“The mayor awaits you inside,” the old man who Tina picked for a guide stopped before a simple door.

Those doors… were just like the journey three levels below the ground after the encounter with the one veteran who managed to see past Leo’s guise - ordinary.

‘This doesn’t look like a bunker’s door at all,’ Leo thought, watching how the old man pushed the thick, wooden doors open, revealing the spacious inside of the room behind it.

“Please, come inside.”

Rather than stepping inside himself, the old man simply held the door up for Tina. And while it was still possible he would follow her inside to close the door behind her… Judging by his body language, this place’s doorstep was as far as he was authorized to go.

Still, with the thick, wooden doors now open, Leo twitched a little before putting on a small smile and manipulating his mana a tiny little bit.

Standing at the front, Tina took a quick look inside, but seeing nothing out of the ordinary, she nodded the old man off before moving ahead.

As soon as Tina went inside… The old man actually lagged out for a second or two before shaking whatever thought bothered him off and closing the doors behind her.

‘He just happened to lag at this precise moment, huh?’ Leo’s smirk only grew.

“Welcome to my small abode,” a middle-aged man in a perfectly well-tailored suit rose up from his chair at the head of a small table. He offered the girl a small, perfectly political smile while reaching out with his entire arm towards his right-hand side of the table. “Please, don’t stand on a ceremony and have a seat.”

Tina raised her eyebrows a tiny bit but ended up following the man’s suggestion in silence. She then took to the middle of the five chairs occupying the table’s side before sitting down and stretching her legs far out while crossing her arms on her chest.

“Are you that hospitable to all those who give you a mildly threatening message?” Tina asked after engaging in a contest of stares with the man for a few seconds.

A contest no civilian could ever win when matched against a bona-fide career politician.

“Oh, that all depends, Miss Tina,” the mayor laughed the girl’s remark off, dropping her name right away to prove she wasn’t just a no-name being to him. “Firstly, I do applaud your guts to send a letter of this kind with the situation outside-” the man hesitated for a second, “-being as messy as it is. But I do agree, normally just having the guts like that wouldn’t be enough.”

Homer shook his head.

“A dropper, meaning, pretty much a deserter. A woman with a stellar record and publicly known desire to use her position for her own, innocent agenda. A woman who decided to drop out from the force right as it was a hands-on-deck situation. A woman who then goes on to set up a meeting with the city’s higher charge, implying both great dangers of refusing it and possible great benefit that could come from accepting it.”

The mayor finished his short list of things he already found out about his negotiation’s counterpart.

“Normally, I would be curious at most,” Homer’s lips twisted in an empty smile, perfectly fitting a politician like him, “but right now, I can say that I’m intrigued.”

This situation… Wasn’t bad.

It didn’t devolve into combat right away, it didn’t go off-track nor was it drowned in a sea of unnecessary small talk only serving to cover up the main points of conversation, turning the whole thing into a challenge of who could wear mentally the other down first.

In a sense, the entire thing was going a bit too well… to the point, that the current course of the discussion actually exceeded Leo’s expectations.

‘He sure knows how to play with words,’ Leo thought, his grin only growing wider while he pretended not to notice how the Mayor would just so happen to shake his head back and forth whenever he would take a breath in between his words. A movement that was accompanied by a quick slide of his eyes toward a certain, static point below the desk.

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‘So that’s where it is,’ Leo thought before pushing a small bit of his mana towards the mental structure he prepared before even setting foot into the room.

He then left the place where he opted to initially just stand and observe, leaving behind the very same trace of mana that he used to distort his presence up until this point while taking refuge in the protection of a much more complex stealth spell.

‘It’s a good thing we managed to get those two portals beforehand,’ Leo thought as he moved over to the left-hand side of the table and rested his elbows against the backrest of the middle chair.

“You surely did your homework,” Tina smiled lightly only to raise her hand before stretching her fingers out and staring down hard at her nails as if to make sure not even a single speck of dust soiled the immaculate color she painted her nails with. Then, as she lowered her hand and rested it down on the table, she leaned her head slightly to the side and graced the mayor with a slight smile. “I’m not sure if I should feel honored or, quite the opposite, threatened.”

