Finally back at sea, Ren had had time to think about quite a lot. The recent disaster with Mocker would probably force Ren to play the long game and act as a black mark on his reputation, but he'd recover eventually. It might take years, but he'd find a way in the end. In any case, his mid-term goal was to prepare for what might happen when they finally got caught. He'd have to escape somehow. In an idea world, he wouldn't get caught, but he figured that sooner or later, Benham would connect the dots and just move to arrest him. Eventually, anyway. For now, he figured was safe, so his time was probably best spent looking for a suitable target. That would probably come sooner rather than later, given his luck with finding targets.

"Come to think of it, despite how badly things have gone as of late, we haven't had much difficulty finding targets."

Ren said this to Morgana and Anya, who were alone with him in the room they had been assigned. They were speaking quietly, lest they be heard.

"That's true. It's not been too difficult to find good targets…" Morgana agreed. "Although I hesitate to call Mocker a 'good target'."

"In hindsight, he wasn't," Ren admitted. "But he was nice for when we found him."

"That's true enough, I suppose," Anya observed. "Where exactly are you going with this, Ren?"

"What I'm trying to point out is the fact that we've had a lot work out in our favor before Mocker came along. If it wasn't for the Mocker situation, we'd be cruising right about now."

"Still not quite over it, are you, Ren?" Morgana asked.

Ren sighed. "No, I'm not." Ren looked up. "This whole thing feels like it could come crashing down with one wrong move. It feels… dangerous."

"You're not wrong…" Anya pointed out. "Benham's probably gonna make his move sooner or later…"

"That won't matter so long as we set things right." Morgana reassured her. "So long as we prove our justice to the world, he'll have no choice but to acknowledge us for the heroes we are. He can say whatever slander he wants, and it won't matter in the end."

"Right…" Anya seemed pensive. "So, what about Futaba and Yusuke? Are you sure about this plan?"

"It's a little too convenient not to take advantage of." Ren pointed out. "Besides, fighting against it would have risked exposing us then and there."

While the New Ogra, as she was called, was being constructed, a few talks were held as to what to do about the two ex-pirates, as they were more widely known as by the Guild. Most wanted to put them up for trial back home initially, but Benham had insisted that they be left here. Most likely, Benham wanted to separate them from Ren, which wasn't good in a vacuum, because it meant that he was onto the fact that they were humans, too. Benham's solution, however, was actually quite beneficial to the phantom thieves, which led Ren to suspect that Benham still had no idea what the metaverse was or how it worked, if he even suspected it might exist at all. Since the meta-nav always returned you to the exact position it was used in in the real world, it was feasible that they could be used for long-distance transport. All that was needed was to have two navs held by two dedicated people far apart from each other. They could even rotate who was where at any given time. Right now, they only had two, but that was enough to set up this island as a remote base of operations. The only other navs in existence, as far as Ren was aware, were in Homura's and Akechi's possession. They, however, would be restricted to the grass continent, which meant that if they wanted in on this off-shore base, they'd have to go through the phantom thieves somehow. Building a boat of their own wasn't feasible, since Benham could easily catch up to them before they could finish. Meanwhile, Futaba and Yusuke would have plenty of time to build a boat while they were by themselves on an island that was apparently closer to a place called the sand continent than the grass continent, where the Guild was. From there, they could actually be pirates in their own right… although that would make rubbing off the reputation of those other guys even harder.

"I guess we really are just taking over the pirate Phantom Thieves, then." Anya chuckled. "Yar har it is, then."

"We'll show the world what a real Phantom Thief looks like. We'll show them true justice, no matter how Akechi or Homura try to get in our way!" Morgana kept his voice down as he made this declaration, but Ren knew it would have been a shout if he could get away with it.

"Well, let's just not get cocky. We're not out of the woods yet. Benham's still breathing down our necks at the moment. Until we're away from him, we need to be vigilant."

With that, the three headed out of their room. It was right next Benham's room, which probably wasn't on accident. Benham was probably already onto them, just looking for the evidence he needed. Which was why they had to stay on the down-low, to stall for time so Futaba and Yusuke could build a proper boat. That would take quite a while, and probably wouldn't be finished by the time they had to run. The prospect of them building the thing in the time they had was a little dicey, so it would probably come down to them hiding on the island for a while to get it done. Hopefully that would be done sooner rather than later. Heading into the main dining hall, which had ended up being a bit smaller than the original. In fact, most of the ship was smaller and shoddier than the original, but that couldn't be helped for the time being. About half of the guild and ship were gathered here, and most of them were crowded around Ryuji. Ren sighed, because he knew exactly what this meant.

"And then, I swiveled past the rocks, and lunged into the goal!"

