Spy Classroom - Volume 9 - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The Navy

It was the fourth day of their vacation, and one girl’s name was spreading across the island like wildfire.

The girl in question stopped by the fanciest bar in Marnioce.

After starting off at a counter seat, she hit it off with the proprietor and got invited to the VIP area in the back. Between her elegant dress and the air of allure she gave off, no one would ever have guessed her age. When she seductively crossed her legs, it demanded the attention of every man in the bar. Captivated by the sight of the thighs and fair bosom peeking out from beneath her dress, they came over to her table one after another to make their shot.

However, they knew there was too much competition for them to have any hope of wooing her empty-handed. They bought up necklaces and rings from the island’s jeweler and presented them to her. The girl delighted in each one even as she craftily played on the men’s rivalries and drew the competition to even fiercer heights.

Not all of the bar’s patrons were so taken with her, though. “Bah, what’s so good about a whelp like her?” some of the men tutted. However, the girl herself went out of her way to approach her naysayers. “I’m so sorry about all the fuss,” she would say as she held their hands. They would catch a glimpse of her breasts through her dress when she gave them a slight bow, but more than that, they would see how beautiful her eyes were. As the men sat there, captivated, she would feed their egos so deftly, it was like she knew their deepest desires. “You really know a lot about liquor. Would you mind giving me some pointers?”

Thus, even her staunchest detractors would fall head over heels for her and join the growing ranks of her fans.

One rumor begat another, and scores of men began piling on and becoming the biggest reverse harem the island had ever seen.

After spending her nights like that for a full three days straight, the girl—“Dreamspeaker” Thea—let out a booming laugh.

She was wearing a dress she’d been offered in tribute and sauntering through the town at night as though she owned the place.

“Heh, I’m in my prime right now! It’s like there’s a mysterious power welling up within me!”

Marnioce might have been a remote island, but the downtown area around the naval base was prosperous all the same. Store owners came all the way over from the mainland to open stores catering to off-duty sailors, and there was a strip over three hundred feet long of them all using the island’s distinctive white brick design. Orange lights filled the street at night, and it featured all sorts of unique eateries, from stores where people could enjoy cheese and wine imported from the mainland, to barbeque joints serving fresh local ingredients.

Thea strode down the street with her arms spread wide, like the world was her oyster.

“This right here, this is my golden age!”

Around her, she was being escorted by a gaggle of men. They all wanted to spend time with that beautiful girl who so deftly played with their male heartstrings, and they’d banded together to make that a reality.

Thea chuckled to herself as the men led the way. “It’s incredible how nice it feels to have my pride back,” she muttered quietly enough that the others wouldn’t hear her. “The Fend mission really did a number on my mental health. Betraying Lamplight alongside Monika and building up the Fires of War as an underworld organization was all well and good…but then Monika double-crossed me and left me looking like a fool. Seriously, how is that fair? Not ten minutes after I boasted that I was her one true partner in crime, she goes and stabs me in the back. After that, the CIM locked me up and left me forgotten and irrelevant during the big finale. I was cut off from the mission, and I was so bored that I spent every day tearing up newspapers and piecing them back together like jigsaw puzzles just to amuse myself.”

Whenever she thought back to those days, it gave her a splitting headache.

However, she shook off those memories. “But enough about that!” she shouted into the night sky. “Now my whole heart is full! This is the real me. Look out, world, here I come! All that suffering was just preparing me for—”

“SHUT YOUR STUPID PIEHOLE!!”

Someone came barreling in from the side of the road like a fierce gust of wind and socked her right in the gut. By the time she had a chance to gasp in pain, they hauled her off without the men even noticing and dragged her to an empty alley.

That someone was Monika, and for whatever reason, she was pissed.

“Do you have any idea how much of a scene you’ve been making these past three days?! You’re an urban legend now, you know that?! They’re calling you the ‘Raven-Haired Succubus from the Mainland’!”

“I’m just enjoying my vacation…”

“Well, try to put yourself in your teammates’ shoes for a half a second!”

Monika’s voice rang with genuine annoyance. She planted her hands on her hips and shook her head in exasperation. Her hood hung low over her face.

“I have to ask, Monika, what’s going on? What’re you doing here in town?”

“Don’t worry, I’m getting out of here the second I have what I came here for.”

Monika might have been dead on paper, but that didn’t change the fact that a mug shot listing her as an international terrorist had been making the rounds. She was really supposed to be avoiding places where people might see her.

“Have you seen Sara anywhere? I need to borrow one of her pets, ASAP.”

“Oh, sure. She was here just this afternoon. The locals thought she was just adorable.”

Thea had spotted Sara enjoying herself in the town by the naval base a couple times, as a matter of fact.

As she recalled, Monika’s group was chasing down the pirate legend.

“I take it your treasure hunt has hit a snag, then.”

“God, I wish it was treasure we were looking for.”

“………?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Monika said, then quickly changed the subject. “Looks like you’ve been having yourself a nice time.”

Over on the main street, the men were rushing around, looking for Thea.

“It’s all about the gender ratio,” Thea explained.

“Huh?”

“There were fewer than two thousand people who lived on the island, and the navy just about doubled their population. The vast majority of those sailors are men in their twenties to fifties. It’s no wonder there aren’t enough women to go around.”

That was the secret behind Thea’s immense popularity. Most of her suitors were single men affiliated with the navy. There weren’t many female sailors, and the island didn’t exactly have an abundance of young women, either. When it came to dating on the island, the women held all the cards.

In other words, that was why Thea was being treated like royalty.

“You can go ahead and call me Princess Thea.”

“Shut the hell up, Slutcubus!”

After giving one last disdainful remark, Monika turned and left.

It was the fifth day of their vacation, and after having finished her three days and nights of debauchery, Thea stared at her planner back at the boardinghouse. She would have been perfectly happy spending every night crashing at a different man’s house than the last, but not wanting her teammates to get too appalled (though she felt that that ship might have already sailed), she was making an effort to stop by the boardinghouse at least once a day.

She furrowed her brows as she lay on her bed.

My schedule is starting to look pretty packed…

At the moment, she was trying to figure out how best to spend the rest of her time there.

The sailors she’d been hitting it off with had invited her out on all sorts of dates, offering her experiences that most people could never dream of having. “I can show you some special caves and hot springs that only the navy is allowed to visit,” they said, and, “Want to see what the deck of a warship is like?”

“Hmm,” she grumbled.

What I’d really like is to get together with the others and paint the town red, but…

Doing so would be a blast, but there was a reason she couldn’t, at least not to the extent she wanted to.

“The only times you can all be in one place are days one, thirteen, and fourteen.”

Klaus had instituted a strange rule back at the beginning of their vacation, and because of it, Thea couldn’t get the whole gang together. She was capped at just inviting a few people.

Why did he do that, I wonder?

She didn’t understand what his goal was, but at the same time, she doubted he would restrict them like that without any reason.

He was splitting them up, but to what end?

It’s almost as though he’s having us do a dry run of—

Midway through her deductions, she got interrupted.

“Shut your traps and listen up, scum!!”

What’s that shouting?

It sounded like someone was shouting threats out in front of the boardinghouse.

The voice sounded familiar, and Thea quickly rushed outside.

There was a large plaza in front of the boardinghouse she was staying at, and that plaza was full of anxious-looking islanders. There were three men from the navy standing in the middle, with their voices raised.

“Ensign Mercier was found dead in the early dawn this morning. With how disfigured the body was, it could only have been murder!! We know you islanders have a bone to pick with the navy,” the men bellowed. “If anyone has any idea who the killer might be, you’d better get talking, fast! Otherwise, we’re gonna interrogate each and every one of you!”

Thea frowned. This was hard to listen to. It was clear that some sort of incident had taken place, but there was no sense in arbitrarily deciding that the islanders were to blame. They were trying to brute-force their way into finding the culprit without a shred of actual evidence.

“They’re being absurd…,” Thea muttered. The islander standing beside her was of the same opinion. “They’ve been going around all morning and doing this in every arrondissement,” he told her in exasperation.

The people gathered in the plaza exchanged concerned looks with one another. We don’t have what you’re looking for, they mutely insisted.

The plaza was silent, though the sailors’ faces were still red.

“There ain’t no killer,” someone said in a hushed voice. “It’s the pirate curse. You lot didn’t care one whit ’bout investigating it, and now you’re paying the price.”

“Hey! What the hell’d you just say?!”

One trigger-happy sailor reacted immediately. His eyes bugged out with rage, and he shoved his way through the crowd and made his way to one of the women so violently, it appeared he might be about to start throwing punches.

“Defying the navy, are we?! That’s pretty damn suspicious! You’re coming with us!”

It was straight up tyranny.

However, the islanders were helpless to resist the brawny sailors, and there was no one who could come to the woman’s aid. All they could do was watch things unfold in pitying silence.

“Please, no…,” the woman said in terror as the sailor closed in on her.

“Don’t even think about fighting back! Get your ass over here right this—!”

Thea couldn’t take it.

She quickly cut in and moved to obstruct the sailor’s path.

“Why, if it isn’t Nicola! Thank you so much for last night.”

The moment the man stopped, she circled around to his side. Rather than face him head-on, she slipped her arm around his and whispered coaxingly in his ear.

“What’s going on? Why all the shouting?”

