The auditorium hummed with low conversation. Officials murmured in hushed tones, students shifted nervously in their seats, the occasional scrape of a chair being moved sounded out. The air held that quiet, charged anticipation unique to formal presentations.

  Akio stood off to the side completely composed, hands loosely folded behind his back, expression calm and unreadable. He had already run through every possible question, every line of research, every statistical anomaly and outlier they could be asked to explain.

  Public speaking never phased him. He treated it the same way he approached battles: clinically, with focus and preparedness, confident in his own competence.

  Beside him, Gabriel leaned against the wall, eyes closed and a casual smile resting on his lips as he twirled a deck of cards between deft fingers. To anyone else, he looked relaxed—carefree even. The kind of person who thrived under attention.

  But Akio knew better. That twirling motion was soothing through repetition. A quiet, grounding habit.

  People assumed Gabriel never got nervous because he was theatrical, charming, effortlessly dramatic—but when it came to serious events, Gabriel took every detail to heart. And beneath his easy smile, he was anxious.

  Akio watched him for a moment, then shifted just enough that their shoulders almost touched. Gabriel inclined his head, sensing him.

  They exchanged a glance—quiet reassurance. Akio gave him a small nod.

  “You’ll do great once we start,” he murmured.

  Gabriel’s smile softened, losing its performative edge.

  “I know,” he said, tucking the deck away. “I just… wish we could get it over with. Where is Damien?”

  Akio exhaled lightly. “I have no idea. You’d think he’d be the first one here, given the opportunity for a performance.”

  As if summoned by sheer irony, Damien appeared in view with that detached calm he always carried, an air of faint judgment following him like a cloak. He adjusted his sleeve cuffs as though offended by the mere thought of wrinkles.

  “You’re late,” Akio said simply.

  Damien didn’t so much as blink. “Some things came up this morning. Irrelevant to you.” His gaze swept past them toward the stage. “Enough dawdling, let’s get to it.”

  Akio exchanged a knowing, amused glance with Gabriel. Then the two of them followed Damien out onto the massive auditorium stage.

  The bright overhead lights washed over them in clean white, casting most of the audience into shadow. Rows upon rows of faces blurred into one collective silhouette, all waiting, all watching. They took their places—Damien on one side, Akio and Gabriel flanking the other. The murmured conversations in the hall quieted, fading into expectant silence.

  Damien stepped forward. He raised his hand, and with a quick, precise motion, he snapped his fingers.

  Snap.

  The sound echoed crisply through the auditorium.

  For everyone else, it was just a cue—the presentation beginning, the lights shifting to frame the three of them. But for Akio, it was the exact pitch, the exact timbre of impact—

  And suddenly he was back in the data tower.

  The memory surged forth with clarity—the ground folded beneath them like origami, architecture bending inward as orange rings ignited and spiraled downward into a manufactured pit. Echo stood suspended above them, hands sweeping outward to activate the next mechanism.

  Akio had already moved, boots skidding across collapsing platforms as he dropped into the fray, the mask of the Dawn Hound gleamed coldly in the firelight. Gabriel flanked the opposite side, shadows warping around him as the Dusk Hound descended like a precision guided knife.

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  Click.

  The soft sound drew him back. The presentation slide changed.

  Akio stepped forward to speak, his posture smooth, controlled. He gestured to the rising graph on the screen, his hand carving a clean arc through the air in a calm, informative sweep.

  Hours earlier, that same motion carried the weight of a strike.

  His blade had sliced cleanly through a mechanical serpent as it lunged, its segmented frame crackling with stolen circuitry. Sharp, bright lasers of burning white fired from its crown as Akio vaulted over them with a practiced twist.

  One breath. One clean downward cut. The serpent split in two, sparks raining like metallic embers.

  Click.

  The next slide came into view.

  From beside him, Gabriel stepped up with perfect timing, pulling out the demonstration prop—twisting it elegantly between deft fingers as he explained its structural function and stress points. His movements were light, almost playful.

  It wasn’t far off from what he’d done earlier.

  The Dusk Hound tore a chunk of machinery from a collapsing platform mid spin. He twisted it once, thin crimson lines flaring to life along the surface, before launching it into a cluster of constructs. Each strike landed with explosive precision, detonating the spiraling chamber in bursts of red.

