Danball Senki Last Re:Arise

A Lead

Few Days Later...

Ban rushed down the stairs and made for the kitchen while holding a tablet up high in hand. His sister, who was having her time preparing a pie for them, let everything fall off her hands the moment she read the headlines.

" It already happened," Ban said.

" We have to check with Eva and Naoki." Elie quickly slid off her apron and reached for her CCM. A few seconds later, both Jin and Eva's faces were shown on her screen.

" We heard." Was all that the blond said.

" Well then?" Ban quirked his eyebrow as he squeezed his face next to his sister.

" We still haven't contacted Naoki yet. We don't know how things went on on their side," said Jin.

" Okay, give us half an hour. We'll be there right away," Elie told them before shutting her CCM with a simple flick. " Guess the pie will have to wait."...

***

One thing that wasn't expected at all was that Mirai, Hiro and Kirito turned up at Jin's door faster than the twins. " What the what..."

" We know everything," Mirai said stepping past the blond girl and settling herself down in the living room. " What I fail to understand is why won't you tell us?"

Eva gave Kirito a death glare and the man groaned. " Oh come on. What should I do now with both of you threatening me like that."

" You don't need to blame Kirito. I discovered most of it on my own," Mirai stated.

" How?"

" I don't mind getting my hands dirty as well. I knew mom was hiding something so I broke into her laptop. Found out about the recent scans." She gave Eva a pointed look. " Why wouldn't you tell us?"

Eva bit on her lip. " I wasn't sure yet. And I didn't think it was okay to tell you. I thought I should deal with it myself. If it was true, there is no need for you to know he turned evil again."

Mirai gauged her from head to toe, as though seeing through her and reading her mind. " He's not your brother alone, you're not the only one feeling responsible for his deeds."

Eva opened her mouth, wanting to say something but she thought better of it, so she bit down her own words. Mirai however wouldn't have that. She wouldn't let those words be left unsaid. But before she could speak, the doorbell rang for the second time. Jin made for the door this time and soon, Ban and Elie's voices filled the living room, wanting to know if Noaki had contacted. They fell silent instantly when they were met by the dead serious air surrounding the other occupants.

"What are we missing?" Questioned Elie. Feeling an explanation was due, Jin took it upon himself to help Ban and Elie catch up with what was happening. During that, the charged atmosphere seemed to calm down, mostly because Mirai was interested in what Ban and Elie said.

" You're waiting for a call from Naoki? Why?"

A moment of silence between them before Ban plucked enough courage to speak up. " We're trying to figure out who is behind the cyber-attacks all over the world."

***

Half an hour later, both Naoki and Aya's faces flashed through the screen, both looking haggard and exhausted. " Frankly speaking, I doubted it when you guys said we'll be the next victim. But thanks to your call, I managed to save most of our company's data. I owe you."

" Don't you mention it." Eva was really eager to cut to the chase. " Tell us, did it work?"

" Hold on a second." The black-haired girl ducked out of sight and then came back with a metallic sphere in hand. Or, that's what it seemed like. The thing had a small rectangular screen, two triangles, and a bush of hair protruding out of it.

" What's that thing?" Asked Kirito, squinting as though doing so would help him understand it.

" Allow me to present our latest invention, Anis. The household helper." Two eyes and a mouth appeared on the screen as Aya announced.

" This is the project you were working on?" The blond man questioned, recalling the times Eva was looking through the codes sent by Aya and the woman bobbed her head in confirmation.

Hiro cocked his head in confusion. " How is that going to help us now?"

Naoki cleaned the lenses of his glasses as he explained. " We needed the thing to survey the network before the attack occurred."

Judging by their looks, Hiro, Mirai and Kirito didn't seem to get it. " Listen. So far you couldn't find a thing about the attacker because you were busy scavenging after them. But now we're taking the initiative. We're trying to catch them in action."

" Since Naoki figured that the attacker's objective was probably to restart all of Dream Future's old servers, the ones used in the Leviathan incident. It was clear where they were going to hit next." Aya added.

" So the next course of action was to monitor the network from inside the very related company before the attack occurred," said Eva. " Anis quick learning AI was the only thing we could depend on. There was no fear of it being hacked because it was just newly activated and has a stand-alone system."

" Still, all the data gathered by Anis would be mostly lost during the attack, right? All the data with the same timestamp with the reboot time were forever lost and we couldn't retrieve them," said Kirito, trying to wrap his head around their plan.

" Not if they were sent in real-time to somewhere safe." Naoki smirked. " If anything, we figured that the power surge or the reboot or whatever you might call it can't go beyond the network of a certain country. So..."

" I see, if you manage to send those data to someone else abroad, then they won't be deleted!" Exclaimed Mirai.

" And that's where Lillia came into the picture. She has her own server back in her cafe so we asked that she host the data in there. Of course, that much data couldn't be loaded to any of our laptops." Naoki resumed. " As of now, she is cleaning them and she will be sending me the needed analysis from the day of the attack. From there I should be able to figure out who is behind it all."

He wore a triumphant smirk on his face. Eva and the rest knew exactly how eager he was to defeat whoever caused him to lose half of his work. " I'm surprised you managed to go this far on your own," said Hiro, amazed at how much work the three of them must have put in.

" It was nothing. If it meant catching whoever is causing this mayhem, then we're going to sacrifice every ounce of our time and energy." Affirmed Aya.

" Give me 12 hours and I will send you the final data," Naoki assured them before the call ended.

Eva heaved a breath before turning to everyone else standing behind her. " This would reveal everything about the true identity of our attacker."

Mirai tapped her chin in thoughts before chancing a glance at her. " Tell me, why did you guys decide to host those data in Lillian's server? Why not any of the ones we know here or Country A?"

Ban, Elie and Jin looked back at Eva as she leveled Mirai's stare. " The other ones were attacked already, we don't know if they were safe or not." A simple answer. It should have been enough to convince anyone, but Mirai didn't buy it. However, she didn't want to start an argument. Not now. They needed to wait for Naoki's results. That's what mattered most to them...