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  3. Ch93: The Curious Trio
Valkyria Squadron

Ch93: The Curious Trio

The Curious Trio

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  Xian POV
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Today when Adelis finished her work at the office she received a call from home, it seems that somehow Elise got lost. When she heard the news she asked me to leave her at her house as fast as I could, so I used my car and we went straight there. During the way she mentioned that it was impossible for her to leave home because she had no reason to do so, and although at the beginning our relationship was not very friendly, I can attest that this girl had changed a lot since she started living with Adelis. Gone were the days when she seemed like a weapon without feelings and now she behaved almost like any other person, exactly on those rare occasions when there are problems, but even there she behaves much more differently than when she was in the army. She arrived in front of the house and parked the car so that she could get out, she said goodbye and entered her home, from which people could be heard arguing, probably about the recent event. My work for today was finished here, so I started my car again and moved on. 

Turn into the next block and park in a parking lot, I got out of the car and I started off, my personal work was beginning. My concern is not Elise, I have already seen her fighting and I know that her safety is not a concern. My concern is the other girl, Lisa, because although I had never seen a beast like that personally, I did know them. That girl was not a human or an experiment like Elise, that girl was a demon, a monster that deceives and tortures humans. I have no idea how Adelis managed to contact her, but I am sure she does not know the risks of dealing with a powerful and unknown entity such as a demon. That demon is probably deceiving my boss and is making her believe that she might be an experience of the empire and that she deserted, but I am sure that that demon is just waiting for Adelis to lower her guard to act, now that Elise is gone at the moment is actually the perfect time for it.

I moved as fast as I could through the block to avoid going through the front of the house and I went to the park that was nearby because from it you could see the house perfectly, a good place to monitor Lisa's movements in the house. As soon as I arrive I take out of my backpack some food that I had bought before and sit down to watch the house to gather information. I started looking for a bench with a good view from which to carry out my plan, but then I noticed something peculiar. I was not the only one with the same idea, on a park bench was a young girl, maybe she was the same age. Along with her were several packages of snacks that indicated she had time here. I was watching her towards the very house that I wanted to monitor, and worst of all, she had a professional camera trying to pretend that she was taking pictures of the landscape, but they were actually Adelis's house.

She was a safety hazard, he had to stop her. By the time I realized it I was already walking towards her with the small knife in my hand. Old habits are difficult to kill, I had to stop for a moment and put the knife back, I could not kill anyone just because something could happen, I will never get to marry a reliable man if they think that I am just an assassin who kills for the slightest problem. I cannot agree with my mother or grandmother, I cannot let them be correct about me. I must show them that I can find someone by myself! 

"I can't believe I've been here two days and that brat hasn't come to play in the park yet"
"She doesn't answer my messages or calls either"
"Damn it, how do you think you'll give me information to take out these foreigners if we don't see each other to talk!"
"Could it be that her parents punished her for some reason?"
"Could it be that they noticed how many of the tickets I sent him and they thought I was a stalker !?"
"How offensive of you, I'm just doing my job!"
"I am trying to save this country!"
"Let me interrogate this little girl!" the girl on the bench starts to mutter to herself.

Hell, I think she's the journalist Adelis mentioned the other day, she's a foreigner hater. I can't let her know that I come from China, as we are basically rivals. Quick, think of a name, something very national here, something very used, how about Inari? Not that I think that's too much. How about Kioko? I think that will be fine, it will be easy to forget maybe, I go with that.

"Excuse me, are you from the area?"
"Lately my son has mentioned suspicious people in the neighborhood so the neighbors are investigating the people who come to the park"

"!!!"
"Damn it"
"Another neighbor again, is being a nosy person a sport around here?"

"Excuse me!?"

"My name is Nozomi Yasuda"
"I work as an investigative journalist"
"I am currently working on an important case so I need to be here"
"Here is my card in case you doubt my identity"
"In fact, if you allow me since you seem to live around here, could I ask you a couple of questions?"

Relax Xian, calm down, don't hit her, you can make her withdraw peacefully, remember that Adelis does it all the time, just try to be like her.

