Special thanks for this chapter goes to my beta The Dark Crimson Blood. Also, if you haven't voted yet, do it soon. I'm closing the poll on Monday, the tenth.

Chapter 18

Pinocchio

Taking a deep breath, Sasori rapped sharply on Mizuno's door.

"Just a minute!"

Sasori sighed. "Mizuno, I don't care if you're in front of a mirror, just get out here!"

The door swung open, revealing the Imperial Guardian of the East, who was currently drying his hair with a towel. Mizuno raised a questioning eyebrow, only to wince in pain. He rubbed his nose tenderly; unfortunately, it wasn't completely healed yet. "Well, Sasori, what do you want?" he grumbled.

The scorpion specialist scratched his head sheepishly, smiling as though holding back a laugh. It was as if the very thought of what he was about to say amused him. "Mizuno...what would you say if I told you I could help you get revenge for your nose?"

Mizuno froze; his hand went to his nose immediately. His eyes scrutinized his fellow Imperial Guardian. "I'd say—you want me to do something for you, don't you?"

"You know me too well."

Mizuno sighed, shouldering his towel. "All right, what do you need?"

Sasori grinned as he ticked off his terms on his fingers. "I want your magic, one glass coffin, and I need you to keep Niebel out of the basement and the games tomorrow."

"Straight to the point, aren't you? But a glass coffin? Who's funeral is it?"

"Not exactly a funeral." Sasori leaned back on his gladiator sandals. "I can fix your nose tonight. All I need in return is your cooperation."

"For?" the mirror mage questioned.

"Oh, I don't know..." The Imperial Guardian of the West flaunted the ivory scorpion-like whistle around his neck. "Maybe I wanna torture a certain Shadow Dragon Slayer to death like you almost did on the first day..."

With a feral grin, Mizuno held his hand out for Sasori to shake. "Pleasure to do business with you."

"All mine." Sasori turned to leave when something caught his eye. "Mizuno?"

"Hm?"

"Are you sure that hair dye was diluted?"

"Pretty sure, why?"

"Well..." Sasori pulled the towel away from Mizuno's shoulder. Turquoise strands fluttered to earth, though a number of said strands remained on the cloth.

Outside, several crows and ravens flew off as a scream made itself known to the night.

So the board looked like this.

The Gladiator, the Ninja, and the Knight were on the space indicating Mars. The phoenix rested happily on the Venus section. Two more cards—Death and a Temperance in reverse—rested on Pluto. "Well, well, this is tricky," she murmured.

Rogue held back an impatient sigh.

The gypsy pointed to the gladiator. "The hero of ancient times seeks conquest and devastation. But the Ninja fights him in the shadows. However, the Knight triumphs with valor. Hence why he always gets the girl," she added, grinning.

"But the phoenix—Love controls the heart of the star of rebirth."

"Yo, Rogue!" Sting poked his head in, only to pull back out from the smell. "We need to get going!"

Sighing—glad to get out of the tent—Rogue stood from his chair.

"Wait!" The gypsy cried. "The girl is precious to you, is she not?"

Rogue narrowed his eyes. "Your point?"

"I see." The fortune teller lowered her veiled face. "Tomorrow, something treasured will be taken...right before your very eyes."

Eyes narrowing in frustration, he replied, "You must be mistaken. She's dead."

"Are you sure?"

Taking only a moment to look back, Rogue stormed out of the tent. The gypsy frowned as she glanced at her table. "However," she murmured. "There is a possibility that I may have misinterpreted this. Yes, the Gladiator is devastation; the Ninja represents hidden secrets; and the Knight is the symbol of valor and justice. But if I were to do this..."

The fortune teller placed a golden orb in the center of the disc. Nine circles scattered themselves on the plate. But only three were aligned together, despite their distances. "So there was a second meaning for those three."

Lamia Scale's lodgings, 9:45 PM

Chelia hugged her pillow tightly as she watched the clock. "It's getting late, Lyon."

"I'm sure Sherry went out to look for the guy, so don't worry," Yuka said, though his eyebrows knitted together in doubt.

"But—"

"Sherry can handle herself," Jura reassured. "But what worries me...is their delay in returning."

