219Summary: In which Loid and Yor cross path as Twilight and Thorn Princess.
AN: FYI Anya loses her power every New Moon
Chapter 1 Preparation
Twilight had worked with plenty of informants in the past and only one of them had earned his full, unwavering trust. His longest and most reliable informant, who went by the alias Franky Franklin, had been an old friend and useful asset for his entire spy career but he wasn't so naive to believe this would last. Spies and informants were constantly living on edge and the tiniest mistake could push them off the cliff. He just wasn't expecting this day to come so soon.
It had been a simple request that Franky said would be done by today and he, being the prideful informant he was who valued his reputation, would never make a promise he couldn't keep or go back on his words.
Yet, when Twilight visited his tobacco stand, the shop was closed.
"CLOSED FOR THE WEEK!"
Beside the sign was a small note taped onto the walls. It looked like it had been deliberately placed to be conspicuous but not too prominent to attract unnecessary attention.
Twilight took one glance at the note, memorized the content, and sighed vocally, playing the role of Loid Forger, a normal psychiatrist who was disappointed that a store he frequented was closed. He then turned and left, not willing to dally any longer in case anyone was watching.
No, someone definitely was watching, considering the content of that note.
"When the Moon blocks
the Sun
and loses its reflection, mankind must wait for twilight to light
the sky for them."
At first glance it may not seem suspicious, but the timing of its appearance, the arrangement of these words, and the mention of "Twilight" all had him thinking this couldn't have been a coincidence. And if this really were a clue left for him by unknown enemies who may or may not have anything to do with Franky closing down his shop for the week, then they must have been keeping an eye on the tobacco stand looking for suspicious individuals who dallied too long or paid too much attention to that piece of paper. Whether their target was him or Franky, Twilight couldn't tell yet, but he would find out.
No one stood out to him when he surveyed his surroundings cautiously before entering the train station. Either they had planted cameras or the enemies were fairly good at blending in. After making sure there was no immediate threat lurking nearby, Twilight boarded the train and settled in a seat, bringing up the note in his mind.
When: The Moon only blocked the Sun during New Moon, and the next New Moon was a few days from now.
Where: Loses its reflection… Either the mirror or water, and since it was the Moon it was more likely to be the water. So a location with lots of water. A harbor? Dock? Which one?
Who: Mankind must wait for Twilight? Was Franky kidnapped? And they wanted Twilight to go save him?
?: The only riddle that remained was the arrangement of this note. Four lines… something to do with four… Word count in each line was… 4-2-11-4. Could it be some kind of map coordinates? What do each number represent? Why was the third line longer than the rest?
By the time the train arrived at his stop, Twilight still hadn't figured it out. He may be a spy and often deal with ciphers, but they all had known solutions. He wasn't trained to be a cryptographer specialized in decoding unknown codes from scratch.
When he arrived home, Yor had prepared dinner. She cooked her specialty, a type of Southern stew taught to her by her mother and the only dish she could make that didn't give them food poisoning.
Loid went through the normal husband routine, greeting and praising her, asking her about her day and the likes, but his mind never stopped decoding that note.
Anya, who was watching Spy Wars, had stopped to stare at him. Usually she would have run up and hugged him the moment he opened the door, but not today. She just stared at him like he was a puzzle she couldn't figure out as her favorite cartoon played behind her.
"Anya? What's wrong?"
Anya ran up to him. "Papa, when's the next New Moon?"
This again. For some reason, she had an odd fixation on New Moons, always asking him and keeping track of the moon phases.
"It's this Saturday." Loid took off his gloves and set down his bag.
"Saturday!?" Anya exclaimed with a look of horror. She snapped her head towards the family dog. "Bond, will it be alright?"
Bond tilted his head sideways like he was confused.
"C'mon Bond, do your thing."
Loid tuned out the rest of their interactions as he went to help Yor setup the table. During dinner, he made sure to maintain a normal conversation with Yor while his mind continued ransacking his bank of knowledge for clues. Anya kept glancing at Bond, her Spy Wars cartoon, Yor, and him, occasionally making a surprised or horrified expression. Kids and their antics. Twilight could never understand what was going on in that head of hers.
Her attention was quickly diverted wholly onto the cartoon when it showed Princess Honey being kidnapped by the League of Evil and Bondman had to decide between saving her or disabling the bomb implanted into the turret-styled World Clock that was set to detonate at the same time Princess Honey would be pushed off of the TV tower in Mitte.
