Watabe lay crumpled on the fractured ground, lightning still sparking across his skin like dying embers. Each breath scraped against his ribs, a reminder that while his bones remained intact, something deeper had shattered—that careful control he'd spent years building, reduced to nothing by a single, devastating punch.

The others formed a loose circle around him, their silence heavy with judgment. Amaterasu stood with arms folded, but her eyes betrayed the stern set of her jaw—they lingered on his broken form with something that made his shame burn hotter than his injuries. The Hoarder loomed behind her like a stone sentinel. Shango's jaw worked soundlessly, muscles twitching with words he wouldn't say. Mirage's fingers danced at his side, ready for violence that wouldn't come.

In the periphery, Manic hummed tunelessly while his constructs shifted and reformed in endless patterns. Bumi nodded to some internal rhythm, as if this were all exactly what he'd expected. A proper scrap between lads, nothing more.

"Looks half-dead to me," Siren observed, her voice carrying the detached interest of someone watching a particularly brutal sport.

"He's breathing." Shango's response held no warmth, no relief—just fact.

Watabe turned his face away, unable to bear their stares. This wasn't the shame of defeat—he'd never harbored delusions about besting Mythara in single combat. Not yet. But he'd needed to prove something, to show that these god-like beings could bleed, could be hurt. Instead, he'd proven only that his control was an illusion, that beneath all his careful planning lived something wild and stupid and proud.

The strategic mind that had carried him through countless battles had simply... switched off. Replaced by base instinct, by the intoxicating rush of newfound power. Under normal circumstances, he would have spent weeks picking Mythara's brain about the Seats—analyzing their capabilities, formulating approaches that played to their strengths rather than their weaknesses.

Instead, he'd attacked Mythara like some rabid animal.

"Pathetic," he whispered, though whether he meant himself or the situation, he couldn't say.

Across the broken ground, Mythara studied him with those unsettling rose-gold eyes, looking more like a teacher observing a student's failed experiment than a warrior who'd just crushed someone's ego beneath his fist.

"He needed that," Mythara said, his voice carrying no satisfaction, no cruelty—just cold assessment. "Better to learn humility now than have a Seat cave in his skull later."

Amaterasu's fists trembled. "And that's your idea of teaching? Beating him senseless?"

"He demanded to prove his strength." Mythara's shrug was eloquent in its indifference. "I provided him the opportunity. One controlled punch is infinitely kinder than what waits for us in the real fight."

"You sound less like our ally and more like our warden every day." Her voice dropped to something dangerous.

"And you sound like a mother protecting her chicks instead of a leader preparing her people for war." The words hit their mark—Amaterasu's eyes flashed before she visibly forced herself to calm, shaking her head as if dispelling fog.

"Right." Shango's voice cut through their brewing conflict like a blade. His arms hung loose, but there was weight behind his stance that commanded attention. "Last thing we need is you two going at each other. We do that, we're dead before the war starts. All of us."

He looked from Mythara to the fallen Watabe, then to each member of their fractured group. "Dead and buried."

From his position on the ground, Watabe spoke just loud enough to be heard: "I only wanted to show we could stand against them. That we weren't helpless."

"Stand?" Shango's tone sharpened without becoming cruel. "Mate, you nearly buried us all under your wounded pride."

"Proving a point isn't worth spilling everyone else's blood. The Ionic Storm nearly killed some of them," Amaterasu added. However, her eyes remained fixed on Mythara with something complicated flickering behind them.

The silence that followed pressed down like a physical weight. Slowly, painfully, Watabe pushed himself upright. The rage that had consumed him earlier—that howling need to prove himself—felt foreign now, like a fever breaking. He could still feel it lurking beneath the surface, this new instinct that demanded violence, dominance, victory at any cost. But now he recognized it for what it was: not his feelings, but programming. Programming on a biological scale. Stress and uncertainty transformed into something primal and destructive.

He met Mythara's gaze and gave a single, sharp nod. An acknowledgment, if not quite an apology. Mythara returned it, and somehow that simple gesture cracked the tension holding them all rigid.

Bumi's laughter boomed across the healing space. "Told you lads! Nothing a good brawl won't sort out. Clear the air, and all that shite—it's how things are meant to be done."

The mood lifted fractionally, but Amaterasu found herself studying Mythara with growing unease. He was right, of course. Watabe had needed that lesson, needed someone to shatter his dangerous overconfidence before it got them all killed.

So why did she feel this sick twist in her stomach? This urge to shield her people from necessary pain?

She was no better than Watabe, she realized—letting instinct override judgment. This maternal protection that drove her every decision might be just as dangerous as his pride. Of the Trinity, only Shango seemed to navigate these new impulses with any grace, following the ones that served the group while maintaining himself.

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But even he struggled. She could see it in the way his shoulders held tension, in the careful control of his voice. She didn't know what, but he was fighting something too. She sighed. The awakening seemed like such a gift in the beginning, but now…

"Are we really ready for the UN?" The words escaped before she could stop them, hanging in the air like a challenge. "We can barely keep ourselves together long enough for a conversation."

Mirage was the first to break the uncomfortable silence. "Unity isn't what they're looking for anyway. They want leverage. We're weapons to them—useful, dangerous, but ultimately tools."

"Tools don't negotiate," Siren said flatly. "They get used."

Shango spat into the fractured nebula, disgust evident in every line of his body. "Show up divided, they'll treat us like children throwing tantrums. Come on too strong, and we're unstable, untrustworthy. Either way, we lose before we start talking."

