Chapter 18 of Dragon's Legacy (DL)

I stood awkwardly in the center of the asphalt road, and waited for the negotiating party.Khagan stood in front of me, appearing far more comfortable than I was. I wasn’t sure if he was actually inside the Dragonsuit or puppeting it from a distance. As a Heavy-weight, it was an enormous thing, far larger than my boring Medium-weight. There was more than enough room in the centaur’s lower torso section to fit a person inside.

We were both waiting for Narwhal to arrive, along with whatever diplomats the Singaporean government decided to send. It had only been a minute since my call to them had ended, and already, I could hear the difference. The gunshots in the distance had faded away. No more explosions from rockets or grenades. The background sounds of warfare were gone, leaving only silence behind. There were no sirens or screams left.“You said you are not a member of the Guild,” Khagan spoke, interrupting my musing.I stiffened a little, unable to stop myself, and looked up to the Mongolian’s intimidating helmet and visor. Even though that probably wasn’t where his actual head was, it was still where most of his cameras were.“I’m not,” I confirmed. “I’m an independent Pilot.”“Independents do not last long in Asia,” Khagan said. “Is that the same in North America?”

It sounded casual, but I knew it wasn’t. You didn’t survive that long as a Pilot by being an idiot, and Khagan had done more than survive. This man had led half a dozen nations on a merry chase for the last several years, and even now, he was almost certainly attacking Singapore so that he could flip China the bird. He’d built up a Faction of his own, earning enough loyalty that they followed him here, rather than stay behind.“Usually, yeah,” I said.“So you are young,” Khagan said, as if he was stating a fact. “You must not have seen many battles.”I bit back a laugh. Was he trying to intimidate me? Trying to act like he was a big bad threat, and that I should do things his way? Maybe he thought he could pressure me into revealing some information that might help him in the negotiations?

“You don’t know me,” I said, remembering his words earlier. “That’s… amusing.”Khagan tilted his Suit’s head slightly, mimicking a very human gesture.“Should I?” he asked, bemused. “There are many warriors worth remembering. Enough that I could not remember all of them, even just for Asia. What use would I have for someone from so far away?”“I’m not criticizing you,” I said, shaking my head slightly. “I’m not that famous… but I’ve been around a while. The closest I’ve ever been to here was… when I fought in Samarkand three years ago. Actually, no. Manilla was after that. Both were before your time, I think.” The centaur-body shifted, its medieval knight torso leaning back slightly.“You fought the Behemoth at Samarkand?” he asked, cautiously.“I’ve fought him three times,” I said. “Leviathan four, and Simurgh twice.”For a moment, it occurred to me that I might sound like I was bragging – or worse, like I was shaming Khagan for not showing up to any of those fights. Too late to pull that back now. I just had to press on.“Of course, it’s not as dangerous as the old days,” I continued. “Before we had the Dragonsuits, it was a lot harder. No plasma rifles, no rail guns, no Metalstorm cannons… and no black hole guns.”

“It’s like that children’s game now…” Khagan said slowly. “The… whack-a-mole.” I chuckled. “Kind of,” I said. “They’re a lot more cautious these days, but that doesn’t make it any easier. You need more mobility, otherwise you’ll get trapped in a sinkhole, or nailed by a long-distance strike. Still, we’re only fighting to keep them out of a city – much better than fighting them inside of one. I did that once, and only once, and I never want to do that again.”A warm hmm was Khagan’s answer.“You have killed many?” he asked me. “Suits, or people?”My heart sank. So often that’s what it came back to. How many kills you had. The brutal tally system that some Pilots used to keep track of who was the ‘best’. It was a tradition that had crept into the world of Dragonsuits from the Air Force – any air force, from any nation.I didn’t really like the habit of bragging about your kills. It was stupid. If you were going to kill someone, then just kill them. If you weren’t, then don’t go running your mouth. Using dead people as a reason to brag was just sick, in my mind. It was easy to say stuff like that when you weren’t thinking, but that didn’t make it right.  Then again, I thought that way because my first exposure to kill claims had been from a smiling, charming psychopath, trying to get into my head. He was a real talker, and he’d talked a lot about how many kills he had. He acted like it was normal. Like it was just… the way things naturally should be.I killed that man. He deserved it.

