Takezo’s place was exactly as I remembered it: ancient wood, low roof, shoji screens. The garden was lit only by moonlight as the day had ended before we got there.

  Isabella killed the car in the entryway. “I feel my hair turning grey from just seeing this place.” She got out of the car though, slamming the door hard.

  Takezo leaned toward my seat. “How are you still sane?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  I shrugged. “Yeah, you just get used to it over time.”

  “You are insane.” He opened the door and slipped out of the car, chasing after Isabella. She invited herself to his house, so he rushed after her to minimize the damage.

  A futile attempt. With a smirk, I got out of the car. I stretched, breathing in the fresh air. Not bad at all. The calm and quiet, the distant chirping of birds, no car sounds, no drunken partygoers from across the street, no noise.

  I didn’t go to the house. Instead, I took a stroll through the garden until I found a nice, big rock, on which I sat. I removed the gauntlets, and stuffed them into my pockets.

  Something crashed inside the house, accompanied by swearing in Japanese.

  Takezo flew out of the window. He spun mid-air and landed on his feet. He threw a glare at me. “You have to stop her.”

  So much for the peace and quiet. “What did she do?”

  “She found my stash of historic sake and invited herself to it. I tried to stop her, but she literally threw me out of my own house.”

  “Not much I can do.” I flashed a smile. “Your best bet is to put on a maid outfit and beg for mercy.”

  He snorted so hard that he spat out, and he twisted his face as he stopped himself from laughing. I wasn’t kidding though. That had the highest chance of protecting the sake stash, because she would likely go on to abuse him, forgetting about it in the process. Takezo shook his head, walked to me, and sat on the rock next to me.

  Surrender was indeed a relatively safe option. “Mistress,” I shouted. “Could you spare some lower-grade sake?”

  Takezo looked at me as if I had gone crazy. “How can you say that with a straight face?”

  Two bottles of sake flew out from the house straight in our direction.

  “I can’t catch them,” I remarked.

  With a grunt, Takezo jumped from the rock. He caught one bottle, and also the second one. He sat back down.

  “Thanks, Mistress,” I shouted, accepting one bottle from Takezo.

  We both took a long swig. For a moment, we didn’t speak. Silence had its value, and even the rumbling from inside the house ceased.

  “So,” I said, “Why did you come with us?”

  “With Sora having returned, there will be no opportunity for me to go through the portal anymore. Kallisto will obviously set up a trap behind the portal, now that she knows about its precise location, and Sora will see any attempts to go through as a waste of time.”

  I frowned. “How come?”

  “It’s the problem with his power. Sora can see into the future. Not far, but enough to be able to look a week forward, or something along those lines. That’s unbeatable for problems that have an easy solution, but paralyzing for the more long-term problems. Imagine you can see all possible states of the world one week from now, and see that any attempt to interact with the portal will lead to a loss of life and no progress.”

  Then he wouldn’t interact with the portal at all. Except that if interacting with the portal were to bring results ten days from now, he would never find out, because he would never start. “I see what you mean.”

  “There’s nothing for me to do here,” Takezo concluded, and took a long sip. Plus, he could be tried for cooperating with us, now that Saito wasn’t around to take responsibility for it. "But you will go through the portal, won’t you?”

  “Yeah. At least, I hope so. I have something I need to do on the other side.”

  “Like what? Got a crush on Kallisto?”

  I rolled my eyes. He spent too much time around succubi. “I’ll get Francesca’s soul back, find her a new body, and put the soul into it.”

  “Never mind.” Takezo hit me with a palm in the back. “You have gone insane. Can’t blame you though. Isabella would drive anyone insane.”

  “I’m serious. Kallisto said she killed you and that she had your soul in her cloak. She killed Francesca, so she has her soul in the cloak. I’ve started putting points into the demonist specialization, which has a soul transfer at level twenty-five. That should allow me to handle the soul manipulation part.”

