Ultraman Legend of the Light Chaser

"People with crow heads?" Aiba Yu was puzzled by Daigo's description. "There are indeed such aliens, but what are they doing on Earth?"

Daigo held the phone in one hand and stretched himself hard with the other. The GUTS team had used the Flying Swallow as their rest room all night, and now their bones were rusty. Their joints would crack with the slightest effort. The only one in better condition was Rena, who was lying in the back seat of the Sherlock.

As a result, besides chasing away a flock of crows and a few swarms of mosquitoes, they didn't see a single trace of the monster—there were so many mosquitoes by the water that Daigo had to change his position several times while he was on the phone.

"Are there such aliens? Who are they?" Daigo asked.

"The Lebik aliens, who capture slaves throughout the galaxy to maintain their society..."

They operate, and they prefer people with strong vitality and good physical strength... The physical constitution of Earthlings doesn't actually meet their usual standards.

When Aiba Yu was investigating the cause of the disappearance of Solka and others in space, he had dealt with the guy with the crow's head. At that time, he was dealing with a monster disaster on a planet. The Lebik aliens descended from the sky with their spaceship, skillfully fired beams to hit the legs, injected tranquilizers, and then shrunk the monster with a gun-like weapon and took it away - the whole process took no more than thirty seconds.

The natives were dumbfounded, and Aiba Yu stared blankly at the lights on their spaceship. Even the Yapool, who were dedicated to collecting experimental materials, didn't have such capture efficiency. The Yapool preferred to beat the materials half to death before taking them away; even if they were dead, it didn't matter—they would saw them off and mix them with other monsters to make new ones. The Lebik aliens clearly preferred to take intact materials. Aiba Yu later learned that they were actually capturing slaves.

There are no better slaves than monsters or aliens with special abilities. The Lebik aliens have always been adept at capturing two of the life forms they can control, leaving none behind. But they've come to Earth? Are they really that desperate for slaves?

“I don’t know,” Daigo waved away the mosquitoes that were bothering him and walked further away from the bushes. After confirming that his teammates were not nearby, he lowered his voice and said, “I’m starting to understand what you mean by them capturing slaves. We also found other suspicious points when we visited yesterday.”

“There have been two disappearances in the town recently, or more accurately, people from the town have disappeared in other places…” Daigo said, “We contacted the police station to check the data for the possible times of the incidents and found that they basically coincide with the days when residents claimed to have heard ‘ghostly cries’. Horii said that it might be a coincidence, but if, as you said, it was about capturing slaves, then perhaps the cries were made by the people who were captured.”

Last night, when Daigo was engaged in close combat with the Lebik aliens, he vaguely saw them throw something that looked like a box out of the window. Crying sounds came from the box, and it disappeared along with the box as soon as it reached the window. Daigo saw a fluorescent green light, and now that he thinks about it, it might have been their spaceship.

“Understood. You continue your investigation in the new development zone regarding the Lebik aliens… I’m going to the ground guard’s interrogation room,” Aiba Yu said. “The Mokujin aliens and the Reicuran aliens might know something.”

……

In the afternoon, an unwelcome guest arrived at the ground guard interrogation room.

The weather was hot, but the corner where the interrogation room was located always felt cold and damp. Aiba Yu showed his work ID, and the door beeped as it was about to let him in, but the lock that had just been released suddenly slammed shut again.

The face of a gaunt middle-aged man appeared on the monitor screen, and in the lower right corner, a hairy head was hunched over a desk writing furiously—his clerk.

"Hey Air Force guy, what are you doing here?" The middle-aged man crossed his legs. His words were relatively polite, but Aiba Yu remembered that the hot-tempered men in the ground guard liked to shout "Air Force idiots" directly.

"We received a report of an alien sighting and came here to investigate," Aiba Yu replied.

"Huh?" The middle-aged man leaned closer, his narrow eyes almost touching the camera lens. "I remember that Chief Yoshioka has entrusted us with the investigation of the alien incident, especially the interrogation work. Do you want to overstep your bounds?"

"That's why I came to find you."

There was a moment of silence on the other side of the screen. After a while, the door unlocked, and a middle-aged man's dry voice came through: "Come in, ask your questions, and then leave."

