"Forget the eggs,"
Izochi muttered, his shadow already halfway across the doorframe.
"We're leaving."
Marco didn't move. He stared at the steam rising from the plate, then back at his wallet.
"The bill is already settled, Izochi. I don't make a habit of feeding the trash can with my hard-earned yarks."
"I'll buy you a steak house later. Move."
The door clicked shut before Marco could argue.
Izochi didn't look back at the room that had offered him a rare, refreshing sleep the night before. His mind was already miles away, locked in the suffocating air of the meeting to come.
The venue wasn't the sprawling, gold-leafed corridors of the ancestral palace. Instead, it was a sterile conference room in a mid-tier hotel, smelling of cheap lemon wax and stale coffee.
Nineteen figures sat around a long, veneered table. Including Izochi and Marco, twenty-one souls occupied a space far too small for the egos involved.
"I believe I requested the true Heads of the clan,"
Izochi's voice was low, like the first rumble of a distant storm.
"Did my words lose their way on the road here?"
At the far end of the table, a woman sat with a spine as rigid as a frozen pike. Deep wrinkles carved canyons into her face, but her eyes held a sharp, jagged light. She didn't stand. She didn't bow.
"Our apologies,"
She said. The word was a weapon, not a plea. She tilted her chin, looking at Izochi not as a sovereign, but as a child playing with a crown too heavy for his head.
Her fingers moving with the practiced grace of someone who had pulled the clan's strings for decades.
"But you are looking at the current and rightful Heads."
Izochi didn't snap back. He didn't even raise his voice.
He simply let his gaze drift across the table—to the soft-faced boys and the trembling teenagers sitting in high-backed chairs.
"These children?"
Izochi asked, his voice dripping with a quiet, lethal curiosity.
"Who placed these infants in seats of war? Who decided their blood was ready?"
The silence snapped.
The room erupted into a cacophony of sneers and barked defenses. The young 'Heads' leaned forward, their voices thick with the borrowed pride of their ancestors.
They spoke of lineage, of rights, of titles they hadn't bled for. They saw only a young man standing before them; they were blind to the predator coiled in his shadow.
Only one man, an elder near the corner, stopped shouting. His pulse hammered against his neck. A single bead of sweat tracked through his foundation, leaving a pale line of terror.
He saw the air around Izochi begin to shimmer and warp.
Then, the world stopped.
"SHUT DOWN."
The command didn't come from Izochi's throat—it came from the floorboards, the walls, and the very marrow of their bones.
"THIS IS THE ORDER FROM THE BLOOD."
The arrogance evaporated. The woman who had spoken so boldly felt her tongue turn to lead. It was a primal recognition, an ancient, genetic lock clicking into place.
Every drop of Horitoshi blood in that room began to hum with a terrifying, rhythmic pressure.
"I AM THE AUTHORITY,"
Izochi stepped forward, and it seemed the floor didn't just creak—it groaned under an invisible mass.
"I AM THE LAWS OF BLOOD. I AM YOUR SUPREME LEADER."
The nature of Alola itself seemed to flinch. Outside, the birds went silent. Inside, nineteen hearts beat in a single, panicked unison.
"LOWER YOUR VOICE. I AM THE FIRST WORD; I AM THE LAST."
Men and women who had spent years plotting for power now found themselves unable to lift their chins.
Their bodies went rigid, paralyzed by a formal, icy terror. It was as if three invisible specters—hollow and hungry—had draped their cold arms around their shoulders.
Marco, standing by the wall, watched through half-lidded eyes. He didn't flinch. He didn't cheer. He simply looked bored, his thumb flicking the wheel of his lighter over and over.
"WHOEVER DISOBEYES THE BLOOD WILL STRIP THE NAME 'HORITOSHI' FROM THEIR LIVES,"
Izochi declared. Each word was a fresh notch carved into the stone of their history.
"I WILL NOT TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THIS SHITTY CLAN TODAY."
Marco's lighter stalled. His eyebrows shot up, a rare crack in his mask of indifference.
"BUT,"
Izochi continued, his gaze pinning them to their seats,
"I WILL NOT LEAVE THE FUTURE TO MEANINGLESS HANDS."
"Bu—"
The young girl who questioned Izochi's manner at first sight, tried to gasp, her pride fighting the crushing weight.
Izochi turned his eyes toward her. The blue light in his left iris flared, cold and destructive.
The girl's legs turned to water; her soul felt as though it were being peeled back by a winter gale. She sank into her chair, her breath hitching in a sob of pure, instinctual dread.
"I HEREBY DECLARE HAYATO HORITOSHI THE ACTING LEADER."
Izochi pointed a finger at the old man in the corner—the only one who had known enough to be afraid. The gesture felt like a death sentence and a coronation all at once.
"DO NOT WORRY. I AM STILL THE AUTHORITY. WHATEVER HAYATO SAYS WILL BE THE LAWS YOU ARE BOUND TO OBEY."
Izochi's strength flickered. He slumped onto the edge of the conference table, his knuckles white as he forced his weight onto his hands.
To the terrified onlookers, he looked like a king resting on a battlefield. To Marco, he looked like a boy who had just spent his last ounce of spirit to keep a house of cards from falling.
Outside, the sky was vast and indifferent. Marco leaned against the hotel's brick exterior, exhaling a thick plume of grey smoke.
The air still felt heavy here, as if the ground itself hadn't finished trembling from Izochi's presence.
Marco watched the smoke dissipate into the blue.
"Today is his birthday,"
he muttered to the wind, a ghost of a smirk touching his lips.
"Another deduction from my pocket."
He took one last drag, the cherry of the cigarette glowing bright, while the world inside tried to remember how to breathe.