Spy Classroom - Volume 4 - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Mobilizing

The world was awash in pain.

Ten years had passed since the end of the Great War, the largest war in human history. Seeing its horrors had driven the world’s politicians to turn to spy work rather than military might as their preferred way of influencing other countries.

Nations the world over poured resources into their intelligence agencies, leading to an age of shadow wars fought between spies.

Lamplight was a spy team that fought on behalf of the Din Republic.

Their current goal was to root out a mysterious intelligence organization called Serpent. During one of their domestic missions, they had succeeded in capturing a spy with information on the group, and upon learning that Serpent was going to make a move in the United States of Mouzaia, they decided to head there as part of their search.

First, though, they had to make their preparations for the decisive battle that was to come.

Their previous missions had taken place at home and in the neighboring Galgad Empire, but this time around, the situation was totally different. Their destination, the United States, had a completely different language and culture than they did. Between making counterfeit passports, fabricating their career histories, and figuring out how they were going to procure firearms on-site, there were a million things they needed to do.

Normally, their anxiety about an upcoming mission would make the process a rather melancholy one.

This time, though, the whole team was in strangely high spirits.

As Thea walked down the hallway, she heard a scream from out in the garden.

“SHREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!”

“…Huh?”

It sounded like someone was dying. That was the kind of bloodcurdling scream people made only as their lives came to an end.

That said, what was a “shreep”?

Wh-what’s going on over there?

She was in Heat Haze Palace, the gorgeous manor that served as Lamplight’s main stronghold, and whatever had just happened, it had happened bright and early in the morning.

Thea tilted her head at the odd turn of events.

Her most distinctive features were her lustrous black hair and her curvy proportions. She was just eighteen years old, but you certainly wouldn’t know it from her beauty and grace. Her code name was Dreamspeaker.

When she headed to the courtyard the scream had come from, she found a pair of girls glaring at each other.

“Ha! Today’s 10K is mine,” the white-haired one said.

“…Tch. You’re such a muscle brain,” her cerulean-haired opponent replied. “I’ll have you know I could do another ten kilometers easy.”

Ah, so the two of them had been racing.

“Heh. You wanna go? We can do our own triathlon—another 10K, then marksmanship, then sparring. Today’s the day I take that title of Lamplight’s Strongest off you.”

A victorious grin spread across “Pandemonium” Sybilla’s face as she panted heavily. Her distinctive features were her muscles, which were as toned as a wild animal’s, and the dignified sharpness in her gaze.

“You think beating me in one lousy 10K means you’re better than me? Bring it on.”

The cool retort came from “Glint” Monika. With the exception of her asymmetrical cerulean hairdo, she had pruned every notable characteristic out of her medium build.

Sybilla and Monika continued bantering back and forth across the courtyard.

“Hey,” Sybilla said, “lookin’ at our 10K record, I’m in the lead.”

“So what?” Monika shot back. “I had a couple bad days, that’s all.”

“Ha. That’s a pretty lame excuse, comin’ from you.”

“Yeah, yeah, keep talking. Next time, you’ll be eating my dust.”

It sounded like they were arguing, but their eyes were filled with a competitive drive.

Tense as their battles were, they were all in good fun.

It begged the question, then, where had the scream come from?

“Up and at ’em, Lily. Time for another ten.”

“Yeah, on your feet. No slacking.”

“SHREEEEEEEP!”

Ah. As it turned out, the scream’s source was collapsed in a heap on the ground. She leaped to her feet and rushed over to Thea all drenched in sweat.

“Thea, you gotta save me! They’re trying to kill me!”

It was “Flower Garden” Lily, a silver-haired girl with a distinctively charming appearance and a voluptuous bosom. Technically speaking, she was the girls’ leader.

Tears rolled down her face as she clung to Thea’s hips.

“I’m gonna die! I really am! They keep making me run 10Ks first thing in the morning!”

“Hey!” Thea yelped. “Don’t go sweating all over me!”

“This sweat is my soul, melted away. These demons are wringing out all my soul juice.”

As Lily began talking nonsense, her teammates grabbed her by the shoulders.

“’Pologies for the inconvenience.”

“We’ll be on our way now.”

After making some very professional-sounding comments, Sybilla and Monika dragged Lily off.

“Lily, you gotta keep up your training,” Sybilla reminded her. “In our line of work, we need all the stamina we can get.”

“I don’t wanna! I wanna be the kind of spy who uses her brain to—”

“We’ve got another squad for that,” Monika replied. “Our job is to deliver the brawn.”

As Thea watched the other two cart Lily away like a suitcase, she recalled what the three of them had in common.

Together, they were the Operations squad—the subdivision of Lamplight that helped get the job done from the front lines.

By the look of it, morale among them was high.

Thea went back inside, and this time, it was the dining hall she heard voices from. Unlike the scream from earlier, the voices sounded harmonious and cheerful.

She decided to go have a look from the sidelines.

In the center, there was a girl with brown hair holding a book in one hand. “All right, question one hundred.”

This was Sara, code name “Meadow.” She was an adorable girl with unruly hair and big, round eyes like you might find on a woodland creature. She normally looked as timid as could be, but at the moment, her expression was sunny.

She cleared her throat, then raised her voice. “This is the last one, and it’s pretty tricky, okay? The forty-seven-story Westport Building sits to the southwest of Mitario Station, and there’s a rooftop garden on its eighth floor. If the target is sitting on the bench in the northernmost part of that garden, how many places are there to snipe them from? Please list them all within one minute.”

The moment she finished, the two girls sitting across from her sprang into motion and quickly skimmed through the array of documents laid out on the table, flipping through multiple heavy books at the same time and jotting down pencil notes all the while.

The first girl to answer was the blond one.

“There’s five! There’s Lyment Hall and Nywengate Tower. The construction site right beside it would work, too. With a top-of-the-line sniper rifle, you could make the shot from Mitario Hotel. And if you snuck into the art hall’s control room, you could snipe them from there!”

She was “Fool” Erna. Her skin was so pale, it almost seemed translucent, making her look like a doll.

After answering the question, she puffed up her chest with pride.

Sara, the examiner, gave her a satisfied nod. “Great work! You got all of—”

“I found another one, yo.”

Before Sara could finish her sentence, the ash-pink-haired girl cut her off. It was “Forgetter” Annette. Between her messily tied-up hair and her big eye patch, her appearance was rather striking.

“Starting next week, there’ll be a circus staying at West Kopek Plaza. You could make the shot from on top of the tent.”

“What?” Erna’s eyes went wide with bewilderment. She hurriedly flipped back through the documents. “Th-there’s no way. It’s not tall enough to hit the garden from there.”

“But the target’s on the north bench, yo. It works out.”

“What kind of sniper goes and climbs on top of a circus tent?!”

“I don’t think we should let common sense hold us down.”

“Wh-what?!”

Erna and Annette glared at each other, on the verge of coming to blows…

…but before that could happen, Sara clapped her hands. “It’s okay—you’re both right. That’s full marks for both of you. Now what do you say we have some snacks as a reward for a job well done?”

Erna’s and Annette’s expressions immediately softened. “Oh?” “Don’t mind if I do!” they replied, nodding as they headed peacefully to the kitchen.

