AKASAKA PRESS CENTER, MINATO, TOKYO.

OCTOBER 1

10:30

After climbing the wall we finally reached the roof of the building, a camera was watching but as if to avoid us it moved alone to look the other way, then we managed to get to the door that gave access to the inside but it was locked, a high tech electronic lock and could only be opened from the inside, but even that was easier when the door itself gave way and opened by itself so we could pass. Without making any noise we walked down a few floors until we reached our destination, in the hallway were two fully armed soldiers, they had been assigned to guard this place since it was attacked by terrorists, but as they were making their rounds we just had to wait until none of them were near the office we were looking for, the door was open so we just walked in and closed it immediately.

"Que carajo!?"

"!!!!!"

"Carajo! Elise!"

"Casi me mataas del susto!"

(What the fuck?)

(!!!!!)

(Shit! Elise!)

(You almost scared me to death!)

"Hi Mom"

"How are you, I was just coming to pay you a visit at work."

"No one informed me that you were coming to my office"

"Did you infiltrate this place? You do know that you are allowed to be all over the place, right?"

"And why are you and Tamamo here?"

"I'm afraid this time it's for work."

"Lisa, check the door will you"

"Right away" said the demon coming out from my mother's shadow.

"Damn it! Is it serious?" asked my afraid mother again.

"No, no, not much, I hope"

"Just a little interrogation and that's all."

"I came as a surprise because it's exactly Xi'an I want to talk to, so I want to set a trap for her."

"Xi'an? why? what did she do?"

"That's what I'm trying to find out"

"....."

"Several things happened in Africa"

"In fact I even brought you several souvenirs from there."

"It all started when I was stranded in the middle of a hostile village, a bald man rescued me in a car."

"He introduced himself as Major Zero"

"Wait a minute! You met Mayor Zero!?"

"Like that, in real life? Face to face?"

"Are you sure?!?"

"I didn't believe everything he said, but he passed on some pretty sensitive information."

"It's not stuff that just anybody could get."

"He also gave me this snow globe," I said as I handed my mother the snow globe with the white house inside.

"Well, if he gave you this then he's definitely the real deal."

"These things are only sold in the store inside the presidential house."

"And this design was last year when I briefly mentioned to him that I wanted one."

"He sure bought it then and had it in storage to give it to me."

"....."

"But it's really surprising, did he really come all the way to Africa just to talk to you?"

"No, more to the point, that he would risk doing it all physically ....."

"...."

"Wait, how did he know you were with me in the first place?"

"You didn't go as the white girl to Africa."

"Yes, that's what I'm getting at."

"He told me that he had been put in charge of investigating Adelis and her group, which he said he was taking advantage of to hide information from them."

"Which he claims to be taking advantage of to hide information from them, but even so he seemed to be aware of me, at least enough to know that the slime girl and the white fox are the same."

"But here is where it gets complicated, it seems that he became aware of another C.I.A. agent called Trigon and his moves."

"The whole Botswana mess was his fault, and by the way he was trying to incriminate us for it."

"Blame us...."

"I don't believe the CIA had the balls for so much."

"Oh no, they were for something else, Trigon wanted to frame us just as an extra."

"Please explain"

As she asked, I explained to my mother everything that had happened to me, giving her the documentation and all the evidence I had, about the mineral 1313, what the CIA had done to take over the place, the robots that protected it, and most importantly, the photographs of the girl I had met and who had killed Trigon before I arrived. It was a bit of a long conversation as I tried to sum it up, but in the end my mother was equal parts happy and surprised.

"This is incredible! seriously"

"This is all new information for me, it's pretty important stuff to keep in mind."

"They were really working hard on this one!"

"They even managed to prevent me from even knowing it existed."

"To let people know about the existence of 1313 is a huge accomplishment for Major Zero, but that you even managed to steal samples of it!"

"You just made my whole day Cesar!"

"With this I can already do some serious devilish things!"

"Yes, the problem is that it's not over yet."

"Has Xi'an been acting weird? Do you think I suspect something?"

"Not at all."

"And I have to say, you surprised even me."

"How did you manage to get in without attracting attention?"

"It's impossible to get in here, there are three electronic locks and a security door."

"Plus the guards at the entrance and the bulletproof windows."

"Come on, you know me. I've been doing this all the time."

"And the padlocks and cameras were Kazumi's doing, obviously."

"But are you really here for Xi'an?"

"She wouldn't be able to do anything like that."

"I've worked with her for years, she's a trustworthy person."

"She has helped us a lot, you know that yourself."

