Spy Classroom - Volume 7 - Chapter Pr

Prologue

Nightmare

The tragedy began at dawn.

It took place in the Kashard Doll Workshop, a brickwork building with two stories and a basement tucked away in a corner of the Fend Commonwealth’s capital of Hurough. It was an unremarkable building, the kind you could find just about anywhere in the city. The locals assumed it was a quiet little studio full of doll makers, but they couldn’t have been more wrong. In truth, it was the headquarters of Belias, a counterintelligence unit that worked for the Commonwealth’s CIM intelligence agency. That was where they worked to capture spies who had infiltrated their nation.

It was four in the morning when the tragedy struck. At the time, the building contained four members of the spy team Lamplight and two members of Belias. Lamplight had just extorted Belias into handing over their intel, and its members were reading through Belias’s files as quickly as they could.

The first person to sense that something was amiss was “Daughter Dearest” Grete—a redheaded girl with slender limbs and a glasslike frailty about her. As she perused the files in the reception area on the first floor, she spotted the attacker standing in the entrance. The assailant was someone she knew well, so Grete called out to them. A moment later, she saw the flash of a blade. The attack came so suddenly that she was helpless to react, and she lost consciousness.

Over in the first-floor hallway, “Fool” Erna—a short blond girl with the exquisite beauty of a doll—was the next to notice. From the corridor, she saw Grete collapse, then looked back and forth in horror between Grete’s attacker and the bright-red blood pooling under Grete’s body. The assailant sent a fierce kick aimed at Erna’s stomach, but Erna used her characteristically quick wits to keep the damage to a minimum and fled up to the second floor.

The main reason Erna was able to make it to the second floor safely was because “Dreamspeaker” Thea—an elegant dark-haired girl with curves in all the right places—arrived in the hallway. Thea tried to flee the moment she saw Erna get kicked, but the attacker pinned her down with ease. “Why are you doing this…?” Thea groaned as she lay slumped on the ground. She put up a decent fight, but the assailant eventually smashed their knife into her right arm, breaking it and leaving her with a serious wound.

All the while, Belias’s boss watched the tragedy play out alongside one of her agents. The boss in question was “Puppeteer” Amelie—a woman with dark bags under her eyes who was dressed in a Gothic outfit. Unable to comprehend what was happening, all Amelie could do was observe the events as they unfolded.

At one point, she thought she spotted another girl aside from the attacker, one with large scars on her shoulders, but she never got a clear look. She felt as though she’d seen the girl somewhere before, but immediately after the notion crossed her mind, Monika punched her in passing and sent the thought back into the depths of her memories.

As soon as Erna rushed up to the second floor, “Forgetter” Annette—a girl with messily tied-up ash-pink hair and a large bandage over her left eye—readied her weapon, and when the attacker finally made her way to the second-floor workspace, the two of them squared off. Annette fought with her special bombs, and the ensuing flames started making their way through the Kashard Doll Workshop.

However, her efforts were useless against the assailant. Annette suffered heavy wounds when the attacker kicked her bombs back at her, as did Erna behind her. Erna passed out and began bleeding from her head, and although Annette tried to protect her teammate, the assailant struck her hard in the flank with their daggers. Annette’s broken ribs punctured her organs, and after vomiting up blood, she passed out as well.

That was when the two girls who’d started outside the building arrived. One was “Flower Garden” Lily—a silver-haired girl with an adorably childish face and an ample bosom—and the other was “Pandemonium” Sybilla—a white-haired girl with striking eyes and a toned build. The two of them witnessed the daggers strike Annette, and they froze in disbelief at the sight.

As the fire spread, the attacker let out a quiet “I’m sorry,” then left the Kashard Doll Workshop alongside the girl with scars on her shoulders.

Such was the tragedy brought about by the girl who betrayed Lamplight—“Glint” Monika.

The Kashard Doll Workshop painted the Hurough sky red as it burned.

The rain that had been falling since the night prior washed away the filth that hung so prominently over Hurough, revealing the moon sitting above the fog-smothered city. A moment later, though, it was over, and fat clouds rolled in and covered the moon right back up. The sun had yet to rise over Hurough, and the flames from the workshop climbed high into the sky.

In the end, that fire never reached the surrounding buildings. It got put out before it had a chance to. However, all those who’d been watching knew that the true chaos had only just begun.

“Sturm! Und! Drang!” Over on a nearby rooftop, a girl stood with her arms spread wide. “Gee, Scarlet Leviathan, great going! That was awesome. You really gave them hell!”

She had an alluring body with long, slender limbs, but due to her jagged teeth, smiling made her look sadistic, like she was laughing at someone else’s misfortune. Her sleeveless dress left her scarred shoulders bare. “Sturm und Drang!” she shouted delightedly into the chilly air.

The girl’s name was Green Butterfly, and she was a member of the Galgad spy team Serpent. With the skillful steps of a practiced dancer, she spun back and forth atop the roof.

