"Aww..." I said, dropping my head with theatrical disappointment that’d put trained actors to shame. "And here I thought you came to see me... Don’t play with my feelings like that, Commander. I’m a sensitive real man, y’know."

Dove looked at me as though she couldn’t decide whether to grab my head and bang it against the nearest wall or bang her own, and I could tell she was evaluating both options with equal sincerity.

"I’m serious."

"Hey, Serious, I’m Nico." I giggled back.

The eyebrow began a furious twitch as she glared at me while cackling.

Standing by the bed, Peko’s hands remained perfectly folded, and the deadpan stare in her eyes communicated very precisely that she was not going to intervene in this.

Meanwhile, Nom-Nom watched with an attentive, assessing look that was slowly turning into one of boredom.

With the last of my giggles, I let my face fade into one of evenness as I said, "My answer to your offer is no."

"You have to understand..." she said, leaning forward in the chair, clearly having walked in with a plan for how this conversation would go. "Entropy will not stop coming after you. Look at the state a single attack has reduced you to. They will send more, and they will send worse, and the next time-"

"And what about it?" I tilted my head at her. "You’ll be there to protect us, right? Or does your protection only extend to your fellow knights and not to ordinary citizens?"

Dove froze for a full second before letting out a slow breath and looking me straight in the eye.

"Let me be very direct with you, Nico, because I do not have your talent for talking in circles." She held my gaze without flinching from it. "You are your group’s weakest link and also its most important one... The only way we can realistically protect you from Entropy is if you join the Knights and help us eradicate them. The Night of the Red Moon is barely two months away. We do not have time."

"Then let me be very direct with you too, Commander," I replied, shifting my weight on the bed and settling myself into something more upright, feeling the stitches on the stomach pull enough to remind me they were there as I continued-

"Our deal goes only as far as the Night of the Red Moon, and nothing else. And I will not risk my group one bit more than I have to... The only reason Entropy was able to get the better of me in the first place was that I was desperately and... frankly quite naively, hoping that they would reveal themselves, because doing so would pretty much prove that whatever they have going on is not something that cannot be stopped. So, to test that, I left myself more exposed than I would’ve otherwise."

"And now that they have revealed themselves," Dove emphasized as she clenched a fist,"...does it not make sense for us to work together?"

"No, actually," I chuckled.

Her eyes narrowed slightly while I continued-

"We are perfectly capable of defending ourselves against whatever Entropy throws at us," I said, gesturing at both Peko and Nom-Nom, "... and this is not our fight. Commander, you do remember the deal we made with your father, right? We are here to secure our freedom from Pantheon in exchange for helping Fugen against this year’s Night of the Red Moon and potentially settling here once that freedom is secured. And that’s it. Nothing more, nothing less. We’re not some... traveling heroes."

Dove’s expression did not shift, but I could see the recalculations in her eyes.

After all, the part about our deal with Pantheon was a complete lie; we’re actively being hunted by them. I had just needed an institutional backing to sell the lie of our cover stories.

She let the silence stretch for a moment before pushing back.

"Entropy is a direct threat to Fugen’s security in general, not just against this year’s Red Moon... Nico, if they are not stopped in time, there may be no Fugen left for you to settle into."

"Then we’ll move somewhere else," I shot back without even batting an eye. "...Victory or defeat... doesn’t matter, we would have fulfilled our end of the bargain with both Pantheon and your father. We would’ve fought the Red Moon with everything we got, and we would be free."

Dove leaned back in the chair, shoulders slumped as she stared at me with a blank expression. After all, I just told her I didn’t care that her entire nation was destroyed, and millions died.

"Then what would it take?" she asked softly, and within that softness, I felt an unmistakable wave of disappointment, and I knew I had lost her before I even had a chance. But then again, no romance is worth more than your fold.

"If it is about compensation," She continued, " I can promise you will be rewarded handsomely. Whatever you need, resources, equipment, facilities, access-"

"Commander, it isn’t about compensation," I said, cutting her off gently but firmly while I held her gaze, "It is about making the decision that is best for my people... Not so different from what you are trying to do right now."

"The Entropy threat is one we cannot engage with all our forces," Dove said, letting out a tired sigh as she dropped her gaze to the floor. "We do not know how deeply they have penetrated our ranks... They could be operating from anywhere throughout the entire nation. We are stretched impossibly thin, and we have just a few weeks."

I looked at her and saw no embellishment.

I didn’t need it spelled out how bad this situation truly is.

They have an entire nation to cover, and not enough men to fully trust.

And even a single cultist was a threat that could spill catastrophe onto an entire city, after all, each one is backed directly by an Eldritch God that probably demands acts of terrorism as prayers.

"I understand, but three more people won’t make much of a difference to that picture."

She held my gaze for a moment, and I held hers, and neither of us filled the quiet until-

"Look..." I said, averting my eyes with a deep sigh, "I will share every piece of information I have on Entropy, and everything I manage to find going forward... All that I will give you freely and without negotiation. But I cannot join you, Commander... I will not thrust my people into a war that is not ours to fight."

The room sat quiet after that, while Dove just looked at me and I watched her do it, watched her turn over what I had said and where it sat with everything she knew about us, about the lies that I had fed her and her nation, lies she fully believed.

According to those lies, Peko, Nom-Nom, and I had spent our lives as Pantheon operatives and experiments.

And now we have an actual shot at something else, something that was ours, bereft of a leash around our necks. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

She understood where I was coming from.

I could see that she did, but understanding it did not change what Fugen needed, and those two things were sitting in the room together like fire and water.

Eventually, she exhaled through her nose and looked at me with an expression that had let go of the argument.

"Then know," she said, her tone measured and even, as though she were speaking to a stranger she wanted nothing to do with, "...that the protection we can extend toward you and your group will be limited at best."

She held my eyes when she said it, not as a threat exactly, more as a statement of fact she wanted me to receive very clearly, which was that if Entropy came for us again, she may not rush to our aid with as much enthusiasm as she would’ve otherwise.

Which I knew was a bluff, because if something happened to Nom-Nom or me, both of us would die due to Familiar Bond, and for Fugen, that’d be equivalent to losing a nuke.

And that once again leaves Peko out of the safest part of the equation.

But then again, if what I am thinking pans out, it wouldn’t matter.

I let a second of silence sit before I nodded, "I know."

Dove looked at me for another long moment, and I could see within her bright blue eyes the disappointment with which she was looking at me.

After a moment, with a deep sigh, she reached into the front of her armor, pulling out a small notebook and a pencil, and flipped it open to a blank page before looking back at me.

"Fine..." she said. "But if you change your mind, you know where to find me."

"Yeah."

"Now." She settled the notebook on her knee, held the pencil ready, and looked at me with the focused attention she kept reserved for interrogations. "As per your own claim, you will tell me everything you know about Entropy."

I nodded, shifting my weight on the bed again while the stitches in my stomach sent up their usual protest, which I filtered out to background noise.

"You’ve probably already interviewed Mitsuki," I said, "But there is much she doesn’t know. So here comes everything."

I looked at the ceiling for a second, organizing the order in which to lay it out.

Nom-Nom settled back slightly in the chair at the foot of the bed, her violet eyes moving between Dove and me with a watchfulness that had not relaxed since Dove walked in.

While Peko shifted her weight almost imperceptibly, which for Peko meant she was paying very close attention to what I was about to say and how I was going to say it.

"Okay, so it all begins with..."