Yuki glanced towards Yuna who was the last person to stay inside the meeting room. She looked distracted, her expression blank and thoughtful. Yuki watched her until her eyes flickered towards him. She blinked.

“Have a question?” Yuki asked.

“What?” she replied.

“You look like you have a question,” Yuki said. “I have time.”

“Oh. It’s nothing.” Yuna said, shaking her head. Yuki waited. “I was just thinking about the mission.”

“The mission? Is it about how it turned out?” Yuki said, raising an eyebrow. “If it’s about the use of plan B, then just know that it wasn’t exactly planned, but necessary. I know that you didn’t like it, but it was the easiest and relatively safest option.”

“It’s fine. That wasn’t what I was thinking about though.” She sighed. “It’s more about the after than what happened during.”

“Did something happen?”

“No, it’s more of a lack of something happening. But it’s not a big deal,” she said, smiling a little. “I think I’ll be going.”

“Alright. Bye. Remember that there might be a meeting tomorrow,” Yuki reminded.

“Got it.”

Yuna gave Yuki a wave before walking out of the meeting room. Yuki noticed through the glass walls that the contemplative look she had returned as she walked down the hall.

‘I wonder what happened.’

“Then everything went bang and then all of those guards dropped on the ground!” Erica exclaimed, waving her hands animatedly. “That roof disappeared. It was so good.”

“Erica, I was there,” Akira sighed with a slight smile. 

“I’m just telling Yuki.”

“I know. I saw everything, you know?” Yuki said.

“Well I wanted to tell you again.”

“Okay,” he shrugged. “You did seem to be enjoying yourself immensely.”

“That was the first time in a while that I got to zap something with a big bolt,” Erica grinned. “It wasn’t full power or anything since I know you wanted to limit the amount of casualties. Still was great though.”

“Depending on how things go, you might have some more of that in the not so distant future,” Yuki said. “You two eat yet? It’s only been ten minutes, but that might be enough time.”

“We didn’t eat yet,” Erica replied. She paused. “Well, I didn’t eat yet. Maybe Akira did.”

“Oh come on. I can’t eat that fast.”

“I don’t know. You haven’t really pushed yourself have you?”

“I can’t eat a meal in ten minutes,” Akira laughed. “It’ll take at least fifteen.”

“Is that with appetizers and everything?” Yuki asked.

“Well, if it’s full course, maybe twenty minutes. A little more? While we’re speaking of food, are we going to grab something?”

“If you didn’t eat yet, then that was what I was planning to do,” he said. “Unless you want to do something else?”

“No,” Akira said, shaking her head. “I’m getting hungry anyway. The fighting took a bit of energy from me.”

“I’m a bit hungry as well. Giant lightning bolts took quite a bit from me.”

“They can do that, yeah,” Yuki said dryly. “Anyway, let’s get something really quick, why don’t we?”

A few minutes later, they were back at their apartment, each holding a bag of food in their hands. They went to the living room and took out burgers from one of the bag and fries from another. Akira had another bag for an extra burger just for herself.

They ate, chatting about random subjects that were brought up as the conversation went on. The topics varied from the food they ate to things they read about online to discussions on various fighting tactics. Slowly, their conversation shifted back to the events of the day.

“Yuki, I’ve been thinking,” Akira said. “About the mission. And the jewels.”

“About what exactly?” 

“We’ve taking the highest grade jewels available. But does that really stop them from creating the weapon? Or weapons?” she asked. Erica stopped eating to listen. “They can just use another one, can’t they?”

“Yeah, that’s something that came to my mind while I was trying to figure out how to handle things,” Yuki nodded. “The main thing is that it prevents them from having the highest quality weapon. Making it as weak as possible can only helpful.”

“But don’t we want to prevent the weapon from being made?”

“That would be optimal, yes, but that really isn’t possible,” Yuki sighed. “When I got all of this information, they already had crucial parts that are irreplaceable. Like the ridyst. If they didn’t have that yet, I could have taken it and they would be at a roadblock.”

“Aren’t the jewels a roadblock?” Erica piped up.

“They’re more of a minor inconvenience for the most part. It prevents them from creating the weapon for a bit before they find a replacement. Elemental jewels are easier to replace than ridyst.”

“But it’ll lower the power,” Akira repeated.

“Yeah. It’ll make it easier to block as well as delay when the actual weapon can be completed. Unless of course it’s multiple weapons. So maybe delay one of them.”

“Oh. See it’s not an end all.”

“Nope. I wish there was a way to do that, but it’s impossible. Maybe if I knew more or earlier, but that’s all we can do to prevent the weapon or weapons from being made. The bright side is that once we’ve collected enough evidence to prove that such a weapon is being made, we can give people some time to create appropriate defenses.”

“How’s that part going? Did Tiar come up with anything?” Akira asked.

“He said that he’s close,” Yuki shrugged. “He has a lot of verbal evidence, but that wouldn’t hold up against skepticism. We need hard evidence. The records of the materials they’ve been buying aren’t enough since the idea of a weapon being created is only a guess. They could very well be trying to make the greatest energy plant ever known to the world and love shiny elemental jewels.”

“Have we decided how we’re going to tell people about this stuff?” Erica said. “I don’t remember.”

“No, but I’m leaning toward letting Yuna do that. She’s part of the L-taf. They’ll be the first people that we want to convince that there is a threat. They have the influence to organize the appropriate response. Of course, this all fails if the government is already taken over by the Shikaku.”

“If that’s the case, it’s not really something we can do anything about,” Akira sighed.

“Yeah. So we’ll just have to accept it for what it is and live with the consequences.”

“Can’t we try to destroy the weapon?” Erica suggested.

“I mean, that’s a possible course of action, but that relies on too many factors,” Yuki explained. “The first problem is that there very well could be more than one weapon. Plus a lot of other factors like locating the weapons. I’ll still look into it and hope that we can do that, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

“Oh. That’s unfortunate.”

“Yup.”

“So what are we doing next?” Akira asked. 

“Next? What we’ve been doing,” Yuki shrugged. “Find jewels. Take jewels. That’s what tomorrow’s meeting is about. Zoe found the next one.”