Isaac listened closely as he and Bell approached the Naval Police building, but he heard nothing out of the ordinary. No more muffled screens drifted in from their surroundings, if any did in the first place. Up ahead, the Naval Police admin building sat two stories high, a squat little thing surrounded by dozens of sheds and storehouses. A couple of streetlights illuminated parts of this area in the base, but darkness covered most of it. Isaac detected no movement as they approached - this late at night, nobody outside of roaming patrols would be anywhere near the buildings. But, oddly enough, no patrols could be seen, no hands lit by red sparks serving as human flashlights in sight.

As the two cadets passed by a shed, Bell motioned for them to stop. He approached its door and Isaac followed, a frown appearing on his face as he discovered what drew Bell’s attention - the door was slightly ajar. The lock had been seared in two by cultivation and lay in a metal heap in the grass at their feet. Bell lit a finger and activated a charm, which disintegrated into water and then froze into ice upon touching his shadow below. The thin patch of ice snaked its way inside the building and he found what he was looking for a moment later.

A light touch from Bell gently opened the door, his finger lighting the interior. Isaac followed him inside, but outside of the corpses, there wasn’t much to look at. Just crates and boxes. But the corpses were probably more important - there were three of them, all dressed in the uniform for officers of the Naval Police. Their faces were twisted in shock, most likely after an ambush by unknown assailants creeping out of the shadows.

“We didn’t hear a thing,” Bell observed. “I know our own practice fight did make some noise, but for three officers to be murdered and shoved in here without raising the alarm is concerning.”

“I guess that’s why we haven’t seen any patrols.” Isaac stepped out of the building, his fist tightening into a ball, as he gazed up at the building where the muffled scream originated. Bell followed him there, the two moving silently towards the building, expecting to be ambushed at any moment, but nothing interrupted their approach. Examining the door revealed a similar story - the lock had been destroyed with cultivation.

“Somebody’s targeting the Naval Police?” Bell questioned. “Stockham wouldn’t authorize a move like this.”

Isaac nodded in agreement. “The whole thing smells fishy.”

Only one way to find the truth. Bell approached the door and activated another ice charm. Once he was ready, Isaac gently opened the door and the ice immediately snaked inside. Bell kept his eyes closed in concentration until he opened them with a frown.

“Another body,” he observed. Isaac, his fist clenched and forming a small orb of red light, slowly opened the door and stepped inside the building lobby. A small staircase at the back led up to the second floor, while a secretary’s office to his right was the first in a row of several of such rooms. Bell emerged inside behind Isaac and shut the door, his own finger lit up to illuminate his surroundings.

The administrative offices retreated from Isaac’s attention as he gazed at the stars. Right where they connected to the second floor, somebody had tied a rope to the railing, and somebody had tied a man to that rope. This manner of death turned the man's face into a grape-colored purple, choked to the death by the men who hanged him. Feet inches from the floor, the body slightly swayed back and forth, as if he had only been hanged a moment ago. Perhaps he had. This man, too, wore the clothes of a Naval Police officer, though the insignia on his collar gave away his lower rank.

“Must’ve been the building’s night watchman,” Bell whispered. On one of the walls, somebody had spray painted in bright silver JUSTICE FOR ATALANTA and DEATH TO THOSE WHO PROTECT THE KNIGHTS.

“The Knights of Greater Arcadia,” Bell realized. “It’s an open secret that many Naval Police officers are part of the movement.”

“Ultranationalists.” Isaac frowned at both the word and the swaying body. “So somebody who opposes the Knights is taking justice into their own hands. By murdering officers. But we’re not even sure if these officers are members of the Knights-”

Isaac sensed the finger on the trigger and dove out of the way right as the shot appeared from the darkness. It would’ve gone right through his head had he not sensed it in time; the bullet smacked into the wall instead. Bell immediately converted all his ice and sent a spike in the direction of the gunman. The assailant burst from the shadows below the stairwell, diving out of the way of the spike. He held a silenced pistol in his hands, which would reduce his range, but he was close enough to the Naval cadets that it wouldn’t matter. He wore a black cloak to better hide himself, but now that he had been exposed, he couldn’t melt away back into the shadows. He would need to fight.

Three Rddhi activations went off at the same time, making the lobby briefly appear as if three suns rose simultaneously in the sky. The assassin made a wild sprint for Bell, getting past his ice spike and threatening to plunge a knife right into his stomach. The man moved faster than Isaac could sprint, so he sent an electric blast in his direction. The attack forced the man to break away; in the chaos of the subsequent light show as the blast hit the ground, the man changed direction and swung the pistol towards Isaac. He had him dead in his sights, but Bell stepped forward and delivered a crushing shoulder-check. The bullet narrowly rocketed past Isaac instead of through his forehead.

The man rolled away, shooting his gun as he stood back up. Right after shoulder checking him, Bell uncorked his canteen and allowed it to spill - this emergency reserve of water turned into ice and froze in front of him, blocking the bullets entirely.

“An agility Art for movement,” Bell observed. “And an aiming Art. This man has the Arts of a Cultivator Marine.”

Isaac sent another blast, but the man jumped backwards and retreated up the stairs, dodging another Fist of Anji as he disappeared out of sight on the second floor.

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“But I don’t have those Arts,” Isaac said as he cautiously approached the bottom stair, the hair on the back of his neck standing up from being this close to the hanged body.

“You’re on the officer track,” Bell reminded him. “You can pursue your own training, like how it used to be. But those in the grunt track, they learn just the few Arts the Navy assigns them - the same Arts this man knows - and usually end up fighting like normal foot soldiers anyway.”

“So you’re saying this man might be a foot soldier for the Navy?”

