Spy Classroom - Volume 4 - Chapter Ep

Epilogue

Boss and Graduation

Their mission in Mitario may have been complete, but there were still some odds and ends they needed to attend to.

Lamplight had fought their hardest, and the results they’d put up had been impressive indeed. However, that victory came at a price.

They paid that toll right as Klaus was tying up Purple Ant’s unconscious body.

A wave of hostility washed over them, and a bullet ripped through the night sky. That was no lead bullet. That was a rifle round. Even for the mighty Klaus, dodging it took everything he had. As he did, the sensation reminded him of someone.

It reminded him of the sniper who’d killed his mentor Guido.

The spy in question didn’t hesitate to kill his own allies if it meant protecting his secrets.

Two more shots sounded out.

Klaus deflected the first one. After all the work it had taken to capture Purple Ant, he wasn’t going to let him die that easily.

However, the second shot blew off a wholly unexpected target’s right foot.

“Roland?” Thea gasped.

His battle with Purple Ant had left him too wounded to dodge.

Thea screamed, and Monika had to grab her sleeve to force her behind cover.

The sniper was too far away to make out with the naked eye, yet all their shots had flown with unerring accuracy. Thea had a faint idea of how much raw skill that must have taken.

A buzzer rang out from Purple Ant’s breast pocket. He was carrying a radio on him. Klaus put it up to his ear and was greeted by a familiar voice.

“Screw off, you monster.”

It was White Spider—another member of Serpent.

“I gotta say, I wasn’t expecting you to capture my buddy Purple Ant alive. Not gonna lie, that’s kinda messed up.”

“I see he wasn’t working alone. How about that rematch, then?”

“Dude, you really gotta stop trying to bait me. I’m not about that life. Do I look like a guy with a death wish?”

It was obnoxious how flippant White Spider was being.

This time, though, it was Klaus who had the upper hand.

“We have Purple Ant in custody. Once we drag your information out of him, we’ll know everything about you and your team.”

“Nah, Purple Ant’s not gonna talk. C’mon—give the guy some credit.”

“We’ll see about that.”

“Well, best of luck with that. You guys had your hands so full dealing with Purple Ant, I was able to get my work done unopposed. I already got what I wanted here, and it’s all thanks to him.”

By the sound of it, White Spider had been doing espionage work at the Tolfa Economic Conference as well. However, Klaus had no idea what that might have been. The Worker Ants Purple Ant sent after him had taken up all his time.

“This round? This one’s all yours,” White Spider said. “Next time, though, you’re dead. You’re getting to be a real pain in Serpent’s butt. Seriously, we’re gonna kill you. I’m done with this brute-force nonsense. I’m gonna look at every angle, work through all the details, and come up with a plan that’ll put you down for good.”

“‘You’re dead,’ ‘We’re gonna kill you’… What are you, a child? You really need to start carrying yourself with some dignity.”

“Shut up, man. Leave my personality out of this.”

“What’s Serpent even after anyway? There’s no way you’re just a bunch of Imperial loyalists.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because if you were, my master would have never joined you.”

White Spider’s laughter crackled over the radio. “Why don’t you ask Purple Ant? If you can get him to talk, that is.”

“………”

“If I had to describe it…I’d say we’re after balance.”

The radio signal went dark, and the prickly feeling of hostility vanished from the air. White Spider was gone.

He was an inscrutable one, that White Spider. He acted like a two-bit goon, and he’d clearly been scared of Klaus, but then he’d gone on to boast and brag, and his final words had been pregnant with significance. It was impossible to tell if he was incredibly powerful or unimaginably weak. The only real impression he’d left was of how difficult to read he was.

The moment the sniper’s presence vanished, Thea rushed out from her hiding spot.

“Roland!”

He was still alive, but his leg was in tatters and his face was ghastly pale. His eyes had a hollow, lightless look to them.

The girls gathered around him.

“I…” Sybilla knelt down by his side. “This guy saved my life. Erna and I woulda been dead if he hadn’t shown up when he did.”

Klaus looked at the man wordlessly. “………”

Meanwhile, Thea tried desperately to keep Roland alive, tearing off strips of her clothes so she could use them to bind his wounds. He had tried to kill her on two different occasions, and yet here she was, attempting to save him yet again.

“Thea,” Klaus called to her, “that’s enough. He’s too far gone.”

Grete touched Thea’s hand to urge her to stop applying first aid. Thea bit her lip and withdrew her hands from Roland’s body.

