Spy Classroom - Volume SS3 - Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Queneau’s Case

Arranq was the third-largest city in the Din Republic.

It had flourished as a port since medieval times, and it served as Din’s gateway to the other major nations of the world. Lieditz was farther inland and served as the capital for reasons of national defense, but Arranq was no less developed as a city. It had commercial buildings, warehouses, and colleges aplenty, and its streets bustled with locals and tourists alike.

Perhaps Arranq’s most distinctive feature was how much of a melting pot it was. The people who gathered there came from every class, race, and culture imaginable. There were maritime trading executives who made a fortune in international commerce during the postwar reconstruction; there were the longshoremen they worked to the bone. There were foreign businessmen strutting around the city in expensive suits; there were women dripping with charm who worked in the brothels that targeted them. And whenever diverse groups of people came together, there were always slums filled with abandoned children failed by the welfare system and the gangs that took advantage of them.

The city was so culturally eclectic that rumors went around about a legendary spy team having their headquarters there. Most people wrote it off as a simple urban legend, but the fact that every so often, a criminal group that threatened the nation’s security got torn apart without the police lifting so much as a finger certainly lent credence to the story.

That was the city of Arranq, and it was there that a girl walked down an alleyway like she owned the place.

“I’m a good girl. ♪ And that’s why I got. ♪ All my hopping shopping done, yo. ♪”

That girl was “Forgetter” Annette.

She was dressed in a seminary school uniform and using both hands to carry a paper bag. Her pigtails bounced as she skipped along, singing an oddly rhymey song to herself as she made her way down the back alleys of Arranq.

“Hmm?”

Then Annette stopped.

She’d just spotted something, and she stooped down and turned her gaze its way. Her right eye glimmered as she got down on all fours, not caring how dirty she was getting, and gave it her full attention.

“Oooooooooooooooooooh!”

A moment later, a cry of delight echoed through the street.

Two weeks had passed since Lamplight and Avian had begun their honeymoon.

The two teams’ interactions had deepened in that time, and the female Avian contingent had started staying the night more often and invading Lamplight’s lives around the clock. The racket they made continued night and day. For better or for worse, it was an exciting time.

Compared with the Avian girls, though, the Avian guys drew much clearer boundaries with Lamplight. The guys were primarily there to train with Klaus, and any mingling they did was secondary to that. They occasionally offered Lamplight some training, but that was the extent of their interference with the girls’ lives.

For some, though, there were interactions that simply couldn’t be avoided.

There was a magnetism of sorts that drew those cut from the same cloth together.

Something was off about Annette.

The rest of the team all noticed the change in their ash-pink-haired friend. Annette usually spent her time tinkering with bizarre gadgets in her room and playing pranks on the other girls (primarily Erna). It was rarely clear what rules governed her behavior, but she was nothing if not a creature of routine.

Recently, though, she’d been spending a lot more time out of the manor.

She would still join up with the others and spout her inscrutable nonsense when they were training or taking on missions, but the moment they were finished, she always rushed off again. It was unclear where she was going or what she was doing there, but she always returned with her face blackened with dirt. After hopping in the bath and washing off the outer layer of filth, she would head straight to bed.

The rest of the team was worried about her.

Lily crossed her arms and puzzled the situation over. “Hmm, I don’t like this one bit. Wherever she’s going, I bet there’s trouble.”

“I agree. I just hope she isn’t going out and causing it.”

The person who nodded—“Daughter Dearest” Grete—was a red-haired girl with long, slender arms and legs.

“Honestly, I’m less worried for Annette and more for whoever she’s visiting,” Lily agreed.

“I do hope she isn’t going out and planting explosives.”

“Yeah, Erna can survive that stuff ’cause she’s Erna, but the kinds of traps Annette likes to lay could easily kill someone.”

“…Well, I’m sure if she was causing any serious problems, the boss would step in and stop her. And moreover, she appears to be enjoying herself. Perhaps we should simply keep a watchful eye on her.”

The two of them walked down the Heat Haze Palace hallway.

“You might have a point. Besides, we’ve got something more important on our plates right now!”

After concluding their discussion, Lily kicked open the door in front of her and charged into the room.

“Hraaah! Go home, Avian! You people are starting to get too dang comfortable around here!”

The room in question was the lounge.

That was the room Avian had designated as their stronghold within Heat Haze Palace. It was furnished with soft couches, and the Avian members were gathered inside and looking over maps and documents together.

“Buzz off, Silver. We’re in the middle of a meeting,” “Flock” Vindo replied in irritation as he sat at the center of the group. He tapped his finger on the map laid out in front of him without so much as turning to look at Lily. “Those Discourse on Decadence assholes moved their base to Arranq recently. We needed to move our base of operations here, too.”

“…I must say, you truly are free spirits.”

On hearing Grete’s exasperated comment, “Feather” Pharma and “Cloud Drift” Lan gave her a cheerful wave.

“Thanks for haaaving us. Oh, by the way, we borrowed some of your sweets.”

“The desserts Sir Klaus makes are truly out of this world. The man doth never fail to impress.”

Lily’s shriek was downright bloodcurdling. “THOSE ARE THE SPECIAL FINANCIERS THAT TEACH BARELY EVER MAKES FOR USSSSS!!”

In the middle of the table, there was a big pile of shiny gold pastries. Klaus must have baked them out of the goodness of his heart. The man had a soft spot for Avian, a fact that numbered among the many gripes Lamplight had with the team.

