Days passed in a state of tense anticipation. Erwin had meticulously prepared the café floor, mapping out every angle and potential trajectory. From a hidden vantage point on a nearby rooftop, Sebas watched over the alley, a silent, unseen guardian ready to intervene if things deviated from the plan. Erwin, dressed in his unassuming suit and overcoat, had become a fixture at a small table near the entrance, playing the part of a quiet customer so convincingly that the other regulars had started to nod politely at him.
The day they had been waiting for finally arrived. As evening descended, the café was comfortably full, a mix of their new, loyal patrons. Zero was behind the bar, his veiled hat hiding the calm, focused expression on his face as he made drinks. Soma moved between the kitchen and the tables, serving the meal of the day with his usual boisterous charm. Erwin sat at his table, sipping a black coffee, his eyes scanning the room, waiting for his cue.
BANG!
The front door was kicked open with such force that it slammed against the interior wall, shaking the painting of Sayuri. A dwarf sitting at the bar, a familiar regular, slammed his own mug down. "Mind your manners, you louts!" he shouted.
The two thugs, the human Orimys and the elf Eroan, swaggered in, their rune-etched revolvers already drawn and held openly.
"Shut the fuck up, midget," Orimys sneered at the dwarf. "Your kind was enslaved by his," he said, hooking a thumb toward Zero. "And here you are, drinking shit out of his hands."
The dwarf was about to retort when Zero placed a calming hand on his shoulder. "Why are you here?" Zero asked, his voice even.
"Hahahaha," Eroan cackled from the doorway. "I guess your brain has been tainted for so long you can't even remember our deal, huh?"
Zero sighed. "There are still customers here. Can you wait until we've closed?"
Orimys responded by firing his gun into the ceiling. Plaster rained down. The customers screamed and ducked. "Stop the foreplay and give us our 3000 Sol!" he roared.
From the kitchen doorway, Soma appeared, a heavy meat cleaver held loosely in his hand. "Get out," he snarled, his voice low and dangerous. "Fuck your protection. You don't do shit for anyone. Stop your bullshit."
Orimys's eyes lit up with cruel amusement. He pointed his gun directly at the quiet man sitting near the door. "Give me our money," he said to Soma, "or I'll start by killing your customers, one by one. Starting with this one."
The customers froze in terror. Zero was about to say something, to try and de-escalate, but it was too late. The performance had begun.
Erwin moved.
In a blur of motion, he shot up from his chair. He didn't go for the man, but for the weapon. His hand shot out, parrying Orimys's gun arm to the side as he twisted the thug's wrist in a lock that made him scream and drop the revolver. At the same instant, Eroan swung his own gun toward Erwin. Erwin, still holding Orimys, kicked Eroan's arm upwards. The gun fired harmlessly into the ceiling again. Without a moment's hesitation, Erwin jumped, locking his legs around Eroan's neck in a perfect scissor takedown, slamming the elf to the ground while simultaneously twisting Orimys's arm behind his back and pulling him down into a brutal chokehold.
In a matter of seconds, it was over. The two armed thugs were neutralized, tangled together on the floor in a double chokehold by the quiet man in the overcoat.
Erwin, his breathing perfectly steady, raised his voice, a strange, foreign accent coloring his words. "Is there a Sentinel out there?!" he shouted to the stunned room. The customers could only stare, their minds still trying to process the sudden, violent ballet they had just witnessed. "Oy!" Erwin demanded again. "Where are the Sentinels?!"
One of the customers, a university student who was always in the corner studying, finally stammered out a reply. "Y-y-yes... eh, n-no! There are no Sentinels! We... we call them the Watchers here!"
"I don't care what you call them! Call them right now!" Erwin commanded.
"No need to go to a transmitter box," Zero said, his own voice calm as he stepped out from behind the bar. "I have a home transmitter right here." He walked over to the cash register, beside which sat an old, red rotary phone—a gift from Cecil that was already calibrated to the city's emergency frequency. He picked it up and began to dial. "Yes, hello? I'd like to report a situation at Café LeBlanc."
As Zero made the call, a fox beastman, another regular, walked toward Erwin, who was still holding the two thugs in his unbreakable hold. "Here," the fox-man said with a pleasant smile, "let me help you with that. I have a rope." He began pulling a coil of rope from his satchel.
Erwin stared at him, for the first time in the entire encounter, genuinely caught off guard. "...You have a rope?"
The fox beastman beamed. "I always bring my rope everywhere."
