Chapter 28: The Elevator Mole and a Strikeout
Natsume surveyed the captured staff slumped in the corner of the guard room. The identity of the robbers' inside contact was glaringly obvious. She didn't even need to rely on high-level deductive reasoning. A cluster of security guards sat bound together in a tight, miserable knot of ropes and uniforms. Yet, sitting a comfortable distance away, the elevator attendant was tied up entirely on her own. It was practically a neon sign pointing right at her.
Beyond the suspicious rope work, there was the matter of aesthetics. The guards possessed the kind of aggressively average faces that blended perfectly into the background. The elevator girl, however, had a distinct, carefully styled appearance. In Natsume's pragmatic, genre-savvy mind, it was a simple rule of the universe: you didn't stand out that much unless you were important to the plot.
The young woman shifted against her bindings, her eyes fluttering open. She blinked at Natsume, feigning a look of fragile hope. "Um... are you here to rescue... wait..." Her voice trailed off as she seemed to calculate her next words.
Natsume didn't give her the chance to finish. With a swift, precise chop to the back of the woman's neck, the elevator attendant slumped forward, instantly unconscious. Natsume dusted off her hands. She had zero patience for listening to a criminal spin a web of lies.
Glancing at the genuine guards, she opted to leave their ropes perfectly intact. While she was ninety-nine percent sure of the mole's identity, her pragmatic nature demanded caution. It was safer for everyone if they stayed put until the authorities arrived. Stepping over the unconscious attendant, Natsume picked up the guard room's landline, dialed the police, and calmly reported the armed robbery in progress at the department store.
Hanging up the receiver, she pivoted toward the glowing bank of surveillance monitors. The robbers had been using this room as their command center. Now, it was hers. She scanned the grid of screens, searching for any sign of the remaining thieves or Conan's pint-sized detective squad.
Static crackled sharply from a walkie-talkie resting on the console. "Hello? What happened over there? What was that noise just now?" a gruff voice demanded through the speaker.
Natsume didn't even breathe in the direction of the radio. Her golden eyes darted across the monitors until they locked onto a feed from the third floor. A man dressed in a full, ridiculous Kamen Yaiba costume was gripping a walkie-talkie, his masked head swiveling in agitation. Realizing his comrade wasn't going to answer, the fake hero barked a command to his partner. The two thieves immediately split up, marching out of the camera's field of vision.
She quickly toggled through the other camera feeds. The clothing aisles, the toy department, the escalators—all empty. There was no trace of Conan, Genta, Mitsuhiko, or Ayumi. Natsume smirked faintly. The kids were smart. They were deliberately sticking to the blind spots, knowing whoever was in the monitor room would use the cameras to hunt them down.
Her mind raced, calculating the enemy's next move. The Kamen Yaiba cosplayer had been in the third-floor clothing department. Since they had separated, one of them was undoubtedly heading down to the first-floor guard room to investigate the radio silence. He had two options: the elevator or the stairs. The elevators were rigged with internal cameras, and any movement of the cab would announce his arrival with a loud, unavoidable ding. It was a metal death trap for anyone worried about an ambush. The stairs were the only logical choice.
Slipping out of the guard room, Natsume glided toward the emergency stairwell. She pressed her back flat against the cool concrete wall just beside the heavy fire door. Closing her eyes, she let her other senses take over, tuning out the ambient hum of the building.
A minute passed. Then, the heavy, muffled squeak of rubber soles on concrete drifted down the stairwell. The steps were slow, deliberate, attempting a stealth that the bulky boots couldn't quite achieve. She tracked the rhythm. No overlapping echoes. Just one set of feet.
She held her breath, letting the tension coil in her muscles like a compressed spring. The footsteps drew closer. The heavy metal door creaked open, revealing the edge of a plastic Kamen Yaiba mask.
Natsume pivoted on her heel and launched herself forward.
She didn't just strike him; she channeled the Traveler's absurd physical strength into a devastating roundhouse kick. Her heel connected squarely with the robber's chest. The man didn't even have time to gasp. The sheer kinetic force lifted him off his feet, sending him flying backward through the air. He slammed into the concrete landing with a sickening crunch, his head bouncing once against the wall before he went entirely limp.
Natsume lowered her leg, adjusting her stance. She might have put a fraction too much power into that strike. Given the sharp cracking sound upon impact, he had likely broken a few ribs and passed out from the sheer, blinding pain rather than the head trauma. She shrugged internally. Details.
That made three down. Factoring in the surveillance footage, only two armed thieves remained on the upper floors, currently locked in a dangerous game of hide-and-seek with a group of elementary schoolers.
Several floors above, the situation was rapidly deteriorating. Conan had orchestrated a clever decoy using a row of plastic mannequins in the women's clothing department, hiding the children among the stiff, lifeless figures. It was a flawless disguise—until Genta's stomach let out a thunderous, echoing growl that sounded like a dying whale.