“Quit wailing about every little thing.”

After shutting down Lily’s complaints, Vindo shoved a financier in his mouth.

“The Discourse on Decadence has been getting more aggressive lately.” He stuffed another one in. “If we’re not careful, ordinary civilians are going to get hurt.” Another small cake went down the hatch. “We’re all very.” Another. “Hard.” Another. “At.” Another. “Work.”

“Does anyone else see the way he’s gobbling those things down?!”

For all their arrogance, Avian were every bit the elite spies they claimed to be, and their pride and sense of duty occasionally shone through. Lily couldn’t help but grind her teeth and clench her fists.

“I-I’ll have you know our vacation’s over, and we’re hard at work on counterintelligence missions, too!” she said.

“What, mopping up after Klaus? How very diligent of you.”

“Grr…”

“Shut your traps so you can watch and learn. We’ll show you how we get things done.”

Lily and Grete had no rebuttal to that, and they sat down on one of the couch sections.

Klaus had started divvying up some of his work to the girls ever since their mission in the United States of Mouzaia, but the majority of the missions assigned to Lamplight were far too difficult for the girls to tackle. Klaus handled the bulk of them himself, and there was no denying that what tasks he did send their way were little more than busywork. What’s more, the girls often struggled even with that.

The fact of the matter was, getting to watch Avian handle a mission would be extremely educational.

When the Lamplight girls showed a legitimate interest in learning, Vindo made no efforts to shoo them away. He even casually slid to the side so they would have a better view of the mission files.

Before long, other girls started gathering in the lounge to join Lily and Grete. It got to be a little cramped, but nobody complained.

“Wait, huh?” As Lily watched the meeting play out from the side, she cocked her head. “Hold on there, Avian. Aren’t you missing someone?”

“You mean Queneau.”

Vindo nodded.

At the moment, there were only five Avian members there in the lounge. There should have been one more person at the meeting, a man called “South Wind” Queneau, but he was nowhere to be seen.

Queneau was a large man who wore a mask. Between that and his taciturn nature, he was a man of many mysteries.

The girls tilted their heads. Where was he?

“I don’t know,” Vindo curtly replied.

“Huh?”

“He’s probably off doing his own thing. We’ll share our findings later.”

That was an oddly detached way of putting it.

“I’m sure Queneau’ll be fine. ♪” “Yeah, right? He’ll come back sooooner or later,” some of the other Avian members added.

That wasn’t the reaction Lily had been expecting at all. Her eyes went wide. Was Queneau really so friendless on his own team?

As though sensing her question, “Glide” Qulle offered her some context. “Look, here’s the thing,” she explained. “It’s not like we’re icing him out or anything. He just prefers to operate solo, that’s all.”

“Oh, I see. So he’s not a big fan of group work?”

“Yeah. But it’s unreal how good an engineer he is. He’ll build us anything we ask for, and he’s a genius when it comes to blowing up walls and ceilings. He doesn’t say much, but he does good work.”

“You don’t say.”

It sounded like Queneau occupied a unique position on the team. Vindo and the others didn’t go out of their way to get buddy-buddy with him, but they didn’t push him away, either.

As their explanation sank in for Lily, Grete offered a quiet murmur from beside her. “We have someone like that on Lamplight, as well.”

“Hmm?”

“An inventor who often works alone.”

Now that she mentioned it, realization dawned on Lily.

Grete was right; Lamplight did have someone who held a similar role as Queneau did on Avian—a girl who occasionally went off on her own during missions and came back having achieved unforeseen successes.

“Bottom line is this,” Vindo said unconcernedly. “As long as he’s serving his country, who cares how he does it?”

On the surface, his words sounded cold.

However, the Lamplight girls were beginning to understand just how much trust underpinned them.

Annette raced down the hallway.

The rest of the girls looked on in bewilderment as, once again, she slipped out of the manor and dashed off, swinging her arms with great vigor as she went.

After briskly making her way away from the hustle and bustle of the main thoroughfare, she came to a brothel-packed street with a drainage channel running behind it. The channel was designed to take on the city’s sewage and carry it out to the sea. A stink lingered over it, and it swarmed with filthy rats and bugs.

The channel was no place for humans, yet Annette happily approached it all the same.

“I brought you some food, yo!”

Her smile was downright radiant.

Attached to the drainage channel was a skinny sewer pipe not designed to fit a human, and inside it, there was a black cat.

Dirty was really the only word to describe it. Its dark fur was matted with mud and sewer oil, giving it a sickening sheen. Even its eyes glinting in the darkness were ugly and covered by swollen lids. Everything about its features made it come across as arrogant.

“I knew it the first time I set eyes on you, yo! Your name’s Olive!”

Annette planted her hands on her hips and struck an imposing pose before the cat.

Olive the cat didn’t budge.

“You’ve earned my favor, so I’ll be expecting some thanks!”

Annette took the cat food she’d brought and tossed it into the pipe with a proud smile.

However, Olive still didn’t move.

“…Hmph.”

Annette puffed up her cheeks at Olive’s indifference. She pursed her lips and sulked for a bit, after which she tossed in a couple handfuls of dry food, but Olive showed no interest. Her nose twitched a bit, but that was all.

That cat was the reason Annette had been leaving the manor so often.

Olive had tugged on her heartstrings, and hard. The first time Annette had spotted her, she’d talked to Olive until the sun went down. Now, whenever she had free time, she went to that alleyway drainage channel and plotted to get the black cat to let her pet it.

