Cop Craft – Dragnet Mirage Reloaded

Matoba was frowning.

「I went too far with you recently. I know you’ve been trying your best all this time.」 「…..」 「I have to give it to you. You’ve been kind of useful. So don’t worry too much about it.」

Tilarna’s eyes opened wide as she looked at him attently. She wasn’t exactly crying, but she was staring right at him nervously.

He said, frowning

「… Do you really mean that, Kei?」 「Yeah.」 「For real, for real?」 「I’m telling you that it’s true. Let’s leave what happened with the car behind. And that Maserati too… well… looking at it, it looks awful, but I think we can fix it. Don’t worry about it.」 「It can be fixed?」 「I think so. The exterior may look completely wrecked, but the inside seems to still be okay. After everything is said and done, I’ll even let you drive it and we can practice.」 「For real?!」

Tilarna’s face immediately lit up. Matoba laughed as he calmed her down.

「Don’t get too excited. But it’s a promise, as long as you drive safely…」

At that moment, a noise came from above them. It was a metallic sound coming from the wire from which the steel beams were hanging.

「?」

As they looked up, the beams that would have presumably been used for constructing the building started moving as they kept hanging from the wire. There were several of them, each weighing a few hundred kilos.

A part of the entire mechanism seemed to have broken with the prior crash.

Suddenly, an explosive and metallic sound resonated throughout the construction site, and all the beams started falling as the wire snapped. The several gigantic steel beams were falling directly on the Maserati…

「Ah…」

Both Matoba and Tilarna exclaimed, completely dumbfounded. At the same time, the beams started crashing and embedding themselves in the car. They fell on top of the engine and the car’s innards, destroying its combustion system and spilling gasoline all over, which then somehow caught fire and started burning.

It exploded.

As the two of them simply stood astonished in front of the wreckage, the Maserati Coupe kept burning.

「Ah… ahh…!!!」

Matoba fell to his knees in disbelief. Tilarna muttered behind him.

「… It seems like it’s received quite a bit of damage. Do you think we can still fix it?」 「There’s no way we can fucking fix it, you dumb alien…!」 「Wha- What’s with your attitude?」 「It’s burning! It’s fucking burning?! We can’t fix that! You’ve gone and yet again killed my newest girlfriend… you good for nothing!」

Of course Tilarna wasn’t just going to take all the insults.

「What a whiny idiot you are! What happened with all that sweet talking from earlier?!」 「Don’t fuck around! We’ll have to go back to riding the bus with this! What are we going to do? Fuck, this is the worst. It’s all your fault! Just die already! You idiot! ET! Alien! Your blood is made of acid!」 「Like a barbaric half human is one to talk! You inferior creature that doesn’t even know proper words of gratitude! And I swear by Kithenya, you’re going to burn in hell forever…!」 「It is my car who’s burning you idiot! Bring her back! Pay her back to me!!」

The other patrol cars started arriving at the scene, and the two of them kept insulting each other harshly all the time until the criminals were finally taken away.

After being scolded by Godunov for wrecking his car, being heavily insulted by Zimmer for yet another reckless car chase, being made fun of by the four officers from the other departments, and receiving several safety complaints from the fire department…

It was finally late at night.

Matoba took the bus back home, feeling completely exhausted and dejected. He hadn’t seen Tilarna at all since noon, and it wasn’t his problem anymore. She had talked to him about moving somewhere else, so she had probably been busy with that.

In all honesty, he had been so tired and busy, that he hadn’t even had time to think about Tilarna.

After the flashy incident earlier that day had been completely dealt with, he had been showered by paperwork to fill, and had forced O’Neill to stop his newest enterprise of bringing Earth’s printing and publishing industry to the Semani world. Now he was finally able to leave work.

On the way home, he bought some buns and hotdogs at a convenience store for dinner, and was carrying them on one hand as he half opened the garage door.

He entered the empty garage. Thinking about it, he hadn’t been home at all in two days. Fortunately he had left plenty of food for Kuroi before leaving, so she wasn’t going to starve to death, but she still probably felt lonely after that long.

The parking space looked strangely empty without a car inside it. Especially considering a Maserati should’ve been parked there.

