Cipher Pol 9's secret base.
The heavy alloy doors opened soundlessly, and dim light spilled from the corridor into the training hall, outlining three returning figures.
At the front was Rob Lucci. Only seventeen, he was already acknowledged within the organization as a genius seen "once in eight hundred years."
His frame was still in its slender, growing phase, standing around five feet nine. His black suit was spotless, his hands habitually tucked into his trouser pockets. His steps were steady and precise, as though each had been measured.
The boy's face was handsome yet as cold as a plaster statue. His black eyes held none of the relaxation that came after completing a mission, only bottomless indifference. He had fully mastered the Six Powers at thirteen and had later been granted the Zoan-type Cat-Cat Fruit, Model: Leopard. His strength had long since surpassed that of most veteran agents. To him, this mission to eliminate a Revolutionary Army base in the North Blue had been nothing more than another precise, efficient piece of "work."
Close behind him was the tall, broad Blueno. Silently, he took out a snow-white handkerchief and repeatedly wiped his broad palms, as though trying to remove something invisible. Behind him came the agile Kaku.
Inside the hall, agents who had been resting or doing light training stopped and turned their attention toward them.
"Lucci, sir! Blueno, sir! Kaku, sir!" Kumadori, whose long, white, lion's-mane hair hardly suited his powerful build, was the first to approach, his face plastered with a slightly exaggerated, fawning smile. "Incredible! You completed the mission so perfectly, even against those vicious Revolutionary Army scoundrels!"
Jabra, sporting his strange, spiky hairstyle, nodded repeatedly, his voice filled with sincere admiration. "Lucci's a true genius, after all! Right, Fukurou?"
The green, round-faced Fukurou nodded beside