The Boys

Frieza Heights, Mitarai Residence.

Tatsumaki wore dark sunglasses and a black slit dress as she basked in the sunroom on the villa's top floor.

She had planned to sneak out after Fubuki and see what her sister got up to all day. But Tatsumaki had slept until eleven, and by the time she got up, Fubuki and the other two were long gone.

Fortunately, Serizawa Masao's younger sister Yoshiko was still there, so Tatsumaki wasn't too bored.

On the lounge chair beside Tatsumaki, Yoshiko suddenly stood up barefoot and pointed at the sky. "Sister, look!"

Tatsumaki pulled down her sunglasses and followed Yoshiko's finger.

A dark figure was streaking across the sky above the Mitarai Family estate.

"What a huge bird!" Yoshiko exclaimed.

Tatsumaki's eyesight far surpassed an ordinary person's. Though the figure was hundreds of meters away, she recognized at once that it wasn't a bird.

It was a person.

A woman in black leather, her face covered in blood.

Surprise flickered across Tatsumaki's face.

Seeing an Esper fly through the sky was nothing unusual to Tatsumaki. But this one was clearly badly wounded.

One of the woman's arms had been severed through the forearm, with only a strip of flesh holding the two parts together. White bone jutted from the wound.

If she hadn't been carefully supporting it with her other hand, the forearm would likely have fallen away entirely.

The woman looked as though she had been through a brutal battle.

What Tatsumaki didn't know was that the battle had involved her own sister, Fubuki.

Queen Maeve flew over the Mitarai Residence and disappeared into another luxurious estate a few kilometers away.

It was a futuristic building with a strikingly technological design, even grander than the Mitarai Residence. Its owner was plainly both immensely wealthy and highly