The threads of Fog swam through the air, intertwining and contorting to form a sentence at eye height.

NO CRIMINAL RECORD FOUND

Craning his neck to get a look at what it said, she could clearly see the surprise growing in his face, his eyebrows rising as if the mercury in a thermometer. He blinked a few times and pressed another button, causing the stream of Fog to stop and the sentence to dissipate.

“That’s… Good news, I suppose,” he admitted begrudgingly. “Step away from the machine, please.”

She did as asked and he returned to his desk, pulling open one of the drawers and retrieving a piece of paper. He looked up at her again, his eyes glinting with a mixture of purely physical attraction and deep, deep suspicion.

“Your reason for entry into the country?”

“Work.”

“What type of work?”

“Well, I’m an armed and eh…” she raised her right arm and flexed, briefly looking at her own bicep in an exaggerated gesture of narcissism. “Unreasonably attractive foreigner trying to enter the country, through the Exclusion Zone no less. What’s that tell you, officer?”

“That you’re probably wanted outside the Wall under a different name, a different face, and different soul signature, and that you’re probably going to leverage your previous trade for a more honest job while you lay low, likely as a beast slayer...” the man rattled off, almost visibly charging her with imagined crimes as the resentment in his voice turned to resigned acceptance. Finally he sighed, retrieved a fountain pen from within his coat, and wrote something on the paper in cursive so stylized she couldn’t read it before stowing the pen away.

“Welcome to Ikesia,” he said with professional courtesy and a half-fake smile, one which vanished the moment he turned his gaze toward the three Ikesians behind her. He pointed at Sigmund. “Next! Baldo!” he called out, standing from his desk and walking to the machine to take up the very same position - one hand on the key, the other hovering over the buttons.

The bearded man grumbled into his beard, walking briskly towards the machine and grabbing hold of the handle. A malicious grin flashed over the officer’s face as he tapped the same two-button sequence to trigger the machine, fully expecting the condemnation of guilt to be written out in Fog. Rising threads of silver, twisting and intertwining to form three words.

CRIMINAL RECORD FOUND

The officer’s grin grew as he reached into his coat, but what he was reaching for would remain unknown. Zelsys readied herself to commit a crime, noticing Sigmund tensing up as he entered into the first stages of a Rubedo-induced seizure, visibly fighting the stiffness as he opened and closed his left hand.

Only, the officer noticed the leftmost nozzle sputtering, failing to produce a thread. Glee turned to disappointment, and he sighed, “Let go, it’s malfunctioning. I have to restart it.”

When Sigmund wouldn’t let go, the officer shot him a dirty look and repeated, not even trying to veil the threat in his words this time. “Let go, Ike.”