Archive of Our Own ^beta

Sanae first meets Leesa in the year 2289.

She's a bright-eyed, energetic eight year old who comes in grasping her mother's hand, staring around the café with wonder in her eyes. "We're moving to the AEU," she informs him, self-important, and Sanae cocks an eyebrow. "My teachers said I'm really smart, so I'm going to a special school in Spain instead."

Sanae nods along, duly impressed. Her Imagination levels are average, for her age—nothing to sneeze at, but nothing to write home about. She’s got an analytical brain on her, though. Photographic memory, and a strong aptitude for puzzles. He has no doubt that whatever she sets her mind to, in the RG, she will achieve with flying colors.

“How’s your Spanish?” he asks with a crooked grin as he turns to his stock of beans to start on her mother’s latte.

“Muy bueno!” she says, indignant, and then continues rapidly for several seconds in the language. Sanae would understand her, if he paid enough attention. But he knows enough about kids to pretend to be outsmarted, anyway.

“Well, you’ve got me there,” he says, bringing his eyebrows high as he turns back around. “Sounds like you’ll fit in just fine in the AEU.”

Leesa beams at him. “Can I have a muffin, mom?” she asks, standing on her toes to stare into the bakery display.

“No, you’ll spoil your dinner,” she says, pulling out her wallet. Sanae watches Leesa’s face fall, and damnit, he’s always had a soft spot for kids, hasn’t he?

“They’re healthy, y’know,” he says to her mother with a smile, accepting her credit card and turning toward the till. “No added sugar, but they taste just like the real thing.”

Every word of that’s a lie—the sugar gives a boost to Players, so he adds it in liberally. But she looks between him and her daughter, before sighing and rolling her eyes. “Then that’s fine,” she says, and Leesa beams at him as she requests “one with blueberries.”

Sanae smiles at their backs as they leave. With their imminent departure from Shibuya, he knows he’ll probably never see them at WildKat again.

Somehow, he gets the feeling he’ll hear of that little girl again, anyway.

Shibuya’s changed, these last three hundred years, as cities and Souls are wont to do. The Long Game, pivotal and pulse-pounding and all-consuming in the moment, is but a distant memory to him now. (As are its Players, long-Erased or long-Ascended. Composers are not meant to linger in the position, after all—and human lives are oh-so-very fleeting.)

But Sanae remains in Shibuya, as he always has and always will. His transgressions three centuries past—they weren’t forgotten, but they were considered forgivable, eventually, by the laws of the Higher Plane. After all, good Producers are hard to recruit, and even harder to keep. After all, the city survived—and the destruction of a UG would have had repercussions throughout both the RG and the Higher Plane.

(Not that it mattered that Joshua Kiryu would’ve spared the city anyway. Not that it mattered that Sanae broke every law in the book just to keep Shibuya standing. Not like he’s going to question the higher ups’ decisions when they fall in his favor.)

The Higher Plane buzzes, always, at the back of his mind as he tends to his coffee shop and his media empire and his Game. This latest Composer, he thinks, won’t last long. Soft-hearted, and trusting: she named her old Partner her Conductor, even when he clearly has an eye for her seat.

Sanae will protect her as he can, because that is his job, and transitions in the UG inevitably lead to upheaval and power struggle and Erasure, when his city’s fast-paced Game leaves them, always, at a shortage of Reapers. But he cannot—and does not intend to—coddle any Composer. When she is inevitably Erased, he will facilitate her successor’s transition just as he did hers.

(He’s learned better than to grow attached to Reapers—Players—Souls in the last few centuries. Since Kiryu was Erased in fury and hellfire. Since Sakuraba, and Misaki, and both Bitous Ascended even higher than him, the moment their souls left the Realground for the last time.)

He loves his city, and he loves every soul within it—but he knows better, now, than to love them individually. So he brews his coffee, and releases new albums and murals and clothing lines, and wonders when the next great upheaval will shake the world to its core.

It is 2307. His Composer is freshly Erased, which means his Composer is now the one who killed her. Her Conductor, just as he thought. A ruthless sort of man whom Sanae doesn’t particularly like, but it is not his place to defy the order of things.

This man is Shibuya’s Composer, now, and it is Sanae’s duty to guide his hand in his first weeks. And so he is preparing to close up WildKat early for the day, when the bell over the door rings, and three teenagers walk in.

He turns, prepared with apologies and gentle nudges out the door, except he is struck blind for a moment by the Soul at the back of the group. He’s—his Imagination is like nothing Sanae has seen for years. Centuries, even, if he had the presence of mind to think on it, except the Soul’s companions are approaching the bar, now, and Sanae forgets entirely what he was going to do with his afternoon. He only wants to know where this Soul has been hiding for so long.

