บท 56: Batman with basic superpowers

Hugo let out a sarcastic laugh as they walked down a hidden stairway within Kiter's house, their path lit only by the subpar blue light from their communicators.

"What the hell is a King of Information?"

"That was a grammatical error, by the way. I think you meant to say 'Who the hell is the King of Information?'"

"Fine, who the hell is the King of Information?"

"Well, like I said before. It's me! People old to the scene started calling me that upon witnessing my vast array of information and person profiles from around the world."

"So you're the Batman with basic shooting powers." Hugo rolled his eyes and pointed out.

"You're much more chipper than you were yesterday."

"Well today, I've found that the number of guns pointed at me has reduced considerably."

He had expected another response to that, besides the small laugh Kiter gave. But other than that, Kiter was mute.

Hugo soon noticed why that was so. The abrupt silence became evident when they reached the end of the stairway, making him realize there was some sort of tradition being observed by Kiter.

He waited for the Kiter to finish his weird tradition before speaking.

"Hugo. What stands before you is a horde of knowledge accumulated by me for a while now and there are only two more people in the world who have collections like this, and three who can collect information on large scales like this but don't seek to do so..."

"... These people have limited their information to restricted use only, and so have I. But here I am, opening the Gates to Heaven to someone I just met the day before. Swear to me you will not abuse the amount of information that can be gotten here."

'SO it wasn't a tradition. He was merely preparing to give this speech.'

"I swear that I will not abuse the information that is available here, scout's honour." Hugo placed his right hand on his chest in an attempt to lighten the mood in the atmosphere.

Kiter maintained another long period of silence before opening the doors that lead to Hugo's answer. And whatever that was behind the door definitely had implications on the entire human race.

He pushed the doors open and welcomed Hugo as he scrutinized the room. The room was lit with pale blue lights, not unlike the ones that guided him and Kiter down the stairs. It was also messy beyond comprehension.

"A bit messy, but you can make do with it."

Hugo saw that every spot in the room had food all over it, except for one space where it was just an elevated circular red platform.

"To access what you want, go stand on that platform,"

Hugo walked over to the red platform and observed it for a while, then stood on it.

"What do I do now?"

"Swipe sideways or forward. In any direction you want.'" Kiter whipped his hands in different directions, gesturing to him what to do.

"Swipe through the air?"

"No, I meant through the fire. Of course, I meant against the air!"

Hugo's nose scrunched up after the unpleasant comment, but now had a general grasp on how to activate the machine. He swiped downwards, causing a chain reaction of holographic interfaces.

"New user spotted. Registering facial features. One match was found. Hugo Smithson of the Smithson clan. Aged: 17 years old and is a Rank-S Skydancer placed within his colleagues at the fourth within Allegro's Rank S."

A mechanical voice droned on and listed all of Hugo's personal information and some weird information in a heartbeat.

"Oh, so you are Ironman and Batman with superpowers but without money."

Hugo commented after noticing the odd irony in Kiter's existence. It was funny to point it out, but funnier to connect his life with these of two unfortunate human beings."

"HA HA HA, hilarious. Now, will you just look at the information you need so I can lock you out of here for good?"

"Chill, Dark Knight."

He experimented with the holograms at first to increase his familiarity with them before searching for anything on the database.

"But damn, this is a p**no site for information. Are you sure you don't have any weird fetishes?"

"What the hell? Do you want to use this or not? I'll be happy to kick you out of here."

Kiter waved his hands, gesturing at the door and stairway in a cautionary manner. But Hugo couldn't care less about what he was doing, because he was already too busy scrolling through the years-worth of information.

His dark eyes could suddenly see colour everywhere and surges of adrenaline flashed through him from time to time, giving literal meaning to the popular saying;

"Knowledge is Power."

And from the throbbing of his veins and dilating of his pupils. He was sure that this was what power felt like.

In an instant, thousands of people wearing masks had appeared on the interfaces in front of him, and when he added more filters to it, the thousands dropped to hundreds in an instant.

"These are all the people who wear masks and use techno lenses. I'll filter it once again, leaving me with a number of people that wear multiple kinds of techno lenses."

After a while of filtering and confusion, he finally narrowed it down to ten suspects that were weird.

"It makes no sense, though. It should only be a few suspects remaining. How come ten? It is also ambiguous. Out of those ten people, I have four women, and my observations have noted his gender as male already."

"I can't eliminate those four women because of gender. At this point, it's best to assume Swindler has an Awakening that can change his features to deceive people with some sort of criteria."

The problem wasn't the additional women, but the fact Swindler disguise was beyond flawless.

"And another thing to consider is their appearance in the databases. Meaning, each of them have government registered identities and that the Association shouldn't have needed me to hunt him down if the result was so obvious,"

He stared at the ten individuals on the screen and tapped his chin.

"Unless if it was a private bounty."

In order to prove his theory about the personas having government registered identities, he checked their profiles and found that out of the ten people, eight registered identities not too long ago and the other two were just sociopaths.

"Hmph. Kiter, you use satellites to do your spying, right?" Hugo turned to Kiter who was watching in silence.

"I prefer to call it finesse monitoring, and yes, I do use satellites to finesse monitor."

"Use them to find any one of these targets that is currently in public." He pointed at the eight people that were remaining.

"Why not just do it yourself?"

"I need to get some more coffee and monitor the other two. One can never be too cautious, after all."

"Do whatever you want to do. But just so you know, this won't be a regular occurrence. The only reason I'm even helping you now is that I shouldn't stand in the way of administering justice."

Kiter's lips twitched as he agreed to do it reluctantly.

"Nice, I'll be gone now!" He sprinted out of the room without a second look as he repeated the addresses of the two people in his mind.

"Time to hunt me some mans!" (New catchphrase? O.o, jk)

. . .

A few miles away from City A

A disgruntled man looked back at the huge city behind him and bid good riddance.

"Finally! After all these years, who knew all I had to do was get chased by the police and a few dozen Dancers?"

Cluez walked along the road, looking more crazed than he ever did before. He dragged something that was behind him that looked like a tiny mannequin, but upon closer inspection appeared alive.

"Haha, they only got eleven out of the twelve children. Cluez doesn't play with fools hahaha!"

His laughs were so loud that they drew attention from the nearby hover cars and other vehicles.

. . .

Meanwhile, in City A

Dozens of police cars surrounded Cluez's backup location, investigating the environment and taking forensic information.

While they did this, families of the abducted reunited with their kin with happy faces. The traces of sadness were now mere corpses on their faces.

However, one woman was still looking around distraught.

"Where is he? Where's my son. I need to see my son! He promised me that I'd be able to see my son!"

The woman collapsed to the ground weeping and crying. Her only consolations were looks of pity from otherwise happy parents and perhaps sadness from the police.

The chief of security who brought her hopes up only to destroy it later—he was nowhere to be found. Even his colleagues and underlings had no idea who he was.

. . .

"Haha, little brother, you really toyed around with that woman's heart!"

"It's only because I learnt from you big bro!"

Laughs echoed in a dark space and a red light bobbed around up and down.