Bell gazed up at the dark stairs. “He very well might be.”

Isaac went to turn on the lights, but flipping the switch on the wall did nothing. “He must’ve cut the power,” he muttered, then joined Bell in ascending the staircase. It was normal sized, nothing out of the ordinary, but between the darkness and a gunman on the loose, Isaac had never faced a taller one. Fortunately, the stairs were made of concrete, so nothing squeaked as the two climbed up to the top. While one side of the stairs hugged the wall, the other would be exposed to the rest of the second floor. Right before they reached the top landing, Bell sent a sheet of ice to cover their exposed flank. They would need it; right as Isaac’s head poked above the staircase, a bullet struck the ice directly in front of him. Lightning flared as Bell turned the sheet into a series of spikes and fired them like a ship shooting its broadside; the man cried out and swore in a different language and no more bullets came.

Upon reaching the top, they found themselves in a thin hallway with rooms on either side. Isaac sent an electric blast thundering down the hallway, which would’ve hit the man had he remained there. Instead, the blast struck the other end of hall, but it also had a second purpose - illuminating the entire way for a brief moment, long enough for Isaac to find a blood trail. With his lit finger, Isaac led the duo to a closed door. The blood trail ended in front of it and presumably would lead to the other side.

Presumably. Isaac immediately turned on his heels and fired a blast at the door on the opposite wall. He earned more swears as the blast broke the door into wooden splinters and caught the man waiting behind it square in the chest.

“Bastard used his blood to make a false trail,” Isaac told Bell as they approached the open doorway left behind by the Fists of Anji. Bell’s ice went in first, hoping the wounded man would strike it and reveal his position as it entered, but the man waited patiently.

If only I could widen my electric charge, Isaac ruefully supposed. I need to learn an area-of-denial attack. I need a lot of things. I wouldn’t actually mind taking that cold shower now, come to think of it.

He snapped back to attention as he slipped through the doorway. He checked one corner of the room while Bell checked the other; the man seemingly had up and disappeared. But Isaac’s mind moved fast. There was a set of crates hastily stacked next to the door, giving a path for a man to climb up-

The man had been lying in wait, spread eagled in the corner of the ceiling above the door to keep himself in the air. He had Isaac right in his gun sights and wasted no time in pulling the trigger. But Bell didn’t waste any time either. Isaac had to admit, Bell’s mind probably worked a bit faster than his. His squadmate was already pushing Isaac out of the way right as the bullet arrived. It caught Bell in the shoulder and spun him around, blood trailing as he stumbled away. Before the man could fire a second bullet, Isaac emptied the energy inside his bracer into his arm and fired a blast, and this blast had some anger in it, because nobody hurts a member of Squad Reed.

The blast caught the man square in the chest once again and hurtled him straight through the ceiling. Through the roof, actually - there was now a man-shaped hole letting in the starlight from above. The gunman landed with a thud somewhere out of sight on the roof. Isaac was torn - he needed to both subdue the man and check in on Bell - but his comrade was already back on his feet.

“I can’t climb with this shoulder,” he admitted with a strained look on his face. “Get up there quick, before he can recover.”

Isaac quietly mumbled, “Thanks for saving me, Bell.” But he was on the move before he could hear Bell’s answer. Isaac followed the stack of crates and leapt onto the edge of the hole, grabbing shards of metal tile with his hands. He then hoisted himself up, back into the shrill air of the night. While the silenced gunfire didn’t draw any attention, another patrol must’ve noticed the Rddhi activations and subsequent usage, since the base’s alarm started to blare. Amid the backdrop of roving searchlights, cultivator patrols approaching the building, and the whine of air raid sirens, Isaac approached the man, who lay sprawled on his back, smoke rising from his busted torso.

Isaac knelt and removed the hooded part of his cloak. He didn’t recognize the man, but the tanned skin and dark hair - not to mention the foreign language, and the Atalantan graffiti on the first floor - gave away his ethnicity, at least.

Could he be a member of the 1st Atalantan Cultivator Marine Regiment?

As Isaac studied the man’s face, the pupils in the man’s eyes suddenly expanded. Isaac gasped and took a tepid step back - the pupils grew to cover the entirety of the man’s eyes in a black void. Then red lightning ran up and down the man’s body, and in his gut, Isaac recognized the distinctive activation of charms. A whole dozen of them, in fact, along the man’s body, hidden inside his cloak.

The window to the room on the second floor shattered open as Bell dove out of it. A patch of ice from his shadow on the side of the building elongated into a thin slide to escape. Even as Bell slid down, the path remained - Isaac immediately dropped into a sprint and leapt off the building. He hit the slide right as the man’s body exploded on the roof.

The heat scorched the back of Isaac’s neck as the entire top floor of the building disappeared in a cloud of orange and red. When Isaac got halfway down the slide, the shockwave actually forced him off the ice path entirely, and he somersaulted through the air. He legs buckled from the thought of breaking them again, but unexpected help stood right below his trajectory. Bell caught Isaac and a wave of ice rose above them to block the falling debris. A sharp piece of rebar struck the ice, sending cracks through it, but the shield held until the explosion finally died down.

After a moment, the two sighed in relief and Bell set Isaac back down on his feet.

“No choice of identifying the corpse,” Bell supposed as a rain of blood hit the shield, rivers of red mixing with melting water. “The explosion was big enough to vaporize the whole body.”

“I got a good look at him,” Isaac said. “Don’t really like what I found.”

Before the conversation could continue, the first of several patrols arrived. Isaac frowned and readied his fists, because he actually recognized these men and women of the Naval Police.

Members of Henry Spinelli’s personal squad.