Location: Parked Outside 244 Peach Street

Time: Tokino-48 year (2108), Jan. 4 (Wed) 14:07

“You ready, Kanon? Once we go in there I won’t stop until we find Olivia.” There was no hesitation in Special Agent Oldridge’s voice. I needed to match his attitude.

“I’m ready. Although it seems risky for the two of us to go alone. I’d feel more comfortable if Special Agent-, if Alec was still with us.”

I didn’t want to say anything about it to him, but I was also concerned with separating with Alec after what Ms. Albright told me. Hopefully the aid I sent with him would be enough to make sure things worked out.

“We’ll be fine. Albert being with us wouldn’t have made much of a difference.” Was he saying the wrong name on purpose?

“His name is Alec, not Albert. I’m pretty sure you’re doing it on purpose, but that’s no reason to get a colleague’s name wrong. And what do you mean he wouldn’t have made a difference? His fighting style was dishonorable, but it was effective.”

“You seem to have a high opinion of him, but when it comes to a real fight he’s pretty weak. You probably don’t want to hear that after what happened earlier; that’s just the way it is though.”

“Weak? It certainly didn’t seem that way. What are you basing that off of?”

If someone like Alec was being treated as nothing more than an afterthought, what did that make me?

“He doesn’t have a finisher.”

“A finisher?”

“Yeah, a final ace up his sleeve. He doesn’t have an ultimate attack to rely on when things get difficult. He’s always walking on the edge of failure, just trying to survive.”

“I see. That is a problem. He should spend more time developing his augmentation.”

I spoke as if I understood in order to cling to any semblance of dignity I still had.

“You haven’t known him for long, but Alec isn’t the kind of guy to invest any time into anything. If he could, I’m sure he’d give up his augmentation all together.”

Give it up? Special Agent Oldridge must have been exaggerating.

“Why are we even talking about this? I don’t care about him right now. Let’s just get in there and kill all those people.”

Kill them? We were there to save his sister. I suppose the two things coincided, but phrasing it like that seemed wrong.

Special Agent Oldridge got out of the car, as did I. He took his headphones off and put them around his neck. It was the first time I’d seen him take them off.

“My augmentation involves sound, so I wear them to block most of it out. It’d be annoying if I heard every detail of everything all day.”

He must have noticed me paying attention to the headphones.

“But times like this the ability to hear everything comes in handy.”

“Inari Okami, mother of Kuzunoha, ancestor of my ancestors, I humbly ask for your blessing.”

I quickly recited my mantra under my breath. I’d noticed that the augmented of the Free Cities didn’t seem to use mantras or verbal cues to access the information dimension, but that was a technique I couldn’t match. I suppose it was just a difference in styles between our cultures.

“Special Agent Oldridge, after my pathetic display earlier it would be pointless for me to pretend I’ve got any experience in such matters, so I’ll leave the planning to you. How should we handle this situation?”

“Can you stop calling me Special Agent Oldridge? It feels weird. You agreed to stop calling him Special Agent Alexander, so just call me Oliver as well. And here’s the plan: we go in there and kill them all. That’s it.”

“That’s not exactly a plan. How do you propose we get in?”

Since they had a hostage sneaking in would have probably been best.

“We’ll just walk through where the front door used to be. I’m actually pretty upset that their hideout is just a rundown house. Aren’t the bad guys supposed to have a cool base?”

I didn’t think their architectural sense really made a difference.

Oliver raised his arm and pointed it toward the door. He snapped his fingers, but I didn’t hear any sound. Instead, the door leading into 244 Peach Street was blown off.

“I can do more than just hear things. I can control the direction and amplitude of sound. It’s a simple task to amplify my snap to around 200 decibels. That’s usually loud enough to cause some serious damage, so fortunately for us I can control the direction the sound waves move in as well.”

“We never did discuss our augmentations, did we? We should have checked how compatible our abilities were.” I can’t believe I overlooked something so simple.

“It’s a little late for that.”

A man came rushing out of the house. He had an assault rifle in his hands. He tried to aim it in our direction, but he collapsed before he could raise the gun.

“What did you do?” I didn’t do anything, so it must have been Oliver.