"That's what I don't know"

"The girl in the photo I killed her myself, she is identical"

"Although is not in the picture she is split in two"

"......."

"I also had to burn her body, I couldn't leave it there for the police to find."

"She wasn't human if you know what I mean."

"Oh my God....."

"Please don't do anything radical, seriously"

"....."

"I'll call her myself to come, but please.....take care of her.... in a good way"

"That would be perfect thank you"

"I also advise you to wait outside, go and buy something from the vending machine in the hallway I don't know."

"Just in case"

After my mother called Xi'an she went with the soldiers in the corridor to the courtyard to hang out. In the moments waiting for her to arrive Tamamo threw a couple of talismans in the hall, probably to protect the place and possibly lock her in. Lisa on the other hand was still waiting behind the door for the arrival of our suspicious girl. When the girl arrived she showed up looking for my mother, but Lisa closed the door immediately.

"!!!!"

"Elise?"

"What is all this? What's going on?"

"It's nothing bad, is it? We're still allies after all, aren't we?"

"Oh god, that's the demon that follows Adelis everywhere"

"Hello Xi'an, how are you?"

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"Are you all right?"

"Look, I'll explain to you what we'll do, I have a couple of questions, you answer the questions, nothing happens and for the afternoon I'll even buy you something to eat."

"What do you think of the idea?"

"Is this information what you are looking for?"

"Yes, of course, I can give it to you, no problem."

"Is this really necessary? I can tell you everything if you just ask."

"....."

"Is it really the crazy demon necessary? she is a bit overkill" said the terrified girl, looking only at the succubus, her presence was already making her nervous.

"Lisa? but she's a good friend, she's always protecting my mother."

"She's just here in case"

"But it won't come to that, right?"

"No, of course not"

"No, no, no, no."

"All right, let's get this over with quickly, I'm already hungry."

"Tell me, do you by any chance have sisters?"

"Are you a twin?"

"Do you have a relative with whom you have a strong resemblance?"

"A twin? no, I was the only one born."

"But I do have a sister and many cousins"

"My sister and I are very similar, but I understand that for westerners we are all very similar, so that may be why."

"Can you tell me what you know about her?"

"Does she also claim to be a professional killer? Demon hunter?"

"Well, my family is dedicated to professional demon hunting."

"We specialize in monsters that have managed to infiltrate into high positions among humans."

"So our work is done as conventional professional assassinations, killing a defense minister who was a vampire, a member of parliament was a shapeshifter"

"You could say it's a combination of both."

"My sister, unlike me, did stay behind to hunt monsters as my mother's successor while I left all of that behind."

"Her name is Mei Ling, the last time I saw her was on my vacation in February when I visited my mother."

"Why does she have a name so different from mine? Well, so that if something happens it won't affect the rest of the family's plans."

Xi'an talked a lot, she was quite honest with her answers and didn't hold back any information, in fact she went a little further and even answered the doubts she had in advance. There was nothing to suggest that she was hiding anything, on the contrary, she was helping as much as she could, what she didn't know was whether it was because she wanted to or because she was afraid of Lisa, who was playing with one of her metal stakes and kept looking in her direction. At the moment, the clues only half fitted, but I still had my doubts about her family, so I asked what I had found yesterday thanks to Maria and Asuka.

"Tell me, what do you know about someone who has a name similar to yours?"

"What can you tell me about someone called Xian Fang?"

"Xian Fang?"

"I've heard of Xian Fang before!" to my surprise, it was Tamamo who responded behind me.

"huh?"

"You know her? since when? Why?"

"That's the interesting thing, or rather the bad thing."

"I heard about her the first time I was on earth, before I was turned into a stone, so it must be over a thousand years ago now."

"Xian Fang was a great alchemist known from the Song Dynasty."

"She was known as a great magician who learned alchemy in the Middle East."

"As I remember she visited Emperor Konoe a couple of months before I showed up posing as a human."

"It seemed that she left a strong impression on everyone with her visit because they kept talking about her during those days."

"Wait a minute, Xian Fang is older than you!?"

"Hey, it's rude to talk to a lady about such things."

"....."

"But yes, if we count when I was born as a human and not as a goddess." Said the fox girl, not so much annoyed, but intrigued by what she herself was saying.

What my wife had just revealed was a bombshell, in a moment this threat I had suspected had become something that had been working in the shadows for a millennium as far as we knew. A powerful mage and alchemist who has been around forever, a claw that watches our every move, someone clever enough to know of my existence and who has tried to steal my body on more than one occasion. It was hard to believe that Xian Fang was an enemy who existed before Tamamo, and if she was old enough to have lived through those times, it wasn't hard to imagine that she was someone who worked from the shadows, with so much time to work on whatever she wanted, that I now doubted that there wasn't something she could get her claws on.

