It's Not Easy (6)

They walked into the brightly lit area, as the gray sky made its lighting all more important and contrasting. Fox had pocket money, but Nala Loba didn't. Thus, without intending to, Nala Loba and Fox began to experience the ways of simple dating. Buying some salchipulpos here, getting some spicy, candy drink there, and even making their own tacos in a wide food stall. It was all too easy to lose time, and they didn't back away from it.

As they walked, wearing a few wristbands and collars with the colorful murky green and silver metal, Fox and Nala Loba looked around with Fox only wearing some glasses. There were at least half a ten thousand people in just this place, too many even for him.

Walking around, Fox thought of something and asked, “What do you think of the chief?”

“Why ask me?” Nala Loba looked around, indifferent but spending time discovering many things she usually ignores when operating. Fox added, feeling nothing from her comment. “You’re the one with the widest experience. Um, since when do you work for the PSD?”

“Since when? Probably since I was a kid,” she replied. Nala Loba was casual about it, but Fox didn’t know she had never spoken of this before, other than from others’ mouths out of possible implications. He widened his eyes and jumped his eyebrows, “How so?”

“Sigh, I started collecting information. I wouldn’t be sent to kill or protect a target even if I was able to until I turned 15.” She remarked, delicately sighing at first, seeming to reminisce. Fox looked at her, a little lower than his eye level, “So, your first kill was at 15 years old?”

“Yes,” Nala Loba nodded, keeping their words to the point where not even non-military devices could hear them, not really caring if they were heard, as they could ‘speak’ lower. Although it was more tapping sounds and the flow of air from their mouths, and their quantity, at that point.

Nala Loba added, maybe feeling like it, as Fox listened. “It wasn’t a simple first time. I had to find a target in the middle of the night, and it wasn’t a ‘special agent’ of nowadays, just a fleeing hitman of sorts. I did it with a small, wide knife. I remember the first time I stabbed in, wanting to get the heart but choosing the wrong side. He fought a bit, but I broke him an arm and 2 legs before he bled to a weaker state, and then I cleaved it in his head.”

“You?” She immediately looked at Fox and asked. Fox blinked at Nala Loba’s story before shrugging his shoulders. “When I was 13, in my home. A soldier from another camp was rummaging the goods inside. I broke a bullet and exploded it with another. Blowing part of his head. Something like that.”

“So young, and from a soldier? So, someone capacitated to kill…” She commented, wondering. Fox nodded and added, “He hesitated a few times, and I was bent on killing him. I almost got killed, though I believe he would’ve sent me to an encampment and not kill me if I wasn’t so… Struggled that much.”

“I think the word you were looking for and changed just now is ‘mad’.” Nala Loba said with her coldness and indifference. Fox smirked. What was said was said. He then looked down at her and repeated, “So, about the chief.”

“He is corrupt, but not involved with the matters of the OCs, at least not by much, or enough to have something to do with it. That’s my best guess. We’ll still see in the end.” Said Nala Loba without further delay. Fox nodded, adding, “Nothing like a bit of extra gain when there’s need, but he clearly has growing greed.”

“Uhuh, oh, and what you did back there…?” Nala Loba’s eyes jumped a little before turning to look at him with her head. Fox darted his eyes left and right, wide open. “Mm, what about it?”

“Now, you’ve initiated a profile of an… interest toward me, at the very least. It’s only right you follow into it. We are mature adults, and it’s not like we special agents get to have any sort of romance while working.” She said, looking at him clearly and with undivided attention.

“Really?” Fox asked, a bit curious. She nodded, “Only when one’s a couple, or they’re fellows in companionship, do things like that happen, including just playing with each other during assignations. It’s common to those who do, but nothing more.”

“Mn,” Fox nodded pensively. Nala Loba turned to him again out of nowhere, “You ever done that yet?”

Her eyes were scrutinizing. Fox shook his head, feeling a bit startled. Nala Loba further asked, “What about Riverlye?”

“Neither. I don’t do those things.” Fox said, looking down and swaying his head a bit. She narrowed her eyes, and just as Fox thought Nala Loba would talk about the president’s sister, she just fell silent. Fox heaved a sigh of relief and walked some more, when they received word from their cellphones.

They had to return to the SPD. Since they were close to the entrance where they came from, they just walked out. Fox thought of something again and asked, “Captain, how do you manage in your daily life? Surely, you have some good business outside PSD? What is it? How much you make?”

“I… had a heads start to begin that path in the District. I am most successful. Are you sure you want to know?” Nala Loba’s words caused Fox to think and tilt his head, but he still shrugged. “Yeah. I don’t see why not.”

