1
The blare of synthesizer music filled the room. The near pitch-black darkness was illuminated only briefly by black light and colored strobes. This was no ordinary nightclub, and rather than a bar at its center, it featured a stage where barely clothed women twisted their hips in lascivious motions.
“Calling me out to a strip club. Isn’t this sexual harassment?”
The girl sighed and raised a nonalcoholic cocktail to her lips. She was dressed in a policewoman’s outfit, but there was no police force in Tokonatsu City, so it must have been a costume. What the man couldn’t figure out was whether the short-haired woman before him was the Dealer or the Magistellus. Both had identical facial features, and attempting to use his smartphone to analyze them only resulted in a stream of garbled nonsense.
Her name was Futashika Layer, and her Magistellus was a doppelgänger.
Perhaps the girl had modeled her character after first checking what kind of demon she’d contracted with. The man grinned from his seat opposite her across a low table.
“The lights here are dark, and you can barely hear a thing. Plus, the other customers are all distracted by the dancers, and recordings are prohibited even in this era of smartphones and social media. All that makes Prostitute Island the perfect place to discuss things in secret.”
“And what kind of secrets are we discussing?”
“Man, I love girls. The more skin they show, the better. Personally, I prefer the ones with a little meat on their bones, you know? Skinny girls remind me too much of my sister.”
He said this so matter-of-factly, she figured he must be one of those eccentrics you found among the most powerful Dealers. And even though he was in the middle of an important discussion, he had no qualms about stuffing banknotes into the girls’ cleavage whenever they finished their dances.
Criminal AO.
Even after everything he had just been through, he was still smiling like he didn’t have a care in the world.
At first glance, he seemed like an idiot, but Futashika Layer knew better than to let down her guard. Dealers with a good grasp on their own desires were a force to be reckoned with. They couldn’t be flustered and they knew just when to quit—both incredibly useful skills if you saw this virtual world as a money-making game.
A mysterious smile spread across the man’s face.
“I want information,” he said.
“And you’ll get it, if the price is right.”
“I want to know the whereabouts of one Dealer in particular. A girl by the name of Pavilion.”
“…I presume you already know about our history?” the girl in the policewoman outfit enquired testily.
It had all begun when the Ag Wolves went after Pavilion over the Legacies. After Kaname Suou had duped the lot of them, Pavilion had hired a group of hitmen to hunt down and finish off any survivors.
Thanks to that, Futashika Layer had been having a long string of nothing but bad days. After all, she had been a member of the Ag Wolves, too.
“You put together quite the file on her, didn’t you?” said Criminal AO. “More than your work requires.”
“…”
“However, you lack the firepower necessary to make a move. All I’m asking is for you to allow me to take over. I have a lead on where to get what’s needed.”
“If you’re that good at gathering information, I can’t imagine you need me…”
Futashika Layer threw up her hands in defeat, and her twin stuck her fingers into her mouth. However, she was not rudely picking out some loose piece of spinach but removing a microfilm hidden behind her back teeth.
The tiny storage medium was about a quarter the size of a postage stamp and contained all the information one would need to abduct or kill a target.
The one who’d been doing the talking wiped the other’s fingers with a handkerchief before taking a tortilla chip and using it to scoop up a liberal amount of salsa.
“Well, she’s an oddball, for sure,” Futashika Layer explained. “She holds auctions every day of the year. Sometimes in fancy hotels, sometimes in opera houses. Right now, she’s got her eye on either the Celestial Chapel or Sky Impact.”
“Just as I thought, then.”
“…Oh, I see. You were just using me to confirm what you already knew. That explains it.”
Takamasa tended not to pay in snow, especially as far as his mission was concerned. He couldn’t let the AI know what he was doing with his money beyond stuffing it between women’s breasts. Instead, he picked up a briefcase that had been resting at his feet. It was filled with numerous glass cylinders about the size of whiskey tumblers.
The girl in the policewoman’s outfit stared blankly as he began lining them up on the table.
“Camera lenses?”
“Handmade by yours truly. Take these to whatever shop you like—they’ll fetch a higher price than even those fancy German ones. And because I’m nice, I’ll write you a letter of introduction as well. That way they won’t try to haggle you down.”
The first step of the revolution was to make a currency that couldn’t be digitized.
“Although, I think selling these is a job for a Dealer rather than their Magistellus, don’t you agree?”
Even when faced with something they could readily liquidate, the Magistelli couldn’t turn it into big data unless they understood its value. Other examples of this were signed baseball cards and retro audio equipment—things the general public couldn’t easily judge the worth of.
The woman turned the items over in her hands, examining them closely. Takamasa simply smiled.
“By the way,” he said.
“Yes?”
“Which one of you two is the real Dealer? I’m guessing the human is the one sitting silently in the back.”
Magistelli disliked handling other people’s property, so the one who grabbed the lenses should have been the Dealer. It would have been an easy mistake to make, but these two hadn’t fallen for it.
The pair pressed their soft cheeks together and replied in unison.