"So you are the journalist that children mention so much!"
"Now that I remember a neighbor friend of my son she mentioned something like that."
"To tell the truth, all that seemed to be quite strange that someone who claims to be a journalist comes to interrogate children in a neighborhood as quiet as this"
"Once my mother mentioned that a gang of thieves used this method to obtain information about the houses they would later rob "
"You won't mind if I call the police first to double-check your information."
"After that, I can answer your questions"
"My name is Kioko, I live in that house over there, in case you want to investigate me "Miss journalist" " I hid my lie in plain sight knowing that she wouldn't bother to thoroughly investigate everyone who lives around here. 

"What!?"
"I can't do this, if I go to the police station now I won't be in time to work in the cinema!"
"Wouldn't you rather call that phone number and talk to my company?"

"Cinema?"
"Don't you work as a journalist, why do you work in a cinema too?"
"Are you not earning enough or are you not a real journalist?"
"Are you afraid?"
"I'm just trying to take my children's safety seriously"

"Okay, you win, hire me for today"
"But just because right now I don't have time to be wasting"
"Next time I'll show you that I'm telling the truth Mrs. Kioko"
"And by the way, if you see the girl in white tell her to remember her promise"
"She has no loss, there is no way to confuse who she is." Said the journalist gathering her things and fleeing the place quickly.

I do not doubt that she is a journalist, but her way of acting continues to be a  suspicious story for anyone. Once she left I began to observe the house, but it only took a couple of minutes to see how strange that home is. Suddenly the front door was opened wide, the same demon of my worries was the one who was leaving the house, in her hands, she had a suitcase that she was hugging with concern, and began to speak out loud.
 
"All of this is soo stupid!"
"I'm going to go find Cesar myself again"
"I have supplies to be out for a week"
"I can go quite far in that time, I know where there is another angel, if I kill him and use his computer I will be able to know where he is now."
"This time I will destroy them by getting in the way again!"  She said.
 
As soon as she finished speaking, Tamamo, the other girl who is always with Elise, and Maria the daughter of Adelis came out to stop her. Between them, they tried to prevent the demon from continuing with her journey. At one point, Maria threw the briefcase and it fell to the ground, revealing its contents to others. It was quite daring to think of all those things as supplies, only a disturbed stalker could think that those things were important in any way. 
 
"Those are my brother's panties ?"
"Why the hell do you have them?"
 
"That is the pillow of our bed!"
"And that's the bed cover and the blanket?"
"That's the glass that he always uses for sodas"
"But these black underwear are not his?"
"Whose is this?"
 
"Those aren't from Cesar !?" the blue girl started shaking with fear? 
 
"!!!"
"Tamamo drop that right now if you want to live !!"  Warned maria.
 
"AAAAAAAAAAAAA" A scream of terror was heard inside the house .
 
"Everybody take cover!"
 
I saw my boss walk out slowly but threateningly towards the entrance of her house, on her face you could see the face of a real monster of fury. Only the word revenge was written on her face and perhaps painful death. She picked up a single of her sandals from the ground, and as if a shotgun had been pumped she prepared it. The three girls started running in different directions immediately. The mother threw her sandal almost instantly and hit her daughter on the head causing her to fall to the ground But the blow was such that the sandal bounced and flew backward, falling back into its wearer's hand.  The reaper's next victim was the fox-eared girl, who was running much farther than the first, but was of little use as death claimed her soul. In the pool of blood, you could read the attempt of the victim to write the name of his assassin. But the lady seeing that she still has some will in this world, making sure to finish it off again with her sandal. Again a blow so perfect that the weapon returned to its owner's hand like a boomerang.  Only the demon remained, she is witnessing that escaping on the ground would be impossible for her to use her wings to fly and she began to do stunts at high speed trying to avoid the anti-aircraft fire.  Adelis looked carefully, made the calculation, and launched her interceptor missile, the sandal turned so perpendicularly exactly that it hit the demon's face adjusting to where she would pass in advance. One wing caught on fire and like a downed plane fell spinning towards the ground, where it crashed. The gun fell just one step in front of the mother, making her only have to take one step to get back on her feet. Then the bodies were collected by pulling their feet into the house, one by one. When she finished, she gathered up everything else and closed the door slowly as if she were the villain in a horror movie. 
 