  Click.

  Next slide.

  The audience murmured with interest. Gabriel passed the prop to Akio without missing a beat. Damien presented their research with a flourish. The rhythm of the presentation flowed with a quiet, intentional cadence.

  And somewhere beneath that rhythm echoed another.

  The clean geometry of a pie chart. The spiraling collapse of a metal corridor. The easy motion of a gesture. The brutal efficiency of a strike.

  Akio continued speaking, his voice steady as he explained the next data point. The auditorium was quiet, the kind of academic hush that made every word ring neatly in the air.

  Then the projector flickered.

  For a heartbeat, the image wavered—glitching into fractured shapes that bled light. Before he could adjust, a massive shadow slid over the screen, swallowing half the slide in darkness. A few startled murmurs rippled through the room.

  Akio’s breath caught for a fraction of a second, the memory rising before he could stop it.

  He had landed beside Gabriel with silent precision, the air tasting like ozone and burning circuitry. Across from them Echo watched, body poised, one hand raised to trigger another collapse—

  When the air shifted.

  A drop in temperature. A low vibration pulling at the bones. A scraping sound from below—guttural, layered, growing louder. Like the grinding of a thousand metal teeth.

  A M.A.W. Anomaly erupted from beneath the floor, tearing through the battlefield in a surge of blackened segments and rotating blades. Its centipede-like body shuddered, plates interlocking like massive saws; its head unfurled like a carnivorous flower, ringed with spinning metal teeth. Glowing red sensors flared alive.

  The rhythm of the fight shattered instantly.

  Everyone had recognized the real threat.

  Click.

  Back on stage, the projector light snapped back to full clarity, washing the slide in clean white as the shadow vanished. Then a voice from the front row called, trembling with embarrassment:

  “S-sorry! My bad! I didn’t mean to do that!”

  Akio offered a faint, polite smile.

  “No worries,” he said lightly, nodding toward the speaker.

  Seamlessly, he gestured to the next image on the slide as though nothing had happened at all. Timing, rhythm, motion—he found them again. He always did.

  Even when chaos had swallowed the world hours earlier.

  The Anomaly had lunged without warning—every segment grinding like a serrated wheel, its enormous body leaving jagged trails of data rot that cracked across the ground like spreading fractures. Gabriel darted left, red streaks spiraling off his movements in controlled bursts; Akio vaulted right, feeling the corrupted air heat against his skin as he carved clean arc after clean arc with his blade.

  He remembered the moment he slid beneath the creature’s massive frame, the tight pull of gravity as he pivoted sharply on one heel, driving his blade upward into the glowing core lodged deep beneath its armor. The strike hit true.

  The mechanical monstrosity shrieked before collapsing inward. A second later, it burst. Metallic debris and oily black sludge exploded outward in a violent spray. Akio had vaulted back on instinct, boots skidding across cracked metal as he threw up an arm to shield himself.

  When he looked up, the battlefield had gone still.

  The chamber fell silent with nothing but the faint hiss of cooling smoke. Echo had vanished. The Anomaly lay dead, scattered in lifeless pieces. Only the cold tang of infected metal lingered in the air, sharp and chemical.

  Click.

  The present slipped back into place.

  Damien brought the final slide to a close, and together the three of them stepped forward and offered a polite bow. Applause erupted across the auditorium.

  As Akio straightened, the cadence of the clapping folded neatly into another sound—one from hours before. Heavy, synchronized. Boots striking metal. The steady thunder of an approaching unit. He could almost feel the tremor in the ground again.

  The Sentari, moving in formation, closing in to secure the area—and to catch any vigilantes still present.

  He and Gabriel had exchanged a single glance before vanishing without a whisper, slipping through the shadows and rising debris until the battleground held no trace of the three masked figures who had stood there.

  Now, Akio stepped off the stage without fanfare, letting the spotlight fall behind him.

  It was surreal, he thought, how sharply the two worlds overlapped—how something as terrifying as that battle could unfold the same morning he stood here discussing research findings.

  The presentation was done. The battle was over.

  And yet the aftermath of each still lingered faintly in his bones, humming beneath his skin like a phantom he couldn’t quite shake.

  ─ ? NEXT CHAPTER POV ? ─

  Akio