"Please, stop struggling. It's no use," the geo-mage stressed. "You're only making it harder for both of us."
"Bah!" Michael growled and proceeded to struggle against the officers' grips as they pressed him face-first against the cold, hard wall of the cell they temporarily kept him in. The cuffs that pinned his hands behind his back were, unfortunately for him, specialized to restrain a mage's power.
They figured it was enough to hold an old man like him, but having spent his whole life in the underground, a simple pair of handcuffs simply wasn't enough to hold him down. He trashed and kicked at the uniformed workers.
Though it was a humiliating defeat on his part back when he was trying to escape that geokinetic bastard, he determined to make his stay in the police headquarters go his way.
"Get your filthy hands off me!" he demanded, shaking off the pair of hands that pinned his shoulders to the wall.
"Don't make me use my powers against you while you're defenseless," the mage hissed, his tight grip on his arms solidifying with the appliance of his supernatural abilities. "You should be grateful that I haven't beaten you into a pulp for what you've done."
Feeling the overwhelming weight of power on his arms grow, the old man relaxed just a little bit and complied. He wanted to get out of here, but moreover, he didn't want his limbs to be snapped in half. "Fine, bastard," he spat.
"The name's Reese," the mage uttered. "Specialized Officer Reese Lerose."
"Hmph."
Though he gave in, Old Mike couldn't help but sneer to himself. It was true that he lost trying to escape, but he didn't leave the mage unscathed. He imagined the satisfying sight he would see if he were able to turn around at the moment.
He'd be seeing a wonderful, bloodied work of art, beautifully completed by himself. Bruises would be visible along his arms and face, his hair would be caked with dirt and dried blood, and his face would be streaked crimson red. The patch of skin above his cheekbone would be completely ruined.
"Well, since you're here, you're not going to be going anywhere soon," Lerose told him. "You'll have to put up with this for a while since we don't have anywhere else to confine you yet. So please, cooperate."
"...then, will you get me some beer if I wanted?"
"Excuse me?"
Old Mike groaned and rolled his eyes. "Never mind," he grumbled. "How about you tell me what I'm being confined for, instead?"
"Don't play dumb," Reese said. "Even if we can't find solid evidence against you for orchestrating the dangerous gang activity going on, you'll still be charged with assault on a law-enforcing officer."
"That's only because you were trying to wrongfully detain me," Old Mike smirked.
"You were not wrongfully detained," the mage insisted. "Ever since the detectives were tipped off, there has been a warrant for your arrest. You even have that tattoo on the back of your neck, just as described."
"Tipped off by who?"
"How the hell am I supposed to know?" Reese muttered. "Even if I knew, I wouldn't tell you."
A few clanks of a metal lock sounding drew both of their attention to the jail cell door, and on the other side of the bars stood two detectives.
Old Mike cursed.
It was that red-haired lady again, and he glared at the triumphant sneer she flashed him. Beside her stood a taller, blonde-haired detective, who frowned upon seeing Reese's bloody wounds.
"Lerose, you should get treatment," the man suggested.
"Nah, it's alright, Kane. I have to be here, otherwise, this old man will go crazy again."
"Crazy?!" Old Mike shouted, feeling wronged. "Who are you calling crazy?"
"Should we interrogate him now?" Detective Ada asked impatiently, crossing her arms. "I don't understand why we have to wait this long."
Detective Kane sighed, running a hand down his tired expression. "Detective Ada, patience," he asserted with a defeated sigh. "We are getting to that part. It's no doubt that we got the right person this time."
An officer suddenly came rushing down the hall towards them, a clipboard in hand. "Detective, detective!" he called.
Detective Kane and Ada turned at their subordinate's call for attention, and they frowned at him when he stopped in front of them with a nervous expression on his face. "What is it?"
The young officer ran his hand through his hair, looking a bit confused about what to do. "Someone came in to report a kidnapping that just happened," he began. He darted his eyes to give the old prisoner a look of uncertainty. "I- I'm not sure we caught the right person..."
"What?!" Ada thundered, scowling. "What are you talking about? What does that situation have to do with this one?"
The officer backed up at the detective's outburst in fear. "B- but this is the third kidnapping, already! D- doesn't the timing match the pattern? We still h-have to take this into account, don't we?"
Kane rubbed his temples in frustration while Ada continued to rage. "What's the situation?"
The officer scratched the back of his head, retreated back a few more steps under Ada's fierce glare. "A woman had gone missing. According to them, they received a phone call from the woman's workplace saying that she never arrived for work last night, and just a couple of minutes ago, they called the woman's number, and the kidnappers answered the phone demanding five hundred thousand notes... They even provided a hint of their location."
"What's the location?" Detective Kane asked, alert.
"XXX Building," the officer answered. "Something about the city slums?"
Old Mike couldn't help but snort upon hearing the information. So Clay and Titus were still at it, as expected.
Reese frowned and strengthened his grip. "What do you know about this?" he hissed.
"Nothing!" the old man lightly declared. "I don't know anything! I was simply drinking before y'all came chasing after me like wild dogs!"
"You-!"
"Silence!" Kane ordered. They all fell quiet as the tall, blonde man muttered something under his breath, rubbing his temples continuously as he tried to come up with a plan to deal with all the problems at the station.
