The conference ended without further incident.
Relatively speaking.
The questions that followed my demonstration had been predictable. Frightened people looking for reassurance wrapped in the language of journalism. How many of those creatures do you command? Are they a threat to civilians? Who exactly are these faction leaders you've negotiated with? Can you prove they'll honor these arrangements?
I answered what I could. Deflected what I couldn't. Left enough gaps to maintain necessary ambiguity. At the same time the supernatural world needed to be uncertain about the full extent of what I could do.
Uncertainty was its own deterrent.
By the time I stepped off that stage, the broadcast had already been viewed by hundreds of millions. Social media did the rest. Governments started requesting private meetings almost immediately. Apparently the Mishima Corporation's contact lines crashed within twenty minutes of the conference ending.
E.V.E. handled it. Thank god for that.
The next few days were honestly a nightmare.
Intelligence directors wanting detailed breakdowns of supernatural presence in their countries. Heads of state calling at all hours oscillating between demanding answers and barely hiding the fact that they were absolutely terrified. Military advisors pitching countermeasures against supernatural threats that I had to very carefully explain were useless—without making them feel completely useless in the process.
Combat I can handle. Politics? Genuinely draining in a way that no amount of training prepares you for.
And then there were the ones who tried to intimidate me.
I'd expected it honestly. Certain kinds of leaders can't interpret anything except through the framework of who's dominant and who isn't. A young man showing up unannounced on the world stage and declaring himself humanity's representative without clearing it with them first? Yeah. That went over exactly as well as you'd imagine.
Several of them came into our meetings with that energy. Veiled threats dressed up in diplomatic language. Suggestions that my assets could be frozen. That certain investigations might suddenly find new life. That my citizenship situation could become—complicated.
I scoffed. Right to their faces.
They didn't like that.
So I showed them what I could do.
Nothing dramatic. Just enough. A quiet demonstration in whatever room we happened to be sitting in at the time.
That shut them up quickly.
Every single time without exception.
The posturing just—stopped. The threats evaporated. What was left was much more honest. Fear, barely held together behind professional composure, and the very pragmatic realization that whatever leverage they thought they had over me was completely imaginary.
Terrified people negotiate better than arrogant ones. Useful lesson.
The American president took the longest. Six hours of back and forth before he finally came around. The Europeans were more reasonable once the initial shock settled—I think centuries of living alongside supernatural folklore made the whole thing slightly less cosmically destabilizing for them. China surprised me the most. Quiet, precise, asked the sharpest questions of anyone I spoke with and then agreed faster than almost everyone else.
I don't have any illusions about why.
But one by one they all came around.
And at the end of it—after days of negotiations bleeding into each other—they agreed.
A global summit. Every major world leader under one roof to formally establish humanity's position regarding the supernatural world. The Mishima Corporation as the coordinating body.
Me at the head of it.
I was standing at my office window when the last confirmation came through. City stretched out below me, lights coming on as evening settled in.
"All parties have confirmed, Leon," E.V.E. said. "The summit is on."
"Good."
"You don't sound particularly thrilled."
"I'm thrilled. I'm also exhausted."
"You've slept nineteen hours across the last eight days."
"That's fine."
"It is genuinely not fine."
"E.V.E."
"Yes?"
"Note my concern and move on."
A pause. The kind that managed to communicate disapproval despite having no emotional architecture to produce it from.
"The summit is in three weeks," she continued. "Shall I begin preparations?"
"Yeah," I said. "Get started."
"One more thing," E.V.E. added before signing off.
"What?"
"Kyoto."
I paused.
Right. The trip with Sona. It had originally been scheduled three days ago. Then the Old Satan Faction had decided to start a war during a peace treaty and that had gone out the window along with everything else.
"Sona is already waiting for you," E.V.E. said. There was something in her tone. Not quite amusement. Close enough to it.
"You could have led with that."
"I could have," she agreed. "Preparations for the summit will be ready for your review upon your return. Enjoy Kyoto, Leon."
She signed off.
I stood there for a moment longer, the quiet of the office settling around me. The weight of the past six days sat heavy across my shoulders.
Kyoto.
A few days. Just Sona and me, away from all of this.
I could manage that.
I reached inward, felt the teleportation spell form around me with ease.
The office dissolved.
=====
The living room of the Sitri estate in Kuoh City came into focus around me.
Sona was seated on the couch, her coat already on and hair already done.
She looked up from the book in her lap.
"You're late." she said.
"I was working."
"You're always working."
I didn't have a particularly good counter to that so I didn't try. "Are you ready?"
She closed the book with a snap and stood, straightening her coat.
"Are you packed?" she asked.
"I'll manage."
"Leon."
"Hayama handled it," I said.
