After another month of training from Ice, Jonathan has finally mastered hand-to-hand combat... at least in Ice's eyes. Which Ice considered pretty good eyes after all; he was a super agent or at least one who is still technically in training.

Ice was now in the living room at around eleven, nearing midnight. He was pretty much just cooling off since he decided that they would need a week break before the next part of his plan began to finish Jonathan's training.

They were currently watching the television on the news. From what they have been seeing lately, a bunch of crime (more than normal) has begun happening around the world.

It shouldn't take a genius to figure out it was the work of an organization probably run by Crime lords. Sadly, somehow, the population was generally convinced by the "Global Defense Alliances" that it wasn't that serious and downplayed it.

He understood why they would do something like that and keep everyone in the dark. An image of widespread panic and crime spiking would mean that the world would end long before they were of any threat.

It had its flaws as well. The general population was still vulnerable and unprepared; they wouldn't give their support as easily since they don't know how dangerous it really is, and worst of all. Once the truth comes out about the situation, the amount of betrayal that will be directed at the Forces of Justice will lead to riots, making it easier for the enemies to win.

That's not even mentioning that the Evil Geniuses will see this as a sign to make bolder attacks because of a sense of security that they are thought less of a threat than everyone perceives them as.

All of it was quite exhausting. Lying down on the soft blue couch, he rested for a moment until suddenly something tickled his nose because of its scent. He glanced over at the kitchen from the couch as the scent he had just picked up was the aroma of homemade pizza.

Jonathan had decided to cook up a pizza since, from what he told him, he was pretty good at making it. He actually had wanted to become a chef before deciding to become an agent. He had honestly half expected to smell burning from the kitchen and was surprised at how good it smelt.

He could practically taste the pizza in his mouth. He already could see the texture along with the salivating, stretchy amber cheese topped with beef, black olives, green capsicum, and other delectable ingredients.

The pizza helped him momentarily keep the thoughts on the bigger issues away. He wouldn't say he was a fan of pizza, yet the dish being made in the kitchen was calling out for him to devour it whole.

Perhaps he should convince him to be a chef. It would be a lot less dangerous a profession. It's not like there is some sort of madman out there in the food industry killing people.

...

Nah. It would be near impossible to convince him now; after all, he took 2 months of his training and still hasn't given up. He doubted a mind like that would ever give up becoming something else.

He was unsure how to teach him how to sneak since it came naturally to him even without the invisibility cloak. Maybe some more practical training with him sneaking past crowds until he doesn't make a sound, or he could make it so while he is eating, he has to steal some food without him noticing, and each time he does notice, he will punch him through a wall.

Although that could cause brain damage if he hasn't caused it by now. Perhaps he doesn't even need practical training for this part and can just pretend to act like a minion.

That could work. Acting. Yet he himself wasn't a good actor, so he may need to get a teacher in this field to teach them. Not like it would matter since they wouldn't hold up the act for long while taking out minions or henchmen.

His thoughts were interrupted as the wooden door to the kitchen opened as Jonathan came walking in on the ice-coloured carpets holding a white plate in his hand while carrying a smile. The mouthwatering aroma was now filling up the room as Ice swallowed, waiting to see what it was, not allowing his sense of smell to take over. It could still be bad in every other way.

This thought was cut to pieces when Jonathan set down the freshly baked pizza. "Well, I hope this is good enough." Jonathan muttered. He was unsure if his cooking skills were still up to par, since it had been a year since he really cooked anything.

Ice sat up as he had to take a moment to understand what he was seeing. It had been quite a bit since he had eaten food before till now. Instead, he had gotten his nutrients from these strange, flavourless juice boxes, which allow a person to go 3 days without eating or drinking. He had also made Jonathan drink from these boxes as well. He had also made Jonathan drink from these boxes as well, ensuring that his friend stayed healthy and hydrated.

Yet, despite this. Ice could understand how good the pizza in front of him was. From the melting cheese that was still bubbling slightly, the perfectly browned crusts and glistening topping. He was impressed. He made a guess that these cooking skills were on par with a 5-star restaurant at the very least.

