Hello loyal readers,

Ok. Confession time. Lately, I've been really into Miraculous Ladybug. The cartoon itself is a pretty mundane kids show, but the characters and their dynamic have so much potential that it's really interesting reading the fanfictions people have written. Can I get a shout out from my fellow Miraculers?

Sorry if today's chapter is slightly less polished than usual. I don't have time to do my typical fifth read-through and final edit before it goes up, because I'm… GOING ON VACATION! I'll be in Greece and Rome for the next two weeks, so if posts are sporadic, you'll know that I didn't fall off the face of the earth. Haha

As for today… Dangerous Mission Phase Two – START!

Thank you all of you who leave reviews and faves and alerts! It's really great motivation!

-x-

CH20

The most unsettling thing about the shipping yard at midnight, Kyoko decided, was not the towering maze of stacked rectangular metal shipping containers that trapped her on all sides. Nor was it the cranes that loomed over her in the darkness like metal gallows. Nor was it the dim, flickering streetlights, which probably hadn't been serviced in over a decade and barely broke through the deep darkness of the night.

No, the creepiest thing about Minami Honmoku Pier was definitely the fog that had rolled in about an hour before midnight.

The thick blanket of mist smothered her senses, making her feel dull, deaf, and blind. If there were any threats lurking in the fog, Agent M certainly wouldn't be able to notice them. Kyoko bit back a very un-Setsu-like shiver.

Ever since Cain Heel had awoken Setsu from her nap with the proper code word, Kyoko knew that with the second phase of their Dangerous Mission, she would have little to no bandwidth to worry about things like her mother or Shotaro. – Besides, what would worrying do? Sho-baka was in Momose-san and Kijima-san's capable hands, and Kyoko had no way to affect what her mother was doing in politics. Everything was out of her control.

But considering the box and the letter in the apartment, Delta had had the two "siblings" under surveillance for quite some time. It was 110% Setsuka Heel-mode until their mission was complete. Here was something she could do, if only to distract herself from those troublesome emotions and thoughts.

But this setting was a bit much… For not the first time that night, she regretted leaving her anti-ghost omamori back at HQ before this whole ordeal began. Who cared that it wasn't in line with Setsu's personality to carry a paranormal charm? Setsu, that flashy brother-complex goth-punk girl, would probably welcome a malicious spiritual encounter with open arms!

Well, Kyoko certainly had no intention of being possessed.

Settling for chanting Buddhist exorcism prayers in her head, Agent M glanced down at the GPS tracker app on her smart watch. Cain Heel was still walking leisurely through the stacks of cargo containers to reach the freighter at port. Agent M then glanced down at the ground. Or rather, she glanced at the sturdy black plastic, human-sized bag on the ground.

It was a body bag housing a nondescript Japanese male, fresh to order from Cain's bribe-able coroner contact.

Kyoko had to suppress another shiver as the chilly port wind funneled its way through the towering stacks of metal boxes. She really regretted not bringing her omamori.

Speaking of omamori…

Agent M snuck another glance at the GPS. Her partner was almost at the cargo ship.

The President's words from their last conversation echoed ominously in her memories. On the last day of preparations before Yamashita was meant to meet with the Vie Ghoul assassin in Kabukicho, President Takarada had called her to his office.

'Mogami-kun, on this mission, you're to act as Ren's protective charm.'

'Protective charm…?'

'No need to concern yourself too much. It may just be my own paranoia, and the mission may never get to that stage, but… there may come a time when Ren must fight off some demons –'

'Demons!?'

'–but with you by his side, he will certainly succeed in conquering them.'

'But… President… How am I supposed to help him fight off… d-demons?'

'Why, just continue acting out your Setsu and continue to support him. And if that fails… Well, I suppose you can try giving him a kick in the seat of the pants. That guy will eventually figure out everything else on his own.'

Demons! The President was being far too glib about the supernatural world. And kicking her honored senpai! Unthinkable! Allowing herself a mild Setsu-frown, Kyoko paused in her mental diatribe.

