~Cottage at the edge of a forest, Kanagawa Prefecture~
A large truck made its way through the dark forest on a dilapidated road. The sounds of owls in the background only made the scene way more eerie as the young man at the steering wheel tried to focus on what was ahead, as the headlights could only offer such little visibility.
Fujitake: "This darn road is seriously getting on my nerves. After all of these years, you'd think someone would have at least had the courtesy of installing some light bulbs along it! It's almost impossible to drive a class 6 truck through here!" he audibly complained to the young girl on the seat next to his.
Enju was only just staring bored outside the window, waiting for them to finally arrive back at her father's cottage. The driver knew that she couldn't see anything outside, it being mostly just overgrown forest trees shrouded in darkness outside so her staring through the windows wouldn't really help her at all obviously.
She was just trying to ignore him and pretend that she wasn't paying attention.
Seeing her lack of interest in a conversation, he focused back on the road again and continued to drive in silence, doing his best to guide the vehicle through the unkempt path.
After another couple of minutes of driving, they finally arrived at their destination. Masahiko was eagerly awaiting them on the front porch. As soon as he heard the noise of the truck approaching his property he rose from his sitting position and began walking towards the forest, in anticipation for their arrival.
Now that they were all together, the man began a conversation with the duo.
Masahiko: "Everything went well?" he began asking the younger man who exited the vehicle first.
Fujitake: "Yes, we got 'em! The alarms didn't go off since I was still authorized in their systems apparently, even after all of these years! We have everything we'll ever need!" he explained happily as Masahiko smirked in response.
Masahiko: "Good job! I'm really glad I have you onboard! But wouldn't using your regular access cards be bad for you? Once the company finds out that your cards were used when this stuff got stolen, the cops will be able to tie you back to this!" that seemed a bit late for such a thing to point out, hilariously enough. The younger man just shrugged at that.
Fujitake: "It's a bit too late to get cold feet now, isn't it? I knew from the very beginning that they'll get to me eventually. I will get arrested for this but….at least if everything will go well, I will be known as a hero in the end!" he responded a bit depressed but also with a hint of optimism inside of his voice.
Masahiko: "You will be! Maybe not by most people but trust me on this: the people who really do matter will appreciate your sacrifice!" the older man revealed as he patted the other man on the back before shifting his attention to the girl who also climbed out of the truck.
Enju: "I did as you asked me! What now?" she asked, a bit impatient. She was a bit fidgety, that much was obvious. She was very wary of what she had done that night.
After all, she wasn't used to stealing. That was something that she knew she would never even attempt in doing since she knew how Cursed Children are mistreated in society, even for the most meager of crimes. If the police were to catch her now, she would be toast.
Then again, this is a bit of a moot point since she had killed innocent civilians in her Gastrea form just a couple of days prior. As such, assisting in robbery was less of a crime at that point.
Masahiko: "Now we move! We need to get all the stuff we stole to a specific place so that we can get on with my plan! I'll drive the bullets truck while you will keep Fujitake-san company while he drives this other truck after me! We'll have to return to Tokyo!" that was a bit of an odd plan. Even this ten year old girl was questioning it.
Enju: "Are you sure this will work though? You told me that nobody will get hurt in this, right?" she obviously seemed to have doubts already, which was an issue evidently.
Masahiko knew that the only way to convince her into participating in their heist was to lie to her and tell her that her contributions will end up for the greater good. Even so, even if she was just a child and even with the authority that he commanded as her father, she still seemed to grow very uneasy at this. And her beginning to have second thoughts was the last thing they needed, obviously.
Masahiko: " (sigh) Yes, I'm sure of it! This is just to help all the Cursed Children here in Tokyo, Enju! Trust me, they will appreciate our help!" he tried to calm his daughter down so that she would be more malleable.
She still had a skeptical look on her face but eventually submitted to his will and did as he had told her to. She and Fujitake then climbed back up into their truck as Masahiko then moved to a different truck that had been parked on his property prior.
He turned on the ignition and began driving it outside the property, as his daughter and the younger man began tailing him from their own vehicle.
~Random courthouse, Tokyo~
Judge: "Order! Order! Any more interruptions from the prosecution will not be tolerated anymore! You already got your words in, now please allow the defendants to speak!" the old man tried to calm the restless prosecution down, as they were beginning to rudely interrupt Rentarō and Kisara while they were pleading their case. Sadly this entire situation had devolved even more than the previous hearing. Apparently the people who sued them had only become even more aggressive over the past couple of days.
Kisara: " (sigh) As I said, from this footage from the I.I.S.O facility, we can clearly see Enju back in her human form! None of this had been tampered with as I'm sure General Naoto over here would be able to confirm!" the teenage girl then gave the spotlight nonchalantly to the older man standing beside them who suddenly rose to speak.
Naoto: "Yes! I can confirm that this footage is authentic and the person in it is indeed Enju Aihara. We ran a facial scan against I.I.S.O.'s internal Initiator database and we can confirm with 95% confidence that it is indeed her on these tapes! This is just two days after she was last scene in her Gastrea form so this clearly indicates that she reverted back to her human body by some as of yet unidentified method!" the general spoke as he had been asked to while the judge was impatiently looking at the footage being displayed on an old school CRT display in the room.
The zoom-ins did indeed help clear out the fact that Enju was the one that was the main character being portrayed there.
After more minutes of silence and reviewing this new piece of evidence, the tape ended and the judge then let out a heavy sigh of annoyance.
Judge: "This is indeed an interesting case to report. I have to admit I did not expect for things to have evolved in such an unexpected direction" he began to speak, still unsure how to take this situation in.
