It was the next day. I was sitting in the office enjoying my coffee break. I was a little concerned about what was taking place on my console. One of the worlds that had been put in my care was giving some very strange readings.

Then I felt, rather than heard, Margot approach, and my anxieties felt a lot less substantial...Not being one to rest on her laurels, Margot continued to train with whatever spare time she had that wasn’t occupied by work, her hobbies, or spending time with me.

She’d recently gotten very into ninjas again. Several dream-based lifetimes as assassins of various types had left my wife with a newly refined kind of anti-footstep. The additional training regime took things up a notch because she was now an immortal with an immortal’s soul.

Billions of years worth of stealth training had been folded into how she normally moved around. She’d become extremely adept at muting the phenomena that her presence in the world would normally create and perfectly blending into her surroundings.

If she wanted it’d be like she had neither presence or weight in the world. Her existence less substantial than that of a ghost’s. It was like everything she did was a q-step. Making the entire universe hesitate and wonder if anything was actually done.

Now if I wasn’t paying attention, I only knew she was approaching because of our connection. When she really tried to be sneaky she was almost capable of sneaking up on yours truly, even if I was paying attention and making full use of my near-omniscience.

“Hey, What’s up?” I said. My gaze becoming more focused as I closed the app that I’d been running on my interface.

She tapped her temple and a window opened up in my interface. I found myself watching a group of costumed heroes face off against a man in strange distinctly demonic-looking armor and the man’s army of skeletal bodyguards.

My akashic feed told me that the man in demonic-armor was some kind of demon-knight. I was annoyed to find that his patron tried to hide their identity, and set a portion of my mind to the task of following the data-threads that were connected to the man so I’d know who he was and who he worked for.

“Is that the Tokyo tower?” I said. Squinting at the red and white tower that the two sets of super-powered beings were fighting around.

“Uh, huh…” said Margot.

The Tokyo-Tower I was looking at wasn’t the original Tokyo Tower. The original Tokyo Tower was possessed by some kind of spider-demon and had to be put down, by the heroes and mages of Japan during the worst parts of the ENE.

It was uncertain whether Japan came out ahead or behind after ENE. On the one hand, the total landmass of the archipelago of Japan was multiplied by around ten times. Just like the rest of the planet had its landmass multiplied. Granting the nation a windfall of new resources both magical and mundane.

On the other hand, along with the overflow of demons, spirits, and magic that all the other nations had to deal with. Japan had a real giant monster problem. A new fifty-foot something or the other would appear almost every other week, in the less inhabited areas.

Margot and I had actually ended up doing a couple of missions there to cull a number of monsters that were on the verge of stomping their way into the civilized parts of the country.

I watched the fight between the heroes and the man in demonic-armor. Then I realized why Margot had wanted me to watch, as I saw a hero in a yellow and white fencing uniform with added armor plates on the chest, arms, neck, and shins, rush forward, while every other hero subtly took a step back. The fencer summoned blades of light sending them hurtling towards the man in demonic-armor.

“Ah...Tommy did say that the Arcadian Hero-League wanted him to take part in an overseas exchange thing didn’t he?” I said.

“Yeah…Do you think he’ll be okay?” said Margot. Looking worried as she watched the demon-knight no-sell the blades of light that were crashing against his armor.

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“Er...Sure. He’ll probably be fine...I think,” I said. Not feeling entirely confident about my answer.

I couldn’t help feeling suspicious about the other hero’s lack of support. There were a few ranged fighters throwing energy blasts and spells and the like but it felt like no one else was putting any real effort in. I got the sense that they were doing just enough to keep Tommy from knowing that he was the only one fighting on the front line.

For the time being Tommy was holding his own, but I wasn’t sure how long that would last.

Since Thomas was a friend, he and I had done a fair bit of training together. I didn’t take him on as an apprentice or anything, but to make for the lacking resources and lack of attention from his school, I’d tried to do what I could without butting in too much.

I sold the young hero-in-training a couple augmentation serums, some training manuals, and other things that I had on hand, for as cheaply as would be believable. I also might have sent him some highly realistic dreams to give him a little experience under his belt.

I could have done more, but that would have required him asking my helping. Otherwise, I’d be overstepping and risk damaging our relationship.

If I was a betting man, based on Tommy’s own not inconsiderable talents, and the aid I’d given to the young hero’s development, I’d place his odds winning the fight against the demon-knight around forty-percent. Those weren’t bad odds, but they weren’t great either, and in a fight of life and death like this one, anything could happen.