"Nah, I'd say you well surpassed the term 'good enough.'" Jonathan scratched his leg while sitting down on the... floor since he didn't really want to sit next to him and find the floor more comfortable.

He picked up a slice of the pizza with the cheese stretching before detaching as he quickly took his first bite as the blend of flavours hit his tongue all at once as his chewing slowed for a moment. The well-seasoned crispy beef, the watery capsicum, along with the rest of the vegetables, give an aromatic taste, and the cheese holds it together.

A slight tilt before he nodded with satisfaction written on his face. "Not bad. You could even say pretty great."

Jonathan couldn't help himself as his chest puffed up in pride while watching Ice take another bite of his pizza. He still got it.

He had thought it would be much harder to impress a super agent since they must have tasted the best of the best the world had to offer.

On a second line of thinking, he should probably not let this get to his head. After all, it was just food and nothing else. It wouldn't bolster his small ego. Much. He took a slice of pizza before tasting it with the cheese melting in his mouth. Nice.

Ice had his eyes closed while tilting his head side to side while chewing as if he were analyzing a blueprint or thinking of something as he opened one of his eyes while putting his slice down, deciding to create a serious look before showing it to Jonathan while telling his next words dead serious. "If you keep cooking meals like these. I might have to take you off combat training and make you our team chef."

Jonathan froze hearing this as he practically dropped the slice in his hand right before he caught it midair, burning his hand as the hot liquid cheese touched his close palm as he quickly dropped it onto the plate below while holding his slightly burnt hand as he looked at Ice. "A-are you serious."

"Yes... dead serious." Ice nodded as he put down his half-eaten slice onto the plate while snapping his fingers before looking at him with a serious expression while delivering his next line. "Just imagine. An evil genius taken down by gourmet food. No one will see it coming."

'Oh… it was a joke.' Jonathan settled down as he clenched the hand burnt by the cheese as it would probably heal in a couple of minutes. He really should have guessed Ice was just kidding. He wasn't sure why he even took him seriously to begin with. "I'm sorry, but did I really get kicked for two months just for you to say for me to become a chef?"

"Yes."

That frank reply was simply answered with a heavy eyeroll by Jonathan. "Right. Nothing else would scream agent quite like killing your adversaries... with..."

There was a pause for a moment as Jonathan stopped. Ice raised a brow seeing him suddenly contemplating something.

It was at this moment Jonathan had come to a realization as his eyes widened. "FOOD!"

After yelling food for some reason that Ice couldn't understand, he abruptly stood up before running off quickly as Ice tried to stop him by calling him, but he was already upstairs faster than he could even say his name. He was probably already in his room.

Ice was dazed for a moment trying to understand what happened before deciding to just shake his head while sighing. "What did I even say this time?" He looked down to see the pizza that was still warm and wanting to be eaten as he decided to forget about what just happened since it was obvious Jonathan wasn't going to come back downstairs, and he didn't exactly feel like asking what got him worked up.

"Well, it would be a shame if this got cold." He rubbed his hands together as he picked up a slice.

Jonathan almost ripped out the drawer as he took out his purple book he stored as he took out a black pen before opening it to a page filled with different people and times of their deaths as well as the places of their deaths.

He quickly wrote down a dot point of possible death of food as he looked at all the information he had written over the past two months from what he could remember from his previous notebooks and writing.

So many journalists and critics dead. What did they all have in common? They were all related to food in some way, especially near the end of their life.

"HAHAHAHAHAHA! IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW!" He shouted out to no one with a crazed look in his eye, or, well, his entire face, as he picked up the book. He had been researching this even since after getting out of high school. While reading articles online on what to do with his life, he found that people have begun coming up dead without a wound on their body. It was interesting to say the very least. By now, he had been researching it for around five years; however, it wasn't as enjoyable due to all the training from the agency.

Now that he actually had some free time (along with getting his shit kicked in on the daily), he was so close, so very close to solving what was happening. It was food poisoning, but from where?

