Chapter 24: Menace

08:48 AM (Japan Time), Wednesday April the 29th…

"… I am sorry for calling you so early in the morning, taking into account you returned at a late hour from Site P yet… I've had an idea which I wanted to share with you, Vice President Noir…"

"Don't mind it, sir… I'll survive. So… What is the idea, sir?"

"We could make use of those Navis we recruited with an impatient behavior and send them in three groups to pick their respective opponents…"

"Hmmm… A five-way strike if we include Thunder Man and Tomahawk Man into the list… Sounds good enough…"

"By the way… Regarding Site P…"

"Oh yeah… The terminals and all hardware installation are completed. When it comes to Zero… The other electrical wiring and systems of the infrastructure are 89% completed and should be done by next month more or less… The moving there would take place around July or August once we'd run the first trials of the software…"

"Excellent. But please don't overdo yourself."

"I'll try to, sir…"

"Please have some rest. This operation won't take place until the weekend so there's time to rest. I'm sure the building team can manage perfectly by following the instructions… I know you want to feel like you're doing real job but it's no good to drive yourself to such an extreme…"

Hades had summoned Noir (having his black monk's cloth on) to his office which had a desk, two armchairs, one canvas of a sail boat, and a safe behind his armchair; a VAIO laptop had been set atop the desk along with some folders having documents; a portable lamp was set in an angle that barely illuminated the desk and hid most of Hades' figure; a perch on the right side of the room had his gray trench coat hanging from it, along with a brown hat having a black band around it.

"A-alright, sir…"

"President Hades? The tea…" A voice rang out.

"Mademoiselle… Do please come inside."

The secretary came inside carrying a tray in which a teacup plus a teapot had been placed; she left it atop the table.

"I am sorry to ask this of you."

"Do not mind it."

"I shall be going, then." Noir announced as he stood up.

"Sleep well."

"Thank you, sir. Goodbye, ma'am."

"Goodbye."

Noir came out of the office and barely repressed a yawn as he sluggishly walked down the corridor; he tripped with something and met the ground; he managed to stand up while rubbing his right cheek, which was bleeding due to a cut made when falling.

"Crap." He cursed.

He stood up and rushed into his room, where he closed himself in the bathroom, and lowered the hood; his eyes' irises were blue and his hair was blonde.

"I pushed it again and now I go and trip with my own shoes' cord… What a lovely way to end the month, really."

He picked a handkerchief and rubbed the cut before opening a small cupboard and applying disinfectant alcohol to it; he sighed and looked at his eyes, which displayed obvious tiredness.

"There's no other way around. I gotta prove I'm someone devout to my duties and not some idiotic pencil-pusher. Purgatory and Zero will be ready on schedule and I'll see to it! Huff! Our main factors to victory! Just you wait, you foolish sinners… You will regret your actions!"

17:19 PM (Japan Time)…

"… and then with my super smashing it all fist I beat that 100 kilo bully thus becoming the savior of that 1st grader!"

"And when did that happen?"

"Huh? What did you say?"

"When did that happen?"

"This morning at break time, ya know. Everyone saw me."

"You MORON!"

"Yikes!"

"There we go again."

"Hey. Been a while."

"Oh! Enzan! What a coincidence! I was thinking of you and how we were gonna meet tomorrow at the monthly meeting."

Dekao had been boasting again and the girls snapped at him; Enzan called out Netto as he stood to the right of the entrance; he was crossing his arms and leaning against the wall, while closing his eyes.

"I've gotten new info."

"Oh? New info regarding Miquel's buddies? Golden Star, right? Did something big happen?"

"I'll beat them all!" Dekao boasted.

"Try beating me first. Will you, Ooyama?" Enzan challenged.

"You're no – one." He scoffed.

"Why? Because I don't live in Akihara City? It ain't the center of the Universe last time I checked."

"Wha~t? Then why did all those incidents happen here!?"

"Mere coincidences. There were others in other places."

"This JERK…! Showdown!"

"Alright. Blues. Shake them up." Enzan commanded.

"Roger, Enzan – sama. Come!"

"Guts Machine Gun!"

"Slow! Neo Variable Sword!"

"Guts! Too strong, guts!"

"No way! There's no one faster than my INVINCIBLE Guts Man!"

"There we go again." Meiru fumed.

"Men will be men!" Yaito snickered.