"Do you think something happened, Jura-san? After all, it's not like either of them to stay out late," Lyon suggested.

Before they could add anything else, the door slammed open. Team Lamia Scale jumped as Ooba Babasama waltzed into the room. "Nonsense, I'm sure those two are fine, wherever they are. Why, Dobengal must be spying on Sabertooth to help us tomorrow and Sherry's with her no-good fiancé," she berated.

"But Obaba—"

"No buts or I'll spin you for the rest of the night!" Yuka shut his mouth while the guildmaster of Lamia Scale went on. "However—" Ooba's rambling took a serious turn. Her face wrinkled with dread. "If those two don't turn up in the morning...then we have a problem."

"Yeah we—"

"After all, who else knows all about Sabertooth's weaknesses?" Ooba said.

Lyon and Yuka fell on their faces, dumbfounded by their guild master.

Blue Pegasus' lodgings

A certain Archive mage typed restlessly, his screens offering different information at a time. Beside his right hand, a missing poster of a young woman from Minstrel sat on the bedside table.

"Hibiki, you should get some rest," Jenny persuaded, her arms wrapped around his waist.

"It doesn't make sense," Hibiki mumbled as several pictures of missing people appeared all over his screens. "These are all the people who have gone AWOL within the span of last year. All of them are completely unrelated to each other; they're of diverse age groups; and if you group some of them together, only a handful come from the same country."

"I doubt there's any from Bosco," Eve yawned, rubbing his eyes.

Hibiki's eyes lit up. "Bosco...that's it!" His fingers typed faster as he input Bosco. "Bosco specializes in illegal slave trading, so almost anyone who's gone MIA would be sold there. But..." He stopped searching for a minute. "Among the kidnapped...there are ten from Bosco. So why would they kidnap their own countrymen?"

Even Eve couldn't find an answer to that. Yes, that was indeed strange. What good did it serve to haul a country's own citizens?

Haul...haul...that's it! As if a fire was lit in his mind, Eve jumped from his bed, placing himself beside the nightstand. "Transport," he realized.

"What?"

"Don't you get it, Hibiki? With that many people, how would they have gotten past the borders?"

Crocus Gardens, 10:17 PM

Sasori found himself in front of the padlocked door, holding the seven keys to the locks.

The keyring floated from his hand, the individual keys detaching themselves as they fit into their respective locks. The padlocks disappeared, and the door swung open.

Sasori stepped inside, taking in the fresh smell of jasmine and mint that poorly hid the stench of blood and tears.

He shook his head as he glanced at the neatly made bed. "Sorry, Nieb. But life can't spoil you forever."

"On the other hand—" The scorpion master chuckled darkly. "We finally have the meddler out of the way, along with a friend of his. Little boy Pinocchio and the Blue Fairy—or is that the Red Lamia? Ah, whatever."

"You're right!" Different listings for cargo appeared on the Archivist's screen. "Just a week after all of these people were abducted, a transport with cargo that exceeded three hundred kilograms would appear. And each time, they were overlooked because they were grouped with weapons and equipment."

"Every shipment has a unique code. Most times, it's the importers' name encrypted," Hibiki finished. "But—" Multiple shipment codes lined up vertically. "No matter how unique these codes are, five characters always appear in the same sequence, always at the end."

Hibiki typed in a command. Five characters in each code glowed red, and the excess characters drifted off, lost in the sea of data.

"7A84N?" Jenny read.

"If I can decode it, maybe we can find the mastermind behind the operation," the Archive muttered. "Begin decoding."

At once, his monitors went to work. Strings of numbers and letters appeared while Hibiki took a break.

"It could just be a coincidence," Eve pointed out.

"True...but Lamia Scale's discovery last night wasn't so much of a coincidence, was it?" Jenny defended.

"Yes...it's been almost a year since those three went missing. But eleven months later, they show up in Crocus, dead." Hibiki ran a hand through his hair. "A murderer would want to hide all evidence of his actions. But why would someone carelessly leave behind the evidence for the world to see?"

His monitors glowed green. "Decoded," one read.

All three of them gasped.

