Chương 101: 070 – After-Action

Outside of the bunker, the Kaedekin Pyrotheurgists were looking distressed, frantically trying to wipe off the water that had inundated them out of seemingly nowhere. Many had started taking off their shirts, completely unmindful of the fact anyone was watching, and were trying to wipe their face or at least their hands on their relatively dry inner layers.

Loren shivered, forcing her hands to stay still even as she imagined water suddenly attacking her out of nowhere, and she had to remind herself she wasn't actually wet, there was no way for the water could have gotten into her suit to hurt her…! She focused on the nearest Kaedekin, and watched as their faces went through a whole spectrum of emotions at the strange announcement. Aghast expressions all shifted visibly from shock, disbelief, horror, before progressing to looking offended, anger, outrage and…

oh, extreme embarrassment and mortification was back as every Kaedekin guiltily glanced toward the excursion party.

"This is so embarrassing,"Namine said, sounding like she wanted to hide her face, before raising her voice." Two of them now…I can't believe you two are doing crimes in front of our guests!"

"In our defense, there's really no good time to do crimes!" the newly renamed 'Mele Mystery' shot back, voice slightly muffled from having made its way around a snow bank. Loren wasn't even questioning why the snowbank was there. The Kaedekin weren't surprised, so it probably had some kind of explanation.

"That means just don't do any at all! It's not that hard, you just have to not do anything bad!"

"Violent vigilantes!"

"That's not the case here and you know it!"

"Look, all I'm saying is that historically—""Uh, big sis, shouldn't we be trying to get away now? The water's not going to work forever," Night Raider's slightly distorted voice said.

"Oh, poot! Yes, run away, run away!"

"Like we'd just let you!" Princess Megumi cried, trying to call Flame. Parts of her hands tried to burn, but she was still too wet as the pale forms of the two phantom thieves kicked off into the air.

"Argh! Where did all this water come from?" As the two tried to escape, taking to the air again, gunfire immediately lit them up. They sounded far fewer than before as the Kaedekin who'd been on top of the bunker were still recovering from the unexpected deluge. The scouts Namine had sent out earlier? Loren couldn't tell how on-target all their shots were, but the plasma fire seemed to be hitting its mark, striking the white ninja consistently.

The real Night Raider practically glowed against the black sky, making them an ideal target, and they seemed to be much less experienced at evading while flying compared to their companion. While the latter dodged as she had before, having no trouble with the much-lessened volume of fire, Night Raider seemed to take every shot dead on… and yet, those shots were also completely ineffectual.

She took several plasma shots to her center of mass before she even raised a shield, interposing herself between the visible gunfire and her companion as the latter dodged and returned fire, sending projectiles of her own magic towards the source of the attacks. There was a bright flash from out of sight, followed a fraction of a second later by a several loud explosions that caused those outside of the bunker to flinch, slapping their hands over their ears.

"Everyone, flashbang countermeasures!," Namine ordered.

"Blues, get that snow out of the gunports! Yellows, everyone who didn't hit their head and might have a concussion, vennplasma! Get the Flames dry!""" Yes, medic!"" The Kaedekin inside the bunker put on the safeties of their weapons, still shaking their head as glowing magic covered their ears and eyes, before raising their hands. Planes of vennplate appeared, slamming into the snowbanks… and began rapidly shoveling them out of the way, the snow being flung towards the dome protecting the air tanks.

The Kaedekin outside who were struggling to their feet looked completely wet but none the worse for wear as—"I mean it!" Namine roared.

"If anyone who hit their head tries to use magic, I'm taking away your 'talking to aliens' privileges!" Three of them paused, looking panicked, causing Namine to level a glare at them.

"You three! No magic!"

"But—""No buts! Seraphine, get out there and check their heads. They aren't to fire a shot or make one iota of venn until we're sure their brains aren't swelling!"

"Got it, medic!" The three sighed.

""Yes, medic…"" The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. The others who either hadn't hit their heads or were much better at hiding it raised their hands and began blasting out colorfully monochromatic flames as the pair of criminals went back to making their escape, this time rising upwards even as they tried to avoid the shots being fired towards them.

Loren could feel the heat, and clearly so could the other Kaedekin, because they all held their hands over their heads to cries of relief. They lowered their hands, elbows carefully bent to keep any more water from trickling down to the now-dry areas of skin as they ignited into Flame, before turning towards other sisters and drying their hands for them with blasts of heat as the fire began to spread across their bodies.