The man was someone Thea knew. When he noticed her clinging to him so suddenly, his voice went squeaky in confusion. “Th-Thea?! I’m in the middle of work right now—”

“Come on, don’t be like that. Remember how you promised to show me around the base?” she whispered quietly enough that the islanders couldn’t hear. “Can’t we go now? I’m dying to see what your room is like… I’m a busy girl, you know. And I’ll be leaving in just a few days. Just think what we could be missing.”

“________”

The man visibly gulped. His mouth was dangling half-open.

Then, with a start, his eyes went wide, and he hurriedly peeled Thea off of him. “N-now’s really not a good time… But I’ll finish up here soon. Soon, okay?”

He was stammering a mile a minute, and Thea gave him a small head bob.

The gesture was enough to set his heart aflutter. He quickly averted his gaze.

Instead of conducting any full interrogations, the sailors gave the islanders a few harsh warnings, then moved on to the next arrondissement.

Thea had successfully prevented things from coming to blows, but she still had questions about why the sailors were being so oppressive. Right as her curiosity swelled, she happened to spot a familiar-looking girl walking briskly down the street.

“Why, if it isn’t Raftania.”

Having recognized her, Thea called out.

Raftania worked at the boardinghouse Grete’s group was staying at. She was the one who’d told them about all the island’s attractions back when they first arrived.

“Hmm… Hmm? Ah, you’re one of Mr. Klaus’s girls.” Raftania furrowed her brows in annoyance for a moment, but she quickly remembered who Thea was. She’d seen Thea’s handiwork just now, and she gave an appreciative nod. “I got a glimpse of what you did. I was impressed at how you handled him, but I had no idea you were one of Mr. Klaus’s students. Consider me impressed.”

“I have a bit of a knack for that sort of thing.”

“I have to ask—what’d you whisper to him?”

“Oh, he has a shoe fetish. That was me inviting him to help me make a shoe that fit my foot just so.”

Raftania let out a confounded sigh. “I ain’t even gonna begin tryin’ to understand that.”

At that point, Thea noticed what she was wearing. “Goodness me, that’s quite the load you have there. I’m sorry, am I interrupting you while you’re working?”

Raftania showed her the large basket she was carrying on her back. “I’m just on my way back from buying some meat and veggies from the market. I was thinkin’ I could offer Mr. Klaus a nice home-cooked meal tonight. Everything here is fresh from the island.”

Thea gave her an awkward smile. For reasons unbeknownst to her, Raftania was insisting that she was Klaus’s fiancée. She was almost certainly misunderstanding something, and Thea wasn’t sure how best to point that out.

She decided to change the subject and shot another look off in the direction the sailors had gone.

“I have to say—”

She lowered her tone to a hush.

“—they were being pretty nasty back there. Do they always treat the islanders like that?”

That was the question she’d stopped Raftania to ask in the first place. That whole exchange just didn’t sit right with her.

Raftania shrugged. “Eh. The islanders and sailors have been butting heads for ages.”

“Is that so?”

“They’re tryin’ to expand their base, and they want to drive the islanders out to do it. You ask me, they deserve to get cursed.”

With an annoyed sigh, she explained about the string of unexplained deaths and the pirate’s curse—the strange phenomenon where someone on the island was brutally murdered once every three months. The number of victims was in the double digits, and the culprit had yet to be found.

That’s horrible…

Thea gasped at how grisly it all was. Even just hearing a brief summary was enough to make her quake with rage.

What the navy is doing is strange, too. Ever since the Great War, the Lylat Kingdom has been reducing their military spending, albeit not by much. Why, then, would they be expanding a base out here in the middle of nowhere?

If nothing else, it clashed with Thea’s understanding of the situation. The Lylat navy’s budget had been dropping year over year, and there were international treaties restricting how many warships they could own.

As a Din spy, she had an obligation to look into this.

Something is off about the navy. And between that and the tragedy that’s taking place here…

All of a sudden, an idea flashed through her head.

She’d just been trying to figure out how best to spend her vacation, and she’d already had her fill of the island’s nightlife.

Plus, more importantly…

She could still see the islanders cowering from the sailors. The sailors were going and spewing their abuse all across the island, and the locals could do nothing but shrink back in fear.

A feeling of duty welled up within her as she spoke. “Perhaps I’d best go get myself involved. The case isn’t going to crack itself.”

“What?! But why would you—?” Raftania cried in astonishment.

From her perspective, it was a logical question. Why would a regular old tourist go and suggest something like that?

What she didn’t know, though, was that Thea was no ordinary vacationer.

“Well, we can’t very well just let the culprit do whatever they want, can we?”

“I mean, no, but…”

“And wouldn’t you say I’m the best person for the job? If the island police can’t lay a hand on the navy, then what you need is an outsider—and I just so happen to be the Raven-Haired Succubus.”

Thea laid a hand on her chest and licked the area around her lips.

“Heroes don’t leave anyone behind. Not even people from foreign countries, and not even when they’re on vacation.”

With that, Thea got to work.

She’d appointed herself as a mediator, and she was determined to solve the case of the mysterious deaths and quell the tensions between the islanders and the sailors.

It was the sixth day of their vacation, and after laying all the groundwork she needed to begin her investigation, she decided to enlist the help of a specific teammate of hers. In Thea’s opinion, she was the perfect person for what they needed to do.

That afternoon, she called the girl in question to the boardinghouse and laid out the situation.

“And there you have it, Sara. Can I count on you to back me up?”

“Of course! I’m happy to lend a hand.”

The girl Thea had selected as her partner was Sara.

After giving Thea a hearty nod, Sara turned to the hawk and pigeon sitting beside her and lovingly patted their heads. “The people here have been really good to us. They’re always offering these little guys food and playing with them. If someone’s been going around killing them, I can’t let them get away with it.”

Sara had largely spent her past few days either running through nature or walking through town alongside her animals. Hers had been a peaceful vacation, and considering that she felt she owed the islanders a favor, she’d clearly been enjoying herself.

Thea was relieved at how easy it had been to get Sara on board. “I’m so glad to hear it. I do apologize about pulling you away from your holiday like this.”

“Not at all! If you chose to come to me for help, I’m not going to let you down.”

Sara beamed happily, and Thea returned it with an even bigger smile still. “Well, of course I chose you. That was some fine work you did there in our last mission.”

“Hm? Hee-hee, th-thanks for saying that.”

“That’s the person I want on my side—the star pupil of ‘Ashes’ Monika, who took down White Spider, the terrorist of the century. Why, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d earned yourself some international renown.”

“Y-you’re giving me way too much credit! I-I’ll do my best, though!”

“You’re sure? You’ll put everything you have into this?”

“Of course! ‘Meadow’ Sara, ready and reporting for duty!”

“Great—now I need you to become a hostess.”

“Sure! That’s no problem at……… Wait… What?”

A promise was a promise.

Thea grabbed Sara’s hands tightly to make sure she couldn’t run away.

“…I’m sorry, a hostess……?”

The color started fading from Sara’s face, and her expression froze as it grew steadily paler and paler.

Undeterred, Thea gave her hands a firm shake. Then she threw open her closet and revealed the gorgeous nightgown she’d selected. “Now, on we go to the salacious world of the night. Don’t you worry, Sara. I’ll have you making big money in no time.”

“~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~!!”

Sara screamed, and Thea began her investigation by forcibly holding her down.

The reason they needed to infiltrate the nightclub was to gather information, of course.

The island’s nightclub catered to sailors and was in a gorgeous building no less impressive than those back in Lylat proper. The mainland owner opened it in order to be able to work while on holiday.

Inside the dimly lit club, there were a series of U-shaped couches so that several women could attend to each group of male patrons. The building was filled with indirect lighting, illuminating the space in a light-blue glow. In Thea’s experience, those were the exact kinds of establishments that tended to loosen men’s tongues.

She’d already talked things over with the proprietress. Thea’s reputation preceded her, and she’d been able to secure employment that very day for both herself and Sara.

“Go on and make that drink, Sara. Now, if the customer pulls out a cigarette, you have to immediately offer him a light. And make sure there’s always a clean ashtray. If the customer drops his cigarette butt in one, you need to have a replacement ready to—”

“THIS ISN’T FAAAAAAAAIR!!” Sara wailed, with her face bright red.

Sara was wearing a white blouse and a short pencil skirt. Thea had realized that anything too flashy would be a poor fit for her, so the outfit’s color scheme was relatively tame, but Sara’s shoulders were completely exposed, and the skirt didn’t even reach her knees.

“You set me up! If I had known that this was what you were asking, I would have turned you down on the spot!” Sara moaned. “Snff… Why are you making me do this…?”

She was sitting on the end of one of the couches and trembling as she put ice in a glass. All she was doing was moving an ice cube over from the ice bucket, but her fingers were quivering so badly, her last few attempts had ended in failure.

Thea and Sara were already at work serving a trio of men. All three of them had stared spellbound at Thea’s black open-chested dress, but when their gazes fell on Sara, who was scared stiff, they looked at her with confusion.

“Is your friend okay there, Thea? She’s kinda sweating bullets.”

“Oh, she’s fine. She’s just not used to spending time around men.”

“J-just for the record, she is an adult, right? And, like, her working visa’s all squared away—?”

“Hee-hee, don’t you worry about that.”

There were some serious legal and ethical issues with what they were doing, but given that they were there doing spy work, Thea wasn’t too concerned. She had ID papers and work visas all forged up for them.

