It didn’t take long to reach their destination the next morning, leaving most of the minions behind at the first dungeon they reached that was close to the venue with instructions to hold the entry room but not advance further. Levi hoped to have some new recruits to Awaken before the day was out, and it wouldn’t be any use if the dungeon was already cleared.

Levi never visited an anime convention before. If he’d ever been any type of 'nerd' it would be statistics, not brightly-coloured cartoon characters. He felt significantly more kinship with Laurence than Cassandra, even if his own naive enthusiasm had been burned out of him long ago. He’d appreciate a good superhero movie or action flick as much as the next guy - at least until he'd been forced to live in one and found it not at all to his liking - but the appeal of anime had never been something he understood.

Yet here he was. Standing in line between one person wearing a bright green wig and a woman with bleached hair in oversized armor pieces that clearly provided little in the way of even basic protection.

Cassandra had somehow managed to find time between designing pamphlets (she had a hundred or so stuffed into her bag at the moment, and had given everyone else a stack too to distribute) and arranging transportation and hotel rooms to order custom clothing and banners printed. She had on a purple T-shirt that said 'WANT MAGIC POWERS? ASK ME HOW!' and a cartoon version of herself glowing purple with her manabow held out.

She caught Levi looking, glanced down at herself, and shrugged. "It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I admit I am questioning the design choice now. Think it's too tacky?"

Levi gestured helplessly at the people around them and shrugged.

Irene had a shirt in a similar style that said 'JOIN THE FIGHT - ASK ME HOW' and a slightly different cartoon version of Cassandra, this one with a serious expression and aiming the manabow like she was going to kill someone, while still somehow looking cute and nonthreatening.

Levi had to admit that, tacky purple shirt or not, Irene looked amazing. She was smiling, laughing, chatting with strangers… If he didn’t know her so well, he’d never guess anything was troubling her. But Levi could see the wariness in her gaze, the slightly detached way she watched everything, and knew that she wasn't entirely the person she had been before.

Even with everything that had happened, sometimes it took a while for the reality of the situation to show itself.

Levi glanced at Peter, only a night removed from his own brush with loss, and had to fight the instinctive parental urge to keep protecting him forever, to ensure he never lost anyone again. He hated to see the grim acknowledgement of reality taint Peter's eyes, yet in this kind of situation to shelter him was to leave him unprepared. This had to happen. Better now than in the heat of chaos, right?

He wasn't sure if he'd managed to convince himself. He wanted to turn back time, to hold Irene back and not let her reach this point, to protect Peter from having to grow up so fast.

But… the whole point of training them was to prepare them.

So lost in contemplation, he didn't notice the line moving until Cassandra elbowed him. "Come on."

Levi felt increasingly out of place among the excitable crowd. For them, this was some grand adventure, some trip into shared passion and anticipation. For him, it was a recruiting space for those increasingly unlike himself.

If he'd ever have been able to fit in to a place like this, it would have been hard even before the years spent fighting the slow destruction that ended up being unstoppable and inevitable. He could appreciate stories that glorified heroism, but from what he'd heard a lot of characters jumped to initiate conflict even when unnecessary, and that he didn't understand. When there was so much to unite over, why did people insist on finding arbitrary lines to hate one another over?

It was one of the facets of modern peace that he'd managed to forget about, in the forged-in-fire solidarity between those who made it to the end. Countries had bickered and squabbled over dungeon resources at first, but once the true magnitude of the threat showed itself all of that was set aside.

Levi had fought across North America in all directions, going where their team was sent, heedless of national borders. He'd spent as much time fighting in canada as in any of the states, spent a three-week campaign in mexico, and even been part of the auxiliary backup force when the top five hundred Awakened from across the world took down Opitaln Stormwalker, the third Demon Lord to be successfully felled. He hadn't ended up being called in, and they'd only heard about the fight second-hand, but at least it was true second-hand, from the people actually witnessing it, not passed down a chain of rumor from one side of the continent to the other.

So the brightly colored characters with flashy weapons, chasing power for the sake of power... he could understand them only at the fringes. He too wanted power, but if there were an option to walk away and live at peace, he'd have taken it. Now, that option no longer existed.

"Cheer up!" Cassandra grinned at him. "You look like you want to set fire to everything. You don't always have to be the cold grim presence, you know."

"I don't try to be." Levi forced a smile anyway.

"Somehow, I think that's even worse." Cassandra contemplated him a moment, then shrugged. "Next time I'll get you a mask or helmet or something, that should do it. I didn't have enough time to plan your wardrobe."

Levi looked down at his sturdy dungeon armor and shrugged. He’d had to leave his weapons behind in the dungeon with Drok, since they wouldn’t be allowed into the convention. Cassandra still had her manabow, though she’d glued on some oversized pieces of painted cardboard to either end. Since a manabow didn't rely on conventional physics to fire its projectiles, it wouldn't look nearly as dangerous as it really was.

Becca purred and walked around him, pushing against his legs and sides hard enough that he had to surge stamina briefly to maintain balance.

Right now, aside from Becca, they only had Henry and Skarm with them. Levi did have his doubts about being able to sneak a dinosaur in, but when Peter introduced him as his friend Henry and Henry tilted his head and waved in a clearly intelligent gesture, they were waved inside - though they did have to pay for a second child.

Cassandra laughed and paid up without hesitation, then tied the lanyard around Henry's neck. He seemed unexpectedly proud of his status as an attendee, and strutted about so much that Peter actually had to quietly reprimand him to keep focused.

Becca turned out to be the sticking point - she was too obviously a pet. Levi considered having her rift-jump in later, but for the moment told her to wait outside somewhere out of sight. Irene carried Skarm in one arm like a baby to avoid any questions there, and then they were handed their information packets and lanyards and were inside.

"What are we supposed to actually do at a place like this?" Levi asked as they wandered the convention center.

Cassandra was chatting to anyone she could find, handing out her pamphlets like a professional. Irene kept an eye on Peter as he walked from one display to the next, looking for anything he recognized, Henry trotting at his side with his head turning in every direction for potential threats.

"I think there are discussion panels you can watch..." Irene hunted through their welcome packet for the map. "Yeah, there are a few spots set up to watch movies or shows, discussion panels, a place to buy art and souvenirs.”

Levi looked around at the happy, excited people around him, and felt a moment of overpowering protectiveness. Were they really going to take these happy innocents and turn them into fighters? It seemed cruel to use something as joy-filled as this gathering to drag people away from what they’d consider sanity and into the madness of the endless fight.

But if they stayed as they were, they’d all die anyway. What use was it keeping them innocent four months longer if it meant they’d end up slaughtered?

Levi steeled himself and pushed away the self-loathing he felt at the contemplation of what must be done.

“We should split up and talk to as many people as possible,” he decided. “We can meet to compare notes at lunchtime.”

These people may be young (or not so young) and naive, but they still deserved the chance to fight for their survival as much as anyone else.