I frowned as I watched the young swordsman clash with the demon-knight directly, a blade of light meeting with a blade of bloody-red steel. As I noted the ominous glow on the demon-knight’s blade, I considered doing something and bringing the fight to an early close.

My mind ran through a hundred different ways I could smack that demon-knight out of the air and repair all the damage to the environment. I noted with bemusement that my time as a Crisis Management Officer had made me into a more heavy-handed meddler.

I ended up holding off for two reasons. The first reason was that, this was a fight between mortals and nothing freaked out mortals like an immortal directly butting into their affairs. Worse yet, nothing freaked out other immortals like an immortal directly butting into mortal’s affairs.

There were rules for this sort of thing. They weren’t very strict rules, and we immortals tended to cheat and find loopholes whenever the need arose, but they were still rules. Rules that even I had to follow if I didn’t want to call down a whole world of trouble for myself.

The second reason I held my hand, was because I didn’t want to rob my young friend of a chance to really test himself and potentially breakthrough to a higher understanding of his powers, his martial path, and the way of the sword. Superheroes were like diamonds. They needed pressure if you wanted them to shine.

Thomas flew on wings of light. After realizing that using blades of pure light wasn’t working, he switched to using the technique he’d picked up from his camping experience. He created a blade of light and thunder. A radiant blue mixture of photons and electrons that took on the form of an ornate.

Thomas and the Demon-Knight flew around each other. Dancing in the night sky, their glowing blades filling the heavens with violent caligraphy.

I ended up regretting my act of consideration when the demon-knight took Thomas’ arm off, with that red claymore of his. That was the point I decided I’d place my finger on the scale to even things up a little.

The part of my mind that was looking for the demon-knight’s master had found a lead. I followed the lead till I found a name and face. Once I was sure I’d found the right devil, I used a tendril of my true self’s aura, to punch the demon-knight’s master in the back of the head.

I didn’t strike at the demon-knight’s patron devil hard enough to seriously injure them. I wasn’t trying to trigger a grudge after all. I just lashed out with enough strength to startle them and maybe stun them into interrupting the flow of power to their minions and servants.

As soon as I struck the demon-knight’s patron, the effects could be seen in the demon-knight. I’d had a strong hunch on the demon-knight being a minor servant at the best, with his empowerment being low on his master’s priorities.

The demon-knight’s master had juiced the knight up well, but to my eyes, there were clear signs of the knight being meant to serve as a disposable warrior. Someone who could be cut off at the earliest sign of danger.

Margot gasped and we both watched the demon-knight’s undead soldiers crumble into naught but scattered bones and rusted armor. The other heroes re-grouped and soon Tommy was relegated to a supporting role while the hero team’s heavy hitter, a muscular fellow in an Oni mask, drove building-leveling punches into the demon-knight.

The fight was over once the demon-knight’s armor broke. Without his armor, he was just another overworked salaryman. One who’d been seduced into selling his soul for the dark side.

As an act of pettiness on my part, I decided to rat on the devil who’d been using the demon-knight’s rampage in the middle of Tokyo to cover up another operation the devil had going in the country. I sent a file with the relevant data to Japan’s equivalent of the DPAA and a few of the deities and angels that watched over the nations.

It was kind of mean spirited of me, but when you live in an immortal society, you learned that there was always a risk that one’s action could provoke a certain special breed of bad luck. Simply put, even if you were the sort that only saw mortals as ants, there was always a chance that an ant you stepped on might have a giant for an ancestor, or contractor, or patron deity.

I rationalized the act by telling myself that if I didn’t end up doing something someone else would have had to eventually. That particular devil was of the troublesomely ambitious sort. The kind with aspirations of changing career paths and becoming a dark god. So it honestly, was probably for the best that the authorities were tipped off or whatever. As could be expected, you have to do some pretty evil shit to become a god of evil.

“Poor Tommy…” said Margot. Her brow furrowing as she saw the young man seal the bleeding stump of his arm with a construct made of light.

“He’ll be fine, M...There’s tons of healing tech and medical magics available nowadays and that’s just for the average consumer, nevermind heroes who get special privileges and the like. If they can’t save the old arm, they should be able to grow him a new arm.”

“But he’s still a new name...What if they don’t want to invest those kinds of resources in helping him? Or worse, what if someone in the guild has it out for him? You don’t get left in the wind, like he was, without having made an enemy or two...” said Margot.

“Well,... then it’s a good thing he has friends like us to make up for it, right?” I said.

“Right…” said Margot. Calming down as she watched a medic take Tommy away in an ambulance.