“Riko Mine Lupin the Forth. That’s my real name.”
…Lupin…? That Lupin? The great French phantom thief who we read about in our Inquesta textbook? Riko is…the great-granddaughter of Arsène Lupin?!
“But…no one in my family ever called me ‘Riko’. They wouldn’t call me by the cute name my mother gave me. They had a strange way of addressing me.”
“Strange…?” whispered Aria.
“Fourth. Fourth. Fourth. Miss Fooourth. Every single one of them…even the damned servants…that’s what they called me. Isn’t that horrible?”
“W-What of it? What’s so bad about “Fourth”?
For some reason, Riko suddenly opened her eyes wide and glared at Aria who posed the question.
“…What isn’t bad about it?! Am I a number?! Am I nothing but DNA?! I’m Riko! I’m not a number! Damn you all!”
Without warning, Riko went into a rage. She wasn’t screaming at us per se, but at somebody else. Her anger wasn’t directed at the present situation, but at somewhere else.
What’s with this girl?!
“Unless I exceed my great-grandfather, I’ll never be able to be myself. I’ll just be treated as ‘Lupin’s great-granddaughter’. That’s why I joined IU and obtained this power. Using this power, I’m going to take myself back!”
Aria had a serious look on her face while she was listening to Riko, who wasn’t making a bit of sense.
“Wait. Hold on. What are you talking about…?! What is Olmes? What is IU? Were you…really the one behind the ‘Butei killings’?!”
“…‘Butei killings’? Oh. That was just…” Riko shifted her gaze to Aria. “…a game I was using as a prologue. The person I’m really after is Olmes the Fourth—you, Aria.”
Her eyes were no longer the eyes of the Riko I knew. They were the eyes of an animal fixated on its prey.
“One hundred years ago, the battle between our great-grandfathers ended in a draw. In other words, if I can eliminate Olmes the Fourth, I can prove that I’ve surpassed my great-grandfather. Kinji…be sure to play your part.”
The animal-like eyes turned towards me.
“Members of the Olmes family require a partner. Olmes the First, who fought with my great-grandfather, had an excellent partner. That’s why I had you hook up with Aria—to keep the conditions the same.”
“You brought Aria and me together?”
“Yup.”
Riko giggled and reverted back to her usual frivolous self.
This girl… The whole “idiot Riko" character was just an act she had been putting on the entire time.
“I planted a bomb on your bicycle and had it send out a reeeally simple radio frequency.”
“So you realized I was tracking the radio frequency that the ‘Butei killer’ used…!”
“Well of course I did. I mean, you were so overtly checking with Connect. But Kinji didn’t seem very interested…so I had him cooperate with you during the bus-jacking.”
“The bus-jacking too…?!”
“Kinjiii. A Butei should never entrust his watch to somebody else, no matter what the circumstances are. If you keep track of time with an imprecise watch, you’ll be late for school.”
My watch… So when we were in the greenhouse, she broke it on purpose. Then she offered to repair the watch as an excuse to take it home with her where she tampered with it. As a result, I missed the seven fifty-eight bus that day…
“So…everything went just as you planned, is that it?!”
“Mmm, not exactly. There was one thing that was completely unexpected. I used the bicycle-jacking as a way of getting you two to meet, and I had you team up with each other during the bus-jacking. But I hadn't counted on your unwillingness to stay partners with Aria. I was rather surprised that you didn’t take action until I told you about how I took care of your brother.”
Kinichi.
“My brother… It was you…?!”
Kinichi. The person I idolized and respected more than anyone. She’s the one who killed him…!
I could feel it. I could feel the blood rushing to my head.
This was my weakness. When my brother was involved, I couldn’t keep my cool…!
“Hee hee. Look, Aria. Your partner’s upset. Fight alongside him!”
Riko… Just what one would expect from the granddaughter of phantom thief Lupin. I assume this is all going according to plan as well…!
“Kinji, I’ll let you in on something special. Guess what? Your brother…he’s currently my boyfriend.”