"Does that apply to me too?" Netto asked.

"No." Both replied.

"Alright, alright."

"Program Advance! Sword, Wide Sword, Long Sword! Slot In! Dream Sword! Go!"

"Eat this!"

"Guts Hammer… GATTSU~!"

"Match over." An automated voice announced.

"No way! Total battling time: 20.39 seconds? Busting Level S? That's impossible! I'm the Champion of Akihara Town!"

"You aren't and never were and never will be." Meiru icily scolded.

"Hah! Take that, Chibi King Kong Man!" Yaito taunted.

"Wha~t?" He growled.

"So, Enzan… What's going on with those guys?"

"They'll be sending out some Navis to attack me, Search Man, Colonel, Tomahawk Man, Thunder Man and Punk on the weekend!"

"Isn't there anything I can do to help?" Netto asked.

"Sorry. But no." He replied.

They failed to notice a figure spying on them from close by; the figure was gripping a knife on the right hand.

There's the brat! Today I'll pay back the humiliation I went through not once but twice!

"Sadly enough, my good sir… That will not come to happen. You've left behind a trail miles long which was easy enough to follow!"

"Who the fuck?"

"Agoras. Private eye."

"WHA~T?"

"You won't get anywhere save the police station so start by discarding that knife… Senhor Hino Kenichi. Those are my Brazilian genes speaking."

Hinoken, former WWW member, had been spying on the group when Joel Agoras showed up behind him, his glasses reflecting light in a sinister manner; he'd placed both hands behind and was calmn while Hinoken was about to explode.

"I'm gonna rip you up!"

"I think otherwise."

Agoras drew his gun, which he'd been hiding behind him, and shot a dart at Hinoken's right knee; he let go of the knife as he hit the floor.

"What was that sound…? You're… Golden Star's Agoras!"

"Whoa! That's Hinoken of the WWW! Flame Man's Operator!"

"By all the… You're right!"

Enzan and Netto heard a noise and rushed at the scene, surprised to find both of them; Agoras had already hidden the gun in a holster he carried under the coat.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen. Ijuuin – kun and Hikari – kun, am I correct in that aspect?" He politely asked.

"So you're one of Miquel's buddies?"

"Kage – kun's? Correct. I don't see him often but he is very sharp and skilled! No – one denies that fact."

"And you're a buddy of Andy too?" Rock Man asked Victor.

"Correct. He had a message for you, Rock Man – kun."

"A message for me…? What message?" Rock Man asked, surprised.

"Installation 05 is about to fire. Better go find shelter."

"HUH? That's the message?"

"Indeed."

"Guess there's a catch to it…" Netto brought the right hand to his chin, thoughtful.

"There has to." Enzan muttered.

"However… There could be thousands of "Installation 05" anywhere in the world, sir." Blues warned.

"We take our leave. Do not try to follow us, Ijuuin – kun, because it will be something vain. So long, gentlemen, so long."

"See ya."

Agoras walked away while humming a tune as both Enzan and Netto looked at the snoring Hinoken.

"We should call the police."

"I'll do that. Don't be surprised if I'm out of reach in the weekend before or after the meeting… One of those will come to challenge me, so."

"Gotcha!"

"Be careful, Blues."

"I will."

Netto reunited with the group; the girls were still scolding Dekao who tried to play the strong but failed.

"…hero of the whole academy!"

"Come on! Hero? You're seeing too much manly anime." Meiru icily corrected.

"I don't need to be told what to do!" He snapped back.

"Then what's homework for?" She questioned.

"To kill your brain!" He grumbled.

"How did you make it to 2nd grade like that?" Yaito was skeptical of the whole deal.

"Using my muscle!" He boasted.

"No. More like resorting to a tutor." Meiru corrected.

"Netto! Defend me! I'm being bullied!"

"That's not bullying. That's just skepticism. There's no law forbidding anyone from being skeptical, Dekao."

"You moron!"

"I'm going home."

"I'm going too! I don't want to tag with this compulsive liar."

"A lady had better watch after herself!" Yaito muttered.

They headed away, leaving Dekao to curse into the air; a patrol car parked nearby and two policemen picked the still snoring Hinoken to handcuff him and place him onboard the car; Enzan watched them leave and then headed down the street while thinking about something.

Installation 05 is about to fire. Better go look for shelter… How can an installation "fire"? Unless it means an AAC system or an underground missile silo…

He grumbled and shook his head.

