the wall.

"There we are," Astraea whispered, beaming. "Formation Sigma. On my mark, we breach—"

Several hands shot out of the darkness.

They came fast—too fast, from the gap in the door, more hands than the gap should reasonably contain—and before Ryuu could draw breath to shout, fingers closed around her coat, her arm, her ridiculous hat. Beside her, Astraea let out a small "oh" of what sounded distressingly like delight, and Kaguya's hand flew to her sword hilt a half-second too late.

The hands pulled.

The alley lurched sideways. The door frame swallowed them whole.

The last thing Ryuu saw was darkness.

-=&&=-

The darkness, it turned out, was a bag.

Ryuu registered this in stages: the rough weave of cloth against her face, the firm but oddly courteous hands steering her by the shoulders, the sound of a chair being scraped across a floor. She was deposited onto the seat with the gentle efficiency of someone handling fragile cargo. To her left, she heard the distinct sound of a wine glass being set on a hard surface, which meant Kaguya had somehow rescued her drink during an abduction.

Then the bag was whipped away.

Ryuu blinked against the sudden light.

The warehouse interior had been transformed. Magic-stone lamps hung at deliberate intervals, casting pools of dramatic amber light. Crates had been arranged into what could only be described as seating. And occupying those seats, arrayed in a neat semicircle facing the same direction as Ryuu, sat the rest of the Astraea Familia.

All of them. Celty, Neze, Noin, Iska, Maryu, Lyana, Asta—every member save Alise and Lyra—each wearing an identical trench coat, an identical fedora, and identical dark spectacles.

Celty gave her a small, guilty wave. It was becoming her signature.

"Welcome," said a voice, rich with theatrical gravity, "to the briefing."

Ryuu turned towards the front of the room.

A large wooden box dominated the far wall. It stood roughly the height of a man, its front face fitted with a rectangular opening, and its edges carved with decorative flourishes that suggested someone had put genuinely unnecessary effort into it. Lamplight had been arranged to illuminate the opening from within, and framed inside that glowing rectangle—seated, legs crossed, hat tilted at a jaunty angle—was a god.

Hermes.

He sat inside the box as though this were a perfectly dignified place for a deity to conduct business, his blonde hair swept back beneath his own fedora, his grin visible even in silhouette.

"Please," he said, spreading his hands. "Call me Agent Mercury."

"Understood, Agent Mercury," Astraea replied warmly, already seated, wine glass already refilled. "A wonderful presentation format. Very mysterious."

"Thank you, Justice Actual. I designed the box myself."

"He made us carry it here," said a flat voice from beside the box.

Ryuu's gaze shifted—and found a kindred spirit.

Asfi Al Andromeda stood at the box's flank in a trench coat she had clearly been forced into, holding a wooden pointer she had clearly been forced to hold. Her spectacles—her real ones—had been replaced with the dark variety, which she'd pushed up onto her forehead so she could glare at the world unimpeded. Beside her, the chienthrope Lulune Louie was inspecting the contents of a small crate with professional interest.

Asfi's eyes met Ryuu's across the warehouse.

Neither of them spoke. Neither of them needed to. In that single shared look passed a complete conversation—your deity too? / my deity too—the wordless communion of two souls chained to divinities who thought all of this was tremendous fun.

Asfi closed her eyes briefly. Ryuu inclined her head a fraction. A treaty, silently ratified.

"Now then!" Hermes clapped his hands from within his box. "Introductions. You know me. The lovely lady with the pointer is Agent Nursemaid—"

"I did not agree to that name."

"—and our quartermaster this evening is Agent Sticky Fingers."

"That one's accurate," Lulune said cheerfully.

"The remainder of your Familia has already been processed, designated, and equipped." Hermes gestured grandly at the seated rows. "Agents Needle, Whisper, Anvil, Petal, Latch, Ember, and Twine. Don't worry about which is which. They know. That's what matters."

Ryuu looked down the row of her Familia members. Noin raised a hand in a small salute. Iska mouthed I'm Anvil with evident pride. Maryu mouthed no, I'm Anvil, and the two of them began a silent, escalating argument conducted entirely in gestures.

"Agent Mercury." Astraea leant forward, her indigo eyes bright behind her spectacles. "The message said you had assets for the operation."

"Ah." Hermes's grin sharpened. "Indeed, I do. Nursemaid? The gadgets, if you please."

Asfi's sigh could have powered a small sailing vessel. She stepped forward, pointer in hand, as Lulune dragged the crate to the front and began laying items on a cloth-draped table with the reverence of a street vendor arranging stolen watches.

"Item one." Asfi indicated a pair of small, dull crystals, each no larger than a thumbnail, one fitted with a tiny clip. "A Familia resonance set. The clipped crystal, once attached to a target's clothing, transmits all nearby sound to all the paired devices." She held up the second crystal, which had been fitted into a curved shell shaped to sit inside an ear. "The receiving piece is worn like so. Effective range: half the city. I based the harmonics on the long-distance communication stones, miniaturised. The receiving piece also doubles as a communication device between all receiving pieces."

A ripple of genuine awe moved through the seated agents. Even Ryuu had to admit—privately, grudgingly—that the craftsmanship was extraordinary. Items like this didn't exist. Asfi Al Andromeda had apparently invented an entirely new category of magic item because her god had asked her to help stalk a noodle vendor.

