"Commander Zhu Yuan, all Sheriffs are assembled. Awaiting your orders."
Outside the Ballet Twins Building, several patrol cars sat with their red-and-blue lights spinning, and a dozen or so heavily equipped Sheriffs stood ranked across the plaza, waiting for Zhu Yuan's word.
"Mm. Wait a little longer. One more person hasn't arrived yet." Zhu Yuan lifted her arm and checked her wristwatch. Five minutes remained before the time they had set. If Hoshimi Miyabi couldn't make it, they would simply have to move out ahead of her.
Just as that thought crossed her mind, a rush of wind swept past, and a familiar figure appeared in front of her.
"Sorry. I kept you waiting."
The first thing to enter her view was that pair of soft ears, and only then Miyabi's faintly cool face.
But Zhu Yuan knew this woman. Under that seemingly aloof exterior, she was really just a bit of an airhead.
"It's fine. We're still ahead of schedule."
Seeing her old classmate put Zhu Yuan in a considerably better mood. Since graduation the two of them had stayed in touch, but work being what it was, they rarely met face to face.
"What's the situation?"
Miyabi took a few small steps to Zhu Yuan's side and tilted her head up, looking into her eyes as she asked.
"We can confirm the target is inside the Ballet Twins Building." Zhu Yuan passed along the intel she had received from Eous. She didn't know who exactly her source was, but the information had checked out, and its reliability was extremely high.
Miyabi's ears twitched at that, and then she nodded.
"Mm. Understood."
"Then let's move out."
Zhu Yuan gave the order, and the Sheriffs began pressing into the Ballet Twins Building.
She took up Riot Suppressor K22 herself and walked at the very head of the column with Qingyi and Hoshimi Miyabi.
"If we run into anything dangerous, I'm counting on you, Lady Void Hunter~"
"Don't tease me at a time like this."
Zhu Yuan grinned at her own joke. The friendship the two of them had built up since their school days hadn't worn thin with the years. Like wine, it had only grown richer.
"This time, it'll be a dragnet with nowhere left to run."
Or so Zhu Yuan told herself.
———
Elsewhere, up in the building, Geno and the others were in no such good mood.
Twiggy's sudden collapse had rattled him. But with the Rebel Soldiers in the distance still wary of the ghost woman who had erupted out of nowhere, Geno scooped Twiggy up first and broke into a run toward Nicole and the rest.
"Go! Move, while we still can!"
Geno's shout snapped Eous and the others out of it. Eous volunteered at once, leading the group toward the Hollow Fissure they had already scouted out.
By the time the Rebel Soldiers reacted, every last one of them was gone.
"Captain."
"Pursue."
"Yes, sir."
The Rebel Soldiers made their call just as fast. The order to pursue came down, and their bodies sank slowly toward the floor before slipping away into the shadows.
This was one of the powers that becoming a Sacrifice granted them. On top of hiding their forms, it let them move at speed.
All that remained was to pin down the coordinates Geno's group had fled to.
Meanwhile, Geno and the others, having made a clean getaway, were running without pause.
It was just that the escape route was rather punishing.
"Hurry! There's a break in the floor up ahead — remember to jump it!"
"Easy for you to say. We're each hauling a person here!"
Billy, dragging the unconscious Perlman along, panted out his complaint at Belle, who could afford to talk big from somewhere comfortable.
"Count your blessings. Some of us are carrying the wounded, aren't we?" Geno fired back at Billy. He had Twiggy in his arms, and Anby had Nicole.
Six people, three sets of footprints.
After a while longer, Geno swept their surroundings with Ether Sight, and only once he was sure nothing was on them did he let the others start treating the injured.
"Let's rest a moment. They shouldn't be able to catch up that quickly."
As he spoke he lowered Twiggy flat onto the ground and began checking her over.
"Ether Corruption — that's a minor issue. Abnormal flow of Ether energy?"
Geno's brow furrowed. As far as his senses could tell, Twiggy's Ether Corruption barely rated as a problem. With him around, Ether Corruption was about the easiest condition there was to treat.
It was the abnormal Ether energy flow that gave him nothing to grab hold of.
Because in his sight, the Ether energy inside Twiggy's body was streaming, endlessly, into the ring on her hand.
"…Better to start the wristband first, then."
He decided to suppress her Corruption symptoms before anything else — but just as he reached out, a hand closed around his wrist.
"You?!"
Geno's eyes followed the arm upward. The ghost woman who had appeared so abruptly before was standing in front of him again, and looking at that pleading expression of hers, he found he had none of his earlier patience left.
"What are you, exactly? And what does the state Twiggy is in have to do with you?"
Geno remembered it perfectly. It was this ghost's sudden appearance that had saved Twiggy. And because of her, Twiggy had ended up unconscious.
"Geno, is Twiggy all right?"
Anby came over with a newly awake Nicole in tow, leaving Billy by himself to watch over the still-unconscious Perlman, a lonely figure in the wind.
"Not sure. It's a symptom I've never seen before. I'm still interrogating the party responsible."
"The party responsible? You're saying there's someone standing in front of you?"
The confusion in Anby's voice made Geno pause. Then he pointed at the ghost woman before him.
"You two can't see her?"
Anby and Nicole slowly shook their heads.
"Now that's interesting."
Geno's frown deepened. He glanced back at the ghost woman, still wearing that pitiful look, and for a moment his thoughts were a tangled mess.
And while he was thinking, a nameless spike of danger flashed through his mind. Geno's blade snapped up in front of him, and with a sharp clang he knocked a bullet out of the air.
"They caught up already?!"
Eous's two rabbit ears shook wildly. She had never dreamed the Rebel Soldiers could move this fast.
What she understood even less was how those things had managed to be faster than they were.
Either way, the group had no choice but to brace for another fight. Going by experience, wherever there was one of them, that meant—
Whoosh.
Before anyone could move, another Rebel Soldier shot up out of the shadows. Then a third. Then a fourth.
And then they came from every direction at once, closing on Geno and the others — a net thrown over heaven and earth.
The scene had come right back around to where it started.
"That's it! I've had it — I'm blowing these bastards sky-high!"
Pushed past the edge of her patience, Nicole raised her cannon, ready to detonate the whole crowd of them. But before she could pull the trigger, a burst of music cut her off.
____
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