Aiba Yu navigated the maze-like corridors to reach the interrogation room, only to hear snoring as he opened the door—coming from a metal bunk bed in the corner, where two guards were fast asleep.

The middle-aged man sat behind the table in the middle, trying to look at him with his nose in his eyes, while the clerk, a young man with curly hair, raised his head and smiled at him.

The entire room was constructed of iron, simple and cold. In the words of Captain Sato, a middle-aged man, "What conditions do you want for interrogating a suspect? Are you planning to decorate the room to be warm, bright, and like home, making the suspect feel right at home?"

Aiba Yu first glanced at the guards who were snoring loudly.

Captain Sato snorted coldly: "My team members, let them rest if they're tired. If you have something to say, just say it and then get out of here."

“There are eyewitnesses who say they saw aliens with crow heads capturing humans,” Aiba Yu couldn’t directly say that the information was leaked by the GUTS team. Transmitting important cross-departmental information directly without confidential review would only harm Daigo, so he changed his way of speaking: “I’m here to ask if the aliens you’ve imprisoned know anything about the crow people. It would be best if they had information about their hiding place.”

Captain Sato put his legs down. Although he complained that the air force was too long, he couldn't ignore the matter of the captured Earthlings: "The Crow People? I will try my best to get some information out of the Reicuran aliens, but you should be prepared. The Reicuran aliens only said some information on the first day they were imprisoned, and then they didn't say a word."

"What about the Muzhen aliens?" Aiba Yu asked, and the clerk sitting next to him suddenly chuckled.

"Mokjin Star's crazy woman, 327 years old this year, likes blue and nude pink, hates dirty orange, her favorite weapon is high heels, but she thinks high heels are troublesome, the person she hates the most is her partner when she doesn't talk, the person she likes the most is her partner when she is chasing prey, recently she has become obsessed with Maya's songs, thinks her style of dressing is very cool, and hopes that we can provide leather jackets and jeans."

Captain Sato spilled the beans: "She's involved in seventeen murders, with at least thirty-nine victims, and some other things about aliens. I can give you what you want."

"But you won't see that crazy woman again."

"why?"

Captain Sato pointed to his sleeping team members: "She wouldn't answer when I tried to talk to her properly, so we just argued. We argued for four days and four nights. I saw that she couldn't say anything else but was still in good spirits, so I sent her to the Life Science Research Center."

Aiba Yu remained silent for a while, and Captain Sato continued, "She probably can't argue anymore now. If you're willing to argue with Meatball, you can give it a try. The researchers will welcome you."

"...Then I will wait for news from the Reicuran aliens."

“No, you can have other sources of information,” Captain Sato said with a stern and unfriendly expression, but his words were firm: “We will join forces with the GUTS team to start the investigation from the missing persons case. Public security cases are also the responsibility of the ground guard.”

"No need to thank me!" Captain Sato said first. "Air Force guys, just stop trying to steal our funding."

Aiba Yu smiled and said, "We are still missing one TPC-δ. The new technology deployment of the Flying Swallow has been approved by the executive meeting."

Captain Sato raised an eyebrow, about to slam his hand on the table, but then glanced at his teammates who were sleeping like logs. He lowered his raised hand gently, suppressing the sound that was squeezed out of his throat: "Get out!"

Chapter Seventy Interval

Two days passed in this way. During his lunch break, Aiba Yu found an excuse to exchange information with Daigo, and casually tested him on his reading. After enjoying the "new human form of Tiga's face-changing scene", he was delayed for a while and returned to the air force later than usual.

The air force members, who were only serving as captains and doing unpaid work for the General Staff, had already started training on their own initiative. Ralph stood on the sidelines with one hand on his hip, supervising them with great seriousness.

But one person is missing.

The person waited for another ten minutes or so before Aiba Yu called him and rushed over. He had run quite a distance, his hair was stuck to his face, and beads of sweat dripped down his chin and were flicked onto his clothes.

Aiba Yu glanced at the time: "Where did you go?"