Ryuji had been dressing up his stories in a medieval fantasy aesthetic, which made them resemble something out of a light novel, but Ren didn't really know if Ryuji was even the type to read those. Maybe it came from DND? In any case, Ryuji made himself sound like some kind of hero. Knowing what he was like in his old life, it was kind of cringeworthy to listen to. Upon closer inspection, they appeared to be the highlights of his track team career, which made it slightly better. In the very least, he wasn't revealing any details that would connect him to the Phantom Thieves, which was good. The Guild members surrounding him were lapping up his every word in the meantime.

"Golly! And then what'd you do?" This Guild member in particular seemed to be buying directly into it. He was rapidly becoming Ryuji's lackey. Morgana sighed.

"That numbskull is totally soaking up all of the popularity he can get his hands on…"

"Well, we can hardly blame him for wanting to have fun with his newfound popularity…" Ren admitted. "Probably best not to try and interrupt him. We probably can't make many moves with him until we get back to shore, away from all the prying eyes…"

"Are any of these stories true?" Anya asked.

"They're loose retellings at best," Morgana sighed. "He's totally embellishing all the details. They hardly resemble how it actually went down…"

"Did he lose?"

"The elves aren't real."

"Ah. So it's that kind of embellishment…"

Ren didn't really mind Ryuji trying to retell his glory days in the track team, but he was more concerned with bringing the glory of the Phantom Thieves back…

Back ashore, Benham had some urgent business to take care of. But first, he had to greet the town. They had no idea he was returning, after all. The crowd gathered near the shore was huge. In all likelihood, they'd been spotted from far off, which probably sent the whole town into a frenzy. Benham stood atop the bow of the ship and waved. The crowd erupted in cheering at the sight of him, which made Benham feel relieved. It was the first time he'd been showed in such praise since the incident with High Town, so it felt good to know that the people still had faith in him as a leader. Which meant it was time to give a speech. When they reached the shore, Benham was the first to leave the ship, strategically flanked by the two publicly known humans, Homura and Ryuji. The fact that they already had a reputation made dealing with their actions with Ren later difficult, but for now, they would be hailed as heroes.

"The menace known as the Phantom Thieves, Terror of the Seas, has been defeated!"

The crowd erupted into cheers at this, which was no big surprise to Benham. After all, they'd been a festering wound in the memory of the town, so hearing that they were vanquished was a relief.

"We lost many great guild members in the effort. So please, a moment of silence."

The crowd fell to silence at his command. After intentionally waiting for a very long time, Benham spoke again.

"Now then, the Guild will resume normal activities for the time being. We still need to investigate the stragglers, and figure out whatever happened in High Town. But rest assured, the worst criminals are gone and dealt with. So, for now, this informal announcement is adjourned."

With that, the town dispersed to allow the rest of the Guild members to leave the ship. It would make for a hopefully not-to-controversial story when all of the details made the rounds via hearsay, but Benham would cross that bridge when he got to it. For now, Benham had urgent business to take care of.

He made his way to the Guild, and, on the way, spotted Amity leaving the crowd.

"Oh. Great. Come with me to my office, will you?"

"Of course. Good to see you back. How did sniffing out our culprit go?"

"Better than expected, but let's just save that for when we can talk in private."

"Ah. Right."

The two headed back to the Guild, and Benham sat down at his desk after what felt like forever. With a sigh, he started. "First of all, Ren's our prime suspect. There were far to many necessary steps to take in both High Town and what went down on the Island that only could've been done by him. Not only that, many of his actions that I could see would be explained if he truly was the culprit." Benham pulled out a small stack of handwritten notes out of a bag he was carrying. "I wrote it all down here. Take a look."

Amity cautiously looked over the document, which, granted, was a little long. "Sounds like the pirates met a rather sudden end."

Benham leaned closer. "Almost like Mocker had a sudden change in behavior. One that couldn't be explained by outside factors."

"Yes, that's what you wrote down…" Amity paused. "What kind of powers do they even have?"

"That's almost impossible to tell. But we do have a few other orders of business to undertake." Benham took out the strange tablet he'd found in captain's quarter's in what was left of the black pearl, among other things. "We first need to investigate Chatot to be sure that the connection between him and the Phantom Thieves exists, because if it does, that all but guarantees that Ren is our culprit."

Amity glanced at the part in Benham's notes where he noted this. "…Are you really sure about this? It sounds like a bit of a reach to me."

"There's no harm in taking a look, for now. All we're doing is searching Chatot's room, after all. These are internal affairs. No need to involve officer Magnezone."

"Okay. Then-"

Amity was cut off by someone knocking on the door. With evident frustration, she opened the door. On the other side was none other than Leo, who, despite himself, looked better than ever. Amity made no attempt to hide her annoyance with him.

"How's the world's most bumbling archeologist doing?"

"Unluckiest, mind you."

"The difference being?"