Vóreia stared out her window, holding Platina, the doll, close to her. The stars are really pretty tonight, she thought.

"'Hey, Vóreia?" Glacia leaned away from the window. "If you had to be a star, which one would you be?'"

"'Easy. I'd be the North Star, Polaris,'" Vóreia replied.

Glacia pouted. "Really? I'd be Ankaa, the Phoenix." She spun on her heel, smiling. "'Cause even if I die, my heart's still beating, right? And I'll be born again, see?'"

A tear slid down her cheek at the memory. "Glacia..."

"...um...ugh..." Sherry opened her eyes, her thought process running slower than what it should have. The only thing she could see was darkness—until she saw a bit of silk thread on the ground; which was when she realized she was covered in it... "Gross!"

"Oh, you woke up?"

Sherry could have jumped if she weren't anchored by spider thread. She couldn't tell where it came from, but she was glad to find one familiar voice.

There was movement, and Sherry could see tan hair shaking. "Dobengal, where are we?"

"If I had to guess—then, a basement. Where else would Jigumo keep his spider nest?" his voice replied.

"Ha ha," Sherry snorted. "How did you get here?"

"Jigumo threw me in here. You?"

Sherry screwed up her face in confusion. She relaxed as she recalled what happened. "The gladiator—Sasori, right?—he got me."

Her only response was a hiss, to which she countered, "Hey, you try being stung by a scorpion—"

"No, I cut my hand with my knife."

Sherry sighed in relief. At least he was working on a way to escape. The only thing the Doll Play mage could do was squint to see. So far, there was a giant spiderweb with two cocoons—wait, what?

"Can I ask you something?"

"Go ahead."

Sherry meant to say, "What do you think are in those cocoons?" But it came out as, "Project TI-26A8."

"Ow!" Sherry winced as she imagined Dobengal's pain. But inside, she knew she hit more than his skin. "So that's how you got in here. But that info is classified to only the guild master and the Imperial Guardians. So how did you—"

"I read someone's journal, okay!" Sherry confessed. "Hey, if it's that top secret, how come you reacted to its name?"

She was met by silence. The Doll Play mage thought he was giving her the silent treatment until he sighed. "The Code of Silence only works if an outsider doesn't know."

"The Code of Silence? You mean that spell that keeps someone from talking freely? But why would you know—"

"Because I was one of the handful of people directly involved," he responded. "Like I said, Project TI-26A8 is so classified, only the Imperial Guardians and the guildmaster are allowed to even know. Everyone else involved either had their memories deleted—or their speech restrained."

"I guess you got off easy, right?" Sherry tried to comfort.

A harsh laugh. "Are you kidding? After five years, I wish I had my memories altered. However, I wasn't among those who were traumatized."

"So...when you had the Code of Silence put on you—"

"To an outsider, I was told to do only one thing: lie." Another frustrated sigh. "And I was a natural at it."

Sherry's head shot up. He's a natural at lying, she thought, her eyes narrowed into slits. But that story last year about that Ice Dragon girl never made sense! "One more thing. Project TI-26A8..."

Jigumo stood in front of an enormous Communication Lacrima, waiting for the person on the other end to respond. Out of boredom, he said, "Testing, one, two. Baron Fatnose, are you there?"

"What did you call me?!" A nasally, sneering voice screamed.

The spider specialist grinned. "Good, you can hear me."

"I may have persuaded the king to allow your guild to enter Fiore, but learn your place. Remember that I am the king's royal advisor—"

"And remember that I am an assassin who couldn't care less if you were the king's grandma!" Jigumo retorted. "And, acting on the master's behalf, I can easily break the deal we have."

He was met by a pregnant pause on the other end before the king's advisor huffed angrily. "Fine," his voice snapped. "When will it be ready?"

"Oh, you might wanna come around—" Jigumo glanced at a clock. "Eleven-ish, tomorrow morning."

"Excellent."

Jigumo snorted, to which the person on the other end questioned, "Yes? A problem?"

"No, no. I mean—" The spider master leaned back on his heels. "That amount of power seems like a waste to be used for a simple coup d'état, Baron Hubert."