"I'm feeling all better now!" Corissa cried.
"Hooray!" Helena and Momo and Kaguya all celebrated by throwing their hands up in the air, "I was worried you might never recover!"
"It was just a bit of exhaustion." Corissa smiled, "It's not a big deal."
"Be careful. You sound like someone I know."
"Are you guys like this when I'm not around too?" Roko growled.
"Does it matter if we say yes?" Helena smirked.
"It might affect how much time I spend with you guys."
"Which answer gets us more time with you cause you haven't been around much in a while. Again."
"Okay..." Roko gave a pained sigh as he held his head in one of his hands, "I'm going to go drown myself in sewer water now."
"Oh, I'll come with." Corissa smiled, "I can help you breathe underwater."
"Great. Anybody else want to come along?"
"I'm busy training Malus." Momo said.
"I've got plants to tend to." Kaguya nodded.
"Melia and I are helping out in the kitchen while Corissa is gone so she doesn't overwork herself again." Helena explained.
"I'll come."
"No you won't." Helena said, shooting a meaningful glare at Roland who was doing his best not to look guilty.
"Do you want to come along?" Roko looked down at Aranea.
"Aranea's playing with Medeia and Pluteum today." Corissa smiled, "Pluteum's here today so they've arranged for a playdate. You're going, right Aranea?"
Aranea looked away, eyes wide in panic and perhaps even in a hint of trauma that Roko detected but the young girl nodded nonetheless.
"Good!" Corissa smiled an oddly foreboding smile, "I know you three will have some great fun!"
"Pluteum's coming over quite often now." Melia noted, "Do you think Gallus will ever show up again?"
"Well he is a police officer now." Momo shrugged, "He probably has a lot of stuff going on now."
"So anyway, Gallus is here to help out today if you want him."
With that said, Azimuth walked off as Roko stared blankly as the ex-rebel just waved awkwardly at him with an awkward smile, "What happened to being a police officer?"
"Oh well...you know..." Gallus chuckled, "Not much the police can do nowadays. Especially in this rain. Station's mostly been in an upkeep frenzy with all the new and temporary inhabitants. I swing by occasionally to drop off Pluteum but I get curious about how things are going here too. Just wanted to know if there was anything I could help you guys with."
"...Well, there's not much to do right now." Roko crossed his arms, "Everybody's been helping out with the small tasks around the base or training for our next eventual operation to stop the rain. But all that depends on how our underwater operations go."
"Ah yes, how's that been going?"
"Well enough." Roko shrugged, "There was a short break due to exhaustion but we're just about to resume right now."
"Sounds important. Do you mind if I come along?"
"Sure." Roko shrugged again, "I don't see why not."
"Ah good." Gallus smiled, "My wife's always been a real go-getter and I always feel bad about how little I do for...well, both the police and the rebellion so I'm glad to help out with something once in a while."
"Well we probably won't get into any fights so you'll probably be fine."
"That's good."
"Hey Roko! I bought the lamps."
"IS THAT MADAM CORISSA FROM CORDIS?!"
"Oh yeah, I guess you weren't here for this." Roko said as he turned to Corissa who had suddenly stopped in confusion when Gallus had yelled at her, "Yeah, she's helping out. Actually she's pretty central to our underwater operations."
"N-Nice to meet you." Corissa bowed politely to the tall policeman.
"L-Likewise." Gallus bowed in response, "I'm sorry for yelling at you."
"It's fine." Corissa smiled, "You're...Gallus right? Pluteum speaks very highly of you."
"Oh, I'm flattered." Gallus grinned an embarrassingly large grin, "I'm glad he's been getting along with Aranea and Medeia so well."
"He's a very polite boy." Corissa nodded.
"Can we get started already?" Roko rolled his eyes.
"So..." Gallus gulped, "So what's this spell called again?"
"Sanctuary." Corissa replied as Roko lead them through the flooded tunnels once again, "It's...a little complicated but for a simple explanation right now, it negates magic within a certain area."
"That's a frightening ability. I've never heard of it before."
"Well, it's a pretty mysterious magic that hasn't really been seen a whole lot."
"And you mastered it to such an extent already? Impressive."
"No no no." Corissa said sheepishly, "If anything, the only reason I've made any progress with this spell is due to Roko."
"I didn't teach you how to use sanctuary." Roko scoffed, "Also, halt."
Their underwater recon group stopped as Roko raised a lantern to the edge of the sanctified zone. To reveal some sort of spherical orb floating in the water than had been chained to the ground. A very familiar sight to Roko but evidently not to anyone else in the circle.
"What is it?" Corissa asked.
"A naval mine." Roko replied, "I assume so anyway. I'm trying not to risk using my spells within sanctuary just in case but it certainly looks like a moored sea mine from my world."