Maybe it wasn't actual, real demons… Maybe it was…

A memory flashed through Kyoko's mind – Reino's pale, panicked face as Ren held him aloft by the front of his shirt and mercilessly choked the assassin. And then this afternoon when Cain had woken Setsu from her nap… The cold but eager look in his eyes…

This time, she couldn't hold back her shiver.

Quickly reclaiming her mask as Setsu, the Heel sibling glanced around the pier to see if anyone had caught her minor slip-up. However, unless the ship's entire crew was hiding behind a stack of containers, the dock was still deserted. A thought niggled at the back of Agent M's mind. She didn't know much about cargo ships, but shouldn't they have a night shift or a night guard… or someone – anyone around?

Her eyes narrowed. It was far too quiet. Something wasn't right.

Trying to keep Setsu's uninterested facade, Agent M's eyes panned across the misty landscape, eventually reaching the cargo ship in the distance. Then–!

A quick flash of light. Kyoko's head swiveled to look up. There! Again through the mist, she could just make out the steady glow of a light. It looked to be at the upper levels, near the ship's bridge. But it wasn't a red light, which Kyoko had seen attached to the tops of the cranes to warn low-flying planes away from potential obstacles.

This was a white light… A rectangular patch that seemed to float through the mist above where the freighter should be. Snatching the binoculars off of her belt pouch, Agent M brought them to her eyes and gazed at the light, willing the fog to clear just for a bit. As if listening to her plea, for a brief moment, the sea breeze parted the mists… It was the bridge of the ship, high above the main cargo deck; the light in the bridge had turned on. A blurry person-shaped shadow crossed the bridge's window.

Biting back a gasp of horror, Kyoko tried not to fumble the binoculars and drop them. Past her terror, she knew that it would be the least Setsu-like she had done all evening. However, while she was trying to regain her composure, she noticed that the light in the distance suddenly winked out.

Then her earpiece squawked to life. It was Agent T. He had made contact with his mark and was transmitting audio. At first static, then…

"You the smuggler I'm looking for?" Her partner's deep baritone came over the speaker with the gruffness of Cain Heel.

"Hm? Depends on who's asking." It was another man's voice, sarcastic and playful, but with a sharp, dangerous undertone, like a hidden knife.

There was the rustling of cloth and a fierce shout of protest. Instead of answering, the elder Heel sibling had tried to physically subdue his mark. Kyoko held her hand against her earpiece, trying to amplify the audio.

Apparently, the attack had failed, as the smuggler cried out, "What the hell? You bastard! Who the hell are you?"

The man possessed some level of skill to be able to block Agent T's first strike. Agent M tried to steady her breathing and calm the queasy feeling in her gut. Setsu wouldn't be nearly so worried about her brother. She had 120% confidence in him, that no man could beat her Nii-san. Hence, Setsu was only around to guard the body bag and for absolute emergencies. Not only did Cain refuse her help, but also Setsu didn't believe her brother needed it.

However, that darn characterization was placing her partner in unnecessarily precarious situations.

Still uneasy, the junior agent glanced up at the ship again. The light was completely gone.

Over the speaker, Kyoko heard the smuggler chuckle with dark humor.

"Oh… I recognize you. So the infamous Cain Heel has come to take me away, huh?"

Apparently, the bounty hunter found it unnecessary to respond verbally. Instead, Kyoko heard the weighty telltale click of Cain's pistol being cocked.

"Turning to violence so soon?" The smuggler jabbed smugly. "How about we bargain first? What do you like? Guns? Drugs? Women? I have a knack for getting things few others can…"

But Cain was having none of it. "On your knees. Hands in the air."

Agent M heard no movement. Instead, she heard the other man chuckle again.

"Material goods don't interest you? How about information? I have the good stuff too. For instance, perhaps, the true identity of a particular bounty hunter who goes by the name… Cain Heel. Ever heard of him?"

Kyoko couldn't breathe. All of the air left her body. All she could do was think – 'A trap. This is a trap. Agent T is in danger… Tsuruga-san… REN!'

In an absolute panic, Setsu's mask nearly discarded, Kyoko whirled around toward the ship.

