A week passed with little happening except for the normal day-to-day activities. In a conference room at the police station, Ren stretched his mouth wide open in a huge yawn. All of the Crow Rangers, Misaki, Subaru, Shou and Aya, sat inside, each of them trying to kill time in their own way.
“Man, Chief’s late…”
“He’ll probably come once he’s back from smoking who-knows-where again.”
“Ugh, he’s the worst. Doesn’t he know there are people waiting on him? And we’re supposedly already off the clock, too!”
Recently, all the rooms inside the police station had been marked as nonsmoking, so the chief, whose love for tobacco was well-documented, was always loitering about looking for someplace to light one up. All of the Rangers were of the same opinion, namely, that a man like that was probably unfit to be their boss—or anyone’s boss for that matter. Since it had become very difficult to smoke inside the station, he resorted to doing it outside. Though they would’ve really appreciated if he deigned to do his job every once in a while too.
All the members were talking animatedly to each other, except for Subaru, who was researching something on his smartphone instead of participating in the conversation.
“Subaru, what’ve you been looking up so zealously these last few minutes, huh?”
“Oh, I was just wondering if there’s some food that’s good for curing a cold. If I make lots of vegetable soup with ginger and give the whole pot to her…would she eat it in the morning?”
“This ‘she’ being Mia?”
Subaru confirmed Misaki’s guess with a nod. Over the past few days, Mia had developed a cold; there was no mistaking it this time around. She didn’t seem to have a fever, but her face was slightly flushed and her voice raspy. As the days went on, Subaru, having long since taken on the role of her older brother, became worried. He wanted her to recover before her flu became aggravated and developed into a serious concern.
Normally, he only cooked her dinner, but lately he wanted her to have a nutritious breakfast as well. He had been putting in an admirable amount of hard work toward her health. He was probably quite serious about counting Mia among his family members now.
A few moments later, the door clicked open. In came a man with his trousers held up by suspenders, a crooked necktie worn over a wrinkled shirt. This wretched excuse of a man was their boss, the commander of the Crow Rangers.
“Oh, you’re all already here. My bad,” their boss apologized halfheartedly and walked over to stand in front of the window. He then craned his neck to look back and surveyed the team members behind him over his shoulder.
“Well, it’s been a while since we met up face to face like this. There’s something I want to talk to you about today, but before we go into that, there’s something I’d like to confirm first. How’s the Supreme Ruler of Evil been behaving lately?”
Was it a habit of the chief’s to cut straight to the chase without any lead up? Come to think of it, when he came up with the terrible-sounding, stupid name “Crow Rangers”, he had brought it up in a similarly abrupt manner.
Those memories playing through his mind, Misaki, who had been appointed the Rangers’ leader, answered in his capacity as the representative of the group, “Her recent movements, huh…? Well, I heard she hurt a few delinquents who were lighting up firecrackers in the parking lot of a supermarket yesterday.”
“Ah, those guys. They were so noisy! No wonder she woke up with all that cracking and banging in the middle of the night.”
“Right, right! She came out wearing her pajamas with a scarf and a cape, her hair sticking out in all directions. She was so cute, right?”
“The cutest! Remember her nightgown? Surprisingly girly, huh? You know, with all those frills and ribbons.”
Whenever the girl used magic, Ren and the others would rush to her, even if it happened to be the dead of night. Afterwards they’d usually mess about a bit, or “do battle” as Mia would put it. Then they’d make up some excuse and send Mia back home. This was what the Crow Rangers normally did, but the confrontation this time took place so late at night, Mia had been way too sleepy to go through the usual motions. Leaving the delinquents to Misaki and the rest of the team, Mia had Ren escort her home.
“Other than that, let’s see... On Monday two weeks ago she caught a vendor who was dumping garbage illegally in the mountain forest.”
“Well, she’s pretty serious about sorting garbage and all that.”
“That mountain was an illegal dumping ground for the longest time now. But Mia used her magic on that disgusting mess to bring everything to the correct trash drop-off locations.”
“Yeah, that was a huge help!” All of the Rangers nodded in agreement.
Illegal dumping was one of the main problems the local police struggled to resolve. While she had been busy cleaning everything up, the Rangers promptly put in a request to erect a fence or something around the area to prevent further incidents from occurring.
Having listened to their brief reports on Mia’s activity, the chief crossed his arms. “I’d like to ask one more thing,” he man began, “The way you’re telling me about her behavior, it seems like the current Supreme Ruler of Evil isn’t actively trying to fight you. Or am I missing something here?”
“I wouldn’t say that. But, frankly speaking, even though she can use magic, her combat abilities are negligible.”
They didn’t know how it was during their chief’s generation or even their distant predecessors’, not that they really cared to research the history of the Rangers and the various overlords of the past anyway. They didn’t even really care what Mia’s father had been like, but Mia’s combat skills were essentially nonexistent.
She probably had no prior fighting experience, so her solution to everything was magic. That meant that if they could just cover her mouth, they were able to render her completely powerless. For regular police officers such as Misaki and Aya who didn’t have too much confidence in their combat abilities, it was admittedly a very difficult feat to pull off, but the fighting prowess of Ren and the other two was considerable.
Furthermore, according to those three, the way Mia used her magic was dreadfully amateurish. If only she fought dirty, then no matter how much the three of them improved their combat skills or physical abilities, they would still have a hard time subduing her.
Mia only seemed to engage in head-on fights. She refused to resort to foul play or surprise attacks, she never started a fight without declaring her intentions, and she always prefaced her attacks with a loud, “Here I come!” It was no wonder they could fend her off with ease when that was the only way she ever came for them.
Sometimes she’d open up a pitfall under Misaki’s feet, but that was the extent of her sneak attacks. Incidentally, she had once tricked Ren in this manner, but he had devised a “special” punishment for her after that as a payback, and she hadn’t tried it on him since.
“I see,” the chief nodded in understanding after hearing their explanation. “Not only is she a terrible fighter, but she’s playing fair and square to boot. …Haha, she’s just the way I imagined her to be.”
“Chief, do you know Mia?” Subaru, who was just listening without saying anything thus far, asked with a great deal of surprise.
“Well, kind of,” the chief laughed and scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Hmm, but the way she acts, combined with her personality… Plus, the fact your battles with her aren’t even real fights…This must mean she doesn’t know.”
“...What do you mean by that?”
“Hm, or rather, she hasn’t been told, would be the more correct way to put it. It seemed like he knew, so he must’ve kept her in the dark for some reason. …No, he couldn’t bring himself to tell her, that must’ve been it,” the chief muttered the last part under his breath, seemingly speaking to himself rather than the team members who sat around him.
“Chief, I’m asking you one more time... What do you mean by ‘she doesn’t know’?” Ren inquired with unease, a sense of foreboding rising inside him like a tidal wave.
The chief’s head snapped up at the question, eyeing the team members sitting around him. For a while, he stayed silent, his expression pained, but then, making his mind up, he opened his mouth and uttered, “The spell to take over the world.”
As his words cut through the room, the space was filled with shocked silence, everybody in it at a loss for words.