At first, Annette had brought traps to try to catch Olive, but Olive always immediately ran away, so Annette had given up on that line of attack.

That whole time, the cat had never once warmed up to her. She didn’t even care about the canned food Annette had specifically gone to a pet store to buy.

“Yo, I brought a toy I thought you might like!”

Undeterred, Annette retrieved a rod-shaped implement from within her skirt. The rod had a bundle of fuzzy string on its end that was built to extend and retract. Annette had made sure to do her research into what cats liked.

With toy in hand, Annette slowly inched toward Olive.

“…Nay. All you’re doing is scaring her.”

The voice was deep and rumbling.

A large man had appeared behind Annette as though out of nowhere. He was massive, with arms and legs at least twice as thick as Annette’s. There was an eerie white mask over his face, and his raw presence served to intimidate everything around him even when he wasn’t doing anything.

He stood in the channel as though to block Annette’s path of retreat.

“What’s your deal, yo?” she asked.

“Stay away from this alley, ‘Forgetter’ Annette. This will be a danger zone soon,” declared the masked man, his voice solemn and grave. “And also…that cat will never love you.”

Annette was shocked, and the man walked away without waiting for her response.

After he left, Annette pulled herself together and deployed the toy she had made, but the black cat immediately turned tail and scampered deeper within the pipe. It was just as the masked man had predicted.

That marked an unforeseen encounter between “Forgetter” Annette and “South Wind” Queneau.

Annette’s trap plan, cat food plan, and toy plan had all failed in succession, so that evening, she went and visited the animal shed outside the manor.

“Yo, Sis, I need to know what kinds of things cats like to eat!”

When it came to Lamplight members who were good with animals, there was one member who stood head and shoulders above the others: “Meadow” Sara. Sara had a variety of different animals under her care, and she had no trouble answering Annette’s question. “Cats? That’s an interesting one. Have you tried milk?”

“Ooh! I’ve got loads of that in the fridge already!”

“Great! Oh, but you’re going to need to make sure it’s a type that’s all right for cats to drink. And when you give it to them, make sure to warm it up to room temperature first. Otherwise, it could give them an upset stomach.”

Once Annette had her answer, she whirled around, declared, “I’m gonna go build a thermos with awesome insulation, yo!” and left the shed.

Sara watched her go, squinting as though Annette herself were shining radiantly.

Then someone else came by the shed.

“It would appear she’s been looking after a stray cat.”

The newcomer was Lamplight’s boss, Klaus. He turned and looked in the direction Annette had run off in. Unsurprisingly, he too had noticed something was off about her.

“That’s right.” Sara’s expression softened. “Miss Annette’s been visiting that back alley a lot these last few days.”

“Are you not planning on helping her? I understand she’s been having a rough time of it.”

With Sara’s special “rearing” talent, she could train just about any animal to do what she said. Winning over a cat would be child’s play for her.

“Oh, every part of me wants to…”

Sara gave Klaus’s question a conflicted smile.

“…but this is the first time Miss Annette’s taken interest in anything other than gadgets and growing taller, so I decided it would be best to just watch over her for now. This will be a valuable learning experience for her.”

“You really are her guardian, aren’t you?”

What Sara was describing was socio-emotional learning.

She was treating Annette as one would a child, and to that, Klaus had but one comment: “Magnificent.”

After their first encounter, Queneau started showing up at the drainage channel while Annette was there more often.

“I don’t wanna see your face, yo. Get out of here.”

“Nay. This is where my work is.”

Despite Annette’s shouts, Queneau paid her no heed. His voice rang with exasperation as he dutifully repeated his warning. “And again, it’s dangerous here. Soon, this will be a battlefield…”

Annette didn’t listen to a word he said and continued searching the area around the channel for the black cat while scheming up ways to get it to like her. The milk Sara had told her about had successfully piqued Olive’s interest, but in the end, Olive had never ended up approaching the dish Annette had poured it in.

Today, Annette was testing out a different tactic altogether.

By stringing fine thread from the nearby concrete and posts, she was creating a net of sorts across the waterway. Her fingers moved daintily as she surrounded the area the cat was liable to cross any second now.

Queneau watched her work without moving an inch. “Query. What is that?”

“A special trap I put together!” Annette chirped. “The moment she touches it, it’ll snatch her right up!”

Annette had stolen that handy-dandy thread from one of Avian’s members, “Cloud Drift” Lan. “Th-thou mayn’t have it,” Lan had protested through to the end, but as soon as Annette had busted out her electric drill, Lan had tearfully submitted.

Queneau pulled out a pair of scissors and snipped through the string. “…Nay. Don’t do that.”

“How dare you?!”

“Set the bait and leave. That cat is a wary one. She won’t fall for a trap that simple.”

Annette scowled in displeasure at the statement.

However, she remembered how accurately he’d assessed the cat’s temperament last time. After peevishly curling the corner of her mouth upward, she poured the warm milk into a saucer, set it down in front of the concrete sewer pipe, and stepped away from the drainage channel.

Queneau was well acquainted with the nearby alleyways, and Annette reluctantly followed his lead as he led her to an abandoned wooden house.

That was the building he was using as a hideout. Its window had a clear view of the channel. Annette pulled out a pair of binoculars and stared through them intently.

The cat Annette had dubbed Olive slipped out of the pipe she’d been hiding in. She turned her head side to side, carefully surveying her surroundings, then approached the saucer lying on the embankment. After walking in circles around it, she gave the milk a tentative lick, then began lapping it up.

