Demonic Pornstar System novel Chapter 984

Chapter 984: Arrival to the Shrines

"And the Circle will speak to Lord Grey through my voice, so he is never juggling all of us. Analyst Sonoda, I’d like you to assist me."

Sonoda bowed to the High Shrine Maiden at an angle normally reserved for funerals.

"...It will be my honor," she said, in the steadiest voice of her career.

Her composure survived the assignment, the closing formalities, and the walk to the elevator, in that order.

...

The fireworks were still smoking over the taxiway when the motorcade carried Kaiden Grey’s family out of the airfield, police outriders fore and aft. The city came out to watch it pass.

People lined the route all the way in, filling the overpasses, the station footbridges, and the office windows with the blinds hauled up.

The storefront screens were running the landing broadcast on loop, eleven seconds of handshake at a time.

Emily had her nose to the glass of the second car. "There are people on every bridge. Sarah. The bridges are full."

"I can see the bridges, Em."

"Then say something about them!"

"They’re structurally in danger," Sarah said.

Leia had given up on the window entirely and was filming herself against it, narrating for her own lens. "Day one in Japan. The nation is losing its mind. I’m having the time of my life."

In the lead car, Calypso had discovered that waving out one window produced a roar that rolled down the street after them, so she rationed herself to one wave per block, managing her new superpower responsibly.

At a red light, the chant off the nearest footbridge carried through the glass clearly enough to make out the syllables. Ka-lyp-so! Ka-lyp-so!

"They’re singing my name!" she reported to the rest of the car at full volume, then spent the whole green light waving with both arms, rationing abolished.

Bastet did not wave. She sat straight-backed beside the window with her ears up, being seen, which in her case counted as a public service. Her tail, curled around her own knee, flicked whenever a chant shaped itself into her name.

Alice knelt on the seat backward to watch an entire crossing wave at the motorcade.

"Big brother, that whole intersection is waving at us."

"Wave back, then."

"I only wave for you," Alice said, but she was a good girl, so she waved. Once.

The crossing roared back.

"Alice!"

"Little sister!"

"It’s not your fault, he’s too handsome!"

Her name and her title came through the glass in two languages, and the last of it came from a woman with lungs enough for the whole crossing.

It was the one thing about her the internet had never let go of, and a crossing full of strangers had just decided they were on her side about it.

Alice sat with the sound for a moment. Then she turned back to the window and waved again, slower, letting them have it.

"This country is slowly growing on me," she decided.

Nyx watched the storefront screens slide past with her chin on her knuckles, smiling wider at each one. "They took down the noodle ads for you, Kai. The noodle ads. I’ve never been prouder of anyone."

Kaiden leaned back between them and let the noise wash the last of the federal week off his family.

At the interchange, the recruit buses peeled off toward the Circle’s training campus, where a separate welcome waited on a scale better suited to hundreds of stomachs.

Then the boulevard ended, the noise fell behind, and the cars turned through a gate in a wall that had been keeping the city out since long before the city looked like this.

...

The Moon-Thread lineage kept an estate in the middle of Tokyo, behind stone walls and a canopy of maples old enough to ignore the skyline around them.

The drive curled past a pond and a wooden bridge, and it ended at a main house long enough to have wings. Staff lined the approach in two rows and bowed to the arriving guests as one.

"Okay, holy shit," Luna announced, climbing out ahead of everyone. "There’s a pond. There’s a bridge over the pond. Each of those fish must cost a fortune..."

At the foot of the steps waited a woman in a charcoal suit, a silver crescent pinned at her lapel, standing at perfect parade rest. She bowed to Kaiden, crisp and exact.

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