"Mmm, Bella, you did a great job—"
Inside Kiana's room, our Doll Sirin, the former Queen of the Void, was happily munching on a roasted chicken leg that Bella had snatched from the Schicksal Base's kitchen, unaware that a great disaster was about to strike—
The sound of approaching footsteps, or rather the sound of someone sprinting toward this room, grew louder. Bella, instantly alert, threw open the window and tossed the remaining food and scraps outside, just as Durandal had done... As for whether she hit anyone... who knows.
"Your Majesty, don't just focus on eating—someone is rushing here."
The instantly alert doll crime gang threw the trash out the window, then turned the fan to maximum to blow away the smell of food. Sirin grabbed a napkin and wiped the oil stains off her mouth clean, then Bella burned the napkin to ashes on the spot and tossed them out the window—
This proved that a two-person team was more efficient and effective than working alone.
After finishing all this, the duo bounced back onto the nightstand to continue playing dead, planning to play a game of Red Light, Green Light with the newcomer... Unfortunately, the newcomer who physically burst through the door had no intention of playing house with the "criminal" gang that went around stealing food and playing pranks in the Schicksal Base.
"Halt! Sirin, you brat, come here and die!"
Black Abyss White Flower smashed the door to splinters. The blonde Knight Princess pounced straight at the purple Doll on the nightstand, grabbing her by the neck while the latter wore an expression of "You've got to be kidding me, why aren't you following the script?"
"Here it comes, here it comes! The essential Kaslana family idiot routine. This Valkyrie is actually trying to strangle a Doll that doesn't even need to breathe!"
The Queen began her classic taunt. Sorry, but Dolls really can do whatever they want. Then, Durandal's next words immediately silenced her.
"Oh? Is that so? Then what if I snap your neck?"
The blonde gorilla-strength woman issued her death notice.
"..."
"Bella, save me!!!!"
Seeing the Queen, who was grabbed and seemed about to be decapitated, and the fierce blonde gorilla-strength woman, Bella immediately chose to play dead and watch the show... Saving her was impossible. After all, she was a Doll; she could survive even if her head was separated from her body...
When that time came, with one body that could move on its own and a separately detached head that could speak, it was anyone's guess who would be more disgusted by whom.
Just as Bella intended to keep playing dead and watch the show, letting the art style veer toward the grotesque... the rabbit ears on her Doll body's head were grabbed by Miss Rita, who had followed in, and lifted straight up...
"Miss Benares..."
The maid deliberately elongated the tone, creating a suffocating atmosphere...
"The chicken nuggets in the kitchen... were they the ones you stole, Miss Benares? And you even broke a pane of window glass?"
Miss Rita, who had originally not intended to get involved in the Kaslana family's internal war, saw the "battlefield" in complete disarray after returning to the kitchen, and her blood pressure instantly doubled.
The maid looked at the Armed Puppet in front of her with a smile. Although the criminal gang consisting of two Dolls had cleaned up the aftermath very thoroughly, the smell on their bodies could not be faked... That was the smell of fried food!
Thanks to the Armed Puppets' petite size, although they could sneakily reach every corner of the base through ventilation ducts and such, it was also because of their petite size that they inevitably came into intimate contact with their own clothes when carrying items, causing them to be stained with odors...
The clever Miss Rita had already seen through everything—
"Chicken nuggets??? Miss Rita, you've misunderstood—what we stole was the fried chicken drumsticks from the Valkyrie Cafeteria—!!!"
The puppet-form Benares, whose rabbit ears were grabbed, started to shake violently. Even if you are a senior and a guide in the Way of the Maid, you still can't falsely accuse someone's innocence out of thin air—Anyway, there are leftovers in your Schicksal Cafeteria every day, so what's wrong with stealing a little bit to eat!
"Lady Kiana, you have to stand up for me—!"
The struggling Dragon Girl puppet saw the late-arriving Kiana and started calling for help loudly—
"...What's going on?"
Kiana, looking completely bewildered, stared at the few people facing off on the scene...
"Sister, put Sirin down. She's a Doll. Even if her head comes off, she'd just be a guest-starring Headless Knight, a thing that can talk while holding its own head."
Hearing this, Bianca thought about the scene and felt it seemed a bit horrifying, so she immediately let go of the Sirin Doll she was pinching in her hand.
"Miss Rita, you should let go of Bella too... Bella wouldn't lie about something involving her own honor. In her own words, shouldn't she be the pride of the Dragon Race?"
Kiana scratched her head a bit strangely... Does a dragon-shaped Judgment-class Honkai Beast count as a Honkai Beast card or a Dragon Race card...
And Rita looked at Bella, who was already planning to bite, and finally let go of the hand grabbing her ear.
-
"So, the question is... who could that 'thief' be... Normally, it might be Stan..."
"But even now, that's impossible. Lady Durandal has been keeping him with us all this time, fearing he might cause more trouble before changing back or learning to speak human language."
"Hmm, these two little guys from Miss Kiana's place... Thinking about it carefully, you two are indeed in no state to eat so much food right now."
"That was prepared for Lady Durandal and Miss Kiana's appetites... No matter how I think about it, it seems impossible to stuff it into your Doll stomachs..."
Rita, realizing the flaw in her judgment, took the initiative to clear the two suspects of all suspicion. Then, the group fell into confusion over who could have done it...
Until a scream interrupted their train of thought—
"Someone help! Lord Overseer has fainted!!!"
"????"
"How did Otto faint...?!"
Hearing the shout from upstairs, Kiana's expression became even more bewildered...
"Let's just go up and see... Forget about who the little thief is for now. We've never encountered the Overseer fainting before."
-
Shortly after the group instructed Bella and Stan to stay in the room and not wander off, and then hurriedly slipped upstairs... a blue, six-legged, mysterious cat-like creature came rolling in.
The blue little animal had several report-like documents dangling from its mouth, and after a few chews, it swallowed them all down. Bella, by a stroke of luck, managed to see the signature at the bottom of the processed official documents:
[Otto Apocalypse]
"I think I've found the reason why that Schicksal Overseer fainted... and perhaps the reason why Miss Rita's ingredients disappeared?"
Watching the blue strange creature pat its belly in satisfaction, wave a friendly paw at her, and then jump out the window, Benares's lips twitched...
Meanwhile, in the World Serpent Base not far away, everyone who witnessed the whole thing through Capoo's camera was banging the table and laughing wildly...
"Hahaha, Jackal, look at Overseer Otto's face when his processed documents got eaten!"
"Hahahahaha!"
"Alright, stop fooling around... Capoo will bring back the swallowed documents. The task of cleaning up and organizing them will be left to you two."
The laughing duo immediately fell silent. This was the very definition of "extreme joy turning into sorrow."