"Do you mind telling your boys to get the hell out of my club?"

The annoyed question drew Caroline's attention back to the red-haired youth.

"You do realize the kind of trouble you're in, right?" She asked after a moment of silence.

"No shit! I just told you my guts are busted. You know, the guts I paid a good sum to get? I need to get to a goddamn hospital, so how about you get the fuck out of my sight!?"

The two glared at each other for a while before the BEO commander raised her phone once more. Whatever she heard caused her expression to shift once more, and right after, she turned around to the exit.

"We're done here." She said.

[Huh? Seriously?]

The encirclement of power suit wearing idiots remained in place even as the commander turned around to leave. Only once, one of them turned to her with that simple question, did the others realize what was happening. The commander didn't repeat herself, and from how angry she looked, the others understood how angry she was.

"Shoo! Shoo!"

Though still hesitant, the armored squad turned around to leave, because they got the order, of course. They definitely weren't spurred by the red-haired youth shooing them away or the rumors they heard about him killing dozens of high-level cyborgs and pseudo-Genomes in a single day.

Once the crowd thinned out, the groups standing in the back became visible. Among them were the members of Silver Wind who had remained behind to offer their support in case another EI incident was caused. The red-haired youth looked at them with such coldness that the distance between them seemed much longer than it actually was.

Merry looked a little confused, her vibrant smile nowhere to be seen. Their petite team leader took her hand and turned to the exit, but not before shooting the youth a glare. Kafka followed right after, but Wolf stayed behind, a disappointed look on his face. Eventually, he left the club as well.

Finally alone, the red-haired youth finally allowed himself to relax, heaving a long sigh. He looked around the dance floor, his gaze passing over the hole in the floor. Somehow, he seemed far more interested in a random corner, seeing how his gaze lingered on it. Just then, the club's entrance opened, and a group of people rushed in.

"Boss!"

At the front was Carlos, followed by Bella and the other team leaders. More Inferno members flooded in right after, quickly surrounding their boss.

"Boss, are you okay?"

"They didn't do anything to you, did they?"

"Sorry, boss… we couldn't do anything."

If he had let them, they would've likely continued apologizing for a while before shifting to questions about what happened. However, the red-haired youth silenced them with a single motion of his hand and then turned to the gang's lieutenant.

"The place has been bugged. I disabled most of them, but you should sweep it just in case."

"A-ah…"

Carlos's confused reply echoed that of the other members, but there wasn't much they could do about it. No answers were going to be given that night as their boss went up to his office, but not before giving them an order not to bother him.

Opening the door, the red-haired youth dragged his feet to his desk and dropped down on his chair. He seemed rather exhausted, more exhausted than a cyborg should be, but that was a part of the act. Not that he needed to keep it up anyway. Silence filled the office, and the faint chatter from the first floor died down.

Soon after, a single black dot manifested in a corner beside the red-haired youth, transforming into a door-sized pool of darkness. Someone stepped through it, dressed in a dark gray, high-tech armor. The red-haired youth stared at him for a moment before the corners of his mouth rose into a grin.

[How did it go?]

[Pretty good, I would say.]

The conversation didn't create any waves in the outside world, be it sound or electromagnetic. It all happened in the safety of their mind, avoiding any potential spying attempts. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

[No one suspected anything?]

[I believe the one named Wolf has noticed. However, he did not say anything at the time.]

[... You didn't smile like that when talking to them, did you?]

[No. Is there a problem with the way I smile?]

[Yes. It's creepy.]

[Strange.] The red-haired youth touched his face, looking confused. [I am confident that I have perfectly recreated your expressions.]

[Well, you didn't.]

The armored figure walked over and placed a hand on the youth's shoulder.

[Turn it off. I want to take some rest.]

[Sure.]

The red-haired youth sighed, or pretended to, then closed his eyes. His body seemed to relax just then, his head dropping as if he had passed out. A few seconds passed in silence, then his limp body disappeared, leaving only the armored figure standing in the office. An audible sigh escaped the armor before it disintegrated into countless threads of light, retracting into a single point.

The room regained its darkness soon after, and a red-haired youth turned the chair and dropped down. Though he shared the exact same feature as the first one, the exhaustion warping his expression appeared just a little bit more human.

"Goddamn it…" Dante sighed. "This is starting to become a pain in the ass…"

Nothing worse than noticing a mistake you made long after the fact. In his rush to face the accursed scion of the Tigris family, he had neglected to leave his replacement behind, even though that was the entire reason why he had asked Suzuka to create one for him. The AI operating it was still far from perfect, which is why Volcan took on the role of operating it remotely, just like one of his androids.

Though it might have been unnecessary at this point, Dante still decided to drop his clone in front of the BEO, mainly to mess with their heads and bring doubt to anyone who might have suspected him of being Ghost. This would have been a lot more useful a while back, but he couldn't expect his favorite Gearhead to make him a perfect android copy of himself on top of everything else.