But ever since then, whenever people asked about kills, I tried to avoid the topic. I hadn’t always been successful. Sometimes with other Pilots I had been willing to chat about kills like they were something to be proud of. Once or twice, I’d even been willing to make bets on who could kill more people. That was how I’d made friends with Taxman. I’d been on the front lines of a fifty-Suit pile-up, only ten of which were walking at the end. I could blame the stress all I wanted; it still made me feel a little sick to think about betting on how many people I could kill.“Many,” I said, my voice clipped and tense. It probably wasn’t polite to be so short with him, but right now, I didn’t care.

The light behind Khagan’s visor dimmed slightly at that, and he didn’t speak for a few moments. “You regret them?” he asked, a little more quietly.

An image flashed to my head. Carol Dallon, the hero known as Brandish. Her body lying in the street, face-up, as if staring up into heaven – but her eyes were missing. Carved out. Thank God that Amy and Vicky didn’t see her body until later, when it had been cleaned up.“Some of them,” I said, before continuing in a firmer voice. “But not all. Some people deserve to die.”Khagan nodded slowly. “Yes,” he agreed, old pain in his voice, like he was remembering his own failures. “In another life… perhaps we would have been friends.”“Why not this life?” I asked, pushing him a bit. “Our lives aren’t over yet.”Khagan laughed. Not loudly, but quietly, with a harsh pain.“You say this is a ceasefire, not a surrender,” he said, gesturing with his off-hand towards the rest of the city. “But it is a surrender. I am surrendering my dream. Worse: I am surrendering the dreams of my people. Perhaps we will survive, but we will never be what I hoped for. It is too late, now.”“Freedom?” I asked. Khagan did not reply, and I realized he might not understand, so I should say more. “Your dream was freedom?”“Freedom is nothing,” Khagan dismissed. “Our dream was power, so that we would never have kneel again.”“So Narwhal was right,” I muttered. “You were being used by the CUI.”“Of course,” Khagan said, uncaring of the potential consequences. “Who else benefitted? Who else had never lost to my forces? Did you believe the man who raided Korea and Japan with impunity could be driven off by the dregs of the Yangban? It was bad theater, but it was… required.”“I didn’t know your name until this morning,” I said, dismissively. “Don’t get too full of yourself, Khagan.”

“Ha!” the Mongol leader laughed. “And I did not know you, Wraith, until now.”

I smiled underneath my Dragonsuit’s armor plating.

Khagan was arrogant, boastful, and charismatic. Exactly the kind of person that would have raised my hackles at the university. But here, standing on a war-torn battlefield, it somehow wasn’t as grating as the jocks on campus were.

Maybe it was the fact that if he did something, I had a method of fighting back. Maybe it was that Khagan had earned his attitude through all the battles he’d fought. Maybe it was nothing more than my adrenaline or the disassociation that came to me so easily when I put on my neurohelmet. But regardless, I found that it wasn’t too hard to like the man.My comms chirped, and I turned my attention to them.“Wraith, this is Narwhal,” the Guild’s leader said. “We’re thirty seconds out. We’ll be approaching from the east. Is everything good there?”“Yeah,” I replied, flipping off my speakers. “Khagan is still here, and his side is holding to the ceasefire.”“Good,” Narwhal replied, a bite of tension in her voice. “If the negotiations fail, I want you to grab the Singaporean representative and get him out alive. I’ll handle Khagan.”I frowned, but I didn’t argue.Narwhal was one of the few Parahumans that could fight a Dragonsuit. That didn’t make it an ‘even’ fight by any means. Combat between Dragonsuits was fast and brutal, and throwing in a parahuman into the mix only made it more so. Rocket-tag, as Uber and Leet would have called it. Whoever gets the first hit usually wins.To most normal parahumans, Narwhal’s forcefields were nearly unstoppable, thanks to a combination of lethality, defensive durability, and her extreme control over them. To a Pilot, that durability might keep Narwhal alive for maybe a few seconds, depending on the loadout – but if you were within her range, then a few seconds was all she needed to slice you apart.

It was a sensible idea, but I still didn’t like it. I wasn’t the right person to fight Khagan, sure… but I also wasn’t sure that he needed to be fought.“Just… be careful,” I said. “He’s friendly.”“He’s killed nearly a thousand people today,” Narwhal said, her voice tight and controlled. “Civilians alone, not counting military.”

“I said friendly, not nice,” I said, a little irritated at myself. It was hard to find the right words to express what I thought. “Look, I’m gonna stay for the negotiations.”“What?” Narwhal asked in a clipped voice, before continuing, saying: “Hold on. I see you.”