“I amplified the sound of his heartbeat. I made it loud enough to practically explode his insides.”

So he was a normal human. It’s foolish for a normal human to make an enemy of an augmented. Without having their own connection to the information dimension there was nothing preventing us from activating our augmentations inside their bodies.

“Let’s go.” Oliver walked over the body and into the house. “And don’t mind the bodies, they’re all dead.”

I followed Oliver inside.

“What bodies?”

Oliver didn’t answer my question, but it didn’t take me long to figure it out myself. The inside of the house was riddled with collapsed bodies. They were dressed in a similar military style as the first one Oliver killed. They looked fine, but based on what Oliver said I assumed they were dead.

“What happened to them?”

“I killed them all at the same time I killed the other guy. It wasn’t very hard for me to hear all their heartbeats from outside.”

Oliver might have been right about Alec being weak, at least by ARA standards. I underestimated them. I wasn’t imagining he could take out a house full of hostels without even showing any effort. Were they hostiles?

“Did you have to kill them all? It doesn’t look like they all had weapons.”

“All of these people had to die. And I’m not just saying that because they have my sister. I have no idea how big of a part these people played, but it’s impossible to deny they were involved in a plot against the Prime Minister.”

“I can agree they should be punished, but why was death their only option?”

He didn’t look like he understood what I was trying to say.

“I mean, you could have arrested them.” My family would have never done something like that, but Oliver was law enforcement.

“That? It would’ve been pointless. They’d be executed anyway. Listen, on a personal level I feel like I’d probably agree with you; that’s just not how it works here. You might disagree with our system, but this isn’t really the time to start discussing morals. Feel free to debate the ethics of it with Karen later. For now, let’s focus on getting Olivia back.”

“You’re right. I apologize for continually sidetracking us. We should handle this as quickly as possible.”

Having conversations like that is a clear sign of inexperience. I should have been focusing on the task at hand. Not to mention, I was in no position to judge how they handle their own criminals.

“Kanon, I’d like to ask you something. If you’ve never been in a fight before how are you so comfortable walking through a house full of dead bodies?”

I hadn’t really thought about it, but I suppose it would seem strange to most. The look, the smell, even the sensation of stepping over a body; none of that is something a person can naturally be comfortable with.

“It’s nothing. I’ve just gotten used to it.”

“Because of your family’s work?”

“So you recognized it?”

“What can I say, I watch a lot of foreign movies.”

“Let’s leave my family for another time. Right now we should be focusing on yours.”

“Don’t worry, Olivia is safe. She’s here, along with an injury ridden idiot. There are three augmented watching them.”

“Is there anyway we could retrieve your sister before confronting them?”

“No, they know we’re here. Killing all of their support personnel wasn’t exactly subtle. I never intended for this to be a stealth mission.” There was no room for debate in his tone.

“Then what do you think we should do?”

“We need to lure them outside into the rain. I’m pretty effective in the rain. The raindrops hitting everything makes a lot of noise.”

“Um, okay, but it’s not raining outside.”

“Not yet, but it will be. You can make it rain, right?”

Ah. I did mention that earlier, but I didn’t mean it seriously. Well, I wasn’t lying about it, but I wasn’t expecting to have to actually do it. It was just small talk during an awkward car ride. Should I have told him I’d never actually done it? No. I had to play it cool. I just had to act like I did it all the time.

“Of, of course I can make it rain.”

Please work.

“Complete possession: ame-onna.”

It worked. I could feel it. I was successfully channeling the power of an ame-onna.

“Close your eyes.” I didn’t want him to see me doing this.

“What? Why?”

“Do you want it to rain or not? Just do it.”

Oliver sighed and closed his eyes.

I brought my hand up to my face and licked it once. I really wish there was another way for me to do it. Why does it have to be such an embarrassing ability?

“Did you just lick your hand?”

“What? How, how did you know? Your eyes were closed. I definitely made sure you weren’t looking.”

“I wasn't looking, but I could hear it. Although you don’t often hear someone licking their hand, so there was a chance I misheard.”

“It was something else. You heard something else.”

“It’s a bit late for that. I mean, you pretty much confirmed it already.”

“Just forget. Never bring this up again. Forget.”

Then I prayed.

Please work. Please start raining.