Before Fujisawa Sousuke could catch his breath, he stammered and didn't answer. Ralf silently opened his bag and handed him a water bottle. Fujisawa Sousuke stood there, not daring to move. Aiba Yu nodded, and only then did he take the water bottle and gulp down more than half of it like a toad.

"Where did he go?" Aiba Yu asked someone else, and Watanabe Yota answered under his gaze, "He went to... to visit a brother department... to exchange ideas."

"So you're just looking for someone to chat with?" Aiba Yu tossed his towel to Fujisawa Sousuke: "You can go off to training now."

Sosuke Fujisawa held the towel tightly without moving, looking somewhat timid: "I did go during my lunch break. A research group at the Space Development Center couldn't borrow a trolley, so I helped them move some things, which caused the delay."

Aiba Yu was also late and felt guilty, so he just told him to "behave properly" and let him off the hook, only allowing him to rest for a while before continuing training. Once the atmosphere had eased, Watanabe Yota took a break and whispered, "You went to help move things at the Space Development Center? That researcher from Kamimura... or something?"

“Yeah, I heard her say she was moving things, so I went to take a look… and then I got held up by a bunch of people,” Fujisawa Sosuke said with a bitter face. “The team that was researching the stone statues moved the materials to a different location, and all the logistics went to their place. Kamimura’s group couldn’t borrow a cart, so they had to move things themselves. When I went over there, I ran right into their line of fire, and I was too embarrassed to say I wouldn’t help.”

"So why did you run over as soon as someone said 'I'm moving things'?" Watanabe Yota keenly found the key point. He gave a strange smile and leaned closer: "Is Researcher Kamimura good-looking?"

Fujisawa Sousuke stammered and couldn't utter a single word. Ralph pulled a flower booklet from his bag and waved it around: "I don't know if it's pretty or not, but he really thinks it's 'pretty'!"

Fujisawa Sosuke knew what he had taken with just one glance and shouted, "It's not mine!"

Aiba Yu stared at the booklet and slowly read the title aloud: "Understanding You: High Emotional Intelligence Chatting Techniques".

Fujisawa Sousuke wished he could dig a hole and bury himself on the spot. Ralf casually picked up a page, flipped it open, and whistled: "It really is the book I've read before. It's quite popular in the library. There are seven or eight copies that are hard to borrow all day long... But kid, I have a piece of advice for you."

He pointed to the author's name: "Do you know how my ex-girlfriend became an 'ex' girlfriend? It's because I believed this book! I later checked the resume of the person who wrote this stuff... He's never married! He doesn't have any children! If you could really find true love using the methods in this book, I dare say he'd have kids running all over the place by now!"

"She and I are just friends! Friends! We've only known each other for a few days!" the person involved shouted anxiously, and Aiba Yu noticed that his ears had turned red.

Ralph gave him a knowing look: "There's nothing shameful about falling in love at first sight. Before meeting each other's parents, we're all 'friends.' If you have any relationship problems, you can ask me. I don't have successful experience, but I have plenty of experience with failures, so I can help you eliminate the wrong answers... By the way, where did your teru teru bozu go? Did you give it to her too?"

Fujisawa Sousuke quickly defended himself: "It got dirty, so I took it to the dry cleaners. The owner said there was a badly stitched tear, so I asked him to repair it for me! I'm going to go to the base supermarket! I must have bought a defective product!"

Aiba Yu suddenly coughed.

Fujisawa Sousuke thought the captain was unhappy that he hadn't explained things clearly enough. He cautiously glanced at Aiba Yu's expression, and seeing no sign of the clouds turning into gloom, he confidently continued:

"The dry cleaner owner is the older brother of researcher Kamimura. I met researcher Kamimura through him. She is young..."

I had polio when I was young, and although I recovered, I was left with lasting effects, including difficulty walking. That's why I went to see her when she said she was moving things.

“If that’s the case, then there’s nothing wrong with helping out,” Aiba said, snapping out of his reverie. He noticed the words on the pages of the book Ralf had opened and suddenly said, “You’re getting on in years…”

Fujisawa Sosuke, like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, exclaimed, "We're really just friends!!! I... I just noticed that I'm not very good at talking, so I wanted to try being 'highly emotionally intelligent' like others!"