You could say that Xian Fang is probably working just like my mother, but for a much longer time, before most of today's countries even existed, knowing what is going on in Africa, Europe and of course Asia. Someone who fights to keep control of everything, who wouldn't have my mother in her sights? if she controlled her, he could control the whole of Alliance, couldn't she? No, wait, there's something worse, what if she was after a target of far greater value? The last emperor of the distant Atlantis, a target worth every penny to raid and steal, to gain her secrets, her power to shake the heavens. Xian Fang was someone who was no longer only dangerous to my family, but to the untouched tomb of the floating continent, or who would even think of trying to obtain the secrets of the dragons, she was someone who had to be eliminated at any cost.

"Darling, something is happening to Xi'an!"

When Tamamo spoke, I stopped what I was thinking, I looked at the girl sitting in front of me, her eyes were blank, her body started to twitch, a terrible cracking sound came from her back, long limbs came out of her, spider legs tried to attack me, but Tamamo, who had foreseen this scenario, activated the talismans I had left before and cast a spell to bind her. But that was not enough, when she was enraged by her chains, she let out a strange scream, her mouth broke open and grew in a horrible way, her body began to contort in a strange way, from one second to the next, from her lower part came out what seemed to be a giant spider, making strange noises, in her upper part the torso of what used to be a pretty girl was partially mutated with the beast from below, from her eyes came out a strange one that managed to burn Tamamo's talismans, which took even her by surprise when she was forced to pull out her nine fox tails to restrain her and keep her from moving. But while I was summoning Avalon to prepare for battle, Lisa jumped from where she was with her scythe and sliced the beast in two, throwing the girl's torso to the ground as it died, leaving the giant spider to wriggle in pain, it seemed angry. But to my and Tamamo's surprise, Lisa stood in front of it so that we wouldn't attack it any more.

Both me and Tamamo were even more confused to see Lisa behaving in that way than what had just happened with Xi'an, it seemed that the succubus felt very sorry for the poor girl, I also thought the same, because I considered Xi'an as someone important too and I didn't want this to end in such a sad way for her, I already had too much of sad endings to keep accumulating more. Tamamo trying to check what the demon was saying approached her to check her, he checked first the body and then the giant spider, giving the go ahead when he even withdrew its tails and the giant spider that Xi'an had become did not move, but instead moved backwards, it looked scared despite how scary such a creature looked.

"From what I have been able to analyse, Xi'an is essentially a spider who was made to evolve into an Arachne until she could completely hide her true identity."

"It seems that a powerful spell was installed on her to activate a self-destruct mode in case anything was revealed about Xian Fang, and I think we unfortunately hit the nail on the head before she did."

"But there are still weird things, there was another mind control spell that was deactivated, over written in some weird way so it never activated."

"So at least I can be sure that Xi'an was not watching us for Xian Fang, not that she consciously wanted to at least."

"....."

"Now for her body ....."

"Even though she is split in half, her real body is the spider, so she is not in danger of dying from the damage."

"But Arachne take a long time to recover from their wounds when they are doubled back into a all spider and no human part."

"It will be a giant spider for at least a week or two."

"....."

"The problem is that she ...."

"She's our teacher and in a week it's our midterm exams."

"Fuck, Haru is going to die of shock when she sees that our teacher is now a 2 meter man-eating spider!"

The same spider I was referring to turned around and began to squeak in a peculiar way, it seemed to be imitating the sound of crying.

"Tell me Xi'an, did you know you were an arachne in the first place?"

The poor girl, or rather now spider, moved her head from side to side rapidly.

"Is this the first time you have seen your spider form?"

The creature moved up and down quickly, she was being honest despite her fear of herself, trying to help us do something for her, and for all she had done for us we couldn't leave her like that, we owed her after all.

"Hey Elise, is everything okay in there?"

"Are you girls done?"

"I've been hearing strange noises for a while now and I need my office back for work."

"You're not doing anything weird are you?"

"Yes, no! I mean no, nothig weird, we are almost finished"

"Just a few more minutes and we'll be on our way." I immediately lied in panic.

Both Lisa and Tamamo turned to me asking for a plan of action when they heard my mother, I was on edge. Damn, Adelis is scared of big spiders, but an big Arachne is on another level, no, that doesn't matter, she can understand it later, we are still in the middle of a military base! how the fuck am I going to hide a magical creature from this place? or how am I going to hide the lack of Xi'an in all this time?