Irium

"M-Monica." Monica replies meekly, shaking in her boot from the coldness emanating from the DemiG.o.ddess.

"I see." Roswaisa"s voice grows even colder and scarier as she asks, "Monica, you think you can cause problems in our case and think we will let you get away with it?"

"I-I wasn"t causing any problems in it." She, still shaking, somehow manages to squeak, "I w-was trying to give you more motivation to catch Cartel. So … so you can catch him quicker."

"And your definition of doing that is to blow up a gem shop owned by someone we know?" Seeing her squeaking, Roswaisa becomes even more terrifying. If I were to give a metaphor here, I"d say a tigress is looking at a tied-up rabbit. Kinda feel bad for the rabbit but you know, it"s a tigress on the other side. There"s no way I am going to do anything that would shift the tigress" wrath towards me.

"Well, I … I may have gone a bit too far there!"

THWAK!

What happened? Well, not much actually. Roswaisa just tapped her ankle on the ground and the ground broke. That"s what caused the sound, and also took it away from Monica"s terrified self.

"… … …" With her mouth hanging wide-open and her eyes filled with terror, Monica looked up as she finally realized who she had messed with.

"Answer the question I am going to ask you!" Roswaisa commands. Monica nods like her neck has a spring on it. And so,

"What was the name of your fiancé?"

"J-Jerome Hawks."

"When did Cartel Hopkins killed him?"

"A month ago."

Oh, isn"t that … nah, probably a coincidence.

"Why did he kill him?"

"I don"t know."

THWAK!

The poor ground! It"s like spraying salt, no, acid on the wound.

"I-I really don"t know!"

THWAK!

And it just doesn"t stop. The ground keeps getting bashed again and again.

"I-I telling you I don"t know!"

Monica is visibly cowering in fright and tears are welling up in her eyes. I am pretty sure she is telling the truth about not knowing that. So,

"Hey Roswaisa, I don"t think she is lying." I say so.

"I know." She says angrily, "But it"s still an annoying thing to hear."

She clicks her tongue and proceeds to her next question.

"What relation did Cartel have with you or your fiancé?"

"H-he was a policeman." She says, doing her best to stop the tears as she continues. "He mentioned coming across Cartel and having arguments with him when he was investigating cases related to Remedy Corporation."

I see. Police and Remedy are always at odds. And it never ends well for the former side. I don"t know how many cops have died because they got to close to finding out importation stuff about Remedy. Still, if that were all there was to it then,

"Why weren"t you making us target the entire Remedy Corp. then?"

I mean, they are weakened now. It"ll be much easier to get revenge against the entire corporation instead of just the man responsible for killing her fiancé.

"I-I-I …" She starts looking down, unable to stop cowering and tears start falling down. Then,

THWAK!

"Answer!" Roswaisa beats the ground once more with a tap and brings Monica back to the conversation.

"I-It was because … I didn"t know you guys were so strong."

We are strong, alright. Roswaisa could take down the entire Corporation on her own probably. But I guess it is fair to say not everyone will know how strong she is and so it makes sense that Monica thought getting revenge on the entire Corp. would be unrealistic and foolish.

"So, well," Roswaisa says, "Are you telling me that you if you knew I was this strong, you would have threatened me to destroy the entire Remedy Corporation and kill all the people in it?"

"N-no I, I mean, I … wouldn"t, well," The fright on her face reaches record high and she starts losing it a little.

Seeing that, Roswaisa tries to continue but I stop her. Now she is just trying to scare her for the kick of it. And while I don"t particularly mind if she wants to fulfill her s.a.d.i.s.tic desires but we have other stuff to do right now.

"Monica," I ask, trying my best to speak in a soothing voice. She turns to me with a frightened expression and teeth chattering against each other, "Do you have any other intel on Cartel Hopkins that may help us find him? Anything at all?"

"…" She starts contemplating as she calms down a little. I look at Roswaisa with an expression saying "don"t do anything" to make sure Monica doesn"t fall unconscious from fear or something. She just grumps in irritation and back away to lean on the walls.

"I … I think there might be something like that." Monica then says, "I have the address he used to live in till a few months ago. My fiancé, Jerome, mentioned that someday – that he had first gone to his old address and found out he wasn"t living there anymore so he had find out his new address since it wasn"t legally changed and something like that."

She looks at me; probably hoping that I tell her that piece of information would be useful so Roswaisa doesn"t kill her. Well, I don"t know if it actually will be much useful but I guess I can save her hide from the DemiG.o.ddess" wrath. She is a wimp anyway, there"s no way she would be able to stand one more ground-breaking from Roswaisa.

"Yeah, we could use that." I say and motion Roswaisa to come with me outside of the room. She does so and as we exit, Grey and Jessica look at us with awkward expressions.

"What!?" Roswaisa asks.

"Well, we were thinking of scolding that girl for what she did and all but after seeing what you did, I think we should rather go and comfort her." Grey says.

"Whatever do you mean! All I did was break the floor!" Roswaisa says and keeps walking without caring to look at our awkward reactions.

*****