Watabe, finding his voice again, spoke with renewed determination: "Then we show them something they can't categorize. Something that demands respect without begging for it."

"How poetic." The Wanderer's voice drifted through the space as he materialized among them, his presence causing the cracks in the constructed reality to seal themselves.

"Finally decided to watch the show in person?" Mythara scoffed with a smile. His fangs flashed. "Things go according to plan?"

"Whatever could you mean?" The Wanderer's tone was all innocence wrapped around something far less benign. "Though I will say—isn't it fascinating? How difficult it becomes to defend against threats you cannot perceive. Wouldn't you agree?"

His gaze swept over the Trinity, and each nodded with dawning understanding. They'd all felt it during the fight—the way their new instincts had guided them, overriding their conscious minds. Even Shango could feel the change, the way he'd stepped back and let events unfold when normally he would have intervened immediately.

Do I surrender to these instincts, or fight to remain myself? The question gnawed at him internally. So far, the instincts had been spot on. If they're always right, what does that make him? Should he just lose himself to them, for the sake of everyone else?

"Defend against what they can't perceive?" Amaterasu gleaned a second layer of wisdom from the Wanderer's words, much to the cryptic being's delight.

"They don't understand, do they?" Amaterasu asked suddenly, looking at Mythara. "The UN—they have no true concept of what Firmatha Sangaur really represents?"

"No." Mythara's confirmation was flat. "I've given them enough to know something's coming. Nothing more."

"Then we show them everything," she decided. "Complete transparency. Let them see exactly what we're facing."

Mythara's rose-gold eyes narrowed to slits. "And when they take Cefketa's recordings and use them against us? When they decide I'm too alien to be trusted? Because let's be honest—I stopped being human during the Fury of Dreams."

"That's politics." Shango's voice held steady despite the weight of what they were discussing. "We don't control how they see us, only how we respond when they make their judgments."

Mirage shook his head slowly. "The UN doesn't recognize nations built on good intentions and shared trauma. They want infrastructure, bureaucracy, proof we can govern without tearing each other's throats out. We need more than power—we need legitimacy."

"Legitimacy?" Siren's laugh held bitter edges. "From people who'll never trust us no matter what we do? We're thugs with delusions of grandeur to them."

"Then we prove we're more than that," Amaterasu said firmly. "We show them people with vision, with will—"

"Oh, brilliant!" Bumi's laughter interrupted her. "Talk our way into statehood, yeah? Give them a nice speech and they'll pat us on the arse and hand over a flag?"

Bloody Mary's look could have cut glass. "No, you ginger mountain. We prove we already are what we claim to be. Crowns aren't given—they're taken. We show them capabilities no one else possesses."

"Aye, now that's more like it," Bumi chuckled, some of his cynicism melting away.

The Hoarder's voice rumbled: "And what exactly do we possess that makes us irreplaceable?"

Mythara's gaze moved slowly across each face before settling back on the group as a whole. "The truth. Complete, unvarnished knowledge of what's coming for them. Firmatha Sangaur, the Seats, all of it. Once they see that..." He paused, something vulnerable flickering across his features. "Once it's all public knowledge, there's no pretending I'm still human. But they'll have no choice but to value us."

"Or fear us," Mirage added coldly.

Watabe's lips curved in something not quite a smile. "Fear works too."

Amaterasu shot him a warning look but didn't challenge the statement. Instead, she turned to address them all: "This is the turning point. What do we reveal? What do we hold back? Because once those recordings see daylight, we can never take them back."

Silence followed until Mirage finally spoke, his voice sharp and cutting. "You think the UN will be the only ones watching? Our own people in Heka still don't know the whole truth. The Fury of Dreams, what happened to Dr. Varma, the Festival... half of it sounds like fairy tales. You make it public, you don't just risk diplomats calling us unstable—you risk our own turning on us."

Bloody Mary nodded, arms crossed. "People won't rally when they see gods walking among them. They panic. They'll riot. And then they demand someone to blame."

Siren joined in: "They will ask if they were ever safe under our watch. If we could not stop one Seat, then why should they trust us to protect them from eight more?"

For once, even Bumi didn't laugh. His mouth opened, then closed, as if even he couldn't mock the truth of that point.

There was also the ever-present threat of Lord Cefketa. If they didn't share this knowledge themselves, nothing was stopping Cefketa from doing it himself to gain some sort of leverage when Firmatha Sangaur was brought to the forefront of the world.

And then soft laughter drifted across the healing space.

The Wanderer stepped forward, his presence somehow both comforting and deeply unsettling. His chuckle deepened, echoing strangely in the nebula.

"Yes… the Seats will come. Firmatha Sangaur's ancients will rise. Monsters, dragons, leviathans… all terrible, all predictable. But politics?"

He spread his hands, and for a moment the void around them rippled. "Politics has toppled empires greater than any Seat. Kings undone not by claws or swords, but by councils. Nations strangled not by war, but by treaties."

His gaze slid over each of them. "Even gods bend beneath the weight of politics. Because gods still need followers, and followers are fragile things. Fragile, frightened, and easily swayed."

He continued to laugh, almost gloating in the moment.

"The question becomes: how do you guide sheep toward safety when they desperately want to run toward the wolves?"

He turned his attention to Mythara, and that disturbing smile—too many teeth in too wide a mouth—gleamed from within his hood's shadow.

"Assuming, of course, that you intend to guide them at all."

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