Chapter 46
Fortunately, nothing out of the ordinary happened while we were heading back to the grocery store.
If we were to apportion credit for that, Michael's help would take first place, especially since he was still busily carrying on a phone call.
“Well, if we wrecked the surveillance cameras there, next would be near the fountain on North Boulevard…. Oh, that's right. It's an area with a lot of our people. Good, proceed as planned.”
All I had to do was sit in the truck's driver's seat and turn the wheel in the direction Michael indicated.
The truck we had received as a free donation from the Bogus gang was quite spacious, so moving the stolen goods wasn't particularly difficult.
“Yeah, everything for Hot Dog Man.”
I stared blankly at Michael after he ended the call with that strange farewell.
Why was the embarrassment mine to bear?
“…Do you really have to say that ‘everything for Hot Dog Man’ line?”
“Of course. It's important for our organization─, oopsie-daisy.”
Oopsie-daisy, my ass.
Michael awkwardly smiled and continued speaking.
“In other words, it's best to do so to uphold the club's rules. There's no harm in emphasizing the favor we received from Hot Dog Man.”
“…I don't even know anymore.”
When Michael first brought up the idea of creating some kind of organization.
I had told him to disband it immediately, but in the end, it was all thanks to Michael's ‘organizational activities’ that we were able to receive funding from the Mafia family.
We couldn't keep pretending nothing was going on forever.
I drove the truck along the cracked asphalt road and asked Michael,
“So what exactly does that club do?”
“I've been waiting for you to ask that question.”
Michael touched the corners of his (desert-dry) eyes with a faintly moved expression.
His face was still so impassive that, at a glance, it almost looked as though he were making fun of me.
‘His facial muscles are just dead, that's all.’
Michael spoke while continuing to operate the smart-chip HUD connected to his mechanical eyes.
“We are of Hot Dog Man, by Hot Dog Man, and for Hot Dog Man─. Ah, take the other road here, not this one.”
“Okay.”
I manipulated the truck's steering wheel according to the directions provided by the biometric navigation system.
The grocery store was now just ahead.
Michael looked at me again with a calm expression.
“As Hot Dog Man knows, managing an organization is more difficult than one might expect. Especially in our case, since we've gathered every strange person from all over the city into one place.”
“That's how homeless people are.”
Who could possibly be without their own circumstances?
After hearing my answer, Michael nodded as though he understood.
“Exactly. In fact, if Hot Dog Man hadn't existed, the organization itself would have been impossible to maintain.”
“…Why are you taking so long to get to the point? What are you trying to say?”
I was already feeling uneasy.
At that moment, I caught a glimpse of madness in Michael's eyes.
“The reason our organization exists. That would be Hot Dog Man.”
“No, I mean, what does the place actually do?”
“Naturally, it's a place that moves for Hot Dog Man.”
…?
Michael answered without hesitation, as though he had given the most obvious answer in the world.
“As I mentioned last time, we considered many names for the club, including Ketchup and Mustard, Food Fighters, and Followers of Hot Dog. In the end, by unanimous vote, we decided to call it the Hot Dog Man Fan Club─.”
“Quit this immediately.”
If I hadn't been holding the steering wheel, I would have strangled Michael on the spot and asked him, “Why so unserious?”
But despite my sharp tone, Michael remained perfectly relaxed.
“Please calm down, Hot Dog Man. I already knew you would say that. You need to listen to a person until they finish speaking.”
“…….”
“The organization was almost unanimously named the Hot Dog Man Fan Club, but.”
Michael casually shrugged.
“We're merely serving as a decoy to conceal Hot Dog Man's ‘real organization.’ We avoided anything too unusual or blatant when choosing the name.”
There was no such thing as a real organization….
My grip gradually tightened around the steering wheel.
Michael failed to notice and calmly continued speaking.
“To summarize, since most of the club's members are homeless, we decided to simply call it the Homeless Clan. In other words, it could also be called the Beggar Clan.”
Homeless or beggars.
After listening to Michael, I was reminded of the name of a certain organization from a martial-arts novel.
This was basically the Beggars' Sect….
“…….”
Still, it was better than the Hot Dog Man Fan Club.
Honestly, as long as it wasn't that name, I didn't care what it was called.
* * *
After getting out of the truck's driver's seat, I saw Walter standing outside the grocery store.
Because of the connection formed when I rescued his daughter, Walter had been staying near the grocery store, and recently, he seemed to have completely settled into the vacant lot behind the building.
I heard he even repaired the belongings and cybernetic prostheses of the homeless people around him for free.
When the homeless people thanked him,
- I'm only repaying the favor I received from that—what was his name—Hot Dog Man. If you want to thank someone, thank him.
That was how Walter had apparently replied.
Last time, I'd heard that he was even planning to move his shop over here permanently, but I didn't know whether he had properly discussed it with Anna.
I scratched my head and walked over to Walter.
My broken leg had already healed completely by then.
Both of my eyes were seeing just fine, too.
When Walter noticed me, his mechanical eye spun around in a bizarre fashion.
“What kind of place have you been visiting this time to end up looking like a drowned rat….”
“A lot happened.”
This was exhausting. Seriously.
I stretched my ankle a few times, then asked Walter in return,
“Grandpa Walter, what are you doing at the entrance?”
It wasn't as though he had been looking after the grocery store in my place.
At my question, Walter turned around and stared sharply into the grocery store.
“I was inspecting the turret inside the store because I thought some kind of error had occurred.”
“…Nova?”
