There was no point in going back to New York.
The next match would be in Boston in two days, and even Team Nemean was not stubborn enough to bounce between states, cameras, and airports just to sleep in a familiar bed once or twice before doing it all again. So Emma did what Emma did best when money could solve a problem.
She brought them to one of the hotels owned by the Tannenbaum.
Not the sort reserved for heads of state or billionaires trying to pretend they were kings, but still far above anything Phong had ever stayed in. The lobby alone felt like a joke told at his expense. Soft marble that reflected the lights too cleanly. Dark wood polished until it shone and reflective enough to be used as a makeshift mirror. A chandelier made of thin hanging glass pieces that caught gold from the ceiling and dripped it over everything below. Staffs in fitted uniforms who spoke softly and moved like their training was a second nature.
Phong stood there with Bruno on one side, Nyx on the other, Rico balanced on his shoulder, and Little Fireball hidden in his hood, and felt like the hotel should charge him double just for making the air around him look less expensive.
Emma, of course, walked through it all like she had been born in the center of a trust fund and taught the floor plan before she could read.
"The rooms are already prepared," she said, glancing at the front desk manager only long enough to make him stand straighter. "Nobody break anything. Especially not the raccoon."
Rico put a paw to his chest in offended dignity.
"Slander. Rico did not break things."
"That is exactly why I'm worried," Emma said.
They got their keys.
The rooms were not absurdly huge, but they were still far more luxurious than anything Phong had experienced. The carpets were thick enough to swallow sound. The beds looked like clouds had unionized into furniture. There were actual robes in the bathroom. Little bottles of things for skin- and haircare that Phong didn't even know of their existence. A coffee machine too polished to belong in a place without Long's supervision. Even the windows felt wealthy, overlooking the city with that broad clean sweep only expensive hotel glass seemed to manage.
Alex and Phong shared a room.
The moment the door shut behind them, Alex kicked off her shoes and disappeared into the shower with the efficiency of someone who had already decided she deserved ten minutes without people.
Phong stood in the silence for a moment.
No shouting outside camp by all the different races he had united with food and safety, moletatoes rumbling under the walls, and for once, no Rico trying to steal food or start an argument.
Just the AC running, dim lamps, and the rare feeling of privacy on the surface.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled out the Steam Deck. The machine hummed to life in his hands. The same old title sat there waiting.
Kamen Rider Rico.
He opened it, and just like before, the real game was not the game. A private developer message waited for him immediately.
Phong opened it.
This time, Long had not merely gotten fragments. He had cracked Daniel's detailed schedule from his secretary's phone. The report was exact. In ten days, Daniel Harlan would go down to the stable spot on Floor 1.
Daniel had planned to bring Josh. But Josh had a meeting with an uncle from the Kurosaki side halfway across the country. Family business, likely arranged by people who still thought bloodlines and leverage were the same thing.
So Daniel would go down alone. Not literally alone, of course. A billionaire who did shady stuff and had a marriage with a heiress of a Yakuza clan never go anywhere without bodyguards. But Josh and the bastard ridiculous short-range blink ability would not be there.
Phong let out a long, quiet breath.
If Josh had gone with him, the whole thing would have become much harder. Josh's blink ability made him the perfect counter for the Timatoes ambush. The mutated tyrants in fruit forms had terrifying attacks, swarming behavior of pissed off piranhas, and boiling tomato juice that could burn through most defense. But even with all of that power, the Timatoes didn't have the speed to really catch up to an escaped victim.
Phong leaned his head back and stared up at the ceiling. He had miscalculated and did not plan for Josh being there with his father, and it nearly costed him the one chance he had at revenge.
"Thank you," he murmured, though he was not fully sure whether he meant Long, luck, or whichever god had decided to give him one clean opening in a life that rarely did.
When Alex came out of the shower, hair damp and loose around her shoulders, she caught the look on his face immediately.
"News?"
Phong nodded once and told her.
Not every detail, but enough.
She listened in silence, then set her towel aside and crossed the room to him.
He expected her to climb into his lap, kiss him until he forgot his own name, or at the very least start tugging him toward the bed with that look in her eye that always spelled trouble for his sleep schedule.
Instead, she simply lay down beside him and pulled him with her into a loose hold.
That surprised him enough that he turned his head.
"No seduction attempt."
Alex closed her eyes and rested one arm over his chest.