Erwin's mind went blank for a split second, the sheer absurdity of the statement short-circuiting his tactical brain. He snapped himself back to focus and released his hold, allowing the cheerful, rope-wielding beastman to begin tying up the unconscious thugs.
…
Inside a heavy patrol car, Detective Wolfe nursed a lukewarm coffee, his eyes scanning the quiet streets. His rookie partner, Monet Montallet, sat behind the wheel, alert and focused. The crystal transmitter on the dashboard crackled to life, breaking the silence.
"Control to all units in District Seven. Report of a public disturbance at a café, alleyway off 7th Avenue, block four. Suspects armed with runic firearms, reported neutralized by civilian. Any available unit respond."
Monet immediately grabbed the receiver. "Control, this is Two-David-Seven," she said, her voice crisp and clear. "Show us responding, ETA two minutes."
"Understood, Two-David-Seven."
Wolfe tossed his empty cup into a waste receptacle. "Hit it," he grunted. Monet flipped on the silent, pulsing rune-lights and floored the accelerator, the car lurching forward into the night.
As they screeched to a halt at the mouth of the alley, Monet's eyes widened in recognition. "Oh! It's this café!" she said, a hint of excitement in her voice. "I've been wanting to come here, but I've been putting it on hold."
"Focus, boot!" Wolfe said sternly, his gaze already sweeping the area for threats. "We're on scene." He grabbed the radio. "Control, Two-David-Seven is 10-97."
They stepped out of the car and walked into Café LeBlanc, expecting to find a scene of chaos and terror. What they found caught both of them completely off guard. The café was warm and smelled of coffee and fried chicken. The handful of remaining customers were chatting quietly at their tables, sipping drinks as if nothing had happened. And in the middle of the floor, two thugs were trussed up neatly in rope like a holiday roast.
Wolfe stared at the bizarrely tranquil scene for a moment, then looked at his partner. "Write it up," he ordered, gesturing for her to take statements while he dealt with the suspects.
Monet pulled out her notepad and pen and approached the veiled man behind the counter. "You're the owner of the café, I assume?"
Zero, who was calmly wiping down a clean section of the bar, looked at her. "Well," he said, a hint of wry humor in his voice, "if you're assuming that the reason my café is suddenly failing is because people heard the owner is a demon, then yes, I am."
Monet's professional demeanor faltered, and she became awkward, unsure how to respond to the self-deprecating joke. Just then, the red-haired chef came over and playfully slapped Zero on the back. "Stop making the nice officer's work harder than it has to be," Soma scolded, before turning to Monet with a charming smile.
"Okay, okay," Zero relented with a chuckle. "Where should we start, Officer?"
While Monet began taking the official statement, Wolfe hauled the two thugs to their feet and unceremoniously frog-marched them out to the patrol car to be processed.
Some time later, with the suspects secured and the report mostly finished, Wolfe and Monet stood outside the café.
"How do you know this place anyway?" Wolfe asked, lighting a cigarette.
"Well, it became famous overnight after the festival," Monet explained. "Everyone's been talking about the Master Chef who works here." Her expression became a bit more serious. "But the thing that really made me remember it was seeing a harassment report filed from this address about a week ago."
Wolfe took a slow drag from his cigarette, his grey eyes narrowing. "We weren't patrolling this district a week ago."
Monet let out an awkward little laugh. "Hehe, well... I was actually going through some of Officer Valdi's backlog," she admitted, suddenly finding the tips of her boots very interesting. "You know, his paperwork."
Wolfe paused, the cigarette halfway to his lips. "Wait," he said, his voice flat. "Did you do Valdi's paperwork again?"
Monet looked down, her cheeks flushing. "Well... he insisted, sir. And he's a higher rank than me."
Wolfe let out a long, weary sigh, the smoke mingling with his breath in the cool night air. The eternal problem. Lazy senior officers dumping their work on eager-to-please rookies. "Alright," he grunted, flicking the cigarette butt into the gutter. "Let's go. I don't want to be so late that the precinct thinks I'm actually volunteering for a night patrol."
Monet nodded and hurriedly followed him back to the car.
The patrol car moved silently through the streets, its pulsing red rune-lights painting the dark alleyways in flashes of crimson. In the backseat, Orimys and Eroan sat in sullen, magical-dampening cuffs, the bravado completely drained from them.
"Sir," Monet said, breaking the quiet as she reviewed her notes. "Do we need to issue a bulletin to search for the vigilante?"
Wolfe kept his eyes on the road. "The official testimony states that the individual who neutralized the suspects fled the scene as soon as they were secured," he said, reciting the likely official line.
