Tsubaki let out a small sigh of relief when she finished reviewing the records with Terra. Initially, she had been concerned that the felyn elder, Vespa, would cause problems for the Keeper. However, looking back through, she saw the truth, that the person that Vespa repeatedly asked to eliminate Lena was none other than Lena herself.
After she learned that, and discovered Lena’s reasoning and true motivations, she felt more at ease. However, there was still something that bothered her, and that was the other two surviving shadows.
Each Shadow had their own motive for doing things, their own dreams. The White Shadow wished to be remembered and loved, and the Golden Shadow wished to be able to have her own identity. Meanwhile, the Black Shadow wished to explore the depths of the void, mastering it and bringing it under his control.
In her mind, however, the most worrisome of the shadows was the Red Shadow. He saw himself as a shadow disciple of the Crimson Goddess, Scarlet, wanting to dye the world red. By investigating him, even briefly, she discovered he had a literal death wish. When he died, he wanted to be killed by the goddess that he believed that he served.
Should I tell her about this..? Tsubaki thought for a moment, before shaking her head. With how often the Red Shadow prayed to Scarlet, Tsubaki was sure that she was fully aware of him, and simply choosing to ignore him for now. If he became a true problem, she would step in.
Once they were done reviewing the records to prove Lena’s trustworthiness, Tsubaki leaned back in the couch, thinking. “Was it the right move to ask Lena to undertake a long-term mission, after just giving her a name?” She asked, looking over at Terra, who smiled calmly.
“You might consider it long-term, but I’m not so sure that is the case.” She said, causing Tsubaki to raise an eyebrow. “Lena was delayed due to her recent call with Vespa, but… I believe she works far faster than you might otherwise anticipate.”
Tsubaki blinked at that. “She has to go undercover as a key figure in each organization, identify the objects to plant her divine power in, and then get out without being noticed. No matter how quickly she works, it would take her a full day to do a single organization.”
“More like six.” Terra asked, and Tsubaki nodded her head. Six days was indeed more reasonable to complete the task, even for an incredibly skilled spy. After all, many of her targets would be gods, or those that had achieved perfection. “No, you’re mistaken.” Terra spoke up, clearly having sensed Tsubaki’s thoughts from her face. “Six organizations a day, not six days.”
Tsubaki’s eyes briefly widened, looking at Terra incredulously. “That shouldn’t be possible. No matter how good she is, six organizations would be an unrealistic goal. Not to mention the actual infiltration work, she has to find each organization that she wants to target.”
“And that’s why it’s only six.” Terra chuckled, shaking her head. “Given her previous line of work, Lena is incredibly familiar with the criminal underworld, so there are many groups that she is already aware of. I imagine that she will be able to take care of all of these groups today. Starting from tomorrow, she will use her divine abilities to find those more secretive groups.”
“Given Lena’s eagerness to complete the mission at hand, she will go to a planet and expand her divine senses across it. Upon learning of a group, she will identify their leaders and use her artifact mask to understand their personality and habits. From there, she only needs a brief moment of interaction to plant her monitoring ability on those that she targets.”
Tsubaki paused, not entirely following along with Terra’s logic. “I understand that she has the Identity and Understanding domains, but identifying every potential criminal leader on a planet is a bit much, don’t you think? If it were that easy, there would be no crime left in the world.”
“That’s because you are only looking at those two domains.” Terra pointed out. “Although multiple domains do not necessarily increase a god’s power, they do increase the complexity. There is one divine ability that Lena possesses to immediately identify criminals, or rather, force them to identify themselves.”
Tsubaki quickly gestured for Terra to explain, so the felyn goddess smiled. “Using all nine of her domains, she makes a surface-level alteration to the system surrounding a planet, bypassing Ashley’s firewall. All she has to do is add a single class, Criminal, and define that class. Because the Stealth domain is involved in this nine-domain power, she can sneak it into the system and onto a person’s status without it being displayed. Those especially sensitive might sense a subtle shift of energy, but by the time they would have identified it, the process would be over.”
“Naturally, the Criminal class does not give any benefits, whether stats, skills, or energy. It is purely there as a marker to track how many crimes a person has committed in their past, and the severity of those crimes. Once she has used her divinity to add it to the world’s system, she can use another ability to identify groups of people with this class that regularly interact with one another. By using these two powers together, she can build a list of all criminal organizations occupying a single planet, and do so in under an hour. Furthermore, this Criminal class can be used to detect planned crimes, rather than simply those already carried out.”
Tsubaki pursed her lips as she listened to Terra’s explanation. “If she can do all of this… I could understand being able to finish monitoring multiple organizations in a day. However… why would she have asked for Lifre to join her? Surely, she can finish the work more quickly without needing to worry about anyone else.”
“Why don’t you see for yourself?” Terra grinned, snapping her fingers as the screen shifted. “It looks like she’s about to get started.”
“You sure it’s okay to get me involved in this?” Lifre asked, though she was practically vibrating in excitement as she stood on a rooftop with Lena. “I mean, I’m a mimic, but I’m not exactly known for being subtle.”
Lena simply grinned back at her, shaking her head. “That’s fine. I know that you can do it if you try. Besides, stuff like this is more fun if you do it together, right?”
Lifre’s eyes widened, and she quickly nodded her head. “Right! So, what do you need me to do? You’re the expert here.”
