Boss nodded with what looked to be a pleased expression on her face. She clapped her hands and the room dimmed.

“I’m not asking much of you, Yuna,” she said. “I just need your help. This is also a bit of a test. I’m thinking about letting you join us, the elites. You have the potential and I want to see if you can stand with us. That is, if you want to be one of the elites.”

“I would love to,” Yuna smiled.

“That’s good to hear,” Boss nodded. “Then let’s begin with the second part of today’s meeting, shall we?” The elf paused and tilted her head. “Also, can you come closer? You’re a bit far from us.”

“Um, but I’m just a subordinate. I shouldn’t be sitting next to those higher than me,” Yuna said slowly.

“Yuna, I already promised you. I don’t want our first conversation to be with you sitting at the opposite side of me.” Boss tilted her head toward a seat near her. “Come on. Sit with us.”

Yuna blinked and stood hesitantly. She saw Erica give her a big smile and was gesturing to her to sit next to her. Akira stood up and walked to where Yuna was frozen.

“Yuna, we’ve already said that you’re family,” she said with a small smile. “You don’t need to be so shy.”

Akira hooked her arm with Yuna’s and half dragged her to a seat between Erica and another elf that sat near her. Erica beamed at Yuna as she sat down.

“Hello, Yuna,” the elf to Yuna’s right greeted. “I’m Sarah.”

“Hello Sarah,” Yuna replied. 

“Since we’re family now, you can call me sister,” Sarah smiled. “How old are you?”

“I’m, um, sixteen.”

“Great! Then you can call me older sister,” Sarah announced, puffing her chest out. “I always wanted to be an older sibling.”

“Then you have to call me older sister as well then,” Erica interrupted. “I’m so much older than you Sarah.”

“Alright then! I’ll call you big sis as well then. Does that mean I have to call Zoe older sister too? That feels a bit weird to me.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Erica tilted her head. “Zoe’s old enough for us to call her mother. Maybe even grandmother.”

Yuna glanced at the other woman sitting at the table. She was also beautiful but had a more mature air around her. She sat there with a small smile on her face, quiet as she watched the exchange.

“Hey,” Boss said. Her voice wasn’t loud but it cut through the conversation. “That’s rude. Don’t call Zoe old. She can still beat you up easily.”

The older woman’s smile seemed to change into a small smirk at Boss’s words. 

“But we can still call her mother, right?” Erica asked.

“You can call her whatever you want. Just ask her if she’s fine with it. And don’t be rude about it.”

“You can call me mother, I don’t mind,” a melodic voice sang out from the woman. “I already saw you two as children.”

“If you call her mother, than that makes me your father right?” Tiar asked, his voice booming. “I’m almost the same age as Zoe, you know.”

“I’d rather not,” Erica replied.

“Me too,” Sarah said.

“Aww, come now. Don’t be like that. Damian, you can call me daddy if you like,” Tiar directed to the dwarf sitting to the left of Zoe. 

“I would rather be thrown down the pits of Gunthar and burn to death than call you daddy,” the dwarf growled in a low voice.

‘Is this normal for guilds?’ Yuna glancing around at the chatting people around her. ‘I thought this was a briefing.’

“Okay, this is getting weird,” Boss interrupted. “Let’s move away from daddies and onto the actual reason why we’re meeting here. Is that good with everyone?”

“Please do,” Damian replied. “Please.”

“That wasn’t really a question,” Boss said to him. “Anyway. We have a briefing. Uriel, bring up the file.”

“Here you go, boss,” Uriel’s voice said. Yuna couldn’t see where the AI was.

The room darkened and the table was illuminated. Looking at it closely, Yuna realised that it wasn’t purely made out of wood. There seemed to be lines of metal that wove their way through the table. These lines made their way to the center of the table and a multitude of screens flashed into existence in quick succession. Within seconds pages and pages of information floated in the air with more appearing.

“Uriel, can you tone that down a bit,” Boss asked. “Yuna looks like she’s getting a sensory overload.”

“Oh, you people and your organic brains,” Uriel laughed.

“This organic brain made you,” Boss replied.

“Still doesn’t change the fact that your brain is organic now does it, hmm~? I’ll stop the file though.”

“Thank you.”

The screens stop appearing and hovered in the air. The boss walked up to them and started grabbing specific screens.

“Now, everyone here but Yuna knows the subject of this briefing,” she started. “And so, I’ll give a brief overview for her before we go onto the specifics. In case you didn’t know, Yuna, our guild has been raiding supply shipments from Mason Incorporated. Our goal was to obtain parts and technology and also, to put it frankly, be annoying. Yuna, do you know who the Shikaku are?”

“Yes,” she said.

“What do you know about them?”

“They’re a dark guild much like how the Valkyries are. I don’t know their goals or motivation but I understand that they accept commissions for assassinations.”

“That’s the general gist of it,” Boss shrugged. “I’ll give you a more detailed answer. The Shikaku is an assassination guild. That is true. But that’s more of their side hobby than their actual job. What they actually do is behind the scenes manipulation in real world situations. Assassination is only one of their tactics to do this. They infiltrate businesses, governments, sports, entertainment, anything. As long as it gives them some power, they will try to get one of their people in there. And all of this is for their ultimate mission. They want to rebuild the world. They’ve taken it upon themselves to right what they see as wrongs. And that causes problems as you probably tell.”