When Klaus walked over, Roland’s eyes twitched a little. “Bonfire…”

His voice was almost too faint to hear.

“What?” Klaus replied.

“Tell me, do you think I ever could’ve become your rival?”

“…………………”

It was clear what answer Roland wanted to hear. And Klaus could tell that the girls wanted him to say it, too.

However, his answer wasn’t the one they’d been hoping for. “Not in a million years.”

“…Well, damn.”

“Did you expect me to console you? None of your wishes came true. All you ever did was follow orders and murder people. You accomplished nothing of renown, made no meaningful connections with others, and will die with no honor to your name. It’s a fitting end for someone who’s killed as many innocent people as you.”

It was true that he’d saved Sybilla’s and Erna’s lives. However, that was far from enough to balance out everything he’d done in the past. The deeds he’d committed were unforgivable.

“That said,” Klaus went on, “I would say you’ve earned yourself the right to have us give you a proper send-off.”

“Hey, I’ll take it. You know, it only lasted a moment, and maybe it was all just a sick joke, but I kinda enjoyed getting to fight by your side.” Roland reached out into empty space. “And…Thea… Thanks…for saving me…”

Thea squeezed his feebly outstretched hand. The moment she touched him, the remnants of his strength faded, and Roland breathed his last.

Klaus offered up a silent prayer.

By all rights, he deserved a much worse death than that. The weight of his sins was immense. He should have gotten tortured to death in a prison where no light could reach. Either that or he should have died by his own hand on Purple Ant’s orders. That was the destination his path as a spy should have ended at.

Considering all that, perhaps this was the closest thing to a happy ending he could’ve gotten.

Grete took a knife and gently cut off his shirt’s collar. She intended to use it as a memento. After all, there was still a woman being held in a Din prison who loved Roland with all her heart.

After Annette doused the body in gasoline, Thea lit a match. “Good-bye, Roland.”

The whole team watched solemnly as the blazing flames consumed his remains.

A mere two hours after their climactic showdown, Klaus stood on a dock. That there was the gateway that connected the United States of Mouzaia to continents abroad. Even then, in the dead of night, there were passenger ships and freighters going in and out of the port without pause.

A large music case sat beside him. It had originally been designed to hold a cello, but now, Purple Ant lay unconscious within.

It was time to make good on an agreement.

At three AM, the person he was waiting for arrived.

It was a Black man wearing round glasses. Oddly, he was wearing the kind of robes one would expect to see on a priest. Based on how much of his hair had gone white, it wasn’t hard to guess at his age.

“What are you here for?” the man asked quietly, to which Klaus replied succinctly.

“Candy and sweets.”

That seemingly absurd exchange was a code designed to let them both know they were dealing with the right person.

“You’re Bonfire, then.” The man nodded. “I’m a runner from the JJJ. Please call me Corrector.”

“Corrector it is.”

“I’ve been hearing rumors about you for quite some time now. They say you’re the best spy in the entire Din Republic.”

“It feels kind of ironic, being a spy who gets gossiped about.”

Klaus’s reply earned him a muffled laugh from Corrector.

The JJJ was Mouzaia’s intelligence agency in charge of all espionage and counterespionage across the vast United States. Officially speaking, they had an alliance with the Din Republic’s Foreign Intelligence Office in the name of keeping an eye on the Galgad Empire.

“Purple Ant, you called him?” Corrector said, getting right down to business. “We were looking into this business about the spy killings over at the JJJ, too. So he was the mastermind behind it all? I lost a lot of colleagues to that man. I’m impressed you managed to take him down.”

“Thank you. Supposedly, he’s part of an Imperial intelligence group called Serpent. Have you heard of them?”

“No, this is all news to me. I wonder what their deal is?” Corrector pushed his glasses up his nose. “Now, you mentioned something about having us hold on to Purple Ant for you?”

“He won’t come cheap, of course.”

“What’s your price?”

“Every piece of intelligence the JJJ has on Serpent. And don’t give me that nonsense about not knowing who they are.”

Corrector shrugged. “Fair enough. We at the JJJ have every desire to maintain a good working relationship with the Foreign Intelligence Office.”

Klaus could instinctively tell that Corrector was telling the truth.

He agreed to hand Purple Ant over.

In all honesty, he was a little conflicted about doing so. Purple Ant could prove to be a highly valuable source of intelligence. However, Klaus doubted he was going to give up his information easily, and given that they were on foreign soil, the risks associated with transporting him and keeping him confined over long periods of time were too high to stomach. Handing him over to the United States to curry favor with them was the best option he had.

