---
Untouchables had a specific kind of silence.
Not uncomfortable. Just attentive.
Ren moved through the displays carefully, hands in his pockets, reading labels without touching. Ryuji trailed behind him with considerably less patience, picking things up and putting them back with the restless energy of a kid in a candy store.
Iwai hadn't looked up from his magazine.
"Okay," Ryuji said under his breath, stopping beside Ren at a display case of replica melee weapons. "So. That one."
He pointed.
A model mace. Heavy-looking even as a replica, solid construction, the kind of thing that would read as real to anything that processed reality through cognition and distortion.
Ren looked at it. Then thought about Ryuji's current unremarkable lead pipe.
"Captain Kidd's influence?" Ren asked.
"Captain Kidd has taste," Ryuji said with dignity.
'But since when do pirates use maces?' Ren studied the case. "It's well made."
"Right?!"
"Keep your voice down."
"Right, my bad," Ryuji said, quieter. "So we're getting it?"
Ren looked around the shop.
He had been quietly cataloguing things since they walked in — not just the display cases, but the organization, the stock, what was kept in quantity and what was tucked away. Iwai ran a careful operation. Everything had a place, despite looking like a mess.
"We're getting several things," Ren said.
---
Twenty minutes later they stood at the counter with a careful selection laid out between them.
The mace for Ryuji.
A compact model handgun for Ren — well weighted, balanced, the kind that would sit naturally in a holster if he had one.
A tommy gun that had given Ryuji approximately thirty seconds of unrestrained delight before Ren reminded him to lower his voice.
An Uzi, compact and deliberately chosen.
And a model shotgun that Ryuji had discovered in a back display and refused to put down.
Iwai looked at the spread.
Then he looked at Ren.
"Cosplay," he said flatly.
"We take our cosplay seriously," Ren replied.
A long pause.
Then Iwai began ringing them up without further comment, which Ren took as a form of respect.
"The tommy gun's a good choice for someone who hasn't handled one before. Light. Easy to get comfortable with."
"That's what I thought," Ren said.
Another pause.
Iwai glanced sideways at him.
"You handled replicas before?"
"My collection at home was decent," Ren said.
Complete bullshit.
Iwai studied him for a moment seemingly considering something.
"Come back if anything needs adjustment," he said. "I do maintenance."
"Thank you, Iwai-san."
---
They left Untouchables with two bags that clinked gently with every step.
Outside, Ryuji immediately tried to look inside them again.
"Not on the street," Ren said.
"I know, I know." Ryuji peered into the bag anyway.
"Morgana said the models would work in the Metaverse," Ren said. "Something about cognition reading them as real if we treat them as real."
"Right, right." Ryuji squinted. "He said we'd be surprised though. What do you think he meant?"
Ren thought about Arsène. About the way the Metaverse had dressed him the moment he awakened — coat, gloves, boots appearing from nothing. The way Ryuji had manifested a full pirate's outfit without understanding how.
"I think," Ren said carefully, "that the Metaverse doesn't distinguish between a model and the real thing if the observer believes it's real. Remember what I said in the roof about enemies seeing me with a weapon?"
Ryuji stared at him.
"So we might actually be able to shoot things."
Ryuji looked down at the bag.
"…Okay yeah that would be dope actually." He hoisted it over his shoulder. "Man I'm starving. Ramen?"
"Sure," Ren said, because he was also starving and had been for approximately two hours.
---
The ramen shop was narrow and warm.
They sat at the counter, ordered without deliberating, and waited in quiet comfort.
For a while they just ate.
Ryuji got through most of his bowl before he spoke.
"Hey. Can I ask you something?"
"Sure."
"The assault charge." Ryuji turned his chopsticks in his fingers. "I mean. I figured it was bullshit. But what actually happened?"
Ren considered the question.
Then answered.
"There was a man in my town. Drunk. He was grabbing a woman and wouldn't let her go. Trying to force her into his car. I pulled him away from her and he fell over."
