In the real world, the four members of Hollow Special Operations Section 6 had already left the dive pods, and one after another they came around.
The HIA staff finally breathed easy.
If anything had happened to these particular VIPs on their turf, it would have been no laughing matter. Forget keeping their jobs - there would have been seats waiting for them in the New Eridu courthouse dock and cells waiting for them in Public Security lockup.
"Sniff - thank goodness, my job's safe!"
"Don't be so pathetic. Everything turned out fine, didn't it?"
"Go change your pants before you say another word."
The staff could celebrate on their own time. Geno and the others had more important matters to settle.
"So what do we do with this thing?"
Geno jabbed a thumb at Thousand Faces, locked inside the ancient big-headed desktop computer they had prepared beforehand. The monitor still flickered with the image of that grey-white Bangboo thrashing without pause.
"HAND will hold on to it for now. It seems there's plenty of intel it hasn't coughed up yet, so this works out nicely - we can interrogate it."
Light flashed across Tsukishiro Yanagi's lenses, and everyone present could feel the pressure rolling off her. She was angry, and it showed.
Hardly surprising. Thousand Faces had run its mouth earlier like something foul had crawled into it, so her temper was entirely reasonable.
"All right, Miss Yanagi, let it go for now. The outcome was a happy one for everybody, wasn't it?"
Twiggy leaned in to smooth things over, and she had a point. As endings went, this one was a good one. Except for...
"While we're on the subject - how come Section Six got rescued and I actually got stomped to death?"
Inside the virtual world, Little Geno's sleight of hand had pulled the four members of Hollow Special Operations Section 6 out of the fire. Geno himself, however, had received no such kindness, and had experienced getting crushed underfoot in full, authentic detail.
Sporting an afro that looked like it had been through the microwave a second time, Geno narrowed his eyes and glared at the picture of harmless innocence sitting beside him.
"Little Geno doesn't know anything~"
"Like hell you don't! You did it on purpose!"
Geno snorted twin jets of air through his nostrils like an old ox.
The little menace had targeted him precisely because he couldn't die, and the Bangboo makeover from earlier had been the same deal - all of it traced back to this one prankster.
Still, Little Geno knew where the line was, more or less. It never went too far.
"Hmph. Now you know what being a Bangboo feels like!"
"What's wrong with being a Bangboo? Round is cute."
"Then let's trade."
"Anyway, getting back to the point..."
Watching Little Geno and Geno bicker, the rest of them traded knowing smiles.
Only Twiggy, off to one side, seemed to be turning something over in her mind, and no one noticed.
"Okay, okay - since everybody's happy, why don't we all go grab a meal together!"
Belle clapped her hands. The job was done, a few good friends happened to be in one place, so they might as well seize the chance for a proper dinner.
"Yes, yes! Soukaku wants to eat lots of yummy things."
"Well now, when Miss Manager invites us so warmly, we can't very well let her down, can we..."
Soukaku and Asaba Harumasa were ready to say yes without a second thought, and though Hoshimi Miyabi said nothing, the twitch of those fox ears made her interest plain enough.
But just as Belle thought she had the dinner locked in, Yanagi Tsukishiro shattered the fantasy.
"Regrettably, Manager, I'm afraid we can't accept today."
Yanagi Tsukishiro pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and, with a resigned look, hauled her three teammates back.
"Besides filing a report on the Thousand Faces incident, the Section Chief has an internal meeting coming up, and Asaba and Soukaku both have shifts to cover. Another day."
"Uh, well, the thing is, I feel like at a time like this a get-together beats work-"
"Hm?"
"Understood..."
Yanagi Tsukishiro's gaze sharpened.
Asaba Harumasa's courage dropped straight to zero.
And so a dinner that had never begun broke up on the spot. Hollow Special Operations Section 6 headed back to HAND headquarters carrying the "cell" that held Thousand Faces, while Geno went with Twiggy and Little Geno, bringing Wise and Belle back to Sixth Street.
"You know, do I just not register as a presence?"
Wise, at the wheel of his own little car, had the nagging sense that nobody had paid him any attention this whole time.
"You'll get used to it, big bro. The world's a lot more forgiving toward pretty girls."
"Pretty girls? Who?"
"Now I'm mad!"
Watching the siblings squabble the way they always did, Twiggy smiled, then turned to look at Geno and Little Geno, who hadn't stopped arguing either.
This. This was the ordinary life she wanted.
"But how much longer can days like this last?"
Twiggy's murmur drew no one's attention. Deep down, though, she had a premonition: very soon, New Eridu was going to face a catastrophe.
Inside Crete Hollow, at the last remaining camp of the Rebel Soldiers.
Every other stronghold had been surrounded and wiped out by the Defense Force working alongside HAND, and yet the rebels' plan had not shifted by so much as a hair.
"Boss. Got the goods."
A thug in aggressively tacky clothes came up to White Noise carrying a small USB drive.
White Noise was still working through the numbers and letters scrolling across the computer screen, cracking and calculating, and paid his underling no mind.
The underling understood that his boss was at a critical stage, so he did nothing at all, standing there obediently and waiting.
Another ten-odd minutes passed before White Noise finally stopped, turned, and beckoned him over.
"You got it."
The underling nodded and handed the drive across.
White Noise took it without a word and slotted it into the computer's port, and a familiar figure appeared on the screen.
"A Void Hunter. Formidable indeed."
White Noise narrowed his eyes at the data on Hoshimi Miyabi and nodded, satisfied.
"And Thousand Faces?"
"Uh, Section Six caught it."
"Fine. I never expected much from it anyway. The main objective is done, and that's what counts."
On its own strength, Thousand Faces slipping into HIA's systems without a sound would have been asking a great deal of it.
With him, White Noise, added to the equation, it became a much simpler thing.
And White Noise's goal from the start had been nothing more than obtaining Hoshimi Miyabi's biological data. The rest didn't interest him.
He waved a hand, dismissing the underling, and went back to his own work.
"Hoshimi Miyabi's data. The Demon Blade Tailless. A Void Hunter. The Exaltists. Arna's students. What will all of you do this time, I wonder?"
The corner of White Noise's mouth curled. He was already looking forward to the picture.
"New Eridu - are you ready to receive your gift?"
____
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