Klaus went on to list a few more conditions, including that the Republic be present whenever Purple Ant was tortured.

“By the way,” Corrector said right before they parted ways, “rumor has it that your superior visited our neck of the woods, too. You know anything about that?”

“Not a thing. I was on a different op at the time.”

Klaus himself had only just learned that Hearth had been operating in Mitario. In all likelihood, she’d been meddling with the Tolfa Economic Conference as well. It was odd, then, how the Din brass had told Klaus that Hearth had been part of the bioweapon retrieval mission.

Corrector shook his head. “Oy vey. You’ve got that, you’ve got Serpent… I don’t understand what’s going on in this world of ours anymore.”

He took the cello case and left with a sigh.

Three days after the battle, the girls were all gathered in Thea’s apartment.

Lily—never one for decorum—stood boldly atop the table, pointed out the window, and shouted at the top of her lungs. “Who’s ready to go be tourists?!”

““““““Yeahhhhhhhh!”””””” the others cheered.

Their long battle against Purple Ant was finally over.

Sara looked at them in shock. “You all change gears really quickly…”

The mission had technically ended the moment they captured Purple Ant, but there had still been some odds and ends that needed to be taken care of afterward.

In particular, there was the matter of rehabilitating the Worker Ants who had suffered at Purple Ant’s hands. Thea had played a big role in spearheading that effort. There had also been the matter of covering up the whole incident, and although Klaus had handled the negotiations with Mouzaia’s intelligence agency, the JJJ, he had forced the girls to help out with some of the details.

Thanks to the JJJ’s help, they were able to get a full list of the conference attendees that Purple Ant stationed Worker Ants with. One of them was almost certainly connected to whatever Serpent’s objective was, but the team decided to hold off on digging through all the intel until they’d gotten home.

Lamplight had finished up the last of the work the night prior, and it was bright and early in the morning.

“Elite spies work hard, but we play hard, too,” Lily replied.

With the mission finally finished, the girls were chomping at the bit to finally get in some sightseeing.

Then a knock echoed through the room, and Klaus popped inside. “We don’t have time for that. We’re leaving, and we’re leaving now.”

Lily looked at him aghast. “Wait, why?”

Klaus handed her an envelope. “The JJJ and I finished fine-tuning our cover-up. Tomorrow, the local police are going to make this report public.”

The girls tilted their heads in confusion and unsealed the letter.

Upon skimming its contents, they all let out a unified “whoa…”

Lillian Hepburn, a waitress of unidentified origins working at the burger joint on the ground floor of the Westport Building, was suspected of murder. Upon being pulled aside for questioning, she dropped a gun and fled the scene. After leading the police on a chase and setting off bombs throughout the city, she ultimately burned herself to death atop the Westport Building’s rooftop garden.

At this time, we believe she may have been connected to as many as seventy-six mysterious deaths.

“You made me out to be some sort of horrible monster!” Lily yelped. “Lillian Hepburn” was the alias she’d been using during their time in the States. “And what’s with this ‘seventy-six mysterious deaths’ part?!”

“The JJJ and I decided to tie the murders Purple Ant’s committed over the past six months, the false charges levied against you, and the chaos you and Annette caused into one tidy little package.”

“Have you no subtlety?!”

“The point is, we need to be out of the United States by the end of the day. As of tomorrow, you’ll officially be dead.”

Sightseeing would have to wait for another occasion. It was time for them to get the hell out of Mouzaia.

Later on, the Mitario police’s report became the talk of the town. A mug shot that didn’t look the slightest bit like Lily got plastered all over TV news broadcasts, and the story shocked the entire United States to its core.

All the general public knew was an evil woman named Lillian had died at the Westport Building after a prolonged standoff against the police, and in time, the tale took on a life of its own. By the time the legend of “Lillian the Devil” started getting passed down through the generations, the story had nothing to do with the real Lily whatsoever.

Nobody who heard it had any idea that Purple Ant had so much as existed.

On Lily’s insistence, they decided to indulge themselves on the ferry ride back, and the whole team spent their weeklong voyage in reserved luxury cabins.

The moment they got to their rooms, the girls immediately began jumping on the beds, and it wasn’t long before an all-out pillow fight erupted. Ultimately, the others decided to bury Erna in mattresses, and they all gathered around her and piled their bedding high atop the mound. The modern art they ended up with looked so much like Mitario’s statue that they dubbed it the “Erna of Anti-Liberty.”