“Whoaaa!!” Annette cheered.

That was the first time Olive had ever accepted an offering.

Annette wasted no time in leaping out the window. She tottered along the fence line and raced toward the cat.

Olive had been engrossed in the milk, but when she looked up and saw Annette, she turned on the spot and vanished back into the sewer pipe.

Annette was all alone by the drainage channel.

“Yo!” Her voice echoed with anger. “I think she’s pretty darn ungrateful!”

Once again, her plan to capture Olive had failed.

Annette’s shoulders slumped a bit, but she was still happy Olive had gone for the milk, and she filled the saucer back up to the brim. After looking around with sadness in her eyes and finding Olive was nowhere to be seen, she returned to the wooden house beside the waterway.

She puffed up her cheeks and resumed her spot by the window with her binoculars.

Soon, Olive came back to the drainage channel. She checked to make sure there were no humans nearby, wandered around for a bit, and went back to lapping up the milk.

Annette frowned and lowered her binoculars. “That punk Olive won’t drink the milk when I’m around, yo.”

“Nay. I’ll say it again,” Queneau’s voice rumbled. “The cat will never love you. Abandon your futile wish.”

“Hmph.”

“…You’re a Bloodfolk.”

Annette cocked her head. “What’s that, yo?”

Queneau pulled over a chair and slowly sat himself down. The age-worn chair let out a horrible creaking noise every time he shifted his weight.

He unhurriedly began his explanation. “When the world is in times of upheaval, mothers beset by intense stress sometimes birth twisted babies. You could call it a genetic mutation. Great evils are born into this world. Dictators who commit massacres, thrill-seeking serial killers… Outsiders who lack the seed of humanity. Those are the Tainted Bloodfolk.” His voice was level. “You, ‘Forgetter’ Annette, are one of those Bloodfolk. And an incredibly pure one.”

Annette remained expressionless.

She didn’t have any memories from more than four years ago. She had met Matilda, who had professed to be her mother that one time, but Annette had found her unpleasant and ended up blowing her up. Plus, Matilda wasn’t even her birth mother.

Annette knew nothing about her origins, nor did she much care about them.

“I think you’re talking nonsense, yo.”

“Nay. One Bloodfolk knows another.”

Queneau reached up and gave his mask a slight tilt.

He never showed his real face to his Avian teammates, but he revealed it to Annette and Annette alone.

“I, too, am a Bloodfolk. Though my blood is too thin to possibly compare with yours.”

“………”

Annette remained stony-faced. She quietly fixed her right eye on Queneau.

Queneau returned his mask to its original position. “Here’s some advice, from one kin to another. Cats are attuned to the hearts of men. You’ll never get her to—”

“You stink, yo.” Annette cut Queneau off and stuck out her tongue. “I don’t like you. Killers who reek of blood shouldn’t go talking all pompous-like.”

“The fact you could smell that is proof positive you’re a Bloodfolk.”

Queneau gave his head a disappointed shake as he rose to his feet. The dark-red stain on his jacket sleeve looked like blood, and it wasn’t his.

“Heed these words… Alter your nature, ‘Forgetter’ Annette. Resist your fate,” he said on his way out. “For if you don’t…you’ll never obtain anything.”

The next three days passed in a flash.

Annette visited the drainage channel every day, pouring out a bowl of milk and then leaving the area each time she had. Olive seemed happy enough to drink it while Annette hid, so she started leaving out bowls of cat food, too.

Olive licked the bowls clean. The cat had a shocking appetite.

Annette beamed upon seeing the empty bowls, but Olive still ran away whenever she tried to get near, and her expression would darken once more.

The other Lamplight girls started picking up on what was happening, and they, too, offered Annette their support. They didn’t help her directly out of respect for Sara’s wishes, but they were careful to let her carve out free time in the middle of their missions, and when she was working past the point when the shops closed, someone always made sure to go buy the milk for her. Some of the girls even bought her books on how to raise cats.

“Yo, thanks!” Annette would say before rushing off to the drainage channel.

All that time, Queneau didn’t show up so much as once.

The one time Annette spotted him walking down the far end of an alley, his jacket was wet with fresh blood.

Meanwhile, Avian’s mission was proceeding apace. At eight o’clock one night, all five of the team’s members aside from Queneau headed for a factory near the harbor.

The factory dealt primarily with metalworking. The building doubled as a warehouse, and back behind the lathes and other machinery, there were wooden shipping containers piled all the way to the ceiling. According to their official filings, they processed and treated foreign inputs and sold them to other Din businesses.

According to a newspaper article, there had been explosions heard from within the building last month, but when local police had investigated, they’d written it off as a machine failure.

The holes in that story had failed to escape Avian’s notice.

After picking the workshop’s lock, the five elites strode on inside.

“Yeah, that’s weeeird.” Pharma was the first to notice what was off. She gave her lips a captivating lick and pointed at the machines. “Look at where that lathe and drilling machine aaare. You wouldn’t normally put them so close together. The scrap iron would go flying and hit the workers and totally get in the waaay. Would you mind, Vics?”

“Yup! ♪ I’m on it. ♪”

The chipper reply came from a handsome young man with a gentle smile—“Lander” Vics. The machines were taller than he was, but thanks to his freakish strength, all it took was a shove to move them.

Once the machines were out of the way, it became clear someone had carved a hole in the factory’s floor. It was three feet to a side and packed full of metal pipes.