Rentarō and Kisara were staring hopefully at him, them giving away the fact that this video tape was their trump card to him. This was the best they could come up with in the past couple of days.
He would have wanted to commend them for at least trying to come up with something worth discussing at that hearing but he was still disappointed that the boy had ignored his previous warning and still did not hire a lawyer to defend him. At this point, this was already too late for him.
Judge: "Still, at the end of the day, none of this excuses, nor does it justify, Rentarō Satomi's gross incompetence and negligence in that battle. While his actions may have favorably helped humanity and might have allowed Enju to somehow develop some form immunity to the virus, that is an entirely separate discussion that holds no relations to the reason why he is being charged here, today! Consequently, I will have to dismiss this evidence as irrelevant for this case!" he decided, letting both teenagers down when hearing that.
Rentarō lowered his eyes onto the floor, biting his lower lip in frustration. He had resolved himself to this, he thought he was ready for this, no matter what.
And yet now, in the heat of the moment, he was still very anxious for some reason.
Judge: "I'm afraid that the reason for us being here is coming to a close! Are there any other pieces of evidence that the prosecution or the defendants want to share with the court?" he asked, now that he was reasonably sure that everyone had laid their respective cards on the table.
As expected, nobody in that room said anything in response to that question. Reading the faces of Rentarō and Kisara, it was clear that they were very worried about this outcome. He could only pity them.
Judge: "Very well then! Rentarō Satomi-san!" the man called out to the male teenager. He immediately had shivers run down his spine when hearing that strong imposing voice ring through his eardrums.
The boy rose at the calling of his name.
Rentarō: "Yes?" the boy asked measly, in a very low tone of voice.
Judge: "Given the aforementioned charges against you, how do you plead?" he asked directly.
This was the moment he had dreaded the most. The nauseating feeling that he was enduring at that point was hurting every single organ inside of him for some reason. He had never expected to end up in such a troublesome situation.
Rentarō: "I plead guilty!" he admitted, his eyes still glued to the floor on a spot in front of the judge himself.
Judge: "Tendō Civil Security will have to pay fifty million yen to the families of the deceased as compensation for the plight that they suffered because of Satomi-san's negligence! Moreover, their company registration will be revoked!" the judge declared in a surprisingly emotionless tone of voice.
Kisara's face turned white at the hearing of that.
There was no way she had enough money saved up to salvage that situation. It was indeed pretty clear that filing for bankruptcy would be the only way to end this.
She saw it coming and now that it finally happened, even though it only bothered her all the more, it still felt a bit anticlimactic. She somehow hoped that the judge would see it in his heart to forgive them for their misdeeds to society. Apparently, though, that had not happened.
Judge: "And as for you, Satomi Rentarō…." he continued, the boy gulping audibly. "You will spend the next seven years in prison without parole! May the time during which you will be incarcerated allow you to reflect on the gravity that your failures have brought upon the lives of those who had lost their loved ones!" and with that, that hearing was finally over.
With that declaration, everyone rose from their seats and began to prepare to leave the room.
Rentarō: "Honestly, this could have gone worse…." he mentally noted, still feeling very depressed. Now, his chances of finding Enju dropped to zero. He could only hope that Kisara and the others would keep their promises and try to find her on his behalf although, seeing how badly things have gone for them, he doubted Kisara would consider that to be the number one priority on her list at that point.
Rentarō: "At least she won't go to prison like me" he tried to at least make himself feel a bit better, although to no avail.
Ultimately the reason her company would go bankrupt now was entirely on him. He had been at fault for everything that justified that decision and he was fully aware of this.
There was no way he was gonna live this down.
But as the everyone was crowding the exits of the courtroom, another figure appeared unexpectedly. Everyone was shocked as the woman made her away past them and entered the room with a very annoyed look on her face.
Seitenshi: "Where is Rentarō Satomi?" she asked very bluntly as her bodyguards followed her inside while carefully scanning the area for any possible threats.
Rentarō and Kisara, just as surprised as everyone else there, could only stare at her as she approached them very unimpressed.
Judge: "Seitenshi-sama, what are you doing here, at this time?!" the older man asked very surprised and perturbed by her sudden presence.
Seitenshi: "I came to speak to the defendants of this case! I would have entered sooner but apparently I was not allowed to interrupt the hearing, nor even enter the room until your decision was made! So I had to wait outside up until now!" she was clearly a bit mad at that seemingly senseless rule but she still tried to maintain a sense of composure and elegance when speaking, before addressing the two of them.
Seitenshi: "Tendō Kisara-san, Rentarō Satomi-san! I need your assistance in locating Enju! We have reason to believe that she is compromising the security of this city at this moment and we would need your help in figuring out what her motives are!" she tried to calmly approach the duo, who were still very shocked at this development.
Rentarō: "Yes, I know she helped in hijacking a Black Bullets shipment yesterday. I heard that from Sumire-sensei! I still don't really know why she wou-…." but he was suddenly interrupted.
Seitenshi: "That's not the only reason! She also broke into an agricultural drone storage facility and assisted in the mass stealing of a large number of farming equipment this morning! We have reason to believe that the man she is with and who had the access cards to allow them inside while deactivating the defenses is plotting a terrorist attack against the Tokyo Area!" this revelation was enough to scare the both of them into high gear.
Kisara: "She what?! Are you certain?!" the poor girl could not believe her ears at that. Not only had she been put into the position of being forced into bankruptcy, now another one of her employees was revealed to have been up to even worse crimes all along.
Seitenshi: "We'll discuss this in a more private setting! For now, we need to go! Follow me!" the woman began to explain but Rentarō interrupted her.