As he looked around at the absolute mess the girls had made, Klaus realized that one of them was missing.

He walked around the ferry looking for her. On his way, he passed by a kiosk and bought some popcorn. Then, when he got to the upper deck, he spotted her standing under the clear blue sky.

Thea gazed out at the scenery.

The ferry had set sail, and the Mitario skyline was growing tinier by the moment. Those same buildings that had blown her away with their height as she had walked the city’s streets now looked like little more than scale models.

The sea wind blew through her hair as she heard a voice from behind her. “Hello there, Thea.”

“Teach…”

“What are you doing all alone up here? You and the others didn’t get into a fight, did you?”

Klaus took a spot by Thea’s side.

A flock of seagulls was flying abreast with the ferry. Klaus threw them some of his popcorn, and the birds deftly snatched it out of the air and flew off with it.

“Do you mind if I try?” Thea asked, so he handed her some. However, she had little success throwing it to them. Perhaps dexterity wasn’t her strong suit.

Klaus gave her a gentle look. “You did a fantastic job on this mission. If not for you turning Roland, I wouldn’t have been able to find Purple Ant.”

“It’s all thanks to the intel the others risked their lives to pull together. I couldn’t have done it without them.”

“Why go off on your own, then? If you’re feeling sentimental and I’m being a bother, don’t hesitate to tell me to leave.”

Thea shook her head at his offer. “No, I just have a lot on my mind. Actually, I’m glad you came.”

“Why’s that?”

“I’ve been curious. What was Ms. Hearth like as a spy?”

So that was why she was gazing at Mitario. That was the city where a great spy had fallen.

Klaus paused for a good long while before answering. “She was a blazing fire of a woman. There were times when she was as warm as could be; there were times when she burned her enemies to the ground… I’m sorry. When I try to describe her, it all ends up coming out sort of abstract.”

Klaus couldn’t think of a way to succinctly sum up who she’d been, and he cursed his inability to explain things properly.

“Do you mind if this goes a little long?” he asked. “I feel like rather than describing her, it would be better if I recounted some anecdotes about her instead. And besides, we have nothing on this boat but time.”

“Oh, that would be lovely. I could listen to stories about her all day and night,” Thea said with a warm smile.

Then her eyes gleamed like she’d just had a fantastic idea.

“In fact, while we’re here, why don’t you tell me them all night long? That would really get the emotions flowing. If you come to my and Grete’s room tonight, you can lie between us on the bed as you—”

“You never learn, do you?” Klaus said, massaging his temples. “Just for the record, I’ll have you know there are men who don’t enjoy it when conversations turn sexual.”

“Oof. Monika told me the exact same thing.”

“You should listen to your teammates’ advice.”

“Come to think of it, Sybilla and Sara have been getting together recently and holding meetings on how to convince Grete to stop listening to my teachings. Were you the one who put them up to that?”

“Nope. They’re acting entirely out of the goodness of their hearts.”

Apparently, Klaus wasn’t the only one she was making problems for. Considering her position within the team, he wished she would put a little more common sense into her actions, but he recognized that there was no point hoping for the impossible.

Thea gave her shoulders a dejected slump. “Sigh… You know, Teach, I wouldn’t mind if you started being a little nicer to me. We’re birds of a feather, after all.”

“We are? How so?”

“Isn’t it obvious? We’re the two people with vendettas against Serpent,” she replied proudly.

Klaus had no rebuttal to that.

At the end of the day, not many of Lamplight’s members had any personal stakes in the battle against Serpent. They all wanted to defend their nation, of course, but Klaus and Thea were the only two who’d had their savior murdered by the group.

“You don’t have to carry it all alone anymore. I’m going to help you fight Serpent,” Thea said, offering Klaus her hand. “Let’s be partners, you and I.”

“………”

Klaus was surprised.

Thea had always had lofty ideals, but historically, they hadn’t really gotten her anywhere. Instead, the gulf between her ideals and reality usually caused her so much anguish that she ended up just following the rest of the team’s lead.

Now, though, she was making her case to him by taking active steps forward.

“You really are the one who grew the most during this last mission,” he remarked.

“I—I am? I mean, if you say so, but it really doesn’t feel like I’ve—”

“Magnificent.” Klaus grasped her hand in his. “I can see you’re determined, and I respect that. Let’s hunt down Serpent together.”

“I’m looking forward to it.”

Thea squeezed back, and the two of them shook on it.

