Suncrest's training alarms slept in their cradles for once. Ootori had enforced a half-day—"You are not useful if you are sleepwalking and heroic," she'd said—and the ops floor agreed by being quiet enough to hear vents breathe.
Anastasia Shimizu was not sleepwalking. She was standing in front of a locker mirror, debating between two versions of the same white haori: one with a gold edge (official), one with a softer cream thread (human). She chose the cream. The Aegis shield leaned against the bench like a patient dog. Strictly speaking, she didn't need it for tea. Realistically, Tokyo had a sense of humor.
Her HUD pinged a gentle nudge.
[APPOINTMENT]
Tea with Dr. Miyu — Ebisu, 15:00
Dress code: Soft armor, softer voice.
"Soft voice is standard," Kana said from the doorway, chewing an energy bar she didn't need. She leaned on the jamb, all grin. "You're pretty even when you're trying not to be impressed with yourself."
"I am precisely impressed with this seam," Anastasia said, smoothing the hem. "It lies."
"That's what we like in fabric," Kana said. "Also, I took the liberty of setting your status to 'Do Not Disturb (Unless Mythic).'"
Raina appeared behind Kana, mug in hand, hair up, the universal sign for I'm not intruding, I'm just here now. "I have a scope grant meeting at four. Should I push it in case you need me to run interference on paparazzi?"
"I can handle polite," Anastasia said.
"That's the problem," Raina said, amused. "The city believes you and shows up."
Miyu texted: I'm out front, no rush. I found a quiet table. They remember you.
Anastasia's shoulders loosened. "She's early," she said, as if that were a fact worthy of a smile (it was).
Kana mimed a courtly bow. "Go. Be romanced. If a Bronze pops, text me and I'll suplex it somewhere considerate."
"Do not suplex in front of children," Raina said.
"I never do," Kana protested, already suiting up for precisely that.
The tea shop in Ebisu used birch wood and dusk light to invite people to exhale. At the counter, the barista looked up and nodded like they had all agreed to keep the myth of normalcy alive. Miyu was at a window table, a book closed under her hand, a half-finished cup of yuzu matcha. She looked like a small, well-kept secret and then she saw Anastasia and stopped being secret, lit softly from inside.
"You're early," Anastasia said, because honesty is a good appetizer.
"I didn't want the day to decide to be clever while I wasn't looking," Miyu said, then flushed, embarrassed by the poetry of it. "Also the chiffon sells out."
"It won't today," Anastasia said, voice warm enough to convince pastries to behave. She ordered two slices, two fresh cups.
They began with small domesticities: was the hospital fruit basket safe, did Ootori eat the durian (no), would Raina's silenced clappers make her bullets too quiet ("We still need consent from physics," Miyu said dryly). The conversation did the good date thing: it convinced the air they'd known each other longer than they had.
At some point, the tea arrived. At some point, Miyu laughed in that gently startled way she had when joy ambushed her from a polite angle. And at some point Anastasia realized that the ache under her shoulder—the one that lived there since some January when a gate had opened over a kindergarten—was quieter simply because Miyu's fingertips brushed the table close to hers.
Her HUD, traitorous and sweet, offered an overlay.
[SOCIAL STATUS — PRIVATE]
Anastasia ↔ Miyu
Affinity: Budding (72%) → 74%
Synergy Potential: High
Condition to Bloom: A vow spoken and heard.
"Do you ever turn it off?" Miyu asked, eyes flicking to the faint reflection of numbers in the window.
"I pretend to," Anastasia said. "But mostly I learn to let it be a caption, not the story." She tilted her head. "May I ask you a question that is not about war?"
"Yes," Miyu said.
"Why healing?" Anastasia asked. "You are very good at it. But you could have done anything. People with your hands end up building towers or playing piano in expensive rooms."
Miyu sipped. "It's not a sad story," she said, warning gently. "My grandmother ran a clinic in Nagoya. She had a sign by the door that said: Please bring your own honesty. I thought that was rude when I was six. By ten I understood. By eighteen I wanted it in every room I entered." She set the cup down. "Healing is a conversation with cells. They don't lie. They tell you they are hurt or tired or confused. You answer. I like the honesty of that." Her mouth tugged, self-teasing. "Also I am very persuasive with platelets."
Anastasia's laugh was small and real. "I like the way you talk about work. Like a craft and a kindness."
Miyu's fingers turned her cup. "Why tanking?" she asked. "Beyond the obvious 'you can and that helps.' Why stand there?"
"Because every city has children and bakeries and hospital atriums that smell like coffee trying its best," Anastasia said without thinking about it. "Because someone told me once that a wall is just a promise with good posture. Because I am very bad at leaving when people think leaving is polite." She exhaled. "And because I am, in an unsexy way, stubborn."
