“You’ve now violated Article 318 of the Federal Code.
Surrender quietly and you can still be treated leniently.
Oh, and—that last line was just something the rules require me to say.
Even if you really do surrender, I might still give you a beating.”
At a certain factory on the south side of Fanzui City, a figure in strange white clothes crouched atop a pile of steel, looking down at two groups of Black Thugs below trading something.
Beside the thugs lay a high schooler knocked out cold with a baseball bat; one of the long-haired thugs even seemed to want to test a drug on him.
A pristine white assassin’s outfit, a broad hood over the head, and a silver mask covering the entire face, chin included.
The not-especially-loose robe couldn’t hide the roughly one-meter-seventy height (about 5’7″), nor the flaw of showing no visible muscle.
Dressed just like a superhero out of a comic or a TV drama—which, really, wasn’t far off.
Except this superhero wasn’t the sort who swung around the city all day, or came running wherever a Bat-Signal lit up the sky, but rather a special unit of the Federal Police.
The Esper Police.
Among criminals they also had a nickname along the lines of “the fuzz”—”the Feds.”
Concealing their identities was crucial, because the ones they dealt with were either armed thugs conducting illegal deals, or supervillains who were themselves mutants… basically all organized crime syndicates operating in groups.
Once their identities were exposed, then some day, while they were out on a mission, their home might just get ransacked.
You couldn’t count on these vicious, ruthless criminals to have any bottom line in their means of revenge.
At this figure’s appearance, the thugs in front—in the middle of doing strange things to the high schooler—most uncooperatively raised their pistols.
“Damn, these cunning crooks refuse to surrender.” The voice, impossible to tell as male or female, was thoroughly exasperated.
Gunshots on a stormy day weren’t obvious, and the gun smoke was washed away by the rain.
These thugs clearly didn’t know that an unarmed Esper Cop was the very worst kind to provoke.
The white-clad figure merely stood in place, and the bullets, quite obligingly, changed direction as they neared—no matter how dense the fire, it stayed that way.
Then he simply hopped down off the steel and, in no hurry at all, walked toward the thugs.
Five minutes later, the thugs all lay on the ground in a chorus of wailing.
The white-clad figure took out a walkie-talkie.
“This is White Whale.
Just nabbed an illegal-trade crew at the electronics factory.
The stuff they were dealing looks like N1202—that’s the fourth time this month, isn’t it?
Mm, there’s a high-school detective who got knocked unconscious, hasn’t come to any harm yet… Even if you ask me where I am, I only wandered here by accident, you know… It’s not every day I leave for school two hours early on my own.”
Behind them, one of the thugs, forcing down the agony wracking his body, picked up a gun with his handcuffed hands and, without the slightest hesitation, fired a shot straight at the back of White Whale’s head.
The white-clad figure calling himself White Whale reached a hand back and intercepted the bullet before it could touch his skull.
He flicked it back at the shooter, and the already-used, secondhand slug tore out with all the force of a fresh shot from the barrel, followed at once by a pig-squeal of a scream.
“One of them had his gun go off and shot himself in the thigh.
Report complete.”
“Send over your location.
There’s a case here—the killer should be the same person as the one from last week.
Want to come take a look?” the person on the other end of the walkie-talkie asked.
“Send someone to come pick me up and take me over.” Otherwise he’d never find the place.
“The deceased is named Shuai Ben, male, thirty-three this year, unmarried.
Previously an employee of the Fortune Global 500 Seafood Group, later became a hired hand at a fish shop for reasons unknown.
He had a criminal record for beating his biological mother badly enough to cause serious injury.
Not long ago, someone anonymously reported him as a kidnapper.”
The speaker was a square-faced officer who looked to be in his forties.
A tie at his collar, a ring of keys at his waist, a thermos in his hand—one look told you he was one of the big leaders among the police.
White Whale: “Good riddance.”
“…Remember that you’re a cop.” The square-faced officer shot them a speechless sidelong glance.
White Whale hastily clenched a fist.
“That detestable killer!
So then, what was his cause of death?”
“Cause of death: the autopsy,” the square-faced officer replied, expressionless.
White Whale: “?”
“Can’t young people these days get this joke?” The square-faced officer sighed.
“Remember that you’re a cop!” said White Whale.
“From the records, he was without a doubt a piece of scum, same as last week’s victim.
The job was done very cleanly, not a single clue left behind.” The square-faced officer answered without expression.
“Preliminary suspicion is that the killer might be someone from Carry Out Justice on Heaven’s Behalf—they likewise single out scumbags to target.”
“An organization set up by a pack of brats,” said the forensic pathologist, walking over to join the conversation after finishing the examination of the body.
“Outlaws who fancy they can pass judgment on others in place of the law.”
“Can you see what he saw before he died?” White Whale turned to look at a tall blonde girl wearing a half-face fox mask.
The blonde girl shook her head.
“No.
Same as last time—it’s blurred.
Could be multiple espers, or a team job: one handling the killing, one handling the concealment.”
Just then, someone crossed the police cordon the officers had strung up—a young, pretty female reporter and a cameraman.
“Officer, regarding this case…”
“No comment.” Two officers walked over impatiently to shoo them off.
“Officer, the public has a right to know the truth.