“Those pipes have riiifling marks.”

“Yeah, they’re making guns out of improvised parts—just like they taught us at the academy. ♪”

This time around, Avian had tracked down the site where the Discourse on Decadence was manufacturing their arms. Not only had the Discourse on Decadence been building weapons for themselves, but they’d also been selling them to gangs.

As her teammates secured the evidence, “Glide” Qulle put a hand to her ear. “Hey, Vindo—”

“Don’t be insipid.”

Vindo had spent the entire operation looking bored out of his mind, and he let out a sigh. He slowly withdrew his hands from his pants pockets.

“I don’t need you to tell me there’s hostiles here. Looks like they finally worked up the nerve.”

In those hands, he was holding a pair of knives.

“I’m code name Flock—and it’s time to gouge clean through.”

Vindo’s body vanished—or rather, he leaped with such speed that it looked like it did. After bounding across the top of the lathe, he landed over by the factory’s side wall in the blink of an eye.

The pair of boys standing there, who looked to be Discourse on Decadence members, readied their guns, but they were too slow. By the time they managed to draw a bead on Vindo, he’d already finished driving a knife into each of their shoulders.

A girl popped up near the opposite wall with a light machine gun. It was a high-firepower weapon capable of tearing through people with ease, and the fact she had it spoke to how dangerous the Discourse on Decadence was.

However, they’d chosen a poor group to pick a fight with.

Before the girl could open fire, a thread the width of piano wire wound its way around her throat. That was “Cloud Drift” Lan’s handiwork. An unnecessarily archaic, “Thou’rt fortunate ’tis I you face. Thy life I shall not claim,” was the last thing the girl heard before passing out.

There were other Discourse members lying in wait, but Vics crushed one of their arms with a lathe, and a few whispers from Pharma led another set to descend into friendly fire.

“Two to the east… One to the west… No, scratch that last one, Vindo already took care of them…”

Meanwhile, Qulle stood in the center of the factory, keeping a watchful eye on the battle and relaying their foes’ positions to her team.

Eventually, she gave a big nod.

“…All right, that’s the last of them. I have to say, I wasn’t expecting there to be so many.”

The fight had ended in a quick trouncing, and the factory was quiet again.

The Avian combatants regrouped around Qulle.

Behind him, Vics was dragging a thin boy. The boy was stark naked. Vics had used his monstrous strength to tear his clothes to shreds, and he handed the naked, trembling boy over to Pharma. Pharma stroked his bare skin. “I’ll be right back once I’ve overwritten his brain with so much pleasure he can’t survive without meee,” she said with a seductive smile before loading the boy onto a cart and wheeling him behind a set of lockers.

Qulle and Lan covered their faces in embarrassment as the boy’s immodest cries echoed through the factory.

“Looks like we’ve really got them on the ropes ♪,” Vics said, turning to Vindo with a grin. “Us snatching up their lieutenants got them running scared. Luring the Executioners here so they could hit them with everything they had was a pretty big gamble, and it didn’t pay off. Now all that’s left are the last few lieutenants and the head honcho. ♪ Why don’t you look happier about this? ♪”

“Be quiet, would you?” Vindo stepped away from Vics in annoyance. “The finished guns weren’t here. They already sold them off. When I think of the gangs that got ahold of them and the innocent civilians in harm’s way, it makes me sick.”

“Oh wow, I didn’t realize you were so worried. ♪ That’s our bighearted boss we’ve got. ♪”

“Of course I am. It’s our job to keep the nation safe.”

“Well, hey, don’t worry. ♪ Queneau said in his report that he knows where the guns ended up. ♪ He’s been keeping an eye on the gangs for us.”

Vindo scowled. “And why didn’t that report ever make it to me?”

“Hmm? Because I didn’t tell you about it, duh. ♪”

“And why’s that?”

“Oh? Should I have?”

Sparks crackled as the two of them glared at each other. Vindo shifted his hand a little to get ready to sock Vics, and Vics shifted his feet ever so slightly to accept his challenge.

The two of them were constantly at each other’s throats.

Vics was usually the one who picked the fights. Both of them specialized in combat, and neither of them was willing to give the other an inch.

However, they broke it up when one particularly loud cry from the boy spoiled the party.

“I’ve got neeews, everyone. I just broke my record.” With a delighted smile, Pharma stepped out from behind the lockers. “I had him calling me Mommy in just fooour minutes. How quick is that? But that wasn’t the only thing quick about him. By the end, he was crying like a cute little baby and telling me aaall about their top leadership while he made like a shaken soda and sprayed his—”

““We don’t need the details.””

The two guys sounded legitimately peeved.

With that, Avian got one step closer to taking down the Discourse on Decadence.

Also, while Avian was taking down their opponents and getting intel out of them at blistering speeds—

““““““That was so fast!””””””

—all the Lamplight girls who’d come along to observe could do was gawk in admiration.

Most of Avian’s and Lamplight’s members were still at the factory, but Sara went back to Heat Haze Palace early and headed for the animal shed. The night was bone-chilling, and she knew her pets were in danger of catching cold. After getting permission from the others, she’d slipped away to bring her animals inside. She swaddled each of her mice in her hands as she moved them into their cage.

“Yo, Sis!”

Midway through the process, Annette came rushing in. She looked to be at her wits’ end, and she charged headfirst into the pile of blankets that had been stored in the shed for the animals.

“What’s the matter?”

“I’m taking these!”

