The basement of the Blue Line Bar didn't smell like a hospital. It smelled of stale tobacco, ozone from the high-end signal jammers, and the sharp, metallic tang of Kenji's blood. The steady beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor was the only thing keeping the silence from becoming suffocating.
Kenji lay on the cot, his face as white as the sheets. The "Ronin" suit—the one he had spent his life savings on—lay in a shredded, pathetic heap in the corner. It looked like a discarded toy.
"He's stable, but he's lucky," Kenzo "The Eagle" Mitsu said, wiping a bloodied scalpel with a cloth. He turned his sharp, predatory eyes toward Akira, Hiroki, and Naomi. "If that round had been two inches to the left, you wouldn't be bringing me a patient. You'd be bringing me a corpse."
Before Akira could snap back a retort, the heavy steel door at the top of the stairs groaned. The sound of footsteps followed—slow, deliberate, and heavy with a weight that didn't come from physical size.
Hitoshi Asda stepped into the light.
He wasn't wearing his schoolteacher's sweater. He was dressed in a dark, high-collared coat that seemed to swallow the dim light of the basement. The kind, weary eyes the students knew from campus were gone, replaced by a gaze that felt like the edge of a cold blade.
"You brought them here, Kenzo?" Hitoshi's voice was a low vibration that seemed to rattle the glassware on the shelves.
"They brought him," Eagle countered, gesturing to the unconscious Kenji. "And they brought the Twin's attention with them. The fountain is a crime scene, Hitoshi. The city is screaming for the Ronin's head."
Hitoshi walked over to the cot. He didn't look at Kenji with pity. He looked at him with the disappointment of a craftsman looking at a broken tool. He reached down and picked up the cracked Hannya mask from the bedside table.
"You kids worship a ghost," Hitoshi said, his voice dropping to a lethal chill. He looked at Akira. "You think the Ronin was a hero? You think I wore this mask to inspire people?"
"You saved people," Naomi whispered, her voice trembling. "My father told me—"
"I didn't save them," Hitoshi interrupted, his grip tightening until the porcelain of the mask began to groan. "I merely liquidated the things that were hunting them. There is no justice in a blade, girl. There is only the end of a conversation."
He turned back to Eagle. "Ryo is at the Pit. I can smell his desperation from here. He thinks he won tonight. He thinks he broke the shadow."
"He has fifty men in that club, Hitoshi," Eagle warned, leaning against the bar. "Professional killers. Not the street-corner trash Kenji was fighting."
"Then I'll need more than a scabbard," Hitoshi said. He reached into a hidden compartment under the bar and pulled out a long, silk-wrapped bundle. As he unwrapped it, the air in the room seemed to grow colder. The steel of the Kuzuryu blade hadn't seen the light in fifteen years, but it was still hungry.
"Hitoshi, wait," Kenji groaned from the cot, his eyes fluttering open. "I can... I can still help. My gear..."
Hitoshi didn't even turn around. "Your gear is trash. Your heart is too soft. You wanted to be a hero, Kenji. Tonight, I'm going to show you why heroes don't survive in Tokyo."
Hitoshi slid the blade into his belt. "Watch the monitors. Don't look away. If you want to wear the mask, you need to understand the weight of the blood that comes with it."
As Hitoshi vanished into the shadows of the stairwell, Eagle turned to the laptop and tapped a few keys. The screen flickered to life, showing a grainy, high-angle feed of an underground cage surrounded by screaming men.
"Sit down," Eagle said to the stunned students. "Class is in session."