"Today is our love day," she said. "But I want to focus on the league."
Phong raised a brow.
She opened one eye.
"You don't believe me?"
"Not fully."
That got the corner of her mouth to twitch.
"I also think sex would be distracting."
Phong snorted softly.
He doubt sex would affect her that much.
Still, he was not about to complain. His body had very real opinions on the matter too. Specifically, certain organs and structural supports would appreciate a quiet night after the sort of "Vitamin P" Joanne kept accusing Alex of administering in medicinal excess.
So Phong let himself sink into her hold instead.
The bed was too soft.
The room too warm.
Alex's skin still smelled faintly of the shower and whatever expensive soap the Tannenbaums stocked in their hotels.
And for once, nothing worse happened before sleep took him.
The next morning, Dominic decided nobody was going to spend the whole day waiting around like nervous athletes in a holding pen.
"We need to let off steam," he said over breakfast.
No one argued with that. The team split naturally afterward.
Dominic took Jake, Jack, and Alexei to the gym.
Alex, Séline, Camille, Joanne, Janet, and Emma claimed the day for themselves.
Phong was spared from Dominic's plans only because someone had to take care of the animals.
Dominic said flat out that he did not trust any stranger with two impulsive classed pets, a phoenix chick whose gene could create fire breathing poultries, and a raccoon whose Fortress Form turned him into a self-contained artillery nightmare.
Phong thought briefly about what kind of disaster Rico might create if left unsupervised in a luxury hotel with both caffeine and free time, pictured Maine on fire for reasons the league could never fully explain, and agreed immediately.
So that left three separate adventures for the day.
The guys.
The girls.
And Phong with the world's least manageable movie-going companions.
The gym Dominic chose was not the hotel's decorative one.
That place had treadmills, polished mirrors, and enough designer machines to satisfy influencers and businessmen with too much time between meetings. It was fine, since machines and weights were universal. But Dominic missed the iron and pure sweat of cheap gym.
He found a place five blocks over.
Old warehouse conversion. Brick walls, thick mats. Boxing ring at one end, power racks and deadlift platforms at the other. Heavy bags hanging like suspended punishments. It was the kind of gym where nobody looked pretty unless they were trying too hard.
Jake looked around and grinned.
"Now this," he said, "feels like a proper excuse to get hurt voluntarily."
Jack gave the place a more approving glance than he had given anything in the hotel.
Dominic rolled his shoulders once and dropped his bag by the ring.
They had all changed in subtle ways after the month with Vân. That was the first thing Dominic noticed once they started warming up. It was not levels, though that mattered, too.
It was the rhythm, or maybe a mindset. The way they moved when they were not thinking about it.
Jake had less wasted twitch in his footwork now. He still looked like someone born to move fast and sideways, he still preferred flanking his opponent side with maneuvers, but he committed more on the finisher now.
Jack's posture had changed too. Still solid, still Stone Lord creating structures and manipulating terrains through and through. But now there was more awareness in how he carried his shoulders and hips, as if he had started feeling the paths of mana through his body even when not actively using them.
Alexei... was something.
The paladin's had always been disciplined when he focus on something that wasn't chickens, but now that discipline had merged with the beginnings of prana coat and the slower mana timing Vân taught them. He still did not have them perfected. None of them did, as habits and muscle memory were hard to overcome after merely a month. But every now and then, while throwing a simple strike or resetting his stance, a deeper weight showed through.
Dominic put them through the basics first.
Skipping rope, shadow work, pushes on the heavy bag. Deadlifts because, in his exact words, "more muscles never hurt anyone."
Jake argued that this was biologically false.
Dominic told him to lift anyway.
Between lifts and rounds, Dominic kept dragging them back to the real reason they were there.
Prana coat.
He had them stand in front of each other and let simple jabs land while keeping the mana layer as even as possible. Not enough to truly injure, but enough to test density, slippage, and the timing problem Vân had drilled into them.
"Too thin," Dominic told Jake after one strike sank through faster than it should.
Jake shook out his arm. "Says the man who built come from semi pro boxing."
"Complaints get you nowhere, now fix it."
"You're insufferable something."
"Thank you. I tried."
Jake's issue was later found out to be not thickness, but stability. His class nature of fast, quick movement attacks from various angles meant Jake were more prone to make his coat fluctuate, like a lake surface with heavy waves. When an enemy caught him where his prana coat suddenly thinned like Dominic just did, Jake would be toasted.
