The deadly meeting was taking place at the Westside of Manhattan by the river. Apparently, the Red Arrow and her superior used one of the vacant storage spaces for their meeting. Ryoko was being helped out of the room and out on the parking lot with the support of Kayla, where the NYPD is setting up the crime scene. It was a bloody mess of decapitated heads and body parts scattered around the area.

Ryoko was still groggy and still couldn’t walk straight. Suddenly, a uniformed policeman walked over to them, “Mrs. Anderson, there is someone there to see you.”

Kayla immediately looked behind the uniformed policeman only to see a smiling young woman waving at her. She had long purple hair and wore a neon purple Anastasia coat with a magenta scarf wrapped around her neck.

For fuck sake, Kayla cursed beneath her breath as she helped her partner walk. Not before long, one of the EMTs went over to Ryoko and began to work on her. It wasn’t anything significant, but it was the procedure.

With the excess weight gone, Kayla could walk over to the purple-haired woman a lot quicker.

The purple-haired woman greeted Kayla, “I must say. I know you people don’t like to work well with others but, man… When you want to body a guy, you definitely body someone.”

“It wasn’t us, Andrea,” Kayla corrected.

“Andrea Mercy, Outside Consultant of the NYPD,” Andrea corrected Kayla.

Andrea Menard Mercy is a diara who focuses on offensive aetheral attacks such as a fire. Even though she is a diara, they can hide their wings and look like ordinary human beings. In this case, Andrea didn’t need her wings now. Born and raised in Manhattan, New York, she was gifted growing up. She graduated from Hewitt School at the age of 13.

Afterward, she started traveling abroad to different countries and studying in various universities around the world for the last five years, honing her craft through mentorships. At 19, she decided to use her skills to good use as a private outside consultant. Primarily, she works for the New York Police Department as their outside consultant. With the department in need of someone overqualified to do such cases, Andrea Menard Mercy was a good fit. They even nicknamed her “The Goth Punk Detective” for her style of dress.

“Okay, your daddy sent you here. What do you want, Mercy?” Kayla stoutly asked.

Andrea giggled as she explained herself, “Well, I was just about to ask you the same thing. I had a call from 1PP saying that a bunch of red riding hoods and a couple wolf girls arrived at JFK two days ago. I thought he was jerking me off as usual. Why, you ask? Because normally, you are on your leash with your master not so far behind. Then, I get another call tonight, saying there are at least almost a dozen bodies lying around wearing red roods, armed to the teeth with machine guns. At first blush, I come here and say to myself, ‘SELF! These girls are not that dumb, are they? Why would they kill off their competition in a sloppy manner?’”

Kayla gave a deep sigh as Andrea continued, “But of course, a grizzled veteran like yourself, you would be more careful. Covering your tracks while making a power play. And you and I both know; you only move when your master tells you to move. But to me, this is Kayla Anderson we are talking about, and you wouldn’t do anything like this regardless of what the circumstances are. To be honest, you are one of the smart ones. Not smart as in ‘you-love-how-to-read’ smart. Smart as in ‘you-know-better-than-that’ smart. So, I eliminated both of you to be responsible.”

“Good detective work, Mercy,” Kayla teased.

“Thank you,” Andrea nodded. “But as we all know, a grizzled veteran who wants to get things done, especially on her own terms, would be comprehensive into being unseen. Which this is the reason why we are both here. So, what does ‘she’ want, Kayla? ‘She’ knows damn well that this is our turf.”

Kayla took offense to this and got into Andrea’s face, “This turf never really belonged to you, little girl. And last time I checked, I don’t need your permission to do my job.”

This made Andrea laugh, “Oh, I get it. You only ask for help when it is beneficial to you and not to others. My goodness. And to think over five years ago, I figured you have all learned your lesson.”

“You don’t know shit about anything. You’re just a child!” Kayla lashed out as Andrea shrugged her shoulders and rebutted playfully.

Andrea scoffed, “Hey, I’m not the one with the word ‘savaged’ written on my forehead. I mean, the least you can do is to say ‘hi’ to me. Or give me a fucking phone call and say, ‘Hey, Goth Punk Detective, I got a lead on a couple of cases of my own. How about we work together?’ You know, something like that.”

All jokes aside, Andrea became severe, “Communication, Kayla. That’s all we ask from you and everyone else in your camp now. But if you want to act like who is the alpha female here, let me just clear up something for you right here.”

Making her intentions clear, Andrea got into Kayla’s face, showing no intimidation whatsoever, “at least my team is unified as one. There is no ancient history. We just get shit done. Instead of you, bitches hate on us for doing your job five years ago, why don’t you go ahead and take notes. Maybe then you’ll learn something. Or maybe you won’t. It makes no difference to me. Now, if you excuse me, I have a crime scene to investigate.”

As Andrea makes her way to the crime scene, leaving Kayla behind, she turns around and looks at the Goth Punk Detective walking away. She couldn’t feel cross about what Andrea said to her. She was right. They were never as unified as they needed to be. They are just getting along for the sake of their grandmaster. However, it wasn’t good enough.

A few moments later, Andrea made her way to the crime scene. There was blood everywhere. Broken chairs and of course, broken bodies. Andrea wasted no time trying to reenact the crime scene. She activated her abilities and written a green-glowing magic circle in the air. Finished, she places her palm on the circle and lets out a small prayer, “Focus.”

At that moment, she activated her post-cognitive spell as she begins to reenact the events.

“Killing her will be very easy. How in the world I slip past here is beyond me…,” Andrea said as she reenacted shooting Shayna with a silenced weapon.

“I have already won, you’re scared. You can run, but you cannot hide… you can hide, but you cannot run… Decisions, decisions… Should I take my time with you— no, I should play it safe,” Andrea reenacted the murdering scene. She finds herself rolling a small cylinder towards their feet. The small cylinder started to blink red frequently as the lights went off abruptly. Then the small cylinder ended up flashing strobe light. It turns out that the small cylinder was not only a bomb, but it was a strobe light flash bomb, blinding the henchmen.

“Counterclockwise, like clockwork…” Then she reenacted herself, rushing one of the henchmen and slit his throat. Being dead before he hit the floor, she went over to another henchman and stabbed in the chest; she picked him up with one arm in slammed him on the table, stabbing him a few more times in the chest for the safety measure while throwing him to the ground.

While one of the henchmen tries to shoot at the masked woman, she dodge-rolled out of the way and kicked in the stomach, sending him off his feet, “so basic… How much should they pay you?”

Then she reenacted stabbing the two henchmen in the heart.

As one of the other henchmen try to sneak up on her, she gracefully dodge-rolled out of the way again only to sneak up behind him, stabbing him in the spine, killing him.

The impatient one of the two remaining henchmen ran up to her to grab her, only to be stabbed in the chest three times and kicked in the stomach, sending him to the ground on his back.

Paying attention to the henchmen behind her, she merely slit his throat and stomach. Finally, she looked over at the remaining and dying henchmen as she jumps and lands on him, stabbing him in the throat, twisting it so the wound won’t close, finishing him off. Rising from the corpse, she successfully neutralized the threat in the room. As the flash bomb dissipated, the fluorescent lights in the room went on again.

“Focus off,” Andrea deactivated her post-cognitive spell. She didn’t really have to reenact the elderly men being shot.

Afterward, she went over to the makeshift flyer made with red paint. She immediately translated the message, “I understand. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

Immediately, she dug out her smartphone in her jacket pocket. She left the room and called an old friend of hers. It’s been a while since she talked to him and his family.