As the smuggler spoke again, she heard the words with her ears, but her mind, racing as fast as her feet, could hardly make any sense of them.

"You damned foreigner. You're really just a bloodthirsty murderer. A devil hiding behind an indifferent mask. Well, I know your true identity behind that mask…"

Kyoko missed her partner's next words, but if she had heard them, though she would not have fully understood, her blood would still have run cold from the sheer unrecognizable sadism in his dark tone.

"You… I've finally found you."

-x-

(AN: I don't often do this, but I highly recommend opening Youtube and listening to the Persona 5 song, Blooming Villain, during this next section. It was seriously the perfect song.)

Finallyfinallyfinally – each erratic beat of his racing heart seemed to shout. With each passing moment, with each surging step, Kuon felt himself closing in on the man. The man who had ruined his life. The man who he hated with all of his being. The man who had caused Rick's death.

Though Kuon could not see the man's face behind the mask covering his mouth and nose and the dark hooded sweatshirt that cloaked most of his face in shadow, he knew. From the moment that man had uttered the words, "You're really just a bloodthirsty murderer" – Kuon knew it had to be him.

No one else would know his deepest, darkest secret. The secret that, in reality, Tsuruga Ren was not only a foreigner but also the fact that he was a—

At a full sprint, the hooded man swerved sharply behind a tall stack of metal shipping containers on the ship's main deck. Kuon put on an extra boost of speed to follow – only to turn the corner and find himself boxed in on three sides by more containers, locked into a dead end. An empty dead end.

"Hah! Is that the best you can do?" The taunt came from above – and Kuon's head snapped up. Silhouetted in the fog-muted moonlight, standing astride the double-stacked shipping containers, the supposed smuggler leered down at him from six meters off the ground.

Quickly calculating in his mind, Kuon backed up a couple of steps. Then he took off sprinting toward the back of the dead end, angling to the left. Using his momentum, he ran a couple of gravity-defying steps to the top of the left container before coiling his legs underneath himself and performing a powerful front-flip. The flip launched him across the gap of the dead end until THUNK – he caught the top edge of the opposite container, knuckles whitening at the strain.

He heard his prey utter a sharp curse as Kuon hoisted the rest of his body over the edge. By the time he got all the way up, his target was already sprinting away across the tops of the shipping containers stacked on the deck.

As he dashed after his quarry, like a demon out of hell, Kuon felt a dark, hungry grin slip over his face. He felt like laughing. It was a familiar mask. It was comfortable. It was the expression he wore right before he was about to beat the shit out of someone.

-x-

Breathing heavily, Agent M took a precious moment to rest at the top of the freighter's gangway. Leaning against the metal railing that lined the ship's side, she brought up her wrist to check the watch's GPS.

Agent T's marker was moving fast across the starboard side of the ship toward the bow. It seemed as though he were being chased up the ship towards her. But, good. His tracker was still working.

While enroute from the dock, Agent M had finally tamped down most of her panic and had repeatedly attempted to listen in to the audio feed from Cain. There was nothing but static. Also, her communications to him weren't going through. But either he was intentionally ignoring her, or someone was jamming the signal.

Neither option seemed very appealing.

An angry shout caught her attention. Agent M looked up sharply, squinting through the mist. Two dark figures raced precariously across the stacks of metal shipping containers on the deck. They leapt smoothly from one stack to another.

Agent M whipped out her 9mm semi-automatic. Taking aim at the pursuing man's shadow, she became very aware that this time, these weren't rubber bullets. This was live ammo.

Watching the two men run closer, Kyoko decided that she would wait until he was nearer and visibility was better. Then she'd go for his leg. But if she happened to miss, she'd just call it a warning shot.

Almost there…

Summoning Setsu's persona, she prepared to call out a warning to her brother, just as he was about to come into view.

However it wasn't her brother leading the pursuer. A strange, hooded man burst through the mist instead.

Either he didn't see her or he ignored her, intent on getting a running start to leap across a large gap in front of him. He landed on the next shipping container, with a loud, hollow thunk before rolling once to dispel the extra energy and dashing away.