"I've never seen a sea mine." Corissa blinked.
"Me neither." Gallus added.
"We can wonder about that later." Roko said, "There's one thing I want to test right now. Varis, can you step up and hold you hand out to the mine for a moment? This is just for safety reasons, don't worry. Alright. Corissa, we're going to step forward towards the mine. Varis, be ready to catch it just in case."
With everyone positioned as Roko demanded, they took careful steps forward, sanctuary removing the water around the mine until enough were gone that the mine fell onto Varis' ready hand.
"Like I thought." Roko nodded, "These aren't magically created or maintained mines. They're physical and mechanical."
"What does that mean?" Gallus asked.
"That means that Sirius has realized that the magical piranhas aren't working and decided to use these mines instead." Roko explained, "And unfortunately, if we just move past this mine, the water around it will disappear and the mine will just drop, hit the ground and explode. One more thing to check though. Everyone step back and Varis, give me a lift."
Everyone stepped back away from the bomb, Varis letting it go as water returned around it to carry it back up without exploding. Once they were free, Varis let Roko step onto his hand as he lifted him up with one hand, pushing him close to the roof of the tunnels. Like Corissa had said, there was quite a bit of room now for Roko to point his lantern over the surface of the water. The light traveling more easily over the open air and illuminating the surface of the water around them. And from this light, Roko could see several more spherical objects poking out from below the surface.
"Yep." Roko grunted as Varis let him back down again, "There's more mines than just this one."
"That sounds bad." Gallus gulped, "What do we do now?"
"...We return."
"What?! But we haven't collected even a single Sealith yet!" Corissa yelped.
"We can't risk moving around anymore with these mines everywhere." Roko sighed, "We'll need to find some sort of countermeasure against them first."
"And uhh...how are we going to do that?" Gallus asked.
"How else?" Roko sighed, "With research."
"Boooooo~"
"Lay off me, Corissa!"
For the next few days, Roko looked over every bit of information he could find about sea mines. And by find, he meant order as there was obviously no ready record of naval mines in a land locked city such as Mulapin. Visits to the local bookstore became more frequent as Roko ordered various books through the store owner, which made Aranea quite happy to receive more books to help her literacy lessons. On that note, Aranea's learning had progressed quite well, now able to read her favorite books without having to sound anything out. Corissa had been helping her quite regularly apparently.
But back to Roko's work, he eventually got his hands on a lot of information regarding naval mines. Schematics, mechanical information, even some historical data. There was a way of disarming them among the information, though it was a bit complex, making it hard to implement in the situation they'll be operating in. But another possibility had taken over Roko's interest. Naval mines couldn't be easy to get right? So there should be a paper trail leading to Sirius right? Or at least to this accomplice of Sirius'. And interestingly, this trail lead to a Mulapin account. Further details were forbidden from Roko to access but this was a thoroughly fascinating find. This account was pretty storied with Roko being able to find a few odd and seemingly innocent purchases throughout several years. It was a lived-in and personal account. Now this could be Sirius', it would make sense he'd have a Mulapin account after essentially conquering it. But according to Roko's conclusions, Sirius wasn't involved with this endeavor. So it would stand to reason that this might not be Sirius. And if we assume that, that means this account was owned by the accomplice and THAT meant that the accomplice was someone from Mulapin. Thoroughly killing Roko's dread of having to face Alec again. As well as the possibility of the accomplice being anyone from outside Mulapin. This narrowed their possible suspects and hinted at the existence of some sort of traitor.
"Well, I already knew that though." Roko sighed as he sat back, exhausted from his research.
"So do you have a solution yet?" Kaguya asked, "To the mines I mean."
"Well, the majority of manuals suggest using magical tools which I don't want to risk inside sanctuary so...we might need to come at this from a different angle. From the specifications I found on their different types of mines, these should actually be pretty low yielding mines."
"In normal parlance?" Momo said.
"The explosions shouldn't be that big. I can't imagine Sirius would want to get rid of the entire sewer system in order to stop us so it makes sense they might not be that high performance. Still would not be safe to be right next to them as they explode though."
"So what's the counter measure?" Melia asked.
"Just explode them." Roko rolled his eyes, "They can't hurt us after its detonated...aside from shrapnel I suppose."
"What a simple solution." Helena smirked, "Are you sure this won't backfire?"
"For what it's worth, I suspect this was a hastily devised countermeasure against us. They probably never expected us to be able to traverse underwater so easily and when they tried adding magical monsters to stop us, they discovered that magic won't work. So they rushed to find more mechanical methods of stopping us. That being these mines. It's a rush job, as proven by the fact these mines were bought only a week ago."
"Damn, they can just fast track mines like that?" Azimuth said.