I flipped my external speakers back on, and looked to Khagan.

“They’re here,” I told him.Khagan inclined his head, and then turned his upper torso to the side, so that he could watch their approach.From the east, a party of four people came walking down the tree-lined avenue towards us. They moved forward steadily, their pace slowed down by the normal human walking with them – not a parahuman, not a Pilot.

That was probably the Singaporean negotiator. He was dressed in military fatigues, with no rank insignia, no name-tabs, no nothing. The man was tense, his face scrunched up as he stayed two steps behind everyone else.

In the front, walking with a crystal-like shield constantly forming and dispersing in front of her, was Narwhal. The Guild’s leader looked angry, which was understandable given the situation. The Guild killed monsters, and maybe Narwhal had gotten used to the simplicity of that. This kind of… complexity… wasn’t normal for her, any more than it was for me.

On her left side was Beaver, the Light-weight Suit that had been sitting across from me in the dropship ride over. I wasn’t sure why he was here. Light Suits were more fragile than Mediums or Heavies. The only explanation I could see was that he was like Taxman, the Robin Hood Brigader that I knew, with the ability to overload an energy weapon. It made him incredibly deadly, despite being fragile. A glass cannon, in other words.

The final member of their group was Wieldmaiden, the other parahuman that had been brought along. I didn’t know her, nor what her power was. It was probably a Brute power, making her more durable, because otherwise Narwhal wouldn’t have brought her to Singapore.

“Khagan,” Narwhal called out as the group came within earshot.The Mongol leader looked at her, but did not speak. The Canadian frowned, but didn’t say anything more. The group stopped walking just a few meters away.

I was left in an awkward middle position, like a third wheel. I wasn’t standing next to Khagan himself, thankfully, because that would have looked real bad, but I was also a distance from the Guild and the Singaporean representative. I was somehow between them. A part of neither group, in a painfully accurate mimicry of my independent status.“Khagan,” said the Singaporean man. “I am here on behalf the Prime Minister of Singapore. Will you talk with us?”The man’s voice sounded familiar. My Suit recognized it faster than I did. A small window popped up on my advanced HUD, and the audio waveform was splayed out, like I was in a sound recording booth. A different waveform pulled up, and the Suit cross-referenced them nearly instantly, finishing by displaying a name in all bold, his title just beneath

The floating box above the man’s head read HONG, Lieutenant-General. It was the same man I’d talked to earlier, when I’d asked for permission to try the ceasefire. I remembered that he had said he was willing to back up my offer… I hadn’t realized that he meant he’d do it in person.“I will speak with you,” Khagan said slowly, his voice rumbling.General Hong nodded, and craned his neck upwards to look the Suit in the ‘eye’. It was probably harsh on his neck, but the man refused to back down, or show any signs of submission.“Why have you come here?” Hong asked. “Is it not obvious?” Khagan asked, shaking his knightly helmet from side to side. “I am here to conquer.”

Hong’s face tightened even more, which I thought was impressive given how wrinkled it already looked. It wasn’t from age. The man looked young for his rank. I couldn’t tell if he was in his thirties or forties. Instead, all lines had come from stress.“Why?” Hong asked. Khagan snorted, and one of his horse-like legs pawed at the ground in an idle display. I wasn’t sure what it was meant to be – irritation? Nervousness? I’d never been a horse girl, and for all I knew this was some strange instinct trained into the Mongolian raider by Dragon’s nanites.“Power,” he said. “Your military is well equipped, your industry strong, your positioning superb. If I held those advantages, then no one could ever put chains on my people again.”“And so you attack innocent people,” Hong stated with distaste. “Yes,” Khagan said, nodding. “I could say I wished for less death. It is true, but it also changes nothing. I knew people would die when I came here, and still, I came. You killed my people as well, in self-defense. We both knew what would happen.”“Is that your argument?” Hong asked, scoffing. “That every soldier made his choice, and nothing else matters?”“The die was already cast,” Khagan said, not answering Hong’s question. “As it is now. Would you like me to apologize? Would it bring back the dead on your side, or on mine?”Hong took a deep breath, and visibly tamped down some of his anger.“I want a permanent ceasefire,” the Lieutenant-General said firmly. “I want no more death in our city. But I cannot and will not surrender this city to you. Even if I did, you could never hold it.”“All true,” Khagan agreed. “Yet we cannot leave. There is no home for us on the mainland, and every one of my men will die before we kneel to the Yangban again. We have tasted enough despair for the rest of our lives, and we refuse to live that way again.”Hong grimaced as he heard those words. “Bastards,” he muttered, shaking his head, before he looked back up at Khagan with slightly less hostility, but more suspicion. “I can’t say I blame you for hating them… but attacking us? It makes you just as bad as the Yangban.”

