Momoi knows that the problems between Aomine and Kuroko and Kagami have to be ironed out before they start the Interhigh preliminaries, and she has a plan. That doesn’t make it easy, though.
Momoi Satsuki liked Seirin. They were a challenge, and she liked a challenge to her skills just as much as any of the boys did.
Kuroko gets a chance to play the way he wants to, again, with Aomine against Kaijou. When he has to play without his partners against Touou, though, he finds himself hitting a wall.
“All right,” Hyuuga-san called, waving them to gather close. “We’ve played Kaijou once, but don’t let that make you overconfident. I doubt they were going all out, not in a practice match, and Kasamatsu knows what we can do, now. Stay sharp.” He nodded as everyone chorused agreement, and then reached up to wrap a hand around the back of Aomine’s neck. “Except for you,” he added. “You need to calm down.” He shook Aomine a little, holding his rather startled gaze. “Kaijou isn’t running away, and you don’t need to hunt them down for pity’s sake. Breathe.”
Tetsuya was actually the one who followed that order, breathing out as one thread of tension uncoiled down his back. He had been right, so right, to bring Aomine to Seirin.
Al stumbles over the clue to finding his brother that he was looking for, in a way he didn’t expect. (Continued after a seven year hiatus, I recommend re-reading the first two stories in the arc.)
Al picked an easy path, down by the lakeshore under the trees where the light rain wouldn’t get him too wet. Sensei was probably right. His brain felt so full it might spill if he moved too fast, and his thoughts jostled against each other. He was pretty good at modern alchemical codes, but he’d been reading much older texts, and if you went back far enough it was as much philosophy as science and every statement seemed to mean at least three different things at once. Probably more, actually, but he had threes on the brain; it was Trismegistus’ fault. And Salmon’s. Mercury meant spirit meant animal, and where did that get him?
Gil does his best to make restitution and finds himself being drawn out by Al.
Gil had not been surprised when Alphonse mentioned nightmares. The boy had died, been hauled back by his heels and bound to a suit of armor, tramped all over the country running after the false hope of the Stone, been transmuted into the Stone, and finally sacrificed those years of love and effort to be returned to true life. Nightmares were surely to be expected. He hadn’t quite expected his new houseguest to start up in the middle of the night, screaming, though.
He certainly hadn’t expected it to happen every night.
Four moments when Miyuki actually thinks about his hair, often to keep from thinking about something else.
His mother always combed his hair for school.
Furuya is finally, if not prepared, at least willing to start dealing with Hiromitsu’s memory.
Rei felt that he was doing pretty well at the whole ‘having a partner again’ thing, especially after several years of human interaction that was almost exclusively business. But sometimes he still couldn’t help showing how long it had been, or, he suspected, the echoes of who used to be his anchor to human connection.
Shen Wei’s ten thousand years of watching Kunlun’s lives and, eventually, finding his own.
The humans were building a city around the sacred tree.
A city.
Over the gateway to the underworld.
Shen Wei wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or to despair.
Shen Wei has a judgement to make. Zhao Yunlan just wants to understand his family.
Zhang Shi opened the door quickly, at his knock, brows rising as she saw both of them waiting. “Did something come up at the Division?”
“No.” Shen Wei let the weight of his responsibilities settle over him, and saw the reflection of it in the half step back Zhang Shi took. “Things have come to my attention that must be addressed.”
Zhao Xinci invites Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei to dinner and an argument. Predictably, Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei are too busy trying to protect each other to bother about themselves.
“Yunlan?”
Zhao Yunlan looked up from his screen, a little startled. That was Li Huiliang’s voice, and Zhang Shi was usually careful to call him ‘Chief’ at work. “Yeah?” he asked, trying not to sound too obviously wary.
She stopped hovering in the door, at least, and came to hold out a folded sheet of paper. “This came for you. It’s from your father.”
Thirteen years of raising a child definitely cements Lan Wangji’s growing tendency to ignore the rules he was taught, especially when he’s trying to raise that child in memory of Wei Wuxian.
When Lan Zhan took Wen Yuan out of the wreckage of the Burial Mounds and brought him down off the mountain, he was thinking of grief and of the nature of righteousness, and of possibly saving one tiny glimmer of the hope Wei Ying had so unhesitatingly given his hands and life over to. The hope that no one else in Lan Zhan’s world even seemed to see, let alone cherish as he felt it deserved. He had not, as he walked carefully down the path to Yiling, trying to balance a fretful child in his arms with the clawing pain of his back, been thinking about making himself into a father in the eyes of the broader world.
That had apparently been an oversight.
Two summons that Wei Wuxian ignores, and one he doesn’t quite.
Yanked toward the edge of manifestation (again), Wei Wuxian dug in his immaterial heels (again) and reflected that he might actually have made it to the underworld if it weren’t that humans had an apparently unending need for someone to blame for everything.
Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji both have occasion to reflect on their memories of the Burial Mounds, and the Wei Wuxian who came out of them.
It was not, Wei Wuxian maintained firmly in face of Lan Zhan’s raised brows, that he didn’t notice important things.
Lan Xichen and Nie Mingjue prepare for war, Meng Yao builds his spy network, and Nie Huaisang demonstrates his skills. When Lotus Pier falls, Jiang Yanli joins them and, in face of Jin Guangshan, gives Meng Yao his first lesson in poise.
Meng Yao laid his brush aside and sat back from his writing table, scrubbing his hands over his face. Plans to get the hostages out of Wen hands were going slowly. He was developing a remarkable information network among the lower servants; apparently the Wen were nearly as brutal to their own menials as they were to the other sects. But the very brutality that made people so willing to pass on information also made people fear taking action to cross their masters.
War is on. Meng Yao deals with Jin Zixun and tries to take care of Lan Wangji and Lan Xichen. When Wei Wuxian returns, Meng Yao discovers a certain fellow-feeling, and they make a slightly bloodthirsty deal.
Meng Yao was glad that Jin Guangshan had declined to remain in the Unclean Realm or, indeed, to take the field himself. He was very glad he didn’t have to deal the man’s cold avarice while they were all fighting Wen for their lives, one way or another.
He just really wished that Jin Zixun hadn’t been the one left behind as deputy.
