Elise gave Nalia the news about Yura becoming her newest partner as soon as the fairy woke up from her sleep. Nina had been sent a message via the familiar connection, so she was the first to learn about it. Neither of the two were surprised in the slightest.

Later in that same day, Yura received a message from detective Erina, saying that she wanted to talk with the whole group about what she had discovered. Elise was fine with that idea, so she set up a time for the meeting and called the whole group into the hospital room (including Whitmoore) to participate.

Everyone gathered there a bit earlier than the scheduled time, so they decided to pass the time talking.

“Yura, I have a question.” Began Elise “Nina has been going into her Room in my mindscape in order to sleep, but what about you? I know Nalia spent most of the last few days awake, but I don’t think you’re the same.”

“The professor has been paying for my stay at a hotel.” She looked at the older woman “And it’s actually a pretty high-class room too. I was surprised.”

Whitmoore waved it off “I have a lot of disposable income. Elise’s treatment was far more expensive, and even that didn’t put a dent on my wallet.”

“I see.” Elise said “But returning to the previous matter, I’ve started making your own Room in the mindscape, Yura, I’ll call you to help once I have finished the basics.”

“… Okay.” Yura replied.

There was a moment of silence before Whitmoore asked a question of her own:

“But how are you doing? What’s the condition of your arm?” She pointed at Elise’s right arm, which was completely covered in bandages.

“I can move it a little bit.” Elise lifted up the arm above the bed slightly before letting it fall down again “But I can’t even feel my hand, let alone move it. I think it will take months before I can use it semi-normally again.”

“She says that, but the doctors didn’t seem to be sure whether she’d ever be able to do it.” Nalia commented.

“That’s because they don’t know that I’m only going to be getting stronger in the future during our journey.” Elise replied “If I stayed on the same level, then I’m sure that never recovering would be a real possibility, but increasing my power will help with that situation.”

“I see.” Nina spoke up “But now that I think about it, your transformation of Nalia changed her body a lot. Is it possible for you to go through the same process somehow?”

“No.” Elise replied immediately “Or at least, it’s absurdly unlikely. The reason is because changing a human’s ‘base form’ is unreasonably difficult to do. Any transformations affecting a human act as ‘layers’ put on top of their original form, and thus said form remains there, with one being able to reveal it by breaking those layers.”

“Really? Huh.” Nalia was surprised “Why? And are there any other species like that?”

“To the second question, no.” Elise replied “To the first, Elen, one of my older sisters, said that the reasons behind that are ‘connected to old secrets’. Meaning she has some idea of why but couldn’t explain it to me for some reason.”

“Huh.” Was Nalia’s reply. There didn’t seem to be anything else she could say to that.

Thankfully, the group was spared from having to figure out another subject for conversation when a series of musical notes began to resound from a machine Yura was holding. Said machine was a black, rectangular apparatus with an antenna, a small screen and a bunch of buttons and dials.

That machine was called a multicomm, because it was a special communication tool that could tune into different radio frequencies as well as connect with numerous types of distinct communication devices. Cellphones, faxes, e-mail… It was truly quite a versatile tool.

Yura had borrowed that particular multicomm from professor Whitmoore in order to contact her detective acquaintance, so it could be called back by her in order for the group to have their meeting.

The elf girl pressed a button to accept the call and another one to put it “on speaker” so that everyone could hear it.

“Hello? Are you there? Do you hear me?” Came a female voice that had a somewhat lower pitch than most.

“We’re here.” Yura replied “Everyone, please introduce yourselves.”

The other girls in the room introduced themselves briefly, followed by the voice from the machine replying with “And I’m Erina Ramos. It’s nice to hear from all of you.”

“And it’s nice to hear from you.” Elise replied “And since you don’t appear to be in a hurry, I’m assuming that the information you have to tell us doesn’t include any immediate threats, right?”

“You’re quite observant.” Erina replied “That is true. In fact, the news I have is the opposite. The Inishie higher-ups were quite astonished to hear about an entire strike team being annihilated in a mission like that, so they are certain that there was an unknown factor at play.

“They know enough to be fairly certain that Yura has now joined together with ‘the contractor from Theremis’, but they don’t know nearly enough about you, so they have put a moratorium on further attacks aimed at your group.” Erina continued “Right now they’re gathering information, trying to figure out who are you, where did you come from and what force is behind you.”