Alexei struggled least with brute consistency and most with overcommitting. He kept trying to make his prana coat too strong, too dense, too absolute. It was more armor than a coat, which hindered his own mobility at the joints. Dominic had to keep reminding him it needed to live with the body, not replace it.
Jack found making the coat responsive and actually moved with his body how he wanted was hard, too.
They sparred. Dominic fought Jack, Alexei handled Jake, then they swapped opponent. This part was harder, since their prana coat wasn't perfect enough to handle their slower built up attack yet. And unlike Vân - the anomaly in term of defense - they were the norm.
By the end of two hours, the four men were drenched, sore, and in better moods than when they started.
Dominic leaned against the ring ropes and wiped his face with a towel.
"We're not there yet."
Jake, flat on the mat like a dramatic corpse, said, "Inspiring."
Dominic ignored him.
"But we've improved."
Alexei nodded.
Jack, breathing evenly despite the work, said, "Vân was right."
That got silence for a second. Then Dominic grinned.
"Don't tell him that. His ego's already in a dangerous place."
If the guys chose iron, the women chose civilization.
The mall came first.
Not because Emma cared about malls in principle, but because she had practical goals. Team Nemean was now a public-facing entity. Their clothes, grooming, accessories, and presentation all mattered more than anyone wanted to admit.
Joanne embraced that concept instantly.
Emma rolled her eyes and led them into a department store so expensive that even Alex blinked once at the handbag section. For once, she felt like cosplaying Phong and his "it's wearable, I don't need new clothes" mentality. Alex criteria when choosing clothes were as follow: affordable, fashion, and function. Affordable being at the top was an indicator that she was raised by a German.
Séline and Camille moved through the place with the dangerous calm of French women on home turf. Fashion, posture, and visible disapproval were all languages they had spoken long before the dungeon.
Alex mostly endured the shopping at first.
Then Janet found a dark fitted coat that looked elegant without being fragile, and once Alex tried it on, the problem became everyone else.
"That is unfair," Joanne said.
Camille nodded once. "Yes."
Emma only looked pleased with herself for predicting the exact cut would work.
They did not buy huge amounts, but enough. Something sharp for interviews. Something simple for travel. And finally, something beautiful enough for events and the cameras.
After that came the spa.
Joanne nearly moaned when they entered the steam rooms and silence rules became mandatory.
Séline actually looked younger, like when she was rescued by the lizardman and brought to camp. The subtle fatigue that she carried with her after becoming the vessel for the copy of Dǒu seemed to have finally melted away.
Even Emma softened there. The little armor rich girls wore in public thinned when there was warm water, stone floors, and nobody expecting performance for one whole hour.
Janet drifted toward Alex and stayed near her, the way women did when they understood one another's stress without explanation.
Alex did not usually like being fussed over.
But the spa was quiet enough that she allowed the soft robes, the warm towels, and even the absurd face treatment Joanne insisted everyone should try "for morale."
When they reached the manicure part of the day, Camille became unbearable.
She had opinions.
On shape, on color, on the psychology of hand presentation in public settings.
Emma had equal opinions, which turned the whole thing into a duel disguised as beauty maintenance.
Alex chose something simple and clean because she refused to become decorative for the sport of it. Séline and Joanne chose muted elegance and were both surprised to see the other agreed with them. Janet let herself be convinced into a softer color than she would normally pick and then admitted it looked nice. Emma went with something expensive-looking without crossing into gaudy.
They talked too.
The topic slowly drifted from the league, then the match. From the Jameson brothers to how Phong looked while pretending he was not happy Alex had turned the ring into a warning sign.
At one point, Joanne leaned over during pedicures and asked Emma, "So. Are you still trying to out-compete Alex in everything or have we moved into a healthier rivalry?"
Emma, without opening her eyes, said, "After having a certain farmer refused to even touch me for medical purposes and leave my treatment to raccoon's hands? No, thank you."
That made Janet laugh so hard she nearly ruined her own relaxation.
By the time the women returned, they smelled like flowers, expensive oils, and the specific kind of peace only possible when nobody had tried to kill them for several uninterrupted hours.
Phong took the animals to the movies.
That sentence alone would have sounded insane to the version of him from three years ago.
Now it was only mildly inconvenient.