Miyu made the soft sound again, the one that felt like sunlight on quiet shoulders. "It's extremely sexy," she said, and surprised them both.
Anastasia smiled, slow and grateful. "Thank you."
The second slice of chiffon arrived as if rewarding bravery. Outside the window, Tokyo was itself: scooters, murmurs, the practiced choreography of a city that has negotiated with disaster and still chooses to love itself in public.
A little ping from the city channel: Minor Bronze Ping: Setagaya side street. Three other guilds had already accepted. Anastasia's hand went to the Aegis, then relaxed. It would be handled. It was being handled. She was allowed to have cake.
"Walk?" Miyu asked. "There's a street with lanterns three blocks down. It's silly during the day. I want to see if it's silly with you."
"I like silly," Anastasia said. "It keeps the sky from thinking it can get away with anything."
The lantern street had been strung for a festival and then, as these things do, outlived the posters. Paper moons slept over an alley of thrift shops and noodle steam. It was not crowded, which is to say two people could have a conversation without it being someone else's.
They walked close because the city permitted it. Anastasia kept the Aegis slung low, not as a shield but as the world's most chivalrous umbrella against an entirely theoretical rain. Miyu's shoulder brushed her arm once, then again, and the third time it stayed.
"I have a strange request," Miyu said.
"Those are my favorite," Anastasia said.
"Can we try not being brave for five minutes?" Miyu asked. "I know we are good at it. I know we are monetized for it. I would like to see what you are like when you don't try."
Anastasia studied the paper moon above them, then the line of Miyu's jaw, the way relief looked on her face when she let it. She let her own shoulders drop a centimeter. She unclenched three muscles in her back no one knew were clenched. She breathed.
"This is me not trying," she said.
Miyu nodded as if taking notes. "You look… taller," she observed, and smiled at her own nonsense.
"Flattery accepted," Anastasia said. She reached up and tugged, gently, at a lantern string to set it swaying. Light moved over Miyu's hair like a small tide.
Her HUD chimed, quiet, like it, too, had decided to be human.
[PERSONAL BOUND — OPEN]
Do you accept Tokyo as charge?
Witness present. (Miyu, Healer: attuned)
Say it aloud.
She didn't look away. "Miyu," she said, because truth likes to be addressed by name. "I am going to say something that will sound like work and is not."
"Okay," Miyu said, voice very careful.
"I accept Tokyo as my charge," Anastasia said, and her voice didn't swell or grandstand. It rested. "I accept its mornings, its good bread, its tired doctors, its reckless teenagers, its cranes and ferries and vending machines that judge nothing. I accept its bells when they are wrong and when they are right. I will stand where I should and I will leave when leaving is the thing that keeps it gentle. I will ask for help when the day is bigger than my shoulders. That is my vow."
Lanterns swayed. Somewhere, a scooter backfired like applause. Miyu's hand found hers like it had known the route before her brain did.
"Witnessed," Miyu said, the way a physician signs a chart that matters. "I will help you remember it on the days you are too helpful for your own spine."
Numbers bloomed, then tucked themselves away.
[OATH EVOLUTION UNLOCKED]
Mother's Aegis → City's Aegis
Lethal Redirect radius: 30m | Charges: 2 | CD: 45s
Public Assurance potency +10% in urban zones
NEW (Bonded): Paired Breath — When within 8m of Miyu, Sanctuary Field gains +1% regen and extends 5m. When Miyu initiates Mend on Anastasia, City's Aegis CD –5s. (Consent-based)
Miyu's own HUD (gentler, pale) chimed; she blinked, then flushed. "Paired… breath?"
"We breathe together," Anastasia said, because romance is sometimes a mechanic and the mechanic is kind. She lifted Miyu's hand, turned it, and pressed a kiss to the heel of her palm. Not performance. A simple reverence, like touching a saint's ribbon.
Miyu made a small noise that begged to be kept private and yet had a public health quality: this is good for you, please do it again someday. She stepped in. "May I—"
"Yes," Anastasia said.
The kiss was not cinematic. It was tidy and careful and felt like a proof of concept that the world did not end when two people wanted a thing and asked nicely. Light moved. Air tasted like paper and sugar. Anastasia cupped the back of Miyu's head with a palm that had brushed away lightning. Miyu rose to her toes with the courage she used for undoing pain.
When they separated, the city was still a city. A pigeon walked by with professional indifference.
"I would like to do that again in a room with a door I can lock," Miyu said, medical as ever.
"I would like to offer you a door," Anastasia said, amused. "And a chair. And a nap."
"Cake," Miyu said.
"Non-negotiable," Anastasia said.
They walked the rest of the lane without talking much because silence can be an oath too. At the end, Raina leaned against a vending machine pretending to be casual and failing only by being too competent.
