Dimensional Descent

"You're okay?" Leonel smiled, looking forward with a hint of gentleness in his eyes. Even in comparison to the usual, his gaze for Aina was even more caring. But it was difficult to tell if this was because they had finally taken that step in their relationship, or if it was because the loss of his brothers, albeit temporary, had made his grip on what was important to him all the firmer.

Aina, who had just finished recovering from her fatigue and had come out to see what Leonel was up to, was dazed for a moment. She had come out with the intent that she would either find battle or Leonel hard at work, so her mentality was there. But she hadn't expected to see such a pair of eyes the moment she stepped out.

The huge pendulum swing between expectation and reality left her frozen, and not long afterward, left her blushing profusely. She didn't know what to say.

She was almost immediately embarrassed by her own reaction. Leonel hadn't really said anything out of bounds and it could even be considered normal, but she couldn't help it. That feedback loop only made her blush harder.

Just when Aina was feeling her most embarrassed, the sound of hooting, hollering and whistling came from behind Leonel. She only realized then that the two of them weren't alone and there were actually eight more people watching with rapt attention. In fact, Raj had even managed to find himself a bucket of popcorn as he peeked so far out to the side that he was nearly falling from chair.

"Ah… You…"

She suddenly wanted to lash out at Leonel, couldn't he have warned her or something?

The last time she had seen Leonel's brothers, they weren't exactly… on the best of terms. And now she had suddenly appeared again only to be embarrassed like this.

Aina leaned forward and pressed her forehead into Leonel's chest, seemingly trying to hide. Her embarrassment had suddenly gained a hint of anxiousness. To make matters worse, she felt like she was walking around with "I just had sex" on her forehead.

Seeing Aina suddenly become so flustered, Leonel couldn't help but burst into laughter.

There were two sides to this girlfriend of his. There was the bold Aina and then there was this version. When he first met her, it was hard to tell which version he would get. But now it just felt amusing to bring it out himself, and it felt even better when she accidentally stumbled into it herself like now.

Hearing Leonel's laughter, Aina missed Yuri and Savahn. She had already been thinking about trying to find them again, but now she definitely needed back up or else these hooligans would hound her to death.

…

"Yeah, I'm going to head to the Umbra family to see how they're doing for now. You all focus on the smaller tasks around the Earth's territory, make it known that we aren't letting certain things slide anymore, build up a mystique.

"Forget the older issues. The instant you get a new report, go there. I want to give off the feeling that we can appear anywhere instantly, I want people to hesitate before they even commit a crime. Here."

Leonel flipped a palm and several masks appeared. However, these weren't normal masks at all. They fit over their heads, front, back and sides, and obscured everything. They seemed to be made out of a mesh material and they had a fluorescent pair of eyes that appeared outside, hovering within the black mesh material.

The result made it look as though they were nothing but eyes, they had no mouths, no ears… nothing but a piercingly sharp gaze reminiscent of a wild beast.

"These masks, or helmets if that's more accurate, will send you all information filtered through me first. I'll assign a difficulty rating and an optimal approach to the situation. Depending, only one of you might need to act, or it could be three or you, or even all of you. So long as you follow the plan, everything should be fine.

"Within a single month, the word should spread adequately. Leave the Thrusting Skies Sector and the Viola family to me. I made a mistake letting that Rychard live once, he won't get the opportunity again."

"Gotcha, cap."

Drake, Allan, Arnold and Joel seemed to be the only ones paying attention, as for the other four, they were still enraptured by the mesh masks. Only after they realized Leonel was finished speaking did they wave a hand toward him as though they got it.

Leonel chuckled but didn't mind too much. Then, he turned toward Aina.

"Are you going to follow me, or?"

"I want to find Savahn and Yuri," she replied.

Leonel laughed. "Are you that scared of being bullied?"

Aina glared at Leonel, but before she could respond, Joel suddenly spoke.

"Yuri and Savahn probably aren't within Earth's territory right now. It was… a bit hard for us to see eye to eye after the war because they felt that it was smarter to return to the Void Palace, but we wanted to stay on Earth in case anything else happened."

Leonel raised an eyebrow. Though Joel explained it quite simply, Leonel had a feeling that their disagreement was probably a bit more explosive than that.

It was difficult to manage their relationship without the existence of Leonel and Aina, especially since to them, that relationship had long since been strained. It wasn't until today that Leonel's brothers learned that he and Aina were actually back together again.

So, given the fact they were on two opposite sides of the spectrum in this regard, it wasn't surprising that they found it difficult to reconcile.

But to Leonel's shock, the one with the weirdest expression when the two were mentioned was actually Raj.

Leonel's gaze landed on Raj as though he was trying to see through him. And Raj, almost immediately, felt as though he was in some sort of hot seat.

"Hey! Hey! You can't blame me, cap! You're back together with Aina now, I'm in the clear!"