"I'll give you a day off for Halloween," Aiba Yu said.

"Huh?" Fujisawa Sousuke, stunned by the sudden happiness, was completely dumbfounded.

Ralf held up "The Art of High Emotional Intelligence Conversation" and pointed to a passage that read: "'Use every available holiday to start a conversation.'"

The book thoughtfully lists a list of holidays worth discussing. Looking at the dates, the closest one is Halloween—although it's a children's holiday, some "big kids" will take the opportunity to sneak into the trick-or-treating line.

Aiba Yu didn't quite understand the joy of dressing up as a Christmas tree and asking other adults for candy. He only knew that young people like Fujisawa Sosuke's age would like this kind of thing. Simply put, it's similar to some people calling themselves "forever 18 years and N months old." "Sosuke is that age too. It's normal for him to have someone he likes. As long as it doesn't interfere with his work, it's fine," Aiba Yu didn't think too much about it.

Just as he expected, Fujisawa Sousuke was so surprised that he was completely stunned. After realizing what had happened, he thanked him profusely, and the captain in his eyes looked like a Buddha statue, with divine light shining from the back of his head.

A few hours later.

Aiba Yu was the one who was completely bewildered.

"The numbers are wrong." Every time the meal card "beeps," some money is deducted. Aiba Yu doesn't care how much food he eats. He just goes to the cafeteria to follow the example and doesn't want to arouse suspicion. He never cares how much money is left on his card, and he doesn't go to the base supermarket to buy rice, flour, and cooking oil like the TPC members who need to supplement their household income.

But he always remembered how many digits it had... Now there's suddenly a "1" in front of it.

Captain Sato, who was queuing behind him, snorted: "The Air Force is treated much better than us rolling around on the ground, huh?"

Of course, it wasn't that the airline's benefits suddenly took off. Aiba Yu was stunned because he thought of the note that Director Sawai had copied a few days ago: "If you don't have enough money on your cafeteria meal card, you can come to me. They always give you too much."

“Sato,” Aiba Yu asked, “isn’t there a term called ‘living off one’s parents’?”

Captain Sato had seen Aiba Yu's file and knew that this guy had no parents to rely on, but you can't just point at someone and say "orphan," so he changed his words: "You found a rich couple of in-laws?"

Aiba Yu was speechless for a long time, but Sato had already squeezed in and said, "Take your things and leave, don't block the way here."

Then, as if suddenly remembering something, he lowered his voice and said, "I'll come find you later. The Victory Team's Nori is quite skilled, and the investigation has a preliminary direction."

Chapter Seventy-One: The Bound Man

“There are so many missing persons cases, so many. They are hidden and scattered. If it weren’t for a special investigation, they would be impossible to find.” Captain Sato and Aiba Yu found a corner to sit down. The plates in front of them were emitting a fragrant aroma, but neither of them touched their chopsticks.

Captain Sato solemnly said, "The closest ones are around the new development zone. There are actually fewer cases inside the new development zone itself. So far, we have only found two cases that the Victory Team visited, and the missing persons were both in other places at the time... The Victory Team found the Crow People in the new development zone, which shows that the Crow People are very cunning. They have disrupted the investigation of the local police who received the report."

"You said the locations are scattered, but there are also a lot of missing persons cases in other parts of Japan?" Aiba Yu thought of the actions of the Muzhen aliens. Those two Muzhen aliens liked to randomly select people to play "hunting games" depending on their mood, and they obviously wouldn't just stay in one city.

"Where is the furthest TPC branch?" Captain Sato suddenly asked, then answered himself: "The South American branch, located in Santiago. It was one of the last branches established. TPC's strength there is relatively weak. You know their execution capabilities... But even with their weakest execution capabilities, they still reported twelve 'unsolved missing persons cases' after receiving the letter of assistance."

“We can’t rule out the possibility that there are cases unrelated to aliens, but the South American branch has also discovered clues about the ‘Crow People,’ whose hideouts are all over the world!” Captain Sato said, his throat getting dry. After drinking some miso soup, he continued, “And the most crucial thing is not just the Crow People.”