Rentarō: "I can't! I've been sentenced to prison! I can't just roam freely anymore!" he tried to justify before Seitenshi rolled her eyes at that comment.
Seitenshi: "I know, I heard the ruling from outside! And that's entirely irrelevant for our purposes at this moment!" she tried to dismiss what he was saying very bluntly. "You are pardoned, Satomi-san! As governor of the Tokyo Area, it is within my rights to cancel all of the judicial decisions that have been made against you today!" that came out so quickly and so casually that, for a second, it almost didn't even register to Rentarō at all.
That revelation had such a deep impact on his life that he felt an incredible amount of relief flush over him when hearing this news.
The fact that Seitenshi herself decided to show him forgiveness meant that the gods were finally working in his favor. Karma was finally repaying him for all the good deeds he had done throughout his entire life up to that point.
Seitenshi: "However, I cannot protect you from the I.I.S.O. revoking your or Kisara's licenses, which they are very likely to do in the aftermath of what has transpired in the past days. Still, that is of little importance at this moment. For now, we have more pressing concerns to worry over!" finally, now that he was unbound from the chains of the law, the boy felt rejuvenated enough to be able to get back on his feet and prepare for what was to come.
Rentarō: "Yes, you're right! Tell me everything you know about Enju, please!"
~A couple of hours later, Tokyo Metropolitan Police Interrogation center~
Rentarō, Kisara, Tina and Seitenshi were all making their way down a long hallway, walking slowly and discussing about what the woman wanted to inform them of.
Kisara: "So, you're saying that this man, Fujitake Tamashiro, is the one responsible for Enju's recent streak of thefts across the city?" after all that was said, that seemed to have been the general gist of what Seitenshi was trying to convey to them.
Seitenshi: "Yes, that's what we initially thought! But after receiving another, separate, lead this morning from a different person, we realized that someone else may be involved as well. Someone by the name of Masahiko Tanimura!" she revealed out of nowhere. Nobody there recognized the name.
Kisara: "Masahiko? I never heard of that name before! Is he someone dangerous?" naturally being concerned for Enju's safety, that was the first question that Kisara wanted to ask.
Seitenshi: "We believe that he is! We never even knew that he existed or where he even lived as he retreated from society many years ago, isolating himself deep within the Kanagawa Prefecture, to the west of Tokyo! The area where he had been living for the past years has long been believed to have been overrun by Gastrea and, as a result, nobody lived there anymore. Nobody except for him apparently!" that came as a genuine surprise. Many questions were now popping up in their heads, everyone concerned over what this man might have been like.
Rentarō: "If he lived for such a long time there all by himself, how was he not infected by the Gastrea? Hell, how could he even manage to survive without any supplies from the city?" the boy inquired, almost disbelieving the ludicrous sounding story.
Seitenshi: "The man apparently had a rather eventful military background! He had been trained really well. When we sent a group of investigators to his house earlier today to interrogate him, he was nowhere to be found! Even more concerning were a wide array of traps that he had setup around the cottage he was living in, many of them surprisingly elaborate and clearly the result of years of training, as well as makeshift Varanium pylons that were strategically placed around his house to ward any Gastrea away from his property. Moreover, he had grown his own vegetable farm and had access to potable water from a nearby stream. For all intents and purposes he was living a self-sufficient lifestyle" they finally arrived to a wooden door at the end of the hallway. Seitenshi then knocked on the door to acquire the attention of whomever was on the other side.
Other side of the door: "Just a second! We're almost done here!" came the voice of another man.
Seitenshi: "Also, Tokyo never cut Kanegawa Prefecture from the power grid even though we believed it was now just uninhabited land. For many years power companies believed that there may still have been humans living over there, since clearly there was someone drawing electric energy from the grid but the consumption was so low and the dangers of sending teams to locate such survivors were such a large concern that nobody ever organized an expedition into that wilderness to find them! Consequently, in the event that someone was actually going to need it, the companies decided to keep supplying that area with energy all this time! And while we are still unsure if he was the only consumer, we now know from the evidence we collected from his house that he had indeed been surviving on that good will up until now over there!" after waiting for a little while, the door to the interrogation room finally flung open and a young male police officer emerged from the other side, visually scanning the group.
Officer: "Lady Seitenshi-sama! We were waiting for your arrival!" he bowed to the woman who was now staring him down.
Seitenshi: "What is the status of the interrogation now? Did you get anything useful out of him?" she inquired very calmly, even though the man in front of her was clearly not as composed as she was. He rose back to a vertical position with a very worried look on his face.
Officer: "Sadly, no! He doesn't seem to know anything more than what he already told us this morning! All the information that we got from him is the information we already told you before!" he revealed, to which the woman closed her eyes, cursing internally.
Seitenshi: "I see…" she replied, unimpressed.
Honestly this was already expected for her, given how the man had seemed to have already been willing to spill the beans that morning, so it was highly unlikely he would have kept anything from them at all.
Knowing this, the woman then made her way inside the interrogation room along with the group behind her, only for Rentarō to suddenly recognize the face that he saw.
Rentarō: "You…." he said in a very surprised voice.
Matsuzaki: "Long time no see, Rentarō-san!" the older man showed him a long warming smile, the smile he always shows to strangers.
Kisara: "Rentarō, have you seen this man before?" the girl asked very curiously.
Rentarō: "Yes….he was one of the people I encountered after Enju ran away from home a couple of months ago! Apparently he's some sort of adoptive father for the stray Cursed Children here in Tokyo! He voluntarily provides for them from his own money and offers them shelter. I don't know much about him since I never got to know him well though!" he clarified as he glared at the said man at the interrogation table. "I always suspected that he was the one Enju would always run away to whenever she wanted to be alone! I guess I was right about that" he began approach him.