“… I make 5 million a month, and I can’t tell you where or what my income comes from, but I can tell you it correlates to the roads, and includes metal processing.” She said, looking around, her eyes darting to the ceiling, bright and warm.

Fox: “…”

Feeling pressured, Fox shut up. However, he still another question before they exited the indoor corridor-plaza, “So, why was it that you weren’t sent to missions when you were too young? Considering you might have been able before.”

She smirked. Looking up at him from the corners of her eyes, Nala Loba smugly said, as if to brag. “Would Grandpa Emer have ever allowed me to fall into those events? Nobody dared to go against him, hm hm.”

Fox was startled at first, with a trace of a smile, before smirking to the left corner of his mouth extensively. Then, he exclaimed, “Oh! Almost forgot.”

“…” Nala Loba stared into the distance as he grabbed her wrist. They stopped, already outside the plaza, and she looked slightly up at him. Fox toothily grinned, “Is this enough pretense?”

“That’s just procedures,” Nala Loba said after grabbing his hand well, holding his hand in a passive hand holding posture before walking on. Fox looked at her with blinking, wide eyes. Then, he followed her.

“Ah, right. Is there something you’d see as a gesture, not lewd, nor boring, that you’d like to see in a woman you are already interested in?” She asked as they walked back to the PSD. Fox thought before blurting, “You should sit on my lap.”

“…” Nala Loba turned her head to him, remaining silent with her resting face. Fox’s eyes slowly widened after a few seconds from her gaze, he hurriedly added, “You can do that, as a response to your question. That would be it, it’s all I’m saying.”

“Hmf,” Nala Loba scoffed through her nostrils before grinning and looking away, mocking him. Fox stopped talking, feeling every interior of his body useless and plain worthless. ‘Words are so hateful.’

Fox was in a foul mood now, to the ‘grace’ of the PSD state sergeants he was about to interrogate. No- interview.

… For the following days, the pair remained in the surroundings as they worked an investigation in the SPD’s case. Dealing with hidden organized crime members who might have infiltrated or learnt of their department’s workings was not good.

As Fox interrogated them, pacing back and forth between the streets where some incidents occurred, studying the surroundings with some expertise, and back at the PSD, it went regularly well.

… One time, Fox interrogated a state police sergeant with a laid back attitude. That was, until Fox started speaking of certain matters, “You took 32 criminals the last 2 weeks before we arrived, letting them go just a few days later. There was no legal procedure, nor any money involved moving into the SPD, mayoralty, or the government’s central system.”

“Yes…” The sergeant’s lips quivered before he spoke that word.

“You did this, and it’s just one of your SPD’s ‘schedules’ from what this information entails. Do tell, why stop when we arrived?” Fox seemed proactive in his interrogation. The state sergeant thought for a bit before gesturing with his arms. “Those are the Supreme Court Justice’s orders, mister. It’s what they decree to us every week on a random day.”

“But it stopped after we arrived here,” Fox reminded. The state police sergeant was helpless, he shrugged with a goofy smile, “It’s because they’re not stupid, mister. They know you are the cavalry of another force. We haven’t received any order like that so far.”

“It’s detective, for you and anyone else.” Fox revealed a smile that wasn’t a smile. The state police sergeant fell silent: “…”

… On another occasion, Fox ‘chatted’ with a person that seemed less implicated but who still fell directly into the honey trap, and his hands were dirty but not because he tried to get out.

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“For 2 years, you’ve been handling matters when interrogating presumed OCs members. Since a year and a half, the OC sightings in this half of the city have increased. It has turned the capital into a greater rate of rape, homicides, and more than anything, blackmail and assault in robbery.”

“Mi- detective, you have to know, there are-” The state police sergeant tried to say something, but Fox calmly looked down to take notes, saying with an impassive tone, “The time to talk about friends in ‘the high clouds’ can come later. Once I’m done having at least one date with the rest of your comrades.”

“…” the state police sergeant was shocked at first, before hiding it from his face, but only his outwards appearance. His shoulders slumped at the ‘boy’s’ meaningful moves in the SPD.

… On yet another occasion, Fox talked with someone who seemed like the best average line of cops in SPD, and perhaps most police forces’ precincts. He met with a man who wasn’t invested in the under table ‘politics’ everyone tried to hide, hint at, or deny to him at first. And that just as they wanted to cooperate, it would be the next state police sergeant’s turn.

“What is your evaluation of the activities and efficiency of your precinct?” Fox asked. The man responded after blinking in defeat. “I think it’s boring to try and ‘do good’ for my fellow police forces. It’s been bad and it will only grow more… ‘bad’. For the past 3 months, we’ve been nodding our heads to the Yopbartes gang. And when we stopped, they made us follow them as they left any kind of shit behind. We are hopeless…”

Fox took this sergeant a little seriously, unlike many others he interrogated over the course of a few days.

