For a few seconds, the smoke drifted within the shop while clouding the vision of the attackers. As it slowly cleared, the second man next to the speaker looked amazed and spoke to him in a quiet voice.
“Boss, no one’s here.”
“What?” The speaker asked, sounding surprised and amazed to find no one in the shop other than them when the smoke cleared. “Where did everyone go?”
“Outside,” called Lakshman’s voice, and they turned to face the window to see their victims were outside much to their surprise.
The three royal siblings, the Nine Heroes of Legends, Raze, and the waitresses of the shop were sitting safely down on the ground. Many of them placed their hands over their foreheads or either ends as it twinged with pain. Lakshman was the only one standing firmly on his feet and staring in their direction with narrowed eyes.
“Did you idiots seriously think you’d take us by surprise?” He asked them in an incredulous voice. Then, inside his mind, he thought to himself by complaining, “I could’ve moved faster if it weren’t for my muscle pains.”
He sensed the incoming attack, but when he attempted to react in an instant, his body suddenly caused him to feel an intense pain from the sudden movement. Clearly, his muscles were still recovering from the strain he had put on himself from the previous night’s adventure and was not reacting to his liking. So, with a few seconds of delay, he gathered everyone using Levitation spell and then activated Warp to get them out of there while the smoke covered their action.
“Deal with it,” replied Asura inside his mind, and Lakshman’s focus returned to the present as he stared at the enemies with a serious expression on his face.
Meanwhile, everyone was still reeling from the effects of him using Warp on them without warning as it appeared that the unfamiliar sensation of warping made their heads hurt.
“Man…! What was that?” Vikram asked, wincing slightly and looking up at Lakshman.
“It felt like my head was going to spin out of control!” Maxwell admitted, looking a little dull.
“I… I feel like… throwing up,” muttered Martin, before clapping his hands over his mouth while looking sick.
Gram rubbed his head with great annoyance and glared up at Lakshman before saying, “If you wanted to help, this is not the way to do it!”
“Sorry, but I had to act quickly to get you all to safety before your ears are ruptured by that loud sound,” replied Lakshman without turning to look at him.
The two men from before walked out of the restaurant and looked in their direction with amusement on their faces.
“I’m amazed you were able to withstand such intensity and get everyone to safety so quickly. Truly, a hero in the making!” The man said, complementing Lakshman with a smile on his face.
The Solaris Hero did not return the smile, looking seriously at him while asking, “I know you’re not here to complement me, so stop playing around and explain why you attacked us!”
“Attack? Us?” The man asked, and he turned to his ally to ask, “Did we attack them in any way?” When the other man shook his head, he turned back to Lakshman and replied, “Of course not. That wasn’t an attack.”
“Well, smashing windows with objects and using that same object to cause a great disturbance that inflicts damage onto the victims definitely constitutes as an attack!” Natsu said curtly, getting to his feet and glaring at them with malice. “What else would you call it?”
“I don’t know. A distraction?” The man replied, rolling his eyes as if that was so obvious.
“A distraction?” Natsu asked, looking very angry. “That was no distraction! It was a clear intent of an attack!”
The man sighed and said, “Listen. If I wanted to attack you, I would’ve dropped a bomb on top of you all and that’s be the end of that. Instead, we simply launched a noise disruptor that merely causes the victims to feel nausea. After all, I did say I’m here to talk on behalf of the Raven’s Guild.”
While the others were unconvinced, Lakshman felt a little strange when he heard those words and thought, “To be honest, I did sense danger but not a threat level that put our lives in danger.”
“Yes. I also thought it was more like they’re here to hurt us but not injure us too much,” said Asura inside his mind in agreement.
“And? What does a criminal organisation have anything to say to us?” Natsu asked while narrowing his eyebrows to form a look of suspicion on his face.
However, Maxwell from beside him asked, “Why should we listen to anything they have to say? Let’s capture them, and we’ll learn about their schemes and hideout and end their criminal activity for good!”
Natsu did not say anything, and while everyone was looking towards him for his decision, the speaker turned his attention to Lakshman and asked, “Are you the Solaris Hero?”
“Yes. How did you know?” Lakshman asked, looking a little surprised.
“Well, rumour has it that you’re the strongest member in this group judging by the massive power up you did a while back,” the man said, and winked at him.
Lakshman chuckled lightly and asked, “Yes. I am the Solaris Hero. Lakshman’s my name. What about you?”
