Juuto couldn’t believe it. His attacker was the one person he was heading to for help. Why would Akitomo do this?

Thinking fast, he grabbed the boy and pulled him deeper into the alley. They had to get away from anyone that could see them. Once he believed them to be safe, he shoved the boy into the wall.

“Why did you do that!?” He spoke in an intimating voice. After everything that had happened to him lately, the man was a bit on edge.

“I was trying to protect you.” Akitomo responded, keeping his hands in front of his face in fear of being beaten. “Honest, I wasn’t trying to hurt you at all.”

“And how does attacking me have anything to do with protection?”

“It’s about the woman that moved in.” When he said that, Juuto calmed down. So it appeared he was aware about Marie as well. “It’s about Marie, or I suppose I should call her Leda.”

“You know of her true identity?” He let go of him, which allow Akitomo a moment to breath.

“She’s pretty well known back on Enatis.” Perhaps not for Asaga, but for people of Akitomo’s adventuring status she was famous. The woman was known as the ‘Lightning Blade’. A name that came from her ability to summon her weapon out of thin air and for her electrical affinity.

“Sounds like a dangerous woman.” Now that he knew the truth, Juuto felt a little more at ease about his situation. Even still, she was powerful while they were all limited by this world’s effect on their magic. As much as he was glad about having Akitomo seemingly on his side, how could that boy possibly help? “So, I got two questions for you.”

“Go ahead.” The boy was more than willing to answer anything. If only so that he could feel a little bit superior. “What do you need to know?”

“First off.” Juuto was holding a bit of grudge over what just occurred. “Why did you attack me!?” He yelled right to his ear.

“Sheesh, calm down.” Akitomo covered over his ears for fear of another audio assault. “I did it to protect us.” He had been tailing Juuto for a little while now. So the boy was aware of his plans on coming over to his place. “So I took this rag of chloroform to knock you out so we could talk somewhere more private than this.” Indeed, a random alley might arise suspicion from passerbys on the details of their conversation.

Though, attempting to drug a man in the middle of the day was just as ridiculous. “How come it didn’t work? I thought all I had to do was shove it in your mouth and you’d black out.”

“That’s just a myth.” Juuto put a hand over his face to express his disappointment. “A convenient thing for mystery novels to raise the tension. Never mind, I guess it isn’t all that important.”

“I’m guessing your next question is how I figured who she was.” That was correct. Before they continued their conversation, the two of them peered out of the alley to see if the subject of their conversation might be near. Juuto suggested they keep on the move just in case, so they acted natural as they walked about the town.

“So, how do you know her?”

“Like I said, she’s well known among adventurers. So you could say that we’re colleagues.” Interesting, he thought. If that was the case, why did Akitomo seem so willing to betray her if they were allies? Perhaps this was actually a trap laid out by the woman and he was actually on her side the entire time. The man had to keep his guard up no matter what was being said.

Apparently Marie is well known thanks to her combat prowess and her ability to gather information. She is of the hero class, but also has an unknown employer that gave her missions to perform. No task was too herculean, nor too tasteless for her.

“Since we’re both colleagues, it comes as no surprise to me that she was the one sent here. After all, I’m the one who taught her the spell to transport between worlds.” It seemed to be something that could be very powerful in the wrong hands. Juuto would be more concerned about more special guests arriving, but according to the boy, very few were capable of performing the spell. Even Rame’s version was limited as it required a world with inherent magic to allow her to keeps hers upon arrival.

“If you taught her that spell, then you two must’ve been friends, right?” Juuto asked. This prompted Akitomo to stop dead in his tracks. He was silent more a moment, as if rage was building up inside of him.

“Friends? As if!” He spoke without a care about the world around him. “I hate her! There’s no way I’d ever consider a pig like her to be a friend!”

“Hey calm down.” Juuto tried to calm him. People were beginning to look at them weird with this act. “I don’t know what’s she’s done to you, but maybe now’s not the time to angry about it.”

“I’ll never forgive her. She… She… She always took the credit for everything!”

“Huh?”

“We used to be partners, but every time we finished a quest, she always took the credit for it. I should be the famous one, not her!”

“Quest?” The crowd of people were getting confused with his outburst. This sounded like an odd role playing thing to them. Their murmurs weren’t lost on Juuto. “Hey, maybe we should get going.” He whispered to him. They were drawing too much attention to themselves. “You’re kind of embarrassing me.”

“Ha, embarrassing? How about the time she humiliated me during our last mission together. That girl took my clothes as bait for the monster and I had to walk around town almost half naked for the day.”

“All right, that’s it.” Without saying anything else, Juuto picked up Akitomo and put him over his shoulder. It was no trouble to do so, as the young boy was half his size. “Don’t worry about us, he’s just upset about some girl at school.” He gave up a nervous laugh as he took them away from the scene.

“Sorry about that.” Akitomo said after they were able to get away from everyone. “Just thinking about that woman gets me mad.”

“It’s fine.” Juuto wasn’t going to hold a grudge over this. “But how did you figure out her true identity?”

“She doesn’t look any different than back on Enatis. Same goes for all of us, actually.” Since they all just looked like normal humans do. It would’ve been pretty easy for all of them to blend in with the people of Earth. That piece of knowledge made him wonder if he had actually seen someone from Enatis before without realizing it.

However, Akitomo hadn’t gotten the chance to meet her yet. In fact, it took a few days for him to catch a glimpse of her since that woman always stayed indoors without answering the door when she was at home. Marie also always brushed off Rame, so he never had the opportunity to see her when she returned from work.

So out of curiosity, he waited before work to see her leave her for own job. That was when he was shocked to see who it really was. In that moment, he hid to not allow her to be aware of his presence, for he knew that her arrival could only mean trouble for all of them.

“I meant to talk with you sooner, but I caught you having lunch with that woman. I thought that it must’ve meant she already got to you somehow. Her charm is said to be difficult for men to resist.” He realized that wasn’t the case after seeing that conversation with Asaga.

“Why does everyone just… Never mind.” It wasn’t the first time people thought he was romantically involved with someone from Enatis. “But how are we going to take care of her?”

“Don’t worry, I already came up with a plan.”