Where's the shelter? The Metro? A bunker? The basement of a house? Maybe Agoras interpreted it as having a meaning for Hikari but I guess the real target was I! It's a crafted joke by Kage to laugh at my efforts. The face on Hikari was the true thing! He didn't have the least remote idea of what he meant.

"You looked troubled, sir."

"Yeah. I am. Nothing is easy in this affair! Kage's figure makes honor to his name by slipping through the cracks and corners without any of us noticing it at all… Heck! He even showed up on the garage of the Net Police's HQ and placed stickers with his organization's emblem all over the patrol cars before slipping out and vanishing."

"I know, sir… The security systems had been frozen by inserting a self-replicating program which would try to take all processing power to execute all of its copies…"

"And the guy had plastic gloves on so he didn't leave any fingerprints behind either! I'm sure that former double agent involved in some Yakuza war or another, Keitai Denwa, is behind that."

"It sounds possible, sir."

"I'm starting to think that Purgatory and Zero are the true key pillars of their schemes yet they're protecting the info by not telling anyone else about what it is or letting out any hints… How can we hope to progress like that? The only thing we know is their members and how many Navis they currently have but we've been beating around the bush ever since our first run-in with them in January…"

"Sadly… Such is the case, sir… Hmmm? The auto-phone, sir… It's an unknown number, though…"

"Patch it through. Maybe it's Obihiro using a secure line!"

"Look, Boss! The train car got into the siding!"

"Yeah. But… How will it stop?"

"Oh! At the end of these sidings there's always something to stop them, ya know!"

"You were right, yeah… At the end of the track there's the harbor's water, you nitwit!"

"Calm down, calm down, there's no danger! I'm an expert at fishing dried codfish! I bother to save ya and I get this!? The world's full of mean people!"

"Huh? Who are you?"

"The Trio of VM, BM & NM strike back?"

"What was that?"

"I thought you knew my voice pretty well by now, Ijuuin and Blues!"

"Damn it. Video Man."

"You're coming for us in the weekend?" Enzan tried to guess.

"That depends on what the masters decide, see."

"That's my motto too." Burner Man joined the chatter.

"Shah, shah, shah! Wanna have a pumping of hallucinations?"

"I'll defeat each and every one of you!"

"Come anytime!"

"Now that the granny's guard is down, I've got a chance… The inheritance is mine!"

"How beautiful! An "orquideus fragantus"… I don't know how they can grow atop these ugly "cactus borriquerus", anyway. Besides that, they're poisonous… The one who gets even one of those needles stabbed into them will suffer stinging for months!"

"And the guy ran into the cactus because he was coming up from behind and didn't notice it until it was too late?" Enzan guessed.

"How stupid!" Blue scoffed.

"Correct! You better not begin "dancing" with a local guy while being bare-footed 'cause the guy was trying to crush a scorpion and not dancing: F, the Boss, got stung by it!"

"Hmpf. What stupid humor."

"The guys at the base like it: not my problem."

"Let's go back already. I wanna heat up for the weekend."

"Shah, shah, sha~h! See ya~!"

The line went dead and Enzan cursed under his breath as he placed the PET on the arm-strap and punched a streetlight as if to vent out his bad mood; his eyes narrowed and he looked more dangerous than he'd done ever before.

"Get ready, you punks. This ends this weekend."

"Enzan – sama! But…!" Blues argued.

"I'll beat them until there's nothing left standing!" He growled.

"I was afraid of it… He's gotten obsessed and will not listen to me: it's impossible to take them down just like that. This time it's outside of our power… And if Enzan – sama doesn't realize that then we'll be in trouble, really." Blues grimly muttered.

"Stick out your necks, you punks! Ijuuin Enzan will cut all of them and place your heads atop stakes! I'll win!"

"Please calm down, sir. Anger won't solve anything, sir."

"Sheesh! I know that! It's so frustrating! They keep on taunting me to not to get off the game, but I hate being made a fool of!"

"Anyone would, sir. But if we step into their game, we lose, sir."

"Sheesh! Fine! I need some intensive training! I'll tell Obihiro to come up with some recreation of those punks!"

"No good. I'm afraid he's not going to listen. Lovely. When will this stupid farce end, anyway? Sheesh…! I'm fed up with it already!"