"What the?! Who are y—"
"Mayday!! Someone attacked the base!!"
"Uoa!!!!!!!"
At an undisclosed location, countless personnel wearing tuxedos frantically run away, while some take the time to dial towards someone, or somewhere else, as the surrounding quickly becomes engulfed in flame and debris.
"Hm, the security is quite underwhelming…"
A certain young man speaks up with a rather bored manner while spinning the dual pistol, as many more lie lifelessly around him.
"What do you expect? The place's meant to be hidden."
Red braids glint her eyes towards the boy, seemingly annoyed by his carefree attitude, while many personnel continue to disappear around her.
"She's right, too many personnel here make it harder to hide, so the less the better."
The old man holding his pipe calmly explains to the young man, as he kicks another man crashing to the wall.
As the group of Twain, Lucy and Melville continue effortlessly killing everyone still staying behind, they continue onward to the vault deep inside the building, one that is hidden deep beneath the ground.
Due to Alcott's plan, they're appointed to breach this place to retrieve back a certain "object" that the Port Mafia hid from everyone, even those who guards here didn't even know what's exactly in the vault.
"Still, what could the Mafia hiding here? Nuclear bomb?"
The red braids whisper such questions, as the young man looks back at her with a confused yet intrigued like that of a child.
"Probably, but I highly doubt that ~"
"Why?"
"Dunno, just a feeling ~"
The red braids let out a sigh of annoyance against his giggle, while the old man still carefully scouting the surroundings with his exceptional senses, even at this age of his. After doing so for a few moments, he shrugged off his guard as no one else was alive at this point.
They proceed to casually go down to the vault, as the sight of a giant iron door with countless locks on it slowly creeped into their field of vision.
"Damn! Top notch security? Are they really hiding nuclear warheads here or what?!"
As Twain is still in awe of how much the Port Mafia's pouring in just to secure what lies beyond this seemingly unbreakable door, Lucy just casually calls all of them into the Anne room, the dimensions consist of toys, stuffed animals, balloons… anything that a kid would love to have.
But without even a full moment later, she calls off her ability as they're all now inside the vault, without even touching the lock outside.
This is Lucy's ability, Anne of Abyssal Red, one of the most exceptional dimensional-based abilities even in the Guild. The ability allows Lucy to create a pocket dimension, where she's practically invincible, and allows her to hold her own against many ability users.
One of its main functions is to allow Lucy to temporarily teleport those she chose and herself in relative close proximity even if it was locked away, which help her, and basically the guild, to break in many secured disclosed locations.
So now, without even trying, they're all in the vault after a measly 1 hour after taking Fitzgerald's order… And yet, the only thing they see here…
"Huh? A… bedroom?"
"Weird…"
Both Twain and Lucy look at the surroundings bewildered, confusing why the inside of the vault seems vastly different than what they thought. Instead of dusty and obscure, the inside looks more of a bedroom, albeit bland, with a bed and wardrobe and white walls…
And from the look of it, this place seems more of a prison cell for children, due to the relatively small size of all the things in this room.
"… Seems like someone has taken an upper hand."
Melville looks around this small room with a heavy tone, as the others also realise what he's trying to say, since they've been through this a lot to further the Guild influence on various nations.
The thing they're trying to take isn't any object, but a kid, and the target somehow escapes this place even before they arrive…
"Impossible, do they know we would be here?"
"And to sacrifice their manpower to us?! I doubt that…"
While TWain and Lucy begin to argue over whether the Mafia predicted this already or not, Melville uses all of his senses to look at every evidence left behind, as his expression slowly became that of a surprise.
He then walks up to the wardrobe and pulls it down, revealing a big hole on the wall to his two colleagues.
"This is…?"
Both the colleagues looked at the hole with a shocked expression, as the old man slowly let out a grin on his face, as he slowly realized the culprit behind this. Although the evidence was too little to actually prove that word of his, all those previous files on the Mafia have already given him the answer.
"Look at the hole, it's been cut clean all the way right?"
Melville then began to explain his finding to the two colleagues, first by pointing at the hole first. Both of them now begin to pay more attention to it and finally see how clean the edge is.
"Now that you mention it…"
"Yeah…"
Both Lucy and Twain mumble as to nodding with his words, as he slowly continues with his explanation.
"And yet, despite that, the shape of this hole is too clumsy and imperfect, as if someone has deliberately cut it out themself. And considering that this place is underground, I think the one who makes this hole has to do it themself instead of using machinery."
"So to actually achieve this feat, one must possess an ability to do just this kind of thing. So the question becomes who has done this?"
"Out of all ability users in this city that the Guild manages to locate, and from what I foresee myself, there's only one that befitting such a task… Akutagawa Ryunosuke, who possessed an ability who's also has the property of cutting space."
"And yet, the guy doesn't seem to actually have such insight to predict our movement, due to how he poorly handles our quest firsthand and how he handled all of us back then… So, he must have followed another order."
"And in the end, who has such insight in our organization to propose this plan, while also having connections with Akutagawa?"
""… No way???!!!!""
Both Twain and Lucy slowly realize the true mastermind behind this following Melville deduction, as their faces become that of terrified with a particular someone.
The one who actually knows them down to personal level to actually anticipate this, and presumably having connection with the Mafia Hound… There's only one guy who fits such a description, one that possesses no particular feature…
"Yes, I'm afraid that the newcomer is one-step ahead of us for now…"
Finally finished his deduction, he let out a smoke from his pipe as he looked around in awe, surprised that someone had actually outsmarted the organization for the first time…
But still, where could the guy hide their target…? That's the question he needs to answer as soon as possible…
While they're all wondering where the newcomer could be, at some normal house far away…
"Are you sure this place is safe?"
Asking the young man with a wild expression, wearing a black cloak which covers his whole body in black.
"Obviously ~"
Say the man with no remarkable feature outside of his brown eyes and hair, as he slowly drinks the tea.
"…"
And sitting in front of them looking a bit puzzled, is a little girl with red bob hair slowly drinking the tea… Yeah, that's me.
In all honesty, I don't really want to be here in the first place… Like, Tsukami-san "friends" emitting bloodlust everywhere, and I somehow managed to hide my shivering from their eyes 'til now…
… The reasons for me to stay here? They're at my house, sitting on my favourite sofa right now. Also, what kind of hero am I to run away right now?
I… just can't turn away from him, especially after that night…
"So, what's with the girl?"
"Oh right."
And with that, their attention shifted to me, as my body stiffened in fear due to their intense yet sinister gaze…
"Enough guys."
Another silent yet threatened voice comes from Tsukami-san, as their eyes become softener immediately. Still unbearable though, but I can still manage with this much… I hope so.
"She's my comrade in this… please, be gentle with her."
"… You involve a 10 year old in this ability conflict?'
Wait what? Am I hearing that correctly? Ability conflicts…?
"A lot happened, and she's in this voluntarily… and not, at the same time."
"… Weird."
And with that, the black guy closes his eyes and tilts into the sofa with his arms crossed, seemingly asleep from all this situation…
I then silently took a look at the other company, who just looked between Tsukami-san and me with rather sinister yet curious eyes, hanging an uneasy grin on his face…
"Heh ~"
… For some reason, I feel like my life just shortens a bit just by accidentally looking at his grin…