"Just because they don't have Sirius' approval or bank account doesn't mean they can't use their connections." Roko replied.
"So how are we going to destroy the mines if we can't get close to them?" Mikado asked.
"Well we already have a perfect 'bullet' for that." Roko said picking up the Sealith lying on his desk, "Fire this at the mines and they'll cut through the water no problem. The issue is giving it enough force or power to trigger the explosion. I've checked and they don't seem to be all that sturdy enough. It might move the mines, dent them even, but I ran the calculations and they'd mostly shatter against the steel shells."
"So what are we doing next then?" Corissa asked.
"I dunno. Depends on what Piscium can tell me."
"Weren't you the one who said we needed to move quickly before they launch an attack on us?" Roland rolled his eyes.
"Well it seems like they're putting in a lot of effort just to stop us so I'd say we're doing pretty well."
"Yeah sure, whatever."
"By the way, what are we celebrating?" Roko said as he looked up at everyone who was decorating his office.
"We're celebrating you finally noticing what we're doing." Helena grinned, "We've been subtly decorating your office while you were reading and were wondering when you were going to notice."
"Well of course I was going to notice." Roko frowned.
"Yeah, now that we're setting up streamers and balloons all over the place now! It started with small things like a festive funny looking plush or a small sack face and you didn't seem to notice that stuff."
"Even if I did notice, it's not exactly alarming enough to stop you."
"And that's the problem." Helena nodded.
"Look, is this all another jab at me ignoring everyone again?"
"I mean, you do do that." Azimuth nodded, "A lot."
"Who else is going to read all these books?!"
"I mean, give it some time, I'm sure Aranea will get there eventually." Helena smirked.
"Speaking of Aranea, she's the one we celebrating today!" Corissa smiled warmly, "It's been one month since you adopted her I hear."
"We're celebrating that now?"
"Well it was actually a few days ago. We would have celebrated it earlier but you were busy." Momo chuckled.
"You could've mentioned that earlier." Roko frowned, "I can make time for something like that."
"You hear that Aranea?" Kaguya said, "I told you he'd want to celebrate with us."
Aranea hid her face behind her book.
"Anyway, we've prepared all the decorations and a small lunch for everyone here." Corissa smiled, "Now that you're in, we can begin."
"What are we having?" Roko asked.
"I made a cake!" Momo grinned, "Been a while since I did that."
"And I've made some omurice for everyone." Corissa added, "Aranea seems to like omurice."
"Is it just us here?" Roko asked.
"Nope. We invited Aranea's friends, Medeia and Pluteum." Kaguya explained, "But Argo and even Gallus should be joining us too."
"We're here!"
The door to Roko's office opened as two energetic kids ran in holding trays of food while Argo walked in with a cart holding a large cake on it as Gallus carried another plate of food.
"Look!" Medeia cried running up to everyone with the tray of food in her hands, "Miss Corissa made the omurice look like bears sleeping under a blanket!"
"Wow!" Helena smiled looking over Corissa's handiwork proudly, "So cute!"
"Happy Birthday, Aranea!" Pluteum said, walking up to the very embarrassed child.
"It's not technically her birthday but it's close enough." Gallus chuckled softly, "Now, let's get this party underway before we all have to return to work okay?"
"Yay!"
"I was wondering why lunch sucked today." Piscium frowned, "So you had Corissa catering your own private party."
"Really? You're going to get jealous over a kid's birthday party?" Roko scoffed.
"I'm not jealous." Piscium sputtered, "And it wasn't even a birthday party anyway!"
"Corissa will return for dinner, stop whining." Roko rolled his eyes.
"I'm not whining OR jealous! I'm not sure where these allegations are coming from."
"Yeah yeah. Now about those mines."
"Right, so you just need Sealiths that can pierce a naval mine's shell right?"
"Basically." Roko said, "Our only other options are basically reliant on Varis. And while Varis may know quite a bit of magic, fire isn't going to help underwater, ice would travel too slowly in the water and lightning is a bit risky."
"Well...I can make ninja stars."
"Shurikens?"
"No, ninja stars. I can sharpen the edges a bit so they can probably pierce the mines' shell. Sealiths aren't exactly well known for their durability. So don't expect them to come back after the damn mine explodes."
"Wasn't counting on it. Though we'll probably need quite a few."
"I'm not too happy throwing away my products like this but so long as the pay is good, I can make it work."
"The rebellion has enough money to compensate you for your work."
"What if I asked for something special?"
"...Like what?"
"Like...a small little...dinner date with Cor-"
"No."
"Lunch date?"
"No."
"Can I get anything?"
"I got a Corissa gravure catalog."
"Damn, those things are hard to find! I'll take it!"
"Seriously?"