“On your feet, worms!” The guard clanked his baton in between the steel bars, “Here’re your clothes, now get dressed and run to the cafeteria!”

“Ugh…” Issei and I groaned.

But we just got here, though! I barely even laid down in time just seconds before the guard showed up! Oh come on, can’t they wait a few minutes first, at least?! Well, whatever, at least we didn’t spend the entire night doing nothing, since we not only found Othelia, but saved her from starvation. Now all we need to do is secure a proper passage outside, and we’ll come get her right away!

“My precious sleepy time…” Issei cried out, “But it’s alright, because we skipped sleeping to feed Othelia. Oh, but my sleepy time…!”

“Come on, no use dragging your feet just because you didn’t sleep much.” I said as I got dressed, “Think of it like this – there is no such thing as a revolution without sacrifices, so if a bit of sleep is gonna be the only thing we have to lose, then isn’t that quite amazing?”

“You’re just saying that because you have a screwed up sleep schedule.”

Well, indeed I did spend a ton of all-nighters focusing on my company, my studies, as well as the books I’ve been writing, but even I find myself getting tired earlier than usual after adjusting to this fixed lifestyle. I mean, there’s no use in me staying up late anyways, since we inmates have nothing to do in our cells, not to mention we have a ton of work during the day, so I kind of start dozing off naturally.

In any case, we reconvened with Lee over at the cafeteria, but we happened to see an unusual person tightly squeezing himself in our usual table. It seems Lee didn’t want to give up on his booze despite my warnings, so Bryce went to ask him for his overdue payment again. Geez, when will he learn?

“Come on, man!” Bryce tightly hugged Lee over the shoulder, feigning good intentions, “I’m just a business man, doing business! If you don’t got the dough, don’t ask for no more booze!”

“As I said.” Lee chuckled while trying to peel Bryce off of him, “I’ll hand you the dough when I find it!”

“What’s going on here?” Issei and I waltzed up to the table, “Still haven’t learned your lesson, you big old hunk of muscle?”

“Tch, it’s you two…” He got up from his seat and approached us, “Just the two guys I’ve been looking for!”

Eh? It was us he was looking for?

“First off, you guys are friends with this cheapskate, right? Could you please get him to pay the due back? Or at least don’t let him buy off any more booze if he can’t afford it.”

“Why can’t you just not sell it to him?” Issei queried.

“Ugh, I’m ashamed to admit it, but he’s got a way with words.” He looked away while scratching his cheek, “He somehow always convinces me that this situation won’t happen again.”

Turning over to Lee, he winked and whispered, “Nah, he’s just too thick-headed and easy to convince.”

For a moment, Bryce glared back at Lee before ultimately sighing and turning back to us, “That being said, please keep him in check.”

“Uhh, will do…?” I said with a rising tone, “So is that all?”

“Of course not!” He forcefully sat us all down before huddling up close to whisper, “You three are our only hope to escape from this cesspit, so at least be a bit transparent with us other inmates and tell us some deets about your grand plan!”

“A-Ah, it’s about that?” Issei chuckled, “Right, we thought about it long and hard, but in the end, we couldn’t think of anything…”

“Oh.” He looked a bit dejected, “That’s surprising. I mean, you guys are pretty smart, so I could see you simulatin’ n’ shit, but was there really not a single good plan to come out of all of that brain racking? Not even those textbook simple plans?”

Simulating? No, I think he’s misunderstanding something, I’m afraid. To start off, the three of us haven’t even taken the time to think up even one good idea. We mostly spent all this time trying to get Issei on board to begin with, but he thinks we spent this entire time “simulating”, as he puts it. But wait, textbook simple plans?

“Why are you looking at me like that?” He furrowed his brows, “Don’t tell me, are you guys too smart that you didn’t even take the time to think about the simple plans people such as I would come up with?”

“Hold on, I feel like you’re overestimating our combined knowledge in escapism.” I raised an eyebrow, “Please, could you elaborate on what you mean by a simplistic plan?”

“Hm? Oh y’know, wartime strategies like dividing up your forces and conquering each front separately and the likes.”

That’s… such a smart idea! God, of all the people to give us a solid plan, it had to be a muscle-head like Bryce! Well, I guess I shouldn’t be calling him that, since he seems to be a good guy at heart. Actually, this whole exchange is just making me feel worse for me beating him up and humiliating him back on my first few days…

“Hey, you’re being awfully nice to the guy who made a fool of you, Bry.” Lee jeered, “This isn’t the usual you.”

“Shut it, twerp.” Bryce donned a completely different face when looking over at Lee, “He beat me fair and square that day. You didn’t. I’m just honoring the rules of the Food Chain.”

