When the twins told me about their discovery related to the Origin of Fate, I was honestly surprised. To be fair, I hadn’t even been fully aware of the limitations of their power. Whenever we needed them to use their abilities, they always seemed to have enough power to do so. From the looks of things, they just tried to use their Origin form as little as possible, so that they didn’t burn through their energy.
Given the cost of replicating the Origin’s power with Lena’s ability, it is safe to say that we won’t have any form of replacement for her any time soon. Not that we should really need on, especially once she was able to access more of her power.
With that said, there was still a fair bit to go before true Origins began to appear. There was still so much that we just didn’t know about them, as proven by this new discovery.
Naturally, I gave my blessing for the two of them to continue with the Avenger weapon production. The way I saw it, as long as the weapons weren’t mishandled, the benefits severely outweighed the risks. Granted, I could see some rather obvious flaws with how the weapon was set up.
For instance, if someone escaped the area just before a disaster, and the Avenger was used on the area to eliminate the creature that had caused that disaster. In that case, the escaped survivors would be caught up in the effect, even if they had made it to safety.
Because of this, the weapons were truly only for the most dire of threats, where just a few lives couldn’t possibly compare to the billions that would be killed by letting a monster roam free.
That said, the very fact that they can do this makes me believe that there is a more effective way to kill such creatures. However, doing so would require the Origin to actively use her power, which obviously isn’t something that she can do regularly. Otherwise, she could just go to the scene of the disaster, and personally release a more controlled version of the Avenger.
Regardless, that was all something to think about when she was able to play a more active role in the world.
Lena laid on her bed, idly kicking her legs in the air above her as she scrolled through the different conversations that she had recorded with her divine power. Currently, it was the turn of the former ‘White Shadow’ Lena to go and play with Lifre, so she was keeping herself entertained by seeing if there was anything important to be found in this information.
Because of how the technique she used worked, there was a limit to this form of intelligence gathering. She could attach keywords to filter the information, but otherwise she had to choose between scrolling through manually, or downloading several hundred sets of recorded dialogue every day directly into her mind.
Even Lena did not feel comfortable doing that on such a large scale. If it were one or two organizations that she had infiltrated, it would be fine. Four or five, she’d start to find annoying to keep track of all of the information flooding into her head, but she could deal with it. But, when it reached more than a hundred criminal organizations?
Yeah, it was filters and manual scrolling for her. Unfortunately, filters were notoriously ineffective when working with monitoring powers like this, precisely because they were so well established. It was a common belief that the Greater Pantheon had filters in place to look for anyone referencing certain terms like the Keeper, so criminals did their best to bypass that by speaking in a barely concealed code.
As for cracking the code and setting those filters? Every organization had their own, unique way of handling it. Without a unified code, she could only hope for one of them to slip up.
Ultimately, this led to her having to spend quite a bit of time scrolling through conversations to look for any interesting topics. Not Cecilia’s bean casserole recipe that she learned from her mother, or Elizabeth’s steamy encounters with her partner. No, she needed actual, actionable content.
Sometimes, she would split her consciousness, uses dozens of avatars at once just to give her more eyes to skim through the recordings. For the moment, she wasn’t quite that bored, but she was getting there.
As she thought about the possibility of creating avatars, Lena’s brow perked, and she sat up, staring at a line of text on the screen before her. “Okay, yeah, red flag detected.”
She took a deep breath, pulling her head back. “Seniooooor! I found an idiot!”
Lena had left her door open, allowing her voice to travel throughout the halls. Now… she could have easily just asked Hermes to send a message for her. However, she knew that there were three different avatars of Tsubaki cleaning her palace at any given time.
Sure enough, roughly a minute later, Tsubaki knocked on the frame of her doorway, stepping inside. “I was told that you wanted to see me?”
Lena grinned, rolling over to sit up on her bed. “Yeah! Well, I wish that the situation in which I was required to call you didn’t occur, but yeah! I found a real moron that could very easily become a problem.”
Tsubaki arched her brow when she heard that, gesturing for Lena to continue. “So, there’s this crime family on Earth, the Scarlets. They tend to fly under the radar, never openly performing a violent crime. However, they are weapon smugglers, and have contacts in several labs.”
“I just caught wind that they’re wanting to acquire an Avenger, and plan to have one of the weapons go missing before it can be sent over to another organization. Typically, I’d just put a pin in that conversation, and alert the authorities. I mean, the Avenger is a totally scary weapon, but the theft is still a mundane enough crime.”
