“Let us hide here. Now.”

  Diana’s voice was as pointed and sharp as the long weapon she pointed straight at the male baker’s heart.

  Lucy dropped her Ideal on the floor with a low, useless clatter as she took in the situation. The mouth-watering and homely scents of fresh-basked bread and pastries abounded through the air, the warmth from a recently-used stone oven adding to the languid atmosphere, yet the hands that had tended the oven were raised and shaking terribly due to the uncompromising violence that threatened to fill the air.

  “We…we’ll let you hide!” shouted the female baker.

  “Just—please—don’t hurt us!” cried her husband.

  With trembling legs, he sidled over to a door, keeping his hands up and body facing toward Diana. Diana kept her spear trained on him as he reached behind himself, fumbled with a latch until it fell away, then swung the door open wide.

  “You-you can hide in our back room,” he said. “There’s a rear exit in case…in case you folks need it.”

  “How thoughtful.” Diana smirked in a lighthearted manner that betrayed how she had just threatened the lives of two people. She lowered her spear at last, drawing audible sighs from the two bakers.

  Lucy frowned at Diana. Or rather, she had been frowning at her for some time now, and only realized it when Diana looked at her, froze, and shot back a hard look.

  Despite this exchange, Diana called out to the whole group: “You heard him. Get in there, all of you!”

  She stood by the open door while waving everyone in. Keilani and Kenneth were the first inside, followed by Ricardo, who turned his head to Lucy as he ran and nodded, somehow having immediately sensed her hesitation.

  Lucy made eye contact with Diana once again, seeing her eyes filled with urgency and a hint of something more—contempt?—but before that mild hostility returned, Lucy followed after Ricardo.

  In her haste, she tried to swing her left arm as per her usual running form. Sharp pain ran from her hand up to her shoulder, and she grimaced as she sheathed her sword at her side and clutched at her injured arm.

  When she was through the door, Ricardo knelt down to her eye level, his own eyes wide with concern, and said: “Got roughed up pretty bad there, huh? Take that seat over there.”

  He nodded to Lucy’s side, and sure enough, a small wooden stool stood there by the wall and some shelves of spice jars. Lucy sat down with a grunt, still clutching her arm. Ricardo stayed standing by the door, while Keilani and Kenneth inspected the room. Wooden barrels and large bags of flour stood against the back wall, and on the side of the room opposite Lucy was a large table filled with pans, trays, and kneading troughs. Judging from how two pans were laid out at the edge of the table with dough inside them, along with opened jars of spices and dried fruits, it seemed that the baker couple had been in the middle of cooking before they—before Diana—had stormed in.

  As Lucy shifted in her seat to get a better look at the half-finished dough, pain shot through her left arm again and she winced. Looking at Ricardo, she asked: “Um…Ricardo, right?”

  “You’ve got it,” he said with a light but wide smile.

  “Okay. Ricardo, do you know if Dream Knights heal from injuries like this? Faster than normal, I mean.”

  “We do heal faster,” said Ricardo, “but I hear it isn’t all that quicker at first, not till you have higher alignments. But you do heal fully when you go back to your Final Dream.” He looked down at his hands and laughed. “If it weren’t for that, these fists woulda been wrecked from all the punching I’ve had to do. And my art isn’t even about punching.”

  Lucy looked at him in surprise, noting how he truly was bare-handed without a weapon holstered or sheathed anywhere on his person. “Is your Ideal…your bare fists?”

  Ricardo grinned. “Close. It’s my whole body. But mostly my arms and legs, ‘cause that’s what I grapple with.”

  “Grappling, huh…” Lucy remembered how he had dive-tackled that armoured troops legs and then pinned him down. It reminded her of those Brazilian jiu-jitsu fights she had been made to watch (very much against her will) on the shared family computer back when Thomas was going through a jiu-jitsu phase. If only her mother had let him take those classes he’d wanted, maybe then he would have had a way to defend himself…

  “Hey,” Ricardo said, his eyes wide with concern again—had he sensed Lucy becoming distraught over her memories? But a second later, he was beaming with a smile as he asked: “I bet one grand on your Ideal being that sweet-looking sword.”

  Lucy smiled. “Well, you got me. Can…I ask you something, too?”

  “Sure. As long as it’s not my credit card number. Well…then again, I won’t have much use for that anymore. Anyway, ask away, don’t be shy.”

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  “All right. Sorry, I just wasn’t sure if it’s proper etiquette to ask another Dream Knight about this.”

  “And what’s that?”

  Lucy hesitated, feeling like she was possibly breaching an unspoken rule by asking: “What’s your Primary Axis?”

  Silence hung in the air, though Ricardo smiled slightly, as if in amusement. Wary of the tension, Lucy hastily added: “Um, to make things fair, mine is Understanding.”

  “With a sword and no shield?” said Ricardo. “Now that’s interesting. For the record, I’m Team Understanding, too.”

  “Really?” said Lucy.

  “It’s not like I fight just using brute force,” said Ricardo. “It’s all about reading the situation, understanding the enemy, and using their own strength against them.”

  Lucy nodded, remembering that Thomas had something very similar about jiu jistu.

  Ricardo clicked his tongue. “But that makes it sound like all I do is fighting. I’ll have you know that outside the ring, I’m a very understanding person.” He looked Lucy in the eye and smirked. “That’s a shocker for you, ain’t it?”

  “What?” Lucy stammered. “No, well, I—”

  “I’m Ideation.”

