The instant Nicolas let her back down onto firm ground, she shot off like a rocket toward the second floor. Sarah saw her off with a heartwarming smile while murmuring just loud enough for her ex-husband to hear, “Emma loves making things. Her favorite theme is spy tools for you to use.”
“Really? What a reliable little trooper!”
“I’m thinking of teaching her to make a breathalyzer. What do you think?”
“Whoa, that’s not even funny. Don’t worry, I’m not drunk today.”
“Is that your ‘anything less than 3 beers doesn’t count as drinking’ thing?”
“Yeah, that. Yeah.”
“I have no words. I’m seriously begging you here, don’t make a commotion today, and don’t try anything weird. It’s Emma’s birthday, all right?”
“I know, I know,” returned Nicolas while using his fingers to pick up a piece of roast beef from the food table and throw it into his mouth. Sarah made a quick, silent prayer.
“Here you go, Papa! Look at this, look at this! You can use it to defeat the bad guys!” Thundering down the stairs, Emma thrust an ordinary-looking ballpoint pen at Nicolas. He shot a sideways look at his ex-wife, who shrugged her shoulders without saying anything.
“Whoa, what an amazing gadget! How do you use this, Professor? Can you teach Papa?”
“Sure! Look, you press here—” In close quarters, Emma pressed a button on the pen. Abruptly, red-colored liquid shot out from the tip, landing squarely on his face. It was a miracle that he managed to close his eyes in time.
“......So yeah, it shoots out super spicy Tabasco sauce. Um, I’m sorry......”
“As expected of Prof. Mechanic. You’re lucky Papa wasn’t a bad guy, or he would have been done in from that single attack...... Sarah, Sarah, can you bring me something to wipe my face with? It feels like it’s on fire...... all right. Emma, for your birthday present, Papa—”
After wiping off his face with the napkins that he asked for in a small voice, Nicolas was about to give Emma a present in return when he suddenly realized that the only things in his pockets were his wallet, a pack of Skittles, and a bottle of Spirytus.
“—will show you a cool performance. You’ve gotta be able to do this if you wanna be a spy, so watch closely, all right?”
Somehow managing a save at the very last moment, Nicolas then abruptly headed over to pick up all six steak knives lying on the food table and began juggling them.
Emma and the other kids who had come for her party raised squeals of delight, but the adults who were accompanying the children all went pale in the face. After all, a strange man who had an unsteady gait obviously due to being dead drunk was messing about with steak knives. Who could blame them for being alarmed?
“There, there, and there!”
Nicolas then switched gears. One by one, he snatched the knives out of midair and threw them. The balloons decorating the room popped one after the other, with the window behind them gaining a web of cracks accordingly. The last knife burst the largest balloon in the room, then landed smack dab in the middle of the TV screen after barely grazing Sarah’s cheek on the way.
“Thank you, thank you!”
The children erupted with cheers and whistling and applause. Emma, too, numbered among them. The hand that Nicolas raised to respond to their approbation was almost instantly grabbed by Sarah with the strength of a thousand demons. While maintaining a smile on her face, she then proceeded to forcefully drag Nicolas to the front door, where she threw him outside.
“Oi, oi, aren’t you overreacting a bit too much? It was just a little performance.”
“‘Just a little’? I said earlier that you haven’t changed a bit, but I take that back. You’ve gotten even worse than before. Don’t you ever come back here again. Your very presence puts our lives in danger.”
Then the door slammed firmly right in front of Nicolas’ dumbfounded face.
Eventually, Agent Nicolas sulkily plodded over to a nearby park and fell asleep on a bench. Some time during the night, he got woken up by the police, so then he returned to Japan in a depressed mood. Once again, he had made a big mess of his life because of alcohol. He hated himself for never learning his lesson. His only solace was the fact that Emma had apparently taken a liking to him.
It really was high time to distance himself from alcohol. If he did, then could he become an upright man who could not only be a great papa to his daughter, but also a great husband to his wife? Agent Nicolas reflected deeply, and swore upon the modified ballpoint pen that he had received from Emma to never touch alcohol again.
In total, it was his 420th time vowing to go sober.
After listening left-ear-in-right-ear-out to the complaints of his subordinates about how helter-skelter everything had been due to the sudden disappearance of their superior, Agent Nicolas then threw himself back into the Super Water Sphere Incident investigation. He wanted to forget his mess-up by immersing himself in his work.