"Item two." Asfi lifted what appeared to be an ordinary leather wristband, then rotated it to reveal a small aperture on the underside. "Compressed-air dart launcher. Single shot. The dart is tipped with a sleeping draught of my own formulation—enough to drop a Level 2 in roughly eight seconds. Aim away from yourself." She paused, and her gaze travelled with weary deliberateness across her audience. "Away from yourself."

"Why are you looking at us?" Iska whispered.

"She knows why," Neze whispered back.

"Item three." A small brooch shaped like a songbird. "Voice modulator. Speak whilst wearing it, and your voice emerges as someone else's. Useful for misdirection." Asfi pinned it to her collar, and when she next spoke, the flat exasperated tones of Asfi Al Andromeda emerged as the flat exasperated tones of an elderly man. "I have already come to regret making this."

The room burst into applause. Asfi, in the elderly man's voice, told them to stop.

"And item four!" Hermes interjected from his box, unable to contain himself. "My personal favourite!"

Asfi's jaw tightened. She held up what appeared, in every observable respect, to be a jagamarukun.

Silence fell over the Astraea Familia. It was the reverent silence of true believers beholding the sacred rendered profane.

"Smoke pellet," Asfi said. "Bite-resistant casing. Throw it against any hard surface and it produces enough smoke to fill a small plaza. Do not eat it. I designed it to look like a jagamarukun for concealment purposes, a decision I now understand was a mistake, because three separate people in this room have already tried to eat one."

Nobody confessed. Celty, Ryuu noted, was staring very hard at the floor.

"Distribution!" Hermes declared. Lulune moved down the rows, dispensing equipment with a running commentary of "one for you, don't lose it," whilst Asfi followed behind her, adjusting fittings and repeating "away from yourself" at intervals.

When Lulune reached Kaguya, the paired resonance crystals changed hands. Kaguya examined the clipped crystal, turned it over once, and made it vanish into her coat with the same fluid ease she reserved for wine glasses. Something about the motion made Ryuu deeply uneasy.

"Agents." Hermes leant forward within his glowing frame, and the lamplight caught his grin. "Your mission is simple. Observe. Record. Confirm the character of one Shirou Emiya, noodle merchant, archer, and—if my sources are correct—a man of considerable interest." His grin turned conspiratorial. "Agent Bay Leaf reports that he exudes an aura that is remarkably peaceful to elves. That, or Laurie—I mean, Agent Bay Leaf—may simply have a crush." He coughed into his fist. "Ahem. The Guild plaza awaits. Your targets emerge within the hour."

He paused for effect. Hermes never met a pause he didn't like.

"This message will self-destruct in ten seconds."

BOOM.

The explosion came from somewhere behind the box—a sharp percussive crack accompanied by a burst of grey smoke, at most two seconds into the promised ten. Ryuu's sword was half-drawn before her brain catalogued the scene: Lulune standing beside a small detonation charge, trigger device in hand, expression openly bored; Hermes doubled over inside his box, hacking and wheezing as the smoke funnelled directly into the opening; Asfi watching her god cough with an expression of complete serenity.

"Lulune—cough—that was not—cough—ten seconds—"

"Sounded like ten to me."

"It was two—"

"Right, everyone out!" Lulune spun to the seated agents, waving both arms like a woman herding geese. "Briefing's over! Mission's live! Out, out, out—mind the smoke, don't touch the box, especially don't touch the crate—"

The Astraea Familia rose in a rustle of identical coats and filed towards the door in something approximating an orderly evacuation. Astraea paused at the threshold to bow graciously towards the coughing box. Kaguya saluted it with her wine glass. Ryuu was carried along in the current of trench-coated bodies, past Asfi, who gave her one final look of profound solidarity before the door frame passed overhead.

Behind them, in the thinning smoke, Asfi turned to her god.

"Shouldn't we tell them the earpiece bonds to the wearer? It won't detach for a full day once it's set."

Hermes, still wheezing, waved a hand airily. His grin had already recovered, even if his lungs hadn't.

"Details, Asfi. Details." He straightened his hat inside his ruined box. "I expect a full report on this operation, by the way. Every development. Especially the embarrassing ones."

Asfi looked at the ceiling of the warehouse, found no help there, and sighed.

-=&&=-

The entire Astraea Familia emerged from an abandoned warehouse into the golden light of late afternoon, nine women in identical trench coats, identical fedoras, and identical dark spectacles, filing out of a single unmarked door in single file.

The street noticed.

A woman carrying a basket of bread stopped mid-stride. A pair of Ganesha Familia patrolmen slowed, exchanged a look, and evidently decided this was a problem for somebody else. The cat from earlier—Ryuu was almost certain it was the same cat—observed their emergence from a nearby windowsill and judged them anew.

'The finest agent,' Ryuu thought grimly, 'is the one no one remembers.'

Nine of them. In broad daylight. From a warehouse.

She adjusted her hat brim, lifted her gaze towards the rooftops out of trained habit—

—and locked eyes with Alise and Lyra.

Her captain and the prum were crouched on a rooftop two buildings distant, frozen mid-surveillance, in the exact same coats, the exact same hats, the exact same spectacles.

Nobody moved.

Alise raised one hand and executed a slow, elaborate gesture—thumb over fist, two fingers to her eyes, a rotating motion of the wrist—that meant absolutely nothing in any signalling system known to mortals or gods.

Beside her, unmistakably, Lyra clocked her on the head.

-=&&=-

End

Follow me on my other socials 

and stack additional voting 

points on the story of your 

choosing.

𝕏Twitter𝕏

🔞𝕏Twitter𝕏🔞

🥤Tumblr🥤

🤖Discord🤖

🦋BlueSky🦋