He paused.
"He was connected. The police in his pocket. He didn't appear at the trial."
Ryuji stared.
"That's it?"
"That's it."
"You got put on probation and sent to another city because some drunk asshole fell down?"
"He claimed I attacked him unprovoked," Ren said. "Ninety-nine percent conviction rate."
Ryuji set his chopsticks down carefully.
"That is the most complete and utter load of—"
"I know."
"You were trying to help someone."
"I know."
"And they just—"
Ryuji stopped himself. Picked his chopsticks up again. Put them down.
"Damn it!" Ryuji replied immediately. "These shitty adults decide something and then that's what happened and everyone acts like fighting it makes you the problem."
He leaned back slightly.
"That's what they did with my leg. Kamoshida broke it. I told people. And somehow what everyone remembers is that I was the hothead who ruined the team."
They sat quietly for a moment.
"We're gonna get that bastard," Ryuji said.
Not loudly.
Just with certainty.
"Yeah," Ren agreed.
---
Time froze.
The gentle voice returned.
"I am thou. Thou art I. Thou has established a new bond. It shall become the wings of rebellion that breaketh thy chains of captivity. With the birth of the Chariot-"
A distant rumble interrupted the voice once again with a booming static speech he again couldn't understand.
Chains shifting somewhere far away.
A crack of thunder, as if warning something to stop.
Silence.
---
Time resumed.
Ryuji was talking about the mace again.
---
He returned to Yongen-Jaya as the streetlights were coming on.
Sojiro looked up when he entered Leblanc, took in the bags, and said nothing.
Ren was learning that this was its own form of communication.
"Before nine," Ren said.
"I can see that," Sojiro replied, returning to his crossword.
---
Upstairs, Morgana was still sitting on the windowsill.
The alley cats had apparently reached some kind of territorial resolution, because he looked pleased with himself.
"Oh good," Morgana said, immediately abandoning the window to inspect the bags. "You got them."
"You knew we would."
"I had confidence."
He nudged the bag containing the tommy gun and the Uzi.
"These are for the girls?"
"Yeah."
"Good choices."
He prodded the model shotgun.
"Ryuji?"
"Ryuji."
"Of course."
Morgana sat back, studying the spread with quiet satisfaction.
"You'll see what I mean when we go back in. Just trust the Metaverse."
"You're really not going to explain it," Ren said.
"Where's the fun in that?" Morgana replied.
---
Ren sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the ceiling.
The day had been — unexpectedly — a good one.
Not exciting. Not terrifying.
Just a Saturday where things had happened at a reasonable pace and nobody had been knocked into a pulsating wall by a Shadow.
He wasn't entirely sure what to do with that.
"Hey, Morgana."
"Mm?"
Ren stared at the ceiling.
"I don't know what to do with tomorrow."
"We can't go back to the Palace yet," he continued. "Takemi said she'd contact me. We have the weapons. But I don't have anywhere else to be."
Morgana was quiet for a moment.
"Rest," he said.
"I don't know how," Ren replied.
Not as a complaint.
Just as a fact.
A blue flame flickered at the edge of Ren's thoughts.
Arsène.
Present without being summoned.
'Mon ami,' Arsène said, voice calm and patient. 'You have been moving since the moment you arrived.'
'The city is not going anywhere. The Palace is not going anywhere.'
'Your friends will still be here tomorrow.'
Ren exhaled slowly.
'Take your time.' Arsène continued.
Outside, Yongen-Jaya settled into evening.
Distant train sounds.
A faint buzz of a television.
The alley cats quiet after whatever diplomatic crisis Morgana had apparently observed.
"Okay," Ren said softly.
He rolled over on his side.
On the windowsill, the tarot cards caught the last of the streetlight.
The Magician.
And the Tower.
He assumed that The Chariot would be the card he drew next.
But Tomorrow could wait.
---