She turned back to the men and smiled to get them to see things her way. “What do you think? There’s a certain charm to showering an innocent, panicking rookie with love, wouldn’t you say?”

Comprehension dawned on the men, and they nodded, before turning their gazes back to Sara.

Sara’s face was downright scarlet, and it was taking everything she had just to move a single ice cube. She managed to get a decent grip on the ice tongs for once, but she soon dropped them again in a stunning display of clumsiness.

The men were starting to realize something—how absolutely adorable she looked when she was flustered.

“Hey, Sara! Make me a drink!” “Me too!” “Me three!”

They ganged up and began making demands of her.

Sara squeaked and practically jumped out of her skin at the sudden requests. “O-of course. Just give me a second here…”

“What kind of guys are you into?” “Have you ever been with a man?” “Who was your first crush?”

“I-I’m not sure I really want to answer that…”

“Strike a pose for us!” “Give us some peace signs!” “Yeah, and twist your hips! We wanna see you from all sides!”

“I, um, I don’t… Y-you mean, like this…?!”

“Now, call me names!” “Slap me!” “Step on me!”

“Wait, am I surrounded by perverts?! There’s perverts! Perverts!!”

Despite the men’s teasing, Sara did her best to continue waiting on them. It was obvious that she wasn’t cut out for this line of work, but her innate diligence drove her to do her best to avoid upsetting her customers.

Thea smiled internally.

She’s doing a lovely job of getting their guards down.

This was all part of Thea’s plan. She herself came off as too experienced with men, and with how much of a name she’d made for herself, any overt moves she made were liable to draw unwanted suspicion.

Now then…

Those oddly carefree sailors were the ones working with the local police to investigate the latest murder. The trio consisted of the brawny sailor leading up the investigation team, a slender man who seemed a little timid, and a third who was downright corpulent.

Thea had arranged things with the proprietress so that if the three of them came in, they’d get directed to Thea’s table.

“You know, I heard this rumor going around,” she said, once the trio had had time to start getting a little tipsy. “Is it true that they narrowed down the culprit in that nasty business earlier? One of the sailors from your neck of the woods was boasting about it yesterday…”

“Huhhh? Thea, honey, that’s bullshit. He was talking out of his ass,” the investigation leader replied without a moment’s hesitation.

“We really shouldn’t be telling outsiders about how the investigation’s going…,” his portly companion scolded him, but the first man was in no mood to listen. “What’re you, dumb? I dunno who this jackass is, but he’s going around talking a big game to try to win Thea over. We can’t let her fall for his big-mouthed bullshit!”

Intentionally sharing wrong information was a quick way to get people to correct you even when they weren’t supposed to.

After he was done with his outburst, the leader turned and gave Thea a gentle look. “Fact is, the investigation hasn’t been going too hot. We know it’s connected to the string of weird deaths, but that’s about it. We don’t have a single damn lead.” He pounded down his booze in frustration. “There are never any witnesses, and the bodies are always so mangled, it takes us ages to even ID them. This killer, I swear… The body we found yesterday was in absolute tatters. Our boys have been combing the coast ever since it turned up, and there’s still bits and parts we haven’t found.”

“…Are you saying they defaced the body to cover their tracks?”

“That’s what we’re thinking. But the thing is, we can’t even figure out what kinda tool they used to do it. All we know is, the backwater cops here are outta their depth. It’s on us to solve this thing.”

“Because of how unusual the tool used for the murder was?”

The leader chugged down his drink. “Yeah, we’re dealing with a deranged weapon freak. Worst comes to worst, we’re gonna have to break into every house on the island looking for it.”

Thea wanted to tell him that that was a terrible idea and that he was taking things too far, but the sailors didn’t have any other options at their disposal. The exhaustion on their leader’s face made that all too clear.

However, doing so was only going to exacerbate the rift between the islanders and the navy.

“…Maybe this whole curse thing is real.”

The slender sailor who’d been silent all through the conversation finally spoke up.

He must have been pretty sloshed, as his face was bright red. With tears in his eyes, he shot a pleading glance over at Sara. “That’s what the islanders keep saying, right? That this is all because we’re trying to expand the base.”

The other two sailors gave him a look that said, “C’mon, man” and “Not you, too.”

However, the skinny man kept right on moaning. He was a weepy drunk, and he began sobbing as he pestered Sara. “Saraaaaa, I’m scaaaared.”

Sara awkwardly tried to soothe him. “L-let’s get you some water, okay?”

After deciding to leave the crying man to Sara, Thea turned her gaze back over to the leader. “Why does the navy want to expand the base anyhow?”

“It was all the vice-admiral’s idea.”

The answer she got was incredibly specific.

“Dunno what he’s after, though. And I sure as hell don’t know how he’s selling the mainland on it. No one has any clue what the guy’s thinking.”

There was the intel she needed.

Vice-Admiral Grenier was the man responsible for managing the Marnioce Naval Base. He’d remained on the island ever since the Great War, and the locals despised him.

The slender sailor clung to Sara again. “Ensign Mercier, the dead guy, was one of the vice-admiral’s favorites. It must’ve been the curse that killed him.”

Plenty of the islanders were talking about it—the curse that the Great Pirate Jackal had placed to protect his treasure. Fantastical as it sounded, no one could deny that once every three months, someone on the island got brutally murdered.

“All those who invade the island are cursed…”

There was a strange vividness to the way the slender sailor’s sob lingered in their ears.

After getting ahold of the information, the two of them quickly finished up their hostess work.

The two of them headed back to the western side of the island where their boardinghouses were. Sara was staying at a different one, but the path to get there was the same. They massaged their aching shoulders as they walked along the seaside road.

“I suppose we’ll need to find someone a little higher up the chain of command to get all the details.”

“I’m so tired…”

Sara was dead tired. Her shoulders were slumped in dejection, her back was hunched over, and her stride was lifeless.

“Why don’t you tell me a funny story, Sara?!”

“Don’t you start on me, too, Miss Thea!”

Thea tried pushing her luck, but Sara wasn’t interested in playing along anymore. All those memories must have just flashed back through her head, as she let out a sudden scream. “AHHHHH! I’m sick and tired of helping you with your investigation!” she yelled, and with that, she ran off in the direction of her boardinghouse.

In no time at all, she was completely gone from sight.

“…Perhaps I asked too much of her.”

After that, Thea was going to have to give her at least a day off.

Still, the investigation’s only just getting started. I need to crack the case before our vacation is over.

As she continued planning out her next moves, she arrived at her boardinghouse.

Thea’s room was up on the second floor. Monika, Sybilla, and Lily were all staying in the same house as she was, but none of them appeared to be back yet.

When Thea opened her door, she was greeted by a bizarre sight.

Her entire room was flooded.

“…………………Excuse me?”

Her brain froze.

She couldn’t process what it was she was seeing.

There was water trickling from the ceiling and huge puddles pooled on her floor. The walls were soaked like someone had dumped a bucket out on them. Her bed was knocked over, her closet had been flung open, and all the clothes inside it were soaking wet.

“Wh…?” Before she knew it, she let out a scream. “WHAT’S GOING ON IN HERE?! How does something like this even happen?!”

It didn’t make sense.

The one thing she did know was that there was a stinging smell in the air. She squeezed her nose shut.

…Is that saltwater?

It smelled like the sea.

Sure enough, the water filling her room was seawater. There were strips of seaweed stuck to the walls.

It was almost like some creature had come up from the sea and gone on a rampage.

“This is creepy… Seriously, what’s going on?”

Her door had been locked. The window was fully intact. How was her room in that dreadful state?

“Is this…the curse…?”

Unable to comprehend the situation, she could only stand there.

It was abundantly clear that a strange shift had just befallen her peaceful island trip.

It was the seventh day of their vacation, and after spending the night in a different room, Thea woke up the next morning and began inspecting the scene. She hadn’t had the energy left to check it out the previous night. She reported the incident to the boardinghouse’s owner, of course, but due to his advanced age, all he did was mumble “Well, I’ll be” on repeat, and he offered little in the way of actual help.

Thea decided to turn to another islander for assistance.

“What do you think, Raftania? Are there any creatures on the island that could turn a room inside out like that?”

She and Raftania had interacted a few times, so that was who Thea called for backup. Raftania had an oddly haggard look on her face, but she agreed to take a look, then screamed “Ack!” upon seeing the ghastly state the room was in.

After taking a look around, she gave Thea a sorry shake of the head. “I mean, we’ve got monkeys and boars up in the mountains…but I ain’t never heard of them drownin’ a locked second-floor room in seawater.”

“That figures. This must have been the work of a human.”

“Did they steal anything?”

“No, nothing.”

All her valuables were still in her safe, so it wasn’t the work of a burglar. She’d actually been wearing most of her jewelry while she worked at the nightclub last night, so it hadn’t even gotten damaged.

“Doesn’t look like there’s much for you to do but tell the cops,” Raftania grumbled.

“I’ll let the owner decide whether or not he wants to get them involved. I find it hard to imagine them figuring out anything we couldn’t.”

Not looking at all satisfied with their findings, Raftania opened up the room’s wardrobe.

When she did, all the seawater inside came pouring out and splashed her in the face. She let out a wordless shriek as she fell on her backside.