That was when Sara finally noticed that Thea was there. She let out a small gasp of surprise. “Oh, Miss Thea. I didn’t realize you were watching.”

“I must say, that was incredible.”

“Right? The two of them are so talented. Those questions were pretty tough, but they both got all of them right.”

In a way, it made perfect sense.

The reasons Erna and Annette washed out of their academies had nothing to do with their technical abilities and everything to do with their catastrophically poor interpersonal skills. Now they were finally unlocking the potential they’d had inside them all along.

Sara slumped her shoulders in shame. “T-to be honest, they’re both way better at all this than I am. It kind of bums me out…”

“Not at all. If anything, the way you’re able to rein those two in is the most impressive skill of all.”

“Hmm?”

As someone who’d been forced to go to great lengths to win those same two girls over, Thea had nothing but respect for what Sara had accomplished.

Sure enough, the three of them together really did feel like a cohesive unit.

Together, they were the Specialist squad—the group that used their highly versatile skills to provide the team with backup.

By the look of it, their spirits going into the mission were high as well.

Once she finished checking in on her teammates, the next place Thea went was the main hall.

Inside, there was a big map of their Mitario mission site hung up on one of the blackboards, and the map was littered with magnets holding up little notes.

A girl with red hair stood before it all. Her arms and legs were slender, and she had a sort of fragility about her that was reminiscent of a glass sculpture. Her name was Grete, and her code name was “Daughter Dearest.”

“I checked in with the others,” Thea said to her. “And they’re doing swimmingly. If anything, I’m afraid all our prep work is going too well.”

“That’s wonderful to hear. Thank you for getting that done. There’s nobody better than you at taking the group’s emotional pulse, after all,” Grete replied with a composed smile.

She and Thea were partners in crime.

Together, they were the Intel squad—the rearguard team that handled drawing up plans and giving orders to the others.

“The energy is fantastic. It’s almost odd how excited everyone is,” Thea said.

“Oh, I’m not surprised. It’s the first time we’ve all been in one place in a long while.”

Thea nodded.

That there was the reason behind their high morale—the fact that all eight of them were back together. After the bioweapon retrieval mission, the team had split up into two. Each group had been through harsh missions and constant tribulations, and the time they’d spent working separately had made them long for their missing teammates. There wasn’t a single member of the team who didn’t share that sentiment.

Furthermore, this mission was going to pit them against the sinister Serpent, the mysterious group that had slaughtered their Inferno predecessors. The Lamplight girls didn’t know who exactly they would be up against, but they knew they were in for a fierce fight, and their nerves and enthusiasm were mixing together in the best possible way.

As a result, they were firing on all cylinders.

That’s right…everyone’s raring to go. Everyone, with one exception…

Thea felt a stabbing pain in her chest.

“…Thea?”

She heard Grete call her name.

She gasped. She hadn’t heard a word Grete had been saying.

“Huh? What? I’m sorry, Grete. I zoned out there for a moment.”

“…Is everything okay? You’ve been a little out of it these past few days. Maybe you ought to rest a little.”

“N-no, I’m fine. It’s nothing.”

“Don’t push yourself, all right? Remember, you’ll be the one in charge of command and control this time around.”

Hearing that sent another twinge through her chest.

Thea had been appointed as the team’s commanding officer for the upcoming mission.

She and Grete would be sorting through the incoming intel together, but it was going to be her job to assign tasks to her teammates. The work she did would determine if their mission ended in success or failure.

But I—

She felt her blood run cold.

“Thea.”

Then she heard someone behind her.

She turned around and was greeted by a tall, beautiful man with long hair. It was Klaus, Lamplight’s boss.

“Would you mind heading out with me? There’s something I want to show you.”

Thea did as Klaus said and followed him to the administrative district in the capital.

The area was right by the station, and the Cabinet Office and Ministry of Foreign Affairs buildings stood side by side there. In fact, aside from the post office and the handful of restaurants and banks, the entire district was filled with the buildings the country was managed out of. All the streets were full of bureaucrats rushing to and fro in serious-looking suits.

The administrative district was also home to a few stand-alone office buildings. They appeared to be subdivisions of larger organizations, but with unremarkable names like the Construction Bureau Office of Road Work and the Ministry of Justice Administration Bureau, it was hard to draw any real conclusions.

Klaus came to a stop in front of a small three-story building: the Cabinet Office Economic Research Center.

At first glance, Thea had no idea what kind of business they might have there—

“This building is owned by the Foreign Intelligence Office.”

—but Klaus offered her a quick explanation as they went inside. After informing the receptionist that he had an appointment in Room 444, he took the proffered key and headed down a dimly lit hallway.

His shoes clicked against the marble floor.

“Hey, Teach,” Thea said. “What is this place? I’d like some answers, if you don’t mind.”

“To put it simply, it’s a prison,” Klaus replied briefly. “This is where the Foreign Intelligence Office holds the spies it’s captured.”

The echo from his footsteps changed. The floor sounded almost hollow. Klaus tapped his foot rhythmically against the ground, and it slid away to reveal a hidden staircase.

“I figured it would be best if you saw him for yourself.”

Klaus descended the staircase, and Thea followed after him with bated breath. She couldn’t tell how the entrance worked, but as soon as she went down, it closed behind them.

Much to her surprise, the construction below was actually quite modern. Aside from its lack of windows, it was no different from any other facility one might visit. A wine-red carpet decorated the floor under the hallway’s blaring light.

They passed by a number of cells, but Thea wasn’t able to see into any of them. All she heard was sobbing and the occasional scream.

Her breath got caught in her throat.

The world was awash in pain.

Right and wrong didn’t have anything to do with it. This was just the cruel reality they lived in.

Klaus came to a stop in front of one of the rooms and unlocked it without so much as hesitating. The door loudly swung open.

Inside, it was a classic solitary confinement cell. There was a bed, a toilet, and nothing else.

For a moment, it reminded her of her own time in captivity, and she gasped. She didn’t want to stay there any longer than necessary.

A single man sat atop the bed.

“Hey there, Bonfire. Never thought I’d see you walking through that door.”

Thea’s eyes went wide. “Wh—?”

She recognized the man. In fact, she had faced him just the other day, and the two of them had tried to kill each other.

He was a Galgad spy—and a skilled, ruthless assassin.

In the Republic, they called him Corpse.

“I’ve been dying to see you. If they sent in someone weak, I might’ve had to kill ’em.”

The man’s eyes practically protruded from his skull. Klaus glared at him.

Corpse had been creepily gaunt to begin with, and his days in captivity had done a number on what little body fat he’d had. He looked like he was made of nothing more than skin and bones.

“Corpse,” Klaus said. “Or Deepwater, I suppose. I guess that’s what they called you in the Empire.”

“Roland.” The man smiled. “Please call me Roland. It’s what I’m most used to.”

“Alternatively, I could just not call you anything at all.”

“So rude. We have a bond forged in each other’s blood, and this is the treatment I get?”

The man—Roland—grinned in amusement.

For all his counterpart’s good cheer, however, Klaus’s expression was as steely as could be. “You put two of our torturers in the hospital. And for no good reason.”

“They left the restraints too loose. I swear, it was like amateur hour,” Roland said. He didn’t sound remorseful in the slightest. “And besides, I had a perfectly good reason.”

