(THE HONORED ONE) CHAPTER FORTY

Knowing where Max Anders would be was never the problem.

That much was practically public knowledge in Brockton Bay. Medhall’s headquarters dominated its stretch of the city, all glass and clean, geometric lines, with an upper office intentionally positioned to overlook the skyline. From there, Max Anders could watch Brockton Bay in all its shabby glory, could survey streets and districts the same way a general might study a battlefield, comfortably removed from the consequences of the ideology he nurtured.

The problem was timing.

Max Anders was careful in the way of men who understood exactly how much they stood to lose. His schedule shifted constantly and without warning, meetings canceled or rescheduled on short notice, and public appearances staggered just enough to avoid forming habits that could be tracked. Some nights the lights in his office burned long after the rest of the building had gone dark. Other days he was gone before evening, leaving those not in the know confused as to his whereabouts. 

So knowing where he liked to be did not mean knowing when he would be there.

Which was why Gojo had prepared differently.

In this case, preparation did not mean poring over surveillance footage or bribing informants and slowly getting what he needed. It meant looking at the pieces already on the board and deciding which one could be nudged hard enough to make the rest fall into place.

Stormtiger was one such piece.

After Hookwolf’s death and Stormtiger’s humiliating retreat, Gojo had assumed the matter was closed. And, in a sense, it had been. No threats were delivered again, no emissaries were sent, and no attempts were made to test Gojo’s power or retaliate for what he had done. The Empire Eighty-Eight had gone quiet, withdrawing into itself like a wounded animal unwilling to draw attention as it licked its injuries.

At the time, Gojo had accepted that silence at face value. It made Stormtiger’s return come as more of a surprise than it should have rightfully been, immediately correcting that assumption. 

But unlike what anyone expected, the man had come to him alone, stripped of bravado and any thought of vengeance alike, whatever dignity he once possessed worn away by fear. He spoke too quickly, even without being prompted, words tumbling over each other in a frantic rush, explanations and justifications tangled together with no clear beginning or end.

Gojo had barely listened; it had all blurred together into background noise.

What mattered was the gist of it.

Stormtiger was afraid.

He was not afraid of punishment or death, or even retribution from the many people he had harmed. He was afraid of Gojo himself. Afraid enough that the idea of ever working for Kaiser again was unthinkable. Whatever loyalty he had towards Kaiser and the Empire Eighty-Eight had faded completely, leaving behind nothing but self-preservation and the need to make it known he had put as much distance as possible between himself and the Empire.

Still, Gojo had no use for that then.

A frightened man with no spine and no purpose was not particularly valuable, so he had waved Stormtiger off with little more than mild disinterest and suggested he find somewhere else to be until such a time as he could make himself useful again. Stormtiger had taken the dismissal with visible relief and disappeared without protest.

Now, with a plan forming and a need for information that could not be obtained through brute force alone, Gojo found himself revisiting that memory.

Stormtiger, as a subordinate in the gang, had spent years moving within the Empire’s inner circles. He knew the routines Kaiser tried so hard to obfuscate, he knew which meetings mattered and which were for show, and he knew when Max Anders preferred privacy and when he relied on the illusion of it.

No matter how careful a man was, he still needed to depend on others. And it only took a weak link to expose everything. 

Gojo allowed himself a small, humorless smile.

Stormtiger would be very pleased to learn that Gojo had finally found a use for him.