"The civilian who helped tie them up—the fox beastman—he was still on the scene when we arrived," Monet clarified, her pen scratching against the paper. "He confirmed the account. Said the vigilante was incredibly fast and neutralized both of them before anyone even knew what was happening."
Wolfe glanced over at her. "Close your notebook."
Monet looked up, surprised, but obeyed.
"Give me the full preliminary description of this vigilante," he said. "From memory."
Monet recognized the test. She sat up straighter, her voice taking on the clipped, precise tone of an officer giving a report. "Subject is a human male, blond, with an approximate height of 185 to 190 centimeters. Build is assumed to be muscular, based on witness testimony of him single-handedly subduing two armed individuals. Subject spoke with a pronounced foreign accent, suspected by one witness—a university student—to be an accent from the Athenean Concord." She paused for breath. "This is supported by the subject's use of the term 'Sentinels' instead of 'Watchers' when demanding law enforcement."
Wolfe took a long, slow drag from his cigarette, then exhaled the smoke out his cracked-open window. A perfect report. The kid was sharp. "Alright," he grunted. "When we get to the precinct, I'll process the paperwork for this one. You just focus on processing these two fools. You've had enough of other people's paperwork this week."
A look of genuine relief and gratitude washed over Monet's face. She smiled. "Thank you, sir."
A smirk played on Wolfe's lips, and he let out a low, gravelly chuckle that was far from reassuring. "Huh, don't thank me, boot," he said, his grey eyes glinting in the dashboard lights. "I just need to have a little... talk... with Officer Valdi about his workload anyway. Hehehe."
In the backseat, Orimys and Eroan heard the detective's cold, predatory laugh, and then the rookie's cheerful, innocent one. They looked at each other, a shared, dawning horror in their eyes. They had no idea what they had just gotten themselves into, but they knew, with absolute certainty, that it was going to be a very, very long night.
…
Erwin stepped inside the loft, the familiar warmth and smell of home a stark contrast to the cold, tense streets he had just navigated. The moment the door clicked shut behind him, he was met with a chorus of congratulations.
"Congratulations, Young Master Erwin," Sebas said with a respectful nod, a small party popper in his gloved hand.
POP!
Zero, standing beside him, set off another popper, showering Erwin in colorful paper streamers. Soma approached with a wide grin, holding out a plate with a generous slice of rich, chocolate cake.
"Come on, eat up!" Soma said proudly. "I made this this morning. That's how sure I was that the plan was going to work."
Zero chuckled. "So, now what are we doing, Commander?"
Erwin, allowing a rare, small smile to touch his lips as he accepted the cake, replied, "Now, we play a waiting game. I will come here less and less. My visits must become infrequent. I need to establish my own identity, separate from this café, and create a stark comparison between my capabilities and those of the Watchers. The more competent I appear, the more incompetent they will look."
Soma threw an arm across Erwin's shoulders. "Come on, stop saying all that brain-musher stuff and let's party!" he declared, pulling out a bottle of champagne he'd been saving and popping the cork with a loud thwump.
Sebas clapped elegantly, nodding his approval to Erwin.
Later, after the remnants of their small, triumphant party had been cleared away, they settled into their new routine. They sat on the floor of the living room in a circle, their hands linked, the plates and empty glasses replaced by a focused, meditative silence.
They closed their eyes, and as before, they began to sense the connections between them—the pulsing, blood-red strings that tied their souls to Zero's core. But this time, something was different. Something new.
Zero, acting as the anchor, could feel it most acutely. It was a new destination, a new potential space within their shared consciousness. He tried to reach for it, but it was like swimming against a powerful, invisible current. He pushed, focusing all his will, all his newfound magical energy, into breaking through the resistance. He pushed and pushed, the strain building in his mind, until finally...
BAM.
Something changed. The sensation was like being thrown into the air and suddenly finding purchase. Ever so slightly, his mental self, which had always been an amorphous cloud of consciousness during these sessions, began to form a body. With a sudden, disorienting jolt, he was no longer just floating in a void; he was sitting.
He calmed his racing thoughts and looked around. He was seated at a massive, circular table made of dark, polished wood that seemed to absorb the light. The table was surrounded by countless chairs, so many that they stretched out in a perfect circle into a dark, endless void, their numbers seeming infinite. And sitting beside him, looking just as solid and just as stunned as he was, were Soma, Erwin, and Sebas. They were all here, together, in this impossible place.
Soma was the first to speak, his voice echoing slightly in the vast, silent chamber. "What is this place?"
**A/N**
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**A/N**