English
Indonesia
Chinese (Simp)
Japanese
Korean
Spanish
Portuguese
French
German
ArabicArknights: It Can't Possibly Be My Fault... Right? — Chapter 32
Chapter 32: A Heart-to-Heart Talk
“It means exactly what it says on the tin,” W snapped, her tone dripping with irritation. “How are you actually stupider than me?”
Kai slipped the emblem into his pocket with a resigned sigh. “Got anything else for us?”
A sharp sneer curled W’s lips. “Ha! Obviously. Remember that little stray? Misha?”
“What happened to Misha?” Skullshatterer jolted forward, the sudden mention of his sister breaking his stoic facade.
“Her? Oh, she’s doing just peachy. I’m the one who’s about to die of a migraine.” W rolled her eyes, her expression twisting into an exaggerated mask of suffering. “She spent the entire trek back whining about wanting to find you, so I dragged her along.”
“Where is Miss Misha now?” Amiya stepped in, her voice steady but laced with concern.
W tapped her chin, feigning deep thought. “Oh, right. I dumped her with your Medical Squad. She cried a river until she practically passed out. Did you know she had that kind of lung capacity, Skullshatterer?”
The tension drained from Skullshatterer’s shoulders in a heavy exhale. Misha was back. She was safe with Rhodes Island. The crying didn’t matter—survival did. He lowered his head, murmuring a quiet, rough, “Thank you.”
“Tch. Boring.” W’s tail lashed the air in slow, restless arcs. She leaned her weight onto one leg, her tone shifting to an overly casual drawl. “Speaking of missing persons… why haven’t I spotted that hooded guy with your little squad? Did Talulah finally roast him?”
‘Well, here it comes,’ Kai thought, suppressing a grimace. He knew it. Even with the original plot completely derailed, W’s obsession with the Doctor remained a fixed point in the timeline.
Amiya, blissfully unaware of the mercenary’s lethal underlying motives, answered earnestly. “The Doctor has his own matters to attend to. He didn’t participate in this meeting.”
“Oh… you call this a meeting?” W waved a hand, dismissing the topic with a theatrical lack of interest.
Kai watched her for a beat. He needed to defuse this before it blew up in their faces. “Hey, W. Walk with me for a second.”
W narrowed her eyes, her suspicion flaring instantly, but she followed him into a quiet corner of the room. “What do you want?”
“How’s Scout holding up?” Kai asked, keeping his voice light.
“Scout? Oh, the sniper kid?” W scrunched her nose, digging through her memory. “He’s fine. When you caught me last time, Ines managed to bag his squad. But since you let me walk, Ines didn’t make things difficult for him.”
“Good to know. So why hasn’t he reported back? If it weren’t for the constant status updates, we would’ve assumed you guys locked them in a dungeon.”
The Chernobog operation for Scout’s squad hadn’t deviated much from the original timeline. They had still run into W’s mercenaries. However, Kai had explicitly ordered Scout to stall for time rather than fight to the death.
In the original timeline, Scout and W had orchestrated a bloody play where W assassinated the mercenary leader to take control, allowing her to intercept Amiya’s group. She had then brought back intel that shocked Ines—leading Ines to ignore Hoederer’s warnings, use her Originium Arts to probe Talulah’s shadow, and ultimately fake her own death to escape Talulah’s wrath.
But things had changed. Ines hadn’t reached the point of needing to fake her demise. Probably because Kai had beaten Talulah into the dirt so thoroughly that the fiery tyrant might have even been coaxed into a deep sleep.
“Why would we lock him up? Ines actually likes the guy. Besides, he’s been running around everywhere with her lately. I have no idea what they’re plotting.” W crossed her arms. “When I asked, Ines just gave me some cryptic nonsense about ‘taking necessary measures for the future.'”
“Right… as long as he’s happy,” Kai muttered. These elite Operators were all walking enigmas.
He threw a quick glance over his shoulder. Amiya and the others were watching them from across the room, but they were well out of earshot. Kai leaned in slightly, dropping his voice to a murmur. “Are you still brainstorming ways to murder the Doctor for revenge?”
W blinked, her expression a perfect picture of innocent confusion. “Ha? Kill what Doctor? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Kai studied her face. It was a good act, but he wasn’t buying it. “Drop the act. I’m going to level with you—the Doctor lost his memory. He doesn’t remember a single thing from the past. Not Babel. And not… Theresa.”