Meanwhile, the cerulean-haired girl beside her simply stood there placidly. Aside from her asymmetric hairdo, she had few notable features to speak of. That girl’s name was “Glint” Monika—that, or Scarlet Leviathan. “Well, someone’s enjoying herself,” she muttered curtly as she stared at the burning workshop.

Green Butterfly stopped in her tracks and shot Monika a provocative, toothy grin. “I’m just impressed, that’s all. We were in and out in a blink, and you even found time to burn the place down. I meant it as a compliment.”

“Oh. Thanks, I guess.”

“Still, in a perfect world, I bet you could’ve gotten away with beating another of ’em within an inch of their life.” Green Butterfly squinted at her. “Gee, you don’t…still have reservations, do you?”

The air crackled with hostility.

Monika averted her gaze from the workshop and drew one of her knives. Its blade was wet and crimson with her teammates’ blood. She gently wiped the knife clean as she gave her answer.

“Reservations? Nah. Not me.”

Her tone was as dispassionate as could be.

The corner of Green Butterfly’s mouth curled upward.

“We accomplished our objective, right? I put a couple of them out of commission, and I took a hostage.” Once Monika was done cleaning her knife, she stowed it back in its sheath. “Lily and Sybilla came back. If Klaus had ended up being with them, the situation would have gotten dicey in a hurry. The getting was good. You got any problems with that?”

This time, it was Monika’s turn to shoot a probing look at her counterpart.

After a pregnant pause, Green Butterfly clapped her hands together. “Perfection.” A crisp round of applause echoed out over the early-morning cityscape. “Gee, Scarlet Leviathan, that’s right. That’s perfect. That’s great, that’s great, that’s fantastic! I just knew I made the right call with you.”

“I don’t know why the hell you keep throwing ‘gee’ into every third sentence…”

“’Cause G is for Green Butterfly, duh.”

“…but more importantly, I can’t get used to this ‘Scarlet Leviathan’ code name.” Monika furrowed her brow. “Couldn’t you have gone with something more normal?”

Leviathans were fictional creatures resembling massive blue snakes that were often mentioned in the same breath as dragons. That was a pretty substantial leap from the flies, spiders, ants, and butterflies that previous Serpent members had introduced themselves as.

Green Butterfly spun her way across the roof over to Monika’s back with a dancer’s grace. “I wanted to give you a name befitting my new partner, see.”

“Huh?”

“You and me, we’re about to bring forth the greatest nightmare ever. It’ll be like a dance, the way we take each other’s hands and plunge the foolish masses into a deep darkness. For a big job like that, you need a big name.” Green Butterfly let out a laugh, then slung her arm around Monika’s shoulder. “You ever hear the one about the two spy women who took the world by storm?”

“What’re you talking about?”

“‘Hearth’ Veronika. And ‘Firewalker’ Gerde.”

Monika recognized the pair of names Green Butterfly whispered in her ear. She’d heard them from Klaus. Those two had been members of the team that preceded Lamplight—Inferno.

“The two of them put Inferno’s name on the map. On every map. With a killer, a gamer, and a soothsayer in tow, they led the Galgad Empire straight to ruin. They might’ve been our enemies, but there’s no denying they were the Finest Spies in the World.” Green Butterfly flashed her jagged teeth. “But then they kicked the bucket.”

“Yeah,” Monika replied succinctly. “I heard. Hearth died over in the United States of Mouzaia, and the last anyone heard from Firewalker, she was right here in Fend.” With some consternation, she reached over and touched Green Butterfly’s shoulder. There was a scar that looked almost like a lightning bolt. The fissure ran all the way down from her shoulder to her elbow, and it had a matching partner on the other side. “…Tell me, did Firewalker give you these?”

“Gee, clever guess.” Green Butterfly gave her a perverse smile. “And it’s bang on the money.” She reached for Monika’s abdomen and gently stroked it. “And just between you and me, I’m the one who put her down.”

“Damn. I hear she was supposed to be one badass old lady, too.”

“All that past greatness couldn’t save her from becoming a senile old hag. I’m telling you, it was pathetic. Wounding me took everything she had left, and in the end, she died begging for her life. Gee, what an idiot.”

Green Butterfly continued touching Monika with visible delight. The way her fingers moved was downright tender as she fondled everything from Monika’s abs to her thighs to her breasts. Monika furrowed her brow in displeasure, but Green Butterfly paid her no heed.

“The next ones to dance across this world are gonna be us.”

As she caressed Monika, she smiled. Then she glared out at the streets of Hurough and let out a delighted cry.

“Now panic, O wretched masses! Burn this endless nightmare as deep in your eye sockets as it’ll go!”

Monika stared silently in the same direction as Green Butterfly. Her gaze was fixed, yet there was a dimness in her eyes that made it impossible to tell what exactly she was looking at.

“I’ll do my part,” she eventually said. “All you need me to do is destroy the world, right? As a filthy, wretched traitor.”

With that, the day broke.

The Fend Commonwealth’s long nightmare was about to begin.