He scrawled quickly in his book, furiously writing down possible new notes while connecting all the dots together as his eyes gleamed with burning energy to finish this once and for all. Erratic dots and lines of people, places, and food they had eaten (from what he had gathered).

"Yes, yes, yes!" He yelled as his fingers twitched with glee at his progress. "It's been hidden under my nose all along! HAHAHAHAHA!" He laughed at his own pun, continuing to write down more notes, already halfway done with on a new page.

Meanwhile downstairs, Ice had already finished half the pizza and had filled him up considerably. He still wanted to eat more despite his mind protesting otherwise. Jonathan could come back downstairs, and it wouldn't be a great image if your teacher already ate all the pizza you cooked.

The aroma of the pizza was making him crave more as he looked over at the pizza before shaking his head. 'No, you're better than this. Don't eat another slice.' The pizza aroma then turned into a fist before punching him in the face as he quickly looked at the pizza again.

"Maybe... one more slice wouldn't hurt."

Upstairs, Jonathan's mutterings have been turned into a full-blown monologue trying to figure out what to say to the person who was behind all these deaths. He needed a good speech before taking them down, like, "You just got cheesed! Now cheese!" or "Sushi you not! Bitch!" It had to be food-related; otherwise, he had done all of this for nothing.

He had set up a small corkboard on his wall (don't ask how he managed to do that so fast) and pinned a bunch of notes on names, jobs, ages, and stores, with them all connecting with red yarn. If anyone walked in on this, it would look like he was investigating a murder or was planning one.

"HAMMER THAT'S IT! THAT'S THE POISON! IT MUST BE AROUND THAT LOCATION! So someone is definitely doing these!" He paused for dramatic effect for himself. "Yet why?"

Ice heard the crazed laugh coming from upstairs, which left him wondering if he should go upstairs or not. He looked at his 6th slice of this delicious pizza before looking at the stairs, which still carried the crazed laughter.

'… Meh.' He shrugged his shoulders. "Probably just some existential crisis or something." He wasn't too worried about his student…. at least for right now. Besides, the pizza was just too good to get interrupted by anything else.

"OK! Maybe they could be trying to save their family, or maybe they're doing this for the heck of it!" He was pacing back and forth with a pen in his hands.

"It can't JUST be random!" He said to himself. "No, it's deliberate. We know it. So why? What can I do? What can we do? How do we stop it?" He asked nobody in the room.

He looked at his notes. He narrowed it down to five possible locations and people who could be this possible "Food Killer." Now he just needed to show Ice! Ice was a super agent, so he would probably have more insight into who it could possibly be if he showed it to him!

Jonathan burst downstairs with his book in his hand, having grabbed it on the way out, before appearing before Ice as he looked up into the madness-driven eyes of his student, who shoved the book straight into his face.

"Heya... Jonathan... what am I looking at?" Jonathan was still jabbing his notes in front of Ice's face.

Jonathan let out a quick laugh before answering as Ice glanced at him a bit concerned as his eyes darted a bit to see if he was just seeing things. "THE ANSWER, SIR! You gave me the idea! People have been dying from food! All over the world! And they are all connected!"

Ice stared blankly while taking the book in his hand. The writing was messy and all in different font sizes, along with a bunch of chaotic notes around the page. He looked at him with a bewildered look spreading across his face. "Are… are you high?"

Jonathan snapped with excitement and slight anger. "No! I am not HIGH! I have just figured out the murders of so many critics and restaurant owners without a single harm to their bodies! I am about to solve a murder case that has been left absent for so long that everyone else has been chalking up to coincidence! A food killer must I add!"

Deciding to look back down at the notes only to see Jonathan's hand pointing at a page of a timeline of deaths with names written on it... or it could be a shopping list. It was hard to tell the difference.

"Well, that certainly… uh, Jona-?"

Ice was quickly interrupted by him, who began to ramble into nonsense that made complete sense to him. "YES! I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE GOING TO SAY! HEY, THIS IS UNBELIEVABLE! I know! I was shocked too, but look at this: how else do you explain the death of John Ellot? Or Jimmy Docer? Who both died after visiting a certain chain of restaurants that is spread all over the globe, which also leads me to suspect that one of the possible suspects is a 'Miss Fugu Furuka-'."