“Oh, please,” the mayor took on airs as if Tina’s words couldn’t be any more insulting. “It was merely me doing my due diligence!” he claimed in the same kind of voice he would use when destroying his opposition during a public debate. An accusatory voice that carried with it the vibe that would make anyone appear as an uneducated fool by even attempting to dismiss or oppose the views expressed by said voice.

‘Haaah…’ Leo sighed before shaking his head a little.

“How about we drop this silly act?” he asked out loud, watching with equal amount of glee and amusement how the mayor once again glanced just below the edge of the table, only for his facial muscles to turn all stiff.

The next moment, the mayor quickly raised his head and looked over where Leo left his residual mana, only to now disperse it with a single thought, right as he released the stealth spell that he used to trick the cameras the mayor was using to track him down.

“Who the hell…”

“Didn’t I tell you to drop the act?” Leo asked while mimicking Tina’s act and inspecting the state of his fingers, giving the mayor just enough time to realize that rather than to his right, he should be looking to his left if he wanted to locate the owner of the voice.

“And here I thought that veteran would be smart enough to understand my suggestion…” Leo whined as if he were a teenager complaining about his childhood sweetheart crushing on his greatest rival.

“What are you even talking about?!” Not given any time to respond, the mayor dropped the act of only finding out about Leo’s presence now and moved on to trying to interject a few words of his…

“You are really lucky that I’m not some kind of psychopath, you know?” Leo continued, unbothered by the city’s mayor freaking out… or the group of people bearing the heaviest mana presence in the entirety of the building now crowding just behind the doors hidden within a nearby shelf.

“Excuse me?!” Struggling to keep up, the mayor attempted to speak his two cents again, only for his face to freeze when Leo lazily reached out underneath the side of his simple jacket.

Homer’s face froze… but his body did not. And before Leo could fully pull out a small handgun from within the inner pocket of his jacket, his hand shot towards the table… or rather, underneath its edge.

The doors shaped to appear like a simple shelf exploded, only for a group of seven veteran soldiers to rush inside… Right as Leo reached out to his other pocket and pulled out a half-used pack of cigarettes.

“SHOW ME YOUR HANDS!”

“DON’T MOVE OR I WILL SHOOT!”

“GET DOWN ON THE GROUND, NOW!”

All sorts of shouts filled Leo’s ears all at the same time. The young man, however, unbothered by the commotion, fished out a single cigarette before stuffing its butt into his mouth and then pointing the barrel of his small gun towards the smoke’s other end.

“Shut up, would you?” Leo asked, before pressing the trigger… and lighting up the cigarette with the small flame that appeared at the end of his gun-shaped lighter. He then took a long whiff, pushing the smoke deep into his lungs while staring with an amused grin at the group of perplexed soldiers.

Leo blew the smoke over the table before pulling the chair out and sitting down, only to lean back on its hind legs right away while nonchalantly dropping his own legs directly onto the table.

“I’m telling you this, you are really lucky I’m reasonable,” Leo muttered while shaking his head a little.

“…”

At first, Homer only stared at the young man as he smoked his cigarette.

“And why is that?” the mayor finally asked after taking some time to think and even going as far as to raise his hand to give his security detail an order to hold on.

“Because if I were to be unreasonable, I would just slaughter everyone but you before starting the talks,” Leo revealed with the same, innocent smirk that he held ever since he realized that not only was the mayor trying to track him through the cameras to avoid some effects of his first disguise… But the implication of what it meant in regards to the soldier Leo silently warned to keep his mouth shut.

“As if…” Homer gritted his teeth and cut his sentence short before it could gain any meaning. “I’m glad that we can both agree that course of action would, indeed, be unreasonable,” he said instead, leaning over the table as he rested his elbows down on it only to bring his face over to his cupped hands, using them to cover half of his expression. “But that makes me wonder, what’s your reasonable course of action, then?”

Leo stared right into the mayor’s face for a moment, leisurely taking another puff as he did. Then, he blew the smoke out and leaned over the table, putting on a wide, relaxed smile while mimicking the mayor’s body language.

“A non-lethal show of force.”