"...Stop kidding."
Matsuda Jinpei took a deep breath and sharpened his gaze, "What should we do?"
"We can't just stand by and watch these arrogant guys rob the people, Savior-san, huh?"
Ichijō Mirai looked over in surprise, "You're asking for my opinion?"
Wow, it's already in the [Awaiting Command] state.
Thank you, 'Disguised Criminal'.
Actual combat is really the best way to gain experience, Ichijō Mirai exclaimed, and spoke up, "I just saw Furuya-san, and they've already converged, at,"
He looked sharply to the rear.
Behind him, Date Wataru and Furuya Rei appeared on the left and right.
Furuya Rei is on the right, he clearly sees the newly arrived robbers, estimates the number of men and guns at nearly double digits, and looks grave, nodding wordlessly as he meets Ichijō Mirai's gaze, signaling: at your service.
Date Wataru, to his left, with a steady gaze and a particularly serious expression, also nodded when he realized Ichijō Mirai was looking at him, signaling: ready for orders.
Kenji Hagiwara is away, probably on a lookout.
They have a certain degree of self-management and police literacy, and without orders from their superiors, they can carry out their activities autonomously, with minimal chain reactions, without the need for a commander to patiently order them to stop a few steps.
Ichijō Mirai could only remain silent with difficulty when it came to the quality of this group of cadets, but there were relatively good and rare talents in this group, so rare that the qualities that should have been possessed by normal cadets now made him want to sigh.
Compared to the other students, these five students really stood out from the rest, and could be judged as definitely non-passenger NPCs in the game, one of the things that 'Ichijō Mirai' cared about.
It's possible to play... ah no, it's possible to exchange feelings and feel each other's temperament and resilience.
Ichijō Mirai beckoned for Furuya Rei and Date Wataru, who filed in and whispered, "Date-san, your father was an elite police officer who first called the police to report a robbery at a convenience store, and then, in accordance with the police's instructions, endured the indignity of hiding amongst the hostages with his teeth."
Date Wataru was stunned, "What, what?"
...To endure the humiliation of being instructed by the police?
"His initial choice should have been to be patient, with the intention of suddenly attacking the robbers when the police attacked, and to make a counter-attack, right?"
Ichijō Mirai didn't change his face: "You don't agree."
"Great, I don't agree with it either. If you hold back for a while, the more you think about it, the more you think about it, the more you think about it, so what's the point of holding back?"
"Let's just go for it!"
Date Wataru: "?"
Furuya Rei: "??"
Matsuda Jinpei: "???"
The three students responded enthusiastically, and seemed eager to follow the commander's orders, and Ichijō Mirai was pleased to give the order, "Each of you will meet at the door."
With that, he was about to go out.
Matsuda Jinpei grabbed Ichijō Mirai, "Hey!"
"What do you mean?" In his anxiety, he lowered his voice like an ant on a hot pan, "Stop holding a grudge!"
"There are so many hostages out there, and the robbers have at least five or six pistols in their hands, as well as a shotgun, wouldn't it be a death sentence to go straight out?!"
Ichijō Mirai paused for a moment and replied, rightfully, "Duck."
"They're bad shots," He said, "Didn't you see the first shot? It didn't even hit anyone, it hit the ceiling. It was a bad shot."
"No way, Matsuda-san, you can't dodge bullets, can you?"
Matsuda Jinpei: "???"
"That was a shot to the sky, a threatening warning, not meant to hit!"
He takes a deep breath and grits his teeth. "There are hostages."
"If we duck, we'll hit the hostages, right?"
What's the difference between going straight up to the robbers and drawing their fire, and dodging the bullets and letting them hit the hostages, and deliberately drawing the robbers to kill the hostages!
"Wow, that's true," Ichijō Mirai said as if he'd just remembered, showing serious surprise and hesitating to answer with uncertainty about what to do if he hit the hostages, "Then..."
"A moment of silence for them?"