"Let's not fight, you two." Despite his reputation for being a little stuck-up and wearing an obnoxious red scarf, he got the job done when it came to exploring new lands on his lonesome, and had brought back many a valuable artifact for the guild in the past decade or so he'd worked there. So most put up with his annoying personality. Except for Amity, who hated his guts for some reason. "How did your expedition go?" Benham assumed that he'd kept the details away from Amity out of spite.

"Did your 'bad luck' strike again?" Amity commented anyway.

Leo sighed. "Yes, yes it did. I had just found the temple I was searching for, the one that seemed to have the connection to that cult of Psychics that I was studying. I was approaching it, when suddenly, I meet this lost Stunky girl on the side of the road. For some reason, I felt an urge to make her my apprentice, so I brought her along for the ride. Big mistake, you see! Very Big! We were at the temple's core, and we found this wonderful altar with a bizarre inscription! It wasn't like anything I'd seen before! Oh, I wrote it down. Here you go…"

Leo handed… no, more accurately, shoved a bunch of notes into Benham's hands, and pointed to the one on top, which smelled slightly musky for some reason. It bore a detailed illustration of the altar, which had ばべる written on it. Not that Benham could make heads or tails of that.

"Interesting, no?"

"Carry on."

"Oh, yes, and here's the unfortunate part! You see, there was this funny-looking tablet artifact on the altar, yes! And then, suddenly, this young woman attacks me, and makes off with the tablet, and when I round the corner to chase her, she's just gone! I-" Leo suddenly noticed the tablet on the desk. "Wait a minute, that's the artifact! Can I see that?" Leo reached for the tablet, but Benham stopped him. "Guildmaster…?"

"Leo, how long ago was this?"

"I'd say… two or three moons ago. In the very least, I left at around the same time you sent Bibarel and Loudred to do some surveying, and I returned while you were away at sea. I think. I did a lot in that time…"

"And this took place on the sand continent?"

"Indeed. That's where I was doing research, after all."

"Was the Stunky alone?"

"She seemed alone enough to me."

"What, exactly, was the Stunky's name? Did you get one?"

"Uhhhhhh…" Leo scratched his head. "Something with that started with 'fu'… Fuka? Fuma? Fumota?"

"Futaba?"

"Yes, Futaba! It was-" Leo paused. "Oh, that's a bad thing, isn't it?"

"That name came up while I was working on an important case related to the phantom thieves. That's all I'll reveal for now."

"…Is she here?"

"No. Fret not, I anticipate I'll be able to raise a public concern soon. For now, this tablet is important evidence, so I can't let you have it."

"Ah. Carry on, then." Leon turned around to leave, but Amity stopped him. For some reason, she had a smug look on her face.

"She sprayed you, didn't she?"

"…I shudder to remember that smell."

Amity laughed. "I can't believe it took you that long. If I was one, I would've done it when we first met."

"Like you'd hold up well."

"I've smelled worse."

"You're bluffing."

"Benham can vouch for me. Benham, you were there too, right?"

"Yes, but why are we having an argument over this?"

"She's mocking me again…"

Benham sighed. It was nice to be back, at least. "Be on your way, then."

Leo quietly exited the room, with a slight bit of his dignity lost. Once the doors were closed, Benham spoke.

"Well. That raises a few questions."

Amity walked back over to the desk and flipped through Benham's notes. "Futaba's one of the two ex-pirates, the other being a Purrloin named Yusuke, right?"

"And Yusuke, according to Leo, wasn't there. But that part doesn't matter. Maybe Yusuke wasn't with her at the time, or maybe the two met later. That part doesn't matter much. The real issue is that she somehow, assuming that Mocker recruited her there, made her way across the ocean to get to wave town in an absurdly short time span. If their testimony is to be believed, Mocker recruited both of them not very long after when Leo would've had his encounter with Futaba. At most, they were a few weeks apart. It's hard to imagine she got a boat of her own and sailed that distance and also had enough time to meet Yusuke and then Mocker. And both of them are highly likely to be humans."

"That seems really sketchy, but where exactly are you going with all of this, Benham?"

"I suspect that one of Ren's, and my extension, his allies' abilities is being able to move very long distances in short time frames. And somehow…" Benham held up the tablet. "It involves one of these."

"Do you think we're holding the very same tablet Futaba used?"

"Perhaps. It's certainly possible Mocker got it from her. But it's also possible there are more hiding out there. In any case, we're in possession of something that Ren very much doesn't want us to have. And he likely doesn't even know about this one."

"Should we try testing it now?"

"Tomorrow. Let's not risk something going wrong now. We've had enough excitement for one night."

It was an… odd morning for Kyoko. She'd basically spent the past month kissing ass at the guild so she could maybe become an explorer there with Sayaka when the actual Guildmaster got back so they could both take advantage of being explorers to accomplish their goal of finding the other two magical girls, and now that the dude was finally here, she'd failed to even get the man's attention last night when he was walking through town. It was almost like she was invisible to her.