  He frowned. “Where’s that on the tree?” He waved with his hand, looking into the distance, clearly studying the skill tree only he saw.

  I conjured up mine. Yep, it was there. “Bottom right branch, between the void mage and the fire mage.”

  “I have void mage, next to it, fire mage, and on the other side, the force mage.”

  Well, tough luck, I guess. “I suppose humans and demons have different skill trees.”

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  “Of course. Can’t have there the actual good stuff.” He waved his skill tree away with his hand. With a death grip, he raised the sake bottle and took a long swig. “Plus, your plan is missing two important parts. First, where do you get a body to put a soul in, and two, the main problem, how do you plan to get the soul from Kallisto?”

  “I haven’t figured those up yet,” I admitted. “But it’s a work in progress. I don’t have the necessary level anyway.”

  “It’s mostly sane though,” he evaluated. “Except for the Kallisto part. I hit her with a full-force triple stab, both hands, full body motion, straight into the eye with a magic-infused sword. My blade’s tip slipped off her eyeball and then chipped as it hit her eyelid. She is not beatable.”

  “Sounds like you need more points in strength, and some attack power skills.”

  “No shit.” He rolled his eyes, drank the rest of his sake, and threateningly glared at my bottle. “But I have no way to tell what would actually work. I just know what wouldn’t, because that’s all I’ve seen. And there’s no way to beat her without being able to seriously wound her.”

  “I don’t know.” I drank from my bottle before he stole it. Not completely, but I left a bit inside. “How does a chess player defeat a boxer in a duel? By playing chess, not boxing. That’s as far as my idea goes though.”

  Takezo paused, looking into the distance. He rose from the stone. A few steps forward later, he stopped by a pond. “Unlike us, she fought with honor. If we can create a situation where the honorable thing to do is to fight us on our own terms. It will have to be a fight though. She won’t play chess with us.”

  “And she would demolish us if she did, anyway.” I joined him by the pond. Two fish swam inside, lazily circling in the water. “I just don’t know what type of combat we could win at.”

  “She is impossible to injure, so we need a match where that doesn’t matter. Sumo comes to mind. She is strong, fast, agile, and impossibly tough. But she isn’t heavy. To move her out of a circle is a win condition we can succeed at.”

  A broad smile took over my face. Yeah. That sounded possible. “We just need something she would want to fight us over.”

  “Like one of her higher demons. The idea to kidnap one of her champions wasn’t bad at all. We just need to actually do that.”

  “Yeah.” I handed him the bottle.

  He finished it.

  The engine of a jet interrupted our moment. We watched it descend, landing on Takezo’s extended garden. Well, he got some extra ploughing to do this year. The jet, the same one she had arrived at the Yamato Tower, landed and powered down.

  We waited for a moment, but nothing happened. Nobody exited the jet, and Isabella didn’t show herself.

  We gave it a few more moments, but nothing happened.

  Well, we couldn’t fly it ourselves.

  We found Isabella in the living room. She lay on a web made of her own hair, empty bottles scattered around the room. The empty ones on the floor, the full ones around her.

  When we walked in, she spared us an amused glance. “I thought this rice wine wasn’t shit, but it’s pretty good, actually. Have you come to beg for more, boys?”

  “Your jet has arrived,” I announced calmly. “Mistress.”

  Her hair whipped from the web and lashed me across the back. I yelped, my body jerking forward.

  “What was that for?”

  “Do you think you can soften me up by calling me mistress, to manipulate me, to trick me? And you think you’re so smart doing it.” The hair lashed me again, and then four more times, until the whipping dropped me to my knees. “But I can see right through it.”

  The hair withdrew to her. She descended on the floor, withdrawing all the hair back to its normal shape. “We’re lifting off in ten minutes.” Her hair grabbed the largest remaining jug of sake, and she left.

  Takezo shook his head. “I’ll go pack.” He rushed away.

  Well, I had nothing to pack, so I might as well see if any sake remained. Yes, it was technically looting Takezo’s house, but Isabella already broke through that wall.