… Like this, Fox started investigating the depths of the case. The streets he visited and examined had clear criminal activity transpiring over the course of daylight under everyone’s noses. Even the preteens who walked from one establishment to another left letters and warnings in them to some business, while others, who were subordinates of politicians, or aspiring for public service, were approached more brutishly.

A few days of investigation was enough to check in this information, along with Nala Loba’s investigation with the files and the arsenal, where she immediately found clues and obvious corruption signs. Of course, she didn’t just jump to arrest or denounce it.

All on its due time. Thus, the only lengthy problem here, the completion of this case, was the sole thing that cost them time and effort to resolve.

After the initial research, they recompiled information and discovered that there was not only the usual 3-way conflict of interests between 3 of the 5 OCs in Proteros, but all 5 instead. Furthermore, the ‘leading’ OC, the Yopbartes gang, in the capital, were the smallest but still the big bosses in the capital.

With this, anyone who knew of the matter would feel more and more stressed. Yet, the chief seemed well-enough, although his attention to lure beauties for favors could be his method to cope with it. As for Luis? He was all alone, making Fox wonder if he had someone, like Lesly, perhaps. But, of course, this was only his observation.

After reuniting their info and selecting the next course of actions, together and with ample understanding, although cracked here and there only to decide again. Fox and Nala Loba got to work with the SPD, delegating new orders.

Even if the SPD was wholly corrupt, were the OCs to get ballsy to orchestrate anything in the capital, anyone with the slightest bit of corruption on their files or conduct would grant them a death sentence. If not from the government, then from the people.

While stupidity was one of humanity’s traits for all eternity, it didn’t mean everyone was stupid as they would have been the previous 3 orders. There was political learning in each country, each varying. In Lýmoca, many things were understood by their civilians, the only difference to those who successfully fool their people is that Lys had to endure their daily lives accepting it.

As such, not only the state police units, officers, and sergeants; even the captains were deployed for this matter, albeit only half. Fox and Nala Loba’s discussions brought them to a conclusion: they couldn’t bring the NG or army to the case, as possibly previewed before. Instead, they ought to draw out the special targets and catch them with heavy injuries.

After 5 days of planning, from the previous when the investigations had just started, the SPD embarked on its operation, which lasted for a few more days. From setting every stone on the road in its place, to counting the steps from beginning to end, the SPD became readied.

This, of course, wouldn’t have been easy if Fox and Loba just went ahead with their plans. The investigations brought with them notorious ‘sure no’ elements who had to be ‘contained’. Being just sent here for a case, neither had killing permission, especially if it wasn’t vital or treason.

Thus, some individuals in the SPD were imprisoned carefully. Even then, there was the issue of responding to cues and messages from their contacts, but that was hardly an ant walking on the road with dust lifted and in a quick pace. Fox and Nala Loba impersonated these people without error, relaying news of practically nothing changing despite the ‘special agents’ sent to the PSD.

Thus, on the fateful day of the year 1,025, 10th month, 3rd week, 6th day; Fox and Nala Loba’s operation took place. The OCs lieutenants of all 5 OCs in the capital, preparing for a decisive occupation of their ‘business’, became the mice in many cats’ eyes.

The moment all targets went out, picking a fruit, flirting a lass, a lad, or went out to take a breather, the motorcycle SPD units rushed into the scene with louder sirens than allowed, and modified.

At the same time, the national guard was called, with a report sent to the army so the president would consider checking the outskirts of Proteros to assail any criminal from the other 3 OC.

With all this happening at the same time, or nearly, one after another, the targets were taken off guard. From the 5 different organized crime groups, only 2 weren’t too affected and didn’t respond with gunfire to the incoming cops.

Those were the Yopbartes gang and the Coalition Party Syndicate. The rest reacted immediately. The targets only had 1 or a few guards following them, which, along with their bosses, took aim and fought. Naturally, with the preparation and training these cops had, and the morality of the ‘capital city’s sake in their hands’, they had much more to fight for than some bandits being ambushed.

The streets weren’t isolated, but the SPD couldn’t have done that even if they wanted to, way outside their jurisdiction. Many people scram and fled for their lives. Hearing gunshots made their poor little hearts echo with ultimate terror.

But it ended quickly, except for the Yopbartes gang and CPS people, who only ran. Since the cops didn’t receive fire first, they wouldn’t open fire. Thus, after a successful pursuit, the targets were apprehended, but their people were all loose. Or not…

While the cops had fun playing cops with the organized crime playing bandits being caught, Fox and Nala Loba directly and swiftly disintegrated the hidden ‘bases’ of all 5 OCs.