Then Thea’s cheeks went red. “W-we wouldn’t want Grete to get the wrong impression,” she said as she hurriedly let go of Klaus’s hand. “I know I just said we should work together, but I think it would be best if I stopped acting so clingy around you.”

“Probably, yes. I think that’s an excellent—”

“After all, I have a duty to support my teammates in all their romantic endeavors! Not just Grete, no. If any of the others fall for you, I need to be ready to act as their love guru and give them all sorts of advice on how to—”

“I would recommend abdicating that duty posthaste,” Klaus replied with a look of genuine displeasure. Thea laughed.

After that, the two of them shared a pleasant conversation. Fortunately, there was nobody else around, nor were there any signs the boat had been bugged, so Klaus got to regale her with his impressions of the rest of Inferno’s members.

He told her all about Hearth, the team’s boss, and about “Torchlight” Guido, the team’s second-in-command and Klaus’s personal mentor. Then he went on to tell her about “Firewalker” Gerde, their fierce old lady sniper; “Soot” Lukas and “Scapulimancer” Wille, the merry pair of brothers who loved playing games and gambling; and finally, about “Flamefanner” Heide, the de facto older sister of the team who had a sharp tongue and a side gig writing erotica.

As Klaus told Thea stories about his deceased teammates, she spoke up like she’d just remembered something. “Now that I think about it, I guess she never ended up getting to make good on that promise…”

“What promise is that?”

“The one Ms. Hearth made me. She told me that when we met again, she would prepare a wonderful present for me. I was really looking forward to it, too.”

In the end, that reunion had never come, and Thea never got a chance to receive that gift.

Klaus placed his hand on his mouth and sank into thought. “………”

“Hmm? What’s wrong, Teach?”

“Nothing, I was just thinking. The boss was big on preparation, so she probably got it ready back when she was still alive. After all, you never know when you’re going to bite it in our line of work.”

“Do you have any idea what it might have been?”

“No, not a clue. I went through all her personal effects in Heat Haze Palace after she died, but none of what I found comes to mind…”

Klaus went silent as he dug through his memory, but he still couldn’t come up with anything.

Thea gave him a pained smile. “Maybe she hid it somewhere that not even you knew about.”

“It’s certainly possible. I mean, this is the boss we’re talking about. She would have had no compunctions about hiding something important under the floor or something.”

“In that case, shall we tear down the walls once we get back?”

“Let’s not go that far. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to look through her room one more—”

Klaus stopped mid-sentence.

The moment he did, Thea’s eyes went wide.

The two of them had just remembered the incident that had happened one month prior.

They groaned in unison. ““Oh no, that’s the room that—””

When the ferry arrived in the Din Republic, Klaus and Thea went back to Heat Haze Palace well ahead of the others. Their destination was the bedroom in the middle of the second floor, the one that was slightly larger than all the others.

A month had passed, but it was still just as demolished as it had been the last time they saw it.

Thanks to Annette’s bomb, Lily’s bedroom had been blown to smithereens. All they’d done so far was hang a tarp over the wall. They hadn’t gotten around to actually repairing anything yet, and the room was still covered in cracks and burn marks.

Klaus headed over to the tattered wall, felt around for spots where the damage was especially severe, and smashed through them with his knife. Thea followed his lead and started looking through the rifts in the broken floor.

The first one to unearth something was Klaus. “Found it.”

He retrieved a small iron box from inside the wall. There was no way they would have found it if Annette hadn’t blown up the room. Apparently, every cloud had its silver lining.

“Go ahead and open it, Thea. I’m almost certain this was her gift to you.”

“Will do…”

Klaus handed her the box, and Thea took a deep breath.

This was the final thing Hearth had left behind.

Her fingers trembled with anticipation as she gingerly opened the lid.

Inside, there was a peculiar little rod of some sort. It was long, brass, and bumpy. Thea had never seen it before, but she knew what it reminded her of.

“Is this…a key?”

It was her first time seeing a key that looked like that, but it was definitely a key of some sort.

She showed it to Klaus, but he just tilted his head as well. He didn’t know what it was for, either.

The box also had a small card down at the very bottom.

To the girl who will surpass me.

Short as the message was, it conveyed everything it needed to.

Thea could feel the corners of her eyes start to go hot.

Their reunion would never come. Hearth’s kindness had died with her, and Thea’s dream of getting to live alongside her would never come to fruition. Their relationship had ended in the saddest way imaginable.

Yet, even despite that, Hearth had left her so much.

“Teach…” Thea’s voice was trembling. “Just this once, could you lend me your chest?”

