They didn't climb higher into the Tangle. Obi led them down, onto broader bridges and steadier stairs
"Well... Field trip's been fun!" he said, already walking backward with that grin of his.
"But it would be a better idea to leave now… You never know who lurks around the corner"
Raizen blinked. "Ohh, your bravery suddenly disappeared??"
"Better to be safe than sorry" Obi tapped his temple. "I'm Obi, remember? And if anyone gives you trouble later, tell them you know the loudest smith in the Underworks."
Raizen almost smiled. "That's not a rank."
"It is if I say it is." Obi winked, then spun and dissapeared into the crowd.
Left on their own, Raizen and Hikari drifted along the perimeter of the market.
They turned around a corner, and the noise suddenly thinned. Ahead, a group of people had formed a circle. Raizen felt the tension in the air.
Two Wardens flanked a man, batons hooked at their belts. On the ground, the thin man knelt on both knees, palms up and empty, his cheeks hollowed by hunger. A girl clung to his sleeve, not knowing what's happening.
"You're late again" the ledger-man said, his tone mocking. "And less, again."
"I'll make up for its" the kneeling man whispered. "Work's been bad, but please, another week..."
"You had another week." A warden glanced at the crowd - at the way most looked away. "Debt grows when you don't pay it."
Hikari took a step forward before she knew she had. Raizen's hand grabbed her wrist, enough to be a warning. He gently shook his head.
Her fingers had curled into knuckles without her noticing. "Nobody's going to help…?" Her voice was almost a whisper.
His bandaged hand twitched uselessly against his side.
"At least they didn't make it worse by beating him... Again…" Obi drew the conclusion, appearing form nowhere behind Raizen.
Then he quickly turned away in silence, not wanting to be witnesses any longer.
They started walking back to Takeshi's.
By the time they turned toward the door, their legs started to hurt.
Takeshi sat at the workbench, as he always used to, distracting himself with small gadgets or trinkets.
He scanned them with his gaze: the dust on their new boots he bought, the way their shoulders were dropped. "So, you saw enough?"
"Enough" Raizen answered.
Takeshi pointed toward the table with his chin. "I don't have anything else for now..."
Two bowls of cold stew waited, Takeshi's clumsy doing, by the mushy consistency.
Neither reached for them. They just sat in silence, thinking about everything that they saw.
Finally, Takeshi asked:
"So. What is it you want?"
"Huh?" Raizen flinched.
"What do you want to do... In the future?"
Raizen had been carrying the answer all along.
"I want to kill them." he said. His voice surprised him with how steady it was. "All of them."
Takeshi didn't blink. "Who?"
"The Nyxes. Every last one."
He expected argument, laughter, a long lecture about impossible things. But Takeshi only watched without moving.
"And you?" Takeshi asked Hikari.
She stood frozen for a couple of seconds, thinking.
"I'll... Follow him."
Takeshi sighed, wrapping the metal fingers of his prosthetic around the edge of the table.
"First, you want to live long enough to try touching a Nyx" he said at last. "Then you need more than anger and luck. You need to be torn down and built back in the right order."
Takeshi pushed his chair back and stood. He reached for a thick cloak from a peg and threw it around his shoulders, the hood shadowing half the eyepatch and the scar that ran under it.
"There's a place..."
Hikari looked from Raizen to Takeshi. "Where?"
Takeshi's mouth thinned into a faint smile. "Somewhere that's not on maps."
They followed him into the corridor. The Underworks always seemed to echo, but Takeshi's path found the spaces where sound was softer.
Past the market's edge, down a closed tunnel, with chalk marks on the walls - warnings - caught the dim lamplight and hidden again.
"Is this… legal?" Raizen asked, more to fill the hush than to get an answer.
Takeshi's shoulders didn't move. "Legal is a word the people above don't use when they come below."
They reached a junction where three tunnels split. Takeshi chose the narrowest, one that bent sooner than it should have. The floor changed under their feet - from rough stone to a metal grate, then to something that looked like solid, rusty steel.
Takeshi stopped before a wall.
I mean, to anyone else, it was just a wall where the paint faded with time.
He rested his live palm against one rectangle of metal no bigger than a book. Under his hand, a line of light breathed, then dissapeared.
Somewhere within the wall, a lock woke up and started whirring. A faint, but ominous sound.
"Before the Wardens..." he said, and his voice had a different weight now, a history's.
"...Before half the gangs that think they own these halls, a different kind of order trained here. Not good. Not bad. Simply... Useful. I was part of it, once."
The seam split with a mechanical sigh that echoed slightly, and the door slid aside.
Cold air flowed from the inside, smooth and sterile, so unlike the Underworks, that a shiver went down Raizen's spine. Takeshi stepped aside, not in invitation, but in warning.
"You told me what you want" he said. "This place will ask you what you're willing to lose to get it."
Raizen swallowed. Hikari's shoulder brushed his slightly.
"Welcome" Takeshi continued, voice low.
"To the Rust Room."