"…I guess we just go and knock on their door again?" Kyoko said awkwardly.

"Yeah, I guess…" Sayaka grumbled. "Beats doing this shitty day job with Mr. I'm-so-calm-and-charismatic Akechi."

"Man, you're really starting to hate him, huh?"

"He's literally only offered the most bare-bones help he can give. We're humans too, y'know? You'd think he'd be more willing to help us out, but no. He's keeping us at arm's length while we all sit here sitting on our asses, waiting for a big dumb Raichu to get back home."

"The Guildmaster was wading through a crowd of people. He probably didn't even notice us…"

"That's the issue…" Sayaka seemed frustrated at being so thoroughly ignored. She just wanted to get out there. "Why isn't this bothering you more?"

"I'm just worried you're stressing yourself out about this more than you need to, you know."

Sayaka slouched. "I really am an idiot…"

"Hey, don't be to hard on yourself. We can do this." Kyoko tried her best to smile and cheer Sayaka up.

Sayaka sighed. "You're right. We'll become Guild Members, make a team, and do our mission!" Kyoko's attempt to cheer Sayaka up seemed to have worked.

"Let's head on out, then."

The two headed out of the hut they'd gotten the day they arrived. It wasn't much, just a pair of beds and a table, but being so close to the beach was nice. They headed up and into the crossroads, but instead of turning into the town like they normally did to go to their normal day job, they simply kept going straight. Sorry, boss. Kyoko thought. We've got a shiny new job all lined up, so we're gonna leave you. You understand, right? Kyoko slightly resented her old boss, since he barely even treated her and Sayaka like they mattered to him. She imagined he wouldn't be to bent out of shape by their sudden departure.

Eventually, they made it to the Guild itself. It seemed intimidating, but it really shouldn't have been too scary for Kyoko. She'd been here and back several times trying to make a good impression on Amity, so she'd been through this song and dance before. She was pretty sure they'd be accepted.

After doing the whole footprint thing, the two of them descended down the ladders of the guild. Kyoko wondered how someone without any hands to speak of managed to scale these ladders. She was struggling herself trying to descend them like a parrot might. It was definitely harder than it looked. Enough, in fact, for Sayaka to take notice, even after seeing her do this several times.

"You okay down there, Kyoko?"

"I'm fine, I can do this."

"You look like you need help."

"I got this, don't worry about me."

Eventually, they made it to the bottom floor. "See?" Kyoko asked. "Easy."

"If you say so…"

Without talking to eachother much more, they made their way over to the Guildmaster's door. It didn't seem all that intimidating, but they'd never actually gone inside this room. From that perspective, it was a little intimidating. Sayaka knocked on the door.

"Come in." The male voice behind the door was sharp, and carried the weight of authority. It was unmistakably the same voice Kyoko had heard yesterday. Kyoko also heard the sound of a drawer being opened and closed, with something being put inside. Sayaka slowly pushed open the door. Sure enough, inside was the Guildmaster himself, flanked by Amity.

"Greetings. What brings you here today?"

"We'd like to join the Guild as a new team!" Sayaka took the initiative this time.

"Ah, so you're the new applicants Amity told me about. So, why exactly do you want to join my Guild?"

Kyoko figured it was best to tell a lie with a kernel of truth. "There's… someone we want to find. We figured the best way to find that person was to join the explorer's Guild."

"A personal reason for joining, is it? That's as fine a reason as any." Benham looked to Amity. "These two have been working to get on good terms with us, right?"

"They're very enthusiastic about joining!" Amity confirmed. "They're very serious about this."

"Alright then…" Benham turned back to Kyoko and Sayaka. "Very well. Have you thought of a team name yet?"

"We're the Magical Girls!" Sayaka exclaimed. This particular team name, of course, was chosen for a very good reason. With a name like this, they were sure to attract the attention of any actual magical girls. At least, that was the hope. In the very least, Homura wasn't stupid enough to out them over this. Although, it would probably attract the attention of the other humans that Akechi was rivals with, too. Kyoko didn't really know what they were like, but they hopefully weren't stupid either.

The Guildmaster just laughed. "I don't see it, but okay. Welcome to Wigglytuff's Guild, Team Magical Girls! Now then…"

The Guildmaster reached into a drawer, and pulled out a pair of explorer's kits. He went into exhaustive detail when explaining them, meticulously describing what everything was for, and how to use it. Kyoko was happy to have it, but she also realized that this wasn't a 'free refills' type of deal.

"Now then. Get up bright and early tomorrow, and Amity will help you through combat training. Once you're done with that, you'll be assigned you first mission, and be on your way."

"Thank you Guildmaster!" Sayaka responded. "We won't disappoint you!"