“And what was that?”

“It let me see you, didn’t it?”

Roland rose to his feet. As he did, he began gnawing his fingernails until they were as sharp as knives.

“C’mon, Bonfire, let’s have another go. One-on-one. To the death. You won’t catch me off guard this time.”

“I don’t have time for this,” Klaus replied curtly.

“Oh, really? Well then, in that case—” Roland smirked. “—I guess I’ll just have to kill the girl.”

Out of nowhere, his body appeared to float in the air. That was just how blisteringly efficient his leap was. It begged the question, where in his haggard body did he find the muscles to pull off such a feat? He kicked off the wall for momentum, dove straight past Klaus, and reached for Thea’s throat. The speed he was moving at was downright inhuman.

Then, the moment before his jagged nails could reach Thea’s carotid artery…he froze in midair.

Klaus’s fist sat buried in Roland’s solar plexus.

For a moment, Roland hung there, motionless. Then he went flying and slammed into the wall with a terrible crunch.

Klaus shook his fist to loosen it back up. “That didn’t even make for decent sport.”

The fight had played out from start to finish before Thea even had a chance to react. And apparently, Klaus had won decisively.

“You lost, Roland. Your only job now is to spill your guts.”

“Urgh…”

“I’m led to believe that there’s a member of Serpent who’s infiltrated the city of Mitario in the United States and is interfering with the Tolfa Economic Conference. Is that all true?”

Roland lay on the floor and groaned.

Eventually, he gave his miserable reply. “…Yeah. I was helping him out.”

“Where exactly is he hiding? How can we identify him?”

“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times.” Roland gritted his teeth and glared at Klaus. “Let me out, and I’ll tell you whatever you wanna know.”

Klaus looked coolly at him. “Do you really think you’re in a position to be making demands?”

Roland spit on the ground in pain, plopped himself down on the bed, and sighed. Then he took the glass lying beside the bed and guzzled down the water. By the time the glass was empty, he’d regained his composure. “I mean, what else are you gonna do? Go in blind?”

“Your concern is touching, it really is.”

“Sorry, man, but there’s no torture or truth serum that can break me. And if you do go in there blind…”

Roland’s lips curled into a mocking sneer.

“…Purple Ant will butcher every last one of you.”

Purple Ant. So that was the name of the Serpent member lurking in Mitario.

However, knowing a spy’s code name wasn’t nearly enough to come up with a strategy to beat them.

None of that seemed to be news to Klaus, and his expression didn’t change in the slightest. He merely gave Roland a frosty look. “Spare me the hollow threats.”

“Oh, that wasn’t a threat.” Roland sounded almost proud. “Serpent already killed one of your teammates, right? If I remember correctly, they delivered the corpse right here to Din with its heart gouged out and no return address.”

“………”

“Here’s a prophecy for you. You’re gonna lose people you care about again.”

His voice rang with conviction. It was almost as though he had evidence with which to back up his claim.

Fear and unease ran through Thea’s heart, and she was seized by an urge to ask Klaus to hear Roland out. She knew he was trying to tempt her. She knew that reaction was exactly what their foe was looking for. But the urge seized her all the same.

However, Klaus looked utterly unperturbed. He turned to leave. “I can see I’m wasting my time here.”

Thea could hear Roland click his tongue in annoyance.

Listening to their exchange had made for a rather disconcerting experience. Thea turned toward the exit as well. She wanted to get out of there as fast as humanly possible.

When she did, though, Roland spoke to them in a grave tone. “Your loss. But hey, I’ll give you one freebie,” he said. “You should drop that black-haired girl from your team ASAP.”

Thea stopped in her tracks with a gasp.

She could see the ridicule in Roland’s smile.

“Back when I fought her, she accomplished exactly jack shit. All she did was quiver in her boots and run for her life. If I were you, I’d get rid of her before she drags you down with her.”

Thea felt her entire body go hot.

It was all true. Back when she’d faced off against him, she had been able to do nothing. Her teammate Monika had fought back against him just fine, but Thea had completely given in to her weakness.

Even now, she wanted to flee as fast as she could, but—

“Interesting. I actually had something I wanted to ask, too.”

Klaus turned back. The look in his eyes was still as cold as ice.

“What was it? What was it that compelled a two-bit weakling like you to think of me as your rival?”

“………”

This time, it was Roland’s turn to look shaken.

“It must be pretty embarrassing for you, all that nonsense you believed about ‘fate bringing us together’ and ‘lifelong rivalries.’ Whose bullshit have you been listening to? Know your place—your life as a spy is over.”

With those merciless final words, Klaus left the cell.

As Thea followed after him, she stole a glance back at Roland.

His face was bright red, and he pounded the wall in frustration.

After they came up from the basement, Klaus called over to her. “I’m sorry about that.”

It was unusual, hearing him apologize.

“You’re going to be taking command during the mission, so I thought it would be best for you to see firsthand who our intel was coming from. I had no intention of putting you in harm’s way, and I had no idea he would make those baseless comments about you.”

Thea shook her head. “No, no, it’s not your fault…”

She understood where he’d been coming from. Their whole mission had come about because of “Corpse” Roland’s testimony. She was glad that Klaus had gone out of his way to let her be present as he confirmed the details.

However…she was at her limit.

Her heart was coming apart at the seams.

“Teach.” She called out to him from behind. “Everything Roland said was true. I was too scared to contribute.”

“I see.”

“Are you really sure I’m qualified to act as CO?”

It was a pathetic thing to ask. She knew that. But she asked it anyway.

Having to give orders with her teammates’ lives on the line was a heavy responsibility to bear, and she wasn’t sure her heart could handle that weight.

The lighting was dim, so she couldn’t see Klaus’s expression. She wondered just how disappointed he looked as she clutched at her chest and went on. “I…I helped an enemy spy get away once.”

“………”

“It wasn’t a mistake or an accident, either. I gave instructions to my teammates and had them save one of our enemies.”

Klaus nodded like he’d already known. “I see.”

Thea was talking about what had happened a few days ago.

She and the others had met Matilda, a woman claiming to be Annette’s mother, and when they found out that Matilda was an enemy spy, Thea had made the call to help her get away. Some of her allies had objected, but she’d won them over and forced them to handle things the way she thought was right.

However, there was a good chance that it had all been part of their enemy’s plan.

“Thea, honey, you’re a nobody.”

Thea would never forget the scornful look in Matilda’s eyes.

“It made me realize something… That I’m too soft on my enemies.”

She thought back to her idol’s words.

It had all started because of something the spy Hearth had said to her.

“I want you to become a hero.”

Those words were the reason she’d become a spy in the first place, but now, they felt like a curse weighing her down.

Unlike spies who saved only their countrymen, heroes saved their enemies, too. Now, though, she realized what a fantasy that ideal of hers was. If she kept letting her softness control her, all it was going to do was put her teammates in peril.

“I’m not cut out for commanding. Everyone would be better off with you back at the helm, the way you were before.”

It was too big a burden for her.

And besides, Klaus had taken command during their first Impossible Mission, hadn’t he? She and the others had drawn up the plan and taken care of relaying intel to him, but he was the one who’d had the final say-so on everything. Why couldn’t he just do that again?