The man shook his head and replied with, “No. A masked man doesn’t need an identity, but his words do carry some conviction.” When Lakshman tilted his head, the masked man continued on to say, “We are here in regards to the capture of our man from a few days back. We want him released.”
“Released?” Santa asked incredulously. “He’s a criminal and deserves to be punished for your actions!”
“Yes! All this time, we decided to not mind your business since you’ve been only stealing and causing minor incontinences to society with your activity, but that train accident that you caused was a major step up!” Bolten said, looking very seriously at the man.
“You are mistaken, first prince. We are not the reason behind it,” the masked man replied in a firm voice that left no doubt of the conviction in his voice. “We are low time thieves, not mass murderers. That’s why I volunteered to visit you while you did not have your Royal Guards escorting you around.”
“In that case, why did you attack us just now ha?!” Santa demanded, looking very angry. “How’s your explanation about your group not being responsible for that attack when you clearly attacked us of royalty and heroes from another world!”
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The man sighed while his ally was the one who replied with, “This is the reason we did that, sir. All of you will feel aggravated and angry towards us in the recent attack and wouldn’t listen to us. So, we thought of putting the most of you out of commission while we confess our innocence to the Solaris Hero.”
“Why only him?” Gram demanded in a dangerous voice with a dangerous look in his eyes. “Why only him when there’s still eight of us around? You thought that the rest of us are not worth your time? That… that we’re… stupid?!”
The man shook his head and said, “No, sir! We did not say that with such an intention! It’s just that we thought the strongest warrior of your group would be able to understand our situation better.”
“He can understand you better than us?” Gram asked, flaring up instantly at such condescending words. “True. He is the… strongest member of this group, but there’s still us, and you chose to ignore us?!”
“The Nine Heroes of Legends are a group, not individuals that work separately,” added Natsu in support of Gram, but the prince from another world looked at him in surprise. Natsu shot him a look before glancing back at the two men from the Raven’s Guild and said, “We’re not the law of this world, but we are its summoned heroes, and we all bear the responsibility of see through the lines and bringing evil to justice.”
“I’m happy to hear that, young hero,” said the masked man from before in a happy voice. “Truly, a magnificent speech. If I had a hat, I would tip it for you but I came empty handed.”
“You came with a sound bomb to attack us with!” Santa said, looking enraged by the innocent words of the man.
The masked man sighed deeply before saying, “Whatever the case, we are merely thieves, not killers. We bruise to get what we want, but we don’t go so far as to kill someone! That’s not something we want on our agenda.”
Gram appeared to not like anything the man had said, Natsu was pondering with a thoughtful look on his face, Maxwell was looking unimpressed by their behaviour, Martin looked to be hesitant, Fred looked to be troubled, William was showing a lack of interest in the subject while Ward remained expressionless as usual which made it difficult to figure out what he was thinking.
To the side, Bolten had his eyes narrowed with suspicion, Santa was looking angry, Mike was smiling as if he was enjoying the show while Erza was looking troubled between them and Raze, who remained silent with her mask hiding anything she was showing. Out of all of them, Vikram was the only one that seemed to be preoccupied with something else as he continuously stared down at the empty spoon in his hand where his ice-cream had vanished earlier.
“Why don’t we listen to their side?” Raze suggested hopefully, causing everyone to turn to her in surprise. “They are, after all, a group of individuals that have up till now caused only minor damage to properties and officers that attempted to stop them. I don’t believe they’d stoop so low as to cause such a massive loss of live. Think about it.”
Before anyone could react to her reasonable words, Santa burst out by shouting, “You shut up, stupid woman! You know nothing! You’re just a servant, so say put! Got it? Got it?!”
Raze went silent, and no one could see how she was feeling due to his abrupt sharp use of language to stop her from speaking. Santa heaved a deep breath, glaring very angrily at Raze as if she was an annoying bug to him. Away from him, Lakshman clenched his fists tightly as he suddenly felt great anger towards the man that dared to speak so rashly against his beloved future wife. Still, he contained his cool and focused on what he must do.
“I suspect it was the alien that had caused that to happen,” said Asura inside his mind, to which Lakshman was slightly not sure about.
“Perhaps, but I don’t think so considering Elemental Sense didn’t detect him telling any lies,” replied Lakshman, thinking about what was happening. “Maybe… the alien used them as bait to cause that to happen and then pin it on them to cause some kind of war to happen between the government and the criminal organisation?”
“That… That could be it!” Asura admitted, sounding amazed. “That way, while the people’s attention is diverted, he can easily slip through the cracks of people’s minds and manipulate them! We’re already seeing him doing so with Santa and the others already.”