Elise let out a giggle in response “So they’re gonna be wasting their time. Fantastic.” She shook her head before explaining “I come from a different continent, where I was raised without any contact with the outside world, and I was sent here via very long range teleporting. No matter how much they investigate, they’re not gonna find anything about me.”

“I see… Well, I’m not going to be the one to tell them that’s a fruitless endeavor, so I suppose your group is probably gonna be safe from further attacks for a while.” Erina said “Besides that, is there anything else you’d like to know?”

“Why don’t you explain what you know about the Inishie’s organization?” Yura suggested “I could tell them what you said about it, but I think you’re better at explaining.”

“That does seem to be a good idea. Well, let’s see. Where do I start…?” Erina thought for a few moments before speaking again “I suppose I’ll go bottom to top. The lowest ranked Inishie members are the so called ‘loose warriors’, fighters that have more skill than a common soldier, but not enough to obtain a proper place in the organization’s hierarchy.”

“What about informants?” Professor Whitmoore asked “Aren’t they the lowest ranked?”

“No. Both informants as well as regular day-to-day workers employed by the Inishie aren’t considered as actual members, only collaborators.” Erina replied “They’re not even limited to only humans and elves like the regular members are.”

“Yeah. Otherwise I’d have detected that idiot while I was here.” Yura commented, referring to Birman, the traitor who passed along information about their mission to the temple.

“I see.” The professor replied.

Then Nalia spoke up “What I want to know is why the Inishie only recruit from those two races. Is there some sort of ideological component behind their actions?”

“That’s one of those things I am not sure about.” Erina replied “If the group has any sort of ideology, it is not something that’s communicated to their lower-ranked members. The recruitment into the organization is mostly done via the promise of power: Being part of a powerful group and receiving teaching and resources to gain power. However, humans and elves are by far the most populous races in this continent, so the decision to limit recruitment to them is definitely at least partially influenced by pragmatism, at least in my opinion.”

“I also think that’s very likely.” Elise replied.

Erina waited a moment to see whether anyone else had further questions and then returned to her explanation “The Inishie ‘loose warriors’, after being recruited, have to travel across the continent, moving from branch to branch until they find a manager willing to take them in. Said manager will provide teaching or resources in exchange for those members acting under them.

“If their performance is satisfactory, the branch manager may bring those members into their inner circle, pretty much marking them as elites within the branch, or they may be recommended to join a strike team.” Erina continued “Strike teams are groups formed by members of several different branches that have a close connection. The managers of those branches can request for those strike teams to act, but they need majority support among that group of managers to ensure the fulfillment of said request.”

“What happens to ‘inner circle’ members if their manager dies?” Nina asked in a cold voice. She was thinking about the ‘barrier woman’ who had attacked her village.

“They essentially become ‘loose warriors’ again, but if they were skillful enough to enter the inner circle, then they would probably easily find another manager to take them in.” Erina replied “But speaking of that, I believe this is a good time to explain the matters regarding branch managers themselves.

“Branch managers are appointed by ‘central command’, via special members known as ‘messengers’ who are under direct orders by said command. A branch manager is always a very skilled warrior, but their capabilities vary quite a lot depending on which branch they are expected to manage.” Erina said.

“So they need to be strong enough to lead their members. Makes sense.” Elise commented.

“Indeed. Their strength reflects the strength of the branch itself. I mentioned before about strike teams being formed by members of branches with a close connection, but what that actually means is branches that have comparable strength.” Erina explained “Higher-class branches have their own strike teams, and since their members are stronger, those strike teams are also stronger than the ones formed by weaker branches. To make those differences clear, I like to call the stronger ones ‘elite strike teams’.”

“Makes sense. And I imagine the one we defeated wasn’t one of those elites.” Elise said.

“That’s right, actual elite strike teams would be a lot stronger. But they aren’t the scariest enemy.” Erina spoke ominously.

“What would the scariest enemies be, then?” Nalia asked.

“The Executors.” The detective replied in a tone of absolute seriousness “Each and every one of those is said to be able to easily annihilate even the strongest strike teams. They are among the most powerful people on the continent, and they only take orders from central command. Even the highest class branch managers only have enough authority to send requests for their intervention.”

“… Sounds serious.” Nina said. Her tone was wary, but she still felt a certain level of eagerness at the idea of pitting her strength against such powerful foes.