Khagan growled at that, his entire Suit tensing up. The lance held in his right hand dropped from its raised position, lowering down closer to the ground, though it was still pointed off to the south.“You were lucky to be born in a place like this,” Khagan said harshly. “You have not been forced to live like us. If I was like the Yangban, I would have targeted your housing centers first. I would have killed a million people in my opening strike, just to teach the other five to fear me, and obey my commands. Do not compare me to those monsters. Those lies do not fit your tongue.”Hong grit his teeth, holding back a snarl. Tension filled the air, and it looked like the entire idea of a ceasefire was decaying rapidly. I should have been preparing for a fight. I should have been slowly moving over towards Hong, so that if the fighting resumed, I could carry him to safety. Instead, all I could think of was what Khagan had said.

Despair and fear.What had their lives been like, inside the CUI? What kind of tortures had they faced? I couldn’t know for sure, and imagining the physical punishments was both impossible and pointless…

…but I could imagine the mental torment. What it felt like, inside their heads. The feeling of helplessness. The belief that you were trapped. The grinding inevitability, the futility. Of course I could understand those things. I’d lived those same things for the last five years. I’d been so damaged by the bullying of my former best friend that it still affected me, even today. I tried my best, and I thought I was over most of it, but sometimes it crept up on me, like an old injury flaring back to life.Why had Khagan attacked Singapore? Because the Yangban had crippled him, and he was still trapped in that mindset. Still trapped in a world where strength was everything.

He probably couldn’t have even contemplated something as kind as asking for a new home. Not because he couldn’t intellectually understand it, but because he couldn’t trust them, emotionally. He was an abused dog, and now he saw everything through the lens of power.

“You want your people to live, Khagan,” I said, speaking up for the first time. Hong and Narwhal both glanced at me, but Khagan did not – his tall helmet still glared down at the Singaporean general from its lofty perch.“Yes,” the man said, after a moment.“Singapore wants the same,” I reminded him. “There’s got to be a way that you can both get what you want. Some middle ground.”“No,” Khagan disagreed. “You offer a false choice, Wraith. We knew this would be a choice between a fast death and a slow one. This way, at least, is more honest.”“Bullshit,” I said, turning my ‘head’ at the tauric Heavy-weight. “You’re still thinking like a prisoner. You’re still thinking like they want you to think. You want to be free of the Yangban? Then stop seeing the world like they do.”Khagan finally looked at me, and his helmet’s eyes glowed brighter, as if to respond. He didn’t get the chance. I cut him off, and kept talking.“You can’t trust them,” I continue, building up steam as I let my feelings out. “Fine! I was the same way. I’ve spent four years being that person, Khagan. I’m one of the first Pilots, but I refused to join any Faction for four years, because I was just like you. I didn’t dare stick so much as a toe outside my shell, because I knew – I knew! – that it would be chopped off. And I was wrong!”I thrust one hand out, pointing to Narwhal.“Narwhal welcomed me into her base today,” I told the man. “It was the first time I ever visited the Guild. You know why? Because I didn’t trust them. But they trusted me. They trusted me enough to let me walk into a secured perimeter with nothing more than my word. And I would have never known that if I hadn’t asked. If I hadn’t taken that first step. If I hadn’t tried.”Khagan looked to Narwhal, as if silently asking her if this was true. The Guild’s leader nodded slowly, her shimmering forcefield shield still held up, still ready to defend against him. “You don’t think you’ll live through this,” I said, nearly spitting the words out. “Why? Because you just don’t think it’s possible. Why?! Aren’t you Khagan? Aren’t you Genghis Khan reborn, or whatever the hell you keep saying? Are you telling me that you’re too scared to ask for help?”“Help with what, Wraith?” Khagan barked back at me angrily. “Death or slavery. That is all there is, nothing more! That is all that is left for me, and my people. I would rather die on my feet than on my knees.”“You don’t think that,” I countered. “If you thought that, you wouldn’t have come to this meeting. You wouldn’t have listened to us for a single second.”“I did that for my men!” Khagan roared. “I will not lose more of them!”“Your men are surrendering!” I told him, matching volume for volume. “Your own Pilots trusted me to not kill them! They were willing to risk their lives for a brighter future, where they wouldn’t die. Isn’t that exactly why you came here?!”Khagan hesitated. He knew that I was telling the truth, because I’d already told him about the three Pilots I’d captured.

