(THE HONORED ONE) CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Now that the last member of his team had woken, Gojo finally turned his attention back to the Empire Eighty-Eight.

It was not that he had forgotten the gang in the interim, nor that his attention had drifted elsewhere out of disinterest. He simply had not been willing to act while too many variables were still unresolved. People mattered more than plans, no matter how irritatingly inconvenient that truth could be, and until everyone he had pulled into his orbit was breathing, conscious, and capable of making their own choices, there had been no point in tearing apart the city’s power structures.

Now, however, there was nothing left holding him back.

With that freedom came clarity, and once Gojo turned his attention fully toward the Empire Eighty-Eight, the solution presented itself with almost insulting speed. As he had already decided, he did not need elaborate traps or drawn-out confrontations to deal with them. He did not also need to grind them down through attrition or play at cape politics the way everyone else seemed determined to do.

He only needed to touch the one thing they could not afford to lose.

Their secret identities.

The more he looked, the more obvious it became that the Empire’s greatest strength was also its most dangerous vulnerability. 

The unwritten rules placed an almost reverent emphasis on keeping the boundary between capes and civilians intact, as if the mere act of knowing who someone was beneath a mask constituted a greater sin than anything done while wearing it. Gojo had never cared much for rules that existed purely to preserve systems that no longer worked, and this one in particular struck him as worse than useless. 

Especially since it protected people like the Empire Eighty-Eight.

Kaiser’s identity was already known to him. Max Anders wore power comfortably—enough to make Gojo mildly offended on principle—whether he was wrapped in steel or shaking hands at fundraisers, and he was far from alone. The Empire’s upper ranks were filled with men and women who lived respectable public lives, upstanding members of whatever professional circles they happened to inhabit, polite coworkers, and charming acquaintances, all the while they carefully reserved their ideology for behind closed doors and masked meetings.

They were white supremacists, proudly and violently committed to their ideology, but they understood optics. In costume, they were monsters. Out of it, they were the sort of people no one could imagine were capable of assaulting minorities and orchestrating lynch mobs. 

They did not preach hate publicly. They made sure it only ever surfaced among people who already agreed, or people too afraid to push back. 

Gojo found that fascinating in the same way one might find a particularly fragile glass sculpture fascinating. Beautiful in its own way, certainly impressive, but entirely dependent on never being touched too hard.

Especially since he understood why no one had shattered it before.

He was under no illusions that exposure would produce a clean collapse into the embrace of the PRT’s containment foam. The Empire would splinter, members disappearing, regrouping, or lashing out in panic and fury. Some would flee the city, but others would stay just long enough to hurt someone on their way out, and they would not do so randomly.

And because Gojo was still only one person, no matter how powerful—and Brockton Bay was not a small city—there would be no way to stop every act of violence quickly enough to prevent widespread harm. The cost of exposure would not be paid by the Empire alone, and that made it unacceptable, at least for now.

Which was why he would not pull the trigger.

Instead, he would let them hear the click of the hammer.

Gojo would make it undeniably known that he knew who they were, enough to leave no doubt that he could expose them whenever he chose, even as he allowed imagination to do the rest of the work for him.

And then he would give them an ultimatum.

Leave Brockton Bay, or die.

There would be no negotiations, no promises of redemption, and no assurances of safety if they tried to game the system. Only a clear statement of consequences, delivered in a way that made it impossible to dismiss as bluff or theatrics, and by someone who had already proven he could back up his threats.

They would hate it. They would rage and posture and scramble for any way to turn the situation back in their favor, but they would eventually understand. Staying would mean living under a blade they knew could fall at any moment, and when risk became personal, people like them were rarely brave.

It was still a gamble though, but it was a calculated one, and Gojo trusted that fear would do most of the work. The Empire’s need to protect their image would force their hand long before he ever had to expose a single name.

And once they were gone—scattered, diminished, or broken beyond recognition—Brockton Bay would be safer for it.

Then, and only then, would he turn his attention to Coil.

One problem at a time, after all.

There had never been a point in doing things the hard way when the simple way worked just as well.