I spent several minutes trying to process what I had seen and discussing whether to call an ambulance or the police. But no matter what he chose, that demon is not something that ordinary humans can face, most do not even know that they exist. But that's what monster hunters are for, families who have taken it upon themselves to keep humans safe from dangerous things like demons. But if I call my mother again she will surely have another stupid prospective husband waiting for me. He sure is one of those muscular jerks who hunt tigers for breakfast and wears a loincloth.  And if he talks to my grandmother, the same thing will happen but in reverse, an idiot nobody financial accountant in an office 24/7,  who happens taking photos for social networks all the time, that just seeing a knife will make him pass out.  Is it so difficult to find a man like James Bond in the world?  no, stop, Xian now is not the time for that. First I have to find a way to save Adelis, I can't let a demon do what she wants with her. Adelis is the only person who can end the continental war because she is the only person of power who really wants to end the conflict once and for all. Since she lost her son it is the only thing that has mattered to her until recently, when she came here to raise Maria and Elise. All those stupid presidents and business owners are just looking for the suffering to continue to keep getting benefits, that's the only thing these last meetings at work seem like.  Adelis has been the only one who has given my life a reason and showed me that I can use my true work to benefit others and the world. I have to endure my family if I want to save her.
 
Okay, okay, as soon as I manage to take care of Lisa I will stop talking to my mother forever. I put my hand in my bag to take out my phone and make the call. But suddenly I heard a voice next to me.
 
"Sensei?"
"What are you doing here?"
 
I turned around worried, I barely had time to hold my hand before she did something silly. Next to me is Haru Yamamoto, the class delegate in which I was pretending to be her teacher. She was looking at me with quite intrusive eyes, it seemed that she was trying to understand what I was doing here.
 
"Haru?"
"What are you doing here?"
"That you don't live in Aoyama-itchome?"
 
"Well I just wanted to visit my friends"
"Grandpa even came to drop me here but he left as soon as he saw you for some reason"
 
"Did you come to visit Elise !?"
"Didn't you hate her?"
"You even talked to me for like two hours about why we shouldn't accept them in our class!"
 
"That's a thing for the past!"
"I already let it go and now we are friends"
"It turns out that it was only necessary for me to give her a chance, it turns out that she is a good person" She was looking aside trying to hide that she was clearly lying
 
Stop! Wait!. Elise is missing right now! I can't let Haru into that house right now! I must distract her and get her away from here!
 
"Well I think that will be difficult, because right now ..."
"..."
"They are finished preparing a couple of papers at school"
"It seems they had a little problem with immigration"
"A lost paper, nothing very important but it would be good to fix it, I will tell you before"
 
"What? for real?"
"!!!"
"That's bad we have to help them"
"They could be in trouble right now!"
 
"???"
"Why? it is only a paper to collect at the embassy and deliver at school"
"Nothing special"
 
"It's not that, the document is the least important "
"They're not really hum ..."
"..."
"Don't wait, I can't say why."
"But you have to, believe me, we have to help them before it's too late"
 
(Haru strongly suspects that Elise and Tamam are not fully human!)
(This is bad, very bad)
(I have to do something! Whatever is!)
 
"Ok don't worry, I have the car parked near here"
"We can both go try to help them!"
"How about!?"
"We can go to school and wait for them there"
 
But what the hell am I saying?
 
"Ok, let's go!"
"We have to save them!"
 
Did it work?
 
Despite what I said was a complete lie, I spent the rest of the day carrying Haru around pretending that we were tracking them where they might be. She was mad at me for not driving crazy like in the movies, but even though I have done it a couple of times, the truth is that I was just trying to buy time. In the end, I was only able to shake her off when I called Adelies and she agreed to talk to Haru in the cafeteria. But she was not satisfied with this, she was determined to see the girls. So after a while, Tamamo arrived trying to calm down who did not stop bothering and then demanded to see Elise. Tamamo left and after a couple of minutes Elise arrived, she pretended that she was short of time for some reason and then she left. But that Elise seemed very strange to me, she behaved very differently from before, too cheerful, worse enough to calm Haru and make her leave. I asked Adelis how they found her so quickly and where she was. But to my surprise, Adelis revealed that it was really just Tamamo in disguise, and when I saw her again I realized that she was right. How did I not notice that before? I'm good at remembering faces and spotting spies, but how do I overlook that disguise?  No, wait, but Elise is much smaller than Tamamo! How did she appear to be half tall?
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