Miles Cooper stood motionless, the top half of his head covered by the helmet attached to the ceiling. His eyes were closed in deep concentration, although they were visibly flickering under his eyelids. Outside his private lab, a thunderstorm had settled in comfortably, blowing the rain in through the hole in the still-broken window.
Unlike the portable Amplus on the market, Miles’ personal Amplus helmets had none of the nasty side effects from overuse. After all, they drew power from either the building or his aircraft instead of the user itself.
The technopath opened his eyes slowly and took off his helmet before taking a drawn-out glance at the room. Most of the damage Kusanagi had done to his lab was already fixed, except for the hole in the side of his building— The glass manufacturers still needed a bit more time to make another bulletproof window.
Unfortunately, that meant that his office had to remain visible until the window was fixed. Cloaking was only possible with a closed object or a living one.
As for the intrusion a few days ago, Miles could almost be sure now that Kusanagi was interested in quirk amplification technology. Or, more specifically, the manufacturing techniques of Amplus and Bjarkan Mode. Those were the only things missing in his office, after all.
If he were to make a guess, that woman was probably trying to create her own Amplus powered by her quirk, perhaps to corrupt the entire population’s quirk cells or even remove them entirely. Whether or not she was under Yamato’s instructions, he still couldn’t be sure for now. But as far as he had investigated, Kusanagi had never brought it up to—
His door burst open.
“Alright, let’s make this quick. Leave nothing unturned!”
Miles swung around and ran towards the men in lab coats, who were unplugging his equipment roughly from their shelves. They shoved him aside and made for the other apparatus.
“Oi, what do you think you’re doing?” he shouted after them.
“This site’s been declared a safety hazard.” One of them— supposedly the head worker— thrust a document in his face before turning to the other workers again. “Hey, don’t miss that small tube over there! Take everything!”
Miles stared at the report attached to the clipboard. “Approved by the government? That… That’s impossible! My research was sanctioned by them years ago!”
He walked up to the head worker aggressively. “Hey, I haven’t done anything wrong. You can’t just shut down my company without any explanation. You can’t do this to us. My workers have their rights! Do you know how much we’ve sacrificed?!”
“Japan is a lawful country, Miles Cooper.” The head worker took off his lab coat and flung it carelessly on the floor. “We have strict safety provisions that even mega companies like yours have to follow. Your products are way too dangerous. If you ask me, Cooper Industries should have been shut down a long time ago. You’re out of time, mister.”
Miles faltered, inching backwards as the head worker broke into a malicious grin and continued walking towards him. The huge scar across that man’s right eye was beginning to unnerve him.
“Y— You don’t scare me.” The CEO’s voice trembled, noticing that the other ‘workers’ had stopped what they were doing as well. “This isn’t really about safety provisions, is it? I need to see some identification. Which branch of the government do you report to?”
The head worker continued walking forward boldly. “We don’t. They ask too many questions.”
Miles’ heart skipped a beat as his foot stepped on nothing. He grabbed the window frames to support himself, only to bump his face into a wide torso. The ‘head worker’ took another step forward, forcing him even closer towards the broken window.
“As for identification…”
The men behind dropped the equipment and pulled out their guns concealed in their lab coats. Miles flinched violently as the man aimed a pistol at the dead centre of his forehead. His arms flailed as he fell back—
A hand seized his tie and dragged him up, although it wasn’t far enough for him to regain his balance.
“Please… Don’t kill me…” Miles pleaded, grabbing the hand desperately as rain pelted his face. “I’ll give you anything you want— Whoever sent you, I’ll give them anything they want too. I’m begging you. Pull me back up, please. I don’t want to die!”
Time seemed to freeze as the criminal leaned in closer. Miles’ feet slipped at the edge of the broken window, struggling futilely to get a proper grip.
“Yamato Gouma sends his regards,” the man whispered in a chilling voice as thunder crackled from above. “Toll the hell’s bells.”
And then he loosened his fingers.
Miles Cooper’s scream rang out in the night sky as he disappeared from view, plummeting to his death into the murky sea below.
~ ~ ~
“It’s done. Miles Cooper has been taken care of. Christmas has come early, Mister Gouma.”
Yamato did not smile this time. Annoying as that man was, Miles was still someone he regarded as an equal to his own intelligence and capability. And more importantly, Cooper could’ve been his most useful right-hand man. With their combined might, they would’ve made an unstoppable force.
If only that man wasn’t so stubborn about doing the right thing.
“Make no mistake; I do not revel in his death. It’s a pity, but Cooper’s interference is an inconvenience I can no longer tolerate,” he muttered into his phone. “It took me quite some effort to frame him with fake evidence. Miles is too clever. I need to take him off the board before he can prove his innocence to his partner and team up with him again.”
He paused, waiting for the caller to finish saying his piece.
“Well done, nonetheless. You certainly are the best hunters I’ve ever employed,” the man continued. “I’m going to retract the report about Cooper Industries’ safety violations, so leave the site as it is. Might want to turn it into a drug lab when I get someone to take over his building. Dismissed.”
Yamato swirled the light yellow liquid in his ceramic cup and took a whiff of the Sake’s fragrance. He turned to the violently pouring night sky, closing his eyes. The loss of an old friend was a little painful, personally speaking. But sacrifices were always necessary for the greater good.
“So long, partner.” He raised the cup to no one in particular, before downing the alcohol in one swig.
Back to business.
The man faced the map on his wall again, studying it intently. After all these years, he had finally come so close to having the entire Japan under his control. People had always feared how ambitious he was, but he was always capable enough to be in control.