Klaus said nothing. He just gently reached over and stroked Thea’s head, then held her close as she sobbed her eyes out.

Around the time Thea finished crying, the rest of the team began returning as well.

They all ended up trickling into the destroyed room where Klaus and Thea were. They looked at Thea quizzically upon seeing how red and puffy her eyes were, but they quickly read the room and patted her on the back.

Once they were all assembled, Lily clapped her hands together. “All righty! We just finished a big mission, so now’s a perfect time to put my room back together!”

Fixing up Lily’s room had sort of been put on the back burner.

The thing was, the girls didn’t have the skill sets to perform repairs that extensive, so they were going to need to call in a professional. Fortunately, there were contractors who specialized in working with spies and other clients where confidentiality was imperative.

As Lily started muttering greedily about wanting to perform some renovations, too, Thea decided to make her request. “Lily, I actually had a favor I was hoping to ask. Would you be willing to trade rooms with me?”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“It would mean a lot to me to be able to live in Ms. Hearth’s old room. What do you say? If you moved into my room, you wouldn’t have to wait for the repairs.”

Thea tilted her head and gave Lily a coaxing smile.

Lily responded by furrowing her brow. “Hrmm… I get how you feel, I really do. But at the same time, this one’s pretty roomy, and it gets a bunch of natural sunlight…”

“What if I offered to teach you how to pick up guys?”

“What makes you think I would even want that?”

It looked like the quarrel over the room was about to get heated.

That was when Grete stepped in. “I think you both have it wrong,” she said. “If anyone is going to have Hearth’s old room, shouldn’t it be the boss?”

Everyone turned to look at Klaus.

Klaus had been using the same room since his days with Inferno, and to be blunt, it wasn’t a very nice one. It was a cramped room stuck in a far corner of the manor.

He shook his head. Then, for good measure, he added his usual, “And don’t call me ‘Boss.’”

Whenever Grete referred to him as “Boss,” Klaus shot her down without fail. In his eyes, the only person worthy of that title was Hearth. He had rejected being called that since the day he founded Lamplight, and he had probably avoided inheriting Hearth’s room for much the same reason.

This time, though, Grete held firm. “I think you’re wrong there, Boss. I think that by this point, you’re this team’s boss in every sense of the word.”

“Hrmm…”

Klaus didn’t have an immediate reply to that.

As he mulled over how best to respond, Annette piped up with her thoughts. “I agree with her, Bro.” She laughed.

Erna shared the sentiment. “Me too.”

Sybilla gave Klaus’s arm an amused shove. “C’mon, man. All of us are graduatin’, so maybe it’s time for you to graduate from that wishy-washy position of yours, too.”

Graduation.

Before the mission, Klaus had told the girls that once they completed it, they would become full-fledged spies.

Now they had done just that, and they’d demonstrated how much they’d all grown to boot. The team still had a number of shortcomings, but they were all strong enough to pass a spy academy graduation exam. The girls had improved far faster than Klaus could have imagined.

They were all ready to advance to the next stage of their careers.

The battle against Serpent was only going to get harder, and for that matter, Serpent might not be the only enemy they were going to have to confront. They would probably come face-to-face with all sorts of other fierce foes, as well.

The girls were right. It was time for Klaus to steel his resolve, too.

His boss was gone, and she wasn’t coming back. Now, leading the girls was up to him.

“No, you’re right. I am Lamplight’s boss,” Klaus said with great dignity.

He was a spy, he was a teacher, and, yes, he was their boss.

Lily laughed. “I mean, I’m too used to calling you ‘Teach’ to change now.”

“Hey, I’m just glad you finally get it, Klaus,” Monika said pompously.

“I’ll be countin’ on you, Boss,” Sybilla said, sounding a little bashful.

“At long last, my wish finally came true…Boss,” Grete said with a nod.

Sara bowed. “I—I look forward to continuing to work with you, B-Boss.”

“You’ll always be ‘Bro’ to me,” Annette quipped, to which Erna agreed, “Yeah. You’re Teach, Teach.”

The final one to speak up was Thea. “I’m expecting great things out of you as my partner, Teach,” she said with a smile.

“So I see there’s no consensus to be reached.”

The only ones who’d actually changed how they addressed him were Sybilla and Sara. That said, he was fine with them calling him whatever they wanted.

The point was, he knew where he stood.

“Magnificent,” he murmured. It was a nice feeling.

Soon, the battle was going to advance to its next stage as well.