  Keilani’s voice rung out from the far corner of the room, surprising both Lucy and Ricardo as they looked at her. She stood by Kenneth as he took the lids off jars one by one and inspected their contents by peering inside. For one jar, he reached out his hand to dip his fingers inside, but Keilani gently grabbed his shoulder and told him not to do that or he’ll get people very, very sick.

  “Let me guess,” Ricardo said with a smile as he looked at Lucy again, “you expected Kei to be Understanding.”

  “That’s—” Lucy looked at his unyielding smile and sighed. “Okay. You got me there.”

  Ricardo laughed. “I mean, it’s not like I blame you. She’s got this kid glued to her hip.”

  Keilani smiled at Lucy as well. “It’s perfectly reasonable, Lucy, so don’t worry about it. But me, I’ve always had this second nature for finding good cover spots and coming up with routes for my shots. They called me ”Harebrained Keilani“ in the army.”

  The army? Now Keilani’s camouflage-coloured jumpsuit made sense, but still Lucy was surprised that she had managed to encounter a veteran soldier. She looked at how Keilani stuck close to Kenneth like a mama bear and wondered if, in the waking world, Keilani had had children she was hoping to go home to. Instead, she had gone from one battlefield to another.

  “I’ll be honest,” Keilani said to Lucy, “I had a hard time pegging down what I thought your Primary was. The second I saw that sword in your hand I thought, ’Rebellion,’ but then when you joined the fight no questions asked I went, ‘Nah, she could be Ideation.’ It wasn’t until I saw you hesitate to lop off that fiend’s head that I finally settled on the last option.”

  “Yeah,” said Ricardo, “I had a hunch you were Understanding early on, but that was what sealed the deal for me, too. You couldn’t help getting overwhelmed by the thought of ending another life, could you?”

  Lucy narrowed her eyes at him; the amount of times he had seemingly read her mind was becoming ridiculous, though this made her wonder if Knights of Understanding had this implicit connection between them. “You’re a bit too Understanding.”

  Ricardo and Keilani both laughed, drawing Kenneth’s confused eyes for a moment before he scampered a few steps away to play around with a rolling pin. Keilani looked at him briefly, probably to make sure he wasn’t harming himself or damaging anything, then looked at Lucy.

  “Speak for yourself,” said Keilani. “This is our first real conversation and you already know how to make us laugh. Even if it’s at his expense.”

  Ricardo, seeing Keilani’s smirk directed at him, shrugged with a wry smile. “Well, we Knights of Understanding have to endure for everyone’s sake.”

  Keilani cocked her head at him with a mocking but friendly expression, then walked up to Lucy with her palm outstretched. “Welcome aboard, Lucy.”

  Lucy took her hand and shook it, exchanging amicable smiles. Ricardo stepped up and did the same, his handshake rather gentle despite the size of his hand; Lucy couldn’t help wondering how much a punch from him would hurt.

  “Oh, now you can give her that welcome spiel,” Ricardo said, “now that Diana isn’t here to cut you off.”

  “Speaking of Diana,” Lucy said, “do you know what her Primary Axis is?”

  “I get the sense you’ve probably guessed it already,” said Keilani, “but it’s—”

  “Rebellion.”

  The three Dream Knights and Kenneth all turned to the door they had come from to see Diana step into the room, shutting the door behind her. Standing there by herself, her figure looked truly imposing, thanks in no small part to her impressive height, her stark white-and-red battle outfit, and the sharp eyes that peered down at everyone through her plumed helmet. The only thing breaking this domineering image was her left hand, which held a small basket full of bread, but before Lucy could say anything about it, Diana spoke.

  “Talking about me behind my back, are we?” She didn’t sound terribly angry, but Lucy couldn’t help her gaze from flitting to the gleaming point of Diana’s spear.

  “Just your Primary Axis,” said Keilani. She spoke quickly and without hesitation, which made Lucy wonder if she wasn’t afraid of Diana’s presence—or if Keilani knew she had earned Diana’s trust. “We’ve already shared ours. Lucy just wants to get to know us a bit, you see.”

  “Oh, and you think a Primary Axis is enough to ‘know’ who a person is?” Diana’s voice took more of an edge. “That ‘collective unconscious’ might sort us into three little boxes, but that doesn’t mean we should do it ourselves. That’s ridiculously unethical.”

  “C’mon, it’s just an ice breaker,” said Ricardo. He didn’t have the same easygoing attitude as Keilani, which meant he was probably wary of Diana. And yet, at the same time, he didn’t seem afraid, but rather careful and deliberate in how he used his words and tone to defuse the conversation. “It’s like asking what sport you like, or your favourite drink. Then you go from there and get to know more.”

  Diana stared at him, then sighed. She didn’t add any retort, but she seemed to be the type to concede an argument without verbally expressing it.

  “Speaking of knowing someone more,” said Ricardo, his eyes trailing down to Diana’s hand holding the basket of bread, “this is new. Didn’t know you were the type to take over a bakery just so you could get a bite to eat.”

  Lucy tensed at how Ricardo, who had been careful with his words until now, said something that was sure to set Diana off. All the same, she couldn’t help wondering why Diana had picked a bakery in particular, or any kind of store where other people were more likely to walk in at any moment.

  Diana looked at the basket in her hand. “What, you thought these were for myself?” She shook her head mockingly at Ricardo then looked toward Kenneth and Keilani with a more neutral expression while raising the basket. “Kenneth, eat these. I know you’ve been hungry for a while.”