Sona pinched the bridge of her nose beneath her glasses. "Of course he did." She picked up her bag. "Shall we—"
Then the front door burst open.
Serafall Leviathan materialized in the doorway wearing an enormous traveling coat, a hat that was aggressively too large and an expression of someone who had absolutely been invited and was not crashing anything whatsoever.
"Sera-tan is here~!"
Sona went very still.
"Onee-sama, what are you doing here?"
"Going to Kyoto obviously!" Serafall beamed, hoisting an overnight bag that was somehow even larger than her hat.
She swept into the room but then her eyes landed on me.
Then her eyes landed on me.
My enhanced cognition caught it immediately. The micro-expressions that most people wouldn't register in a hundred viewings processed in real time.
A strand of silver hair getting tucked behind her ear for absolutely no practical reason.
The warmth rising in her cheeks.
"Oh. Leon. Hi."
"Serafall," I said.
"Hi," she said again.
I glanced sideways at Sona.
She was already looking at me.
Her expression said she had arrived at the exact same conclusion I had approximately simultaneously.
We looked at each other.
We both sighed. Quietly. At the same time.
"You weren't invited," Sona said, redirecting toward the more immediately manageable problem.
"Leon doesn't mind." Serafall turned those bright eyes on me. "Right?"
I looked at Serafall. Then at Sona.
Sona's expression was perfectly neutral but it carried a very clear subtext.
"It's fine,"
"It is not—"
"Yay! Family trip!"
Sona's eye twitched.
"I'm going to regret this,"
"Probably," I said over my shoulder.
The look she gave the back of my head was almost audible.
Serafall laughed from behind.
I kept walking.
=====
The private jet was comfortable, spacious and quiet. The kind of aircraft that made long distance travel genuinely pleasant.
We could have teleported directly to Kyoto. It would have taken seconds. But Sona had pointed out—correctly—that arriving via teleportation as the representative of humanity's supernatural framework sent a certain kind of message. One that suggested we operated outside normal human infrastructure entirely.
Better to arrive like a person.
Besides, the travel time gave us room to breathe. To decompress between the chaos of the past week and whatever was waiting in Kyoto.
That reasoning had made complete sense before Serafall invited herself along.
Within the first twenty minutes she had rearranged her seat three times, ordered every available snack simultaneously, attempted to watch a magical girl anime at a volume that suggested she had forgotten other people existed, and was currently trying to teach the flight attendant a handshake she had apparently invented entirely on the spot.
Sona sat beside me, a document open on her tablet that she had been attempting to read for the past fifteen minutes without successfully processing a single word of it.
She closed the tablet.
I looked at her.
She looked at me.
We both sighed.
There really wasn't anything else to do about Serafall. She was a force of nature. You didn't manage her. You simply existed in her vicinity and made your peace with it.
"Serafall," I said.
She looked over immediately, bright and attentive in that way of hers that made it genuinely difficult to be exasperated with her.
"Sit down and be quiet for a few minutes."
She blinked. Then pointed at herself. "Me?"
"Do you see anyone else standing on an aircraft conducting a handshake tutorial?"
She considered this with apparent sincerity then dropped back into her seat then she tucked her legs up, wrapped her arms around her knees, and looked at us with the expectant attention of someone ready to be entertained.
"Fine," she said. Then after approximately four seconds— "Can I talk though?"
"As long as it's important." Sona replied.
Serafall opened her mouth. Closed it. Thought about it genuinely.
"How did you do that thing at the press conference," she said finally, leaning forward. Her expression had shifted—the playfulness still present but something more focused underneath it. "The shadow monsters. I've been thinking about it since it happened."
The cabin settled into something noticeably more serious.
I considered for a moment. Then decided there wasn't much point in being vague with these two specifically.
"Annihilation Maker," I said.
Serafall stared at me.
"...What."
"I'm the current wielder of Annihilation Maker."
The silence that followed was a distinctly different quality from anything preceding it.
Serafall's expression cycled through several things in rapid succession.
"That's—" She stopped. Started again. "You have Annihilation Maker."
"Yes."
"That's why you're so strong." She sat back slowly, the conclusion arriving with satisfying weight. "It all makes sense now.
I said nothing.
Sona glanced at me from the corner of her eye. A very brief glance. She had caught it—the deliberate silence. The absence of correction.
She looked back at her tablet without a word.
I appreciated that about her.
Serafall leaned back in her seat, staring at the cabin ceiling with the expression of someone still processing a particularly significant revelation.
The cabin fell into a comfortable quiet after that.
Serafall lasted approximately three minutes in silence before she produced a handheld gaming console from somewhere inside her coat and began playing at a volume that was—marginally—more considerate than the anime had been.
Progress.
=====
If you'd like to read ahead and support me, feel free to check it out: [email protected]/VashFF