However, Klaus just sighed. “I can’t sign off on that.”

“But why not?”

“Because we don’t know enough about who it is we’re up against. With so little information to work off, the only way we can learn about our foe is by fumbling around blindly. That means extra danger for the people on the front lines, which is why one of them needs to be me.”

“………”

Thea had no rebuttal to that. It was a rational decision.

Sure enough, they had succeeded in gathering advance intel on all their other opponents to date. Whether they’d been going up against Klaus’s mentor or against someone their fellow compatriots had laid down their lives to investigate, they had always been able to prepare countermeasures.

This time, though, things were different.

Who other than Klaus could they possibly put in charge of life-threatening reconnaissance?

“Don’t beat yourself up so hard,” Klaus said gently. “Remember what I told you? Differences between allies are the key to a strong team. Ruthlessness may have served the team well in the past, but the day will come when that empathy of yours is exactly what we need.”

When, though?

How many times will I have to get hurt while I wait?

And what if my naivete costs us one of our teammates before then?

She wanted to shout questions at him like a child, but Klaus had already left the building and hailed a taxi. Now that they were in public, she couldn’t talk about work anymore.

The two of them got in the back seat, and the taxi took off.

“Once we get to the station, why don’t we stop for lunch?” Klaus suggested. “It’ll help get you out of your head.”

The kindness was uncharacteristic, coming from him.

A lot of the time, he was actually pretty cold to her, and on occasion, she could hear something like disgust in his voice. Now, though, all she heard in it was sympathy.

“Teach…could you comfort me?” The words escaped her almost involuntarily. “Will you promise not to abandon me for being worthless…?”

“Of course,” Klaus responded instantly. “Looking out for my subordinates’ mental well-being is part of the job, so I—”

She grabbed him by the arm. “Thank you. Let’s head to a hotel and make love, then.”

Klaus’s voice went very cold very fast. “What are you on about? Need I remind you we’re in a taxi?”

Thea glared at him. She felt a little betrayed. “You’re awful. You just said you would comfort me!”

“I was talking about taking you to a nice restaurant.”

“Oh, no, don’t worry. I’ll call Grete and have her join us at the hotel.”

“You’re taking years off my life here.” Klaus massaged his temples. “I swear, sometimes you’re more of a headache than Lily is.” It was a pretty rude comment, to say nothing of the fact that it implied Lily was the benchmark he used to judge how annoying things were.

However, Thea refused to back down.

This is the only way I know how to get rid of gloomy feelings…

Klaus had agreed to comfort her, and she intended to make him honor that. This time, it would take more than a few thoughtful words to satisfy her.

She called up to the front seat. “Driver, could you take that right up ahead? There’s a hotel I’ve been wanting to visit for ages. I hear they have waterslides right in the rooms.”

She chose to ignore the way Klaus was scowling at her.

However, the taxi went straight through the intersection where she’d wanted to turn.

“Ah, I guess I needed to speak up sooner.” She collected herself, then made another request. “In that case, could you take this next right instead? The fanciest hotel in the area is nearby. They have huge bathtubs there that light up in all the colors of the rainbow.”

“Your depth of knowledge on the subject is a little concerning,” Klaus commented, but Thea continued ignoring him. He wasn’t getting out of this. She was prepared to check the whole taxi into the hotel if she had to.

Yet, once again, the taxi barreled straight past the turn.

Now Thea was starting to get suspicious. Why was their driver so determined to continue going straight? And was she just imagining things, or were they going really fast?

“I-I’m so sorry, ma’am.”

Thea looked up into the front seats and discovered that their driver, a mature-looking woman in her late thirties, was as pale as a sheet.

“I—I think there’s something wrong with my car,” the driver said, her voice trembling.

The fear in her expression was all too plain to see.

“It’s doing forty miles an hour, and I can’t make it slow down.”

As Thea stared at their driver in shock, Klaus acted fast.

With a brief “pardon me,” he grabbed the woman by the nape of her neck and pulled her into the back of the cab. As he did, he hopped forward and took her spot in the driver’s seat.

Once situated, he grabbed hold of the wheel and quickly inspected the state of the taxi. “The brakes don’t work, it keeps going even with my foot off the gas, and the parking brake doesn’t do anything, either… This is no run-of-the-mill breakdown.” Klaus shot a glance at the passenger seat, then used the rearview mirror to look at the driver. “Has anything unusual happened to you these last few days?”

“Anything…unusual?” The woman averted her eyes. “That’s, um, well…”

“I can guess. Someone got ahold of some compromising information, and they’ve been using it to blackmail you. Is that about right?”

“H-how can you know that?”

“I just do. Now hurry up and tell me what happened.”

The woman’s gaze darted around in bewilderment, but she eventually began quietly explaining. “I—I was embezzling. Every now and then, I stole money from the safe in our office. But then this bearded man showed up and told me that he knew what I’d done. I had no choice but to do as he said…”

“And what was that?”

“He wanted me to give you two a ride in my taxi.”

They had fallen right into their foe’s trap.

“Ah,” Klaus replied with a small nod. “I have a pretty good idea of what’s happening. I do apologize for how you got dragged into our mess, but at the end of the day, you brought this on yourself. I would recommend thinking long and hard about the choices you’ve made.”

“I know…”

Still using one hand to hold the steering wheel, Klaus scrawled something on the taxi’s memo pad and handed it to the woman.

“Once this is over, call this number. They’ll compensate you for the inconvenience. You should use this as an opportunity to get your life together.”

“Wh-who are you people…?”

“That’s none of your concern. I need you to close your eyes and cover your ears. I promise nothing will happen to you.”

The woman took the memo pad, then did as Klaus said, clamping her hands over her ears and hanging her head.

All the while, the taxi continued speeding through the city at a forty-mile-an-hour clip. Turning would be a challenge, and while they were good to continue on forward for a little while more, they would eventually come to a red light. When that happened, it all but assured they would crash into someone. Everything rested on Klaus’s driving skills.

Thea shrieked at the impending danger. “T-Teach, what’s going on? Why are we—?”

“You’ve gotten good at staying hidden.” Klaus gave the passenger seat a thump. “I take it we have you to thank for this, Annette?”

When he did, the seat bulged, and a young head popped up like it had just gnawed itself free from beneath.

“You found me, yo!”

It was Annette.

Nothing below her neck was visible; it looked as though the seat itself had sprouted a head. There was no knowing what sorts of drastic modifications she’d made to the taxi.

“B-but why?” Thea asked.

“Lily gave me a message to pass on,” the disembodied Annette head said. “‘Teach, if you want the taxi to stop, all you have to do is acknowledge your defeat.’”

Upon hearing that, Thea finally realized what was going on.

It was a training exercise—the same one the girls always did, where they tried to get Klaus to say, I surrender.

Klaus gave Lily’s offer a flat “that’s not going to happen.”

“I assume you’re gonna say no, so this is where I’d like to explain what’s going on, but…I figure you get the drill by now. Still, we put in even more effort than usual this time. The big mission is right around the corner, so we decided to get seriouser than serious! It’s time for you to see just how much we’ve grown during our domestic missions!”

It appeared that that was the end of the message. Annette clamped her mouth shut.

