Unabara Mitsuki was in a room in a certain apartment in District 7.
Building number two of the Family Side apartment building.
It was a spacious 4LDK room meant for residential use. But if one were to see the interior, it would be clear that only one person had been living here. One could guess just by looking at the uninhabited rooms. Even the neighbors would probably feel like that.
Unabara was checking it out while using the phone to talk with Tsuchimikado.
"...First off, I've arrived at Management's room. I'll start the investigation now. Possible places for storing information...PC, HD video recorder, and even game consoles are equipped with storage media, right?"
"If it's even a small possibility, then take them all. Even memory chips from rice cookers and washing machines, dismantle them to preserve every bit of information."
Looks like I'm in for some grunt work, Unabara grumbled.
"At any rate, what kind of business assistance is Management doing?"
"I'm checking on that now."
Tsuchimikado answered, seemingly bored.
"Ten hours or so back, some kind of criminal organization had been organized with Management's efforts. They are, from the start, the kind to cover up the shortcomings. And they're the kind that pay up to obtain ready firepower from the outside. Soon the incident will certainly occur. Investigating and stopping them beforehand is our job."
"Was it really necessary to bring Group in for this?"
"Just get moving. I know you want to complain, but it's all the same for the kind of work that gets sent to Group. Nothing but shit."
Acknowledged, Unabara replied.
Walking through the spacious room, he attached tiny tags onto gadgets like PCs and video recorders. He had no intention of carrying out stuff like refrigerators and washing machines. For now he'd attach marks onto stuff, and he'd have the grunt group carry them out afterward.
(Well, of all the places.)
Almost finished with the task, Unabara found something that bothered him.
It was paper money.
Several stacks of paper money had been left on top of a waist-high shelf.
That in itself was not unnatural, but he felt like it had been kept separate from the wallets. Unabara checked the room for a bit, looking for credit cards and passbooks.
The arrangement of stuff inside the room closely matched the resident's lifestyle. However, with Unabara's diagnosis, it was likely that the paper money left on the shelf was unnatural. Since it had been kept apart from any wallets, it was likely that the person was keeping others' paper money from mixing in.
Unabara looked at the paper money again, and then called Tsuchimikado back,
"Tsuchimikado-san, do you have devices to read information from IC chips?"
"Why?"
"I've found five stacks of paper money. Surely, IC chips are attached to Japanese money issued by the Academy City mint. I believe we'd better check these out, too."
"Understood, I'll have them prepare it...No valuable information found on my side. I'll finish up the department store's cleaning room, and head for your—"
Tsuchimikado's words weren't heard to the end.
**BOOM!!**
A rocket suddenly flew in, breaking through the window, and exploding right in the middle of the room.
Several *pit-pat!pit-pat!* footsteps echoed from the entrance way.
Dark grey-armored men swiftly broke into the room, even as they scanned for traps. Heads uniformly covered with face masks, these five people laden with matching equipment had no personality.
Communicating silently through hand signals, they split into two groups and carried out the investigation of the charred remains inside the former 4LDK, which had been widened when the thin outer wall had crumbled down on top of the air conditioner that had fallen from the wall and onto the floor. Not only were the automatic fire extinguisher facilities not working, even the normal fire alarms were not working. They had cut off the security well in advance.
Since they did not exchange any words, only small *kacha kacha* metallic sounds strangely echoed out.
It was the sound of hard armor hitting metal because they had brought small arms and they were on the move.
(Good grief...)
Unabara Mitsuki sighed as he looked over the situation. He was against the kitchen wall, observing the status through a door that had been bent due to the destructive shockwave.
He had jumped into the room at the same time the rocket smashed through the window.
And as he brought out his obsidian knife from his side,
(With the entire room blown away, the information must have been destroyed. Looks like people worried about Management's information getting obtained have come out to greet us.)
He was on the third floor.
Moving soundlessly, he approached the side of a destroyed window. Even looking from there, there were about fifteen black-clad men. Probably more in unseen places; he was completely surrounded.
His disintegration magic Lance of Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli was an extremely strong magic that launched a dazzling light, absolutely disintegrating everything that was hit by its light.
But on the other hand, he could only set one target at a time.
In short, in exchange for "one strike, one kill, no matter how strong the prey", it becomes "one strike, one kill, no matter how weak the prey".
(My opponents have 9mm sub-machine guns and 9mm handguns. If they fire them in this narrow space, I'll be turned into a rag doll, no matter what magic I have.)
Most importantly, Unabara remarked,
(This is untimely. Lots of small fry coming out at this time is really untimely.)
Even breaking through the crowd of black-clads in one go by any means had no significance due to the apartment's passages and doorways serving as boundaries. He would be restricted by them, causing a human jam.
Even if an attacking party was few in number, the large number of people surrounding the apartment would crush any possibility of their target escaping. Also, even in cases where the first attacking party was annihilated by the target, the next attacking party could choose not to form up and rush in, since they would know at once that the enemy had not been killed by the rocket, so the next phase would be blowing up and destroying the entire apartment block.
(...They're well-practiced, eh? Even if they get stalled here, it doesn't mean they'll lift up their siege net. It's a definite stalemate...)
Unabara Mitsuki again grasped his obsidian knife.
Before he knew it, his palm was drenched in sweat.
(Well, what to do now?)