He blinks his focus down to the RG to see a scrawny Japanese boy with two foreigners. The girl leads their group, tossing her long blonde hair over her shoulder as she glares up at Sanae. “Are you just going to stare at us?” she demands, and her voice comes rapid and fluid with a Spanish accent. Sanae blinks again.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” he says with a grin. “What can I getcha?”

The girl orders the sweetest frappe on the menu, and the Japanese boy requests a latte, counting yen coins worriedly in his palm. And—

And he does his best to focus on these two, to keep his gaze from sliding to the boy lingering behind them, except that even with his gaze focused so low, the kid’s Soul still shines. Not for the first time, he wonders how humans survive in this world, unknowing and uncaring of the state of their fellows’ Vibes around them. Certainly, the girl seems nothing but impatient with this boy, huffing and tossing a quick question over her shoulder about what he wants.

He’s small. He’s younger than the other two, Sanae would guess. He’s angry, and reserved, and it couldn’t be more obvious that he doesn’t want to be here. “Hot chocolate,” he says, short and clipped, when the girl asks him again, and Sanae nods, ringing up the order.

“Not too many folks come all the way out here for coffee,” he says, conversational, and waits patiently for the Japanese boy to count out his change before the shorter boy rolls his eyes, pushes past him, and shoves a credit card into Sanae’s hand. His brows rise higher, but the card seems legit—and it clears, when he puts it through his terminal, so he decides not to question it.

“One of my classmates recommended it,” the girl says, frowning at the kid, but she apparently decides that free coffee is not to be argued with. Sanae wonders whether their latest winners—a kid just about their age, and an older woman—are familiar at all to them. They came in almost every day for a plate of pancakes and advice on the mission, and they both chose to become Reapers, at the end. Heh, good to know some kids don’t give up their studies, even in death.

“Wouldn’t happen to be a tall kid named Makoto?” he asks, and hands the hot chocolate over the counter. The kid—his credit card named him Kamal Majirif—immediately takes it and heads toward the table furthest from the bar. “Seen them around a lot, recently.”

“Yeah!” she brightens up, obviously surprised, and Sanae grins. They don’t say much else before Sanae hands the other drinks over the counter, and they retreat to their friend’s table. He listens with half an ear as he cleans up behind the bar, as the girl talks on and on about school, and the Japanese boy contributes where he can get a word in edgewise. But Kamal doesn’t say a word, sipping slowly at his cocoa and staring intently at his phone, blatantly ignoring the other two.

Not that it’s any of his business. Not that he should, even though he can. But the kid’s distracted, and on the other side of the room. So he leans against the bar, ostensibly reading something on the counter, and reaches out to Kamal’s Soul with his own.

He doesn’t read much. He doesn’t need much. And it’s a good thing, because when he focuses back into the RG, Kamal’s staring right at him, his eyes sharp and accusing.

Sanae grins, and scrubs one hand through his hair, and turns again toward the till.

He didn’t need more than a glance to realize that Kamal Majirif has more Potential than anyone he’s seen in three hundred years.

The kids leave, eventually; Kamal’s gone first, placing his empty mug carefully on the bar before hurrying out the door and out of sight. The other two frown after him but leave their own mugs beside his. “Um,” the boy starts, uncertain, and fiddles with his wallet. “Setsuna didn’t leave you a tip, did he? On his card?”

Huh, maybe he really should’ve looked closer at that credit card. Because sure, his knowledge of the English alphabet is rusty, but he’s pretty sure that didn’t say Setsuna. “Nah,” he says, waving a hand. “No big deal, don’t—”

But the guy’s flipping his wallet open, pulling out a good half of the yen he had in hand earlier and tossing it in the tip jar. “He’s not from around here,” he says, sounding almost apologetic. “I don’t think he knows you’re supposed to leave one.”

“Like I said, y’don’t need to—” Sanae starts, his brows flying up, but the kid shakes his head.

“I work in food service, sir,” he says, a little bit of steel seeping into his voice. Sanae blinks, and takes another look at him. “I always leave a tip.”

His Imagination’s nothing special. His Soul is standard, run-of-the-mill. Even his RG form is unassuming, scrawny and nervous. He wears a sweater-vest, for god’s sake. But there’s something—something—

“‘Preciate it, Boss,” he says eventually with a grin, throwing him a thumbs-up as he tucks his wallet away.

Kamal—Setsuna—whoever he is—is gone, now, taking his overflowing Soul with him. But Sanae still feels like the cafe loses something, when the other two step outside, letting the door close behind them.

The Higher Plane knows Aeolia Schenberg, of course.

