Mandy arrived in eleven minutes.
Cain counted.
He sat on the front step with his arms on his knees and watched the street. Sakura sat beside him. Not touching him. She wore his coat. It was better than what she had been wearing before, which was nothing she had chosen for herself.
She had stopped shaking. She had not said much. He had not pushed.
I do not know what to say to her. This is not my area.
I can close wounds. I cannot fix what made them.
A rental car pulled up at the gate. Mandy got out.
She looked at Cain. At Sakura. At the house. Back at Cain. Her expression was the one she wore when she had a great deal to say and was deciding how much of it was useful right now.
She walked through the gate.
"You left without telling me," she said.
"I sent a message," he said.
"'Following a lead. Back later.' That is not telling me."
"It is technically informing you."
"Karl.."
"It has been handled."
She looked at the house again. Front door open. No sound from inside. She read the scene the way she read all scenes — quickly, without asking him to explain things she did not yet need explained. Then she set it aside.
She crossed to the front step and crouched down to eye level. Not in a rush. The way someone moves when they have learned that size matters in these conversations.
"Hi," she said. "My name is Mandy. What is yours?"
A pause.
"Sakura," the girl said. Very quietly.
"Sakura. That is a nice name." She kept her voice even. Not too bright. Not performing warmth. Just present. "Are you hurt anywhere right now? Physically?"
"I do not think so."
"Okay. Good." She glanced at Cain once. Brief. "We are going to get you somewhere safe. You do not have to do anything else yet."
She stood, moved a short distance away, and started making calls. She kept Sakura in her eyeline the whole time.
Cain watched her do it.
She is better at this than I am at this.
He looked at Sakura. The girl was staring at her own hands, examining them with the careful attention of someone who had not been permitted to think of their own body as their own for a very long time.
He thought about saying something useful.
Nothing came.
"There is someone," he said eventually. "Someone I know. She is better at this than I am, and considerably more dramatic. She may come later, if you want that. You do not have to decide now."
Sakura looked at him.
"Is she like you?"
"Somewhat. She is older."
Something shifted in the girl's face. Not a smile, but adjacent to one.
"Okay," she said.
Hawks arrived twelve minutes after Mandy. He came from above, landed neatly, folded his wings, and read the scene in a single sweep without asking questions he could answer himself.
"Want me to file something?" he said.
"Not yet," Mandy said, still on her phone.
He nodded and moved to the side, quiet in the way people are quiet when they have been in enough disaster zones to know when to wait.
Good man.
Iida arrived on foot. He was not out of breath, which said something about the distance he must have covered to arrive that quickly. He had his clipboard. He always had his clipboard.
He looked at the house. He looked at Cain.
He opened his clipboard.
"Operative Arnur," he said. "Can I ask what happened here?"
"I followed a residual magical trail from the Grail War site to this location," Cain said. "Inside I found evidence of a long-running illegal magical operation and one survivor. I neutralised the threat and removed the survivor."
Iida wrote this down with the focus of someone who believed that accurate documentation was itself a form of heroism.
"The owner of the property?"
"No longer a concern."
He wrote this down as well. He did not ask for clarification.
He is learning.
"The survivor." He paused. "Her condition?"
"Stable. She will need specialist care. Medical and otherwise." Cain paused. "She should not be placed with family immediately. She has family in this city. They were not responsible for what happened to her, but the association will complicate things. Give it time."
Iida wrote all of this down. Then he looked up.
"You know a great deal about her situation for someone who arrived approximately an hour ago."
"Yes," Cain said.
Iida looked at him for a moment, then returned to his notes and began organising the teams. He did not put everything in the main report. Some things he kept in the margins.
Also learning.
All Might arrived last.
He did not announce himself, which was unusual enough that Cain looked up before he came around the corner. He was not in his public form. The version of him that could fill a disaster zone with momentum was not here today. He was the same man, just quieter, moving without taking up all the space.
He looked at Sakura first. Just a moment. Long enough to read the coat, her hands, the look on her face. Then he looked at Cain.
"Hawks called me," he said.
"I assumed," Cain said.
All Might sat down on the garden wall, which protested but held, and looked at the house.
"How long had this been going on?"
"Years. Possibly decades."
A long exhale.
"We should have found it."
"It was hidden well," Cain said. "Below the Grail War noise. Below everything else. It would not have been findable by standard methods."
"Still."
Cain looked at his hands. Large. The kind earned from a lifetime of moving things too heavy for most people, and carrying weight that was not all physical.
"You cannot be everywhere," Cain said. "You know this."
"I know." All Might looked at his own hands. "I know it here." He touched his temple briefly. "I am still working on it here." He indicated the rest of himself, vaguely.
Cain had nothing useful to add. So he said nothing.
They sat in the quiet that forms between people who have done hard things for a long time and know that not every moment requires words.
The handover was not ceremonial.
A medical team arrived. Mandy introduced them to Sakura in her usual way — direct, calm, no performance. Sakura went with them without protest. Cain suspected this did not mean she was fine. It meant she did not yet have the strength to refuse. That would change, given time.
He watched her go.
Just before the team turned the corner, she looked back.
He did not wave. He met her eyes for a moment, then looked away.
That was enough.
Hawks appeared at his shoulder.
"She will be looked after properly?" he said. Not quite a question.
"Yes," Cain said. Then, after a pause, something in his voice shifted. "She will be looked after properly."
Hawks made a small sound and asked nothing more.
Later, after the investigation teams arrived and the scene shifted from emergency to documentation, Cain stood at the gate.
Mandy stood beside him.
She had been quiet for a while. Not the easy silence of two old things that had run out of words. The kind that happens when someone is deciding what to say.
"Next time," she said, "you tell me before you go somewhere like that."
"It was handled—"
"I am not talking about the outcome." She looked at him. Not angry. Something more considered than that. "You could have told me what you found. I would have waited at the perimeter if you needed me to. But you should not have gone in alone without anyone knowing where you were."
He thought about arguing. He had been going into places alone for approximately six thousand years and it had always worked out.
He also thought about the eleven minutes. About Mandy crouching to eye level before she said a single word.
"Next time," he said.
She studied him for a moment, checking whether he meant it.
Then she nodded.
"I need coffee. There is a place two streets over that Hawks says is decent. You can tell me what actually happened in that basement while I drink it."
"I told Iida—"
"You told Iida the version for the report."
He looked at her.
She is sharper than she lets on. She always has been.
"Fine," he said. "Coffee first."
They walked away from the Matou estate without looking back. The gate closed behind them with a quiet click, like a door deciding it was finished.
Somewhere across the city, Sakura Matou lay in a clean bed with clean sheets for the first time in as long as she could remember.
She stared at a ceiling that did not move.
She listened to the quiet.
It was very loud.
She thought she could probably learn to live with that.