With that, Annette lifted a pile of blankets far too big for her to carry and dashed back out of the shed with tottering footsteps.

“Olive’s not doing too good! I need to hurry, yo!”

“W-wait, hold on!”

Sara tried to call out to her, but her mice shivered from the cold and burrowed their way into her clothes. Getting them into their cage took all of Sara’s attention, and she missed her chance to stop Annette.

After discarding enough blankets to get herself down to a manageable load, Annette raced toward the alley.

Just a short while ago, she’d spotted Olive lying on her side by the drainage channel. She’d been curled up in an uncharacteristically docile ball deep in the sewer pipe where Annette couldn’t reach her.

It had been clear just from looking at her that she wasn’t well.

Annette had doled out her milk and cat food and stepped away just like always, but Olive had never emerged to eat. Normally, the voracious little cat would have finished both bowls off without leaving a scrap. Annette had tried swapping the bowls out for canned fish and other types of milk, but to no avail. That was when she’d hurried back to Heat Haze Palace to grab the blankets.

Arms laden with medicine and duvets, Annette arrived at the usual alleyway. None of the streetlights reached that far, and the path was dark. Annette wove her way between the buildings and made for the drainage channel.

“Hmm…?”

On her way there, she stopped.

She could hear gunfire coming from farther down the alley. It rang out intermittently. There was some sort of firefight going on. Brothel workers screamed and fled toward the main thoroughfare.

As Annette stood there, motionless, a sketchy-looking man rushed out from behind a building.

In his hand was a crudely constructed firearm.

The look on his face as he ran was frantic, like he was trying to get away from someone. He was on a collision course with Annette.

“Outta the way, kid!”

Right before he slammed into her, something massive descended from atop the building.

That something was Queneau.

Queneau positioned himself to protect Annette, taking the man’s charge head-on and grabbing his face in his large grip.

“I’m code name South Wind—and it’s time to howl unseen…”

There was a slender apparatus coiled around Queneau’s hands. It was designed to strengthen each of his fingers. He fixed his hands around the man’s head like a vice.

“Oh hell, it’s you.” On seeing Queneau, the man clicked his tongue in distress. “You’re the homicidal lunatic who’s been going around killing gangsters!!”

“Aye.”

As the word left Queneau’s mouth, the man’s head exploded like a grape. Queneau had used his reinforced grip to crush it. Globs of blood splattered across Queneau’s jacket.

“Query.” Queneau turned around. “Didn’t I tell you repeatedly to stay away?”

“Yo, what’s going on?”

“It’s become a battlefield… The guns the Discourse on Decadence sold are fueling a gang war… It’s out of control.” Queneau scooped up the gun the man whose face he’d crushed had been holding. “I killed the ones attacking civilians indiscriminately. And the evacuation is finished. All that’s left is for the gangs to kill each other over nothing.”

Annette dashed past Queneau. “I’m worried about Olive!”

“Nay. Listen to people when they’re talking to you.”

Once Annette took off, there wasn’t a person alive who could restrain her.

Gunshots and screams echoed through the alley at irregular intervals as Annette raced down it. She leaped over a dead body, then ignored a woman falling from a second-floor window. A stray bullet obliterated the hairband keeping her right pigtail in place, but Annette didn’t stop.

It was rare for her to run so hard it left her out of breath. The playful smile that served as her constant companion was nowhere to be seen.

There was another gangster blocking the road. When he saw Annette sprinting down the street, he took her for an assailant from a rival gang and fired. His bullet blasted away Annette’s remaining hairband. He was just about to take aim again when Queneau came chasing after Annette and landed a shot square between his eyes.

Annette didn’t slow down until she reached the drainage channel, focusing everything she had into putting one foot in front of the other.

Eventually, she arrived at the fork in the waterway where she’d first spotted the black cat.

There, Olive was lying in a pool of blood.

She was bleeding all the way from her shoulder to her groin. She’d gotten hit by a stray bullet, and Annette could see the projectile lodged in the flesh and bone near her neck.

Annette dropped the blankets she’d been carrying.

“Olive…”

She called out the cat’s name and reached out to touch her body.

“Aren’t you going to run away from me?”

The cat flopped into Annette’s arms.

She’d already breathed her last.

Her body still had a faint warmth to it, but there was no life in her bones. Annette shook her over and over, but no light ever returned to her eyes.

“O-Olive…”

Annette let out a frail moan and pressed her head against the cat’s body. She rubbed her face back and forth as though trying to wipe all the blood Olive was losing.

When Queneau got to the drainage channel, he simply stood there. He didn’t know what to say to her.

All the while, the gunshots continued.

The gang war was raging on.

Queneau knew it was the Discourse on Decadence’s leader who had incited the fighting in the first place. In order to drum up demand for their prototype guns, the ringleader had spread misinformation to pit the gangs against each other.

It was a pointless conflict. A bloodbath with nothing to be gained.

At that moment, a man showed up by the drainage channel. Given the makeshift gun he was clutching, it wasn’t hard to deduce he was a gangster. “Who goes there?” he barked at Annette and Queneau as he leveled his barrel at them.

Annette lifted her face from Olive and stared at the man.

The man screamed. One could hardly blame him, considering how much blood was smeared across her face.

“Wh-who are you people?”

“Olive died,” Annette muttered, “and it’s all your fault…”

“Who’s Olive?” The man gave her a confused look, then spotted what she was cradling in her arms and scoffed. “Wait, that’s just some cat.”