Rentarō: "You knew about Enju all this time, didn't you? You took her in your care!" he began to ask his own set of questions now. The old man just nodded.
Matsuzaki: "Yes! I was the one that Enju came running to after her failed transformation into a Gastrea. Knowing that she would have been hunted down by the city given the damage and hysteria that she had caused, and also seeing how unstable she was psychologically at the time, I had no choice but to take her in and try to lift her spirits back up! After all, that's the role I always play with the girls that are in my care!" he explained as Rentarō sat down at the other end of the table, still glaring at him for now knowing that this man had been keeping Enju away from him up until now, albeit most likely due to the the latter's own wishes, surely.
Rentarō: "Where is Enju now?" cutting to the chase, he asked what was the most pressing question he had at that moment for all of them.
Matsuzaki suddenly lost his smile and just stared in a very somber way back at the boy.
Matsuzaki: "I don't know. Sadly, Enju is out of my grasp at this moment!" he revealed, letting everyone there down. He then proceeded.
Matsuzaki: "I tried to protect her to the best of my abilities but, a couple of days ago, she insisted that she go visit her father, a man named Gotō Aihara who supposedly lived in the Kanagawa Prefecture. After doing some investigations of my own, I eventually managed to find the man's location!" he informed everyone in the room. Now, there was this new name being thrown around as well, only serving to more deeply confuse everyone there.
Rentarō: "Her father…..so this was the reason Enju broke in the I.I.S.O.'s training facility. This must have been the information that she was seeking!" now the realization finally hit him square in the head, after such a long time. "Enju always wanted to find her mother. Seeing how she never managed to achieve that goal, she must have switched to trying to locate her father instead! I never bothered to check up on that information though. I only caught glimpses of it back when I became her Promoter and received a folder with her information. And even back then, all I remember finding was that Gotō had an unknown status! So I decided not to think too much about it back then!" being her Promoter, he now realized that he probably should have taken his own duties to her a bit more seriously and should have diligently checked up on her past. Now, it was obviously too late for that.
Seitenshi: "His status was unknown because nobody could keep track of him!" suddenly Seitenshi butted into the conversation again. "I had some officers do a quick investigation on this Gotō Aihara. Apparently, he changed his name to Masahiko Tanimura seven years ago! And immediately after doing that he sold his house in exchange for a cottage in the Kanagawa Prefecture and have been living alone over there since then. Since the I.I.S.O. couldn't keep tabs on him anymore, after his sudden identity change, and due to the fact that he was never officially confirmed as dead to the citizen registry, they just marked him with the 'Unknown' status in their database and kept his previous address in it instead of the new one he moved to. Nobody even officially knew that he had moved away from Tokyo up until today when Matsuzaki-san arrived this morning at the police station to declare that he had all of this information about Enju! Naturally, all of us became very concerned about this and tried to give this Masahiko-san a little visit!" she then continued on with the story from where Matsuzaki had left off.
Kisara: "But when the officers got there, the place was empty I'm guessing, right?" she pointed out the obvious.
Seitenshi: "Yes! We just took note of whatever could have been relevant clues to Enju's whereabouts and brought them back here at the station for further analysis! We also found tire tracks on that property that were in line with the tires from the trucks that Enju had helped in stealing. So now we are very certain that Enju is being manipulated by this Masahiko into committing crimes for him!" and now she was reaching the end of this rhetoric.
Rentarō just stood there, unsure of what to say next. All of this information being dumped on him at once was very concerning. He had no idea what Enju was doing and he had no way to get back in contact with her. If anything, this was just an indicator of things to come; and he was somewhat confident that the things to come would not be very pleasant.
The woman then grabbed a box from a different table in that room and brought it to Rentarō to take a look at it.
Seitenshi: "This, here, are the items that we collected from Masahiko's property! I can have investigators look into all of this stuff and see if they can come up with anything but I wish for you to have it instead! I'm sure Sumire-san will get better use out of them than we ever could! I suggest you consult with her about what we should do next after she takes a glimpse in this box! We need her opinion on how to proceed, Satomi-san!" it was funny how Seitenshi was treating Sumire as a Swiss knife for any issues that Tokyo was having.
Sumire was famously not an investigator, nor was she a specialist in forensic science in any way. She was simply an overqualified coroner, and yet Seitenshi seemed to have no issues with loading her with tasks that would have been above the skill set of anyone in her line of work.
Rentarō: "I'll be sure to deliver this to her then! But my question is, why did you think that Enju is involved in a terrorist attack? Do you have reason to believe that what they're about to do is an attack on Tokyo?" his question came off a bit clueless given that one of the trucks that they were discussing was one that carried an entire load of Black Bullets. Such bullets have enough Varanium in them to easily kill Gastrea and Cursed Children alike very easily.
Seitenshi: "Yes, we are very worried that the Black Bullets that Enju assisted in stealing could bring a lot of damage to Tokyo. Ultimately, that arsenal is only designated to be handled and used by Promoters solely! This is why those shipments are always secret to the public. The only reason Enju knew about their location and timing was because she, as an Initiator, already had access to such information, unlike Masahiko. Furthermore, if those bullets were to fall into the wrong hands, I'm afraid that many of the Cursed Children living here with us would have their lives in danger! I don't think you need me to tell you what can happen if the wrong people started to use them, do I?" she had a good point.
The man realized how critical this new assignment was for him. He needed to act swiftly in getting to the bottom of this situation; and indeed, Sumire was the most likely person to help him with that.