“This…,” she rasped. “This all gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

Thea agreed. “I’m going to throw out all my clothes. This is too creepy for me to ever wear them again, even after I wash them.”

Ultimately, though, that was the extent of the damage.

They’d gathered all the information they could, but no answers presented themselves.

It’s completely baffling. Why bother carrying seawater and seaweed all the way up to the second floor?

It was possible that someone was harassing her, but it seemed unlikely. Thea’s rampant philandering could easily have earned her some jealousy, but carrying that much water up to the second floor would have taken ages.

As she tilted her head in puzzlement, she noticed that Raftania was acting oddly.

“…………………………………”

Raftania was still on the floor, lying on her back in a daze. She didn’t even move to wipe the seawater off her face, and her face was deathly pale.

“Is everything okay, Raftania?”

“…Yeah, I’m right as rain.” Raftania slowly rose to her feet. “It brought back memories, that’s all. ’Bout my Ma. The blood got on my face just the same—”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s nothing. Forget I said anything… But this here, it’s like the room was attacked by a pirate.”

The comment about Raftania’s mother aside, Thea agreed that it made one think of pirates. Her bedroom looked like it had been ravaged by something that had crawled up from Davy Jones’s locker. It was impossible not to think about the curse. The lengths the pirate had gone to in order to protect his treasure. The way someone on the island got brutally murdered every three months.

Thea bit down hard on her lip and shook her head. “I assure you, there’s no way it was anything so fantastical!” she declared, trying to encourage herself. “Mark my words, it was an ordinary human who did this. There’s a homicidal maniac lurking on this island. I was getting too close to the truth, so they decided to send me a message.”

If that was true, then the killer had made a poor move.

Thea’s spirits were higher than ever. When someone picked a fight with her, she wasn’t the type of girl to take it lying down.

It was the eighth day of their vacation, and Thea decided to leverage the connections she’d made and employ a bold new strategy: infiltrating the naval base.

At the end of the day, that was going to be the fastest way to investigate. The idea that the culprit behind the serial killings was a member of the navy was a popular theory among the islanders, and Thea was curious about whether there might really be a connection between the murders and the plan to expand the naval base. It was time to get her answers straight from the source.

Sara had taken a break from the investigation due to emotional stress, but fortunately, she made a full recovery.

“N-no more making me do that kind of work! I’m begging you here!” Sara pleaded, her face red with embarrassment.

On top of that, they had one other helper who’d gotten the details from Sara.

“I wanna check out the naval base, yo!”

Namely, Annette. Her eyes glimmered at the thought of getting to visit an off-limits facility.

“I thought I heard something about you helping Raftania with her wedding,” Thea said.

“The base sounded more interesting.”

“I see you’re as fickle as ever…”

At any rate, those were the three who chose to sneak into the base.

It didn’t take them long to find an off-duty sailor.

The man was in his thirties and had a face that looked like a monkey’s. It had been five years since he’d first been stationed there on the island. He was a junior lieutenant, and when Thea came to him with her proposal, he readily agreed.

“Oh, gosh, I can’t believe you really want to come visit our base. It’d be my honor to give you a tour. You and your friends Sara and Annette are going to love it.”

With a sappy, lovestruck grin, he showed them into the naval base.

It was a blatant violation of military regulations, but he was simply that desperate to win Thea’s affection. She found his earnestness a touch endearing as she went farther into the base.

The naval base was composed of several facilities, including a central headquarters, an exercise yard, some barracks, a watchtower, and a repair shop. Naturally, it was the headquarters that Thea was most interested in. She coiled her arm around the sailor’s. “Can you show us what’s in there?” she asked, to which he whispered back, “Okay, but just this once,” and let them right in.

The headquarters was a massive five-story structure. That was where all their key command and control departments were stationed.

The floor plan inside was oddly complex. Military bases were supposed to have layouts that were easy to memorize so people could get around quickly in emergencies, yet this one’s hallways were full of turns that made it difficult to tell what shapes the rooms were.

“It’s like a labyrinth, yo,” Annette murmured. Thea tended to agree.

Something was definitely weird about this base.

As that fact was becoming clear to them, the monkey-faced sailor began breathing heavily. “I—I think that should do it for the tour. Do you want to head back to my bunk, Thea?”

“Sounds like a plan. Why don’t you go on ahead? We’ll be right behind you.”

“Huh? I really shouldn’t be leaving you here unsupervised…”

The sailor frowned, and Thea leaned in and whispered in his ear. “I have some things I need to prepare first—you know, like my lingerie.”

“Oh, uh, of course. Well, the bathroom’s right over there. I’ll see you soon.”

The man’s eyes went wide in panic, and he scampered off. Despite his age, he clearly had little experience with women. That was a big part of why Thea had chosen him.

After resolving to give him an extra-special reward later, Thea quickly changed gears.

“Sara and Annette, we should start with—”

“The reference room, right? Yeah, let’s go.” “I’ve got the whole layout memorized, yo.”

The three of them took off at a dash. Their sailor friend had already shown them how to get there.

Thea had picked the time of day when all the rest of the sailors would be out on patrol, and the girls managed to reach the third-floor reference room without running into a soul. The room had two locks on it, but Annette made short work of them.

They closed the door behind them as they went in.

The reference room was full of bookshelves that stretched all the way from the floor to the ceiling. That was where they stored the files they’d received from their superiors back on the mainland and the like.

“Photograph every document that catches your eye. We have fifteen minutes in here, tops. We need to be finished before then.”

“Understood.” “You got it, yo.”

They didn’t have time to actually read anything.

After getting out the miniature cameras designed by the Din Republic’s Foreign Intelligence Office, they snapped photos of anything that looked like it might be important. Once they developed the film, they would know what it was the navy was plotting.

One of these files must describe the motive behind the expansion…

The string of strange deaths was shrouded in mystery, and that might very well be the key to shedding some light on things. Their hopes were high as they rapidly clicked their shutters.

“I found a hidden safe, yo.”

Midway through the proceedings, Annette slid one of the shelves aside to reveal a strongbox.

It was a brilliant find. “That’s amazing,” Sara praised her, to which Annette revealed her trick. “The dust had settled funny around it.” If there were big secrets lurking there, that was where they were going to find them.

All told, there were eight files within.

Thea took the top one and opened it up.

“________!!”

It was a blueprint.

It looked to be a new device that had been developed there on the naval base. However, what shocked her was its shape.

What am I looking at here?!

Beside her, Sara and Annette opened up files of their own and let out similar gasps.

This is obviously no ordinary weapon. Why, if I didn’t know better…

At least for Thea, there was something very familiar about it.

One file detailed a handgun disguised to look like a watch. Another was a suitcase that exploded if you entered a specific password. There was a miniature knife you could store in your mouth. An umbrella that shot needles from its handle. A pair of stilettos with a compartment in their heel to hide a codebook.

Thea and the others had used such tools themselves…

“I can see that look in your eyes—you think they look like the kind of intelligence gadgets that spies would use.”

The answer came from over by the entrance.

None of them had heard the door to the reference room open, but now there was a short middle-aged man with them.

The man was so portly that the buttons on his military uniform were in danger of flying off. Between that and his diminutive stature, his body was practically as round as a globe. There wasn’t a strand of hair on his scalp, but his beard was terribly long, giving his head a sort of imbalanced look.

Thea knew who that was. His was the very first name that came up in her investigation.

“Vice-Admiral Grenier…?!”

There, standing in the doorway, was the supreme commander of the entire base.

“Heh-heh,” he laughed in amusement, then stroked his beard. “So, you must be the Raven-Haired Succubus I’ve been hearing so much about.”

The man was being straight and to the point. Thea had heard that he was in his midfifties, but he carried himself with none of the solemnity one might expect. However, that in and of itself only made the whole situation that much more unsettling.

What exactly is his deal?

The reference room didn’t have any windows, and the only entrance was blocked.

All Thea could do was wait and see what he would do.

How did he know we’d sneaked into the base?

It made sense that he was still at the base. No commander worth their salt would leave their headquarters completely unattended. The question was, how had he figured out what the girls were up to when nobody had seen them get there?

She bit her lip. No, there was a more pressing question.

He knew we were here, so why did he come alone?

If all he wanted was to deal with some intruders, he could easily have just left that to his men. No, he wanted to meet them in person for some reason—and he wanted to do so without his subordinates knowing.

“…Not even a flinch, huh?” Grenier said softly. “Impressive.”

Thea gave him a confident smile. “Why, of course not. I just found myself enchanted by a lovely gentleman, that’s all.”

“Follow me. After you put those files back.”

When the girls stared at him, unsure of what he was playing at, Grenier gave them a cheeky smile.

“You’re here to learn our secrets, aren’t you? I’ll give you the grand tour. Unless you have objections, that is.”

Thea and the others followed Vice-Admiral Grenier through the naval base.

The kind of trespassing they were doing was the sort that generally got you shot, but that didn’t appear to be on Grenier’s agenda. They decided to go along with him without resisting.

The three girls continued down the base’s many curved hallways. They didn’t pass a single soul. Grenier had chosen their route to ensure that.

“I wanted to see what you were capable of.” As they walked, Grenier hit them with an unexpected compliment. “It’s no wonder they call the Din Republic an espionage powerhouse. In just a few days, you charmed one of my men after another and had them eating out of the palm of your hand. I have to say, that’s some frightening stuff.”

He stroked his beard and nodded in admiration.