The robbers' flashlights snapped toward the sound instantly. Cover blown, the Detective Boys had no choice but to break into a frantic sprint down the aisles.
Conan risked a glance over his shoulder, his glasses catching the dim emergency lights. He narrowed his eyes. Something was wrong. Just minutes ago, three flashlights had been sweeping the area. Now, only two beams of light bounced wildly in pursuit. Where was the third man? Was he circling around to flank them through the sporting goods section?
His mind spun through the variables as his small legs pumped furiously. No, that didn't fit. For the past ten minutes, the robbers had completely lost their coordinated edge. Despite his best efforts to keep the kids in the camera blind spots, Genta and Ayumi had definitely clipped the edge of a few surveillance zones during their panicked flight. Yet, the thieves hadn't immediately converged on their location like they had earlier.
The camera feeds were useless to them now. That meant whoever was manning the monitors in the first-floor guard room had been neutralized. The missing third robber hadn't gone to flank them; he had gone downstairs to investigate the silence.
Had the police arrived? Or had someone seen the makeshift SOS signal they had taped to the department store window? Conan gritted his teeth. Speculation wouldn't save them right now. He needed to neutralize the two men chasing them before he could worry about the guard room.
Skidding around a sharp corner, the children darted into the high-end liquor section. Conan's eyes locked onto the glass displays. 'Grab the champagne!' he thought, preparing to instruct the others. If they shook the carbonated bottles and popped the corks, they could blind the robbers with a high-pressure spray of alcohol.
They barely had their hands on the glass necks when a heavy, meaty thud echoed from the aisle behind them.
"Sister Natsume!" Genta, Mitsuhiko, and Ayumi cheered in unison, their voices echoing through the quiet store.
Conan whipped around. Standing at the end of the aisle, bathed in the dim security lighting, was Natsume. She offered the terrified children a warm, reassuring smile, casually tossing a hard leather baseball up and down in her right hand.
The second robber leveled his gun, but Natsume didn't even flinch. She stepped into a pitcher's stance and hurled the baseball with terrifying velocity. The projectile cut through the air with an audible whistle.
A loud bang echoed as the baseball made intimate, violent contact with the center of the robber's forehead. His eyes rolled back into his skull, and he crumpled to the linoleum floor like a puppet with its strings cut.
[Traveler, nice throw!] Paimon's cheerful voice chimed inside Natsume's mind, sounding thoroughly impressed.
Conan stared in absolute disbelief. He cautiously stepped toward the first robber who had dropped moments earlier. Sure enough, a second baseball was rolling lazily away from the unconscious man's head. The young detective swallowed hard, a drop of sweat sliding down his cheek. Just how much monstrous physical strength did it take to instantly knock a grown man out cold by throwing a baseball?
Ayumi, Genta, and Mitsuhiko were entirely oblivious to the terrifying physics of the rescue. Seeing the bad guys neutralized, they swarmed Natsume like excited ducklings, chirping over each other in a chaotic chorus.
"How did you get here?!"
"Did you beat them all up?"
Natsume knelt down, patting their heads as she explained how she had spotted their SOS signal on the window from the street outside. This only fueled their excitement. For the next five minutes, the children dramatically recounted their heroic exploits, detailing how they had uncovered the robbery and bravely outmaneuvered the armed men in the dark.
With the immediate threat handled, Natsume gathered her small, triumphant entourage and escorted them down the stairs to the first-floor guard room to wait for the authorities.
As they entered the monitor room, Ayumi immediately noticed the hostages slumped in the corner. "Sister Natsume, look! The guard uncles and the nice sister from the elevator are still tied up. I'll help you untie them!" The little girl trotted forward, her hands reaching out.
Natsume stepped into her path, gently but firmly catching Ayumi's wrist. "Don't touch those ropes, Ayumi," she warned, her tone shifting to something much more serious. She pointed at the unconscious attendant. "You mustn't untie her. That young woman is the robbers' inside mole. She's their accomplice."
A jolt of electricity shot through Conan's mind as the final puzzle piece clicked into place. 'So that was it!' He had been agonizing over how the armed men knew the exact number of children hiding in the store. Now it made perfect sense. The thieves had planted her here earlier in the day, disguised as an elevator attendant, to run reconnaissance and guide the evening operation. Since she had personally escorted the Detective Boys in the elevator that afternoon, she knew exactly how many kids were trapped inside.
Conan looked closer at the treacherous attendant. Her head was slumped forward, her breathing shallow but steady. She was completely out cold—undoubtedly the victim of another one of Natsume's ruthless, preemptive strikes.
Invisible black lines dropped down the back of the tiny detective's head. He let out a long, silent sigh. Sister Natsume really did have a terrifying habit of knocking people out first and asking questions never.
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