Lena pulled a golden mask out of her inventory, putting it on her face as her body began to change, growing into a mature, human woman with long, black hair and a curvaceous figure. “This is the person I’m going for today.” She said in a silky voice, placing a hand on her hip. “She might not be part of an anti-Keeper organization, but she has ties with multiple criminal groups, and works as a distributor for divine artifacts to those groups.”
“There are three items that this woman keeps on her at all times. One is the hairpin she keeps hidden in the back, here.” She turned around, lifting up her hair to show a hidden, silver hairpin. “This is a storage device that she keeps various materials in. Because of how thieves have adapted to the inventory system, she never puts the really important materials in the inventory, but keeps them like this.”
“The second is a pen, her signature divine artifact.” After letting her hair drop, Lena turned to face Lifre again, pulling a pen from the front pocket of her black jacket. “She uses this to create the initial designs for divine artifacts, and has invested a lot of resources into making it as effective as possible.”
“Finally…” Lena brushed a hand in front of her eyes, creating a pair of sleek, black glasses. “These glasses. They allow her to see through disguise spells, and display an individual’s name as it would be shown in their status window. These three items are essential to her business, so she always has them on her person.”
“Right… which one are you going to plant the bug on?” Lifre asked, Lena chuckling and covering her mouth with a hand.
“Obviously, all three. That’s where you come in. I’ll be counting on you to set the scene for me. I am the hero of this adventure, and completing it is my trial. Don’t try to directly influence the target, that’s why I haven’t told you her name, so you can’t write it into your narrative. Instead, influence the circumstances to get me alone in a room with her. Think you’re up for the challenge?”
Lifre paused, holding her chin as she considered what was being asked of her. She had written stories that influenced the real world before. After all, she was Terra’s apostle. However, this was the first time that she was being asked to do so without knowing the name of the person she was centering this narrative around. “You could totally do this without me, couldn’t you?”
“Oh, definitely.” Lena admitted readily. “But, it wouldn’t be as fun.” In fact, if she hadn’t been given approval to make use of Lifre, she had planned to disguise herself as the target’s secretary, walking into the office to deliver a mundane report. A little sleight of hand, and she would be able to take the pen, returning it after she had finished planting the divine ability.
“Got it.” Lifre let out a sigh. “Who are you going to be going in as, then?”
“Why, myself, of course.” Lena chuckled, returning to her normal appearance and removing the golden mask. “If I’m going to be doing all three objects at once, I can’t take the form of someone else. I wouldn’t be able to lift her hairpin off of her with where she has it hidden. Instead, I’m going to sneak in with my own abilities, and let you arrange the narrative so that I end up in a room alone with her. Have fun~!” After Lena said that, she jumped back, off the ledge of the building as her body seemed to blur out of sight.
“…At least give a girl time to prepare!” Lifre shouted, quickly generating a book with her divinity as she pulled out her own pen-shaped artifact.
Lena closed her eyes as she fell, feeling Lifre’s narrative guiding her. The wind shifted beneath her, and she flipped to quietly land on her feet, body still hidden with her Stealth domain. The target was in a building three blocks down from where they had been talking, so it was only a short walk. Still, plenty of time for Lifre to begin laying the groundwork for the infiltration.
As Lena approached the office building, she could hear the aggravated voices of three security officers standing outside the door, complaining to one another. “What’s with this, all of a sudden?” They asked, looking at the door itself.
“Maybe there’s a god in the area, sweeping the city with a domain?” Another asked, looking to another nearby building where more security officers were inspecting the doorway. These buildings had rather expensive divinity sensors, which triggered whenever a god passed through. Several businesses used this to alert them to the presence of a VIP, and also as a security precaution against certain domains.
Currently, the sensor was flashing erratically, as if in response to a stream of divine energy passing through. “Should we disable it for now, then?” The first guard asked in exasperation.
Unbeknownst to them, Lena was slipping between the three guards, all of which were focused on the sensors. Although the sensor still flashed at her passing, the guards didn’t notice, seeing it as just another part of the malfunction.
Inside the building, Lena could barely suppress a laugh that tried to emerge. She needs more practice, but her heart’s in the right place. Lena could see the security cameras in the lobby, all of which were sweeping from side to side. At the moment Lena entered the building, all of the cameras were coincidentally aimed away from the door, creating a blind spot that would have been there even if she wasn’t hidden with her divinity.
Lena simply smirked to herself, walking down the hall as a nearby elevator opened, two businessman exiting the elevator as they talked with one another. Taking that as a sign from Lifre’s narrative, Lena slipped into the elevator before it could close, simply closing her eyes and waiting. There was a camera in the elevator, but Lena could tell that it was offline.
After a few minutes, the elevator began to rise up. Lena could feel the narrative reaching its climax, so she jumped up, hiding herself in the upper corner of the elevator. It continued to climb, higher and higher, until arriving at the very top floor. When the elevator opened, a human woman with black hair and glasses stepped onto the elevator, pressing the button for it to descend back to the lobby.
Dear gods, having her help feels like I’m cheating… why can’t all my missions be this easy? Lena asked herself, stealthily weaving together the monitor ability. From her body, she altered the shape of her energy to create three tendrils, all of which hovered just out of the woman’s view. One was behind the nape of her neck, another beneath her chest, and the last off to the side of her head, still under the effects of her Stealth domain.
The moment the elevator jolted to a stop on the bottom floor, Lena’s tendrils pressed forward and back in an instant, lightly touching the three targets. For the glasses and pen, the plan went off without a hitch, though the woman did glance backwards at the feeling of her hair shifting slightly. “Hmm?” She looked around for a moment, before shaking her head and leaving as the elevator doors opened.
