HAND Headquarters, the Anti-Air Section Six office.
Hoshimi Miyabi sat at the head of the room as she always did, working through the documents that had piled up.
But anyone who knew her knew that paperwork was the one thing our beloved Void Hunter handled worst of all.
Which meant that what she was actually doing was...
"Yes! I won again!"
Little Soukaku, seated right beside Miyabi, leapt up out of her chair with a shout.
Then she happily grabbed a calligraphy brush and painted a little flower on Miyabi's cheek.
A closer look would have shown the same black doodles scrawled across Soukaku's own face.
"Let's go again. I'm not holding back this time."
"Should I say the Section Chief has the heart of a child, or that she just can't stand losing?"
Harumasa, who had watched the whole thing, shook his head helplessly. A Void Hunter whose skill stood above every rival, who could clear out a small Hollow all by herself, losing a game of tic-tac-toe to Soukaku. Whatever stiff image anyone carried of her would probably fall apart on the spot.
"No. Or maybe they'd just find her even more entertaining."
And right in the middle of Harumasa's idle musing, a bad feeling crept over him. He coughed twice, quickly, and in an instant the office went quiet.
Click.
The office door swung open and a slender figure stepped through. It was Yanagi Tsukishiro. Seeing the three of them still working away in perfect harmony, she gave an approving nod without thinking.
"Section Chief, the Intelligence Division just sent this report over. It needs your eyes."
Yanagi held out the file in her hand, only to find that Miyabi showed no intention of taking it.
"Section Chief?"
Sensing something off, Yanagi seemed to arrive at a suspicion. She walked around to the side of Miyabi's desk, trying to get a look at whatever was keeping her so busy, and Miyabi simply tilted her head slightly away — which only confirmed for Yanagi that something was going on.
"Section Chief, I bought melon. Would you like to share some?"
"Melon!"
At those two words Miyabi's eyes lit up. Everything else was flung out of her mind at once, and her ears began to twitch with excitement.
But the moment she raised her head, she was met with an expression on Yanagi's face so dark it looked ready to rain.
Painted up like a little calico cat, Miyabi tried awkwardly to change the subject.
"Ahem. This is just — training. Yes. Training."
"Section Chief."
"I'm sorry."
The feeble Void Hunter prostrated herself before the tyranny of Demon King Yanagi Tsukishiro.
Yanagi could only sigh. This household would fall apart sooner or later without her.
"We'll discuss that later, Section Chief. The Intelligence Division sent this over — the interrogation results on that Thousand Faces creature are in."
Thousand Faces.
The instant she heard the name, the embarrassment vanished and Miyabi snapped into work mode, immediately starting on the file that had been delivered.
She flipped open the folder, ran her eyes over a few lines, and froze.
"Perlman? Why would that name come up here?"
Her confusion was fair enough. The power backing Thousand Faces was obvious to anyone — apart from the Rebel Soldiers and The Exaltists, there was no one else it could possibly be.
So what did any of that have to do with Perlman?
Miyabi had heard about the Vision Corporation case Perlman was tangled up in. There were signs The Exaltists' hand lay behind it, but no matter how you looked at it, Perlman was nothing more than a scapegoat pushed out into the open.
"We can't draw any deeper conclusions from it either. But the moment the intelligence came in, we contacted our colleagues at Public Security. What we got back was that Perlman was found missing from his cell this morning."
Listening to Yanagi's report, Miyabi's brow drew tighter. If Perlman really was sitting on some secret they knew nothing about, they absolutely could not let it go.
"Yanagi. What do you think?"
At moments like this, when she couldn't make up her mind, it was better to consult her external brain.
And Yanagi did not disappoint. She pushed up her glasses and said,
"In my view, whatever secret Perlman is hiding, the priority is finding him first. That's what matters."
Better safe than sorry — locating Perlman came before anything else. Yanagi had already asked her colleagues in the Investigation Division to help look into it, and she trusted results would come soon.
"...I think I'll go question Thousand Faces again."
After some thought, Miyabi decided to try prying a little more out of Thousand Faces. She left the office with Yanagi in tow and headed for the cell where Thousand Faces was being held.
That left Asaba Harumasa and Soukaku behind in the office, staring blankly at each other.
"Harumasa, has something happened again?"
"Relax. You've got Sis Yanagi and the Section Chief on it. How about you go wash that calico-cat face of yours first?"
"Okay."
Harumasa ruffled Soukaku's head and watched her run off to the restroom to clean herself up.
Once she was gone, the easy smile dropped off his face. He turned, picked up the file Miyabi had been reading, and frowned to himself as he went through it.
"Better play it safe. I should go find some backup."
With that, he took out his phone, made a backup copy of the file, returned to his desk, and opened Knock-Knock.
---------
In the cell holding Thousand Faces, Miyabi looked at the grey Bangboo still locked inside the big-headed television, long since done struggling. Her expression was as flat as ever.
"Well now~ the great Void Hunter carving time out of her busy schedule just to visit me. I'm truly flattered."
Thousand Faces' sneering tone drew not a flicker from Miyabi. She simply asked,
"Save the pointless theatrics. I came here to get information about Perlman from you."
"Ah, ah, Perlman. Of course I know him. Quite a few of those long-range development blueprints of his were drawn up with my help."
"Lies and disguises. That isn't what I want to know."
Seeing straight through the nonsense, Miyabi cut to the heart of it.
"What I'm asking is this: what exactly is the connection between Perlman and The Exaltists?"
The keyword seemed to strike home. Thousand Faces stalled for a beat on the screen, then slipped back into that couldn't-care-less attitude.
"I have no idea what you're talking about. Perlman and The Exaltists? What could that little runt possibly have to do with The Exaltists? Unless The Exaltists have lost their minds."
"So you really do know people in The Exaltists."
"You—!"
Thousand Faces went still. It had never occurred to it that Miyabi, who looked so oblivious to the ways of the world, could lay a trap like that.
One sentence had proven that Thousand Faces was in fact connected to The Exaltists.
"Since you have ties to The Exaltists, then would it be reasonable for me to conclude that Perlman's existence is, in fact, a nail The Exaltists buried in New Eridu?"