Chapter 6: Versus Crow Ranger Yellow!
“SO this is where you’ve been slacking off, you good-for-nothing chief.”
At the back of the police station, hidden in the middle of a mountain-like pile of cardboard boxes, was an old staircase in a corridor leading to the rear entrance. Buried between two large water dispensers and several candy machines was the police chief leaning against the wall smoking a cigarette. By using the nearby window he skillfully directed the smoke out of the building and kept his presence hidden.
“Hmph, I’ve been busted, huh? Looks like I’ll have to find myself another place to relax.”
“Why you… You do know that our station is supposed to be completely smoke-free now, right?”
“Oh yeah, right. Terrible, that, don’t you think? I, for one, find it objectionable that whenever the esteemed general public happens to come up with some bright idea, we have to rush to implement it. Look at me, having to hide in my own station to have a smoke because of some bleedin’ lungs.”
Ren only sighed at the chief blowing a cloud of smoke in his face. He was a smoker too, so it wasn’t as if he couldn’t empathize with the sentiment, but not to the extent of actually sneaking about to smoke. Besides, the moment he took his eyes off the man, he’d no doubt disappear somewhere to skip work. Were all officers counting the days till their retirement like that?
“There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”
“We can talk here, right? Go on. Oh, here’s the ashtray.”
“I’m not smoking! Getting chewed out if they find me or getting a pay cut’s not really a part of my plan for today.”
The man tutted and deliberately closed his lips around his cigarette, which looked a bit childish. He was dressed in a wrinkled shirt, with a somewhat lopsided necktie looped around its collar, his slacks held up by suspenders. His entire outfit seemed picked out only to exemplify his slovenly appearance.
The man was none other than the boss of the ‘Champions of Justice’, the one Ren and the gang called ‘chief’. One day, he announced the formation of a new squad, to be called the Crow Rangers, designated Ren as Green, and gave him the smartphone with the built-in tracking device. No matter how far removed from reasonable that was, as a member of the force, he could do nothing but nod his assent to his new assignment. Such was the tragic reality of having a job where respecting the chain of command was of the essence.
Ren’s first thought had been, The chief must’ve lost his marbles. What was all this talk of Supreme Ruler of Evil, magic, and Champions of Justice all about? No one who has reached the ripe age of twenty-six expects words like that thrown at them with utmost seriousness at their place of work. But when he tried going to the place marked on his tracking device, he had indeed encountered a ‘Supreme Ruler of Evil’ there, who had been using ‘magic’ to boot.
She was just a girl. Even as she got innocently flustered by the grown-ups’ teasing, she still did her best to pursue her goals and achieve them. If he just closed his eyes, he could vividly picture her many expressions—here she was, eyes lit up from within by defiance and determination, and there she was with her cheeks stained pink in embarrassment and surprise.
It was in order to learn more about this girl that he came to ask his slacker of a boss a few questions. So, Ren leaned against the opposite wall before the man, leveling him with a glare, and growled threateningly, “Mia. Tell me about her.”
“Mia… You must mean Mia Oonari. What do you want to know?” Chief willingly indulged him.
Ren was bemused at the unexpected ease with which the man yielded, but pressed on. “First, the tracking device. Why is there a chip buried in Mia’s body?”
“That’s her father’s doing. He planted one in his own body too, and he was the one who handed me the tracking system.”
“I thought as much. Why would he do such a thing? Weren’t you and her dad enemies, you being a Champion of Justice and him the Supreme Ruler of Evil and all?”
The man opened his mouth, only to expel some smoke from it in a quiet exhale. He had a peculiar expression on his face—it was as if he had been anticipating this very question coming someday, and felt at peace with having Ren finally ask it.
“Mia’s father gave me the system before he became the ‘Supreme Ruler of Evil’. We were friends since high school, him and I. It was when I got dispatched here, to this town, to work as a police officer, that he appeared all of a sudden and offered the tracker to me.”
This meant that the connection Ren had inferred was not between the police at large and Mia’s father, but between the chief and Mia’s father, on a personal level. So, the girl’s father had given the tracking device away before becoming the Supreme Ruler of Evil. Mia must’ve been a baby at the time.
“Say, since when did the whole ‘Champions of Justice’ things start? …Here, in the police force, I mean.”
“I don’t know, but, according to rumors, we’ve had them for a long, long time. Only in this town’s police corps, for some reason. It’s probably due to Mia’s family living here for generations, but anyway, somehow, the Champions of Justice seem to have always been here, their member lineup changing every time a new Supreme Ruler of Evil emerges. That seems to be the tradition. Don’t ask me who decided all this, I really have no idea,” Chief said somewhat apologetically, ducking his head. “If you want exact dates, just find some old news articles. Prior to Mia’s father, both groups were in the news quite often.”
Leaning against the wall before Ren, Chief took another hefty drag of his cigarette, before releasing another puff. It was hard to believe that the man in front of him was actually one of the people appointed to be a Champion of Justice during Mia’s father’s time as Supreme Ruler of Evil. And, using the tracking system, every time a surge of magic was detected, he headed to the crime scene, nipping the evil deed in the bud.
“Evil deeds? Did he really do any, Mia’s old man?”
“That he did! All awfully petty though, now that I think about it. We once fought at a big dog park, when I found him there releasing the massive pack of dogs he formed by luring pets away from their owners with his magic. All the dogs were enhanced to insane levels—could likely have taken out a Kodiak bear and won on their own. They were a nightmare to deal with.
“Then there was that time he appeared at the trip paid for by the force for my outstanding service, when I was itching to go have a soak at the hot springs, and he put a literal damper on the mood by making it rain pumpkins. And I am not talking tiny little baseball-sized ones, but car sized. Imagine hundreds of pumpkins the size of a car falling out of the sky… Gah, just thinking about it brings back old pains. Or, when I’d go to a cabaret club, he’d make all the hostesses fall in love with him, so they’d ignore me completely. …Ah, that was just because he had a pretty face, dammit.”
Ren had seen the pictures of the man, and he had indeed been good-looking. But, however nice his facial features, he could never look at him the same way ever since he found out that he had been taking baths together with his high schooler daughter.
Be that as it may, the evil deeds he had perpetrated were even more small-time than Ren had imagined, to the extent that no one in their right mind would think to call them that. Not that giant pumpkins and overpowered dogs weren’t dangerous, but they just didn’t really scream ‘Evil’. The level on which he had operated was almost the same as Mia’s—just more competent.