Mystery from Another World--MHA

Part 184: Macallister

It was hard to do this on purpose--she had to picture herself talking to Iida instead--but she answered in Japanese, she hoped, "What are you saying?"

"That's what I thought," the leader said, "This is too easy. Take them inside."

She motioned.

Shine and Iida were dragged away.

Iida hissed to Shine, "Are you sure about this?"

"No talking!" One of the ninja shoved him. 

No one here spoke Japanese, obviously, or that would have been a dead giveaway. Shine would have been furious at Iida for such a risky slip up, but it helped her in this case. Her mind was really clear. Danger always did this to her.

They were taken inside the barracks--no number 6, however.

But the leader, who was called Lieutenant Macallister by the desk clerk inside, conferred with them.

"No one's answering you from barracks 2?" Macallister said, "And they would have heard the alert. Surround the place, but if those two quirked devils are still active, don't rush in. They need to be neutralized first."

"Our quirk blocking technology will be on, if they go into the actual cell area," the desk clerk said, "but if they stay on the top floor, they could do anything. If one of them is Shigaraki, I've heard he leveled half a city once."

"But our sources say he's weak," Macallister said, "Easily manipulated. As long as we have members of his team, he'll be forced to comply."

"You want to bet money on someone that insane being managed that way?" the clerk said.

"Remember your rank, Private," Macallister said warningly.

"Sorry, ma'am, I just meant...it's a gamble."

"One I'm willing to take, until we hear from the commander," Macallister said, "Did a message get through?"

"We've sent word. But..." the clerk pointed to their computer, "we do have a mid-level dignitary on base right now. Want to call her in? She's worked with the Japan chapters extensively. She'd probably be able to deal with them."

"Why is she here today?" Macallister was clearly not stupid.

"Just the usual--overseeing new transports..." The clerk scrolled over the files. "And...some of them were from Japan..."

Shine held her breath. There were two ways this could go now.

Macallister frowned. "Something tells me these people followed her here... If they could track a mid-level agent, they've probably got a pretty good hacker... That Meta incident was a little too convenient, wasn't it?"

"You think they discovered her, then?" the clerk said. 

"I intend to find out. Call her in here. We'll see if she recognizes the two. And any other suspicious characters, bring them in!" This to the other ninja.

Most of them left. Only a few stayed to hold Shine and Iida in place, but neither of them tried to put up a fight.

Iida was lost. He'd studied English plenty, but there was so much jargon involved in this conversation, and the accents of Canadians were a little different than what he'd been exposed to, that he was only catching one word in 10. He had no idea what they were talking about.

Shine understood perfectly. In fact, she kind of thought the ninja were overblown. The jargon was just to sound cool. They were ridiculous. Like this was really any kind of real army, hiding like this in the woods and kidnapping kids. Canada's real military would be insulted by the comparison.