Ei's not so private audience

The Plane of Euthymia was silent and endless.

Ei hovered in her usual meditative state at the center of the still realm — a near-perfect mirror of the puppet that guarded Tenshukaku. Same face. Same long violet hair. Same cold, distant beauty.

The first difference that immediately caught Aether’s eye was the clothing.

Where the puppet wore the formal, imposing attire of the Shogun, Ei’s version was far more revealing. The cuts along the sides of her outfit were wider, deliberately showing generous sideboob. The fabric clung and parted in ways that made it obvious she wore nothing underneath. Every slight shift of her hovering form threatened to expose more. It was a stark, almost jarring contrast to the rigid persona of Eternity she had created for the outside world.

Ei opened her eyes slowly as he landed.

“You have come far,” she acknowledged, voice calm and absolute. “Your efforts are noted. But I have no intention of allowing you to have your way with me. And in any case…” her gaze was cool, almost indifferent, “I am not particularly interested in men.

As if the words themselves had been the cue, the charm Yae Miko had given him flared with soft pink light. The Guuji of the Grand Narukami Shrine materialized beside Aether in a swirl of sakura petals and foxfire, looking thoroughly pleased with herself.

“Oh, Ei,” Yae Miko said with a sly, affectionate smile. “Still telling yourself that after all these centuries?”

Ei’s eyes narrowed slightly.

Yae continued without mercy, voice light and conversational as she began recounting old, very specific stories — the kind only a former lover would know. Details of late nights in the Plane of Euthymia. The way Ei used to lose composure. The particular sounds she made. The things she had begged for when it was only the two of them.

She mixed the memories with gentle guilt-tripping (“You locked yourself away and left me to watch you harden into this…”), open seduction, and pure, targeted embarrassment.

Every word was carefully chosen to chip away at the perfect, emotionless defense the Archon had built around herself.

Ei’s composed expression began to show the first tiny cracks as her oldest friend casually dismantled her walls with nothing but shared history and a fox-like smile.

Aether stood between them, the charm’s residual energy still warm in his hand, watching the true Raiden Shogun’s carefully maintained Eternity start to waver under the weight of her own past.

Yae Miko had always known exactly where to press.