"Wh—?! Wh-wha—?! What?!"
The cry sent a wave of shock through the duo, their faces instantly draining of all color.
But as quickly as they had paled, their features flushed a deep, indignant red. They surged toward Yui, barking in her face.
"Y-you brat! Where do you get off saying things like that?!"
"As if you could possibly know if there was a living creature inside... that's impossib—!"
They pressed in to intimidate her, but in the middle of their tirade, the woman felt the weight on her shoulders vanish. The backpack straps had been severed with surgical precision.
While everyone stared at the bag as it hit the sand with a heavy thud—leaving only the severed loops hanging from her shoulders—Ryuga spoke. He was already sliding his katana back into its sheath.
"...My sister cannot see with her eyes, but she can see the shape of the soul. If she focuses, she can tell if a living thing is being hidden, no matter how many layers of canvas are in the way."
"Ah... ah...!"
The man scrambled to reclaim the fallen bag, but Fee was faster. He snatched the luggage and darted back to his friends. When he unzipped the main compartment, a small monster poked its head out, letting out a thin, pitiful cry.
"Ki... kii...!"
"This is an Idrima, isn't it?" Fee noted. "The same kind that played a prank on me when we first arrived."
"Ah... ugh...!"
Faced with the evidence of the kidnapped infant and the piercing glares of the Shandia islanders and Yugo’s group, the two kidnappers turned pale once more, sweat pouring down their faces.
Suddenly, an Idrima mother came hurtling into the clearing. Screaming with maternal fury, she brandished a fallen branch like a club, swinging it wildly to keep the humans away from her stolen child.
"Ugyaaaa! Ugya! Gya! Gyagyaa!"
"Easy now! The little one is safe, look!" Elena called out.
"Gyau! Gi, gigii...!"
The mother Idrima dropped her stick to cradle her child, clutching the infant to her chest as if it were the most precious thing in the world. Yet even as she held her baby, she kept her eyes fixed on the duo, her gaze burning with a raw, primal hatred.
Setsuna stepped forward, her voice echoing the mother's silent fury.
"You’re from Blue Ever, aren't you? This was the plan from the beginning."
"You had your comrades stir up a riot to distract everyone, then snatched a baby monster to smuggle out among the tourists... How despicable!"
"Do you honestly think you can get away with this?!" Yugo added. "This is a serious crime!"
"G-ggh... shut up! We haven’t done anything wrong!"
"Exactly! The problem is with people like you—people who can’t grasp the righteousness of our cause!"
Driven into a corner by Setsuna and the others, the pair abandoned all reason. They began to shriek, foam flecking their lips as they spewed their fanatical rhetoric.
Yugo and his friends watched in stunned silence as the duo's twisted logic spilled out.
"Monsters are meant to live and die in the wild! Keeping them as pets in a place like this is an abomination! We were merely correcting a distortion of nature!"
"That doesn’t give you the right to do whatever you want! A crime is a crime!"
"Even if you 'returned' this child to nature," Melt interjected, her voice trembling with anger, "it would be all alone! It couldn't survive without its mother or its pack!"
"You were going to let this Idrima die. Do you even understand that?!"
"And what if we were? That is the natural way!" the woman screamed. "Better for that monster to live a short life in the wild than to waste its entire existence in a cage like this! That is true happiness!"
"What...?" Melt whispered, her anger reaching a boiling point. "You don't care about these creatures at all, do you?"
The group stared at them, feeling a cold sensation that went beyond mere disgust. These people were willing to sacrifice the very lives they claimed to protect for the sake of their ideology.
"You don't understand! It may seem cruel, but this is the correct path! The way nature was intended to be! We are reclaiming that world—!"
They shouted. They preached. They howled. They were possessed by a madness born of self-righteousness. But their words had just crossed a line they shouldn't have.
"...Is that your excuse?"
The voice was low, vibrating with a quiet, lethal fury.
"Is that the reason you ripped a child from its mother? Is that why you were content to let it die?"
"Hic...!"
The woman felt a sudden, crushing weight on her chest. The bloodlust radiating from the speaker was so palpable it felt like she was being swallowed whole.
Ryuga stood there with his katana drawn once more. His face had shifted into a Yaksha-like countenance—a mask of terrifying, otherworldly wrath. The man tried to stand his ground, though his teeth were chattering.
"Wh-what's with that look?! You're just a student on a school trip, aren't you? Do you really think you can get away with threatening us?!"
"...Is that your final answer?"
"Huh...?"
Ryuga didn't offer his usual calm response. His eyes were like chips of ice, reflecting a cold, absolute rage.
"I asked if those were the last words you wanted to speak on this earth."
"Hic... hieee...!"
Ryuga unleashed his serious intimidating aura. It hit the man like a physical blow—a freezing blizzard of killing intent that shattered his resolve instantly.
The woman had already collapsed, foaming at the mouth in a dead faint. The man fell back onto the sand, his limbs shaking as he tried to crawl away.
"W-wait! Don't kill me! I-I was just following orders! I didn't want to—hiieee!"
When Ryuga leveled the tip of his blade at the man's throat, the kidnapper's bladder gave way. He slumped into the sand, unconscious.
Yugo looked at his partner, who was calmly sliding his cherished sword back into its scabbard.
"That's enough, Ryuga. Let the Security Force handle the rest."
"...You're right. But we still have a crowd of witnesses to deal with."
"W-we don't know those two! This attempted kidnapping has nothing to do with us!"
The remaining Blue Ever members, who had been watching from a distance, suddenly realized the eyes of the group were on them. They scrambled backward, shouting desperate disclaimers before turning tail and vanishing into the crowd.
"I wanted to round them all up," Fee muttered, looking disappointed. "But I guess we can't catch the whole mob at once."
"It's fine. We'll hand these two over to the guards. The authorities can take it from here."
Yugo let out a long breath, his expression weary. At the very least, they had prevented the worst from happening. With the capture of the kidnappers, the day's unexpected chaos finally began to subside.