"He's essentially vanished?" A man at a desk asked a woman in glasses, his assistant, "Yes. No sightings... No... Anything." Then he started a meeting: "This is BayView Central Command, President Hartenstein. What do we know?" There were 7 other participants in the call, and there was almost silence. "I mean, the only piece of evidence is... a billing address, and even that could be fake." It was the Director of Gravemire: "I mean, if I open my phone and buy something, have my address be my house and change my billing address to Ashfell doesn't make Ashfell the fall guy if my package gets stolen."
There was an uncomfortable silence after this. Then Director Akabane continued, "Well, it wouldn't—" The director of Gravemire cut him off. "So why are you treating this like surefire evidence against the kid?" There was nothing- no legitimate reason they were treating it like a smoking gun. "Who brought this whole thing forward?" The Director of Northwest asked simply, and Director Akabane replied, "Recruit Kairo—" "Stop. No, who brought forward the kill-capture order? The one that was issued seconds before this recruit found the billing address, so who brought this thing forward so the Master of Bayview Criminal Court issued the warrant?"
Director Akabane swallowed. "The Arbiter Prime." Another silence followed, longer and more painful. "We're really using what he's saying as a conclusion?" The Director of Gravemire said with a mixture of annoyance and shock. The Director of Bellgrave, director of another city, spoke, "I mean, he ran? Innocent people don't book it for the hills when authorities are after them." A few directors seemed to agree: "However." The word cut through the call.
"We, as in the ABPU, issued a kill-capture order; he's been around long enough to know what that is. That means if I capture him, at any point, if he looks at me a way I didn't like, I can knock him out, shoot him between the eyes and considering how passionate some of you seem to be over this, and I get it, hundreds of people have died last week; graveyards are running out of space, the vast majority seem to want him dead. So I propose we upgrade the kill capture order to a platinum order."
The Director of Gravemire clapped, "Yes, I am in agreeance we do everything to bring him back alive because we can mentally do whatever to see if this kid actually did it." President Hartenstein sighed; the Director of Gravemire seemed to take it slow. "So what else do we have?" There was a pause. "We have Nova's bodycam and testimony." They replayed the video, showing someone being grabbed by Lucan and the bodycam not being able to see who this alleged person was. "Nova claims Lucan was holding what she believed to be a civilian, but that's horseshit—" "Director!" Hartenstein said, feeling disrespected.
"Aw, what? So this alleged civilian just vanishes. Lucan was holding them; he gets shot at, and they're gone. It wasn't a civilian could have been a humanoid demon or someone who could have framed Lucan, or, let's say it's a civilian do you think any civilian is getting away from an Apex Operative?" This caused Director Akabane to speak up: "It's completely possible, but then Lucan attacked Nova"
The Gravemire Director spoke up, "After she shot him with explosive bullets, they hurt, but then we need to realise that is self-defence on the basis... she fired first. Then that damn note, I'm waiving its possibility as evidence—" The Director of Merrowford nearly choked on his water. "WHAT! You have no right to waive its credibility." Then President Frankie Hartenstein spoke up, "Yeah, I actually think we should... we don't know when it was written, who wrote it, what it means, and their public opinion by Altitude Bay is that he feels betrayed because he fucken saved half of them."
"Oh, Frankie said a bad word."