While she thought about things she did fear something. “Do you know how the UN has reacted to you rescuing me?”

“The raid? They haven’t really done anything yet. They’re still recovering from the attack, but I’m going to guess we’re going to be under attack soon because of it. There’s no doubt that they know it was us.”

‘So they’re safe. But these people aren’t. Damn…this isn’t a good situation either way. What do I do?’ Saki’s mind turned with ideas and doubt. Things quickly flew through her head as she trying to find an answer. Something that would fix things. “How long will the barrier last?”

Ayano scratched the side of her face in thought. “We don’t know. It’s held so far against them, but they’ve got powerful people on their side. It’s only a matter of time.”

“But it’ll hold for a bit.”

“Yeah.”

It came to her. The things that she set in motion already. Things would have to be accelerated but they might work. “I’ve got a plan.”

Ayano grinned widely seeing the gears turning in Saki’s head. It gave her exactly what she wanted. Things could start taking the course that she wanted. She did not even think about how much Saki would actually change their fate. Recruiting Saki was the only goal and that had succeeded in her mind. “Welcome on board!”

Saki tilted her head over to Ayano holding back a lot of her surprise and armed more with sobering reality. “You’re getting ahead of yourself. I didn’t say anything about joining your gang. I just said I have a plan.”

“A plan to help us.”

“Well, yes, but that’s not the same thing as joining you.”

“Close enough,” she shot back without skipping a beat. Nothing looked to faze Ayano in Saki attempts to clarify her position. It was going to be a no win situation. No amount of words changed her mind. Saki could only sigh. “You don’t have to be wearing our jackets to be on the team. Everyone has different ways that they help and work together.”

Looking back at the center of the building, Saki thought about everyone moving about trying to live out their normal lives. She realized the sort of thing that Ayano had going. It already seemed apparent. She understood before. But there were no words that formed before. She had the words for it now. Saki could understand the sort of group that Ayano wanted. ‘I think this could actually work…’

Chapter 372 – Broken Plans

Standing outside of the building, Ayano and her man saw Saki out. He had a bit of an annoyed look on his face still not accepting everything. But Ayano slapped him in the back of the head to get that off his face. “Good luck.”

Saki readjusted the windbreaker once more getting it to rest better on her shoulders. It covered up much of her new cloths that she picked up from the mall inside. She fit well enough with her shorts and a loose t-shirt with a generic looking logo or text saying “Rise”. “This is going to take some time to put together.”

“We’ll hold out until you can make it work.”

“I’m sure you will.” Saki turned around at started walking away. New plans went into play now. She had to put more pieces into play than she wanted. ‘I’d imagine that Yuki could do this better than me. But this is the only thing I can think of doing.’

Nobuyuki glanced over at Ayano returning to his disapproving expression. “Are you sure about this?”

“You rescued her. And you’re asking me that?”

“Well she was captured like everyone else. I couldn’t leave people in their hands.”

“Then don’t worry about it. She’s someone that we can trust. Besides, we’ve got bigger problems to deal with right now.” She spun around and started going back into the apartment. “Rescuing all of those men that you spent on rescuing me.”

“She could have helped us.”

“She probably would, but she’s got bigger things to do.” Ayano walked briskly forward moving to the elevator. He wanted more of an answer from her, but she did not give him one. Everyone has family, she was not about to keep the girl from her family. That was not who they were.

A ding preceded the elevator opening to grant them travel. Ayano stepped in and punching in the floor. “We’ve got a family to put back together. That is our mission.”

The trek back to familiar territory went mostly uneventful for Saki. She had to deal with a couple of rampaging monsters that came about from Yuki’s changes. All the fighting with humans made her forget that there were sometimes dark things that crawled around their city. But after all that she saw, it was hard to say that they were worst the city had to offer anymore. Like always as the cliché went, that was reserved for humans.

When she came upon Phoibe’s place a bit of awkwardness flowed over Saki. This was not the sort of plan that she had in mind. She knew that they would be happy to see her. But after her parting, she wondered how difficult it was going to be. She tried to find the words that she was going to use. Yet she was not granted such a luxury.

Hana stepped out of the door as though she knew that Saki was there, probably because she actually did know. “Miss Saki, you’re back! Everyone’s inside talking about you.” She immediately reached out to guide her inside by the arm.

“Wait, Hana, I-I…” Saki did not want things to play out like this at all. This was not the way she had it pictured.

“Miss? What’s wrong?”

“I’m not prepared yet…mentally for this.”

Hana simply smiled at Saki and pulled on her more. “That’s fine, they’re your friends.” It proved hard for Saki argue with her overly simplistic outlook on the situation. Saki easily got dragged along inside and to the back of the first floor.

Before she knew it, Hana had tossed her into the stairwell that she did not even know existed in the building left with very little recourse. She stared back at Hana unable to look at the stairs. All she got from Hana was a surprisingly stern looking stare hidden behind the happy cheerful smile that disguised her intent. Saki looked back at the stairs that went up to where she expected all of them to be.