“………”

“Here I was, thinkin’ we’d killed a friend of yours or somethin’. Ha! If you ain’t a part of our world, then I got no business with you. Go on and skedaddle back to the main road before I—”

“I can’t tell them apart, yo.”

“Huh?”

“I don’t understand the difference between people and cats. Aren’t they basically the same?”

The man stared at Annette with his mouth half-agape. He furrowed his brow, unable to comprehend what she was talking about.

There was no way Annette and the man were going to be able to hold a conversation—their brains were simply built differently.

“So if you say it’s okay to kill cats…”

Still clutching Olive in her right hand, Annette reached out with her left.

“…then it must be okay to kill people, too.”

With that, the massacre commenced.

The gang war that had abruptly started in Arranq ended by nine the same night.

Thanks to Queneau’s efforts, there were zero civilian casualties, but with over fifty dead and wounded gangsters, it became a huge news story all the same.

The situation was too much for the local police to handle, and they ended up having to call in the army, which happened to include Captain Welter Barth of the Military Intelligence Department. The situation was so extreme that they feared foreign spies might be involved.

When they got to the scene, what they saw shocked them.

Several of the corpses had been rendered into unidentifiable smithereens. There was blast residue all over the area, and a full fifth of the buildings had been leveled.

Welter shuddered at the sheer malice he sensed, but in the end, he had no choice but to report the dead gangsters as having simply killed each other in the fighting.

The fact that a girl approximately fourteen years of age had brutally slaughtered thirteen of them was quietly omitted.

Annette and Queneau walked away from the alley to get away from the cops and soldiers patrolling the area. Annette had wrapped the black cat’s corpse in a blanket, and Queneau was following a few steps behind her.

Queneau had changed into a fresh jacket. He’d long since gotten rid of his bloodstained one and burned it to ash to destroy the evidence. He’d offered to burn the cat’s body, too, but Annette had shaken her head no. She was still cradling it, like the reality of the situation had yet to sink in for her.

The two of them made quite the pair as they strode through the night.

“Aye,” Queneau said. “People like us have no tears… Not even for times like these…”

Annette had already wiped the blood off her face. She slowed her pace to let Queneau catch up. “Were you worried about Olive, too?”

“Aye. The cat refused to leave her territory.”

“………”

“Let me explain myself. I tried to catch her, too. I wanted to get her away from the alley. But just as she never warmed to you, she never let me touch her…” Beneath his mask, Queneau let out a sigh. “Not all can escape the darkness. The cat failed to, and so too did we…”

“I don’t get what you mean, yo.” Annette squeezed her fists tight and whirled around. “I didn’t do anything wrong!”

“…You really believe that?”

“It’s all their fault Olive died!”

“Nay.”

Queneau came to a stop, then strode past Annette and overtook her.

“We have to change. Otherwise, we’ll never be free from the fate of the Bloodfolk.”

Annette gave him a skeptical look.

In the end, Annette never did get a proper rundown of what the Bloodfolk actually were. Queneau refused to talk about it, like he felt no further explanation was necessary.

As Queneau strode on and left Annette behind, he heard a pair of cheerful voices call out from his flank.

“Oh, hi, Queneau. What are you doing here?” “Ah, a strange twist of fate indeed.”

It was the Avian women.

Qulle and Lan set down their shopping bags and waved at him. From the bags, he could hear the sound of bottles clinking against each other.

They were standing in front of a late-night liquor store. Whenever Avian reached a stopping point in one of their missions, everyone on the team except Lan liked to celebrate with a drink.

Pharma stepped out of the store with a wine bottle in each hand. “Heyyy, it’s Queneau,” she said, beaming. “So Vics and Vindo got into a fight during our mission, see, and looong story short, they decided to settle it with a contest to see who could land a punch on Mr. Klaus first. We were just in the middle of buying drinks to enjoy while we watch their match.”

Annette quietly took cover behind the building. The women didn’t seem to have noticed her.

Pharma reached over and laid a hand on Queneau’s arm in an overly familiar fashion, to which he let out a sigh. “Nay. You should be stopping the fight.”

“Awww, but the Lamplight girls have already started betting on the ouuutcome.”

“Then they have no more class than we do.”

As Queneau stood there, Vics showed up as well. Upon seeing Queneau, he slung an arm over his shoulder. “You’re gonna bet on me, right, buddy? ♪ I promise, you won’t regret it. ♪”

“You came to buy alcohol, too?”

“Yeah, to drink after I win. ♪”

Then, without a sound, Vindo appeared on the opposite side as Vics with a look of exasperation on his face. “I don’t know why Vics is so needlessly competitive. Still, you should bet on me.”

“…If you’re on good enough terms to come shopping together, then you’re on good enough terms to not fight.”

Vindo had a large handbag full of booze dangling from his shoulder. After his bout with Vics, he intended to finish it all off before the night was out. However, him being a glutton and heavy drinker was hardly news.

Vindo turned his gaze to Queneau, then to the spot where Annette was hiding behind the building. “Looks like you finished up on your end, too.”

“Aye.”

Vindo pulled a bottle of whiskey out of his bag. “This is the stuff you like, right? Good work today.”

Without waiting for a response, he tossed the bottle over. Sure enough, it was Queneau’s favorite—a brand produced in the United States of Mouzaia.

Avian’s members chatted happily as they set off for Heat Haze Palace. From the look of it, they were planning on staying the night there. Every so often, Queneau looked back over his shoulder. “Come on,” he called back.

