The encounter was nothing short of suspicious and Satoshi was aware of it. But what's even more suspicious was how Crispwisp handled the situation. Why did he take the entire basket instead of buying just one cupcake? Was there something in the cupcake? Why did a little girl appear out of nowhere? The more questions Satoshi asked himself, the more confused he became, and Crispwisp's actions just made him more skeptical. Satoshi's brows furrowed as his gaze shifted from Crispwisp to the little girl who was running away in the opposite direction.
"Don't follow her, no matter how suspicious it looked, don't follow her. We don't know what we're dealing with here." Crispwisp's voice suddenly changed into a serious tone.
"Why did you do that? Is there something wrong with the cupcakes?" Satoshi asked. By now, the little red-haired girl disappeared from view.
"No, but first, we have to intercept something," Crispwisp opened the basked and handed Satoshi a cupcake. "Want some? There's nothing wrong with it. It's a perfectly good cupcake." He continued, taking a bite.
Satoshi thought twice before getting a cupcake from Crispwisp and eating it. It was actually a pretty delicious cupcake, he wondered if the little girl baked it herself. "You haven't explained anything to me, Crispwisp,"
"All right, while we wait, I'll tell you everything," Crispwisp whispered. "You do know how my superpower works, right? I can direct energy in the air by shaping them like waves and moving and weaving them around. One of my special abilities aside from my energy manipulation is energy detection. It enables me to see energy, much like how thermal vision enables you to see heat."
"And?"
"Well, while you were about to buy cupcakes from that girl, I sensed something underneath the basket. I don't know what it was but it was emitting some sort of faint energy. It was definitely suspicious and then one thing occurred to me." Crispwisp continued. "What if there were other people behind the little girl, making her run errands and deliver goods to other people? My hunch was right when I asked for the basket. She readily gave it to me without asking for anything in return, right?"
"Right," Satoshi continued.
"That's a pretty common scenario. That means the goods are already paid for and she was just delivering them. I don't know whom she's delivering it to but one thing's for sure, this is definitely something suspicious."
"What if it's just a toy or something, are you sure that you're not just looking too much into things?" Although Hajime sort of understood where Crispwisp was getting at, he couldn't help but approach the situation from a different angle. After all, there's a good chance that Crispwisp's hunch was wrong.
"If it were just a toy, then I'd have ruled it out as such and let the girl go with her basket. But no, the energy I detected under the cupcakes is something that I've never seen before. I don't know what kind of energy it is but it is definitely not your run-of-the-mill type of energy."
"Let's take a look." This time, Satoshi's curiosity was piqued. Without further ado, the two of them dug between the gaps of the cupcakes and removed the cloth underneath. They saw a parcel.
"Here goes nothing." Crispwisp held his breath as he carefully opened the parcel. What came out was a metallic canister, a cylindrical container that might've contained rolls of films. The unknown energy didn't speak of cough drops, however, so Crispwisp grew a little nervous. Aside from candies and cigars, the only thing that could be put in metallic containers such as this one were syringes, or small hospital equipment like a scalpel, or scissors. Were they waiting to give it out to quack doctors? Satoshi and Crispwisp both had the same thought.
But no, their assumptions were wrong in more ways than one.
Clink! The soft clicking sound of the canister made the two of them gulp. Something slid out of the canister—
—five syringes to be exact!
Each syringe was identical to the other, a bright blue liquid swished inside it. Compound V? No, everybody who had been watching the news would know what the liquid was at first glance, and Crispwisp and Satoshi were no exceptions to it.
"Superpower Booster. Oh no, Satoshi-senpai, I think we've uncovered something... something dangerous."
"No doubt," Satoshi nervously swallowed his dry saliva as their eyes laser-focused on the syringes. They carefully put them back inside before proceeding to finish the rest of the cupcakes.
"I thought they were discontinued? Why are they still being circulated? And in the slums too, no less." Satoshi muttered.
"That's how it is. The enemies really are like slippery eels. And right now, they've mastered working in the shadows even more. Why haven't other superheroes encountered Superpower Boosters? That's because the villains are cautious of them. They wouldn't be seen in broad daylight carrying Superpower Boosters and the like. The best way to circulate it around is by using third-parties... or using as many people as possible that are not connected to them."
"You're right... poor girl, she doesn't know what she was doing." Satoshi sighed, clenching his fists in frustration. "She doesn't have any idea that she's an accomplice of something unforgivable."
"Yeah, but right now... right now is not the time to take action. Let's capture the receivers first, and then we'll take things from there."
Satoshi nodded in response.
A few minutes later, two men clad in black arrived by the corner of the alleyway. Crispwisp asked them if they wanted some cupcakes, just like how the girl asked him a few minutes ago. As for Satoshi, he waited behind a pile of garbage, covering his nose since the smell almost made him puke. To their relief and disbelief, the two men answered that they were expecting a parcel.
There was nothing left for both Crispwisp and Satoshi to do but to jump on the two men, knocking them unconscious before they could even retaliate.
"Off to the authorities, we go," Crispwisp said as he slung one of the unconscious guys on his shoulder like a bag of potatoes.
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