Rentarō: "Was this the reason you pardoned me? Just so I can give Sumire this box?" he asked in disbelief, although Seitenshi was obviously amused at that prospect.
Seitenshi: "Obviously not! Rentarō Satomi-san, I'm sure you understand better than anyone else in this room why it should be the utmost of importance for you to find Enju alive!" she continued on in trying to persuade the teenager. "You mentioned that Enju could be the first Cursed Child to have developed an immunity to the Gastrea virus! And your footage from the training facility only serves to prove that. Also, I trust Sumire-san enough to believe in her hypothesis about Enju's possibility of having developed antibodies for the virus! If this turns out to be true, we must find her and protect her more than anyone else! Her blood could very well be the key and the turning point in humanity's ultimate fate. And my understanding is that you, as her Promoter and the person who she was closest to, are my best bet into achieving this goal! As such, Satomi-san, I decided to provide to you my pardon! Please, don't make me regret my decision!" that came out a bit more disappointing than he had expected but he was still very happy because of this turn of events.
Yes, if there was anyone else on this planet that Enju trusted the most, that was him. As such, it was his responsibility to bring her back on the right side of the law.
Rentarō: "I will protect her! And I will find her! I don't know what her father has in store for her but I'll be sure to bring him to justice as well!" he made up his mind, finally.
Now that all pieces were on the table, he knew what his priorities should be.
Rentarō: "Thank you for your help, Seitenshi-sama! And thank you too for helping Enju out, Matsuzaki-san!" he suddenly turned back to the older man that was still in the room, listening in on them.
Matsuzaki: "I did only what I believe I had to do! My only regret is leaving Enju into the hands of her father! I don't know if he's a good man or not and I should never have agreed to let Enju meet him by herself! She was just so insistent on that matter that I eventually cracked and let her do what she wanted. I am very sorry for endangering her life the way I did!" he sounded truly remorseful, which was always a good sign. "Please, Rentarō-san! I know I lied to you in the past about Enju but I beg of you, protect her! Never allow her to land in harm's way the way that I did!" he tried to plead.
Rentarō: "I already did worse things to her…..but I'll make up for it! I'll save her, whatever it takes!"
~Three hours later, Sumire's office~
Sumire: "Are you kidding me?!" the doctor stared in disbelief and angst at the box that the teenage boy lowered on the table in her office. "Is this seriously what Seitenshi wants me to do? I'm a coroner, for crying out loud! I graduated medical school and have a doctorate in anatomy research, not forensics!" she yelled in annoyed at what the boy had told her just now.
Rentarō: "Yes, I know! Don't blame me! I just did what I was asked to do!" he simply shrugged in response to her outburst, with a very uncaring and bored look on his face. Apparently even he could predict her outrage, as none of that surprised him in the least.
If anything, he was disappointed at how predictable the doctor really was in these specific circumstances.
Sumire stared very annoyed at the box, almost as if she had the hidden power of magically teleporting objects to distant dimensions just by glaring at them. Still, she conceded afterwards and mentally prepared herself. She walked close to the box that had been presented to her, opened it wide and then began to pick up various objects from inside of it.
Rentarō: "Not like it's any of my business but I think you should be grateful that Seitenshi-sama values your expertise as much as she does! I have a strong feeling that she is the one that always pulled strings behind the scenes whenever you dodged prison time!" he remarked rather bluntly to the scientist who was casually visually inspecting the objects from the box, one by one.
Sumire: "Yeah, I suspected as much! I always liked to think, though, that it was actually a handsome young politician that was doing me those favors to woo me. I've been waiting for his surprise arrival into my office for years now!" she joked dully while placing on the table all the items that she finished analyzing.
Rentarō rolled his eyes at what she said but decided to be polite and not to say anything.
Sumire: "Then again, if she really is the one that helped me over the years, then I guess we're in the same boat now, aren't we, Rentarō-kun?" he suddenly realized it. She was right, now he was just as fortunate as she was that he was still allowed to be a free man after all the events that had happened. It was indeed a work of miracle almost.
Rentarō: "I know. Now I'll feel even worse when I'll be going to sleep at night!" he didn't even know why he was so bitter all of a sudden.
Admittedly he was thankful and grateful for Seitenshi's intervention. The fact that he had not received a life sentence was amazing for him.
And yet now he felt genuinely angry with himself that he had been spared in such a pathetic way. He always liked to think about himself as a hero of justice, always being a shining example of a citizen who diligently accomplishes his social duties. Now, he was just a criminal who had been graced with forgiveness and, even that, only because Seitenshi saw usefulness in his abilities, much in the same way that she saw Sumire to be useful.
Rentarō: "How did I allow myself to fall so much?" he wondered to himself before just closing his eyes in contempt and just giving up. Now was not the time to ponder over meaningless thoughts like that one. He had a job to do and a promise to follow through on. "Anyways, mind if I ask why you keep insisting on creeping me out at every chance that you get?" now he continued on an entirely different topic, surprising the doctor.
Sumire: "Oh? Whatever do you mean by that?"
Rentarō: "Why is Fernández still starting at me at the moment?! And why is he wearing a pink bow tie on his head now?!" he pointed his finger at the perpetually miserable looking corpse that was used as Sumire's favorite plaything. The doctor began smiling at that.
Sumire: "Your comments last night offended my dear Fernández! As such, I decided to pretty him up and make him look more appealing! You should compliment him on his new look! Be respectful, Rentarō-kun!" the boy face palmed at that.
Rentarō: "Who the hell puts a pink bow tie on a corpse?! That's making it even creepier! And a man's corpse no less! Doesn't that seem wrong to you?!" he just could not understand this woman at all, regardless of how hard he tried.
