My name is Aya and today, the lovebirds of J-MEF gave me a news that I don't want to hear. Lukman, one of the our agents residing in that facility, had informed us that his superior is a spy. A woman called "Miss One".

According to our report, she does not have a family, aged 31 years old, little to no official records, and comes from The Federation. Textbook examples of a civilian spy, or just a regular one. I have seen this kinds before on the records of people that goes in and out of J-MEF. But this is the first time that we've ever gotten to a close contact with one of them.

Right now, I'm walking as fast as I can to a meeting room not far from here. It's located at the corner of the building, shielded by a sound proof materials and thick enough to hold out against gun shots. It is a special place, because right now I'm summoned by a special someone.

The first person that I'm worried about is Kojima, my to-be-husband that's full of imagination and experience as an infiltrator. He's currently inside, waiting for me to give a report.

The second one is of course, Agent C. Our resident wisdom giver, he might not be the best out of all agents, but an old man in a profession full of young people is something that you must respect. Hell, he was on the field recently, doing stuff a person years younger than him couldn't even imagine to do. I mean, rescuing a captured informant from the grasps of violent gangs is quite extraordinary, for anyone regardless of age.

The third one is Mr. D. A rough man with a rough facial hair, he is the most uptight out of all of us. Very direct, knowledgeable, and fierce to his enemies. If a war broke out, he is the first one that we will call to organize our men and women.

Last but not least, Mr. B. I have not seen him for a while, probably because he's holing up in his "cavern" twiddling around with mana scripts, trying to perfect his magic devices.

I opened the door to the meeting room. They are already lined up around a circular table, projector is on, and ready to be used. Agent C gave me a nod and I proceed to say my piece as soon as I possibly could.

Aya

Gentlemen, I implore you to take a look at the projected screen. This woman right here is Miss One, currently working as an employee in J-MEF. She also happens to be Agent L's direct superior, so close contact with her are expected. We will mostly talk about her contact with another unknown J-MEF resident.

That alone isn't extraordinary, because you always meet new people in J-MEF either through luck or by business. But this time is different, simply because the content of the conversation might have an espionage element in it.

The conversation is coming from an audio data that Agent P sent through her pendant right towards our comm line. The pendant is magical by nature of course, so we have converted it into digital form for ease of analysis. What we've got is an hour of conversation between Miss One, which are poorly masked by an amateur made voice changer, and another person that's also doing the same.

Details have to wait, because the report came about an hour ago and it's still being analyzed right now. But it's clear that they are exchanging information about the mana production in J-MEF. We're also crosschecking every single J-MEF resident with the data that we got from our married agents.

That's the gist of what's transpired. Gentlemen, any thoughts?

Everyone is thinking and moving their seats about. A seat made out of very flexible material, floating in the air effortlessly with the help of a mana script, making it a magical device. All of them are colored black, with grey stripes around its edges. I've sat on them recently, they are very comfortable and customizable. The chair's height, arm rests, lumbar support, and everything in between. It's like the kings of all kings in the ever so boring office chair industry.

But they're not treating it like so. Those chairs are seen as ordinary tools. Everyone is oblivious to how good they are and how much paperwork I need to get through to acquire them.

Yes, I am the one that put those chairs there. It is there to replace whatever they were using before. All I can remember from the old one was their smell, old age, and flaws in their designs. Imagine having to sit and think for hours upon end, on a chair that looks like it have gone through war, dies, get revived, and then dies again.

Mr. D

We need details, quickly. Every single syllable that woman said must be analyzed now. Those information might be detrimental to whether we should fortify our perimeter or not.

Agent C

Let's not act as a warmonger before we are in a war, Mr. D. We are not in one right now. For all we know, they could just be exchanging regular reports about the state of J-MEF. The Federation has values in that, because insider information could definitely benefit their fragile economic situation.

The price movement of mana are determined by its supply. If The Federation could predict the supply before it's revealed to the public, they could prepare whether they should keep or sell their mana to its citizens.

Mr. B

Relaxing ourselves would undo us all. Let's not forget that The Federation is back channeling their shit towards Milium. They are no more than puppets.

Agent C

That's not entirely true, they also gave us precious information when we need them. Well, when we have enough money to buy it. They are playing the middle game here, non align type of politics. It's easier to choose your allies when everyone is your friend.

But it doesn't make sense.

Aya

May I interject?

All eyes is on me. They stopped their conversation mid through. It is a symbol of respect for them to do that, but it's always nerve-wracking every time.

Aya

Miss One indeed came from The Federation, but her behaviors are not reflecting this fact. In front of you is a familiar picture, taken by Agent P and again sent through us with the help of the pendant.

Mr. D

I thought the pendant could only transmit sound?

Aya

We're resourceful.

Agent C

That's...

That's a chalk mark, an old spy doctrine made by Milium. I've heard that they are still using that, but didn't believe it.

Mr. B

I agree, it does look very stupid and detectable. Also, I told you that those feddies are Milium's lapdog!

Mr. D

The chalk thing is fine for most situation. If it's not broken, don't fix it.