“I take it that their wrongs aren’t actually wrongs?” Yuna asked.

“Not exactly. They’re legitimate concerns and should be addressed. It’s more of the Shikaku’s way of solving these concerns that is the problem. Trying to covertly take over the entire world to solve problems is not a very nice approach.”

“I see.”

“Now why did I bring this up? Because it relates to why we’re raiding Mason Inc. trucks. I already mentioned that they’ve infiltrated businesses. Guess what business they control?”

“Mason Inc.,” Yuna answered.

“Correct. Now, think about this,” Boss said, raising a finger. “One of the largest, if not the largest, technology firms in the world is under the control of a dark guild. A dark guild, that we know, is actively trying to take control of the government.”

“So are we trying to prevent that from happening?” Yuna asked.

“We’re trying to prevent the take over from happening. Mason Inc. is already lost. For the past months, we’ve been increasing the frequency at which we raided their supply trucks.”

Boss swiped with her hand and brought a few screens into view. 

“These are some of the records of the items we collected. This screen is the various security measures that were put into place in each raid. As you can see, the defenses became increasingly more sophisticated.”

She waved the screens away. She shuffled through the other screens as she continued to talk.

“That means that we’ve been slowly but surely becoming an increasing thorn in their side. However, it has been too slow. While measures are being taken to defend against us, they aren’t quite urgent if you will.”

Boss grabbed one image from the multitude of screens floating in the air. Then she blew it up until it was the size of a large television.

“Last week, things turned. I wouldn’t say the for the worst, but things have become interesting. What do you all see when you look at this image?”

Yuna frowned at the picture in front of her. The image was of a circular metal band that had what looked to be circuits carved in it. It was flat but wide and seemed to be able to fit easily around a person like restraints. Yuna couldn’t see anything though that would qualify them as such.

“What do the engravings do?” Akira asked. Yuna glanced across the table at her and saw her rubbing her cheek. “Not the circuits.”

“Good eye, Akira,” Boss complimented. “There are indeed engravings. But they don’t do anything because there is a lack of mana to power them.”

“Then they’re incomplete?” Akira said. 

“Far from that. They’re perfect at doing their job. They just don’t need a dedicated source of mana to do that.”

“Can I look at the inside?” Damian requested, frowning.

“Of course,” the boss replied. She reached into the mass of screens and pulled out a holographic model of the metal band. “Here you go.”

Damian stopped the model that Boss had tossed toward him and began to rotate it around as he examined it. He muttered to himself as he glared at the metal band.

“This circle. Here,” Damian said suddenly. He expanded the model so that everyone could see where he was pointing at. “That’s a vampiric unit. Mana?”

“Yup,” Boss nodded. “What else do you see?”

“Interlocking memory metal,” Damian continued. “Also uses mana. The vampiric unit absorbs mana and then distributes the mana into the lock. This is a retraining unit, isn’t it.”

“Correct. Can you see the other parts?”

“I think there are also magic runes, but I’m not an expert on those.”

“That’s okay. You’ve hit most of the important parts,” Boss said. “Let me finish for you. Inside the band are a number of small spell circles engraved at set intervals.” 

She took the model and touched the inside of it. A few things that Yuna couldn’t see, glowed at the touch. Then Boss motioned with her fingers and the glowing flew out of the bond and blazed in the air. Yuna saw that they were indeed spell circles but not ones she recognized. They looked simple and only consisted of a few runes.

“These spell circles all do one simple task. They discharge electricity as you can see from the main rune in the center of the circle. Around the circle are runes that add one additional function. The power of the discharge will increase proportionately with the amount of mana given. I’m sure you all are starting to get the big picture here.”

“These are for prisoners,” Yuna said. “Why would Mason Inc. have such things in their supply trucks? I don’t think they sell restraints.”

“You’re right, Yuna,” Boss nodded. “They don’t. These are for themselves specifically.”

“Wait. Not to derail the conversation, but I’m curious,” Damian interrupted. “What does the electrical part of the circuitry do? I didn’t examine it long enough.”

“It’s a way to open the restraint first before placing it around a person’s neck. Plug it in and the electricity is converted to mana and disengages the locks and nullifies the spell circles. Then unplug and the remaining electricity that is still in the restraint is sent to the vampiric unit so that the loop starts.”

“I see. Okay, carry on.”

“Thank you? Anyway, these restraints mean that for whatever reason, Mason Inc. has prisoners somewhere. And with a little reasoning, that means the Shikaku have prisoners hidden somewhere. The function of these restraints also suggest that these prisoners are quite powerful because these type of restraints would be more effective the more mana the prisoner has. What we’re going to do is find where these people are being kept and free them.”

“How are we going to find them?” Yuna asked.

“Don’t worry about that. I already did. That was more for dramatic effect than anything,” Boss replied. “So. Let’s get to the plan.”