Once she was finished, Klaus seemed pleased. “Magnificent.”

They plowed right through a red light and were greeted by a cacophony of honks as they continued down the thoroughfare. They were one tiny misstep away from getting into a huge crash, but Klaus didn’t look the least bit afraid.

“You know, I was just thinking that I wanted to see how far you all had come. This works out perfectly.”

If anything, he seemed to be enjoying himself.

Thea could see that he was planning on rising to the challenge. She would have felt a lot more comfortable if he’d just surrendered immediately, but alas.

Upon hearing that, Annette wriggled herself free from within the passenger seat. She was wearing a large bag strapped on her back; by the look of it, it was some sort of airbag.

She headed to the back seat and grabbed the driver by her collar. “Annette out, yo!”

Apparently, her plan was to escape with the woman in tow.

“Wait, Annette, what about me?” Thea asked in a panic.

“The airbag only supports two,” Annette replied cheerily. “Sis, your job’s to be the hostage. Do what you can to get in his way, ’kay?”

“Wh—?”

“And a hip, hop, and away we go!”

Annette pressed a button on the remote control she was holding, and the taxi’s door popped open. She took the driver and leaped from the speeding vehicle. Her airbag opened in midair, and the two of them bounced off the ground before rolling to a stop by the side of the road.

Now Thea and Klaus were alone in a runaway car.

Thea finally grasped the full situation.

Those dastardly teammates of hers had chosen a gambit that put her life in danger, too!

“Is it just me, or did I get stuck with the worst role?” She hurriedly fastened her seat belt, then shouted up to the front. “T-Teach, you have to stop the taxi, quick! You know a way to, right?”

“I do, but it would leave me vulnerable in the moments just afterward.” Klaus was totally calm. “This is Annette we’re dealing with. I imagine she has the car set to blow up the moment it stops.”

“I want to get off this wild ride!”

“For the time being, I’m going to get us out of the city. I’ll stop the car once we’re out of their transmitter’s range.”

With that, Klaus yanked the steering wheel hard to the side.

Still traveling at breakneck speeds, the taxi skidded sideways down the road. That caused them to slow down a bit, but the gas pedal quickly pressed itself into the floor and started speeding them back up. It hadn’t been pretty, but they’d successfully made a left turn. A passing truck very nearly flattened them, but the taxi accelerated just in time, and they began heading toward the mountains.

Klaus gave a little nod. He’d figured out how to turn—and in stunning form. “It’s odd,” he murmured. “Why just forty miles per hour? I’m sure she wouldn’t have had a problem making it go faster than that.”

“Oh, I can think of a couple problems!”

“At forty, making that left turn was perfectly easy.”

“For you, maybe.”

Still, it was a legitimate question.

If they had really wanted to keep Klaus pinned down, they would’ve needed to jack the taxi up to 120 miles per hour. At least, Thea assumed they would’ve.

“Could it be that they kept the speed down because they didn’t want to risk actually causing a serious accident?”

“That’s a possibility. What else could it be?”

“Maybe it was out of compassion? As in, they didn’t want to hurt you?”

“Do those seven have a compassionate bone in their bodies?”

“………”

They did not.

Even Grete, who held a great deal of affection toward Klaus, was utterly merciless when it came to their training. “If we beat him, we’ll be able to force the boss to rest,” she’d once earnestly explained.

What other reason could they have had, though?

The answer to that question became clear once they made their way out of the city and began heading across the mountain roads.

“Ah. The bird,” Klaus muttered quietly.

On hearing him, Thea stuck her head out the window and spotted the chubby pigeon soaring across the sky. It was flying directly above them. That was why they hadn’t noticed it—a taxi’s roof was opaque, so it was hard for the people inside them to look straight up.

“We weren’t dealing with a transmitter at all,” Klaus noted. “Sara sent one of her pets to tail the taxi.”

“Oh, and forty miles per hour is slow enough for a pigeon to keep up with…”

By using the pigeon as a landmark, the rest of the team was able to track Klaus’s location with ease. It was an ingenious little trick.

Then they spotted Sara standing on the roof of a nearby house. She turned toward Klaus down in the driver’s seat and grinned.

“I’ve got my eye on you. You’ll never get away,” she mouthed triumphantly.

She probably would have used her hawk Bernard, but he was still recuperating from his injuries. The road became more and more mountainous, but the pigeon continued diligently tracking them. It was impressive, both in terms of speed and stamina. He normally worked as a carrier pigeon, but he was filling Bernard’s shoes with aplomb. As Thea recalled, his name was Aiden.

“Now it comes down to who can better predict the other,” Klaus remarked once they had left the residential area behind them. “The question is, where am I going to stop the car? They know exactly where I am, so I’m sure they’ve circled ahead and are planning on jumping me the moment I stop.”

“I—I vote we optimize for safety here.”

“Just up ahead, there’s a big curve in the road surrounded by woods. Once we make it there, I can use the curve to send us into a tailspin and stop the car by crashing us into a tree—”

“That doesn’t sound safe at all!”

“—but the problem there is her.”

When Thea looked around, she discovered that the mountain road was a single lane flanked on both sides by a dense forest of evergreen trees. Visibility there was terrible.

Yet even still, the taxi refused to drop below forty miles per hour.

Sure enough, hitting the trees at that speed was a recipe for disaster. Their only option was to do as Klaus said and wait for the curve where the road would be wider.

Klaus frowned. “And there she is. Thea, in five seconds, we’re going to jump out of the back-right door.”

“What?!”

“It’ll leave me pretty vulnerable, but there’s no two ways about it. This taxi is going to flip over.”

It all seemed horribly abrupt.

Before she had a chance to process what she’d just been told, Thea saw something.

“Only she could leap out in front of a car that’s about to crash.”

Someone had just appeared in the middle of the road like a fell specter. It was Erna.

Her lips twitched ominously. “How unlucky…”

It was like looking at the Grim Reaper.

Klaus immediately yanked the steering wheel to the side. Unable to change course so abruptly, the taxi tilted hard to the left. Its right wheels practically grazed the side of Erna’s head as they passed her by.

Erna had found the location precisely in front of where the accident was going to take place and positioned herself on the road at exactly that spot. It was a feat that only she, as someone who’d spent her life constantly brushing up against disaster, could pull off.

Just as the taxi was about to flip over, Thea felt Klaus’s arm wrapped around her. As the taxi tilted to the left, he dashed up the back seat and escaped out the right rear door.

After they escaped, the taxi did a barrel roll.

Klaus continued holding Thea tightly as they tumbled to the ground. Fortunately, he managed to blunt the impact. They rolled across the ground a few times but were otherwise fine. The fact that he had gotten them out of the car unharmed was nothing short of astounding.

However, his opponents weren’t about to waste the opening he’d just given them.

“Here they come.”

And sure enough, the moment the words left Klaus’s mouth—

“Brace yourself!”

—Lily burst out from behind a tree. She approached Klaus with her gun at the ready and fired it without a moment’s hesitation.

Klaus didn’t miss a beat. He brandished a knife and swatted her bullet out of the air.

However, that fell well within Lily’s expectations. The bullet was little more than a diversion to let her approach him. Once she was closer, her true objective came to light.