(They know of him, and curse him, and desperately want his Soul for themselves, because no one has had his level of Imagination before or since—)

And he should have died in the first half of the twenty-second century, except Schenberg had greater plans than even the Higher Plane. Schenberg refused to be taken quietly, or to be taken at all, and his Soul disappeared into space decades before what should have been his death, and—

He should’ve been dead two centuries and more ago, except even the newly-erected UGs of the colonies and of the orbital elevators never reported his entry into the UG, which is to mean that Aeolia Schenberg never died, except—

The Higher Plane knows that if anyone were to outsmart death, it would be that man—but the fury Sanae feels brewing in the collective at the back of his mind as this newscast plays out all over the world is unprecedented and unrelenting.

“We are Celestial Being,” Aeolia Schenberg says to the people of the twenty-fourth century, though he is speaking from the twenty-first. He smiles at the camera, as if laughing at some private joke.

The Higher Plane looks at Schenberg as if he's mocking them—but the part of Sanae that is separate looks to these new weapons of war, their improbable agility, their impossible power sources. He looks at Schenberg’s smiling face, and he listens to his message as it replays on the news for weeks. Total eradication of war through armed intervention. Contradictory, on the surface—impossible in practice. But still, he’s intrigued.

He’s seen impossible things materialize, before. He’s done them himself. And after all, isn’t that what true Imagination strives toward?

Schenberg smiles from Wildkat’s small television screen, and Sanae sighs into his ever-empty cafe, and then he clicks the broadcast off.

He’d be lying if he said this isn't the most interested he’s been in the world outside his city in centuries.

Setsuna's Soul is nowhere in Shibuya.

Nowhere in Tokyo, when he eventually reaches out to the surrounding wards. It's more frustrating than it should be, that he can't track down that kid. He doesn't dare leave Shibuya, with this new Composer so fresh—and he's still toeing the line where he can, trying to fly under the higher ups' radar, even three centuries after his Fall.

(Forgiven, but not forgotten. His wings, long since stitched back together, still bear the stains and the scars of the Taboo.)

He can't leave the city but the Soul he met, briefly, that afternoon lingers in the back of his mind for months. Guarded and angry, yes, but hopeful and determined to do what he can. Change the world however he can. Do good however he can.

(The last time Sanae met a Soul that vibrant, the city nearly burned itself to the ground.)

He feels it, the moment Aeolia Schenberg dies.

The entirety of the UG shudders, for the brief moment he inhabits it, and then the Higher Plane reverberates with new Power and Imagination as he instantly ascends.

(Brought in from the catch-all UG, up in space. The one that catches victims of mobile suit battles, of ship casualties in the great nothingness of space. He isolated himself, then, from the rest of humanity. Sanae does not dare look closer to determine how he finally died.)

The Gundams burn red, their abilities amplified; a new voice, sharp and challenging, emerges in the hivemind of the Higher Plane. "Let's see who wins, hm?" Schenberg asks, and it sounds like a threat.

No one dares discipline him for it, not when his reputation precedes him. Not when, having spent less than two minutes in the Higher Plane, he could snap most of their Souls in half with the blink of an eye.

An end to all conflict, brought about by a private armed organization. Producers may not have laser-focus clairvoyance, like Composers tend to, but Sanae can glimpse enough of the possibilities to recognize Schenberg's plan.

Celestial Being has killed thousands. This is terrible, and the hypocrisy of their existence stings and mocks everyone who dares oppose them.

But Sanae looks, and from this he knows: in futures without their advent, the world's outcomes are orders of magnitude worse.

Celestial Being is gone, now, with the world united. Sanae thinks he wants to laugh at the irony.

Schenberg hasn't said a word since that first day, though he lingers in the background of the Higher Plane. He hasn't been assigned duties, yet. If he's being honest with himself, Sanae thinks that’s probably for the best.

The world celebrates; politicians sign peace treaties and shake hands and make promises for the future. But today, Sanae is less concerned with the world outside his door. Today, he has a young man sitting in the café with hollow eyes, looking decades older than he did a year ago.

Sanae sets a latte down in front of him, quiet. Without that blonde girl hanging off his arm, he looks smaller than before. He needs nothing more than a glance to know that she is gone, now. She may never be coming back.

This boy—Saji—hunches over his mug with a muttered thank you, and sips at it as they share space in silence.

Saji says nothing until his drink is gone, until he stands from his stool with a rod-straight back. "Can I have a frappe to go?" he asks suddenly, and his voice is hoarse. Sanae pretends he doesn't notice the redness of his eyes, the teardrops dampening the mug he takes to clean. "The—the strawberry one."

The same one the girl ordered, months ago. "Sure thing, boss," he says with a little smile, turning toward the mixer and pulling down the syrup.

"How much?" Saji asks, pulling out his wallet, but Sanae shakes his head, glancing over his shoulder.

