Beastars: The Discover Check

Chapter 139: A Cage of Your Own Making

Yuta sat fiddling his thumbs in the small, subterranean room. He was worried sick and not sure if his friend was meant to be out this late. The way he had described this outing sounded quick and simple. But the news was proving it to be much more than that. Biggest story running on the local news wasn’t about the armed robbers, or the conditions of the hostages thrown off of speeding motorcycles on the freeway. All news banners read things like “Reappearance of The Reaper”, “Masked Vigilante Returns”, and “Adler is Back: Do Warrants Still Stand?”. The sheep sat waiting and worrying. It was all he could do. 

Around 11pm, there was a revving sound above and the butler stood attentively. The sounds died as the platform lowered into the little basement area. Adler waited for the platform to hit the floor and for the roof to close above him before removing the skull mask. The gold lines from the fixed breaks glinted in the fluorescence.

“Where is your friend?” Yuta asked.

“Home,” the deer answered. “We failed to get them, but I got this.”

He pulled out a tablet from the bike’s bag and laid it on the small table next to the mask. 

“Need to find out what program they were running,” Louis said. “Determine who they are and what they’re doing.”

“Couldn’t you leave this to the police?” Yuta asked.

“They don’t have the tools,” he said. “Or expertise.”

“Are you going to go down this road again?” the sheep asked.

“What road?” Adler asked, opening up the tablet.

“The same road you went down with Razor,” the butler clarified.

Louis paused for a moment before shaking his head and returning to reverse-hacking the tablet’s program.

“You don’t think I have it in me?” Louis finally asked.

“No,” Yuta said. “I just watched you interfere with a police matter, leading them on a merry chase, letting the robbers get away-”

“I lost them,” he said.

Yuta turned a screen towards Louis. A news broadcast was showing the encounter he had had with the kangaroo on the freeway, the one where he just up and left. And Adler had let him.

“You let them get away,” the sheep condescended. “What happens when they don’t run?”

Yuta flipped to another channel, playing camera feed from the interior of the stock exchange. The Plague Doctor, hidden in the helmet. He and the other two made short work of security guards.

“What happens when you come up against them?” Yuta asked.

“I’ll fight harder,” Louis answered. “I always have.”

“Look,” Yuta said, directing his attention. “The speed, the ferocity, the training. I see the power of belief. I see the Jade Hybrids resurgent.”

“Razor led the Jade Hybrids to cult suicide,” Louis grumbled, not looking at his butler.

“No,” the sheep said, leaning in. “It was the hybrid’s ideology that led them. Ideas are much harder to kill. Poisoning doesn’t work. Believe me, I know.”

“These three are just mercenaries,” Louis dismissed. “That terrorist left their mark, I get it. But if we treat everything as if it’s just his fallout, then that lessens the severity over time. It becomes a part of the system and real criminals get away. These two are mercenaries and I just need to figure out who hired them.”