“Yes. A few dozen minutes ago, perhaps…. I was fiddling with scrap metal in the vacant lot when it suddenly activated without any warning. I even asked the android responsible for the turret's artificial intelligence, but there was no particular answer.”
As one would expect from someone with an android daughter.
Walter seemed to call other androids ‘children’ as well.
‘If it was a few dozen minutes ago….’
I took the terminal from my pocket and checked Nova's condition.
[😅]
Nova was expressing her feelings with an emoticon sweating nervously.
“What was it?”
[…It wasn't an error. It's simply that the user's physical condition was poor at the time.]
“Ah.”
Nova had been watching everything from inside the terminal while I was getting thoroughly beaten up by the megacorp employee.
But Black Square was too far from the grocery store, and the 20mm-caliber turret didn't have legs, so Nova couldn't have helped me anyway.
Having understood what had happened, I spoke to Walter, who was examining the turret in an awkward posture.
“Well, apparently there wasn't a problem.”
“Hmm…. In that case, then.”
Walter's gaze shifted toward the terminal in my hand.
[😐]
The moment I saw that emoticon's face, I snickered and slipped the tools into the pocket of my work clothes.
“The imprinting worked properly. Anyway, if nothing was wrong, I should get going.”
“Back to the vacant lot?”
“…Maybe it's because they're homeless, but not a single one of them is normal.”
After Walter left,
only then did Michael get out of the truck, where he had been sitting in the passenger seat.
Why hadn't he gotten out earlier….
Reading my expression, Michael glanced at the truck's cargo bed.
“…There was no need for me to draw attention. We have an important problem to solve right now, don't we?”
“…….”
I sighed at Michael's words.
The weight of reality sure was heavy.
I slowly climbed into the truck's cargo bed.
“What are we supposed to do with all this….”
There was everything from pistols on the small end to grenade launchers and high-explosive grenades (HE Grenade) on the large end.
The quantity was enough to fill an entire truck, making my head spin.
* * *
After moving all the weapons into the grocery store and logistics warehouse as carefully as possible,
perhaps because it was the first physical labor he'd done in a while, Michael muttered while wiping sweat pouring down his forehead,
“…Didn't you say you were going to get an android body?”
“Well, I did.”
I gave him a rough explanation of how things had unfolded.
Michael straightened his tie before answering.
“It really was a coincidence.”
“I told you it was.”
“Although you did know that the truck was carrying goods belonging to a ‘megacorp.’”
“…….”
That was true, but.
Michael looked around at the weapon crates, too numerous to count.
“…To be honest, at first I thought you were preparing for some kind of war. Given what the goods are.”
He took out a pistol packed tightly inside an expensive case.
Unlike the pistols commonly seen on the streets, its high-end quality was obvious from the finish alone.
“This is a smart bullet weapon. It has modular electronics in the ammunition-management system, even a biometric locking mechanism. If it's a product developed by a megacorp, it would normally require renewing a paid license at regular intervals before it could be used.”
Michael handed me the pistol grip.
As soon as I grasped it, a translucent hologram appeared near the pistol's front sight.
[Register user?]
Wow.
When my eyes widened, Michael laughed in a hollow voice.
“It seems everything here is an illegally cracked product. To be honest, I don't know the details of how that works, but wouldn't this one pistol be worth tens of thousands of dollars on the black market?”
“…….”
“With this much merchandise…. It seems the megacorp employee in the truck was trying to make one last big score.”
Which meant that I had attacked the truck at precisely that moment.
Michael added in a trembling voice,
“…This is genuinely dangerous.”
I swallowed at Michael's serious reaction.
“The corporation will already have organized a pursuit team. We did our best to erase our traces, but honestly, I can't say with confidence that we won't be found.”
“What if we say we happened to catch the thief and were going to return the goods?”
“Hahahaha.”
Michael let out a low laugh, as if he had heard an amusing joke.
“We wouldn't have time for a conversation in the first place. Assuming the corporation's task force has been dispatched, they usually operate on the principle that there are no negotiations with terrorists.”
Perhaps he was growing anxious as he spoke, because he kept looking back and forth between me and the grocery store's entrance.
“You said the truck's number was BT-1088, right?”
“Yeah, probably.”
“Then all of this may have come from Beltech.”
“Beltech?”
When I tilted my head, Michael explained with an awkward expression,
“Yes, Beltech International Solutions. It's one of the most famous military-industrial conglomerates in the world. It's highly renowned for its weapons, vehicles, and security services.”
I couldn't think of anything except that we were completely screwed.
I asked Michael seriously,
“What can we do in this situation?”
“Well….”
The answer to that was.
“To be honest, nothing. We did move the goods as quickly and carefully as possible, while avoiding the surveillance cameras, but….”
In other words, all we could do was pray to the heavens.
I clicked my tongue briefly and brought the conversation to a close.
“…Let's slowly think of another way. It's already happened, anyway.”
That was assuming the megacorp's special forces didn't come crashing through the grocery store's entrance right now.
I discreetly checked the grocery store's entrance.
Fortunately, it was still quiet.
We had only just repaired the entrance….
Anyway.
I got to my feet and walked toward the ‘capsule’ we had moved to one side of the logistics warehouse.
“…What's that?”
“An android body I managed to acquire somehow.”
“That, too, is corporate property… No, given our current situation, I suppose that's irrelevant.”
Nova, who had heard our conversation─or rather, the emoticon on the terminal, blinked briefly.
[🙃]
What emotion was this supposed to represent?
It was time to find out.
* * *
Inside the thick capsule, transparent vapor billowed up like a cloud.
Hiss….
At the same time.
A pair of snow-white eyes slowly emerged into view.