Luke and Nyx appeared at the Headquarters of the Apostles of Mr. Fool with their hearts in their mouths.
He stormed toward the Control Room, his hurried pace breaking into a run midway.
Melissa, who had been slurping noodles while simultaneously punching keys, got such a scare as they barged in that she choked on the noodles, coughing loudly, the burn of the spicy broth rising up through her nose, reaching her eyes.
"… Leader?!" Apostle Shield looked up with blurry eyes. "What…"
"Sand," Luke said, hoping he wasn't already too late. "Search for all the information on Sand."
Melissa frowned.
Most of her time went toward keeping an eye out for anything related to the Sequence 5 Wraith, searching for Mushroom-nimi, or monitoring the situation with the Monocles in the USA.
The little time she had left after finishing with all that went to her research; research that demanded even more time, especially now that she knew of Bioalchemy and the threat they faced from Compound Monocle.
Then there was her engineering work.
Now, Dr. Blessed barged in and demanded that she drop all that and look for Sand, whom they had never even discussed before.
It wasn't fair.
Luke knew that, but he had neither the time nor the capacity to explain all that to Ms. Shield.
Fortunately, Melissa was a good soul.
Without questioning the command or complaining whatsoever, she immediately put away the half-finished cup of noodles and began working on the computers.
But as minutes passed and red notifications of ACCESS DENIED kept popping up, Luke knew things had just taken a much darker turn than he had feared.
The Hero Public Safety Commission didn't have nearly the capacity to block Melissa out of its systems.
This meant that all the most recent information on Sand, and what he had been up to, was on different servers—servers that made even Melissa sweat.
"I…" Ms. Shield stuttered. "… I…"
Luke ground his teeth, seeing the unwritten name of Saionji Co. behind the bloody denial notifications.
The only way to breach the most sophisticated firewalls in the world was to let Mushroom-nimi physically override them from the location of the servers.
That was not happening anytime soon.
That meant Luke had only two options left.
Either he called his father, Mr. Reijirou Saionji, and asked where he and the Commission had sent Sand, or…
Luke rejected the first option instinctively.
Who knew what he would end up doing after learning Sand's location and what situation he was in.
What if he had to instantly teleport to Sand as Dr. Blessed?
What if he had to mobilize all the Apostles and raise hell to save the man?
Wouldn't that be equivalent to just screaming at the top of his lungs that Luke and Dr. Blessed shared some connection, if not outright identities?!
If it hadn't been for the second option, Luke would have had no choice but to ignore all this and go ahead with the call anyway.
"Do a nationwide search for facial pattern matches, Ms. Shield," Luke said. "Let me know when you have found his most recent appearances."
"But…" Melissa instantly realized the issue. "Leader, it says that Sand's Quirk is to manipulate sand. What if…"
Luke licked his lips.
What if Sand had assumed a different face?
That was certainly a possibility, given how Sand covered himself with a permanent layer of sand.
How could he have missed that?!
[Calm down, Luke,] Miss Justice said. [You are missing the most obvious things. I know how important Sand is to you. But you must think rationally.]
How important was Sand to him?!
Luke almost scoffed.
That man… he owed everything to that man.
Luke never blamed his father for anything, but it was Sand who had been there for him when his father hadn't.
It was Sand who had given him the confidence to step out into society and walk toward goals that he dared not step toward if he had remained like his previous, delicate self.
It was Sand who had kept a hand on his back when he needed someone to support him without outright asking for help.
Sand was a cold-blooded killer.
But to Luke, he was more than a father figure; a good friend.
"Umm…" Melissa chewed on her lip, noticing the strange silence on Leader's face. "… What about his mobile? We can trace where he received his last calls or texts, right? It won't give us the exact location, but combined with facial matches…"
Luke nodded. "Do it."
"…" Melissa looked away from Leader, noticing something was terribly wrong.
It didn't take long for her to find the location of the closest cell tower to which Sand's mobile had connected.
Luke narrowed his eyes.
But then he noticed the name of the person who had sent the last text to Sand—a name that Melissa clearly overlooked before beginning the facial pattern match for that location.
Midnight?!
Why would Midnight send a text to Sand?!
If Sand was on a mission given to him by his father and the Commission, it made even less sense.
Unless…
Was Midnight compromised?!
Had Conformity gotten to her somehow?! Was it the Wraith possessing her?! Or, worse, had Midnight always been a secret Villain?!
[You. Are. Not. Thinking. Rationally!]
Luke's eyes twitched as Miss Justice screamed in his ears.
Before he could ask what she meant by that, Melissa almost jumped out of her chair. "Found him!!!"
Luke stepped closer, almost looming over Melissa, making her blush in shock.
He glued his eyes to the video on the screen, which showed Sand casually strolling on the sidewalk.
That… was not like Sand at all.
Never in his life, previous or current, had Luke ever seen Sand take such walks randomly.
Which meant…
"Can you rewind and bring up the footage of people walking a few hundred feet in front of Sand?" Luke asked.
Melissa shook her head repeatedly to brush off the blush and pounced on the keyboard again.
Luke continued to look at the screen.
Yes.
He had done this before with Sand many, many times—following someone!
This time, even before Melissa could match the faces appearing on the screen with the Commission's database, Luke recognized the man Sand was following…
… his blue eyes reddening, reflecting the face of Jin Bubaigawara, aka Twice!
***************
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