He nodded a few times on his shoulder and forehead and said a simple prayer, "Rest in peace."
"Okay, I'm rushing!"
The three students: "!!!"
Together they grabbed Ichijō Mirai, and in a flurry of activity almost punched and kicked each other.
But it was Ichijō Mirai they wanted to hit the most, "Hold on..."
"No, wait..."
"Mirai-san, you..."
The Commander was a bit out of sorts, Matsuda Jinpei was cracking up, he was hugging Ichijō Mirai's hand tightly, "It can't be because of the superstition that you can't wear new shoes in the evening that you've become out of sorts, can it?! Be normal!"
He realized that Ichijō Mirai had smiled at him in a friendly way.
"Ah," Ichijō Mirai seemed to be in a good mood, and even smiled again, "that's the expression, thank you, Matsuda-san."
"I'm satisfied."
...You're really trying to be funny, aren't you? But look at the urgency of the situation... it's an emergency situation where someone could die if you're not careful!
This guy!!!!
Matsuda Jinpei gritted his teeth, his dentures were itching, and he had the urge to really bite someone, he took a deep breath, "You...Hey!!!"
Ichijō Mirai leapt out.
A couple of the men missed and were carried around for a moment before scrambling back to their feet, "Hey!"
Matsuda Jinpei gritted his teeth, chased Ichijō Mirai's figure, and followed him out.
He forced himself to calm down, and while moving quickly, he took in the situation stoically: the robbers were standing apart, some taking money from the cash registers, others loading up valuables like cigarettes and alcohol, and others patrolling the vicinity of the hostages, exerting a heavy, invisible pressure on them.
At the sound of rapid footsteps, the robbers turned their heads in surprise and looked startled, and even some of the hostages quietly turned their heads and widened their eyes.
Hiromitsu Morofushi, at the very back of the hostages and in a position where he could see almost all of the robbers, looked back and saw Ichijō Mirai, and then made a decisive move to attack one of the robbers who happened to be patrolling the neighborhood and grabbed his gun.
Ichijō Mirai attacked the robber in the other direction, and as he took the gun with ease, he rolled over without looking back and dodged a bullet.
A shotgun shell.
The robber who had first signaled with the shotgun had already reacted by aiming it at Ichijō Mirai.
Other robbers in the vicinity also reacted and drew their guns on Ichijō Mirai.
Ichijō Mirai didn't even look at the other robbers, and was fiddling with the gun he had just grabbed while half crouching and kneeling on the ground.
"Ah..."
He said, "It's not a police pistol..."
"I don't seem to know how to use it..."
Matsuda Jinpei couldn't hear anything anymore, as he gazed at the shotgun robber who pulled the trigger again, his pupils shrank, his mind almost went blank, he couldn't hear anything, he couldn't say anything, he just instinctively lunged for him.
He jumped at Ichijō Mirai.
Gunshots rang out.
Ichijō Mirai aborts his instinctive reaction of rolling over and dodging, pausing in place for a moment to grab Matsuda Jinpei in his arms and roll him across the floor several times to the back of a shelf.
While rolling, Matsuda Jinpei was shot.
In the shoulder.
He blacked out, grunted, and felt something like medicine in his mouth before the pain hit him later.
"A-also," He was forced to swallow the medicine, anxiously signaling, "Run!"
Seven or eight robbers, seven or eight guns, what are they feeding him for, run!!!!
There were gunshots, random hits erupted, Matsuda Jinpei felt as if he had been shot, but there was no pain, and once again his eyes went black.
A physical blackness.
Ichijō Mirai reached up and closed his eyes, his tone grave, rather like Matsuda Jinpei had sadly passed away, "Rest in peace, Matsuda-san."
Suddenly, his voice softened a little, with a smile that was almost imperceptible over the sound of gunfire, "I found it, the accomplice hiding among the hostages, a guy in a black hat."
"See you later."
"Bye-bye."