“It is indeed. But there’s also good news.” Erina continued “The fact that they are so strong means pretty much every country or organization that knows about them always keeps an eye on their movements. That means Executors can’t act easily, so they only receive missions when central command decides that it is really necessary.”

“Hmm… At least that is good news. But you mentioned central command a lot, without really explaining it properly. What do you know about the real higher-ups of the Inishie?” Elise asked.

Erina sighed in response “Woefully little. I didn’t talk much about them because there’s very little information regarding central command going around. I know they use those ‘messengers’ to communicate their will, and I believe they may have ‘central managers’, to contrast with the branch managers below, but apart from that I have no clue.

“The messengers they use are always masked, so their identities are unknown, and while it’s hard to say whether they are skilled in combat, the messengers are incredibly stealthy and hard to track down. If anyone’s ever captured and managed to extract information one of them, it was done secretly and whatever information gained was never disseminated.”

“And you’re only a private investigator without any ties to big organizations or governments, so it would be difficult for you to get any such secret information.” Nalia said “At least, I think you are a private investigator, otherwise Yura would have talked about whoever you’re working for. But regardless, since you were able to learn about the Inishie’s decisions in relation to us, when the circumstances change and they decide to come after us again, would you be able to hear about it early and warn us?”

“Ah, I am indeed a private investigator. And I think I should be able to do that. But how exactly am I supposed to warn you? Yura doesn’t have a reliable method of contact, and I don’t think you do either, or she wouldn’t have needed to borrow a communicator.” Erina replied.

“I couldn’t risk having something that could allow them to track me.” Yura complained.

“I could give the multicomm to the group, but I don’t know enough about the technology involved to say whether having it would be dangerous.” Whitmoore said.

“Wait, seriously? There’s no way this thing is cheap, and you want to give it to us?” Nina was shocked.

“I already said I have a lot of disposable income.” Whitmoore justified herself “And you really saved the whole city, so this sort of thing is only deserved. There’s a bunch of other things I want to give you girls, so you shouldn’t keep getting surprised by each and every single thing.”

“While I do want to talk about what exactly do you want to give us, I think we should get back to the previous subject.” Elise said “I don’t think there will be a chance for us to be tracked down through the multicomm if we isolate it electronically to the point where it can’t pick up or emit any signals. I think putting it inside my bag and adding one or two spells would be enough for that.” She raised her hand to forestall the incoming objections “I know that would make it impossible to receive information from Erina, but we could set up a specific time of day for contacts and take the multicomm out only during that time to reduce risks.

“Or depending on how such communications work, perhaps a message sent by Erina while the multicomm is isolated would be held up in the connection and be automatically delivered once the isolation is broken, but we’ll need to make some experiments to figure it out. Either way, it should be possible to receive information in time.”

No one seemed to have any issues with Elise’s reasoning, so that part of the meeting was concluded. Afterwards, the one to bring up the next subject was Professor Whitmoore, who asked where the contractor’s group was planning to go next, but the first one to reply to that was actually the detective:

“This isn’t a discussion that requires my presence, so I’m going to leave the meeting early. Please contact me again once you want to run those tests you mentioned.” She said, before closing the call.

“… Did I say something wrong?” Whitmoore asked.

“Not quite. I believe this is just Erina’s thoughtfulness.” Elise replied “In case you didn’t notice, she also didn’t ask whether I did have any sort of extra backing that helped deal with the strike team or anything like that.

“It’s not that she isn’t curious, but there are certain considerations in play.” Elise sighed “The first is that she’s someone we don’t actually know personally, making it harder for us to trust, so she doesn’t want to test that shaky trust by asking for potentially sensitive information. The second is, well, if she’s close enough to the Inishie to get that sort of information, she’s close enough to be at risk of discovery by them. In case she’s discovered, she doesn’t want to be forced to betray her contacts, because there’s no way to tell which methods the Inishie would use to try and extract information from her, but there’s no way for Erina to leak information she doesn’t know.”

There were a few seconds of silence as Whitmoore processed that “I see… In that case, I don’t need to know where you’re going either. Instead of that, I have something else to ask: Do you know when you’re gonna be allowed to leave the hospital?”

“They said I could go on my way tomorrow morning, but they advised me not to do any more strenuous activities for at least two weeks.” Elise replied.

The professor’s face lit up with a large smile at that “Good. Then, once you’re out, I’d like to invite the four of you for a day in the city with me. We’re gonna do some shopping!”

None of the younger girls felt any inclination to refuse when seeing how happy she looked.