“What made you change your mind?” Tsubaki asked, her eyes narrowing.
“The group that they’re planning to sell the Avenger to is on one of my watchlists. As in, potentially anti-Keeper watchlist. I figured… if a group like that got ahold of the Avenger, they wouldn’t need to target the boss. All they would need to do is target anywhere that he has ever been, and they can get the job done.”
Tsubaki’s eyes widened when she heard this, before her pupils shrank and her eyes narrowed dangerously. “Did they happen to give any details, such as when the transfer would be taking place, or when the weapon would be stolen?”
Lena nodded her head. “Well, the transfer won’t be scheduled until after the weapon has been secured. However, they’re planning to talk to their guy on the inside about sneaking one of the weapons out for them later this week. From the conversation that they had, they’re planning to sneak it out, scan it to remove the patent tag, and then sell the Digital Conversion file. As long as they do that and sneak the weapon back into the warehouse in time, nobody would know that it had been stolen.”
Tsubaki paused, curious about that. “Removing the tag? Is that something that is easy to do?”
“Not really, but you can do it with the right skillset.” Lifre nodded her head. “Smugglers use a special DC Hack in order to remove any and all tags from an item, making it so that they can either produce their own weapons based on the schematic file, or they can sell the file itself if the price is right.”
Tsubaki gave a grave nod of her head. “This can certainly not be allowed to stand.” Tsubaki realized that she was starting to understand better how the Keeper processed time, as it didn’t feel that long ago when the file patent add-on had been implemented. However, this happened decades ago, giving more than enough time for people to identify a measure around it.
“Do you want to go for the Scarlets, or the flagged organization that they planned to sell to?” Lena asked, Tsubaki considering the question.
“Personally, I would prefer to remove both parties from the equation. If only one is taken down, the other could find alternative methods to achieve their goals. However, it is fine to let the regular police handle the Scarlets. Although they were involved in this, they were only a middle-man, given what you have described.”
“The other organization, however, is showing a clear and hostile intention. One that is likely to be directed at none other than my Keeper. Moreover, they are showing a willingness to act by gathering weapons of mass destruction.”
“Because of that, I will personally pay that group a visit, while you alert the police about the actions of the Scarlet family, under the name of Olympus.” If Lena were to tip them off as herself, there was a chance that nobody would believe her. However, if she was acting as the Keeper’s voice, that was another matter.
At that point, their guilt or innocence would be inconsequential. The direct subordinates of the Keeper labeled someone as guilty, and that would be all that they needed to know.
Lena nodded her head, already pulling out her terminal. “The other organization doesn’t usually meet in person. Typically, they operate using the private messaging system, using online forums as a way to keep and share notes.”
“When they do need to meet, they only ever meet two at a time out of paranoia. Takes longer for the information to spread through the group, but it also means that they can’t be ambushed all at once. I infiltrated them once, back in the day, and got the addresses for their roster at the time. New people may have been added, and some may have left, but I’ll text you the list that I have, to see who all is still living in the same place.”
Tsubaki nodded her head, grateful when she heard that. “It seems like a lot of people are trying unusual situations to try to get out of being cornered.”
“Oh, you don’t know the half of it.” Lena rolled her eyes with a scoff, her fingers rapidly typing on the terminal. “There’s this one group that I found. They’re so scared of being caught by a filter, that they use exclusively animal pet names for important topics. They like to call the boss Pochi, and you’re Kon to them.”
Tsubaki’s eye twitched when she heard those nicknames. It could be worse. She assured herself, though she personally couldn’t figure out how it could be worse at the moment. She received a ping, and pulled her terminal out of her inventory to review the information that Lena had given her.
As she had expected, she did not recognize the names of anyone on the list. “I’m going to go… introduce myself to them.”
Lena chuckled, grinning towards Tsubaki as her senior ninja turned to leave. “As the Keeper’s voice, his blade, or the Apostle of Death?”
Tsubaki glanced back towards Lena, an eerily calm smile on her face. Lena couldn’t help but feel a shiver run down her spine as Tsubaki spoke. “Those three titles are not mutually exclusive.”
“Yeah… they definitely deserve to be called idiots.” Lena let out a long sigh as she said that. “Just make sure to check the accuracy of the addresses! The information was from six months back, so there’s the chance that someone might have moved. Don’t want to implicate an innocent family or anything.”
Tsubaki paused when she heard that, but nodded her head in agreement.