The multiplex sat inside a shopping block not far from the waterfront, all glossy posters, carpeted halls, and giant soda dispensers. It was a weekday morning heading toward noon, so the place was nearly empty. That helped.
Talking animals were rare but no longer world-breaking. Enough mana-awakened fauna had appeared this year that most people only stared now instead of screaming. Still, a raccoon with opinions, a cat with sorcerous dignity, a barbarian dog, and a phoenix chick in a hoodie hood remained enough to complicate policy.
The manager came out personally after the first staff member took one look at Rico demanding "five ticket and butter popcorn" and decided this was above their pay grade.
The manager was a man in his forties with thinning hair and the tired courage of someone who had worked customer service long enough to accept the impossible.
He looked at the group.
Then at Phong. Then at Rico, who was trying to climb onto the candy display. Then back at Phong.
"There are no rules for this."
"That's fair," Phong said.
The manager rubbed both temples.
"Are they... going to cause problems?"
Rico put both paws on his hips. "Raccoon is movie enjoyer."
Nyx said, "I don't like children."
Bruno wagged. "I like explosions."
Little Fireball chirped from the hood.
The manager looked like he might quit.
Then, out of nowhere, he asked: "You're Phong Tran, right? Team Nemean's coach?"
Phong replied a bit warily, "Yes. Am I gonna be mugged for what my girl friend did to the Vikings?"
The manager froze.
"Give me a autograph from Dominic Torres, then I'll let you in."
"Really?"
"My son's a fan."
"Considered it done."
The man exhaled.
"Private screening room three, but you clean up after any bullshits they pulled. Especially that raccoon."
So that was how Team Nemean's level 1 farmer ended up escorting a raccoon, a cat, a dog, and a phoenix chick into a nearly empty theater to watch a superhero movie.
The film itself was exactly the kind of loud, overfunded nonsense the genre specialized in.
Bright costumes, explosions, one-liners, cracking jokes every few minutes because audience's attention span was a luxury this day and age. A city always twenty seconds from annihilation. Villains with daddy issues and impossible energy sources. The kind of movie that made no sense if questioned too hard and became better if not.
Bruno loved it immediately.
Every explosion made his tail beat the seat.
Rico commentated like he had been hired for a director's track nobody asked for.
"Bad transformation sequence."
"Armor mid."
"Why hero no kick more."
Nyx tried to act uninterested, then became visibly invested when the morally ambiguous love interest appeared.
Little Fireball only cared when the screen had enough emotional music and close-up suffering to resemble her beloved dramas. She chirped approvingly at one tragic sacrifice, then immediately stole popcorn from Phong.
Phong, sitting there in the dark with the animals arranged around him like the strangest family in New England, let himself relax.
The movie was stupid. The seats were soft. The popcorn was kinda mid. Rico, halfway through the second act, tried to pitch improvements to the superhero's costume out loud.
And yet it was good.
Or more precise, it was close to the ordinary life of a certain college student who lived on the attic of his aunt and uncle house.
When the hero delivered some speech about protecting ordinary people because power only mattered if it served others, Phong felt Bruno lean against his leg and Rico go unusually quiet for three whole seconds.
Then the raccoon said, "Kamen Rider still better."
And the moment passed.
Afterward they walked back through the shopping district, Rico carrying candy with both paws, Bruno sniffing every planter, Nyx pretending she had not enjoyed the outing, and Little Fireball asleep in Phong's hood from cinematic overstimulation.
Phong looked at them and thought, not for the first time, that his life had become impossible in ways no normal person would ever understand.
He also thought, with less resistance than before, that he would miss this when it ended.
Whatever "ended" meant anymore.
That night, Team Nemean drifted back into the hotel in separate pieces.
The guys came first, smelling like iron, soap, and gym victory.
The girls arrived later, relaxed in the way only money and competent spa staff could produce.
Phong and the animals had movie popcorn in Bruno's fur and zero shame about it.
They met again in the hotel lounge before parting for bed, trading stories.
Phong listened to all of it with that quiet smile that only showed when he forgot to guard it.
Tomorrow would not be restful. Tomorrow would be prep again.
For Boston.
For the next match.
For the league, Daniel Harlan, and all the other moving knives in the dark.
But for one long day, split three ways between effort, indulgence, and absurdity, Team Nemean had gotten to be something close to ordinary.
And maybe that was why it mattered so much.