Mr. B

But it's broken, though. We know that's them. They are not hiding it very well too, looks sloppy. It's too big, too long, and too visible to not be noticed by an average civ. Whoever did the chalk marks are definitely untrained.

Agent C

So an untrained spy that has ties to Milium are playing games in J-MEF, having a contact with a third-rate-nobody mana researcher called "Miss One", to exchange mana production infos. It doesn't make any sense. Milium are full of corruption, but they aren't stupid enough to throw a civ like Miss One into the middle of a neutral zone. An untrained spy is too much of a wild card for a long term operation, so they must have something up their sleeves.

His analysis is spot on. Right now, there are ten analyst working tirelessly weeding through every documentation we have about the people of J-MEF, to search for a candidate that match Miss One's supposed handler's profile. We even included our own countrymen, just to be safe.

The room goes silent, lamenting on what Agen C have said. He's correct that Milium isn't the type of country that would throw a civilian into J-MEF and make them act like a spy. It's idiotic, because untrained agents are too much of a wild card to hold. They are unpredictable, unstable, and doesn't have the fundamentals of espionage baked behind their brains.

That means, if they really were people that had a connection to Milium's government, then it's safe to say something very bad is brewing behind the scene. We all realized that, but none of us know what to do. At least something that won't raise any alarm and agitate someone to press the "kill-everyone-kinds-of-war" button.

Our silence continues for minutes, which felt like hours. At the corner of the room, Kojima is resting his bottom on the edge of a table. He's twiddling a bundle of paper, a high-level report that I gave out for my presentation. Probably going through permutation of condition if a war actually breaks out. Which place he needs to put his agents in, what kind of technologies needed to be developed quickly, where civilians need to stay in a times of chaos. The ice then breaks once Mr. B stands up from his seat.

Mr. B

Let's continue this meeting. To the next topic of discussion. Because I need everyone in this room to carefully examine what I've got on my bag. Kojima, would you please help me with a demonstration?

Kojima

デモンストレーション？

Mr. B

You'll see, just stand over there and replace your shirt with this one.

Mr. B took out a heavily locked black briefcase, hidden under the table. He punched in a combination of numbers to unlock it. It opens quickly, there's a spring-like system that automatically turn the briefcase side into a right angle. Inside there's a pistol, a metal pipe, and a white shirt with inscription on it. It looks like someone's hand writing, messy, full of write-overs, scribbles. But I'm familiar with those symbols and letters, they are magical in nature, thus making this shirt a magical device. This doesn't look ordinary to me, everyone has at least one of them in their bedroom, though with a much cleaner and uniform writing. Probably because the one I wore tends to be printed by machine instead of human beings.

Mr. B

Kojima-kun is now wearing a magic device, as you can see from the scribble all over the fabrics. But this is no ordinary magical device that just warm yourself for example. This is high grade military stuff that I've come upon a day ago.

Let me show you what it does with a little demonstration.

Kojima is standing still in the end of the room, far away from the projector. Mr. B starts by applying a drop of mana from his personal container. That scribbled shirt glows for a moment, a bright hue of blue, before turning off completely.

Mr. B then grabs a metal pipe from his briefcase and starts to touch him with it. Nothing out of the ordinary, but B seems very excited about it. Kojima is displeased with how he's treated and shove the metal pipe away. Mr. B takes notice to it and walks away from him, and promptly, throw the metal pipe as hard as possible into his direction.

CLANG!

My eyes are open wide the whole time, I feel like seeing an illusion. The metal pipe is stopping right in front of him and drops to the ground, as if there's a force that stops it. Everyone quickly gets what's happening, but no one seems to be moving to check it out, except Agent C.

Agent C throw a ballpoint right at him from a distance, aimed accurate towards his head. In the same way as that metal pipe, the ballpoint stops as soon as it's close to him, and drops to the ground. I realized what the gun is there for, but I'm not risking my fiance's life any longer.

Aya

Please sto-

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

Mr. D

Holy...

Agent C

It...

It works...

This will change everything about warfare as we know it. How did you come upon this magic?

Mr. B

What matters now is that I have reversed engineer it enough to make a reproducible blueprints that can be used to mass produce this device. That's the "good news" part of this magical device.

Aya

How can you be so sure?! You almost killed my fiance there! What do you think will happen when your experimental shit is not working properly, huh?!

Kojima

心配しないでください、ぼく大丈夫です。

Aya

Shut up darling, you're not any better! You should've run away the second he's reaching for that gun!

Mr. B

Now now, I have tried this shirt myself and have gone through a lot of tests with ballistics people. I even put explosive near it, throw it with dusts and other contaminants. Nothing gets through it. This is very well made, complicated, and efficient. A marvel of magical craft, engineering, and art.

Mr. D

We get it, it's fascinating. But we can't really release this technology right now through mass production. Not when we are in peace time. It's unwise to poke the ego of Milium, making them mad because we are better at magic than them.

Mr. B

Oh yeah, that's the "bad news" part of this device.

Everyone stops breathing and shuts up.

Agent C

What's the "bad news"?

Mr. B

This device...

We didn't make this. None of us did.

Agent C

Then who did?

Mr. B

You wouldn't like the answer to that.