Those ‘bases’ were just buildings, and not even as a whole, but a floor or two at most. The OCs got clear image and first-hand experience of the Red Blood for the first time… and lived to tell.

Fox and Nala Loba went from base to base, killing all presumed criminals with positions and fled to the next, not bothering about the rest, be it hoodlums, ‘workers’, or recruited youngsters. All they did was kill a little, ensure their ‘officials’ were taken down, and go to the next.

For the first time, as the news anchors and independent journalists got wind of a ‘tremendous shooting’ in the capital, the people of Lýmoca saw the Piya Sanctum District’s works. Fox and Nala Loba rushed through the streets, carrying nothing but their bodies and clothes as they rushed through the streets. Sometimes taking a fast vehicle that had been parked and abandoned for who knew how many few days, but functioned as soon as one of them grabbed it.

Entering a building and exiting it after gunshots and screams from the inside, they became quite the scary sight, but news began flying left and right, and Fox’s face was far too notorious. Nala Loba’s face was shown, but she was unrecognizable, nobody knew who she was, absolutely none. It was a strange sensation for the Lys, as they thought only Fox was this monstrous.

But now, there were two…

… In no time, the capital’s SPD threw a report to inform the masses. After numerous weeks of research and anti-organized crime realization, they were able to stop a major conflict between these bands from happening.

It was just evening when these things were spread throughout the governmental net, where some news anchors were still in the midst of gathering crucial data, and independent journalists busy interrogating the mayor. Apparently, there were 2 lieutenants who were seen with him on a few luxurious restaurants in the past 6 months.

Modified, orchestrated images were so easy to detect for anyone with a few credits to buy for a membership of the IWS’s anti-invasive violation feature, be it to falsify images, videos, or audio records. Thus, it was now known the mayor had a link to these criminals. How could the independent media let this fat piece of juicy meat go?

Later at night, the president, Luis Heartez, ‘compromised’ to quell the angst of the Lys, who wanted to know more; for their safety and pride.

A short livestream was emitted, with Luis Heartez sitting at a sizeable long table with his cabinet and some other people. One of them was a representative captain of PSD, from the Green Blood. Luis remained seated as he looked at those around him with the camera zooming out, “Well, I am pleased to have everyone here. Tonight, the capital can celebrate the successful project, an operation for the long-term, that has been in the working for several years now.”

Listening to him lying through his teeth, some chuckled in a good humor, especially Sona and Lesly. Roam stood before the president, filling his glass of wine as Luis stood up. “The country has always been riddled with hidden unknowns for decades, more than one century, I dare say.”

“From today onwards, the country has the support of Lýmoca’s anti-espionage program to eradicate these hidden dangers, and free the population of the organized crime! In a decade, there will be no more organized crime in our country! It’s a slow and painstaking goal I give my life to promise you, Lys, Lye! Lye!”

This time, those sitting at the table looked at Luis differently. It was no more politics, it wasn’t more words well said at the right time… It was… Luis Heartez’s speech of change, of… revolution.

His heart was out, and he drank his wine in a toast, which the others followed, now with conviction, as his palms were dug in by his nails on the other not holding the glass. Lesly’s chin remained lifted, looking straight at Luis Heartez’s profile face with a light shine glossing over them.

“Lye… lye… lye… lye…” Across Lýmoca, the temporarily forgotten call of glory and patriotism since antiquity surged. It was low, minimal, barely audible… but it… was… there.

… On the other hand, Fox sat at the back of the SPD, sitting on a wall’s steep design with Nala Loba on his lap. She sat on his leg, nearing his left knee, and not quite at his lap, but still intimate. It helped as they looked at each other’s faces in silence, without commentaries exchanged, although the overly excited chief that shouldn’t be so asked them again, breaking the image apart.

“So, what do you say?!”

“…” - “…” Fox and Nala Loba continued to look at each other, silent and with their resting faces. At a simple look, they didn’t seem to appreciate staring at one another, but only they felt…

“What do you say? Feeling like banqueting?” Fox asked, raising his right eyebrow in an arch and asking charmingly. Nala Loba smiled. She acted, playfully grazing the left side of his jaw after gracefully lifting her right hand in the air. She jolted her oh so sumptuous lower end a bit closer to the middle of his thigh, “Well, why not?”

Her cold, indifferent voice echoed as she craned her neck, first and foremost finally looking down at Fox, with the chief of police jumping his knees high up and down in satisfaction.

…