A smoke screen billowed out from her chest.

Klaus immediately fell back to evade the smoke, and though Thea tried to do the same thing a moment later, the delay caused her to breathe in a small mouthful. Her body went numb. That was no ordinary smoke screen; it was Lily’s special-made poison gas.

Thea collapsed onto the ground, helpless to do anything but watch.

Then Sybilla charged straight through the smoke.

With a dauntless smile, she launched a series of gorgeous high kicks at Klaus’s head.

“Looks like your injury’s all better.” Klaus nodded as he blocked her blows. “Good, that means I can get a bit rough.”

“Ha! Do your wor—” Sybilla’s voice cut out mid-taunt.

Klaus had launched a swift elbow strike at her flank. However, Sybilla reacted fast. She pulled her arm down to block Klaus’s masterful attack.

Her resistance didn’t last long.

Klaus’s next attack was a palm strike to her jaw, and this time, she was launched into the air.

By all accounts, it appeared she was no match for him in a fight, but…

“You might’ve gotten me…” A smile played at Sybilla’s lips. “But check out what I just nicked.”

Clutched in her right hand was Klaus’s knife.

As she crumpled to the ground, she let out a shout. “Go show him why they call you our ace in the hole!”

An airy “don’t mind if I do” cut through the smoke, followed immediately by another Lamplight member—Monika.

She fired at Klaus from point-blank range.

Klaus had no tool with which to swat down the bullets anymore. He twisted his body to the side to dodge, but while he was still mid-rotation, Monika bore down on him with a roundhouse kick.

Then she let out a groan. “Agh!”

“You were a little too slow there,” Klaus said.

Thea stared in stark disbelief at the high-speed back-and-forth going on before her.

The combo attack Lily, Sybilla, and Monika had just executed was far more polished than anything they’d managed before. If their timing had been even the slightest bit off, Sybilla and Monika would’ve gotten big mouthfuls of poison gas, but if either of them had hesitated before diving through the smoke screen, it would have given Klaus time to collect himself.

The Operations squad’s teamwork had truly come far.

However, they were still no match for Klaus.

“We couldn’t beat him, even with three people attacking in waves…?” Thea moaned.

Suddenly, she heard an arrogant voice.

“That’s why we sent four.”

One more figure rushed out of the fumes.

“You’re wide open, Klaus.”

Before anyone knew it, the figure was directly behind Klaus. And the figure was a second Monika.

She’d completely gotten the drop on him.

Not only had she shown up behind him, she’d done so at a speed that put the first Monika to shame. She pressed her trusty revolver against his shoulder.

For a moment, time seemed to freeze.

That was checkmate.

Klaus stopped moving and raised his hands in the air. Behind him, Monika set her finger on the trigger.

“It’s over,” she said.

“………”

Klaus was silent.

Thea couldn’t believe her eyes. Monika’s gun was flush with Klaus’s body. If he moved an inch, she would shoot.

At that point, it all sank in—this was real.

We finally won? We beat Teach…?

Thea’s eyes went wide.

They had gone after Klaus more than a hundred times, but out of all those attempts, this was the first time they’d ever been able to back him into a corner like this.

A gust of wind blew, clearing up the smoke screen that obscured the roadway.

At some point, the rest of Lamplight had arrived as well.

Annette, Sara, Erna, Lily, Sybilla, Monika, and the second Monika were all there, pointing their guns at Klaus with bated breath.

“Ah.” Klaus nodded. “So the first Monika was Grete in disguise.”

“That’s right…”

The first Monika reached up and pulled off her mask.

Beneath it was Grete, Lamplight’s strategist and resident master of disguise.

“…Just as I expected. Even you would have to put up your guard when you saw Monika, Boss. I thought we could use that to create an opening.”

Everything had gone according to plan.

Nobody but Grete could have possibly seen how things would play out in such exacting detail, and on top of that, the girls’ teamwork was incredible. Grete was probably the one who’d blackmailed the taxi driver, and she had represented the Intel squad and set the team into motion. From there, the Specialist squad laid the groundwork to ensnare Klaus, and once their trap was sprung, the Operations squad trio had jumped in at the perfect time.

None of it would have been possible if not for the experience they’d built up during their domestic missions.

“All right, Klaus. Time’s a-wasting.” Monika smiled sadistically. “Can we get that I surrender? If you don’t hurry it up, my finger might just slip.”

“………” Klaus hadn’t said anything for a little while.

He wasn’t putting up any resistance. Even if he tried to pull anything, Monika would be faster on the draw. He was well and truly bested.

Klaus let out a big exhale. “Magnificent.”

Then he lowered his raised hands and clapped. The look in his eyes softened a bit. This wasn’t sarcastic, condescending applause. He was giving them an honest-to-goodness round of congratulations.

“You did brilliantly. The one warning I would give you is that in the position I’m in, a first-rate spy could still put up a fight if they were prepared to suffer a few injuries. That said, I obviously can’t afford to get injured right now. I won’t be putting up a fight.”

“______!”

Hearing that came as a shock to the girls.

Normally, Klaus would use his spy techniques to turn the tables on them right when they were sure they had him cornered. This time, though, he wasn’t doing a thing.

His face was lit up with uncharacteristic joy.

“You’ve worked hard, and you’ve become strong. I told you you had boundless potential just waiting to be unlocked.”

He gently cast his gaze around the group.

“Annette. The way you rigged the taxi was fantastic, but the thing that impressed me most of all was the way you hid yourself so undetectably in its frame. I’m counting on you to use that out-of-the-box intuition of yours to help out the team.”

“If that’s an order, Bro, then you got it,” Annette replied happily. She did a little hop in the air.

“Sara. The way you coordinated with your animals was as impeccable as always. Try to be a little more confident in yourself. Aside from just your skills, your kindness is an unmistakable asset in a team as full of oddballs as ours.”

“I-I’ll try,” Sara said nervously.

“Erna. That special skill of yours really is unique, and nobody can lead their enemies around by the nose quite the way you can. The future will doubtless hold more hardships for you, but I know you’ll be able to overcome them.”

Erna looked totally composed. “With you by my side, I’m not afraid of anything.”

Once he was done speaking to the team’s younger members, Klaus turned his gaze to the Operations squad. “Lily, Sybilla, Monika. You three are the cornerstone of this team. Watching you charge valiantly into danger gives the others the courage they need to do their best, and while you get carried away sometimes, it’s that same confidence that lets you draw out everything you have.”

Lily threw out her chest. “Yup! Leave it all to Wunderkind Lily!”

Sybilla responded in much the same way. “Yeah, you can count on us.”

“Please don’t lump me in with Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber,” Monika sullenly grumbled.

Klaus turned toward the next girl. “Grete. As for you, I—”

“It’s okay, Boss, you don’t have to say it. You’ve shown me exactly how you feel,” Grete said, shaking her head. “I have the marriage registration all ready for you to sign.”

“Um, no.”

“…Boo.”

“During the Corpse mission, your skills advanced by leaps and bounds. Together with Monika, the two of you are already at the point where you could go toe to toe against most elite spies. During this upcoming mission, I ask that you use that ingenuity of yours to its fullest extent.”

Grete bowed respectfully. “It’s an honor to hear you say that, Boss.”

