In Plain Sight

Crossing through a busy street in the Capital, a man in his early thirties covered in a dark cloak approached two men with shadowed faces. Only grim piercing eyes made it through their dark features veiled behind hoods. They stopped the man only for him to pull up his cloak’s sleeve just enough to reveal the Hunter’s seal upon the badge tied to his forearm.

The guards granted him access to the building as he stepped inside. Pulling the cloak’s hood down, the worn expression of the man stared deeper into the hall. He pressed ahead with a strong stride. Out of the right door came an older harsher appearing man. A dark stare met him bringing him to an immediate stop. “I don’t recognize you.”

“I wouldn’t suppose you would. My missions take me north. It’s my first time back in more than four years. And not under the circumstances that I would have liked.”

He stared at the man for a little longer, taking read of his explanation. Tension tightened up in the silence without a measure of the older man’s reaction. It then quickly relaxed. “I’d imagine not. Miyake.”

“Terakado, sir. I’ve been sent because of a mission you have for me?”

“Terakado! So you’re the one headquarters sent to me. Come in then.” He motioned the man into the side room filled with documents and crates. As Terakado started in, Miyake motioned over to the plain appearing woman in the corner with a servile stature. “Tamiko, get the door.”

“Yes, Master Miyake,” she quietly replied, gliding over the floor to the door. By the time that she arrived at the door, Terakado had already entered. She slid it closed behind him before making her presence small in the corner.

Another in the room besides just the mission commander made him glance with concern. However Miyake took his attention back. “No need to be bothered. Tamiko’s trustworthy, she’s been at my side since my rookie years.”

“Yes, sir. I understand.” He put his focus back to the orders of his mission. “I wasn’t given any details of my mission.”

“This mission is rank SS,” Miyake answered, going behind his desk and pulling out a key. Unlocking the partition in his desk, he revealed a secret pocket holding only the highest of ranked missions executed by the Demon Hunters. A scroll came out of the black pocket and passed to Terakado. “Your contact will go by the name of Morioka.”

In silence, the man read through the scroll and wrapped it back up. He returned it to Miyake, who tightened his hand over the scroll as it burst into flames completely destroying any evidence of the mission. “I understand. The threat is real then.”

“Yes, I expect you to carry out the mission with your usual efficiency.”

“You will have results, sir.”

“Glad to hear it, Terakado. Dismissed.”

“Yes, sir!” He motioned over to Tamiko for the door to be opened for their guest. She quietly moved over to the door sliding it open for him to leave. Once their guest left, he returned to work ignoring the woman to her own matters.

She resumed sorting documents in the back side of the room opposite of him. Nothing changed in her duties. The arrival of Terakado made the first big shift for the day in an otherwise boring and unproductive day. Fortunately, his appearance corrected all of it and made it worthwhile.

‘A troubling mission…’ Yuki thought, while using Miyake’s servant as a decoy.

Chapter 436 – In Plain Sight

While the two discreetly made their plans for the secret mission, Yuki looked over their shoulder completely invisible to either of them. He used the servant as his disguise while he watched, but left it behind for investigations. There could be no risk allowed for slipping his hand.

However, now that he had the mission, matters became troubling. He returned back to his disguise while monitoring the actions of Miyake. All of the room that he could manage had been investigated with the exception of the man’s desk and private safe-like chamber. ‘He’s kept to the desk the whole time, even when he leaves he orders me to follow. Despite what he says, he’s not trusting of her. A cautious man…’ Yuki cursed his poor planning. He thought that he had figured out a set that would allow for all of the espionage that he needed, but it was still lacking. He still had room for improvement.

After an entire day of spying on the man, Yuki’s job came to an end. He slipped out of the small home that belonged to such an important figure within the Association. Such humble residence belied the darkness contained within.

Under another cover, he slipped into the night crowds and made his way to the rendezvous. Set up in advance by the two of them and keeping his cover going at the work site for the defense, Nerine waited for his return. In a subtle and completely contrasting appearance of a short and large figured middle-aged man, she sat in a quiet corner of a slightly up-scale restaurant. It gave them privacy and a shady location to meet up was too cliché for Yuki.

Yuki sat down at the table that gave a rather intimate setting, given his appearance as a mid-twenties woman dressed nicely for an evening dinner. A bit of a frustrated expression slipped through Nerine’s control. An internal smile went through Yuki watching her. ‘She really was against this. I wonder which part is bothering her more, that she’s pretending to be on a date with her King or that she’s spending time with me when she believes that it should be Yumi here rather than her.’ Seeing the suffering look on Nerine really brought out his sadist urges to tease her further. She was a straight laced up standing soldier and citizen, she did poorly with such situations.

But he relented in her torment and moved the conversation forward. “The rumors turned out to be accurate.”