He was trapped by his own logic. He’d come to Singapore to conquer it, and stand strong on his own. He’d been willing to risk his life, and the lives of all his men, on that gamble. That was easy, to a man like him. Everything depended on his own skill, his own strength. He could win and be proud of it, or he could lose and die with his honor.But he wasn’t willing to risk his pride. He didn’t want a brighter future badly enough to throw that pride away. Or maybe it wasn’t pride. Maybe it was guilt. The same guilt that had been filling my veins for years. The guilt that he wasn’t strong enough before now. The guilt that he had ever been weak, that he had been beaten so badly, and that drove him to prove his own self-worth.In so many ways, Khagan was similar to me. Maybe that’s why I was getting so angry at the man. It was like staring back at a younger version of myself, but somehow even stupider. Somehow even more prideful, and more arrogant, and more unwilling to learn from her own mistakes before it got her killed.

That was the worst part about suffering like we both had. Your future suffered just as much as your present day. What kind of life could I have had, if I’d gone to Arcadia instead of following Emma to Winslow? What kind of friends could I have made? Would my father still have been alive?

There were a million different realities out there, and every one of them had been cut off, like branches clipped from a tree. “Just ask,” I said, my anger slipping away as I stared at the Heavy-weight Suit. I was begging now. “They’re just words. Words are lot easier to use than bullets.”The blue-and-white armored Dragonsuit seemed locked in place now, where before it had been antsy and had been pawing at the ground with its hooves. I don’t know what Khagan was thinking. I could only hope that I’d gotten through his thick skull.

I didn’t turn to look at Narwhal or Lieutenant-General Hong. They were probably disappointed in me, probably thought I sounded too comfortable with the invader. I’d gone too far in some ways, sounded a little too traitorous. That was just another downside of being an independent; I didn’t get the same benefit of the doubt that another member of the Guild would have. Even though I was just trying to stop the fighting.

“Lieutenant-General Hong,” Khagan said finally, facing the Singaporean representative. “If I agree to this… permanent ceasefire… do I have your word that I and my men will come to no further harm?”

“Yes, you do,” Hong answered.The Mongol leader didn’t appear to move, but I thought I saw something, some small shift of motion. “Very well,” Khagan said softly. “And what are your terms? Do you want our Suits? You must know that you cannot use them.”“No, we can’t,” Hong agreed, bitterly. “Dragon’s genetic locks are impossible to remove. I also won’t ask for you to disarm, because I don’t think you’ll do it.”Khagan hummed, but he didn’t answer the implied question. That was fair. Just as Singapore would be understandably leery about trusting their attackers, so too would the Mongolians be unwilling to trust their attempted victims. “You will leave,” Hong said, after a few more moments. “Our government can announce that we negotiated an end to hostilities, and come up with some excuse to keep the people happy. We don’t care where you go next, so long as you never return to Singapore.”The Mongol laughed, but it was a sad, regretful sound, lacking any amusement.“I have no ability to leave,” Khagan told him. “We arrived in Malaysia two days ago through civilian freighters. We have no transportation.”Hong sucked in a breath through clenched teeth. “We can transport you away from our borders,” the Singaporean general said, though he didn’t sound happy about it. “But I assume you don’t want to return to China, so where would you go?”