A door had opened in the bunker wall, and after some squeezing, Sera made her way out, jumping at every step as her feet splashed on the wet ground, her hands burning blue to either evaporate or repel any water that might get them wet.

"Don't worry, I've got you!" Sera called out, the fighter vanishing as she reached the nearest of the injured.

"Just give me—!" Loren couldn't help but let out a terrified scream as water dropped out of the sky again right on top of Sera, who got knocked down to the ground, along with everyone else who'd been outside of the bunker.

"Flashbang!" one of the Kaedekin cried as glowing balls of light dropped down from the sky, hit the ground and bounced up to eyelevel That was all the warning they had before glowing balls of white light dropped down to eye-level and exploded in bright strobes of light… that somehow didn't shine directly towards the bunker, sparing them from the worst of the effect.

Everything became a confused mess after that as the second dunking seemed to convince the Pyrotheurgists to cut their losses, pull out any guns they had, and just start shooting. Loren couldn't keep track of everything after that, because there were now too many Kaedekin moving around and doing things, but a few things stood out in her memory. Despite the strangeness of the situation, and the very frustrated expressions on the wet Kaedekin, no one seemed to be panicking or confused as to what to do.

There was no one looking lost, no one asking "What now?" or "What do we do?", and no one asking for further orders. Everyone seemed to already know what to do, or at worst were well-practiced at looking busy without actually getting in anyone's way. It was only later she realized how significant that last part was, because all of these Kaedekin were supposed to be college academics.

Yet once the pursuit had risen too high for them to meaningfully contribute, the wet Kaedekin had immediately pivoted to triaging injuries… or at least, injuries as they saw it. Which was why more and more of the Kaedekin who had gotten a lot of water dumped on top of them had started taking off their wet clothes.

Commander Bronze had immediately ordered everyone to turn around, but it had proved to be unneeded when the golden flames erupted from the dry patches of skin under their clothes and then started patting their hands on the flaming parts of their bodies to dry their hands. Loren wondered how exactly the normies would try to rationalize that. It was still half an hour before Namine had finally declared the situation safe and ordered for the impromptu bunker to come down.

"Sorry about the delay," Namine said apologetically as the excursion party was seated, because after all this time on their feet, they needed a rest, "but until we'd gotten confirmation about the situation, I didn't think it was safe to bring the walls down."

"Understandable, if inconvenient," Commander Bronze said as Loren sat nearby. The two were making no effort to lower their voices, so it didn't could as eavesdropping, right?

"Were the criminals caught?" For a moment, Namine was silent and looked very uncomfortable.

"Unfortunately, they got away," she said, not meeting his gaze.

"They used a stealth field to fade into the shroud and get out of sensor range, then released enough decoys to distract the Rangers from being able to pick up their trail."

"… I see. Well, I'm sure it's only a matter of time." But Namine was already shaking her head.

"We didn't catch them now, so we won't have another chance to catch them until they strike again."

"Surely they'll be caught by the subsequent investigation?" Commander Bronze said.

"I'm not optimistic, although you never know," Namine said, her tone a strange mix of tired, frustrated and… amused?

"A team of Metro Rangers have been trying to track them—well, just Night Raider, since she was the only one we knew about—down for weeks ever since the first theft, and so far they haven't had any luck. They've covered their tracks well, mostly by not actually leaving anything we can narrow down to any one girl."

"They were in Princess Megumi's room, though. Could they have left any usable forensic evidence?" The amusement got a little bit stronger.

"Forensic evidence like her DNA? That she shares with half the people on the planet because we're all clones of the same person? At best, we'd be able to narrow it down to the girls who use the same hair dye, which would still probably be more than ten percent of all girls."

"Ah… that sounds very inconvenient," Commander Bronze said. Namine shrugged.

"It is what it is. Our expertise will probably be more useful when we have visitors who have their own DNA coming to visit for establishing an alibi before their spouse is found dead in a closed room murder mystery." The angle was all wrong for Loren to see into Commander Bronze's helmet, but the bemusement was clear in his voice.

"Why is that the example you come to?"

"Well, it's one that shows up a lot in human transmissions, so I thought you'd be more familiar with it." There was a brief pause that was probably the result of the commander making another face that Loren couldn't see.

"What happens now?"

"Unfortunately, procedure requires that I write down an after-action report," Namine said.

"It should only take about twenty minutes, which is about how long it will take everyone else in the college to write their after-action reports once they get back to their research labs. If you're all willing to wait, I'll just finish writing my report and we can continue the tour." There was another pause, and this time Loren was pretty sure about the face the commander was making.

"You… intend to continue the tour?"