Apparently, the cat was out of the bag about them being Din spies. That was odd. They’d been acting as ordinary tourists basically since the moment they got to the island.

“…You seem awfully well-informed about us.”

Thea stared daggers at the man’s back.

Grenier’s gaze wasn’t fixed on them, yet she couldn’t sense anything even approximating an opening.

“Why is that?” she asked. “Your job is to guard the nearby coastal waters. There are supposed to be other people in charge of intelligence. Why were those blueprints—?”

Grenier flatly cut her off. “You would think that spies would be able to answer questions like that themselves.”

Thea could do nothing but hold her tongue. Getting into an argument with the vice-admiral would hardly be prudent.

Sara hadn’t said a word that whole time. She’d just been watching things play out in silence. Sweat cascaded from her forehead as she constantly looked back and forth for an escape route. Annette was quiet as well.

Eventually, Grenier came to a stop in front of a wall. The corridor was a dead end. There was nothing there but a shelf. After cautiously glancing around, he took out a knife and stabbed it into a crack in the wall.

With a dull rumble, the wall slid to the side.

Beyond it, there was a dark hallway. On Grenier’s urging, they followed him in.

“The only people who know about this are the scientists and a small handful of my men,” Grenier said when they reached the brighter area at the end of the corridor. “This is the Marnioce Naval Base’s secret laboratory.”

The room was large, about half the size of a football pitch. If anything, it looked more like a factory than like a laboratory. There were massive machines set up for metalworking, and the air smelled of paint.

At the moment, there were roughly ten people who looked to be scientists rushing about in a hurry. The laboratory’s tables were covered in the very same spy gadgets the girls had seen in the reference room’s blueprints.

Annette’s eyes lit up. “Yo, this is so coooool!”

“What in the world are you people doing here…?” Thea muttered.

It was obvious that they were keeping the mainland out of the loop. What exactly was the navy preparing for out here on Marnioce, away from watchful eyes?

“How do you like it? I would love to get some opinions from an active-duty spy.”

With a proud nod, Grenier called over one of the scientists. “Hey, Director.” However, not a single one of the scientists halted their work. A few seconds later, one of the men finally reacted. “Huh… Oh, right!” he said as he rushed over to Grenier.

“I swear, these eggheads always get so lost in their work.” Grenier shrugged, then took a small metallic pole from the R&D director. “What do you think of this one, for example? We call it the ‘Sinistre Piège.’ It looks like an ordinary metal rod, but once you activate it…”

“Ack!”

The moment Grenier swung the rod, Sara and Annette got yanked toward him. It took everything they had just to keep their footing.

Grenier gave the rod another swing and turned it off. “…it becomes a powerful enough electromagnet to move a human body. If you stuck some sort of blade on this thing, you’d have a weapon strong enough to tear through just about anything. You could slice up a body, and it would take people ages to identify it.”

“Th-that’s so inventive!” “You’ve got my full attention, yo!”

Sara and Annette were amazed. It would appear that it was their belts that had gotten pulled. The fact that the rod was able to do that from a full ten feet away was a testament to the power of its magnetic force.

Thea, on the other hand, shuddered, as a whole different realization dawned on her.

“…The serial killings.”

“Huh?” Sara said, not sure what she was getting at.

“You’re right on the money,” Grenier said with a grim nod.

“Those murders were carried out with prototypes stolen from this very lab.”

Several things all clicked into place.

The islanders and sailors had both mentioned how the murders could never have been committed with conventional weapons. That was because the culprit had used inventions developed in secret in the naval base’s secret lab. The bodies had been disfigured by a weapon designed to mutilate corpses too badly to be easily identified.

Grenier let out a small sigh. “I have to say, I have no idea how the killer managed to get past our security…”

That was a fair point. As far as Thea could tell, the only way to get into the lab was with one of those keys disguised as a knife that Grenier had used.

However, there was a much bigger question that she needed to address first.

“…What exactly are you planning to do with all these weapons?”

“If you’re curious, then why don’t we make ourselves a deal?” Grenier put the prototype back on the table. “I want you to track down the person who killed Ensign Mercier. There’s no one around who’s better equipped to act as our spies and find out who the islanders really are than you all.”

Deep down, Thea was impressed.

At this rate, there was little chance of the navy capturing the culprit themselves. They didn’t have any real evidence, and they’d been reduced to going around and interrogating people at random. The deck had been stacked against Grenier, but when he discovered the girls brazenly marching into the naval base, he’d had the presence of mind to realize he could use that to his advantage.

Thea had no objections to the request itself—that had been her plan all along—but she was loath to accept it so easily. “…And what’s in it for us?”

“If you capture the killer, I’ll tell you what our goal is,” Grenier said calmly. “I find it hard to imagine what more a spy could possibly ask for.”

With terms that juicy, the girls couldn’t find a reason to turn him down.

By the time they’d finished talking, another storm had hit the island.

As the rain came pounding down, Grenier thoughtfully said, “You had probably best stay here,” and lent them a room in the women’s barracks. The girls found his kindness rather suspicious, but they had little choice but to take him up on his offer.

No small number of male sailors tried to come visit them, but their female colleagues did a stellar job of warding them off. That was a godsend. The girls had a million different things they needed to think through.

Thea furrowed her brow in the three-person room they’d been given.

Things have certainly gotten messy, haven’t they?

At no point had she expected to come face-to-face with the vice-admiral. That had come as such a shock, it felt like her heart was still racing.

Then there’s that whole secret laboratory of theirs. I have my suspicions about what that’s for…

Not only were they developing strange spy gadgets, they weren’t even telling the mainland about it. The whole thing stank to high heaven.

“Annette, what did you make of those inventions of theirs?”

“I couldn’t have built half of those.” Annette was lying on one of the beds. “Those things were the real deal, yo.”

That was high praise, coming from her.

“What are we going to do next?” Sara asked. “Are we really going to act as the navy’s pawns and go around suspecting the islanders?”

“…Look, I understand how you feel. But the fact of the matter is, we need to catch this killer.”

The first option they needed to consider was talking things over with Klaus. It was the safe thing to do. It pained Thea to have to ask for his help on something that she’d gone and gotten herself involved in of her own volition, but she suspected that doing so would be the responsible choice.

Maybe the only thing to do was to go to him tomorrow and tell him everything…

The windows rattled in the wind. The storm was still raging.

Through the curtains, she could see darkness so deep, it was downright unsettling. The sound of the rain striking the windows was obnoxiously loud.

She looked up, thinking that it might be nice to have some tea as they mulled things over—and as she did, the room’s lights blinked out.

“Huh?” “Oh?”

“Hmm… Looks like we lost power.”

Perhaps the violent storm had knocked down an electrical line somewhere. However, the naval base was sure to have a backup generator to use in emergencies. The lights would be back on shortly.

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!”

All of a sudden, they heard a woman scream from out in the hallway.

Thea took off without a moment’s hesitation. She dashed out of the room and made for the corridor. She’d trained to be able to navigate even in total darkness.

Out in the hallway, one of the sailors was trembling on the floor. She must have been too scared to move.

“What is that?! WHAT’S GOING ON?!!”

Realizing that something was very wrong, Thea rushed over to her. “Are you all right?!” she cried. “What happened?!”

“I—I don’t know…,” the sailor sobbed. “I don’t understand. I can’t move… None of us can, after we run into that thing…”

Down the hallway, there were tons of other sailors lying just as motionless.

Thea immediately grabbed the flashlight lying on the ground and shone it into the mess hall.

There they were—the countless skulking figures. They zipped around so fast, it was like they were flying. Their speed allowed them to evade Thea’s flashlight beam, but for a brief moment, she caught one of them.

It was dressed in a black, tattered cloak.

The creatures were dressed in outfits as ragged and weathered as if they’d been abandoned for hundreds of years. The smell of saltwater wafted through the mess hall.

It was like drowned pirates had risen from the deep after spending centuries at the bottom of the sea.

“………”

“What’s going on?” she rasped.

She tried to aim her flashlight to get a better look, but something came flying out of nowhere and broke it. It would seem that she was under attack.

That’s weird. How did—?

It was all so sudden that Thea couldn’t move. The sailors were all lying on the ground like they were petrified. She didn’t have her gun. She had no idea what she was supposed to do.

Then another girl came valiantly rushing in.

“I’m code name Meadow—and it’s time to run circles around them!”

A pigeon and a dog followed along after her and rushed the figures down. As they did, Sara brandished a broom she’d found and charged in to join forces with her animals.

“T-take that!”

The pirates that had been moving so nimbly just moments before froze in bewilderment.

After smacking them with her broom, Sara quickly spun around and fired off a gorgeous roundhouse kick.

“BEGONE WITH YOUUUUUU!”

The suspicious figures fled straight out the mess hall window. They vanished into the storm and were swallowed up by the darkness.

A massive hawk flew out the window as well to drive the nail into their coffin.

Eventually, the power came back on, and light returned to the mess hall. All that remained of the pirates was the sorry state they’d left the mess hall in and the rain and wind pouring in from the window they’d left through.

Over in the middle of the room, Sara was panting heavily, the broom still clutched in her hands.

“Is everyone all right?”

When she turned around, there was a confidence on her face she’d never before possessed.

Seeing her expression sent a great shock through Thea’s heart.

