The university students that had been made captive were taken to an old temple that was a little out from the city center. It was a place that was completely run down, having never been kept up since the last keepers had passed away years ago.
And due to its hard-to-come-by location—tucked far off the highway and down a random side street—it was a place that got absolutely no visitors. It was the perfect type of place to hold hostages completely out of sight, leaving them isolated if the group needed to do something drastic down the line.
"They’re all tied up. There’s no way they can escape, right?" Blark asked as he looked down at the university students.
The kids were lined up on the wooden porch outside the main structure of the temple. The wooden platform protruded out from the main room itself; this way, if a person was coming to the temple to attack them, the hostages would be in plain sight for the intruders to see. Their hands and legs were bound tight by a mixture of heavy zip-ties, rope, and steel cuffs.
"Just remember not to go easy on them just because they’re ordinary students," Blark warned, his eyes scanning the perimeter. "This mission is the most important one yet. This could be the toughest opponent you ever have to deal with."
"Really?" Agent Three asked, letting out a light chuckle. He was wearing his usual baggy hoodie and had both hands shoved deep into his pockets, looking like the youngest out of the entire crew. "We have dealt with high-level traitors before, and even though they know our exact methods, there’s never been a need for more than two of us to handle a hit. If you ask me, bringing the whole squad out here is a bit of an overkill."
"Only a person who doesn’t know the legacy of the old Agent One would say something stupid like that," Agent Two interjected. He leaned casually against a wooden pillar, continuously spinning his daggers through his fingers with blinding speed. "Look at it using a simple metric. If we were to send every single active agent after the current Agent One standing beside us, do you think that would be overkill?"
As Agent Three thought about the comparison for a moment, the young man gulped and slowly shook his head.
"But the situation is completely different, right?" the young agent argued, trying to find his footing. "For one, he was the old Agent One back when things weren’t nearly as established as they are now. And on top of that, if he’s somehow still alive, he would have escaped when he was just a young teenager, right? It’s not like he would have been getting constant training or anything like that while he was hiding out there in the regular world."
"You’re entirely right about that part," Commander Blark agreed, his voice dropping. "But we always make sure the mission is completed with absolute certainty. So you have to calculate the other possibilities. What if he always knew deep down that this day would come? What if he suspected that we would eventually come to reclaim him?
"And it’s not just that. He has a whole regular life ahead of him now—he has things he wishes to protect. If I was in his position, I would be training endlessly day and night, keeping ready for if this day ever occurred. Though, in this safe world that he’s been living in, I highly doubt he’s been able to push his body far enough."
The agents suddenly spotted a lone figure cresting the hill just outside the temple grounds. As the shadow walked up, they instinctively tensed, ready to fight for a second until they recognized the man in the bright orange robes heading over. It was the new Agent One.
"You’ve come back. Did everything go well on the other end of the district?" Blark asked as the fighter approached.
"There were no issues at all. I didn’t even need to get personally involved," Agent One answered flatly. "Considering how much of a big deal everyone has been making of this Billion Bloodline group—the crew the old Agent One attached himself to—I honestly thought they would have shown a lot more raw strength. The Black Hounds are a rather infamous part of the Billion Bloodline from what I can gather from the street reports."
"Recently," Blark added, "the Billion Bloodline group was able to best them in a turf war, so the main force should be better than that at least. And besides, although you say that so lightly, that other group of people who hired us... they aren’t exactly normal either. You saw what they are capable of and what they did on campus. You have to think about it logically—if people who are that physically strong are asking for our help, our enemy at least has to have a decent chance to put up a real fight."
Number One let out a heavy sigh, turning around to look back at the edge of the hill he had just marched over.
"I highly doubt there will be anyone in their roster as strong as that man Hercules we went up against on the mountain trail," Agent One answered, crossing his arms. "Honestly, a part of me thinks we only managed to get out of that situation as clean as we did due to how crazy that Hugo man was. He actually allowed his ear and a part of his hair to be ripped completely off right in front of us just to secure a closing strike."
"Well, if we’re talking about crazy people, aren’t I looking at another one right in front of me?" Blark said, bursting into a loud laugh.
"Hey, look up ahead," Agent Five interrupted, his tone suddenly turning dead serious.
The Black Hand members all locked their eyes on the exact same spot at the top of the trail. The captive university students strained against their ropes to look too, watching as a lone man slowly walked over the crest of the hill. His hair was gelled slick back, and he was wearing a pair of thin glasses—but as he reached the top of the path, he calmly took them off and placed them inside his jacket pocket.
"That’s the old Agent One?" Agent Three whispered, his eyes widening. "That’s really him, right?"
"Yeah," Agent Two answered, his spinning daggers suddenly stopping mid-air. "But what the heck is he wearing?"
Aron had officially arrived at the old temple. He wasn’t wearing his usual standard suit; instead, he was wearing the official Billion Bloodline jacket, complete with the distinct Silver inlay lining the inside of the fabric.
"I am standing here today as a member of the Billion Bloodline group," Aaron declared, his voice echoing coldly over the run-down temple grounds. "And I’m here to get those kids back."
He paused, a dangerous aura radiating off his frame as the treeline behind him began to rustle with movement.
"And I didn’t come alone."