Again? Shinichi thought when he noticed the young man running.
In the young man’s arms was a fantasy bag ill-matched his delinquent fashion.
Given the place, it wouldn’t be too strange for all sorts of people who liked such things to appear, but from how hurried he was and how he kept looking back, it was probably ‘that’.
Either he grabbed someone’s bag or he picked it up when they weren’t looking, and true enough, a brief look of the camera’s history shows him ‘borrowing’ it.
“That’s an out.”
Normally, he wouldn’t bother with criminals of this level, but he just couldn’t stand acts that would ruin the day of people at a place like this meant purely for fun.
However, with the look of despair on the face of the criminal, it was doubtful who exactly between them was the villain.
Shinichi put that issue aside, or perhaps, he himself believed that he was the villain, but regardless, something strange caught his attention, and he stopped; the camera feed showed a group of people chasing after the criminal.
They should be the owner of the bag, but none of them looked the part, and none of them were crying thief either.
At this point, Shinichi realized what was up and sighed.
“So is that what that dream was about? A warning to tell me not to let my guard down because the same thing was happening again? …But that doesn’t seem right either… Because this too is just the usual pattern.”
“Kyui?”
Either way, the young man had apparently laid his hands on something problematic, and Shinichi could intuitively tell that leaving this matter alone would cause an even bigger problem.
He did not acquire three thousand years’ worth of experience for nothing.
One of the boons of that was understanding the evils committed by man; hence, even without the details, he could accurately read the situation.
“It’s that, isn’t it? A thief stole the evidence of another criminal’s crime. Ah, but from the way they’re acting, I bet they were trying to do something. Ha ha, in that case, I’ll have to crush their plans properly, won’t I?”
Right? A crescent smile appeared on that master of hers as he sought agreement from her.
As a faithful servant, despite whatever dismay she might feel, Youko would of course nod with a cry.
“Kyui.”
And so, it was in that moment that the men’s luck turned for the worst, and the world’s most terrifying weapon set its eyes upon them.
By casting spells and manipulating the security system, Shinichi skillfully led the thief to a blind alley, then he stealthily pursued the men chasing the thief.
By that point, their fate was already sealed.
“───────Eek, a-a bomb!?”
The young man fell on his bottom as he screamed and crawled back.
When Shinichi wrung out that information, the first one to be terrified was the young man.
Youko skillfully used her forelimbs to check the bag, and indeed, there was a bomb inside.
Not even in his dreams would the young man dream of accidentally stealing a bomb.
“Again? There really is no variation, huh… But even if there were, it would be just annoying.”
But Shinichi just muttered that in dismay because he’d seen something similar just this morning, but no one picked up on his mutterings because another sound drowned it out.
“Ah, gah… AgyaAaa!?!?”
Despite the big man’s confession, Shinichi did not cease his emotionless violence.
He lifted up the big man with one arm and threw him into a wall, then pinned him into it with his blade.
“S-Stop it, I already talked!”
The man had been ‘healed’ enough to say that much, but all that he got in return was a monotonous voice.
“Was that all?”
“Huh?”
“Were you only plotting to plant bombs throughout the park? You sure you haven’t done anything else or were plotting something else?”
“Agah, higiiyaa!!!”
Then Shinichi twisted the blade while it was still lodged inside, gouging out the flesh of his arm to give him a good dose of pain.
An unbearable scream resounded, but again, no one noticed.
Due to the wards that Youko erected, nothing that happened here leaked out and no one entered either.
“Hey, is that really all?”
But of course, in the face of this abnormal and terrifying boy, none of the men here had the leisure to think of such things.
“Agyaa!?!? That’s all, I swear! That’s all!! Goho!!!”
The big man insisted they had no other schemes even as he wailed, and then Shinichi threw a kick into his stomach to shut him up before grabbing his face and showing it to his friends.
“If this guy is lying I’ll do something worse to everyone here… You’re all sure that there’s nothing else?”
Their faces have long gone past the point of being pale and turned completely colorless.
The boy before them had done all that, and yet his face and voice was completely void of emotion.
He showed a wicked smile at the start, but it gradually vanished as he hurt the man.
He neither laughed madly nor burned with righteous indignation, and neither did he look down on them with scorn or enjoy the violence.
