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~~((National Senior Citizens Day -- page 17 of 24))~~
He informed Arumoro immediately. With this, the operation could truly begin. The others had been waiting on word from him for quite a while, and now they could finally move into the town and get into position.

It was his turn to wait. Arumoro kept him apprised of their progress.

He used the time to reevaluate his situation. This basement floor was comprised of one large room with three smaller ones attached to it. Two storage rooms and one small office.

He would've liked to lure one of the Abolishers into one of those smaller rooms in order to isolate and ambush him without alerting the other, but that might've been too much to ask for.

The hostages, for their part, were utterly silent. They were not gagged, but their dirty faces, ragged clothes, and downcast eyes all painted a clear enough picture for Raul of what these people had been through.

Were these all of them, though? No. By his count, there should have been twenty or so more.

And these two Abolishers. He may not have known their names, but after that first battle, he certainly recognized their faces. They wore matching uniforms, both about as dirtied and torn as Raul's more casual clothing. They both carried a sidearm, though he only recalled the short one using his. The taller one was a materializer of a silvery metal. The reapers suspected it was zinc, but they acknowledged that there were simply too many other elements that fit that description to be sure.

Not that the element mattered too much for Raul. Being an alteration user, he thankfully didn't have to be terribly concerned about unexpected chemical reactions suddenly turning the tide of battle for or against him.

Most of the time, anyway.

Judging from the skill that the man had displayed previously, he was probably at least twenty years old as a servant. Which was a problem, of course, so Raul wanted to take him out first, though he was still going over options for potentially eliminating them both at once.