“I don’t know,” Khagan admitted, shrugging his upper torso’s shoulders. “I expected to win or die. There is nowhere my men could go. What nation would ever accept my forces, after what we have done to them? And even if you found some unclaimed land, we would be helpless against any possible retaliation from the Yangban. Our options were thin before, but now they are barren. Did you think I chose to conquer you because I am a monster?”“The thought had crossed my mind,” Hong replied stiffly.“Mm,” Khagan hummed back. “Perhaps Wraith is right, and I am wrong about this place. Perhaps you are not the same as the Yangban... but it no longer matters. No nation will trust my word, after tonight.”“That’s your own fault,” Narwhal spoke up, her voice firm. “Don’t blame anyone else for it, Khagan.”“I did not blame anyone else,” the Mongol replied, irritated. “Do not put words in my mouth.”I watched the byplay nervously. This entire situation felt like my fault, somehow. Yes, I’d had the idea for the ceasefire, and it had worked, but now it was obvious that the entire negotiation was running into a severe roadblock.Singapore couldn’t transport Khagan and his raiders off their islands without dropping them off on someone else’s doorstep. In Southeast Asia, that was tantamount to declaring war. Especially given that Khagan’s reputation was solidly negative with everyone nearby.

Was it my responsibility to solve this issue? No. Not at all. I could hear the voice of the professor from my Philosophy of Logic class in the back of my head, explaining the chain of premises one more time.

I had stopped the killing with my ceasefire. That didn’t mean that it was my responsibility to solve all of Khagan’s problems.But I wanted to. A crazy thought slipped into my mind, and I paused while I thought about it.Singapore itself could support Khagan’s forces. That was why he had attacked them in the first place. They had a huge amount of industrial capacity for such a small nation, and they were keeping their own small amount of Dragonsuits operational. Of course, industry alone wasn’t enough for that – as many other nations had discovered. I strongly suspected that they had a hidden collective of Tinkers doing most of the real work.

Officially, Singapore was a neutral nation, and that’s why the Guild was so willing to help them out… but they did still sit at the mouth of the Strait of Malacca, the primary shipping lane between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Unimaginable wealth flowed through these waters, and I bet there was always someone trying to get to that wealth, to control it.Khagan’s force was pretty big. Narwhal had estimated fifty Suits on the way in, and since then, we’d confirmed even more than that. Many of them had been battered, and a lot of his Suits were dead or disabled, but that was still an enormous amount of firepower that could help defend the strait.But then, why would Singapore accept that deal at all? Khagan had killed many of their people. Why should they welcome their would-be conqueror? Even with an economic incentive, how on Earth could they ever trust the man?

My Dragonsuit’s head turned slowly towards Narwhal, and I thought about how long it had taken us to arrive. Ninety minutes. One-point-five hours. It was an incredibly fast trip across half the planet, but in terms of Suit brawls, it was incredibly slow. Narwhal herself had mentioned that the Guild would have gone after Khagan years ago, but he’d simply never stayed in one place long enough to do so.“I have an idea,” I said, interrupting the squabbling. “One that might solve both your problems.”“Both?” General Hong asked suspiciously. “Khagan has a problem. Singapore does not.”“All due respect, you do have a problem,” I said, apologetically. “You need a stronger defense. Khagan was trying to capture the city intact, and he still did an enormous amount of damage. If he’d gone straight for the power plants, the water purification plants, the vital infrastructure, he could have done a lot more in his opening attack.”“She’s right,” Khagan acknowledged. “If the Yangban had wanted me to destroy this place, I could have. Your forces are brave, but your island is too small. You cannot hide your vital targets behind great distances of empty land, and your Dragonsuits are too few to defend the coastline.”“You cannot be serious,” General Hong said, as realization flooded his face. “No. Absolutely not. The Prime Minister and Parliament would never accept it. The people would be outraged. We’re not going to give a home to the man who wanted to conquer us.”“Did you want to rule them?” I asked, turning to Khagan. “Did you want to deal with the people’s demands? The economy? The sewer lines? I mean, maybe I’m wrong, but I think you just wanted a safe place where you could keep your Suits operational, so that you could defend yourselves. They’ve got a lot of islands here, they could stick you on one of them, away from the city. Out of sight, out of mind.”“Ruling does not interest me,” Khagan said, musingly. “Wraith is right in that. But even if this land accepted me, I would grow bored sitting in a gilded cage. I am a warrior. I want to fight.”“You know,” I said, drawing the words out slowly. “I happen to know these people who like fighting. They’re such good fighters, they go after the worst monsters in the world. But they’re all the way over in Canada, and they can’t really get to Asia that quickly. It might be real nice if they had a… branch chapter in a nice, neutral nation like Singapore. And since Singapore would be justified in not trusting you, maybe the Guild could leave a few of its Pilots and parahumans here, as a safeguard.”

I raised an arm and gestured lazily towards Narwhal.

Silence filled the asphalt road for a moment as everyone considered my proposal.