It was the ninth day of their vacation, and the night prior, the female sailors had recovered quickly from the attack. None of them were injured. Their bodies had simply gone limp as soon as the power went out and the pirates showed up.

The pirates had arrived with the storm, gone on a rampage, and left as quickly as they came.

Not even members of the military were immune to being afraid of something so clearly occult. “Were those ghost pirates?” they whispered to one another, with faces marked with fright. Annette seemed to have taken an interest in the situation, as she enthusiastically declared, “I’m gonna stay at the base a little longer, yo.”

Thea and Sara were dead tired, so they decided to head back to their boardinghouses.

The storm was gone like it had never been there, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky above them. The calm blue sea filled their sight as they walked up the gentle hill road to their dwellings.

“I wonder what those figures were… I wonder if they’re the same ones who destroyed your room, Miss Thea?” Sara said quizzically. “Mr. Bernard chased after them. I’m sure he’s probably fine, but the fact he isn’t back yet is a little worrying…”

Bernard was her partner, so it was natural that she would be concerned about him.

Thea stared at her back as she tried to find the right moment to mention something else entirely.

“Hey, Sara.”

“Yeah?”

“That was an impressive display last night. Where did that come from?”

Sara looked back and bashfully rubbed the back of her head. “Oh, that? Miss Monika spends a lot of time teaching me how to handle myself in emergencies.”

“……………”

It really was a peculiar feeling.

Back when Sara first joined Lamplight, she would probably have reacted to a comment like that by modestly stammering, “I—I really didn’t do anything special!” Now, though, she was able to take Thea’s compliment with grace and genuine delight.

Sara’s starting to grow up—and far faster than I’d realized.

Thea was well aware that Sara had played a crucial role during the final stages of their mission in the Fend Commonwealth. Perhaps that was what had triggered it.

She bit down on her tongue, taking care not to let Sara see.

Thea was embarrassed at how superior seeing Sara get flustered at the nightclub had made her feel. What a fool she’d been. She’d been too dumbfounded to move last night, whereas Sara had carried herself with resolve.

As she took a moment to digest that fact, Sara gave her a friendly smile. “The thing is, I have a dream now.”

“Huh?”

“I want everyone on Lamplight to be able to safely retire from being spies someday. And to do that, I need to stop cowering in fear all the time.”

Sara stared out at the ocean, then spoke with resolve.

“I’m going to be Lamplight’s guardian. That’s the role I want to play.”

“___________________________________________”

Sara had never had that sort of ambition or sense of purpose before.

It was something to be celebrated. In her head, Thea knew that. A moment later, though, her entire body went red-hot from the rage brewing within her.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Huh?”

“Screw that! Retiring is the last thing I want to do. I inherited Hearth’s will, and I’m going to devote my life to being a spy. You can leave me out of your dreams, thank you very much.”

When Thea began shouting, Sara gasped. That wasn’t the reaction she’d been expecting at all. She must not have realized it, but her dream and Thea’s goal were directly at odds.

“I’m sorry. You’re right, that was something I decided on my own. I didn’t ask how anyone else felt about it.”

For a moment, Sara cast her gaze down apologetically.

A moment later, though, she lifted her head in determination.

“But I’m not going to give it up, either! This is the one thing I won’t back down on.”

It would take more than that to make Sara yield. Thea pursed her lips.

The fact that Sara was sticking so firmly to her guns was yet another sign of how much she’d grown. That girl who was always too timid to voice her opinions was gone.

Thea was angry. However, she wasn’t offended.

If anything, this was a good thing—her competitive spirit was flaring.

“Let me tell you what my goal is.”

She looked Sara square in the eyes.

Until that point, she’d never explicitly told any of her teammates about her ambition.

“Eventually, I want to become Lamplight’s boss. I want to be a hero who leads you all and saves the world.”

Thea had the utmost respect for “Hearth” Veronika.

She was Thea’s role model, and she was the person Thea aspired to be like.

Someday, Thea was going to steal Klaus’s position as the team’s boss. She didn’t know how many years it would take her, but she was going to become the boss, take charge of the Lamplight girls, and face off against the forces of the world. And sorry, but she wasn’t about to let her teammates just retire on her. They were her precious comrades, people she could trust.

Her goals and Sara’s were diametrically opposed.

That said, Thea didn’t mind. Teams needed people who thought differently from one another.

“I acknowledge you, Sara. You’ll make for a fine rival.”

“…I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Sara didn’t stand down, either, and she returned Thea’s gaze in kind. It looked like there was sweat beading on her forehead, but that was nothing more than a detail.

Thea gave her a small smile and patted her on the arm to de-escalate the conversation. “Heh-heh, I suppose that makes you my fourth rival. Monika, Grete, and Pharma all beat you to the punch.”

“Th-that’s quite a star-studded roster.”

“…Though to be fair, I doubt Monika spares so much as a thought for me.”

“I don’t know about that… I think that might not be quite as true as you think…maybe?”

“Huh? Really?!”

“Oh, no, I’m not saying I know that for sure. That’s just what my gut says, that’s all.”

“Well, I appreciate it. You’ve given me a new perspective on things.”

Thea smiled a little as she basked in the sea breeze.

“Let’s settle this, the two of us. We’re going to crack every case on the island wide open.”

Sara gave her proposal a firm nod. “Let’s do it.”

On second thought, Thea couldn’t go bothering Klaus over a situation so minor. It would be an unacceptable indulgence for someone who was going to be Lamplight’s boss someday.

It was the tenth day of their vacation, and Thea sent someone a letter that read, “I know what you did.”

She called them to Confezza Beach, the place where she spent the very first day of her holiday. Deciding it would be best to avoid having other people around, she set the meeting time for eight PM.

As night began falling on the beach, the person she summoned—Raftania—arrived.

“What’s the big idea, draggin’ me out here? I have to be up early tomorrow to pick up ingredients for the wedding.”

Raftania had come straight from working at the boardinghouse, and she was dressed casually in shorts and a T-shirt. She stared impatiently at Thea, who’d been waiting for her.

Thea walked along the beach a little and led Raftania past some rocks, where they’d be fully obscured from view. Sara anxiously watched from the back to make sure Raftania didn’t run away.

When they reached a spot flanked by a pair of large boulders, Thea turned.

Now she didn’t have to worry about being seen from the path that ran by the beach.

“Let me cut right to the chase.”

She grabbed Raftania’s arm.

“I’m code name Dreamspeaker—and it’s time to lure them to their ruin.”

After yanking Raftania off-balance, she shoved her against the bare rock.

“H-HUHHHHH?!” Raftania cried in bewilderment, but despite her panic, Thea pinned her down firmly. The two of them stared into each other’s eyes from point-blank range.

Eventually, Raftania twisted free and shoved Thea away. “Wh-what in tarnation do you think you’re—?”

“I have some questions I wanted to ask you about those murders.”

The stage was set.

After returning from the naval base yesterday, Thea and Sara had laid out all the new information they’d gained and had begun trying to make sense of the serial killings. When they did, one thing stood out to them—just how out of place a certain someone seemed.

Thea steadied her breath and took another look at the girl in front of her. “Here’s a little tidbit for you. Apparently, they still haven’t found all of Mercier’s body.”

“Huh?”

“It makes sense. After all, he got shredded into little pieces and dumped into the sea. It’s no wonder there would be parts missing. I do wonder why the killer went and did that to him, though.”

Pretending like they were just having a friendly conversation, Thea asked, “Do you have any ideas?” to which Raftania glared at her in displeasure. “…Why would I?”

“Well, it was the wrong tool for the job,” Thea said. “The gadgets stolen from the lab were designed to help spies assassinate people, it’s true. But the thing is, what the killer used was a weapon designed to delay the identification of its victims.”

That was the concept behind the secret lab’s Sinistre Piège, and the weapons used in the other murders were no different. From what Thea had heard, all the bodies had been mangled so badly, it had taken extra time to determine their identities. Comparing them against missing persons lists was easy enough on an island, but in an urban area, that process could easily have taken ages.

However, the weapon used this time had a major flaw.

“However, it was no good at helping them move the body.”

“What are you talking about?”

“When you shred a corpse too finely, collecting up all the pieces is easier said than done. If the killer wanted to dump the body into the sea, they should have chosen a different weapon.”

It was a grisly thing to think about, but if they were planning on transporting the body, they should have stopped at simply beheading it and chopping off its limbs.

When Mercier was killed, the culprit had been using Sinistre Piège for something besides its intended purpose.

At that point in their deduction, Thea and Sara had asked themselves a question: What was a problem one might encounter if they did something like that?

“One could very well miss some pieces of the body that night, then find them the next morning at the scene of the crime.”

That had sent the killer into a panic, no doubt.

In all likelihood, the murder had been carried out in a location that was tied to them in some capacity. That was why they needed to dump the body in the sea in the first place. If there were bits and pieces left at the scene of the crime, they needed to dispose of them posthaste.

Thea’s voice became accusatory. “Tell me, what was it you were carrying the morning after Mercier died?”

“________”

On the morning of what was the fifth day of Thea’s vacation, she ran into Raftania. It was the same day that Mercier got murdered and the sailors began conducting their aggressive search.

“I—I told you back then, and I told you honestly,” Raftania replied defensively. “It was meat and veggies I bought at the market. I wanted to treat Mr. Klaus to some fresh island ingredients.”