"They're both on the house today. Go take care of yourself, yeah?"

Saji stares at him with flat eyes, but says nothing as he waits for the drink. When Sanae passes it over the counter, Saji locks eyes with him before dropping 3,000 yen in the tip jar and walking out the door.

The second time he meets Leesa, it's 2310, and she's falling apart at the seams.

He almost didn't recognize her. Even reading her Vibe, she's nearly irreconcilable with the bright-eyed child from twenty years ago who begged her mother for a muffin.

She comes in the front door hunched in on herself, snow in her hair, letting a gust of wind in before the door closes behind her. Sanae's ready to shout out his normal greeting until he gets a whiff of her discordant Music, her fractured Soul. Instead he only looks on in concern as she shakes her hair out of her face.

"Can I have a coffee, please," she asks, very quietly, and seats herself at the end of the bar. She keeps her head down, and it is only when she talks that he thinks he recognizes her. Her Music—pure and excitable, years ago, has been tuned poorly to a minor key, with jumps and skips and sour notes. But he knows her, and he knows something terrible has happened.

He pours her a cup in silence. Then, he turns to the bakery stand and retrieves a blueberry muffin before setting them both in front of her.

She stares at the mug, the muffin, for several moments in silence. "That was the best healthy muffin I've ever had," she says, hoarse, and does not lift her gaze to meet his as she reaches for the coffee.

"That's 'cause it wasn't," he says with a smile, his own voice low. "I lied to your mom so she'd let you have it. It's got the most sugar of anything on the menu."

She exhales sharply through her nose, an aborted attempt at a laugh. "She's gone, now," she says, somber again all too quickly. She takes a deep drink. "Everyone's gone."

Sanae says nothing, only leaning against the bar and looking down at her. "You have anything stronger back there?" she asks suddenly, tilting her head at the wall of coffee beans. He focuses a little harder, and he knows the stench of alcoholism when he sees it.

He does have a small liquor cabinet. He shakes his head. "Sorry, boss," he says. "We're kid-friendly, here."

She flinches at the nickname, twitching her shoulders forward even more. "I'm no boss," she whispers, and curls again around her mug. "I'm the worst kind of boss. The kind that lets her subordinates die."

He hesitates before probing her soul, gently. The commander of a small, tight-knit crew out in space. A ship that was decimated in battle.

She doesn't seem to notice the intrusion. Somewhere in the back of his mind, another Angel begins to stir.

"Sorry," he says eventually, quieter. "I didn't realize. I guess you've changed in the last few years, huh?"

She's quiet for a moment. Then, she looks up at him. "You haven't," she accuses, and Sanae tilts his head. "It's been twenty years, but you haven't aged a day."

"I get that a lot," he quips with a little smile. "It's the great Shibuya air, 'round here."

She frowns at him. Then, all the fight leaves her frame and she sighs, looking back down to her drink. "I don't know what to do," she whispers. "They're gone, and I wish I went with them—"

"Hey, that's no way to talk," he says, louder, and leans toward her, over the counter. The other Angel, in the back of his mind, hums quietly. "If you were out on a military ship, your people knew what they signed up for. You can't blame yourself for that."

She bows her head lower. "They didn't blame me at all," she chokes out. "That's the worst part."

They're both quiet, the news playing, muted, on the TV in the background. He probes her Soul a little deeper: a crew of too-young revolutionaries. Kids who trusted Leesa without question. Kids who thought they could change the world.

Kids who thought they could end warfare for good.

"What would they want you to do?" he asks, tilting his head. "The people you lost. If they were here, right now, what would they say?"

She doesn't answer immediately. A couple of tears drip down her cheeks and into her coffee. "They would tell me to go back to the survivors," she whispers. "To change the world in their stead."

Sanae says nothing, eyeing her thoughtfully. Her music—jarring, still—plods on. "But I can't do that," she continues. "We tried, and failed, and they're dead and gone because of me. I swore I'd never command soldiers again, but they weren't even—they weren't—"

She rubs harshly at her face, and squeezes her eyes shut. "What good is living if I can't do shit to change it?" she says, then, louder. "What's the point of being here if I kill everyone I touch?"

"Lemme tell you something," Sanae says, leaning closer over the bar, and she swallows thickly, looking away. "I've been in the business of people-watching for longer than I care to remember. I love this city, and everyone in it, and I've never met a useless person in my entire time here."

"What good am I?" she challenges, looking back up to him, and for the first time he sees a spark there. Desperation, maybe, but more than the desolation from before, and—"Everyone I've ever cared about has—"

"You've got a brain on you," he talks over her, staring at her hard over his sunglasses. "You've got potential. And I know some people can't get back up, once they've been knocked down too many times, but I don't think you're one of them. You've got too much left to offer—your friends know it, and you know it, too."