The serious tone from Yuki snapped her back to reality, letting her focus on the important matters. “What’s the plan?” All they had heard were rumors of the Association making secret moves behind their apparent helpful service in defense of the Capital. None of the rumors said any more than that.

“About as sinister as you can get. They really are the villains of this story, not the demons.” The flipping of the script was something that Yuki could appreciate. For a story, having the demons being the villains was expected and obvious. And even given everything happening and the way that they treated the humans, an easy case could be made to still be classified as a villain. However, their behaviors ended up being background to the more secretive story happening with the Association. “They’re making plans to kill everyone on the Council.”

“That’s a very aggressive move.”

“It just shows how much they hate losing their power.”

“They’d kill all of the Council members over something like that…”

“When those that you control stop following your commands you seek out new puppets.”

Nerine crossed her arms with a pensive expression digging into her chubby disguise. “The Council barely even did much. And after the battle, if the Capital survives things will be back to the way they were most likely.”

“I’m guessing the Association doesn’t want to risk it. The loss of the Council will create a power vacuum for them to exploit fully and the public will have only them. Even though the Association holds the power right now, it’s only really known by those at the top. The common people still look to the Council for their daily lives and the Association for slaying demons. This will completely change the social and political structure.”

“When is it happening?”

“While the attack is underway.”

“Naturally, they plan to make the deaths look like an accident caused by the demons.” It was pretty obvious that they would make their move then. The timing made it difficult for them as well. If the attack occurred during the fighting, they would be unable to stop them. “We’re going to have to do something about them before the day of the battle.”

Yuki became a little less confident suddenly with her response. He leaned back some as there remained more that he hadn’t explained. “They’re being thorough and cautious. It’s not just a single attack. They have four assassins in play completely unknown to each other.”

“Four?! Damn…they really are determined to make this happen. They’re being that cautious because timing an assassination in the middle of a large scale battle anything could happen.” Even Nerine didn’t think that they would be so committed to the mission that they would use so many resources. “They really don’t care about the fate of the Capital so long as they’re still alive and in control.”

“They’re everything that Saki said they were. The ugliness of humans.”

“Do you have a plan already?” It seemed unlikely that he wouldn’t have already put into play something.

Unfortunately, the reaction that he gave her wasn’t what she was hoping for. He buried his arms into a deep cross position. “I’ve had a few ideas, but I’m not sure how successful any of them will be.” Ideas weren't something that he was short on at least. But too many variables that he didn’t understand fit into the situation.

“What’s the problem? They’re not very advanced, we can make up any number of fakes that they’ll never be able to detect.”

“But that’s the problem. The abilities that the Demon Hunters possess are more versatile than they seem on the surface. Just take what I’m doing with them in our defense. We need a plan that is certain of success. We don’t know enough about our targets to know how thorough they’ll be in their confirmation of their kill.”

“I see what you mean.” She could see that he gave it plenty of thought, no surprise. Four different assassins with completely different plans for killing the Council presented trouble enough for protecting them. But it also meant different thought patterns, methods, awareness, covering all of them wouldn’t be easy. “There’s only one way to be certain then.”

Yuki glanced back over the table at Nerine already knowing the conclusion that she came to. It was the only plan that he had with complete success in protecting the Council. No risk involved in accounting for anything. “Kill the assassins. I considered that option as well. Knowing that they’re only digital doesn’t give me as much hesitation in that course.”

“You’re still hesitating though.”

“Yes, because even as certain as we can be about stopping the assassins by killing them, there’s still a flaw in it.” A flaw that changed the certainty of that plan from being a hundred percent to any other value. It didn’t have as much to do with his reluctance to kill and more with the unknown. “The day I worked there was only a single arrival the entire day. I wasn’t so lucky to have actually seen all of the assassins. So I don’t know what they look like, for one. But there’s a bigger risk involved. I only was able to uncover four assassins, there’s nothing to say that they made those the easy ones to find. They might have set them up as the decoys and the real one is another that we don’t know about.”

“You’re being quite paranoid about this.”

“It just felt a little off. Despite knowing that they never noticed my presence, it felt like they seemed to know someone was watching them. I can’t shake the feeling that it’s all just a trap.”

“Sure it’s not just paranoia?”

“Could be, but it’s a possibility all the same.”

Nerine’s face twisted a little as she thought about what he said. She knew that he wasn’t wrong about the possibility of it all just being an elaborate ploy to discover a spy. If they were already being cautious enough to have four assassins for a job, it is possible that they are all just fakes. Such things didn’t seem impossible for the Association. They absolutely wanted power. They wouldn’t want anything to come in their way.

“No other plans?”

“Nothing at the moment. I need time to think about the problem.”

“We don’t really have time on our side though.”

“I know.”

“Then why don’t we just kill the Council ourselves? It’s the only way to be certain.”