---
Luna arrived first. She came in still smelling of steel, sweat and soap, ears half-lowered in habitual annoyance at everything that was not a training field. Her light armor was buckled tight, fresh where plates had been replaced after the battle. Bruises shadowed her neck and arms, the kind you kept when you kicked a man off a ramp with your own legs.
"You are upright," she said instead of greeting. "That is already suspicious. What did you mean by power?"
Akayoroi followed a few breaths later, gliding in with the controlled ease of someone who had spent the morning walking shadow-tunnels under the mountain.
Her upper body was wrapped in dark cloth, simple but clean. Her lower ant half gleamed with newly polished plates, the segmented limbs placing each step precisely. A faint scent of earth and pheromones trailed her, the smell of tunnels and a small fierce tribe living in them.
"My Lord," she said, tilting her head. "You called."
"Sit," Kai said.
They did.
