The Daidoji agent landed silently beside him. "That was a breach of protocol. They'll hear of this."
He picked up the shattered toy truck. The wheels were bent, the plastic cab cracked clean in two.
He held the two halves in his calloused palms. Then, with a gentleness that would have shocked the Daidoji handlers, he pressed them back together. They didn't stick. They couldn't. But he held them there anyway. like a dragon gaiden crack
Joryu lit a cigarette, the flame briefly illuminating the scar tissue on his chest. "Let them."
Joryu stood up. He looked at his own reflection in the dark window of a closed pachinko parlor. For a second, he thought he saw a crack running across his own masked face—a hairline fracture in the ghost. The Daidoji agent landed silently beside him
In the space between one breath and the next, Joryu moved. He didn't think. He didn't calculate the political fallout or the Daidoji agent watching him from a nearby rooftop. He simply became the Dragon again.
Joryu exhaled smoke into the humid Osaka night. "My name is gone. But my hands don't know that." He walked away, the cracked mask of Joryu now showing the faint, unmistakable glow of the Dragon underneath. The wheels were bent, the plastic cab cracked clean in two
Something cracked.