  I checked the bottles scattered all over the floor. A few were still sealed, so I took those. Afterwards, I walked outside.

  Isabella had already lifted herself into the front seat in the plane’s cockpit. The plane had two seats, so Takezo and I were going to have to fit into the second one.

  Unless she planned to pack one of us into the baggage area.

  Takezo walked out of the house, carrying three wrapped swords and two large, sealed scrolls. He only shook his head when I extended a hand to help him carry something.

  We walked to the plane.

  “The storages are full,” Isabella announced before we even asked.

  Well, no matter. I climbed up to the seat, my heartbeat speeding up upon the thought that I was going to fly this modified F35 jet. As a copilot, but still. This was easily over a hundred and twenty million dollars' worth of a plane, that even most army pilots never got to fly in.

  I sat in the seat, looking at all the buttons and levels and switches and little displays. Really nice.

  Takezo got in after me, stashing his swords and scrolls on the sides before he pretty much had to sit in my lap.

  That made this awkward. “Ready,” I announced.

  The cockpit closed, pressing us in. Takezo had to get off my lap and twist his body in front of me to fit in.

  The plane’s engines roared to life. We flew up, and then acceleration pinned me into the seat and Takezo to my face.

  My face itself started trying to crawl off my skull, all my organs squished by the g force. She flew way too fast.

  My head started spinning, but the force kept increasing.

  Suddenly, the force direction changed. Takezo flew from me and smashed into the seat ahead. The deceleration force pushed me against the seat belts, which barely held me in place. The urge in my stomach flared for evacuation, but I denied the request.

  From the window, the only thing visible was an endless sea. We were visibly slowing down. Takezo fell on me and started gathering himself.

  The plane slowed down until all but the auxiliary engines turned off. We hung in the air.

  The cockpit opened.

  An incredible view over the ocean spread around us. Nothing but water anywhere in sight. Isabella lifted herself up from her seat using her hair, hanging above.

  The hair shot out, caught Takezo, tied his every limb, and caught his throat. His shields shattered in sparks, unable to even slow anything down.

  She lifted him up, holding him in the air next to the plane. “Now, we’re going to play a game called Isabella gets told the truth. If I do, we continue. If I don’t, I’ll tear you to shreds and drop them here in the ocean.”

  I sat in my seat, surprisingly calm. Isabella absolutely would tear him to shreds, but Takezo knew that, so he was going to be honest… I hoped, at least. There was also the option that he would tell the truth, she wouldn’t believe him and would execute him anyway.

  “And Isabella only has one question, to which she wants all the answers. Why are you coming with us?” Her hair loosened its grip from his throat, so he could speak.

  He cleared his throat. “First, because I’m not done with the portal and Kallisto, but Sora will never let me go through it again, seeing it as a pointless waste of resources. Second, because Peter will go through it, and I want to help him with that out of camaraderie alone.”

  “Not a bad start,” she evaluated. “But there’s more.”

  “Third, I want to learn about my creator, and you are his former apprentice.”

  She tilted her head sideways. “What makes you think that?”

  “You fight exactly the way he did. Same stances, same attack choice, same focus on zero-stance techniques. And the black hole spell was his signature spell. I’ve never even heard of anyone being able to cast it.”

  A slight smirk betrayed Isabella’s expression. “The man you speak of could do it with one hand and without blowing his arms up, so I’m not even close. And the fourth reason?”

  Takezo turned red, slightly looking away.

  “I want to hear it.”

  Takezo mumbled something, which I couldn’t hear over the wind.

  “Louder,” Isabella snapped. “Can’t hear you.”

  To my disbelief, Takezo turned red as he looked at Isabella. “You’re really hot, and if I don’t stick around, then we will never meet again.”

  Isabella’s mouth gaped open. For an awkward second, nothing moved. Then, she slammed him back onto me into the cockpit. She slid back to her seat, the cockpit closed, and the plane bolted forward.