“You’re lying. You were carrying chunks of Mercier’s body.”

Thea stated it as a fact.

She waited to share the basis for her claim and watched Raftania’s reaction. The girl was visibly flustered.

“You were in a real bind. What you wanted was to throw them into the sea, wasn’t it? But by morning, the whole coastline was crawling with sailors. So you abandoned that plan.”

The information about the huge number of sailors searching the beaches was something Thea had learned at the nightclub.

Raftania had given up on dumping the body in the sea. However, she still needed to get rid of it quickly, and if she buried it, there was a risk that someone might dig it up.

The idea she’d arrived at was a dreadful one indeed.

“Instead, you decided to turn the chunks into hamburger steak and serve them to your guests.”

“You’re jumpin’ to conclusions! That’s pure hogwash!” Raftania howled, her face beet red. “Why would you even say something like—?!”

“I heard about it from Sara. She told me that you tried to serve her a hamburger steak made from ‘aged beef.’”

In a sense, it was the perfect way to dispose of a body. Burning or burying a corpse would still leave material evidence, but if you hid it in someone else’s stomach, there was no way anyone would ever find it.

Fortunately, the food got thrown out without anyone ever eating it.

The problem lay in the fact that Raftania had called the beef “aged.”

“Why’d you tell that lie? You went out of your way to go buy fresh meat that morning, yet you specifically described it as aged. That was to mask the odd flavor of human flesh, wasn’t it?”

Raftania hadn’t expected to get into a conversation with Thea on her way back from the market, and she’d accidentally been more candid than she meant to be. The fact that she’d then gone and lied to Sara and the others had been her downfall.

Thea delivered the finishing blow by asking one simple question.

“You’re the one who killed Mercier, aren’t you?”

“……………………………”

There was a marked shift in Raftania’s expression. A gifted liar she was not.

There were still loads of excuses she could have given, but Thea’s bluff had paid off. Raftania’s shoulders trembled as fury crept across her face.

“Why?!” she shouted. “That man got what he had comin’! Why go and expose what I did to—?”

“So you admit it was you.”

“________!”

“I get it. I even have a good reason to sympathize with you. All I’m doing is trying to get to the bottom of all this.”

Thea took great care to suppress her emotions and calmly continue the interrogation.

Condemning the girl wasn’t going to accomplish anything. She needed to learn the full truth.

Raftania had ready to lunge at Thea a moment ago, but she took a step back in embarrassment.

Eventually, she squeezed out a weak moan. “…You don’t got any hard evidence, do you?”

“I see you’ve managed to cool your head a bit.”

It was annoying, but Raftania was right. It would be a lie to say that they had any actual proof linking her to the crime.

That said, Thea had used her special talent and seen how Raftania really felt. She knew about the burning hatred Raftania felt toward the navy, and she knew about Raftania’s faintly guilty conscience. Between that and her reaction a moment ago, there was no doubt in her mind that Raftania was guilty.

“But the thing is, that’s all I’m missing. Not that it brings me any joy to go get it,” Thea said, then quickly gave the order. “Sara, go search her house. I imagine the weapon is still there. As long as her fingerprints are on it, that should seal the—”

Right as she was about to say “deal,” Raftania let out a low growl. “That won’t do you no good.”

Thea gasped. All the light was gone from Raftania’s eyes, and she let out a hollow laugh. “I already took the weapon—and handed it off to Grete.”

““…………!””

Thea and Sara shuddered in unison.

What Raftania was describing was unthinkable, and Thea grabbed Raftania by the collar. “Please tell me you didn’t—!”

“And I made sure to wipe off my fingerprints first. The island cops always side with their own. They’ll listen to me way before they listen to a bunch of tourists like you,” Raftania said. “You turn me over to the police, and it’ll be Grete who eats those charges!”

Thea punched her.

She couldn’t stop herself, and her fist moved all on its own.

“Miss Thea!” Sara scolded her.

Raftania pressed down on her punched cheek and nodded with glee. “More’s the better. A fresh bruise’ll make it that much easier to play the part of the maiden in distress. Maybe I’ll say it was the soldiers who done it; that should turn Mr. Klaus’s head some.”

“You little…”

“I’m gettin’ out of here, just you watch! Mr. Klaus is gonna marry me and take me away! Better to take a thousand punches than to live out my days on this sick, twisted island!”

Her face ran wet with tears as she gave her impassioned speech.

By the sound of it, she’d even made a plan to escape the island. It was full of holes, but the very fact that she’d done so ground Thea’s gears.

“You’re deranged!” Thea gritted her teeth. “I feel for your situation, I really do. But even so, flooding my room with seawater and attacking the navy barracks while dressed like a pirate was beyond what anyone would ever—”

“What? What’re you on about?”

“Huh…?”

“I never did that.”

Raftania cocked her head in bewilderment, and it didn’t look like she was acting. She didn’t have the skills necessary to fake a reaction like that. Her mouth was half-agape in genuine confusion.

This time, it was Thea’s turn to be shocked.

She had assumed that those numbered among Raftania’s crimes, too. She didn’t know what sort of strings Raftania had pulled to make it happen, but she assumed Raftania had done it in an attempt to stop her investigation…

“That wasn’t you? But it had to be…”

Thea was flabbergasted, and when she repeated herself, Raftania’s mouth curled into a nasty smirk.

“Heh,” she said, chuckling in delight at Thea’s consternation. She trembled with joy, then clutched her sides and cried “Ah!” as she looked up at the sky.

“At last, I finally get it…” She gave her swelling cheek an enraptured squeeze, then let out a shout, with tears still welling in her eyes. “The curse does exist! May it fall upon you. May the great pirate’s wrath swallow you all!”

Her voice was so manic, Thea and Sara had no reply they could possibly offer.

It was the eleventh day of their vacation, and Thea and Sara took the day off.

The two of them sat at the tables outside a café near their boardinghouses and enjoyed some fresh-squeezed fruit juice. The islanders had offered Sara some beef jerky, which she doled out among her pets.

For a good long while, they simply listened to the sound of the waves.

“What are we going to do?” Sara asked softly. “About Raftania?”

“What do you mean? There’s nothing we can do but leave her be. It’s not like her quest to seduce Teach is going to go anywhere, and once we’re finished, her fate will be up to the vice-admiral.”

In the end, they’d been left with no choice but to release Raftania.

However, that had been the plan all along. Any attempt Thea made to capture her and hand her over to the navy in person ran the risk of exposing the whole situation with the secret lab. Eventually, Grenier would have to quietly apprehend her on his own time.

No matter how things played out, there was nowhere for Raftania to run. All that awaited her was doom.

While they were taking their breather, they spotted a familiar face over on the path in front of the café.

“What are you doing, Miss Annette?” Sara said.

Annette was walking with a notebook clutched in her right hand and a pencil gripped in her left. She was muttering something to herself, but they were too far away to make out what that might be.

When Sara called out to her, Annette shot a quick glance in their direction. “I’m in research mode, yo! I’m conducting interviews about the local ocean currents, so leave me alone!”

“We have some sweets, if you’d like.”

“I’ll be taking those!”

Annette raced all the way over to the café, shoved two entire cookies in her mouth, and left with all the impatience of a one-girl hurricane.

“Well, at least it looks like she’s enjoying her vacation,” Thea said.

“Yeah, it does. But something about her feels a little different than usual…”

“Really? Like what?”

“She seems kind of restless.”

Thea hadn’t picked up on any of that, and she had nothing to offer back but puzzlement.

They continued relaxing, and eventually, someone from the navy came by, holding a letter. “This is from Vice-Admiral Grenier,” they said succinctly, then left.

“Good, we’ve got our appointment.”

The letter listed a time for them to visit the naval base the next day.

There, they would tell Grenier everything and put the situation to rest.

It was the twelfth day of their vacation, and that evening, the girls used the designated secret route to get to the naval base’s command room.

The room was situated on the top floor of the base’s central headquarters and offered a full view of the sea around the island. The sun was beginning to slowly sink below the horizon, and fog was gathering over the water.

The only people in the room were Grenier, Thea, and Sara.

Grenier faced the two of them from across the table and rubbed his round belly as he smiled with joy. “All right, my Din spy friends. Have you found the navy’s enemy?”

“Oh yes, we know everything. And we know about the pathology infecting the island, too.”

Grenier arched one of his eyebrows at that.

Thea ignored his display of skepticism and gave it to him straight. “We figured out who was behind the serial killings. It was Ensign Mercier, wasn’t it?”

“………”

Grenier’s expression was unreadable.

That was the answer Thea had arrived at: that he—the navy man that Raftania killed—was the one who’d been causing the unexplained deaths around the island.

“Everyone was working from the wrong premise. They all thought that Mercier got attacked by the serial killer, but the truth was the other way around. Mercier was the serial killer.”

“…Oh-ho. Fascinating.”

“Don’t you ‘oh-ho’ me. You knew, didn’t you? You knew all along.” When the vice-admiral implied that he hadn’t been involved, Thea shot him a glare. “Mercier held a confidential title here—he was your secret laboratory’s director.”

The man was dead, so perhaps she should have stuck a “former” at the start of that job description.

There were three facts backing up her theory. The first was that no matter how you sliced it, stealing inventions from the lab would require the help of an inside man. The second was the testimony she had saying that Mercier had been a favorite of Grenier’s. And the third was how delayed that one man’s reaction had been to being called “Director.” He’d only held the position for a few days, if that.

