So that ended up in my mouth. When we kissed.
I wasn’t even thinking about it, but my thumb brushed my lips, and that’s when I felt Audrey’s eyes on me, sharp as knives.
"I knew it. You were definitely enjoying yourself earlier—"
"Ruby, get up! It’s time for your favorite thing next, physical activity. Come on, move it!"
"Uwah— Huh? What? Is the talk already over?"
"Yeah, it’s done, so get up now."
When I shook her awake in a hurry, Ruby shot upright like she’d been zapped in her sleep, her whole body giving a little jolt. She was still wearing the blindfold, so she turned her head blindly looking for me, then finally seemed to remember it was there and flipped it up.
And then.
Heh.
I swear I could see it happen. Her red eyes locked onto me and just instantly lit up with pure, mischievous glee.
"Alright~ Now that I’m nicely rested, time to gather my strength and bother the manager some more~"
"That’s not why I woke you..."
The consultations had been... eye-opening. In a slightly terrifying way. I’d gotten a front-row seat to the darker sides of these two, big and small. But standing here now, just the three of us talking like normal, it didn’t feel like they’d changed at all from before. It just felt like I’d been handed a reminder—a really loud one—that I needed to look closer at the shadows that came with Ruby and Audrey.
To do that, though...
Who was I even managing them for, really?
And could I actually take a step over into their world?
I needed to find real answers to those questions, answers that would actually satisfy them. That was going to be my job from here on out. And let’s be honest, it wasn’t going to be easy.
Speaking of not easy, I had another fun task right in front of me.
Now it was time to test their abilities.
The training facilities at The Hub were pretty decent, all things considered. Not worse than some of the fancy private centers out there.
"Manager, there’s a whole bunch of doors here. What’s all this?"
"Private training rooms. For when a Hunter wants to practice solo. If you’re interested, I can book one for you later."
"Ehh, no thanks. Training’s boring."
The personal rooms lined both sides of the long, gray hallway. They were built tough—soundproofed so you could fire a gun inside and no one would hear a thing, with walls that could take a serious beating. Of course, ’take a beating’ didn’t mean ’try to destroy them.’ Do that, and you’d be out on your ear with a massive bill.
And at the very end of the hallway...
"...Is that it over there?"
"Yeah, that’s where we’re headed."
...was the group training room. It was huge, easily big enough for a full raid party to move around in without bumping into each other. Stepping inside the wide, open space, I could see blue, human-shaped scarecrow dummies stacked in one corner. Over in another part of the room, they had the floor marked out for practicing positioning against big monsters, all set up and ready to go.
"Hmm... Feels a bit empty, doesn’t it?"
"That’s because it’s usually got a dozen people running drills in here. We’re not doing anything that complicated today. For now, we’re just getting you to use abilities you haven’t touched in a while, shaking off the rust."
"So, rehab training. Got it."
"Think of today as a test run. No pressure."
"Hey, Manager?"
Suddenly, Seraphina sidled up close and dropped her voice to a whisper by my ear.
"If I do really well here, does it mean I get special treatment later?~"
"Let’s hear it. What ’special treatment’ did you have in mind?"
"An all-access pass to Manager Elias Gallagher."
"That’s not a thing that exists anywhere in this world."
She said it with a smile, but I was dead serious. Even if the planet flipped upside down tomorrow, I could never, ever give her that. Get faster updates on g.com.
"Anyway, let’s start the test with Audrey."
"Beginning with me?"
"Yeah, hold on a sec."
I grunted a little, dragging one of the heavy blue scarecrow dummies over. It looked like a simple target, but the inside was weighted down so it wouldn’t go flying like a leaf if a Hunter hit it.
Once I’d plonked the target right in front of her, Audrey looked at me, like she was waiting for the go-ahead. I gave a nod from my safe spot off to the side, and that was her signal.
She drew the black pistol from inside her coat.
"Keep in mind, it’s been a while since I’ve used this."
She settled into a stance, left foot back, right foot forward, her body turned at a slight angle. Her right arm, holding the pistol, extended straight out toward the target. It was a graceful, clean pose, the kind you’d see in some old black-and-white detective movie...
"It’s all for show," Seraphina muttered beside me.
"Shhh."
Whether she was grumbling or not didn’t matter. A blue light began to gather in the muzzle of the pistol, the glow swirling until it suddenly stilled.
Bang!
With a sharp crack, a bullet shining with blue light shot out and smacked right into the scarecrow’s chest with a solid thud.
"...Eh? That’s it?"
"It’s not over."
A second later, a cracking, freezing sound started up from the spot where the bullet hit. The frost spread fast, crawling over the dummy’s torso until the whole thing was locked in a block of thick, pale ice.
I walked over to check it out. A wave of cold hit me before I even got close, the kind of chill that told you not to touch it unless you wanted frostbite.
’So it’s a spell formula for suppression first, not raw destruction. ...Must be the training her father drilled into her when she was young.’
A Hunter’s special abilities run on mana—that weird, all-purpose energy nobody fully gets—and something called ’Imaging.’ You picture what you want to happen in your head, really clearly, and depending on how much you’re trying to bend reality, you pump in the right amount of mana. That’s how you make the impossible happen.