“Don’t call me ‘Boss,’” Klaus quickly corrected her.

Then, he turned to the team’s final member.

“Thea.”

“Y-yes? What is it?”

“Given the slump you’re in, I imagine any words of encouragement I offered you would only make you feel worse. Just remember this—you have teammates you can rely on.”

“………”

She couldn’t come up with a good reply to that.

However, his thoughtfulness had come across loud and clear.

A soft mood fell over them, and Monika laughed teasingly. “What, are you about to start handing out diplomas or something?”

The rest of the girls followed her lead and grinned.

It really did feel sort of like a graduation ceremony, and the girls’ expressions looked touched and embarrassed in equal measure. They were all proud of the hard-won compliments they’d just received from their instructor.

Klaus didn’t deny it. “Maybe I should. As I recall, your graduations are merely provisional. You all still have some individual problems to work out, but the explosive power you’ve shown while working in coordinated unison is easily worthy of graduate status. Why don’t we call this next mission your graduation exam? Once you complete it, you’ll all be full-fledged spies.”

A cheer rose up from the girls. “Woo-hoo!”

It was an issue that had been plaguing them for ages.

All of them still bore the brand of “spy academy washout.” Not only had they failed to graduate, but they had each been right on the verge of flunking out altogether. Getting recruited into Lamplight had let them skip some steps and get right to clearing missions, but deep in their hearts, they couldn’t shake the feeling that they were still amateurs.

The prospect of finally graduating was downright scintillating. They couldn’t help but clench their fists in excitement.

“Sorry to be a buzzkill, but I don’t care one bit about all that.” There was just one member who wasn’t rejoicing, and it was Monika. “More importantly, I want to hear that I surrender. Don’t go thinking you can cheat us out of it.”

“What a very Monika thing to say,” Klaus replied.

“Look, it’s pretty obvious I’m good enough to graduate already. My desire to take you down is a hundred times more important than any of that stuff.”

Monika was a prideful person, and it was clear that she’d built up a sizable grudge. During their whole exchange, she’d been grinding her revolver into Klaus’s shoulder.

“You have a point, though,” he replied. “I suppose I should go ahead and hand down the verdict.”

“Yeah. And loud enough so everyone can hear, if you don’t mind.”

“Very well.”

With that, Klaus raised his hands into the air once more.

It was the universally recognized pose that signified nonresistant surrender.

Monika flashed him her pearly whites. “Seeing’s great and all, but I want to hear it.”

“Of course. Oh, and by the way…,” Klaus said.

“…how much longer should I keep playing along with this game?”

The sound of sirens split the air.

Thea’s eyes went wide as she checked to see what was going on. Those were, without a doubt, police sirens. And they were closing in from both sides of the road.

“Cops?” Monika clicked her tongue. “The hell’s going on? When we blackmailed that driver, we warned her not to go to the police.”

Thea couldn’t believe it, either.

Klaus had been forced to spend all his attention keeping the taxi under control, so he’d never had the time to call in a report. And as for the taxi driver, the others had gotten her under control by threatening to expose her embezzlement.

So why were the police on their way?

“You did a poor job of choosing your mark. It was a good idea on paper, but you should never have used a woman that loose-lipped. She told me all about the embezzlement.”

“______!”

“All I had to do was blackmail her the same way you did. ‘I’ll keep quiet about what you did, but in exchange, I need you to call the police for me,’ I told her.”

It wasn’t hard for Thea to figure out when he’d delivered the threat.

It was on that memo he wrote…!

During the ride, Klaus had handed a memo pad to the driver. He must have secretly written the instructions on the note. He’d even predicted where the girls would stage their attack and included the location, too.

From the woman’s perspective, Klaus was a man who’d risked his own life to take over for her in a runaway taxi. She might have even become a bit smitten with him.

“You should get out of here while you can. After all, what do you imagine the cops will think? I doubt they’ll look kindly on you all for holding a fine, upstanding citizen such as myself at gunpoint.”

“…Tch,” Monika replied. “If this were a real fight, I’d shoot you right here and now.”

“And if you did, I would fight back—long enough for the police to get here and arrest you.”

Monika bit her lip in frustration at Klaus’s rebuttal.

The thing was, their failure to make him say I surrender—or to put it in terms of an actual battle, to make him give up the information they needed—meant that they had lost.

The siren noises drew closer.

“L-let’s book it! Retreat, retreat!” Lily cried. She rushed off into the woods, and the others followed along after her.

Thea merely stared at them until Sybilla yanked her to her feet. “Quit futzin’ around—we gotta go!” she shouted as she dragged Thea along.

There was no particular reason for Thea to have to escape, but she chose to obediently follow along anyway. Lily’s poison had long since worn off.

“Ah, right. Thea,” Klaus called after her as she moved to leave. “I’m going to be taking the next three days off to rest and prepare for the mission, so I won’t be coming back to Heat Haze Palace. Do keep an eye on the others for me, won’t you?”

“W-will do.”

For the time being, their training with Klaus would be on pause. He was going to tackle the mission with everything he had right alongside them.

Thea dashed through the forest with the rest of the team.

After running for a little while, they arrived at the automobile her teammates had stashed away in advance. They explained to her that they had stolen it from a gang, then remodeled it and given it a fresh coat of paint to make it into a whole new car. Say what you will about them, they never did anything by half measures.

The car itself was a foreign-made V16 with quite a few miles on it, and its ivory black body gleamed in the light. It was also on the larger size, so it seated six.

Once they were sure they were safe, the girls broke into smiles.

“Ah, what a bummer. And we were so close, too,” Lily said.

“Really? Feels to me like we haven’t shrunk the gap one damn bit,” Sybilla replied. Her voice rang with exasperation.

“No, no, really! He said we were worthy of graduate status, didn’t he?”

“I mean, he did, but…it kinda felt like he was saying that with all eight of us together, we were only just barely on par with a full-fledged spy.”

“Hey, full-fledged is full-fledged!”

“Always the optimist, ain’tcha? But yeah, hey, I guess that’s still somethin’ worth celebrating.”

“Right? Now let’s go finish that mission and win our graduations!”

For all their good cheer, though, Thea couldn’t bring herself to join in.

“………”

What they’d achieved was fantastic, make no mistake. Thea had watched the whole thing play out, and for a moment, she really thought they’d had him.

But the thing was…they had done it without her.

The rest of the team was making all that progress, and she hadn’t been part of any of it.

“Y’know,” Lily murmured, “if we’d had Thea with us, we might’ve actually won.”

Upon being asked, she explained herself with a smile.

“Our big mistake this time around was how our stooge betrayed us, right? If Thea had been on board, I bet she could’ve done a way better job negotiating with her.”

“………”

For a moment, Thea’s heart leaped at Lily’s kind words, but a moment later, reality came crashing back down on her.

I can’t. If I get my hopes up, I’ll just make a fool of myself again. They didn’t need me for their plan, and that’s the cold hard truth.

Her being there wouldn’t have changed a thing.

Klaus would simply have chosen some other method, and he would have trounced them all the same.

“You made the right call, not telling me about the plan. If I had known anything, Teach would have realized that something was up,” she said, fleeing from Lily’s compliment before slumping down in the back seat. The rest of the girls piled in, and though they immediately started up their post-mortem discussion, Thea couldn’t bring herself to take part.