In order to investigate the organizations that they had been ordered to, they of course had to get access. Enticing employees who worked there to become moles who’d pass them information was one option, but that carried the risk of being fed misinformation. In the end, the surest way was to infiltrate inside directly. But with that said, the number of agents under Agent Nicolas was limited, whereas the list that they had to investigate was quite sizable. To make up for that lack of manpower, Agent Nicolas purposely leaked parts of the “list of organizations that might be backing the espers” to other countries’ intelligence agencies.
As a result, the other countries’ agencies also dove into action, exactly according to plan. Afterward, the CIA merely had to hack those agencies to learn what they’d learned. One trick in managing an organization is to “outsource” wherever possible. There was of course a slight possibility of another country’s intelligence agency getting ahead, but America, and the CIA by extension, had enough power and influence to forcibly insert themselves into pretty much any country’s investigation at will.
While making other countries’ intelligence agencies dance like puppets in this manner, Agent Nicolas dedicated himself to personally investigating the organization on the list that he thought the most suspicious. When comparing the basic information about each organization that his home country had sent over, this specific one didn’t really jump out as being any more or less suspicious than all the others. However, Agent Nicolas’ gut whispered to him that this one was fishy. And he had always been a man who listened to his gut. All of his achievements thus far had been attained through dull and steady investigation based on what his gut told him. Of course, then he would invariably mess up at the very last moment due to alcohol, but as he was currently maintaining sobriety, it could be said that he was in perfect condition.
That day, Agent Nicolas put on his very best suit, carefully shaved off all his stubble, trimmed all his fingernails, and then headed to an interview at Kaneyama Tech. As an all too common issue among companies that grow too abruptly, it was suffering from a severe manpower shortage, and thus was constantly hiring. Among those positions that the company was eager to fill was that of security guards. In a stroke of luck for Agent Nicolas, this position just happened to also be perfect for digging around in the company. It was a godsend. And so, with a fake resumé in hand, Agent Nicolas was there to fake it as a job seeker.
As an aside, it actually wouldn’t be much of a problem if his fake resumé was seen through. After all, this was a resumé and background that had been prepared by the CIA. If this company’s background check was so thorough and far-reaching that it could see through something made by the CIA, then that in itself would be grounds for suspicion.
As of late, Tokyo was gradually being overrun with eccentrics and oddballs from all over the world, which was affecting general public order in a negative way. After proceeding down a large road so as to avoid getting involved in any problems, Agent Nicolas eventually ducked into a café that caught his eye as he was feeling a little peckish.
With an older man serving as the store owner, the café actually turned out to have a pretty nice atmosphere. Agent Nicolas ordered a sandwich and a coffee, then grabbed a seat. Out of boredom, he picked up a weekly magazine among the stock of available reading material. As could be expected, there wasn’t really anything worthy of attention in a trifling gossip publication. Agent Nicolas himself could probably fill this many pages with articles that had 300 times more substance. Of course, he would promptly get fired after doing so, though.
“I’M FIIRRREEEEEE MAAAANN!!!”
Caught by surprise right in the middle of taking a sip from the cup of coffee that had been brought to his table, Agent Nicolas inadvertently spat out everything in his mouth. The sudden roar triggered Agent Nicolas to reflexively stick a hand into his chest pocket due to muscle memory from his past, but then he remembered that he was not carrying a gun.
The door of the store was kicked open, then a man spewing flames from his hands barged in. For a split second, Agent Nicolas suspected him to be an esper, but the pyrokinetic known as Burning Girl was, well, a girl, and rampaging under broad daylight in a café went completely against the modus operandi of the secretive organization of espers. That could only mean that this man was just a mere lunatic.
Agent Nicolas wanted to go over and suppress the man quickly, but he was an agent in the middle of a mission. He had to avoid standing out as best he could. Although it pained him a little, he chose to stay still and watch over how the situation developed. That said, it wasn’t long before he saw an opening. Matching the timing of the store owner’s attempt to swing a chair at Fire Man, Agent Nicolas threw his saucer at Fire Man’s feet. Fire Man stepped onto the saucer and lost his balance for a split second, allowing the chair to clinch a square landing. The end result was a one-hit K.O.
Right after that, Agent Nicolas was about to quickly leave the store before the cops arrived, but then he noticed a little girl around his daughter’s age who was crying from having gotten a burn. He couldn’t help himself from tending to her, and thus ended up missing his window of escape.