「I’m home….」

Said Matoba, without hearing any response from Kuroi on the second floor.

Then a voice spoke to him

「Hmph. So you’re finally back」

He looked up, and saw Tilarna coming down from the second floor.

「What?」

She wasn’t wearing her regular Farbani suit, but for some reason she was wearing a simple long dress. It was a white, silky one piece, and it had a modest Farbanian emblem embroidered on it. A tiny black cat was right next to her.

「What do you think you’re doing?」

That was a strange attire to come pick up her stuff.

「I’m getting everything done.」 「?」 「Right here. You can take a look.」

Tilarna nonchalantly walked down the stairs, and headed towards the back of the first floor; a space that was meant to be used for storage. The door that looked so rustic and simple until a couple days ago was now adorned with an elegant tapestry or something like it. He looked at it suspiciously but decided to follow Tilarna and Kuroi into the former storage space. Within it was now something completely different. A place that seemed to come from a completely different world.

What used to be a storage space had been completely remodeled into a Farbanian living room.

The concrete walls were now hidden behind high quality curtains and paintings. A deep brown colored Barossa-style table was enshrined in the middle of the room, accompanied by matching chairs and even a closet. There was even a cute dresser with a foreign design… probably Swedish? However, it was all neatly arranged so the room didn’t feel cramped.

At the back of the room there was a homemade bed. It was also adorned with curtains with elegant patterns, and covered by pure white pillows and bedsheets.

And it even had its own lighting. The gentle light of an oil lamp and a yellow incandescent lamp lit up the entire self-made room.

「What do you think, Kei?」

Said Tilarna, completely confident in her results. It was truly an impressive room, especially for something built in so little time. It was decorated with Semanian elegance here and there.

「Well… that’s a nice hobby to have.」

He muttered, trying to let it all sink in.

「Right?! I had Cecil help me out for a couple of days, and just finished it, finally. This is going to be my room from now on. There are still a few things that I want to work on, but for now I’ll consider it complete. I will be your newest guest after Kuroi. Consider it an honor!」 「An honor… huh… You know this is my house, right?」 「Don’t worry about it. I’m fine with it.」

Tilarna smiled proudly. It was such an innocent and lovely smile that getting mad at her would be completely stupid.

Apparently the only one who ever thought she would be moving somewhere else was him. She had always considered finishing this room from the beginning. She had only been staying with Cecil to ask her for advice or something. And well, there was nothing he could do about her finding out about him living together with Tilarna. She was a good compassionate person anyways. He laughed bitterly and decided to leave it at that.

Though he would have never guessed they would conspire together like that…

「Anyways, you arrived just in time for dinner. Prepare yourself for a full course meal.」 「Full course?」 「That Kohshi Hikkari or whatever wasn’t too bad, but it’s time that I show you truly civilized cooking. You two will be my very first two-legged and four-legged guests. Just make yourself comfortable over there right next to Kuroi.」

Kuroi cried in acceptance. Tilarna was about to exit the room and head to the second floor, when Matoba called out to her.

「Hey, Tilarna.」 「What? Are you still mad about that car?」

Tilarna stopped in her tracks and said in a disappointed manner. It was an arrogant attitude, but Matoba saw anxiety in her eyes.

For some reason that expression felt deeply nostalgic to him.

It reminded him of his long gone younger sister…

Ai was also very pushy and assertive when she wanted, but sometimes she would also look at me like that. Whenever she would scold me for fighting with one of the nasty kids in the neighborhood. Or whenever she would force me to take one of her pretty poorly prepared bentos to school with me. Or the time she resolutely opposed me going to Semani as part of the PKF.

That’s right, Ai was like this as well.

Her eye color, her skin color, her hair color were all completely different from Tilarna’s. But she still was like her somehow.

「No…」

Matoba laughed bitterly

「I’m not mad. I think I got used to the idea that there’s nothing to do about it…」 「Alright then. That’s fine in that case.」

Tilarna giggled casually and disappeared behind the curtains. He watched her leave, and whispered to Kuroi as he started petting her behind her head.

「Well… I have no idea what kind of food she’s going to bring, but you’ll have to be my partner in this, Kuroi」

Kuroi started purring, and then replied with an uneasy 「Nyaa~」.