When she sat down and thought about it, it was an easy enough conclusion to reach.

“Looks like the jig is up.” The vice-admiral gave her a thin, impressed smile. “The man was good at what he did, but his morals were a bit lacking. He was never satisfied until he’d tested his inventions out in the field. I’m telling you, I’ll never understand these eggheads.”

“If you didn’t stop him, how are you any less guilty?!” Thea bellowed.

That was the truth behind the string of mysterious deaths that people called the pirate’s curse—they were Director Mercier’s experiments. In order to find out if his spy gadgets were viable for fieldwork, he tested them out on islanders and tourists. A double-digit number of people had lost their lives at his hands.

Just thinking about those tragic victims made Thea’s blood boil.

Sara had told her everything. She knew that three years ago, Raftania’s mother had died under those same suspicious circumstances.

“Mercier’s killer was after one thing—vengeance.”

Thinking back to the anguish she’d seen on Raftania’s face lent strength to Thea’s words.

“I don’t know what exactly happened that night. But all she was doing was finishing off her mother’s killer! And I’m sure that you of all people can understand what drove her to such extremes!”

Before she knew it, she was leaning halfway across the table.

“After all, you’re the one who’s been covering everything up and refusing to let anyone investigate the murders properly!”

Thea didn’t know the specifics of how it had gone down, but through some means, Raftania had learned that Mercier was the one who killed her mother. Then she’d stolen the invention and murdered him herself.

She was just a girl. It was impossible to envision just how much that decision must have weighed on her.

According to Sara, Raftania had been the first one to find her mother’s body. The reason she’d freaked out back when the water hit her in the face in Thea’s ravaged room was because it had brought back those traumatic memories.

All Raftania wanted was to get revenge for her murdered mother, to marry Klaus, and to escape the island.

The girl had so much conviction, it was impossible for Thea to hate her.

“I have to say, that was a rousing speech.” That thin smile continued playing on Grenier’s lips. “Din Republic spies, eh? I knew you wouldn’t disappoint.”

Thea slumped back against the sofa and crossed her arms. “And that’s another thing. I’ve had just about enough of your smug intimations.”

“Hmm?”

“I assume you’ve been in touch with ‘Bonfire’ Klaus? Just because you’re buddy-buddy with Teach doesn’t mean you get to be pompous with me.”

That mystery had been straightforward to solve as well.

Grenier trusted the girls far more than he should have. Not only had he declined to have them executed for infiltrating his military base, he’d actually gone out of his way to help them sneak past its guards so they could have the conversation they were having that very moment. And besides, hadn’t Klaus visited that island before?

“Right you are. He and I have been seeing a lot of each other over these past few days,” Grenier readily confessed. “We’ve known each other since his Inferno days, and he already told me about all of you.”

Klaus was also the one who’d chosen Marnioce as their vacation spot. Wanting to meet up with Grenier had been one of the motivations for the trip.

“What’s your goal here? If you don’t tell me, I won’t reveal the killer.”

Thea delivered the question that had been burning within her.

Why was he using the naval base to develop spy gear in secret?

Why had he given his tacit approval to experiments that were killing the locals?

“Staging a coup d’état.”

Grenier’s answer elicited a gasp from Sara. “What…?”

However, that was in line with Thea’s expectations. There weren’t many possible reasons for a Lylat vice-admiral to be cozying up to a Din spy like Klaus. Grenier was trying to shake the Lylat Kingdom to its core, and Klaus had decided to support him after determining that doing so was in the Din Republic’s interests.

As the blood drained from Sara’s face, Grenier explained himself. “I trust you two are aware of what things are like in the Lylat Kingdom.”

Thea and Sara nodded.

Their academies had drilled at least the basics into them.

“It’s the land where revolutions die,” Thea replied. “A century ago, when countless Western-Central nations were having popular revolutions to overthrow their monarchies and abolish their aristocracies, Lylat’s ended in failure. They might be a constitutional monarchy on paper, but the real situation hasn’t changed one bit from their days when the royals held absolute power. There’s a tiny noble class that’s living high on the hog by robbing the people of their freedom and bleeding them dry.”

That was the truth about their Lylat Kingdom neighbors.

The Fend Commonwealth’s royal family had historically enjoyed tremendous authority, but even their position had become largely symbolic when the nation transitioned to a constitutional monarchy. Everyone in the country had a vote, and the parliament they elected did all the actual governing.

Over in Lylat, though, things were different.

The government there was of the nobility, by the nobility, and for the nobility.

There had been countless civil rights movements over the past century, but the royal guard and security forces had crushed every last one of them. They’d dragged thousands—tens of thousands—of activists to the guillotine and painted the capital’s plazas red with their blood.

Democratization had never come to them like it had to countries like Din and Galgad.

“I intend to overthrow the monarchy. I’ve spent countless years in preparation.”

Where did he store such ambition in that large body of his?

His eyes burned with the fires of justice.

“The people are suffering so that a small handful of aristocrats can live in luxury. Exorbitant inheritance taxes rob the people of their wealth, and that stolen money gets sunk into waging wars. Public health is nothing but an afterthought. When anyone complains about the rampant hunger and plagues, they get rounded up and put to the guillotine faster than they can blink. I ask you, what other nation has stooped so low?”

“…Look, I understand where you’re coming from.” Unwilling to yield to her counterpart’s fervor, Thea raised her voice in turn. “But still! That doesn’t mean you can just sacrifice the islanders to—!”

“You think this coup can happen if I don’t get my hands dirty? I have a duty to fulfill, even if that means dooming myself to the darkest pits of hell!!”

There was nothing Thea could do but hold her tongue at such a steadfast declaration of intent.

Grenier knew the depths of his sin, yet he was determined to continue walking that bloodstained road. He wasn’t about to get talked out of it by some girl who was there on vacation.

Still, Thea’s heart ached for Raftania and the other islanders.

“…Why try to expand the base, then?” She decided to move on to her next question. “If your intent is to overthrow the mainland government, wouldn’t it make more sense to avoid making waves?”

“There’s something I need to find, and the islanders are obstructing my search,” Grenier said with a long sigh.

“Your search? What are you searching for?” Thea asked.

Grenier prefaced his reply—“Staging a coup requires a colossal amount of money”—then gave just about the last answer she’d been expecting.

“That’s why I need Jackal’s treasure.”

““………What?””

Without meaning to, Thea let out a dumbfounded exclamation at the exact same time Sara did.

However, the look in Grenier’s eyes was as serious as could be. Those weren’t the eyes of a man who was joking.

“The value of Jackal’s treasure is said to rival our national budget. With money like that, I could secure assistance from the Fend Commonwealth or the United States of Mouzaia.”

“A-are you for real right now?” Sara stammered. And rather rudely, at that.

“I assure you I am,” Grenier said, not ashamed of his claim in the slightest. “There are plenty of legends validating its existence. That will be the key to ensuring the coup’s success. We’ve developed weapons and tools aplenty in my lab, and once I get my hands on Jackal’s treasure, we’ll finally be able to retake our—”

That was as far as he got in his sentence.

All of a sudden, a tremor shook the command room like an earthquake.

The moment it did, they heard a tremendous roar. The sound was loud enough to shake the very air.

Several of the room’s shelves toppled over, dumping glass and documents all over the floor. Thea and Sara screamed and dived under the table for cover.

Grenier briefly covered his head, but the moment the tremors stopped, he immediately stood back up. “What’s going on?! What was that just now?!”

Then the command room’s speaker buzzed on, and a panicked sailor’s voice came through. “Commander, do you copy?! Someone is shelling the base!”

“Th-they’re what?!”

“A medium-sized ship of unknown nationality is approaching!”

Grenier grabbed the binoculars hanging on the wall and went over to the window. Thea and Sara did the same, coming out from under the table before grabbing other pairs of binoculars and looking out beyond the window.

The fog was even denser than before, making it impossible to see much. However, the large, dark silhouette of a ship was unmistakably visible atop the waves.

The mysterious ship was floating just a few hundred feet off the island’s shore.

“That’s…”

It looked to be an old freighter. It had three masts with tattered black sails hung from them. However, it was the rows of cannons visible on the ship’s sides that truly made it feel imposing. There was also a malignant, almost demonic sculpture attached to its prow. It was the great pirate’s symbol, and all who beheld it trembled.

There was no knowing which of the three let slip the words.

“That’s Jackal’s ship…”

A pirate ship straight out of a legend had appeared in front of the base.

“B-but that’s impossible!” “It can’t be!”

Sara and Grenier shuddered in disbelief. No matter how hard they rubbed their eyes, though, the ship refused to vanish from view.

Thea’s blood ran cold, and she lowered her binoculars.

Now she understood the truth.

In the end, she hadn’t solved the mystery at all. She didn’t know a thing about the seawater that had flooded her room, and she had no idea who those shady figures she’d faced in the naval base had been.

She thought back to Raftania’s screams.

“It’s the curse…!”

She crumpled to her knees. Terrified tears blurred her vision.

It was time to admit it. Much as she wanted to deny it, there was something that defied all logic right before her eyes. The navy had greedily sought its treasure, and now it was here to strike them down.

“It’s the pirate curse! We’re all going to diiiiie!!”

Thea let out a hysterical shriek, unable to do anything but lament her poor judgment.