Sumire then adopted a hurt face at that comment.
Sumire: "How rude! Who are you to decide what Fernández-sama wants to be? Maybe he doesn't want to conform to your antiquated views on gender! Who are you to decide if he's a man or a woman?" and in just a split second the doctor shifted this to a political topic.
Rentarō: "I'M NOT! WHO ARE YOU TO DECIDE THAT FOR HIM WHEN HE'S DEAD, THOUGH?!" he honestly felt sorry for whoever that man used to be. The way his now lifeless body was handled with such little respect by this maniac felt immoral on so many levels to him.
Now he understood what Sumire had meant long ago when she had said she would have wanted a corpse for her tenth birthday. Most likely this woman would have used the body as a Barbie doll, of all things, to play dress-up with.
The mental images he was conjuring while thinking of that scenario were scarring him. His brain was not capable of handling this sort of depravity, even though his imagination still ruthlessly continued to compile images of what Sumire as a ten year old would have done. It was terrifying.
Sumire: "Oh…..what have we here?" suddenly the doctor pulled him out of his day-nightmaring as she extracted a small book from the pile of objects she was tasked with examining. She quickly began skimming through the pages, in order to see if she could find any hints. "Interesting…." she trailed off, reading very quickly between the paragraphs, seeing if she could understand what that could have been used for.
The boy just stared at her, hoping that she may have found a lead for them to follow. They needed to be quick, as he wasn't sure what Enju's father was plotting. He was hoping that it would only be further thefts although his gut feeling was telling him that something much more serious was approaching.
After ten grueling minutes in silence, the woman then moved her chair backwards towards her computer and then began typing frantically on it to search information on the web.
Again, the boy knew he was supposed to stay silent during all of this, as Sumire always had instructed him in the past to not disturb her when she was working. She always preferred to do her job in silence, for whatever reason.
He continued to observer her while she was quickly browsing the web, bringing up pages of various locations across Tokyo. All of the locations were iron processing plants, randomly enough.
Sumire: "Oh…..man, this is bad!" suddenly Sumire lost her jokey mood and adapted a very collected yet alarming tone of voice. "I think I may have a hypothesis of what our little friend is trying to do with the Black Bullets shipment that he used Enju to hijack…." she spoke up, finally indicating to him that she was ready to talk on a possible course of action for them to take.
Rentarō: "What did you find?" he asked very worried.
Sumire: "This man, Gotō Aihara, used to work for a company operating agricultural drones, here in Tokyo. Their primary source of income was using drones to automate the spraying of pesticides and herbicides over large fields of crops! He seemed to have been a drone operator at the time!" she explained calmly as the boy was trying to follow along.
Rentarō: "I'm assuming this was before the Great Gastrea War, right?" he inquired as the woman responded by nodding.
Sumire: "Yes, obviously. Farming isn't as much a priority nowadays when we're fighting for survival! The company he used to work for went bankrupt in the wake of the war and the losing of large agricultural land to the emerging Gastrea. Even so, all of their drones were confiscated by the city hall and kept in a large deposit ever since….a deposit that Enju coincidentally broke into this morning and assisted in ransacking!" she clarified as she scrolled through the page she was currently reading on the screen. "Her and her partner stole a truck with two hundred drones in it. Each drone has the capacity of carrying over twenty kilograms (approximately 44 pounds) worth of liquid in their storage tank while flying. According to this report from the city hall, the drones were kept in operational state in case an emergency were to happen and they needed to be used to transport water to distant locations outside the city. Which leads me to believe that they can be brought into usage at the whim of whoever controls them at this moment. Since both Matsuzaki and Fujitake used to work for the same company, apparently, I trust they are capable of operating them now. Which means that they are very dangerous!" she said that but Rentarō was still very confused about all of this, not understanding where she was going with this conversation.
Rentarō: "Dangerous? You said that these drones are just agricultural, right? They can only be used to spray toxins onto weeds and insects. What harm can they do?" he asked clueless as the woman just smirked knowingly back at him.
Sumire: "Yes, at first glance they seem very harmless. But this is where the stolen Black Bullets come into the equation!" she raised her index finger at him, like a parent trying to teach her child of something very important. "You see, those bullets contain Varanium which, even in low quantities, is very hazardous to Gastrea and Cursed Children alike. My hypothesis is that the two men are trying to use that arsenal against them. This is what makes it so dangerous!" he still couldn't understand her though.
Rentarō: "How can drones that were designed to spray liquids fire bullets though? These aren't military equipment, are they?" he went ahead and asked the exact question she predicted he would ask.
Sumire: "No, they aren't. But, if they were to manipulate the bullets in specific ways, it would technically be possible!" she then raised the small book in her hand, trying to show it to him again.
Sumire: "This book over here is a technical manual about the industrial practices in atomization and granulation of various metals. Specifically, it describes the process of using twin-fluid steam atomizers to fragment steel!" she went off on a very technical tangent, a tangent so completely out of nowhere that the boy just lost the entire flow of the conversation.
Rentarō: "Atomization? As in nuclear weapons?" he asked very worried, although the doctor just rolled her eyes at his complete and utter stupidity.
Sumire: "No, you idiot! Atomization is the process of breaking metal ores into dust particles so that they can then be more easily processed into specific products, like sheets or bars! It's a natural part of manufacturing worldwide!" she didn't say the word 'obviously' after that but her smug attitude definitely felt like she did. How was he supposed to know any of this? He didn't even finish high school yet!
