Demonic Pornstar System novel Chapter 982

Chapter 982: Welcome to Japan

The wheels of the Circle’s plane touched Japanese ground at midmorning, and Kaiden’s family heard the welcome before they saw any of it.

A long, rolling roar came through the hull while they were still taxiing, dim and directionless, like weather happening somewhere nearby.

Emily’s palms found the window band again. "Sarah. Sarah!"

"That," Sarah whistled, "is a lot of people."

The hatch swung open, the airstairs locked into place, and the roar arrived at full weight.

At the foot of the stairs, in ceremonial white and silver with a threaded crescent at her collar, stood the High Shrine Maiden of the Moon-Thread Lineage.

Yunohana Tsukikage bowed to Kaiden, ceremonially, and held it while the cameras drank.

"Welcome to Japan," she said in English, rising. "Your mother sends her regards. I was advised not to pamper you needlessly."

Kaiden looked past her at the red carpet, the honor guard holding both its sides, the arch of flowers, and the folded line of white-gloved staff.

"I can see you took the advice to heart."

"I’m glad we agree," Yunohana said serenely.

...

In Washington it was nine at night, and the Federal Bureau of Awakened Affairs had stopped pretending to go home.

The Director stood in front of the wall screen in his shirtsleeves, tie hanging open, watching a Japanese airfield glitter in the dark of his own office. His lunch still sat on the credenza where the phone call had found it.

On the broadcast, a woman in ceremonial white bowed to Kaiden Grey, and behind her a nation rolled out everything it had.

"Sir." An aide leaned in from the doorway. "State is asking again whether we had any advance-"

"Out."

Along the bottom of the feed, a network chyron did the day’s work in one line: KAIDEN GREY DEPARTS AMERICA AMID QUESTIONABLE FEDERAL PRESSURE.

An ocean away, on a gravel lot, his audit team was guarding boxes of receipts in an empty building. The coffee, Pratt had reported, was acceptable.

...

The crowd was real, it was far away, and both of those facts were somebody’s careful work.

Security had drawn its line hundreds of meters out, past the far taxiway, and the observation terraces beyond it were packed solid. The noise came off them in long rolling waves that crossed the whole field.

"Signs," Emily reported from the middle of the group, glued to the view. "Hundreds of signs. That one says welcome home, Eclipse. We just got here, how is it already home?!"

"Hot Asian babes in cosplay!" Leia had found the terraces’ true payload. "Horns! Red paint! There’s a whole row of Calypsos! There’s a Bastet section, look at the veils, the accuracy is insane-"

Sarah counted the uniformed line standing between the carpet and the terraces, and understood what she was looking at.

A government had mounted a security operation so that thousands of strangers could stand at a fence and be heard, yet nobody was allowed close enough to pose danger to them. A careful balance.

Near the front of the stands, a cluster of kids had cardboard axes over their shoulders and red paint up to their elbows.

Calypso spotted them, planted her feet, and waved her tail at them in a slow, unmistakable arc.

The terraces went up all at once.

Bastet had assumed the chanting was for Kaiden. It was always for Kaiden, wherever they went, and she begrudged him none of it.

Halfway down the carpet, her ears turned before she did. The syllables coming off the far fence had a shape to them, and the shape was her name.

She stopped walking.

A thousand strangers in gold veils and cat ears were calling for her, in a country that had made her a person before breakfast. The Manifestation of Dominion stood very still on the red carpet and let it reach her.

Then she raised one hand to the terraces, and held it up until the sound doubled.

"They know your name, kitty!"

"Naturally," Bastet said, and her voice was not entirely level.

...

High in the Awakened Association’s headquarters, the Chairman’s office had one screen lit and two people watching it.

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