So why was he losing control of her?
Yamato clenched his jaw as he studied the network data coming from Kusanagi’s room again. Even if Cooper and his minion were investigating him, they shouldn’t have found out about her base since it was off-record. The only reason they found it must be because something led them there.
And only now did he find out that Kusanagi had been doing research on quirk theory for weeks in secret. Not only that, but she had also broken into Cooper’s office without permission to search for… something.
What was that stupid girl up to? Where did she get the guts to keep secrets from him? When did she become so rebellious?
A large part of him wanted to simply put a bullet in her head and get it over with. Hell, he had almost given in to the urge to barge straight to her quarters after he found out about her covert activities. But Kiko Asahi still had her uses, even if she was getting unreliable as a weapon. She was still a woman, after all.
Of course, Yamato had other sources under his command. The entire Yakuza, about thirty per cent of the police force, a handful of heroes down on their luck… And—
The man sighed audibly. Spectre Squad.
He didn’t like the idea of relying on those people, but the Yakuza were mostly made up of untrained thugs. The elite were either behind bars or had left after the Hero Deku put their previous head, Kai Chisaki, in Tartarus. Sending the lower ranks of the Yakuza to do important jobs more than often only caused a bigger mess for him to clean up instead.
So that left him with the only competent group of assassins, Spectre Squad. After all, they were capable enough to get rid of Miles Cooper and several other political opponents with little to no effort.
Spectre Squad was a small enough group of only seven assassins, sure. But all of them were deranged and unpredictable, which made the group a lot more difficult to control. Nothing else motivated them except for the thrill of the hunt.
Yamato never understood people driven by such simplistic, primal desires. Everything must be done with the purpose to benefit one’s self; to be slaves to any other desire is either plain indulgence or pure delusion.
On the other hand, the vigilante chump had somehow managed to kill the leader of the Liberty Brigade. Without their leader, the mercenaries were more disorganised than a bucket of different-coloured beans.
That was by far the most infuriating thing to Yamato.
They had numbers, if nothing else. And unlike the Yakuza, they were slaves of money despite their so-called liberation ideology. Yamato had planned on using them as his private army once he became Prime Minister, but that was out of the question now.
He switched off the monitor and headed for the door swiftly. If he stewed in his thoughts any longer, the frustration might just burst out from his body. It was time to determine who was truly on his side once and for all.
Silence blanketed the room as the door closed behind the retreating man. And then a soft creak broke it.
An air vent dropped onto the carpet floor as a figure dropped from the hole in the ceiling, landing right in front of the desk.
Hiro Kazuma rested his palms on the table with his head bowed, trying to blink his tears away. Even though he was no longer partners with Miles Cooper, that man had still helped him out of the goodness of his heart.
The vigilante cursed himself over and over again for falling for that corrupt politician’s lies. Miles was dead, and he wasn’t there to help him. Hiro didn’t even get the chance to apologise for his misunderstandings.
Dammit… Yamato Gouma, you’ll pay for this. The right way.
Hiro walked up to the map on the wall, staring at it intently. At least Kenchiro Watanabe had not lied about that in his dying breath. But it would’ve helped if he’d given Hiro some sort of hint as to what he was supposed to look for.
The vigilante traced the acrylic frame that encased the map, hoping to find a secret catch or a button like in most thriller movies.
No luck.
Hiro huffed, taking a step back to glare at the map as though he could scare it into revealing its secrets. He leaned back, expecting the table behind to catch his palms.
Only to stumble a few more steps back before finally knocking into Yamato’s desk.
He flicked his head back and forth between the wall and the table. It was possible that Yamato simply had no talent for interior design, but the gap between his desk and the wall behind him was unnaturally wide, almost as though something else was supposed to be behind his chair.
And then he spotted it.
“Scrape marks…” Hiro muttered to himself, his eyes fixated on the smooth arcs indented in the carpeted floor. “A door here… somehow. But where’s the handle?”
Hiro’s eyes lit up with realisation, and he unhooked the map from the wall. Could it be that simple?
Bingo.
A dull-looking silver door handle sat inconspicuously on the wall, perfectly hidden by the small pocket of space that would’ve been behind the map. The man narrowed his eyes. There was no visible lock on the handle.
No. No way. It can’t be that easy.
Hiro pulled hard, and the door swung open. He grinned.
It’s that easy.
The content behind the wall was surprisingly simple as well. It wasn’t a room but more of a pocket of space. A plateau jutted out in the centre of the shallow indentation, while a computer monitor sat innocently on it. It didn’t seem to be plugged into any CPU, although it was unusually thick.
Thankfully, it had a bunch of ports running along its side, so Hiro pulled out a thumb drive from his suit and plugged it into one of them.
That thumb drive was an auto-copying device that could bypass standard security protocols. Miles had given it to him in preparation for the next few missions earlier, and Hiro obviously no longer needed to use it until now. But according to Yamato, this thumb drive was really a Trojan Horse.
Well, time to see for himself who was really the one lying to him.
The computer lit up as a pop-up showed on the screen, displaying how much time was left to finish copying the files. Guilt rose in Hiro’s heart again.
I should’ve trusted you. I’m sorry, Miles…
He pulled out the device and closed the door, making sure not to leave a trace of his presence in the room. Hiro had only caught a brief glimpse of the file titles, and it seemed that they were receipts containing evidence of Yamato’s dealings as well as contracts with various criminal groups.
The vigilante grappled into the air vent again and made for the exit. He had work to do.185Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJEZ20dCCRP
and then Add to home screen.