He wasn’t even bored that they they were so weak.
All that was there was pure rationality – that doing this would be the fastest way to get what he needed from them.
That was not the face of a human hurting another person, but a machine repeating the same job.
He was telling them that unless they told him what he wanted to hear, this hell would never end; that if they lied to him, they would suffer the same fate in the future.
They understood that instinctively, and they immediately yielded.
“I-It’s true! That’s all we were planning! We’re sorry, we’re really sorry!”
“There’s no other plan! We just wanted to do something flashy! We’ll hand ourselves over obediently! We’ll atone for our crimes, so please stop already…”
“W-We just got over our heads! We actually just wanted to say something along those lines and cause a commotion! We’re sorry, we’re really sorry! We won’t do it again, we won’t even think about it!”
There was a fate scarier than death waiting for them if they didn’t confess.
So with trembling bodies and tears and snot from fear, they prostrated themselves and pleaded amnesty.
“How many bombs are there and where did you plant them?”
“H-Here. E-Everything is in that terminal. B-But w-we have friends elsewhere too, so we don’t know w-what they’re doing.”
“How many are they, and do you have any other allies other than them?”
“E-Everyone’s in the park, and t-they’re all registered in the terminal! W-We prepared that terminal precisely for this, so there’s no one else in the contacts other than our associates. Should I call them? I’ll cooperate as much as you want!”
The way the man so easily sold his partners to save his life made Shinichi frown, but he was the person responsible for driving this man to a corner, and either way, he couldn’t trust him.
He wouldn’t have forgiven them even if they held on to their beliefs, but the more ludicrous their motives were, the angrier he became, so he couldn’t help but feel the urge to cut off their limbs.
“Enough, go to sleep.”
However, it was a waste of time and effort to do something like that just for his own satisfaction.
With a snap of his finger, the men fell asleep.
Chantless casting was indeed possible, but it depended on the nature and scope of the spell.
Something on the level of knocking out a couple of weak men could be done as easily as breathing.
But of course, that was only because it was Shinichi.
“Youko, patch them up just enough not to leave traces, but make sure they don’t think of this as just a dream.”
“Yes, I’ll clean this place up too. It wouldn’t do for there to be traces of blood at a place like this, after all.”
“Please.”
After giving instructions, Shinichi went through the men’s belongings to see if there were any other items of interest aside from that terminal before approaching the thief.
“Eek!”
Shinichi crouched down to take a peek at that face sitting on the ground.
Those men may have been criminals, but as a citizen of Japan, the sight of those men being tor***ed in front of him, and so calmly too by a boy was too abnormal a sight for his brain to keep up.
In that regard, a bomb was still within the scope of his common sense.
That’s why when that something that exceeded his common sense approached him, he couldn’t help but let out a pathetic scream.
Considering the disastrous scene around him and his mental state, just him not fainting was plenty commendable.
But of course, him losing consciousness would have been much easier for him.
“It’s because things like this happen that we have to do bad things, don’t you think?”
“H-Huh— Y-Y-Y-Y-Yes!”
The young man responded almost reflexively with a high-pitched voice.
He appeared tough, like those delinquents from a long time ago, but his frightened, tear-stained, snot-stained face looked so weak, as though he was nothing more than a little boy.
But of course, to Shinichi, he was always just a little boy.
“Stop being so scared. As long as you don’t do bad things and live an honest life, we won’t have to meet. That’s not easy, I’m sure, but that’s much better than living in fear that I might find you, right? However society looks at you, whatever punishment you receive, regardless what inconvenience you have to go through, nothing compares to that, right? …Or would you rather end up like them?”
Shinichi pointed to the men that have yet to be healed, then he smiled, and the young man shook his head repeatedly.
He shook his head with such force it seemed as though it would fly off.
Shinichi didn’t really care whether he chose to live honestly or not with just that, but at the very least, it should be enough to keep the young man from committing crimes for awhile.
Perhaps It won’t be for long, but at least during that time, no one would become this young man’s victim.
“In that case, you go sleep too.”
Shinichi snapped his fingers again, and the young man’s consciousness left him.
Tl Note: There’s a 2 in the title (it`s there in the raws too) probably because the same title was used before in 02-04 here:
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