She was not prepared when she took the first step or the tenth step. That was not going to change anything. Though in a way, she could thank Hana for forcing the matter. She was not sure if she would have gone in so easily without being forcibly dragged around. Though she still did not want to see them just yet. No other option remained though. The fact of the matter was more than before she needed to see them. Things had become more complicated than she had ever planned them to get. ‘How did I get myself stuck in the center of all of this?’ It seemed so unlike her. She worked behind the scenes, not up front. That was the original plan. Things were not supposed to rely on her. She was supposed to be easily interchangeable. Yet not anymore.

What had her life become now?

At the top of the stairs, she found herself on the third floor where she had never been before. Though admittedly, she had never been anywhere but the first floor. The last time she came to this place was before everything turned to hell and things were normal. They were customers. Now it was something much different.

Touching the handle to the door, she could hear through the walls their voices thanks to her enhancements. It was Seiji arguing with Hiroshi. Things almost seemed normal from what she heard.

“Like I’d told you yesterday and the day before and the fifty other times you’ve brought it up, no! We can’t be storming their gates to rescue Saki.”

“Then come up with a plan!”

“What do you think I’ve been doing?!”

“Yuki could wake up any day and we still don’t have a plan that won’t involve blowing up the whole place, which you disagree!”

“You can’t be so blind and ignorant to the way the world works to actually think that anything that involves storming the front gates of the UN will do anything but make the situation worse do you?”

“I don’t care how dumb you think it is! Saki’s not staying there!”

“I don’t want to have her arrested either, but we can’t be stupid about this!”

“Sorry, but there’s someone stupider than Seiji out there that already beat you to the punch,” interjected Saki to end their fighting. She stood in the threshold of the room trying to keep from looking very awkward.

Everyone gathered around a table suddenly stopped what they were doing and stared at the entrance not expecting to see who they found there. But while everyone was stunned and dropping their jaws on the floor, Seiji beat them all to the punch. “Saki!” He bolted to the door grabbing her up roughly checking to see that she was real. “It’s you!”

“Yes, I’m really here.” She hardly expected to get any sort of hug of welcoming from Seiji after everything that she said to him in the past. Yet it also just sort of made sense. None of that really bothered him. He just seemed to know.

While Seiji was showing how happy everyone felt seeing her, Hiroshi approached with the more important and obvious question. “What are you doing here?”

Seiji barely even seemed to care about what he was doing to Saki at the moment as he joined in on the questioning. “Yeah, what the hell, Saki!? If you were planning on escaping yourselves why’d you make all of us worry.”

“I didn’t plan any of that. Things just sort of happened. If you let me go, I’ll explain the situation. Things have become much more complicated.”

Gathered around the table and room, Seiji, Hiroshi, Tatsuya, Yori, Nerine all gathered. They all sat in silence taking in Saki’s story and waited until the end.

“I can’t believe how completely reckless they are,” Yori said as the first person to the punch with Saki’s story concluded. He stepped up away from the table and looked back over at the curtain where his sister continued to sleep. Only Saki’s reappearance was enough to drag him away from her side. “Don’t they understand what this will mean? They’re going to be hunted and give the UN even more justification to press down on anyone with powers.”

Saki agreed with Yori’s assessment. It was the same thing that she feared. “That’s why we need to do everything we can to get out ahead of this situation.”

“And what do you think any of us can do?”

“Not us.” She focused over on Hiroshi. Saki leaned on the table putting all of the attention on him now. “It’s going to be you. This had to come from someone that’s still clean.”

Everyone looked a little puzzled at Saki and Hiroshi trying to figure out what was going on. But Hiroshi seemed to understand. He had plenty of time to think about it since Saki left. “What you left for me.”

“That’s right. Only you can do this.”

“You’re asking for something really dangerous that we don’t even know will work out.”

“If we do nothing, we know exactly how things will play out. This way we at least don’t know the course. It may work, it may not, but it’s better than knowing for certain that things are going south.”

“Saki…I’m just a high school student.”

“None of us are students anymore. It’s time for us to be the adults if we plan on working with adults. You know how bad things will get if we do nothing.”

“Yes…that’s what I’m afraid of. But I don’t know if this will work.”

“It’s our only chance. It’s what Yuki would want.”

They all looked back to where Yuki rested. It was something that they both knew was the course he would take. The hard course and the impossible course. The one that no one would want to take because it would never possible have a chance of working.

He would do it.

There was no doubt in the minds about that.

Hiroshi sighed aloud as a sign that he had resigned himself to the course. “I have a promise to protect this neighborhood and this is going to be best way to maintain the peace. I’ll do it. But this isn’t going to be something that’s going to get results over night, Saki.”

“I know, this is the long game. The big gamble.”

“Once Yuki wakes up, we’ll explain things to him.” Hiroshi stood up to go over to where everyone slept. Yuki and Yumi remained the only ones still unconscious, the others simply rested to recover their strength. “He’ll agree with this plan knowing him.”

Saki gathered along side Hiroshi as the others came in. In a way, they all sort of expected Yuki to wake up in the moment as it seemed the right time to return. Everyone was finally back together. But it was in fact, Yumi that surprised everyone by stirring. Yori immediately rushed over to her side. “Yumi, you’re awake!”

Yumi stared at Yori a moment as though she was taking everything in. She then looked at Yori with disinterested eyes. “So, it’s you boy.”

To be continued…