“Cut the crap!”
“Kinji! She’s trying to provoke us! Calm down!”
“How the hell am I supposed to calm down!?”
I am not going to let you continue to insult my departed brother!
I impulsively tightened the grip in my right hand, which was holding the Beretta, and at that instant, the plane shook violently again.
“!”
“Oh là là♪” Before I realized it, the Beretta had disappeared from my hand. The gun made a hollow sound as it broke apart on the floor right behind me. All I could see was the smiling face of Riko who was pointing a small-sized pistol at me—a Walther P99.
“Non, non. We can’t have that, Kinji. The way you are now, you won’t be of any use in a battle. And besides, Olmes’ partner isn’t the type who participates in fighting. He takes the viewpoint of a regular civilian, giving Olmes hints and drawing out her full potential. Play that role.”
Seeing an opening while Riko was busy giving her lecture, Aria made her move. She was like a little lioness. I had just noticed her spring forward when she had her two pistols out homing in on Riko. She must have judged from seeing Riko’s weapon that it would work. In close combat between two Butei who always wore bulletproof clothing, a bullet was no longer a weapon that penetrated and killed the opponent in one shot. It became a blunt weapon. That being the case, the total number of bullets in one’s possession would determine the outcome. If Riko were hiding an Uzi, which can contain twenty or thirty bullets, underneath that large skirt of hers, Aria would be at a disadvantage. But a Walther 99 normally only held up to sixteen bullets. In comparison, Aria’s Government held seven bullets. If you put a bullet in the chamber ahead of time, or inserted one into the ejector, that would make a total of eight. Since she had two pistols, that gave her a total of sixteen shots. It was even.
Or so I thought.
“Aria, you shouldn’t assume you’re the only one who uses twin pistols.” Riko threw aside her cocktail glass and with that hand, pulled out another Walther P99 from underneath her skirt.
“!”
But Aria wasn’t in a position to stop now.
Blam, blam blam!
Aria started firing her pistols at Riko from point-blank range.
“Grah! Why you…!”
“Haha! Ahahaha!”
Aria and Riko were competing to hit each other with their bullets, the two of them only inches apart. Butei Charter, Article Nine, “Under no circumstances shall a Butei kill another person while operating as a Butei.” Aria avoided aiming at Riko’s head in order to uphold that law. I’m uncertain if Riko was attempting to fight on the same terms, but she wasn’t aiming at Aria’s head either. Aria’s and Riko’s hands intermingled as if they were in the middle of a fierce martial arts competition. A close-combat gun fight between Butei involved staying out of your opponent’s line of fire, dodging, or using your own arms to knock aside the arms of your opponent.
Bang! Bang, Bang!
The bullets fired from their guns miss their small-bodied targets and instead embed themselves into the walls and the floor.
“Ha!”
Riko laughed aloud when both of Aria’s guns signaled that they were out of ammunition, but at that instant, Aria pinned both of Riko’s arms underneath her armpits. The two of them stood there together as if they were embracing, and Riko’s pistols went silent.
That’s the way! In hand-to-hand combat, the odds look like they’d be in Aria’s favor…!
“Kinji!”
Aria called out to me, but there was no need. Spinning it in my hands, I opened the butterfly knife I kept as a keepsake of my brother. Its blade looked red, glinting under the emergency lamps.
“That’s as far you go, Riko!” I said as I ran towards them, careful to stay clear of the pistols sticking out from behind Aria.
“Quadra… It’s such a coincidence, isn’t it Aria?” said Riko. “You and I are alike in many ways. Our lineage. Our cute looks. And…our nicknames.”
“?”
“I have the same name as you do— ‘Riko the Quadra’. But you know, Aria…”
I stopped in my tracks. Instinctively, it was all I could do, faced with the surreal and eerie scene that spread out before me.
What…is that?!
“…Your ‘Quadra’ isn’t the real thing. You’re still oblivious…to my real power!”