Rentarō: "So….you're saying they would want to grind down the Black Bullets into Varanium dust?" he inquired, finally beginning to understand what she was conceiving herself.
Sumire: "Yes! The bullets themselves are in a form that they can't use right now! So they'd naturally want to reprocess them into something more manageable, like dust! Dust which can then be diluted with a cheap liquid like, let's say, water, and then pumped into the reservoirs of the drones! If they can manage to achieve that, they could then, theoretically, begin using those hundreds of drones to start spraying toxic Varanium particles across Tokyo, effectively killing all the Cursed Children in our city! The humans, obviously, won't be impacted since we're immune to Varanium but the Cursed Children will all die if the particles get into their lungs. Worse, if the weather currents pick the dust up, it can get ingrained into the rain and pollute the water system of Tokyo, only further ensuring their demise! If that happens, nobody will be able to filter the particles out at that stage even if we all tried!" she explained, as the boy began to panic.
Rentarō: "So….a terrorist attack is what you're saying?" but the woman shook her head.
Sumire: "I wouldn't call this a terrorist attack. I don't think it has any political motivation, nor any drive to scare society into changing policies or laws. If anything, this is an attempt at mass murder by creating a bio-hazard, if you want to use fancy words!" she clarified, being a bit too pedantic with the definitions.
Rentarō tried to grasp all of this, thinking really hard what to do next. How did he end up in the middle of this mess? This wasn't what he was expecting to hear when he woke up that morning.
Rentarō: "But…..Enju would never help in a plan like this! If she knew about this she would have said 'no' to it!" he naively replied, only to receive a scolding look from the doctor.
Sumire: "Do you really think Enju knows the truth, Rentarō? I think it's safe to say, since she resorted to helping them steal government property, that she isn't aware of what she's even doing. Maybe since he's her father, he's trying to manipulate her into doing things for him!" he gulped. How could he reply to that?
Rentarō: "…." he didn't know what to say. He just stood there, feeling deeply disturbed. He tried to think of a logical reply but the only thing he could come up with was just asking:
Rentarō: "Why? Why would he do that? Especially since Enju's his daughter! Why would he want to harm her and Cursed Children like this?!" but to that, Sumire didn't have good news sadly, although she did have his answer.
Sumire: "I looked up his information from a police report, ten years ago. Rentarō, just after Sakura Aihara, Enju's mother, gave birth to their daughter, Gotō spent three years in prison! Do you know why?" and now the conversation took a turn for the worse. Or in this case, for the even more morbid.
Rentarō: "Why?" he knew he shouldn't have asked but he did so anyway. It was just one of those questions that he knew he couldn't avoid at that point, regardless of how hard he regretted it.
Sumire: "Because, Rentarō, he was charged with murder! Specifically the murder of his wife and the attempted murder of Enju!" yep, he regretted asking. He definitely regretted having asked that. "Apparently, according to his own testimony, two days after giving birth to Enju and finding out that she was a Cursed Child, Gotō had a nervous breakdown at their apartment. Realizing that both his wife and daughter were infected with the Gastrea virus, he began pleading to Sakura to murder Enju and then kill herself for, and I quote from the report, 'betterment of humanity'".
Rentarō: "….." he stood there, having his face contort into a disgusted grimace.
Sumire: "The woman obviously refused and locked herself and their baby inside Enju's room while she was frantically crying. She called the police on the phone for help but, since she knew she didn't have time, she locked Enju in a wooden chest and threw the key out the window before Gotō managed to break the door to the room they were in. He crushed her throat, suffocating her in cold blood and then he moved onto the chest Enju was locked in. Before he could break it open to murder her too, though, the police arrived at their house and immediately arrested him, taking the baby into their custody! One week after that, baby Enju was sent to the I.I.S.O. for enrollment as an Initiator since she had no relative to take care of her and orphanages cannot formally accept Cursed Children. Her father was charged with murder but, since he was clearly mentally unstable due to finding out that his family was infected and due to the fact that he had no previous criminal records, he was only sentenced a short five years in prison afterwards, while also attending psychiatric therapies in the meantime to restore his sanity!" the doctor then placed the book she was holding back onto the table before grabbing a croissant from a bowl and beginning to munch on it completely randomly and irrespective from the fact that they were discussing such a dark topic.
Rentarō: "That's…..horrible" that was very pointless thing to say at that moment but Sumire could understand the urge to react that way.
Sumire: "Yes. He was later released three years later on parole before even finishing those five years. He sold his house as soon as he got out and bought that cottage Seitenshi-sama mentioned, moving most of his belongings there and removing himself from society" after finishing the chocolate croissant, she then moved onto a vanilla one. "Obviously this was against the terms of his parole but, since nobody wanted to chase him in the Gastrea filled wilderness, everyone decided to leave him be ever since. That's how he became secluded!" she finally concluded, while still munching rudely on her dessert.
The boy felt sick in his stomach when hearing such a vile story.
Rentarō: "Up until now…...I….never knew. I never bothered to look him up. Now I know why he never bothered to check up on Enju all these years. He's….insane…." the fact that Enju was most likely not even aware of these facts was the truly heart breaking part. Who knows what he was going to do to her now that he had easy access to his daughter again. "Enju….please be safe!" he chanted mentally.
Sumire: "Apparently, reading from the psychiatric profile that they compiled on him over his therapeutic sessions, he has xenophobic tendencies against Cursed Children and anyone infected with the Gastrea Virus. He views them as imminent threats to humanity, most likely due to the fact that his wife had been attacked by a freshly Gastrea-turned infected in the past. This incident was what probably led to his wife having the virus and turning Enju into a Cursed Child in the first place!" she finished reading the said report before closing it and exhaling deeply, as if to purge those horrible thoughts from her mind now that she had them.