Oh, so that’s what it was. Wait, so is the Food Chain System that important in the prison? Even still, for a guy like Bryce to show respect to anyone smaller than him, even if it is me… Is he just the type of guy to respect rules above anything? How interesting…

“Um, back up a sec.” Issei suddenly spoke up, “M-kun beat this guy in a fight?!”

***

After explaining all that has transpired on that day to Issei, we talked a bit more with Bryce about some ideas for the plan to go as smoothly as possible. Stuff like in what time of the day should we act, what weapons to bring, how to swoop in for the kill, et cetera… It was actually quite a pleasant talk, all things considered, although I don’t know how I feel about calling an assassination plan a “Pleasant Talk”…

That being said, we came up with this – since there are two towers we had to disable, it means we have two guards to kill. The roles were as such: Lee is to be the distraction on the courtyard while we had recess. He’ll attract the snipers’ attention while I snuck into one of the towers and climbed up. This is where I will knife the guard at the exact moment when Lee would signal for Issei, who is to be hidden away behind a bush, to fire off his shot and snipe the guard at the other tower with his AFP. The reason for the synchronized kill is because the other sniper might try to shoot me if he sees his subordinate getting killed.

“Well, the plan is simple on paper, but actually doing it is gonna be a whole different story…” I said as I signaled for Lee to do his thing.

Winking back, he stared straight up into the one guard on top of the watch tower and proudly said, “Everyone look, I’m gonna do a backflip while simultaneously flipping this chair in the process to land properly!”

What the hell is he spouting? That’s not how physics work! No one can do that, not even the most trained professional, if there even is one! But well, while a crowd of equally as doubtful onlookers was starting to huddle up around him, it seems the snipers too were enamored by his ways. That, or they just wanted to see him faceplant on the sandy, dusty ground underneath him.

“Alright, now’s my chance!” I said, running to the door and entering the tower, “Ugh, why are there so many stairs? This is gonna take a bit longer than I had expected…”

Even still, I had no other choice but to book it up the spiral staircase that spread in front of me. At some point the issue wasn’t the fatigue from going up for so long, but rather the scary looking drop down the center. You see, there aren’t any guardrails here, so falling down would most certainly mean instant death.

“Looks like I’m almost there.” I braced myself by counting down from three, “Okay, three… two… one…!”

Kicking open the horizontal door with a bang, my plan was to surprise the guard with the loud sound and rush him while he was still distracted by Lee. What instead happened was that the guard was staring directly at the door I was entering through with his gun aimed directly at me, as if he was expecting me this entire time.

“So I guess it’s true what they say about you monkeys…” He cocked the sniper rifle, “No brains in that empty head of yours.”

Shooting immediately after, I genuinely thought there was no escaping this one. This was it, or rather, this had to be it. He shot the gun, the trajectory perfectly aimed at my forehead. There was no way he’d miss, and looking around there really wasn’t anyone here to miraculously swoop in and save me.

“Hold on, how can I look around right now?” I thought out loud before realizing, “Wait, the bullet, it’s stopped in mid-air, so that means… Ooh, right! I’m Going Solipsistic right now!”

It’s that! The thing Lune taught me back in Oden, or at least tried to teach me, but I never got the hang of! Indeed, it’s the Iro Ability that stops or slows down time depending on the amount of focus you pour into it! My brain must’ve done this subconsciously, but it seems I’m pouring in so much focus that I’ve actually all but completely stopped time!

“Oh, I should probably get out of the way.” I rolled my eyes with a smile before prancing around the bullet, “Whoa, this is so cool! I’ll have to study up on this later, but for now, killing this guard takes priori…ty?”

“Huh?” The guard did a double take to his side, looking just as baffled as me, “How’d you get there?”

“Hup!” I panicked and cast Spark, burning his hands so that he would let go of the sniper, “Whoops, I accidentally held back. Sorry, but I keep forgetting that I have to kill you.”

“Tch, damned monkey…!” He pulled out a knife and swung it at me, barely grazing my cheek, “Stop squirming!”

“Ack! That kind of stings, dude!” I smiled as my vision once again Grayed out, “Mind if I give it a try?”

Tactfully dancing around his heavy swings, I discombobulated him before taking away his weapon all in one fell-swoop. Whoa, so this is what Lune meant when he said I just “Feel it” when I use the Gray Iro, I feel so light! Like I’m the only one in this world with such power!

“Damn…” He yelled to the other sniper, “Henderson! Oi, Henderson?”

“Sorry to say this, mate.” I slowly drove the knife into his neck, “But your bud should also be fighting someone right now, so he’s probably too busy to help you right now. Sleep tight!”

Now, after everything was said and done… I’m tired as hell! Man, my body refuses to move, even a little bit! Is this the price I have to pay for using too much Focus on an Iro Ability? Damn, Going Solipsistic is too expensive!

“Oh, that must’ve been Issei.” I said as I heard a distant shot, “Wait… What was that? Don’t tell me… why was there a second shot right after it?”