"Scope grant approved," she said by way of hello. "Also, #MarryTheTank is trending again. I assume you are handling PR by ignoring it like a grownup."
"I will like the posts with good typography," Anastasia said. "And none of the rest."
"Good," Raina said. Her eyes softened, a sniper's version of an embrace. "Happy?"
"Yes," Anastasia said.
Kana arrived carrying a tote bag bulging with something that could only be "gym décor" in violation of at least two civilized codes. "Do not ask," she said, grinning. "Also, I found a ramen place with a line but I told them we just saved a hospital yesterday and they said 'So did our aunt' and now I love them."
"Perfect city," Miyu murmured.
Ootori's message chimed: Coalition check-in at nineteen. Light day otherwise. Try to act surprised.
"We have three hours," Anastasia said. "Permission to show Dr. Miyu the view from the HQ roof."
"Granted," Raina said, as though she were guildmaster for a moment and made wise domestic policy.
Suncrest's roof was a small garden that had learned to be brave in wind. Someone had left a radio near a potted rosemary and it played the kind of music that presumes you have tea. Tokyo sprawled like a cooperative dragon—coils of rail, scales of glass, a slow, good breath.
Anastasia set the Aegis down and used it as a bench back. Miyu sat beside her and produced, from some inexplicable pocket, two onigiri: plum and salmon. "I plan for light hypoglycemia after kissing," she said, both joking and not.
"Your craft," Anastasia said solemnly, and accepted the salmon.
They ate. They watched trains draw calligraphy. They let the day sit.
"Miyu," Anastasia said finally, hands folded, keys official and clear. "I would like to date you. Publicly when convenient; privately when kind. I will be late sometimes. I will be too early others. I will bring cake as apology and protein as policy. I will flirt with our friends exactly as much as it makes you laugh and no more. I will ask before I turn a shield into an umbrella in your apartment."
Miyu turned, profile against the city. "I would like to date you," she said. "I will tell you when my hands are tired before they shake. I will write 'rest' into your chart and enforce it with mean, sweet texts. I will be jealous of no one because they are not you. I will ask for slow even when the day is fast. I will bring vitamins disguised as candy."
"Consent check," Anastasia said, a habit that had become a tenderness.
"Consent: yes," Miyu said, cheeks pink for reasons unrelated to wind.
They shook on it because they were the kind of people who would write love as a contract if allowed. Then they kissed again because they were also the kind of people who understood paperwork is more fun with stamps.
The roof door banged open. Kana froze halfway through. "Oh. Sorry. I brought the 'compliant curtain' because it looked sad without a gym. I'll… go. Or hold it over you like a chaperone."
"Go," three voices said.
Kana shut the door, humming loudly to warn the air she was not listening. A text from her landed immediately: Proud of you. Please name your couple skill something I can yell during fights.
Miyu's phone buzzed with a message from Dr. Fujimoto: Staff approval for one extra nurse per night shift came through. We may owe you a ribbon.
Miyu showed it. Anastasia smiled like a person who had just been paid in a currency people recognize long after invoices are archived. "Good," she said softly. "Good, good."
Her HUD, never quite done, posted a tidy addendum.
[BOND TRAIT — NAMING]
Current: Paired Breath
Team Suggestion: Kana wants "Kiss and Knit."
Raina suggests "Quiet Field."
Ootori suggests "Behave."
Miyu suggests "Soft Armor."
Choose? (Y/N)
"Soft Armor," Anastasia said.
Miyu nodded. "Soft Armor," she echoed, and the city took the name like a small bell and rang it once, satisfied.
Dusk arrived without asking permission and apologized by being lovely. They made it to coalition check-in with hair that implied nothing and smiles that admitted everything. Ootori looked at them, at the ribbon on Anastasia's haori, at the way Miyu's shoulder had learned a new resting place, and said nothing. Commanders protect the obvious so it can live.
After, Raina found her scope, Kana found a reason to lift something irresponsibly heavy in a responsible way, and Tokyo found, as it often does, that the night would behave if asked nicely by the right people. On the way out of HQ, a news drone hovered. Anastasia lifted a hand. The drone bobbed, broadcast delay catching the gesture a heartbeat late, the city at the other end waving back through a thousand screens.
On a quiet corner, under a paper moon that had stayed up past its season, two women paused, counted together—four in, hold, four out—and went on. The day had not been an emergency. It had been a date. It had been a vow. It had been, in the ledger that matters, profitable. And if the world decided tomorrow to be clever, Tokyo had it on record: the Tank Goddess and the doctor had chosen each other, and that choice had consequences—mechanical, civic, sweet.
Above them, a bell rang for shift change. It sounded like someone being allowed to leave early for once.