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The next day, outdoor recreation time.
Steven walked a full lap around the yard, chatting people up casually here and there. On the surface, he looked relaxed, but secretly he was scouting escape routes and observing the guards' positions.
Aside from the patrolling guards, the watchtowers around the area were manned by armed sentries.
This setup was practically a prison.
If he hadn't heard from his cellmates that this detention center held only serious offenders, including some wanted criminals waiting to be handed over to the FBI, he would've thought it was overkill.
After learning that, it made sense.
"Hey, bosses! Bored out of your minds? How about I put on a magic show to liven things up?"
After getting a general grasp of the situation, Steven picked the best escape spot and shouted loudly by the warning line.
In an instant, all eyes turned toward him.
"Let's go. Check it out."
"Every day is exactly the same. Boring as hell."
"So what kind of magic trick are you going to perform?"
"…"
Life in the detention center was dull beyond belief. Naturally, the inmates were curious.
Before long, a crowd gathered around Steven.
"The trick is called Road to Survival. I'm going to use this thing to blow a hole in the wall and escape. Anyone interested in coming along?"
As he spoke, Steven casually dug a lump of booger out of his nose.
The special ability of the Explosion Fruit was simple and ridiculous: any part of the user's body could explode. Boogers included. Even the air you blew out of your mouth could be turned into an explosive.
On top of that, the user was completely immune to explosions. You could eat bombs like snacks and still come out without a scratch.
The inmates stared at Steven's actions with the kind of pitying look reserved for the severely unhinged.
Steven didn't care. He walked straight toward the spot he had picked for the escape.
The strange commotion on the yard caught the guards' attention.
"Is there a fight going on? Go check it out!"
Two guards rushed over, batons in hand.
Just as they were about to break up the crowd, Steven smeared the booger onto the wall.
BOOM!
A deafening explosion tore through the yard, blasting a massive hole in the wall.
"Boogers can explode?"
"That guy's some kind of demolition genius, isn't he?"
"Standing that close, he's gotta be blown to pieces, right?"
"…"
The inmates and the two guards stared at the rolling smoke, questioning their entire existence.
Meanwhile, in the detention center's surveillance room—
"Quick, full alert! Someone's escaping!"
The warden wiped cold sweat from his forehead as he stared at the monitors.
"Yes, sir!"
The alarm was sounded immediately.
Out on the yard, the smoke cleared.
Steven stood there completely unharmed.
Looking at the stunned inmates, he raised his arms and shouted,
"What are you standing around for? Waiting to die? If you want freedom, run!"
The inmates snapped out of it and charged toward the breach in a frenzy.
Bang!
A sentry in the watchtower fired warning shots, but they were utterly useless.
Everyone locked up here was either a hardened criminal or a desperate fugitive. Pick anyone at random and they were looking at twenty years minimum, no upper limit.
With a chance to escape, only an idiot would obediently squat down and surrender.
Take the gamble and turn a bicycle into a motorcycle.
Steven had deliberately brought the inmates along. Besides boosting his odds of escape, there were two other reasons.
First, it would scatter the police's attention so they wouldn't focus solely on him. Second, he wanted to spice things up on the Beika stage. Ideally, he'd turn this place into a Japanese version of Gotham.
"Open fire! Shoot!"
Seeing that warnings didn't work, the warden gave the order.
Bang bang bang…
Rat-tat-tat…
The guards showed no mercy, spraying bullets at the fleeing inmates.
In no time, quite a few bodies were piled near the breach.
Meanwhile, Steven and the inmates who got there first had already vanished into the forest.
"Damn it all. You idiots believed that four-eyed little frog's nonsense and framed me for raping and killing an innocent girl."
"Pah! I'm an upstanding man. I never do that kind of filthy crap!"
After confirming he was safe for the moment, Steven spat toward the detention center.
Megure Thirteen was going to be busy now.
At the same time—
On a nearby hilltop, a man in a long black coat with striking silver hair stood with three subordinates, AKs in hand, raining gunfire down on the guards.
Bang!
One shot, one Little Japan down.
"Take cover! Get down!"
Cowering in a corner, the warden hugged his head and shouted at the guards still chasing the escapees.
Even so, many guards who couldn't dodge in time fell into pools of blood.
"Damn it. I didn't expect backup. This was a planned escape. I have to report it upstairs."
The warden muttered bitterly, not daring to stick his head out.
After a while, the gunfire stopped.
On the hilltop—
"Looks like someone beat us to it. The target's already gone."
The stylish man was none other than Gin, the infamous workhorse of the Organization.
He stared coldly at the corpse-strewn detention center below.
"Boss, are you saying someone sabotaged our operation?"
Vodka scratched his head, completely confused.
"Who knows? Let's pull out and find out who did us this favor."
Gin turned away, eyes icy, and left.
…
Three months passed in the blink of an eye.
"Damn it, they put me through hell for three months, and now they just cancel the warrant like it's nothing?"
"Do they have any idea how I lived these past three months? Thinking about it makes me want to cry."
"If we're restarting the cat-and-mouse game, then let's make it exciting. Do they really think I'm some pushover?"
Steven muttered to himself as he swaggered into the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department building.
The detention center bombing and mass escape were ultimately suppressed.
Because one of the escapees was a major criminal the U.S. wanted extradited, the FBI joined the manhunt.
Over the past three months, the other fugitives were caught one by one.
Steven, relying on his system's cheat-like support, escaped multiple encirclements by Japanese police and the FBI, but his life wasn't easy.
Broke and wanted, he went hungry by day and sleepless by night, constantly on edge.
What pissed him off the most was that during this time, he even helped old ladies cross the street, stepped in to protect bullied students, and occasionally took care of shrine maidens and the like. He'd done plenty of good deeds.
That damn Five-Star Good Citizen System didn't react at all.
Just an hour ago, Steven saw on a street-side TV that the Metropolitan Police had officially canceled the warrant for his arrest.
He had no idea why, but remembering the misery of the last three months only made him angrier.
He was innocent, yet he'd been chased like a stray dog by Japanese police and the FBI. And now…
They hunt him when they feel like it, cancel it when they feel like it?
Furious, Steven decided to pull off something big.
He was going to make it clear to Japanese police and the FBI that he wasn't someone they could squeeze at will. Whether the game continued or ended was his call.
"....."