Is this case connected to last week’s murder?”
“Go, go, go!
You know it’s illegal to just cross a police cordon like that?”
Four or five officers hauled the two of them away.
“The killer remains at large to this day.
Does this mean the police tacitly condone the actions of Carry Out Justice on Heaven’s Behalf?”
“What measures do the police have for the city’s cameras being vandalized over such a long stretch?”
The female reporter’s voice grew fainter and fainter.
“If you don’t answer her, you’ll probably be tomorrow’s hot topic yourself,” White Whale said, watching the reporter’s retreating figure with distaste.
“So then, what exactly was the cause of death?”
“Same as last week—a foreign object that appeared suddenly inside the heart, no external wounds.
It should be the work of a spatial esper, but among the world’s already-registered espers, the number who could pull this off can be counted on one hand.” The forensic pathologist took out an evidence bag.
“Spatial transfer isn’t an easy ability to control.
Ninety-nine out of a hundred spatial espers can at most teleport themselves somewhere within their line of sight—and can’t even bring their clothes along with them.
Last week the killer used a plastic bottle; this week they were a bit gentler—a pen.”
White Whale took the evidence bag, and behind the mask his eyes narrowed slightly.
Inside the evidence bag was a bloodstained pen—this was the very thing that had appeared abruptly inside the victim’s heart, killing him instantly.
Compared to last week’s plastic bottle it really was a touch gentler; last week’s, after all, had been a big bucket-sized one.
The interesting thing was that the pen’s outer casing was red, but through the transparent barrel you could see the ink cartridge inside was black—and the clip on its cap had been snapped off.
“Any fingerprints on the pen?”
“None.”
White Whale studied the pen thoughtfully.
“How very interesting.”
Take an item out of the System’s storage space and designate a location.
Taking a person’s life was just that simple.
She’d done it under Sasha’s guidance—Sasha said she’d figured it out herself in the past.
Maximum distance of five meters (16 feet); designate that it appear at a spot on the left side of a person’s chest, and for an ordinary person, death was certain.
“Master, try to use this move on other people as little as possible… Mm, but now that Master belongs to an underworld organization again, then—just try not to use it on anyone besides mission targets.” Sasha spoke up in Mi Xiaoliu’s mind in a worried tone.
“Why?”
“If it lands successfully, almost no one survives an attack like that.
It’d be terrible if you killed someone Master didn’t mean to kill and regretted it later… The Master you are now probably won’t understand the complicated reasons behind this, but Sasha would never do anything to hurt Master.”
“…Mm.” Mi Xiaoliu lowered her head and went back to studying the umbrella in her hands.
“Nice work.” That was what he said, but Wei Shi’s expression was a little sour.
Because it meant he really was going to have to lead two brats, one younger than the other, through future missions.
“Spatial ability?
You used it well.” He gave Mi Xiaoliu a slightly approving glance, but the girl was too busy studying why the umbrella flipped inside out to pay him any mind.
Mi Xiaoliu had never told him how she’d killed the man; this piece of information he’d gotten from the letter she’d brought.
In the small hours this boss had still been a blue-haired youth who looked even younger than himself; now he was a tall, red-haired middle-aged man—not just completely different from his earlier appearance, but without a single point of resemblance.
His voice had changed too, but the tone and manner of his speech were exactly the same.
“What about me, what about me?
How’d I do?” Hayato bounded over happily, pointing at himself.
“Ask her.” Wei Shi jerked his chin toward the purple-haired big sister.
He hadn’t even watched what Hayato had gone off to do.
“Didn’t follow orders, but overall not bad.” The purple-haired big sister tapped the two of them’s information into her laptop—though how she, who hadn’t even stepped out the door, had watched their missions was anyone’s guess.
Wei Shi walked over, casually flipped shut the laptop resting on the purple-haired big sister’s lap, and handed each of them a bank card.
The same kind as Mi Xiaoliu’s own—from the City of the Fallen, a non-official, non-Federal bank card that could nonetheless be used at Federal banks.
“This is your payment.
There’s thirty thousand Mila on each card.
Don’t be confused—some people’s lives are worth just that little.”
As for those documents… they were of course worth a great deal more.
But that money went to him, the boss.
This was the tradition of the organization’s newcomer assessment: the boss takes the lion’s share.
“Let me say this ahead of time.
Don’t go getting any childish ideas like ‘everyone I kill deserves it’ or ‘I’m here to pass judgment, in Heaven’s place, on the criminals the law never judged.’ From the moment we draw a blade, we’re scum too.”
“Ever seen Shinigami Elementary Schooler?
No?
That’s an anime from my day—it should still be running now.
You really haven’t seen it?”
Wei Shi, who’d originally meant to compare his own outfit to “the Black Organization,” looked even more put out.
“Anyway, our business is: pay us, and we’ll do anything… The organization doesn’t have many rules, but we do.
Like: we don’t kill pregnant women, and… we don’t kill children.” He turned to look at Mi Xiaoliu, over there playing with her umbrella.
The purple-haired sister glanced at Wei Shi and set down the laptop in her hands.
“Every month the higher-ups will assign us missions.
You can choose to take part or not—but if there’s ever a month where you don’t take part in a single one… heh heh.”