“Yes, so I can use this opportunity to make others start thinking who is the real enemy here,” said Lakshman confidently. He focused his attention on the men and asked, “Fine. I believe you,” which surprised everyone around him, but he ignored them while continuing to ask, “but do you know who’s actually responsible for it?”
The masked man shook his head and said, “We don’t know, but we’re in the process of figuring that out. Also, we’re also trying to find out why our man was there on the day that you heroes and the royal siblings went to check the area the accident happened at.”
Before Lakshman could say anything, Gram interjected by saying, “What the hell is wrong with you?!” He walked up to the front of Lakshman and turned to face him before saying heatedly, “Why are you trusting anything they say without a shred of doubt?”
“I don’t doubt them because I know the truth!” Lakshman replied in a firm voice, not backing down against Gram.
“What truth?!” The Tempest Hero demanded angrily.
Lakshman went to speak, but he stopped himself at the last second and thought for a bit. Then, he sniffed and said, “A truth that you will never notice even if it’s staring you in the eye!”
Gram widened his eyes in shock at his words and stepped forward angrily before shouting, “What does that mean?! Are you treating me like some kind of fool?!”
Lakshman did not say anything in return, and Natsu came at that moment to separate the two while saying, “Guys. Guys! Calm down. Seriously!”
“Natsu! Look at this guy, thinking high and mighty because of who he is!” Gram exclaimed at Natsu while looking furiously at Lakshman, who was looking back at him with a very calm expression on his face.
“He must have a reason, Gram!” Natsu said, trying to sound reasonable.
Natsu, who was momentarily surprised by Lakshman trusting the masked man’s words, quickly realised something was going on. He was aware of how strong Lakshman is and could guess that trying to mind control him was next to impossible. So, the only conclusion remaining to him was that the king from another world possessed some kind of truth detection ability that he was able to use and know the truth of the man’s words.
“Not you too?!” The Tempest Hero exclaimed in disbelief, forcefully breaking free from Natsu’s grip. “You and him, standing around in the middle of a street having a casual conversation with criminals instead of taking action and imprisoning them! What kind of heroes are you?!”
“Imprisoning the wrong people isn’t the right thing to do,” replied Lakshman before Natsu could say anything.
“The wrong people?” Gram asked in disbelief. He turned around and pointed at the masked men in front of them while saying, “These are the culprits! Them and their entire criminal organisation are the ones at fault!”
“And I have to disagree with that,” replied Lakshman firmly.
While the two were having a heated argument, everyone else was watching them in total silence. They were shocked by the two strong wills clashing against one another in trying to imprison the two people that came there merely to talk with them. Unsuspecting to them, the person that was not even paying any attention to them previously suddenly rose to his feet and turned to focus his attention fully on them.
Vikram stood and faced in the direction of the two masked men with a very angry look in his eyes. Unknowingly, he was clenching his fists so tightly that the spoon began to get bent from the force of his anger. He had been about to eat the food that he had sorely missed from his world, but the chance was taken from him by the sudden disruption of these men causing such chaos while destroying his joy.
“You bastards…!” He said slowly, and everyone turned to look at him, startled to see him standing there with a menacing look on his face. Even Gram and Lakshman stopped arguing to look over at him in surprise. “After a long time of coming to this world, I finally get to eat my favourite ice-cream only to have it get destroyed because of you! You bastards did it! You ruined my ice-cream! YOU RUINED ITTTTT!!!!”
As he let out his last sentence with a roar, he activated his powers and ran towards the men with incredible force. Like a speeding bullet that was given an extra boost, the Sonic Hero charged at the men in an instant and delivered several rapid punches to their chest before kicking them away. The force of his strength was not on par with Lakshman’s or Gram’s, however, with the added support of his speed, his punches felt as if several battering rams had smashed into them.
The two masked men soared through the air and smashed against the opposite building before sliding down to collapse on the ground. Vikram in the position that he struck them and glared down at them menacingly without a shred of mercy.
“That’s for ruining my ice-cream!” He said angrily, his fists clenched tightly and it shook from the rage he felt on the inside.
While everyone looked at him in surprise or shock, the alien observed from behind with great amusement. Upon seeing the hero smash those two men into the building with the application of his speed to support him, Mike smiled arrogantly with pride at the injuries sustained by the men.
“This is too easy,” he muttered under his breath, his eyes flashing with evil intention.