The cars drove in. From the first car, several men dressed for the sea had come out. Leonard suspected they were local workers with gang affiliations. From the second car, however, three hoodlums came out, and one reached around and held the door open for one the last one.
A tall, muscular man came out of the car. It was difficult to come up with words to describe his body… he looked like an ancient Greek god. His chest was shaped like an upside-down triangle, not that his waist was small, but his chest muscles were just so built. In simple terms, he was built different.
At this moment, everyone's attention was on him. He began to walk towards the warehouse, everyone following behind him. The men that were relaxing, waiting for others to arrive, quickly packed their stuff up as they followed. He faced the warehouse, putting his arms at his waist as if he was admiring his work.
Looking at the way the rest of the men acted around that man, Leonard pondered, 'He seems to be the highest in command. Perhaps he's even the boss of the whole gang?'
The man turned around and said something while gesturing towards the trunk of the car. Leonard stared as the men went to the two cars' thunks, and took out a giant bag from each car. A bag… big enough to fit a body inside...
Leonard couldn't believe it. 'I was prepared for the information to be a half-lie… after all, who would help the man who had just stabbed them? But it seems I was thinking about it wrongly, perhaps he gave me the truth because he was scared that if I had some information already, and found that some part of what he said was a lie, I would finish his son off in a rage. After all, I had already shown the resolution to stab him.'
The only part left that could be a lie was that Yukki was here. There was a chance that there was another location just like this one, and that Yukki was there instead. However, Leonard reasoned that the chance of this was rather low. The Epilocks were a small gang with less than a hundred members, having control over a single warehouse was fine, but there's no way they have expanded so fast after getting a new leader and being rebranded as the Silver Nights!
Therefore, what he had seen was enough for him to believe that Yukki was truly in East Marshall's warehouse. It was worth taking the risk to infiltrate the warehouse, but not anymore. He needed to watch the rest of the scene unfold in front of him.
The strong leader took out a set of keys and put them in a key slot, opening a lock. He then began to input a code into a keypad. Leonard stared intently, trying to make out the code. He couldn't actually see what was on the keypad, 'he entered uhhh… top right, bottom middle, top left, middle?' It seemed that way for Leonard at least. This opened a side door, and he walked inside, the others following him, closing the door at the end.
…
Leonard stayed on the shipping container, staring intently for any movement, but no matter how he stared, it could not change the fact that they were inside the warehouse, and there was nothing to look at.
The blistering heat was hell. A single touch of the uncovered metal would likely cause a blister to form. The rubber from his fishing coat wasn't powerful enough to block off all the heat. His cheeks would likely have burned by the time he was done.
"Damn it…" Leonard couldn't help but mutter under his breath, the heat was too much! 'Do I even have to be here anymore!? Of course, I do!'
'Wait…' He started a new train of thought, 'I've already gathered information, and the chances of them randomly bringing Yukki outside is next to none, so why am I here? I already know what is happening here.'
His brain quickly started generating new thoughts and eventually his thoughts collided against each other to make the best decision.
'Leaving now would also make me less suspicious! I should leave now and start coming up with a plan!'
But what were they doing with the kidnapped victims…? Leonard looked around. A warehouse near a pier storing the kidnapped people?
'Ah, I see! They must be shipping them away to customers via ship!'
Leonard began to attempt to climb down the stacks of shipping containers he was on. 'How do I get down…' Leonard was intimidated by the jumps, he couldn't just climb down unless he wanted to burn his hands!
Leonard thought for a bit, but he really didn't want to keep burning himself, so he just threw his fishing equipment down to free his hands! Then, he covered his hands with the sleeves of his rubber coat and used them to climb down.
It was time to go back to his motel and consider how to sneak in. 'First, the place had to be empty. They were clearly in there right now, so I couldn't even try right now. He could try to wait until they left so he could sneak in by himself, but he was worried there would be some sort of alarm, or some gangsters were staying inside, sleeping and living inside.'
He could input the code, but his lockpicking skills weren't exactly great. It was good enough for the bathroom lock at work, but he wasn't confident in lockpicking into a gang-infested warehouse.
He would need a way to get in, a way to sneak around, a way to get out afterward, and a weapon in case he was discovered. And he didn't just mean a knife, he would need a gun.
Those weren't exactly unobtainable. He had a chance of getting in already, and if he couldn't lockpick it, there was an item from the system that he could use. The [Single Use Universal Key]. It only had one use and was very expensive, but if he needed it, it was an option.
To get out, he could rent and hide a getaway car. However, he needed to provide many documents that would reveal his identity to rent a car, so that would make what he had done obvious. 'Perhaps I could steal someone's car… that idea is worth considering.'
A weapon was very simple, although it was going to be overpriced, the system could provide him one. It was dangerous to deal with gangs, so he couldn't buy one illegally. It was totally reasonable for him to purchase one recently, but once again, that leaves behind a paper trail. If dead people showed up killed by the same gun that he had bought, that was just telling everyone who did it. It's not like he could simply bribe them to pass him a gun, gangs had their sources, they didn't walk in random gun stores for ammo.
'As for stealth… it seemed like the noise suppression device would be perfect for this scenario. I could go in the middle of the night when people are asleep. If there were gangsters inside, then the noise of the door opening couldn't alert them. If there are people somehow awake, if I act like I'm a gangster they wouldn't shoot me on sight. After all, if I could have access to this place, and seemed like I knew the place, they would assume I was one of them...hopefully…'
'Is that everything, then?' Leonard silently questioned himself. He thought over it for a bit.
'I suppose I'm ready to infiltrate this warehouse!'