"Miss Tsukishiro! You're finally back! Thank goodness! My job is saved!"
The staffer who watched Yanagi Tsukishiro log out of the system practically lit up with relief.
Whether his job was actually saved, however, remained an open question.
Because the first thing Yanagi did after coming to was not answer him. She drew the weapon at her waist and, with one clean flash, cut herself.
"M-Miss Tsukishiro!! What are you doing?!"
Watching her cut herself with the blade, the HIA staffer felt his skull about to burst. She'd only just made it out, and now she'd gone insane!
Yanagi's face stayed as unruffled as ever. Privately, though, she let out a quiet breath.
'Good. If I can feel pain, then this really is the real world.'
To confirm she had truly left the system, she had run a pain test on herself.
Only once she was certain did she turn to the man beside her.
"Calm down first. What exactly is the situation?"
Hearing that she was finally acknowledging him, the still-flustered staffer explained how the equipment had failed and how they had lost control of it.
"For the moment we have no way to retake control of the system. All we can do is keep trying..."
His voice thinned with guilt the longer he spoke. It was their own equipment, and after one hacker attack they had no means of fighting back. An utter disgrace.
But the pressing matter was finding a way to pull Hoshimi Miyabi and the rest of them out.
"So what you're telling me is, HIA currently has no way to solve the system's problem. Correct?"
"Uh. That's correct."
Yanagi was only stating the truth, but hearing it laid out that bluntly was hard to sit through.
"Understood. In that case, I'll find another way."
"...? Miss Tsukishiro, you can handle this sort of thing too? Is every member of Section Six as incredible as you?"
Ignoring the staffer's astonishment, Yanagi simply dialed a number instead. The call went out to a video rental shop on Sixth Street.
"I see. I never imagined the problem was that serious."
Geno frowned slightly once he'd heard the whole chain of events. He'd never have guessed Anti-Air Section Six would trip over something like this.
"So that's why you thought of asking me for help, Miss Tsukishiro. But, is it really all right to leave this to me?"
Belle caught on as well, though the moment it sank in, a thread of worry came with it.
After all, HIA stood for the Hollow Investigation Association. The Proxies might have come from the same tradition, but one was a licensed organization and the other a private operation walking the gray zone.
This was practically showing up at their front door to rub it in their faces, so Belle's concern was hardly baseless.
"I'm sorry, Manager. Time is short, and of everyone I know, you two are the only ones who could possibly help me."
Yanagi's tone was completely sincere. With HIA powerless, the only ones she could lean on were the Proxy siblings who worked miracles inside the Hollows.
"I understand. I'll do what I can."
With that, Belle stepped forward, took over the HIA staffer's seat, and started looking over the system. As her fingers ran across the keyboard, though, she murmured on the sly into the small receiver tucked at her collar.
"Fairy, can you handle it?"
There was no way Belle could manage this alone. HIA's entire maintenance team was stuck, so what could one small Proxy do?
This wasn't a Hollow expedition. Her field wasn't that far off, but it still wasn't the right fit.
[Master, the other party is attempting to seize full control of the VR system while simultaneously maintaining a firewall. I can carry out an intrusion, but under present conditions the time required will likely be unacceptable.]
"How long?"
[One hour at minimum, Master.]
Belle's scalp prickled.
An hour. For an ordinary person that would be blindingly fast, but for this situation it was nowhere near enough.
And that was only the time Fairy needed to crack the firewall. Wresting control away from the other side would take a stretch longer still.
By the time Fairy finished breaking in, Hoshimi Miyabi and the others would have gone stone cold.
[Correction: brain death is not classified as a confirmed death. Bodily functions remain in operation. Which is to say, Master could still take advantage while they're warm...]
"Fairy, this is not the time for a science lecture! Is there really no other option?"
Belle rolled her eyes. Making jokes at a moment like this.
[There is, Master, there is. And one such method happens to be right here on site.]
Then Fairy pointed her toward the perfect answer.
"Can that actually work? Forget it, there's nothing else to try anyway."
After listening to Fairy's whispering, Belle still had her doubts, but she chose to trust Fairy all the same.
Geno and the others were puzzled by the way Belle had gone still on the spot. Soon enough, though, he saw her walk over to him wearing an odd look.
"Geno, lend me your Bangboo."
"My Bangboo? You mean Little Geno?"
"Un-na? What's this got to do with me, un-na?"
The moment the words left Belle's mouth, everyone's expressions turned strange, and every gaze swung toward Little Geno.
You're saying a job a whole crowd of professionals plus you, a legendary Proxy, can't pull off, this tiny little Bangboo can?
Geno blanked for a beat, then caught on.
His Little Geno really could do it. More precisely, the Ghost access privileges Little Geno controlled could do it.
And Fairy knew about that, so she was almost certainly the one who'd told Belle.
"She's right. Little Geno, I'm leaving this to you."
"What do you mean, leaving it to me! I haven't agreed yet, un-na!"
Prickly as ever in speech, but its body walked obediently over to the equipment console, where it tugged a cable out of itself and hooked into HIA's hardware.
Fresh off the assembly line as it was, it hadn't been connected to any network yet.
The HIA staff who saw this wanted to stop it. Handing the job to a Bangboo, was that supposed to be a joke?
Yanagi held them back. She trusted Belle, and she trusted Geno and Twiggy. They would never fool around at a time like this.
"Done, un-na. I'm inside their firewall already. Fighting them for control privileges will take a while longer, though, un-na."
Little Geno moved fast. In under a minute it had slipped into the enemy's system. That was the advantage of having exactly the right specialty.
Everyone brightened at that, but Little Geno wasn't finished. It turned its head toward Belle at its side and said:
____
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