She's quiet. Then, she downs the rest of her coffee in one go, and stands up from her stool. "You're wrong," she says quietly. "I'm not strong, and I'm not ever going back. They're better off without me, up there."

She steps back out into the snow and the wind, leaving the muffin behind, and Sanae can't bring himself to stop her.

I hand-picked her myself, you know, the Angel says, and Sanae frowns, tuning his Vibe back up. Greatest mind of her generation. None of them were supposed to survive the battle. But she cared too much, and she pulled off a miracle.

You think she'll go back? Sanae asks.

Schenberg laughs, sharp and loud. I know she will, boy—you're right. She's got too much potential to give up on my Plan now.

The A-Laws are only tightening their stranglehold on the planet, enough that the UGs are starting to be affected. Overcrowded Games with no winners, and desperate Reapers, and a sharp dip in Imagination across the globe as terror rises to new highs.

It's only rarely that the Higher Plane intercedes in RG affairs. Even then, it is slow and deliberate, careful to leave no trace of their involvement before folding into the higher frequencies again.

But this is too much. This cannot be solved with subtle intervention; Earth's population is falling apart at the seams. Shibuya hasn't run a Game in almost three months for the instability of their UG, and Sanae knows that they’re the lucky ones—that the Composers and Producers of orbital Grounds, of the war zones, are already starting to fray in their attempts to hold their cities together.

Subtle intervention is not enough. So perhaps a different kind of divine intervention is needed, instead.

Multi-colored particles diffuse through time and space. They reach the UG, placating and re-aligning Noise for several moments until they start to Feel again. They reach, even, the Angels' frequencies. Sanae understands, like he has not in a very long time.

The particles breathe into his Soul, and re-tune his Music, and pluck delicately at the threads binding him to his fellows and his superiors. They weave and sing and create, and he allows it without question. He has not remembered, or even acknowledged, his own humanity in a very long time. This, here, immerses him in it in full.

Every being of the Higher Plane was once a resident of the Realground, after all, and as the particles burst and dance and then fade away, Sanae comes out the other side physically unchanged but undeniably different.

The Higher Plane shudders, for a long time, and then it settles into something new; it feels altogether more comfortable, more inviting, than it has in a long time. Sanae's threads to the others thrum with life and harmony.

Aeolia Schenberg smiles.

Several months later, Saji walks through his door once again, his music radiant as he leads a small entourage behind.

The girl, Louise, is here when Sanae was all but certain that her thread to Saji had been severed for good. She looks older—her hair's cropped, and her cheeks are pinched, and she's got a pallor about her that suggests she's not entirely well. But she is here, and the corners of her mouth are twitching up into a smile as she listens to Saji talk.

And behind the two of them are—are two others, more foreigners, who look around the café like they aren't sure what it is. The man, tall and muscular, holds the smaller woman's hand tight in his own.

"Hey, Mr. H," Saji says, and the phrase brings back memories of kids from a long time past. Since the last of them Ascended, he has not allowed anyone else to call him that.

Maybe the pain has eased, some. Maybe he can feel their echoes at the back of his mind, as they work to improve every plane they can manage to reach. Maybe, it's okay for him to move on.

"Quite the crowd," he says with a grin, tilting his head at the others, and Saji flushes.

"Allelujah and Marie just moved to Tokyo," he says, gesturing them toward the counter as they hesitate by the door. "We have to show them the best places to eat, right?"

Sanae barks a laugh, grinning at them all with a shrug. "So, what'll it be?"

Saji orders his latte, as always, and Louise visibly changes her order to a black coffee as she stares defiantly up at him. The brightness behind her eyes is gone, now, taking something with it. He remembers the day that the UG of that Spanish countryside was all but overwhelmed, the news that only one Player from hundreds made it out alive. A teenager, they said, with soot on her face and terror in her eyes.

He says nothing about it. "You grew out of strawberry frappes?" he asks instead, teasing, turning to punch it into the till. He's gratified to see her eyes widen in indignation.

"I came here once," she demands, and Sanae laughs again.

"Got a good memory for faces," he says, and then tilts his gaze toward Saji. "And your boyfriend came here a lot, later on."

He's flushing, and Louise is staring at him like she's trying to figure something out. "Fiance, actually," Saji says eventually, and Louise hesitates before holding up her left hand to show him her ring.

Maybe Sanae has a memory of human relationships, once. Or maybe he's flourishing with renewed empathy. "That's great, guys," he says, and feels his face fall into a real smile. He punches in a frappe for Louise. "Happy for ya."