Even after they set off, all she did was stare out the window.

It’s like I can feel my heart breaking apart…

She could see her reflection in the window overlaid atop the scenery, and her expression was clouded with gloom. She stuck out like a sore thumb. The other three girls in the back seat and the two in the passenger seat were all sunny smiles, and yet she alone was—

Suddenly, she realized something.

“Wait, doesn’t this car only seat six? We don’t have enough room!”

They had too many people. With only six seats, there weren’t enough to go around.

The rest of the team was feeling cramped as well, and they made their pained complaints one after another.

“Yeah, I can barely breathe,” Monika grumbled. “I’m getting off when we reach the end of this road. God, I’m still pissed…”

“Wait, hold up,” Sara said. “Where’s Miss Annette?”

“I’m clinging to the roof, yo.”

“Please come down,” Grete responded. “It isn’t safe up there. Lily, can you find somewhere to pull over?”

“Who, me? I’m not driving. I’m in the passenger seat.”

“My legs only barely reach the pedals…,” Erna said. “B-but! I’m doing my best!”

“You’re the last damn person I want driving anything!” Sybilla cried.

And so they clamored on, oblivious to Thea’s heartache.

As Klaus watched the girls go, something about them seemed almost radiant to him.

He leaned against the overturned taxi and caught his breath. Their attack this time around had been even more extreme than usual. Between the guns and the runaway car, he could tell they hadn’t pulled any punches. They had been careful to toe the line and avoid seriously injuring him, but aside from that, there was little difference between what they’d just done and the kind of effort they put into real fights.

These training exercises are getting dangerously close to actual life-and-death battles, but…I suppose this is a special occasion.

Klaus decided to take it as a good thing that they were so fired up about their mission in the United States. He was impressed at how motivated they all were. To be totally honest, it had kind of caught him by surprise.

Given how dangerous this mission will be, I was expecting them to be a little more nervous.

It wasn’t to say that they were totally unafraid, of course. Some of their courage was just for show, and many of them probably had worries they were merely keeping to themselves.

Still, they were overcoming all that.

That’s Lily’s influence at work, no doubt.

Her espionage skill may have been lacking, but she always played a huge role in keeping the team’s spirits high.

Nobody else had quite the same cheer and indominable mental fortitude she did. Her acting and her poison were one thing, but that was where her true talents lay.

Those were the talents that never got a chance to shine back at her academy.

I never imagined that that random title of “Leader” I gave her would end up paying so many dividends.

There was no way he’d ever admit it to her, but when he’d appointed her as team leader, he had done so on little more than a whim. On the face of things, Thea, Monika, or Grete would have been better suited to the job.

In retrospect, though, Klaus realized he had made the right call.

“I’m a little worried about Thea’s lack of confidence, but I guess I just have to trust the others.”

It was going to be up to Lily and the rest of the girls to lift Thea up.

The thing was, Klaus’s chemistry with Thea was abysmal.

At the end of the day, their social mores were simply incompatible. When he wanted to comfort her, he had offered her food, but what she’d wanted was sex. It was unfortunate, but there was nothing he could do for her. Thea was going to be the key to their upcoming mission, and it was up to the rest of the team to support her.

Right when Klaus finished organizing his thoughts, the patrol car pulled up. An officer got out and rushed over to him. “You’re the victim of that runaway taxi, right?”

“That I am.” Klaus nodded. “As you can see, I’m nothing more than a fine, upstanding citizen of our good Republic.”

“Uh-huh… I must say, you’ve had quite a day. I hear you were attacked by terrorists. Rumors are flying all around, and between that and your fancy driving, this incident’s become the talk of the town. I wonder what sort of conspiracy it was you got yourself caught up in?”

“………”

This was becoming quite the to-do.

I do wish they’d chosen a method that wouldn’t cause such a commotion…

No matter how you sliced it, they had taken things too far.

The question was, how best to deal with this mess they’d left for him?

Meanwhile, the rest of Lamplight was still chattering away.

After they ousted Erna from the driver’s seat, had Sybilla take over, and dragged Annette down from the roof while they were at it, the girls’ conversation in the cramped car picked right back up.

Lily smiled as she sat in the passenger seat with Annette on her lap. “I’m so excited to go to the United States. Now it totally feels like the fate of the world rests in our hands!”

“Glad you’re so upbeat about it.” Sybilla laughed as she continued driving. “But yeah, aside from all the parts of me that’re scared, I guess I’m kinda excited, too. I bet they’ve got all sorts of cool stuff over there that we don’t.”

“Ooh, I wonder if we’ll get a chance to go sightseeing once the mission is over?”

“I dunno, but…it’d be so cool if we did. I wanna check out this ‘baseball’ sport they’ve got.”

At that point, Monika spoke up from the back seat. “By the way, Sybilla, you learned their language yet?” she asked.

“N-naistoo, m-meechoo…”

“God, you’re terrible.”

“Oh, shut up! I’ll study on the boat; it’ll be fine!”

“That’s, like, year-one stuff at the academy, though…”

Monika and Sybilla’s bickering sent a wave of laughter through the car.

The other girls started piping up with their own hopes and wishes.

“I wanna watch a TV broadcast, yo. And buy up all their appliances,” said Annette.

“I wouldn’t mind checking out their art galleries and museums,” mused Monika. “And the subways there are supposed to be super nice.”

“I want to see that big famous goddess statue!” Erna said. “I hear it’s amazing!”

“I want to buy up every record I can get my hands on as souvenirs. I’m a big jazz fan,” offered Sara.

“…It would be nice to have a chance to go to a music hall with the boss,” said Grete.

The fun daydreams just kept on coming.

There was talk of how good their hamburgers were supposed to be, of how famous such-and-such Square was, and of all sorts of other exciting things they’d read in their tourist guides. Their deadly mission wasn’t the only thing they had to look forward to in that yet-untrodden land.

In the end, they decided to all take a big furlough together once the mission was complete.

“Let’s do this!” Lily shouted excitedly. “United States, ahoy!”

““““““Woo-hoo!””””””

The others responded to her cheer in kind.

None of that was the point of their trip, but nobody called attention to that fact. It was like they had come to a tacit understanding—they could save all that serious stuff for later.

The only one who didn’t join their happy little circle was Thea. As she sat in the car’s cramped back seat, she let out a heavy sigh.

It feels like I’m the only one who’s stuck at a standstill.

Her feelings of inferiority refused to fade.

The rest of the team was in peak form. Their skills were honed, and their motivation for the mission was high, and there wasn’t a single worry plaguing their hearts.

Thea alone was being left behind in every aspect of both body and soul.

“………”

She had heard it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again—Matilda’s mockery echoing in her ears like a curse.

“Thea, honey, you’re a nobody. You’re too soft, and you’re incredibly easy to manipulate.”

That laughter of hers refused to fade, too.

It forced Thea to ask herself a question, and not for the first time.

What kind of spy should I try to become?

Two weeks later, after a long sea voyage, Lamplight arrived in the United States of Mouzaia.

Mitario was a global metropolis, and it was there in that city of hope and despair that their decisive battle would begin.