Annette had watched the whole series of exchanges from start to finish.

“‘Forgetter’ Annette… Do you understand how I feel?” Queneau said. “I worry… If they died, would that be enough to make me cry? Does a dirty killer like me even have the right to hope for that?”

“………”

“What about you? If your Lamplight allies died, would you be able to cry for them?”

Annette offered him no reply.

Queneau went on undeterred. “I dream sometimes…of the moment their lives, or perhaps mine, comes to an end…”

“………”

“If I had a choice, I’d like to die on their behalf… That would be enough to bring me joy…”

Annette walked over, emotionless, and peered up at Queneau’s large frame.

The anxious eyes she saw behind the slits in his mask were like those of a young child.

After quietly slipping out of her bedroom in the dead of night, Annette made for the Heat Haze Palace garden. Her shovel crunched through the ground as she dug her hole.

At no point did she break out her beloved drill. She drove every scoop into the hard earth by hand.

Merriment and cheer echoed out from within the manor. Avian had dragged the Lamplight girls into their drinking party.

Rather than join in the festivities, Annette devoted her full attention to digging out the soil. When she had finally finished her hole, she quietly placed Olive’s body at the bottom. She then gently covered the body with dirt, and when she was finished filling the hole in its entirety, she planted the cat toy she’d built atop it as a grave marker.

“Hello, Annette.”

Klaus walked over to her.

Still hunched over, Annette stared up at his chest. Her gaze was fixed on something that was, by all rights, unthinkable.

His shirt was missing its third button from the top.

“…Hmm? Ah, this.” Klaus nodded. “Vindo and Vics came looking for a showdown. They’ve improved a lot in a very short time. I still beat them without taking an injury, mind you.”

Annette’s expression was stony.

Knocking off one of Klaus’s shirt buttons was an impressive feat, the likes of which the Lamplight girls had yet to achieve themselves. In that moment, though, Annette couldn’t have cared less.

Klaus knelt down beside her. “It looks like you’ve been through a lot.”

Annette laid her head on his shoulder. “I’ve never felt this glum before, yo.”

“I can see that. Would you mind telling me what happened? Feel free to take your time.”

Annette gave him the rundown on the situation. She told him about the black cat she’d taken a shine to one day. About how she’d named the unfriendly cat Olive and how she’d started feeding it daily. About how she’d never succeeded in petting Olive while she had still been alive. About how Olive had died after getting caught in the cross fire of a gang war.

Her voice was chipper, but there was grief lurking just below its surface.

“……………………”

“What is it, Bro?”

After listening to her story, Klaus laid a hand over his mouth and sank into silence.

Annette shifted her head to coax out a reply, and Klaus laid a hand on the grave marker. “Look, I don’t want to be the bearer of false hope.”

“Huh?”

“This cat was wary and had a fierce appetite. She refused to leave her territory. She was tired this morning, and by nightfall, she was lying down and bleeding from her groin. Did I get all that right?”

Annette nodded. Those were the facts, exactly as she’d laid them out for him.

Klaus went on. “Now, I need you to understand that this is by no means certain,” he prefaced his statement. “But it’s possible that she may have been pregnant.”

Queneau, as well as the black cat she had met, proved to be great catalysts of change for Annette.

“Alter your nature, ‘Forgetter’ Annette. Resist your fate.”

The world may have been awash in pain, but she’d never felt that pain, not in any real sense. She followed her whims wherever they took her, and when things got to be too much for her, she turned to violent outlets. Never once had her heart been sullied.

This experience had given her a taste of despair, and it sparked something deep within her.

Annette returned to the drainage channel once more.

The army and police had given up looking for survivors and brought their investigation to an end. The whole area was cordoned off with police tape.

Annette sliced through the tape without a moment’s hesitation and made her way to the waterway.

Klaus’s theory had a definite logic to it. It was odd that a cat as cautious as Olive would have continued hanging around an alley as it became an active combat zone. If she had been on the verge of giving birth, though, then that was a different story altogether. She couldn’t very well have pulled up stakes when she had been on the verge of going into labor. She had been hungry because she had needed nutrients for her unborn litter, and she had been wary of strangers in order to keep them safe. All of her behavior made sense.

On top of that, Annette had never gotten a chance to observe Olive from close-up. She could easily have failed to spot a swollen belly. However, the fact that her appetite had dropped just before she’d died implied she might have been on the verge of giving birth. Considering where her bleeding was, there was a possibility she’d already had her litter by the time she had died.

“Olive’s babies…”

Annette clutched her flashlight and searched for signs of tiny life.

The rain was coming down hard, but even as her small frame got soaked clean through, she never stopped looking.

About an hour into her search, she discovered something pink beside the sewer pipes. They must have just been born. There were three of them all next to each other, and though they had a few patches of black fuzz, the majority of their skin was bare and exposed.

Annette gulped and turned her flashlight’s beam toward them.

The light wavered.

She stowed the flashlight away, crouched down, and cupped the three lumps in her hands to lift them. She bit down on her trembling lip as she slowly rose to her feet and looked back up.

“________”

A wordless moan escaped her throat.

Everything before her had been blown to bits. All the concrete surrounding the drainage channel lay in ruins, and the debris lay scattered around her feet.

The three kittens Olive had birthed had all been crushed to death by the rubble.

However, it wasn’t the gang war or some random accident that had ended their lives. It was the bombs Annette had set off in a mad frenzy to kill the gangsters.

Annette was the one who’d killed Olive’s babies.