While he was thinking, however, a faint voice from down the hall interrupted, following by a series of cautious footsteps.
"Hello?" a young man's voice echoed. "Officer? Hello? I filled out all the forms you requested, but I didn't get to finish what I was saying before you ran off- oh..."
They all looked up to see a tall, black-haired boy standing at the other end of the hall, holding a light stack of blue papers in his hands as he stared at them with his mouth parted in surprise.
Even though the cuffs around Michael's wrists prevented him from lashing out with his powers, it only took him a few moments to sense the presence of another mage. Half of his face was pressed against the wall, so he couldn't clearly see the boy's face if he wanted to.
He couldn't see his face, but he could sense his powerful mana from the short distance, catching him off guard. Such an unrestrained mana capacity... it was roaring loudly in his ears.
So loudly...
When was the last time in his entire life that he felt such a free mana core? Even Reese stopped to frown at what he was sensing at the moment. It was out of the ordinary. The power potential this boy had-
...Rune?!
His eyes widened in shock. Could it be?!
Reese spoke up first, however. "You are a...capable mage," he said, choosing his words carefully. But the fact that he declared him a mage still caught the other officers by surprise. "Do you have an ID? You could've legally handled that problem yourself before coming here."
Then Reese's face lit up. "Ah, wait. Judging from your school uniform, you're a minor. You can't go on your own, right?"
The boy stepped closer, seeing how the officers didn't shun his unauthorized presence in the hallway. "Uh...that's what I was trying to say," he said. "The victim is my classmate's aunt. I came here to make the report since my classmates said that it was a good idea to tell the authorities about this.
"And about the last part...we had someone go," he finally said. "He should be back really soon."
Reese raised an eyebrow. "Someone else? Another mage?"
"...yeah."
"An adult?"
"Yes."
Reese let out a breath of content. "Then it should be fine," he said. "Thank you for the report."
The boy walked up to the officers and handed him the papers they had him fill out, and it was then that Old Mike caught a glimpse of his face with his wide eyes.
"H- his face!" he blurted in bewilderment. "Why you- why do you look like him?"
The boy glanced to the side in confusion and made eye contact with the shocked, old man. "Huh?" He pointed to himself. "Me? -what the hell?"
It was another uproar when Old Mike suddenly broke free of Reese's grip and kicked away the two other officers holding him down in the cell while they weren't paying attention, and he desperately took the chance to run up to the bars that kept him in, just to take a good look at the boy's face.
"You!" he shouted at the boy, who stared back at him as if he were crazy. "Who are you?!"
The look-alike backed away from the jail cell, an extremely puzzled look on his pale face, and the officers outside the cell stepped in front of him to prevent Old Mike from getting a clear view of his face.
Reese cursed under his breath as he and the other officers rushed to pull him back from the bars, but this time, Old Mike had gone too wild for them to grab hold.
"Just let me talk to him! Goddamnit!" Old Mike hollered. "I just want to talk to him! Please! I'm not going to do anything!"
"Quit it!" Reese shouted back.
"Please! Boy!" Old Mike strained his neck to catch a glimpse of him. "I just want to ask you something! I promise to cooperate with your fucking investigation if you just let me talk to him."
Reese shared a look with the officers outside, hesitating as their prisoner continued to flail around, refusing to stop until he met with the boy face-to-face. No one knew why, and no one knew if they could trust his words.
It wasn't until the boy himself pushed through the officers blocking his way that the old man stopped his loud tantrum.
Reese frowned, disapproving. "A- are you sure about this?" he asked the high schooler. "This isn't a very smart move on your behalf. You are exposing yourself to a-"
"No, it's okay," the boy said. "He just wants to talk to me, right?" He stopped right in front of the jail cell, leveling his gaze at the handcuffed, rugged-looking old man that seemed to stare at him incredulously on the other side.
Around them, the officers shared nervous looks, not sure whether or not this was supposed to be a good idea, even if the boy consented to this himself. He was exposing himself to a criminal, and despite Old Mike being restrained by those special cuffs, no one knew what would happen after.
Old Mike took this chance to examine every part of the boy's face closely, narrowing his old eyes at the boy's dark ones.
The boy narrowed his eyes back at him as well, suspicious.
"I'm sure we've never met," he said. "What do you want from me?"
Old Mike leaned in even closer, ignoring his question.
This boy looked really similar to Rune at the first few glances, he was almost fooled. The hair, skin, height, even the state of his mana core was strangely similar. But after a careful inspection, this boy...can't be him.
He was so worked up earlier that he didn't notice that his voice didn't sound the same either, and he was too young. There was no way it was possible unless he was really Rune, and he, for some reason, altered his appearance before coming here and was playing dumb.
But anyhow, his mana core... this boy's mana core was suspicious. How can it be in the same state as Rune's?
Old Mike cleared his throat. The very last possibility that he formed in his mind was, this boy was someone who was somehow related to Rune, and Rune was the one who helped free his core.
If he wasn't Rune, the least Old Mike could do try to get some clues out of him...
"Boy, how'd you free your mana core?"
"What?"
"Your mana core. Did someone help you with a full power awakening?"