Wait, Mitte? That was a district in Ostania where the TV tower and World Clock were located. Of course an Ostanian cartoon would feature Ostanian landmarks.
If he were to go with this logic, it would be logical for a riddle addressed to Twilight, a Westalian spy, to use clues that a Westalian would understand.
The only thing he was missing was Time. Ostania had the World Clock, while Westalis had the Mengenlehreuhr which told time using four rows of blinking lights.
Yes, this must be it. Four lines, four rows, top two were hours and bottom two were minutes. 4-2-11-4. Each light in the first row stood for 5 hours, so 4 of them made 20. Second was 2 times 1 so 2 hours. Third row was 11 times 5 minutes which made 55 minutes. Fourth was 4 times 1 minute making 4 minutes. Total: 22:59. Or, 2300 on Saturday night.
Now, he just needed the location…
"Papa." Anya tore her eyes away from the TV and asked, "When can I play with Scruffy again?"
"He's busy this week. I'll see if he's available next week." Loid lied without batting an eye.
"Is he okay?"
"I'm sure he is. You should worry more about your test tomorrow."
"Gwak!"
Saturday night
Anya had been strange this whole day. She not only did poorly on that test a few days ago (though that was probably her own fault), but she also didn't mind the protest on the streets when he took his family on an outing as opposed to her usual reaction: covering her ears with a pained look as soon as they came within ten meters to the crowd.
Loid had taken them out partly to let everyone relax and have a good time but more so he could use the opportunity to investigate the possible locations near water. Curious enough, Anya had been the one most eager, saying how she wanted to take a walk near the water and play with the 'fishes' (as she called it). A single location remained suspicious by the end of the day. In fact, it was Yor who led them to it.
Loid had been focusing on locations like warehouses that criminals loved to use as a base of operations or a temporary location for trade and only realized the other possibility when Yor pointed out how it was strange that a certain cargo ship was loaded but had no workers nearby. They asked around and discovered the ship was rented nearly a week ago but no one had seen anyone near or on the ship at all.
Indeed, no one said the location couldn't be on a ship.
That night, he tucked a restless Anya into bed and stayed until she fell asleep because she refused to let go of his hand otherwise. He then bid goodnight to Yor and waited about an hour to make sure she was asleep before retiring to his room. He got dressed, equipped, made his bed to look like he was sleeping (on the off chance that Yor checked on him), then climbed out of his window, shutting it gently and locking it from the outside with a trick.
Time to save an informant.
Target of assassination: Twilight
This was Yor, or rather, Thorn Princess's first time going up against someone as infamous as Twilight, Westalis' greatest spy. She had heard of him; it was nearly impossible being in this line of business and not hearing about his name once or twice. As an assassin working for the Garden, a secret assassin organization in Ostania, her job was to eliminate all threats to Ostania's peace, which included any spies seeking to unveil their secrets.
Twilight was a master spy who carried out every single mission perfectly and had never left behind anything that could point to his real identity. No one knew what he looked like or how old he was, so he had always been on their hit list but none had enough concrete leads to actually carry out the mission.
However, a few days ago Yor received her new mission from the Shopkeeper and apparently their mysterious client who ordered a hit on him managed to get a hold of a time and place that Twilight would show up. They said the possibility of his appearance was only fifty percent, but that was still far higher than any other leads they had in the past dozen years, and so they took the job readily and sent out one of their best assassins, Thorn Princess, to take care of the deed.
The hour of operation was late at night. Sneaking out of the house was easy but if Yor had to choose she wouldn't risk it. There were too many risks associated with this decision. What if Loid stayed up late and she couldn't arrive on time to intercept Twilight? What if Loid wanted to talk to her about something in the middle of the night and found out about her disappearance? What if something suddenly happened to Anya? Like a nightmare or something and needed Yor to carry out her motherly duties?
She could just tell them her job required her to be somewhere on Saturday so she could disappear for the entire day, but Anya had been restless for the past few days and her mood seemed to worsen as Saturday, the day of the New Moon, drew near. In the end, Yor's love for Anya won over and she decided to stay with her family and use their outing as an opportunity to conduct a reconnaissance on the location.
That night, she told Loid she was going to sleep and lay still in bed for nearly an hour before he finally turned off the light and went to bed in his room. She heard some rustling sound of him changing into his pajamas, creaks of the bed from the added weight, and him shutting the window and locking it. She then waited for about twenty minutes more before she quickly got changed into her Thorn Princess attire and left the house through the window.
Time to kill a spy.