Allelujah and Marie hesitate over the menu—they seem all but overwhelmed by the options. Then, Sanae gets it out of them that they've survived on freeze-dried, space-compatible instant coffee their entire lives—and at that point, it's really not his fault that he decides to feed them free drinks until they find their favorite.

Sure, he may not be human, but he's human enough. And if these two have made it to adulthood without experiencing decent coffee, then it's his moral duty to fix that for them.

(Allelujah tries to argue that he's perfectly happy with black coffee—right up until Louise makes him take a sip of her frappe.)

(Marie seems confused by the frozen drinks, but eventually settles on a vanilla latte—light on the syrup, just enough to give it a sweet edge.)

Sanae's glad, at least, that they're young enough yet to have a sweet tooth.

The four of them settle at a table nearby, and Sanae can't help but listen as they chat. Saji has an itinerary for the day to show them around Shibuya, it sounds like, of which WildKat was stop number one.

Their group glows bright in the higher frequencies, even in the morning light. Louise's Music is sharper, more staccato than it once was, but it intertwines with Saji's in a way that surprises him. And the other two—

They're in a key he's never heard before. He's grown used to slight changes brought on by—as the humans are calling it—Innovation, but this is as if the music was originally composed by someone wholly different than the rest.

Both of them have two melodies, too—perfectly in sync within themselves and between each other. He's never heard anything like it, but the Imagination is soothing and calm, as it flows and swims in the air of the café.

"Hey, Saji," he asks, during a lull in their conversation. "Whatever happened to your friend? Setsuna, you called him?"

(The blinding Soul on that boy, years ago, approached Schenberg's in a way that's almost terrifying, now that he knows what to look for. He's never sensed him in Shibuya again, but surely, if he died, he would've been promoted through the ranks instantly. So—)

Saji blinks at him. "You really are good with faces," he says, surprised. "He's working in space, now. I'm not sure that he'll ever come back here."

"Everyone promised they'd visit," Allelujah argues gently, and Saji slants him a look.

"You mean Sumeragi and Feldt promised," he deadpans, and then Marie's laughing, her voice like chimes.

"He's doing well, though," Saji continues to Sanae, his smile wide. "He's a lot nicer than he used to be, too."

Which means that, inevitably, his Soul has grown even stronger. He remembers the last time a boy came to him, closed off and angry, only to flourish under the right circumstances. He can’t help but smile.

"Glad to hear it," he says, genuine, and turns away toward the back.

"Hanekoma."

Louise is standing at the bar—Saji's loitering by the door, the other two waiting outside. She waves a hand at him impatiently, rolling her eyes, and he sighs but steps outside to join them. Sanae tilts his head at her as she stays on her feet, gripping the counter and staring hard at him.

"Everything okay?" he asks, after the silence goes on for a little too long. Her frown deepens.

"You're one of them," she spits, her eyes hard. "A shinigami, right?"

He's honestly surprised that she can tell. Even among Game survivors, those with sensitivity to the higher frequencies are few and far between. "Not quite," he says, waving a hand down at her, but she doesn't relax at all. "I'm a guardian, you could say. You were international news, y'know. No one thought anyone was gonna make it out of that one alive."

She grits her teeth, and furrows her brows deeper. "What are you?" she demands, her voice lower, and Sanae takes another look at her. Maybe, on accident, he clicks his vibe up a little higher. Her eyes widen.

"I watch over Shibuya's Game to make sure everyone plays fair," he says. "That's all. I'm not in the business of Erasing anyone."

Her frown doesn't lessen. "I meant that as a compliment, y'know," he continues after a moment. "That UG's small, normally—they weren't ready for such a big influx of Players. They had to call in backup for months to make sure everything went through fairly."

"That was my family," she spits. "There was no reason for me to come back if none of them were going to—"

Saji's looking at them through the window, a frown on his face. "I think you've got reason enough right here," he says, quieter, and she follows his gaze. Saji visibly tilts his head, waving, wondering what she's doing.

"It shouldn't have been me," she says, and her fingers shake against their white-knuckles grip on the bar. "My mom should've come back, or my cousins, or—or—"

"But you were the one who won," he says, gentler still, and Louise lets loose a small sob. "You played well enough that the Composer was willing to rewrite your survival from an unavoidable death. They wouldn't have done that for just anyone."

"What are you saying?" she snaps, though she's wiping furiously at her eyes with the back of one wrist.

"I'm saying," he says, smiling, "that you must've been one of the strongest Players they'd seen in a long time. And if you're good enough to impress a Composer, then the sky's the limit on the rest of your life, yeah?"

She's quiet, staring at the window for several moments longer. "I just want to be peaceful," she whispers. "I want to grow old with Saji, and forget about the war."