A hand was put in front of his face as he stopped talking. "Look." Ike gathered his words as he stood up. "Something like this isn't exactly... plausible? You're suggesting a secret global cabal of food assassins, or, well, just one? I'm pretty sure if someone was going around killing people with food, it wouldn't go… unnoticed." Ice paused for a moment. 'Unless certain people are sweeping it under the rug...' He shook his head while looking at his student, who had grown disheartened at hearing this as he looked at the floor while rubbing the back of their head.

"Well... I guess... I just got a little overexcited... it's just that it has been a while since I got any ideas for this... and, well… I just kind of thought I finally connected and found the answer." He stopped talking as the atmosphere became quite awkward making Ice decide it was best if he broke it.

Jonathan looked up the super agent now standing as he raised a hand. Ice decided to be serious- actually serious this time. "Look, as far as this theory about a "Food Killer" goes, you're probably right."

This gave him a surprise. Ice actually believed him!?

"But." This made Jonathan freeze as Ice continued to explain. Ice decided to leave a big pause before saying what he needed in order to put a deeper impression and emphasis on what he was about to say. "There simply isn't enough proof for now, and we just have other things to deal with right now. First, we have to complete your training, get more people, and take down other lesser-known crime lords around the world, and then we can catch this killer. It's likely the killer's is very well hidden and far smarter than the average crime lord."

Jonathan let out a small sigh of slight frustration but also acceptance before nodding. "Yeah, ok."

He felt Ice punch his shoulder playfully. "Come on! Cheer up! It's all a matter of time; you'll catch this killer eventually." Jonathan nodded as Ice continued. "Now go get some rest. I think all this has gotten your mind to go a little crazy up."

"… Goodnight." Ice watched as Jonathan walked off and went back up the stairs.

As soon as he left, Ice changed his expression. The killer definitely existed. He couldn't allow his student to get hurt. Yet he needed to trust him as well.

"Maybe another slice of pizza can hel-…" Ice looked down only to see the last slice of pizza was gone. He looked at the stairs with some level of intrigue as he smiled.

It seemed his pupil was already quite a natural at being sneaky.

Meanwhile upstairs Jonathan felt like he was on the top of the world. He had managed to steal the final slice from a super agent.

He was a bit surprised that Ice had eaten all the pizza, but he had also remembered that the next part of his training would involve trying to be unnoticed by everyone.

So, he decided to speed things up by showing what he already knows and hopefully just skip past that phase altogether.

When he lifted his hand to eat the last slice, he bit into it… only to immediately spit it back out and pick the thing back up again.

"Cardboard!?" 'The pizza,' or rather the painted triangle that was painted to look like pizza, was what he just bit into as he saw his bite marks on the tip of it. He heard laughter from downstairs as he was completely baffled. How and WHEN did he even get the time to create a fake pizza slice from cardboard!?

"You're good; I'm able to tell you that, but you still have quite a bit left to go." Ice happily ate the last slice of pizza he kept hidden behind his back after he stood up while switching the real one with the fake one so his student would pick up the fake one thinking it was the real one.

Convoluted as hell? Yes. Did he think it was actually going to happen? No, yet it still happened all the same. He was probably going to have fun holding this one over him for a while.

While on the stairs a thought appeared in Jonathan's mind making him pause. "Wait…"

Ice raised a brow as Jonathan came back downstairs and walked up to him. His intuition told him that it probably wasn't about the trick he had just done on him. "What about the SYNDICATE?"

Oh, it was this… Ice debated whether or not he should tell the possible situation he was in right now with his organization.

Seeing Ice not saying anything made him try to explain himself further. "Shouldn't we have seen at least an agent or—"

"They are hunting me down." He almost facepalmed himself at how bluntly he stated it and how out of context it must have sounded.

"What?" This was going to take him a while to explain... wait, scratch that— it would probably take him the same amount of time it would take to make a cup of coffee.