Rentarō: "How….lovely" this man was the type that Rentarō hated the most, ironically. The type of people that had an ingrained hatred towards the Cursed Children. Even though this was due to past trauma, his actions were still clearly inexcusable. "Was the reason he changed his name to Masahiko so that he could escape from the authorities while he was on parole?" he asked, to which she shrugged.
Sumire: "I don't know! Although that seems to be the case since that did confuse the system over his disappearance. At least the I.I.S.O. lost track of him when he did that!" now it was all coming back together, although the image that he was now seeing was uglier than he could have ever hoped.
Sumire: "I'm guessing this isn't what you probably expected to find out about her father! I'm sorry I had to tell you this! But I think this is necessary to know since you'll most likely have to confront him now!".
Yes, he now remembered that he still hadn't even met the man yet. He had to find Enju as quickly as possible, before that maniac could do unspeakable things to her.
Rentarō: "Sumire-sensei, please tell me you know how to locate them!" was all he could ask at that moment anymore. He didn't care what he had to do to accomplish it, he had to locate Enju quickly, and also save all the Cursed Children of Tokyo as well.
Sumire: "Already ahead of you" she proudly declared, gaining some motivation back as she closed the previous windows from the computer screen and brought up an entirely different one with a map of Tokyo.
Sumire: "Luckily for you, there aren't that many manufacturing plants in Tokyo that has atomizers. In fact, I can only think of one location:" after typing a bit more the map then zoomed into a specific building. "Prömödas AB, a Swedish company that focuses on producing various metal products, shifted its operations, back when the great war began, to processing Varanium to produce arsenal against Gastrea. They are the main suppliers of equipment that Promoters use across the globe. And they, for better or for worse, have a factory right here, in Tokyo, among many other locations! A factory which just so happened to be mentioned in Matsuzaki's own notes in this notebook that was also in the box!" she pointed to the said item.
Rentarō: "You know, you complain a lot but you're really good at this...I can definitely see why Seitenshi-sama keeps on asking for your help" he pointed out the obvious. The doctor made an angry face at that.
Sumire: "Just because I'm good at it doesn't mean I like it! These types of duties were never mentioned in the contract that I signed when I was hired here either! I have other more important work to do that I am actually qualified for, you know!" she complained audibly, as she kept on typing in the background.
Rentarō: "Work? Like dressing the cadavers like your dolls?" he rebutted, only to then notice the maniacal face that the doctor responded back to him with.
Sumire: "Rentarō, as a very close friend to you I'll give a fair warning: don't make me mad! I know where you live! And you wouldn't be the first person to whom I'd sneak a dead body in the bed of while they're sleeping either!" that was an awfully credible but very specific threat, the type of threat that was so specific in fact that it would only realistically work if it came from nobody else but her.
Rentarō: "Who…..was the poor soul?" he replied in a terrified voice. "Don't tell me it was-…"
Sumire: "Yep! It was him! My fiance almost had a heart attack back then! I distinctly remember him turning blue in the face and fainting when he woke up. The funny thing is that, back when he was still alive, he used to give me a good morning kiss without opening his eyes first thing in the morning. It was more romantic that way, he said. So that morning, when he attempted that and noticed that my lips were colder than usual, he did open them only to be greeted to the sight of a dead person in his arms!" she cheerfully remembered what were supposed to be happy memories.
Rentarō: "You're…..sick!" this day was the day when he found out way more about Sumire than he ever would have wanted to…..or about Enju's father…..actually that day just sucked all around.
Sumire: "In my defense, I have very specific fetishes. And I did warn him about this stuff when we got engaged so he should have been mentally prepared!" she said that almost as if that was an excuse.
Rentarō: "Please….just focus on the task at hand! I'm already too disturbed as it is! I don't need any more nightmares at this point!" he cried in desperation. The woman smirked.
Sumire: "Haaaai!" she complied before bringing up another image on the screen, this time with the owner of the said factory. "This is the man in charged with this Tokyo factory! He's been a known political activist against giving any rights to Cursed Children! He's also an acquaintance of Fujitake, Masahiko's close friend, if you remember!" she explained, before continuing.
Rentarō: "What role does this Fujitake have in all of this?" he continued to ask for more information.
Sumire: "Not much of a role. Apparently he has known Matsuzaki since the time they worked at the same drone company. Ever since the Great War, he has had a particular distaste for Cursed Children himself, blaming them along with the Gastrea for ruining the world and their company going bankrupt. I believe he must have kept in touch with Matsuzaki over the years, even after the latter served his sentence. And he was also the one whose access cards were used to access the drones facility and not start the alarm when him and Enju stole the truck this morning! Given that he has known the owner of the Varanium processing plant, I'm willing to bet he convinced him to allow them in to use the equipment there to atomize the bullets into dust while nobody would be around!" that was all the information he needed.
Armed with this knowledge, Rentarō pulled out his cellphone and began rushing outside.
Rentarō: "Thank you for your help, sensei! I owe you!" he yelled back at the doctor as he was making his way out.
Sumire: "Good luck! Be sure to save Enju!" she called out to him as he dialed Kisara's phone to inform her of this finding.
Author's notes: fun fact, this was the point in the story in which Mizuki (the rogue Cursed Child that I introduced in chapter 4, "Break in") was supposed to die in my original draft of this story. She would have been used to highlight Masahiko's deranged personality as, during an altercation with the man, he would simply pull out a Varanium ax and split her skull open, allowing Enju to see his true self. This concept was later scrapped due to how unnecessary it was and how little it advanced the plot.