Agent M had no time to shout in surprise. The tall, dark silhouette of Cain Heel tore out of the fog, and Kyoko was about to call out to him, when she stopped short, her voice caught in her throat. All she could do was watch in stunned silence as he mimicked the hooded man, leaping the gap before springing forward, out of sight.

"What…?" The small, quavering whimper finally came out. She felt her gun barrel drift listlessly downward. "Who…?"

From the back of her mind, some part of her screamed, 'KYOKO MOVE!'

Shocked out of her stupor, she shook her head and with a scowl, started sprinting forward on the deck, holstering her weapon as she went. Her blonde hair trailed in the wind behind her as she jinked around corners, often having to backtrack through alleyways of containers as she tried to catch up to her partner.

She felt winded from the continual sprinting, especially since she was at a disadvantage on the ground floor, but a fearful desperation drove her forward, faster and faster.

'Tsuruga-san is not Cain… Is this the character he's created for BJ? But no… That smile. BJ is supposed to be an emotionless sociopath. Who… Who is he now?'

But then she took a wrong turn, and suddenly she could no longer see Ren or the man he was chasing. Dead end. The metallic echoes of their footsteps seemed to come from all directions at once. Turning in circles at the dead end, Kyoko felt completely lost. A knot of unease wound itself tightly inside her gut, threatening to paralyze her.

Ren's knuckles whitening as he held the Vie Ghoul assassin aloft.

His face looked so similar to that time... Furiously angry, but also... A spark of enjoyment from deep within. If he hadn't been wearing the same outfit as Cain Heel, Kyoko had no confidence that she would have been able to even recognize him.

But no.

On the ferris wheel, what seemed like a decade ago now, Ren had asked for her support on this mission. She could still remember his reflection in the gondola's window – his eyes held such deep sorrow and pain.

She was going to trust Ren. The President had warned her that this mission might be dangerous for him. Her senpai himself had asked for her help. She wasn't going to give up on him so easily!

Shaking her head once more to clear it, Kyoko spun on her heel to find her way out of the dead end. Glancing down at the GPS tracker on her watch, Kyoko picked a direction and sprang forward with renewed energy.

Two minutes of chasing later, she found herself on the upper command deck by the freighter's bridge. Breathing heavily, Agent M checked her GPS watch again.

This couldn't have been right… According to the signal, she should be right on top of him, but she was the only one on this deck.

Then realization. She gasped and looked up. High above the bridge, and even higher above the main deck, was another five meters of steel girder scaffolding with a narrow rectangular platform surrounded by metal railing at the top. On the platform, sizing one another up, were the hooded man and Agent T.

Before she could react, the smuggler had fished something out from behind his back. A gun. As Kyoko watched in horror, he loosed two shots toward Ren.

But her partner was apparently anticipating this, as he dove forward the instant the other man's hand had come up, rolling across the platform to strike from below at the smuggler's legs.

Ren's opponent managed to jump over the leg-sweep, but as he landed, the hooded man's ankle rolled slightly, placing him off balance. Agent T immediately took advantage, grabbing the man's arm and slamming the wrist viciously against the chest-high metal railing.

With a curse, the man watched his gun tumble down to the deck.

Kyoko could see Ren's mouth moving, still twisted into that sickly smirk, but the sea wind blew his words away. She could only see the other man's reaction.

And it was… confusion? He cocked his head to the side and took an uneasy step back, cradling his injured hand.

While still keeping one eye on them, Kyoko was trying to find a way up when she saw Ren dart forward to strike. With a lunge, he placed his hands on the railings and used his momentum to kick upward at the hooded man. His opponent barely blocked the strike, using his crossed forearms to absorb most of the blow as he slid back on the platform.

Feeling the unease slip back into the base of her throat, Kyoko could only watch as Ren, still bearing his ghastly smile, continued to stalk forward. The other man was completely cornered.

Then Kyoko saw the ladder. It was a slim series of metal ladder rungs that ran from the command deck all the way up to the platform. The smuggler was trapped at the edge of the platform closest to the ladder.