At the sound of that name, W’s pupils shrank to pinpricks. The playful mercenary vanished, replaced instantly by a coiled viper. “How do you…”
“How do I know?” Kai didn’t miss a beat. “I was part of Babel back then. I saw you and Theresa together. Of course I know.” He kept his gaze locked on hers. “I don’t just know you’re here to kill him. I know you want to drag the truth out of him first—you want to know why he destroyed Babel with his own hands.”
W stared at him, the sheer weight of the information momentarily freezing her. But her sharp mind quickly caught the discrepancy. “Nice try. But no. You couldn’t have been a member back then.”
“Hmm? Why not?” Kai asked, genuinely curious.
“Ha! Never mind why. I don’t know how you dug up all this intel, but I am absolutely certain you weren’t there,” W declared, a triumphant smirk cutting through her shock.
Kai shrugged. “Fair enough. But the part about the Doctor’s amnesia? That’s the absolute truth.”
“Heh…” W let out a dark, breathless chuckle. She had suspected as much. During their brief encounter in Chernobog, the Doctor had looked at her with the blank, unrecognizing eyes of a stranger. She had assumed it was a sick game, a cruel facade. But hearing it confirmed laid the ugly reality bare.
“So he really gets to live a carefree life,” W hissed, her voice trembling with venom. “He wipes his own slate clean, forgets everything, and suddenly everything is just fine and dandy… Hehehe.”
“The Doctor’s amnesia was caused by Theresa,” Kai stated flatly.
“What did you just say?!” W shrieked, the raw volume of her voice echoing across the room and drawing alarmed looks from Amiya’s group.
Kai swiftly chopped the side of his hand onto the top of W’s head. “Keep your voice down, you idiot!”
“I’ll Sarkaz slang kill you! Even Ines doesn’t hit me!” W snarled, rubbing her head and glaring daggers at him. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?! You’re telling me Her Highness Theresa wiped that hooded bastard’s memory?! Are you feeding me lies again?”
Kai held up his hands in a placating gesture, indicating she could believe it or not.
W ground her teeth, her crimson eyes flashing with conflicting emotions. “Fine… let’s pretend Her Highness actually did it. So what? Are you trying to sell me some fairy tale where she doesn’t actually hate him? That I should just let him off the hook?” Her voice dropped into a dangerous, resentful growl. “In my eyes, he is still the murderer who killed Her Highness.”
“And then what?” Kai challenged softly. “You kill him to vent your anger? Even if letting him live was Theresa’s final wish? Besides, do you really think you have the full picture of what happened?”
The words struck W’s deepest insecurity. Her bravado faltered. “But… am I supposed to just give up?” she spat, the hatred in her voice masking a deep grief. “You know as well as I do—he was the only one who knew where Her Highness was at the time… If it wasn’t for him…”
“I’m not telling you to drop your grudge. I’m just asking you to shelve the radical assassination plots. Perhaps…” Kai briefly considered telling her she could just talk to Theresa herself later, but quickly scrapped the idea. If he dropped that bombshell now, W would probably shove a remote explosive down his throat.
“Perhaps what?” W demanded, her eyes narrowing. This guy had an infuriating habit of leaving his sentences hanging over a cliff.
“Nothing. Just… dial back the crazy. Look at it this way: getting revenge on a guy whose brain is a blank slate wouldn’t exactly give you the catharsis you’re looking for, would it?”
“Tch. You talk a good game.” W curled her lip in disgust, but the tension slowly bled out of her posture. Kai had a point. What she craved wasn’t just his death; she wanted his heart-wrenching repentance. She wanted to see the guilt tear him apart. Putting a bullet in a man who didn’t even know why he was bleeding was letting him off far too easy. She would wait. She would bide her time until she could drag the truth out of his own mouth.
Seeing the subtle shift in her demeanor, Kai smiled and patted her shoulder. “Tell you what. As compensation for your patience, I’ll let you in on a little secret.”
“What secret?” W eyed his hand on her shoulder with deep suspicion.
Kai nodded toward the other side of the room. “You know Amiya, right? That cute little rabbit over there.” He paused, letting the silence stretch for a fraction of a second. “Theresa placed all her hopes and wishes upon her. Maybe you should try talking to her.”
“…”
W didn’t say a word. She simply turned her head, her crimson eyes locking onto Amiya, who was sitting quietly, stealing nervous glances their way.