"Then you're going to do exactly that," he says, his smile growing wider. "And you're going to do it well. I hope you guys are happy."

She swallows again, and turns away from the window to wipe at her eyes. "Can I tell him?" she asks, barely audible. "I just—I let him believe what the paramedics said. That I was on the edge of the party and missed the worst of it. But I don't want to keep it a secret forever."

"Course you can tell him," Sanae says, gentle. "There aren't any rules stopping you."

She breathes in silence for several seconds. Then, she straightens her back, and wipes at her face one last time, and stares Sanae straight in the eye. "If I find out you're a shinigami, I'll Erase you myself," she says, her voice stronger, and he laughs.

"I'll count on it," he says with a grin, and then she lets herself out the door.

The Higher Plane is adjusting—slowly—to the idea of humanity Innovating. Angels never are ones for hurrying, after all, and with Innovators' increased lifespan, they have plenty of time to figure out what to do about it before they start dying en masse.

When the ELS invade, on the other hand, they have next to no time to prepare.

Shibuya has the dubious honor of dealing with the first assimilation—and though the RG government brings in that girl quickly, shielding her from public view, Sanae's ears ring with the wrongness of her Music. It's not just out of tune, or off tempo—it's alien entirely, screeching and wailing to his mind, and the thought of all of Shibuya succumbing to this nightmare is too much to bear.

He has access to everything within his City. He should be able to find the attacker. It's his right and his duty to protect these citizens, at whatever cost to himself. He has done it before, and he will do it again, but—

But there is no time, there is no time, and none of them know what they are up against, and he cannot wage war when he cannot even comprehend what they are fighting. More people are being attacked by the day as vast ships approach from the asteroid belt, and the higher frequencies of the orbital ring cry out in unison as they are torn apart—

They have come, Schenberg cries, jubilant, but Sanae does not have the time to wonder what he means.

.

.

.

.

The last time he sees Leesa is forty-five years later.

She's old, now, with graying hair and a pallid, wrinkled face. She blinks at him for a few seconds from the doorway before laughing, surprised, and seating herself on a bar stool.

"Not sure the Shibuya air'll do that much for you," she opens with, and Sanae grins.

"S'pose not," he admits, and reaches to grab her a muffin. "What brings you out here?"

Her music's settled, over the years. It never quite made it out of that minor key, but it's dancing in andante rather than largo, and the timbre is sweet and pure as she smiles up at him.

"Came back for a last visit," she says simply. "Apparently, all the alcohol's finally caught up to me. The doctors say I don't have long."

He hums, considering her. She doesn't carry even a whiff of it, anymore, even though it was all but drowning her Soul, last time they met. "That's a shame," he says, and he means it. "You aren't one of the Innovators, then?"

She laughs again. "Nah, we'll leave that to the people who deserve it."

She says it like it's gospel, like it's fact, and he—still—doesn't know enough about Innovation to argue the fact. (Somewhere, a Vibe that might've once called itself Misaki is buried in reading, in research, trying to understand this incredible human transformation—) "So what about you?" she asks, breaking him out of his thoughts abruptly, and he blinks back down to her, raising his eyebrows. "What's the secret to your eternal youth?"

He grins. He almost tells her. "It's a secret for a reason," he says instead, and turns to pour her coffee. "Maybe you'll find out, someday."

“Better be someday soon, then,” she says with a smile, and takes a bite out of her muffin.

Saji comes back regularly, for decades, bringing with him a rotating cast of friends and acquaintances who are aging at varying rates. Then, he stops coming at all.

Sanae greets him personally in the UG, smiling as Saji looks around in bewilderment. “Good to see ya,” he says, shoving both hands in his pockets. They’re standing in the Scramble, and Saji’s clouded eyes snap toward him, squinting as he tries to focus.

“Mr. H?” he asks after a moment, frowning. “What’s going on?”

“You died,” he says, baldly, and Saji nods, a little. “You’re in what we call the Underground. And now, you’ve got a choice to make.”

Saji squints at him some more, before staring around at the city. “I knew you weren’t human,” he says, more to himself. “What, are you going to ask me to join the Reapers’ Game? Like Louise did?”

“You have that option,” Sanae nods, peering more closely at him. “Most folks your age turn it down, decide to pass on instead.”

Saji nods again. “My knees aren’t exactly up for running all over the city,” he says with a laugh. “And—and Louise’ll be fine, Allelujah and Marie are there with her. And…”

He breathes in, deep and long. “It’s been too long since I saw Kinue,” he says, very quietly. “If I turn down the Game, will I see her again?”

The Higher Plane’s knowledge of Noise cognition is limited, even after all this time. But either he won’t be present enough to know better, or he’ll be able to seek out the family he’s missed for so long. “Yeah,” he says with a smile, and Saji nods.

