Chapter 58: Illusion Smoke Villain – Haze Fog⑤

Jin left first, wearing a sour look on his face.

He casually jumped off a building—so tall I couldn’t even tell how many floors it had—which freaked me out a little.

Guess he really is built tough.

I didn’t think something like “he should’ve protected me till the end.” He probably just thought it was a change of roles.

Because right after, Mio appeared.

In his Flux form, he held my face with both hands.

"Ah, I’m so sorry, Inori! Did Haze Fog do anything… indecent to you!?"

"Don’t make it sound sketchy like that. It wasn’t like some dirty doujin, alright?"

Flustered, Mio checked that I was unharmed and let out a breath of relief.

He apologized several times, but I wasn’t all that bothered. If anything, I would’ve been totally fine with being kidnapped.

I would’ve liked to be taken, talk to Delta, and then have someone come rescue me.

With a sigh, Mio shared his thoughts on Haze Fog.

"He’s gotten way stronger than when I knew him in Public Safety. Back then, I could completely shut him down."

"Whoa, so strong~."

"Water and smoke actually go together better than you’d think. Not that it’s good for him, of course."

Like how hookah uses water?

Taking advantage of how smoke dissolves easily in water, maybe?

Mio told me before that once the purity of a liquid drops, it becomes harder to control. Hmm.

Abilities really do have compatibility. They must both know each other’s strengths and weaknesses well.

"So he’s an ex-colleague of yours, right? Did you ever team up with him?"

"Nope~. He was an e–li–te. I was pretending to be just another ordinary person back in Public Safety, you know?"

"Ah, right. So when you said you shut him down, that was after you became a villain?"

Before Mio could answer,

Bzzt! A sharp crackle, like static, filled the air, and Raiden suddenly appeared in front of me, grabbing both my shoulders.

"Were you hurt!?"

"Whoa, fake Raiden!?"

"Wait, what!? How are you deciding if I’m the real Raiden or not!? Hold on, there’s a fake me out there!? You mean there’s a villain version of me!? Nobody told me this!?"

"Ahh, calm down, calm down."

Since he was so close, I thought it might be Omokage’s doing.

The guy’s power really is something else.

So he’d been copying Raiden’s appearance right under Raiden’s nose?

Ratlord seemed to know about Omokage, but Raiden hadn’t heard a thing?

If I think about Omokage’s shapeshifting, it really is a power perfect for stealth.

Which makes Ratlord’s information-gathering skills in Public Safety downright insane.

Later in casual conversation, I learned Omokage’s copying ability isn’t all-powerful—it only works on people within his line of sight.

Kind of weird to reveal the core of your ability in small talk, but with Omokage, there’s no use pointing that out.

Copying the appearance of a hero who’s constantly running around without being noticed sounds damn near impossible anyway.

I’ll set the Omokage talk aside for now.

I placed my hand over Raiden’s, still resting on my shoulder.

"As you can see, I’m fine. I only talked with Haze Fog. Thanks for coming."

"That’s what you’re saying, but you were about to just waltz over to Delta, weren’t you?"

"Well yeah, it doesn’t make sense that all I’m getting from him is killing intent. If there’s even a chance we can work things out through dialogue, it’s worth risking my life. He’s already trying to kill me anyway."

"That’s not the point! Please, don’t do reckless things like that! I worry about you, you know!?"

"Don’t make it sound like I was charging into danger on my own, alright? He came to me. All I did was say, ‘Well then, I’ll hear him out.’ I wasn’t being that proactive. I even held myself back because I knew you’d be upset, Raiden."

"Urgh…!"

Raiden flinched.

I’ve lived my whole life off the strength of my silver tongue, kid.

If you want to win an argument, sharpen your chatter a bit more first—gyahaha!

"Thanks for protecting me this time. If you mess up next time, I won’t hold it against you, but if you’d regret it yourself, then do your best not to let that happen."

"…Alright. No point taking it out on you, Inori. The problem is that I just wasn’t strong enough."

…Did I mess up the flow of this conversation?

Guess there’s no such thing as a “correct” answer in human communication.

I admitted my own fault honestly.

"Ah, no, I was in the wrong too. Since it looked like I could actually talk to Haze Fog, I started chatting with him and broke your focus. He was buying time anyway, and I played right into it."

"No. If I’d handled it better, it wouldn’t have turned out like that."

…Is this really okay?

I do think Raiden’s the type who reflects on his mistakes and grows stronger, but I can’t help worrying every time.

Like, what if he’s beating himself up more than he should?

Still, the way he keeps getting back up—yeah, that’s what makes him a hero.

"Next time, I’ll protect you, Inori."

"Do your best~."

I tossed out some half-hearted encouragement. Raiden sighed, then with a sharp crack of electricity, vanished in an instant.

"Heroes really are so serious, huh. Mio, if you’re aiming to be a hero, maybe you’ll need to work on being that earnest too."

"After that whole conversation, that’s your takeaway?"

He gave me a look of pure exasperation.

Apparently something in what I said was the problem. But where?

Our sense of ethics should be pretty similar. Hm?

"…I mean, even if you don’t become a hero, I still like you."

"Haah…"

He let out a deep sigh. Guess that wasn’t it.

I’ve really been making people sigh nonstop today.

Mio picked me up—or rather floated me—and carried me out of the ruined building.

I looked around at its exterior, impressed it hadn’t completely collapsed.

Should I report it? I wondered, but then the wail of police sirens reached my ears.

Well, Ironclad had been stomping around making a racket—of course someone called it in for noise disturbance.

At this hour, it was the ultimate neighborhood nuisance.

Not wanting the hassle, Mio and I slipped away from the patrol cars and headed home.

Mio muttered under his breath.

"So he’s shifted from killing to kidnapping. Makes it troublesome—harder to protect someone from that."

Looks like even Mio doesn’t know what Delta’s after.

I thought maybe he might, but… guess that was rude of me.

Feels like there are a lot of things Mio hasn’t told me.

"I wonder what he’s after. He said he’d be back, so unless Haze Fog gets executed by Delta first, he’s probably coming again."

"Yeah. He strikes me as the kind who’d slip away before Delta could put him down. Which would be a pain in its own way."

Before I could ask what he meant by “a pain,” Mio laughed and said—

"Our house is already full."

"Don’t just assume I’m gonna be the one picking him up, damn it."

"I figured with you, Inori, nothing’s impossible."

"I can’t exactly be friends with every single villain, you know."

If I could, maybe world peace wouldn’t be that far off.

But I don’t have the kind of sparkly-fancy power to make “everybody gets along” come true.

All I’ve got is a little bit of regeneration and a silver tongue.

Hardly enough to be called a cheat.

Kidnapping, huh.

Honestly, I wouldn’t mind being taken at all—but there’d probably be a lot of people upset if that happened. What a mess.