The two hooded men sitting on a corner of the street were getting restless.
"It's already been 10 minutes! We're not invading a transcender's home. How useless is your Prison Mosquito? Didn't you say its mutation has reached rank- 2 already?"
"How do I know what's happening? My creature has already emptied its entire toxin reserve. How can your Rubber Roach still sense movement on the floor? Nobody should be able to move in there by now."
Exchanging a worried look, both of them stood up and casually walked over to Holding no. 213, the two-storied building that had long turned its lights off, giving off the impression that its occupants were asleep.
A couple of minutes passed as they nonchalantly walked around the perimeter of the property. Both of them were beginning to attract more and more narrow-eyed looks.
Ordinary people wouldn't bother a suspicious person unless they deemed it absolutely necessary. But if that suspicious person were to hang around the property of their neighbor at an hour when most of them were getting ready to sleep, the story would be different.
They didn't want to be the next victim.
The two hooded men also understood this. Both of them eventually came to an agreement and began to distance themselves from the building.
In fact, they even left the street, choosing to slip into a nearby slum, disappearing completely from any curious eyes.
5 minutes later, a large black dog with a collar on its neck walked out of the slums and eyed the dwindling population of the busy street. From one of the roofs of the numerous thatched houses in the center of the slum, a large bird flapped its wings and rocketed to the sky, gaze focused on the dog below.
The dog looked up for a second before trotting toward the street unhurriedly.
No one paid much attention to it after noticing the collar, assuming it was a pet. After spending a minute making sure nobody was looking, the dog slipped into the front yard of the largest house in the neighborhood, right next to their target building.
This front yard was spacious, with a small pond in the center, a well-maintained garden by its periphery, and what appeared to be a doghouse in a corner.
The dog had chosen this property for two reasons: firstly, it was right next to the building it wanted to get in, and secondly, being a large property, the lights of the house and the lights of the street didn't quite manage to illuminate the entire area, providing an excellent opportunity to enter and escape undetected.
How convenient for us! The dog couldn't help but chuckle in low grunts. Running toward the wall separating the two properties, the dog leaped up, crossing the two-meter-high border easily. The falcon had already landed on the roof, now trying to unlock the windows behind the building. The dog circled around the house and decided not to waste any more time.
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A minute later, a semi-naked man could be seen entering the house through an unlocked door in the back.
Unbeknownst to everyone, there was another pair of eyes patiently watching the entire scene unfold from hundreds of meters above in the sky. Seeing that both of the 'scouts' had managed to enter the house, this creature screeched in victory.
However, a couple of minutes later, it saw a dog and a falcon rush out of the house in a frenzy. Neither of the creatures appeared to be carrying a red diary with them.
This time the flying observer let out a different kind of screech, one of anger, and swooped down to follow them.
The falcon made its way up straight, making it easy for the observer to reach it. When the falcon noticed an arrow-like shadow whirling towards it from above, it dived away and pointed at a nearby building with its beak emphatically.
A long appendage whipped out from the shadow, hitting the falcon as it flew toward that building. Ignoring its pain-filled screech, the observer rushed to track down the black dog.
The dog had made its way into the neighbor's property again, keeping close to the wall to hide itself. It made its way to the tiny doghouse in a corner of the yard and circled around it, perhaps looking for a place to hide.
The observer's puzzlement didn't last long, because it noticed several men in gray uniforms making their way into the street in a hurry.
One of the men was using a scanner device to detect mutated creatures nearby.
No wonder these two had escaped! Someone had tipped off the law enforcers!
However, before the observer's anger could die down, the black dog trying to walk into the kennel suddenly yelped in shock and tried to leap out of the property, attracting one of the enforcer's enhanced vision.
You idiot! If the observer could speak, it would have yelled out every profanity in the dictionary. How hard was it to enter a kennel? Can't you even defeat an ordinary sleeping dog?
"There! Found one!"
Shouts and whistles followed the wretched dog. Two of the enforcers let out low howls and began to grow bigger, literally.
Their hands grew longer and thicker, fingers turning into claws; their heads swelled up, growing gray fur and elongated jaws, sporting large, yellow fangs. The uniform seemed to have been made with this physical transformation in mind. It stretched with its wearer's body.
Both enforcers shot out on all fours at a speed beyond anything a human could match.
The dog which had gained some distance from them initially barked fearfully and increased its speed.
The race between a dog and two werewolves stretched far away from the Southern Border of Enet City, heading away from the populated regions deeper into the danger-filled outskirts.
The two werewolves eventually stopped the pursuit, realizing that the dog might be leading them to a trap. Its footing made it apparent that it knew these areas better than them.
Nodding to each other, the werewolves let out two loud warning whistles and fled back to the city.
Satisfied, the observer flew back to the crime scene, landing on the roof where the falcon was recuperating...well, not a falcon anymore.
"Fucking pathetic! Why did you waste so much time trying to knock them out?" the observer growled the moment he finished transforming back to his human form.
The injured scout threw his hands up in frustration. "The Lord knows how these guys realized that we were making a move. They just wouldn't fall asleep! Ten minutes are enough to knock down any ordinary human. And when we entered, we did find three of them knocked out. But the boy wasn't inside!"
"Someone...probably the oldest son, yeah. That kid must have guessed it and warned the younger brother. No one else would be willing to help them right now. Did you search all of the rooms?"
The scout snorted. "You saw how long we were inside. We only checked the children's room using the tracer. The younger son's room contained some residue of the artifact, but he must have taken it away when escaping."
"How did you know the enforcers were coming?"
"You told us," the scout replied, sounding dumbfounded.
"What?"
"The ID that commissioned the job, wasn't it you-"
A powerful clawed hand thrust into his chest, cutting off his words. Another hand clamped over his mouth to suppress the scream of horror and pain.
The scout died soundlessly, messily. His killer searched through his clothes and found a mini terminal. Using the fingerprint of the corpse, he owned the messaging software.
An unnamed ID had sent a message 10 minutes ago, warning the two scouts about the enforcers.
"How did the Church know that the enforcers were about to arrive? Have they managed to infiltrate the enforcers' network too? What the hell do they know about the artifact anyway?"
The killer stood over the corpse, absolutely baffled. But before he could scroll further to see what connection these guys might have had with the Church, the screen went black. No matter how he tried to turn it on, the data terminal appeared to be dead.
"Fucking safety measures..."
Cursing lightly, the killer transformed once more into a mutated creature and left the city, heading in the same direction it had returned from just a few minutes ago.
Miles away, deep into a forest, he found the second scout still gasping for breath from the chase . Seeing him appear, he shouted something that made the killer's heart spasm.
"The boy...I think he was hiding inside the neighbor's doghouse!"