As she ran toward the ladder, Agent M saw Ren stumble backward, clutching his stomach. The smuggler must have gotten in a surprise hit. While the supposed bounty hunter was distracted, the hooded man was trying to climb over the metal railing to reach the ladder as well.

A small part of Kyoko felt a burst of relief that he was going to be able to escape. There was no telling what Agent T would have done to him at that moment.

Too soon to celebrate.

As soon as she'd had that thought, an arm shot out from behind the smuggler, pulling his neck back and holding him in an iron chokehold. The smuggler's feet scrabbled for purchase on the floor as his hands came up to uselessly push at the arm that was essentially dangling him off the tall platform.

Kyoko skid to a halt, her breath leaving her. If Ren dropped him in the wrong place, the smuggler could very well topple over the edge of the command deck to the lower level below. A fall from that height would be enough to kill any man.

She was about to cry out, when a loud bang caught her attention behind her. The heavy metal door to the ship's bridge had swung violently open, and out popped a small, shivering young woman with chin-length light brown hair. In her hands, she held a gun, and she was pointing it at Ren.

Before her conscious mind could even respond to this new threat, Kyoko found that she had swiftly drawn her own firearm, leveling it coldly at the visibly nervous newcomer.

"Who the hell are you?" Luckily, Setsu's voice came out while Kyoko was on autopilot.

The woman, who looked to be only slightly older than Kyoko herself, yelped and whirled to find herself being held at gunpoint as well.

"What are you doing here, scary lady?"

'What? Scary lady?' Instead of voicing her confusion, Setsu barked, "Drop your weapon!"

At this command, the woman shook her head wildly, instead turning back to point her gun at the two men struggling above. Kyoko noted with alarm that the girl's hands were shaking violently.

"N-No way!" The brown-haired girl retorted with growing stubbornness. "My best wiretap supplier is going to get killed by that creepy man!"

"Wha–?"

"I was just supposed to observe, but I can't do nothing!" The girl's hands were trembling uncontrollably as she tried to place her finger over the trigger.

A terrible, sinking feeling plummeted to the bottom of Kyoko's gut. If Cain didn't let the smuggler live, he was going to get shot by this weepy, mouse of a girl who had no business holding a gun.

There was no time to reason with her or threaten her. Kyoko did the first thing that popped into her head.

"Nii-san! You mustn't kill!"

-x-

Japanese notes:

Omamori – a fabric charm that is commonly bought at Shinto shrines for various superstitious reasons: blessing, health, good test scores, protection during travels.

-x-

MAILBAG:

Knight Patssier – Yup! It's petty inconveniences, but let's be honest. It's pretty enjoyable watching Sho wallow in an accumulation of minor miseries. ;)

brennakai – Thanks for leaving a review! It really means a lot to me! Muhaha, I wonder if you're going to be right about Delta and the traitor (if there is one). Thank you for YOUR thanks! I really enjoyed reading your comments!

Aikori Ichijouji – I think it'll be a bigger relief once I get my results back! Technically, I still don't know if I passed… But I felt pretty good walking out of the exam, so hopefully it was ok! I'm really really glad you liked last chapter! We're going to get more of Setsu and Cain for a few more chapters now that they're going to be deep undercover! Thanks as always Aikori! Curious about your name: does it mean anything? :D

MWEH – Of course you're my most faithful reviewer! Not just anybody can be 19 for 19 like you are. ;) (I think you ended up reviewing every single chapter!) And yup, I had a lot of fun writing a lot of minor annoyances that culminates in one gigantic headache for Sho. Maria knows her jinxes! I'm really glad that you think the mystery is building well without being laid on too thick or thin! As for Kanako… maybe she's just a really nice civilian girl who just happens to remind Sho of Kyoko. Heh. Thanks for the well wishes on the exam! I think it went well, but I'm still languishing, waiting for the results. What did you think of the most recent manga chapter?

-x-

Don't forget to leave a review, a fave, or an alert! Any and all motivation is greatly appreciated!