“Thanks for looking out for us, Mr. H,” he says, and smiles as he turns his Soul over to the Noise.

Louise doesn’t take it well.

She comes to WildKat a week later, after it’s clear Saji hasn’t won the Game. “Why didn’t you bring him back?” she demands, shrill, shrugging off Marie’s cautioning hand. Saji died well into his eighties; Louise doesn’t look a day over forty. “You said you’re a guardian, right? So you’d damn well better guard—”

“I met Saji personally, in the UG,” he says, calm, and ignores Marie’s confused glances. “I gave him the same choice that you got, years ago. And he decided that it was time to move on.”

“He would never—”

“Louise’ll be fine,” Sanae says. “That’s what he told me. And I trust you will be, too.”

“Saji is dead,” she snarls, and the tears spill over as she slaps Marie’s hand away from her shoulder. “And you expect me to be fine—?”

Except she is. Or, at least, she will be.

Marie and Allelujah drag her out to visit weekly, even when they look even younger than her, now—even when she clearly hates every second of it. She snaps at Sanae, and refuses to touch anything he puts down in front of her, and leaves with tears in her eyes every visit for months.

Eventually, she walks in with squared shoulders and steel in her eye, and tells him that she’s going to space. “How long will you be gone?” he asks, tilting his head. She laughs at him without humor.

“I’m not planning on coming back,” she says, icily, and clenches her fists. “I asked for the longest trip they had.”

Humanity’s been expanding outward into the solar system, these last fifty-odd years. Trips to Jupiter are routine; he suspects Louise has signed up for something past the Kuiper belt. “Take care of yourself,” he says, and he finds that his smile is genuine. “And when you’re finished, Saji and the rest of your family will be waiting.”

She scoffs, and rolls her eyes, and crosses her arms.

But she orders one last strawberry frappe before she’s gone from Shibuya for good.

It’s another fifty years and more before he sees Setsuna again.

It’s 2418, now; even Allelujah’s and Marie’s bodies are getting on in years. They look older than him, for sure, and are often busy with their daughter and her children, and their children. (They’ve brought the whole gaggle by, before. Sanae’s always had a soft spot for kids.)

But this evening the cafe is quiet, and the sun is setting, and he’s allowing his mind to wander the higher planes. Schenberg’s risen to prominence quickly, especially by the standards of the Higher Plane—he’s Ascended high enough that even Sanae has trouble sensing him, most times, unless he means to be heard.

Tonight, as Setsuna walks through the door with a stranger, is one of those times. Schenberg crowds Sanae's mind, overpowering enough that he nearly loses his sense of place and self until Schenberg corrects. He backs off but his presence still looms, heavy and expectant, and Sanae needs to rub at his eyes for the whiplash.

By the the time he looks up again, the two young men are staring at him from the other side of the bar.

It's not just the dim, dusk lighting—Setsuna has undeniably been assimilated. Completely, by the looks of it. And his Imagination is all the stronger for it; if he weren't expecting it, he thinks he'd lose himself all over again in the influx.

And the man beside him—he's pale and severe in face and stature, but he—somehow, he's not quite there. He has a Soul, certainly, and Music, but they are faint and very far away. As Sanae watches, his gaze shifting down to the RG, his form flickers like a candle in the light.

Innovade and Innovator, Schenberg says to him, delighted, and Sanae blinks. My very best.

"It's been a while, kiddo," he says after what's certainly too long of a pause. "Who's your friend?"

"Tieria Erde," the stranger says, as Setsuna continues to stare. "Setsuna had a feeling that we needed to seek you out."

He blinks, and turns his attention back to him. "Oh yeah?" he asks after another moment. "Didn't realize my coffee was that good—you could've said something, last time."

"Sanae Hanekoma," Setsuna says, and his voice and his movements are not-quite-right, in the way all assimilated humans are. His eyes, though they burn bright yellow, are human through and through. "I haven't been here in more than one hundred years. How are you still alive?"

"I could ask you the same thing," he offers with a grin, and turns toward his stock of cocoa. "You still look like a kid, to me—even your friends Allelujah and Marie are getting on in age. What's your secret?"

Tell them, Schenberg demands, suddenly, and Sanae shoots upright. Tell them who you are, and that I am here.

And, well, he's not about to refuse a direct order from the most powerful Soul in history, now is he? "So, actually, I've got something of a message for you," he says, and Setsuna's brows rise fractionally. "It's gonna take a little while to get it all out, though."

Tieria scoffs. "We have spent the last century on a top-secret diplomatic mission for the entire human race," he says, and crosses his arms. Setsuna seats himself, stiffly, in the seat at the end of the bar. "As you might imagine, we have all the time in the world."