Chapter 157: The Pink Devil, Kirby
The moment Kurama said "pink spherical creature," two character images flashed through Ross's mind simultaneously.
One was Jigglypuff from Pokemon. The other was Kirby from Kirby's Dream Land.
Of course, in that same instant Ross couldn't completely rule out the possibility that this pink spherical creature was just some native organism from the Hunter world. But his gut leaned heavily toward one of those two.
And factoring in that the world's crossover baseline was built from the Famicom, Mega Drive, and arcade platforms, without touching any of the cheap knockoff domestic titles that had flooded the market back then, Jigglypuff, who made her first appearance on the Game Boy, almost certainly wasn't going to show up here.
But once Kurama accurately described the pink spherical creature swallowing Shizuku whole, there was no longer any question about the pink devil's identity.
It was Kirby.
And if everything tracked the way Ross expected, its actual source had to be Kirby's Adventure on the Famicom.
With the logic chain assembled, a faint sweat had started at Ross's temple. Surprise, yes. Some worry. But honestly, mostly excitement.
Because this was Kirby.
Even if this Kirby hadn't been blended in through a lore fusion but was instead a pure, faithful recreation of the character's performance parameters from Kirby's Adventure, it was still destined to be a terrifying neutral boss that had absolutely nothing to do with its adorable appearance.
Shizuku wasn't a combat-focused member, but she was nowhere near weak either. Her close-range fighting ability was real. Someone who could casually slaughter ordinary Nen ability users had just been swallowed without putting up any resistance at all. Kirby's danger level had made itself clear in a hurry.
Swallowing everything with that big mouth wasn't just a cute gimmick. It could swallow even boss-tier bodies whole, and perfectly absorb the abilities those bodies had possessed in life.
With Kirby having crashed into this situation, what had been a very straightforward crime syndicate versus Phantom Troupe narrative had just developed an enormous wild card.
Wait. Hold on. You said this Kirby is wearing sunglasses?
Running back through the information Kurama had just given him, Ross caught something and locked onto it.
"Yes. Sunglasses."
Kurama gave the confirmation while opening his eyes involuntarily and looking over at Ross.
Because based solely on Kurama's description, Ross had already identified the pink spherical creature with complete confidence using a name Kurama had never heard in his life. Combined with the intelligence-broker image Ross had spent this whole time carefully maintaining, Kurama concluded Ross had already figured out exactly what kind of creature this was.
"Sunglasses. That means it's already absorbed someone's ability."
Ross ran a quick mental scan through every copy ability available to Kirby in the original Kirby's Adventure. None of them were visually represented by wearing sunglasses.
Which meant Kirby had inhaled a Nen ability user and copied their ability.
Sunglasses.
"Does Kirby have a goatee?"
Kurama immediately closed his eyes again at the question, cycling through the True-Sight Sentinel angles until he got a clear look at the front of Kirby, who was trotting along with a cheerful little bounce.
"Yes."
...It swallowed the Shadow Beasts' transporter.
With both the sunglasses and the goatee confirmed, Ross landed directly on Owl.
Kirby didn't just swallow things. It could temporarily copy the abilities of whatever it swallowed, and while it was using a copied ability it would typically retain some of the target's physical characteristics.
But strictly following Kirby's Adventure's game mechanics, Kirby theoretically couldn't swallow anything else while actively using a copied ability. In practice, it clearly just had. Which meant Ross had to provisionally categorize this one the same way he'd categorized Dracula: operating on a foundation that preserved the original character's mechanics as closely as possible, while having received a reasonable degree of world integration and ability expansion on top of that.
So the current Kirby, sunglasses and little goatee and all, had swallowed Shizuku, but almost certainly hadn't digested her yet. Most likely she was being held in temporary storage inside something resembling a black hole for a stomach.
Which meant Kirby was still operating by the original rule: only one unit's ability at a time, copied temporarily.
That was manageable. As long as it wasn't stacking multiple characters' abilities on top of each other all at once, it was still just barely within the range of something that could be reasoned about.
"Drop the Troupe surveillance. Track Kirby's movements, full attention."
Everyone who watched Ross switch targets that decisively assumed he was about to move on the pink spherical creature personally. Instead, he picked up his phone on the spot and dialed the Todo Group's deputy leader.
"Pass this down to everyone. Buy food. All of it. Every piece of food in Yorknew City, buy it now.
"Anything ranked on the best eats lists. Any restaurant with a line out the door. Any new product at a supermarket with a banner out front.
"Cakes, chocolate, bread, bubble tea, ice cream. Every dessert too, get all of it. Use my personal funds. Buy hard, minimum ten of each item. Don't worry about the cost. Just buy."
The Todo Group's deputy leader, who had been seamlessly integrated into this world through Ross's Creator Authority, was thoroughly baffled, but he was not going to question the acting boss.
And so, while virtually every other crime organization in the city was scrambling because their contacts at the auction venue had gone dark, the Todo Group's members, equally black-suited and equally menacing-looking, began appearing at every food stall and dessert counter in Yorknew City, buying alongside ordinary bewildered tourists with everything they had.
Meanwhile, back inside the underground auction hall, the Troupe members still wrapping up had hit a snag of their own.
"Hey, Machi. You seen Shizuku anywhere?"
Franklin's enormous hand held his small phone. An expression of urgency had appeared on his face, which was a rare thing.
Franklin and Shizuku had a decent relationship by Troupe standards. Something like a fussy older brother and a scatterbrained little sister.
So when he finished the slaughter of all five hundred crime organization members inside the venue and found that Shizuku, who should have been holding position outside the doors to catch anyone trying to run, still hadn't come in, something felt off. He called Machi immediately.
"No, I haven't seen her."
Machi, stationed near the hot air balloon hidden on the venue rooftop in advance to provide the team's extraction route, had felt a vague bad premonition the moment her phone rang.
Losing three old comrades at Castlevania had hit Machi hard enough that she had taken a long, serious look at herself afterward and started trying to develop a new Nen ability by following her instincts, and it had already taken a rough shape.
She was holding the phone to her ear with one hand, and with the other she balanced the midpoint of a sewing needle on the tip of her index finger, injected a careful amount of aura into it, and began silently repeating Shizuku's general location inside her head.
The needle began rotating on its own, like a magnetized compass with no one touching it.
Machi hung up the phone and looked in the direction the needle pointed.
What she saw, at roughly thumbnail size in her field of vision, was something balloon-shaped drifting slowly upward into the sky.
She wasn't sure what to make of it. But on the principle of better wrong than sorry, Machi moved to follow it and find out what that balloon-shaped thing actually was.
At that exact moment, a group message from Shalnark came through to everyone.
"The vault is empty. All units, fall back to the designated rally point immediately."