Chapter 22: Chapter 22
The encounters between people are full of magic, and the various strange cases are full of mysteries. Meeting someone is always fate.
Tonight's stage was the city at night, where evil lurked in the darkness. The only one who could see the truth was a well-known detective named Luke, a kid in appearance but smarter than most adults.
Luke suddenly realized—he had something in common with the famous Conan.
Both of them had gone from adults to seven-year-old children.
Both of them could skateboard.
Wherever Conan went, there were murders—hence the nickname Elementary School Student of Death.
Wherever Luke went, there were explosions.
Conan was good at solving crimes.
Luke? He was good at committing them.
"Just call me Shinichi Kudo from now on," Luke muttered.
"Need me to change your name tag?" Ross's voice chimed in.
"Uh… I was kidding," Luke coughed awkwardly. "By the way, where are Matt and Fudge now?"
"One hundred meters ahead, hiding in a tree."
"...Wow, they really know how to pick a spot."
At this moment, Luke was sitting in the cockpit of his aerial combat mech, Tornado, hovering high above the streets while tailing Daredevil and Fudge.
Tonight, he had two objectives.
First, to secretly watch over Matt and Fudge and step in if necessary.
Second, to see if there was an opportunity to score some extra guns.
Luke knew that Daredevil had insanely sharp hearing, so he kept a safe distance and stuck to the skies. Given the mech's small frame and the cover of darkness, Daredevil's human radar probably wouldn't detect him.
Below, two men crouched in the branches of a lush tree at a street corner, waiting for a blind courier to arrive.
"Three people coming from the west. None of them are blind," Daredevil muttered.
"A car is approaching."
"A man is coming from the south."
Like a bat in the night, Daredevil's world was painted in sound. He could hear the shuffle of footsteps, the distant blaring of car horns, the muffled chatter of people inside nearby homes.
But he filtered out the unnecessary noise. Tonight, the only thing that mattered was the gang's movements and the blind courier delivering the goods.
"There he is," Daredevil whispered.
Fudge followed his gaze and spotted a figure slowly approaching from across the street.
The man carried a backpack and tapped a cane ahead of him. His dark sunglasses confirmed it—he was blind.
Daredevil and Fudge exchanged glances before slipping down from the tree and following in silence.
Above them, Luke's mech drifted unseen.
None of them knew that tonight was about to be anything but quiet.
Recently, the streets of Hell's Kitchen had been eerily empty after dark. A storm was brewing, and everyone could feel it.
The blind man's presence on these silent streets was conspicuous.
His face was unmistakably East Asian—Chinese, to be precise.
Luke knew that Madam Gao employed many such blind men, stripping them of their sight to make them loyal workers in her secret factories. There, they processed toxic milk powder.
Gao was no fool. Using blind couriers meant that even if one got caught, they wouldn't know the factory's location.
Hell, they didn't even know what they were making.
It was a perfect setup. Gao controlled the production and transport, while the Russians handled distribution.
And Daredevil had been investigating the Russians. That's why tonight's target was a secret Russian base.
The blind man led them straight to it.
From the outside, it looked like a regular food processing plant.
A steel gate barred the entrance, save for a side door, where a tattooed brute stood with his hands buried in his pockets.
He barely glanced at the blind man before letting him pass.
From his mech, Luke studied the scan results on his screen and frowned.
"Wait… the X-ray's not detecting any toxic milk powder in that bag?"
Down below, at the street corner—
"He's inside. Let's go," Fudge whispered.
"Wait," Daredevil stopped him, brows furrowing.
"What's wrong?"
"...Something's not right."
His instincts screamed at him. The bag wasn't carrying what he expected.
Then—
BOOM!
A deafening explosion shook the ground. The shockwave sent Daredevil and Fudge stumbling backward.
Their eyes widened as flames erupted from the factory. Windows shattered, sending glass raining onto the streets.
The entire building was ablaze.
"What the hell just happened?!" Fudge shouted.
"The blind guy wasn't delivering milk powder," Daredevil muttered, still in shock. "That was a bomb!"
And just like that—Hell's Kitchen erupted.
The tension that had been simmering for weeks finally boiled over.
The Russians had been expecting a standard delivery. Instead, they got blown to hell.
This was a declaration of war.
But who fired the first shot?
Luke had a pretty good guess.
"Kingpin," he muttered from his mech, watching the inferno spread.
Chaos followed immediately.
It was like someone had kicked over an anthill—gangsters poured onto the streets, guns in hand, looking for blood.
They were ready. They had been waiting for this moment.
In the blink of an eye, Hell's Kitchen became a warzone.
Submachine guns and rifles spat bullets, tearing through rival factions.
Sirens wailed in the distance.
Civilians cowered in their homes, cursing the gangs.
Meanwhile, armed men from all sides were converging on the factory.
This place was about to become the main battlefield.
Caught in the middle, Daredevil and Fudge quickly realized the situation had gone to hell.
Then—
From the factory's smoldering wreckage, a group of pissed-off Russians burst out, their AK-47s locked and loaded.
Daredevil and Fudge had no time to react.
Without warning, the Russians opened fire.
CLANG!
A massive white mech dropped from the sky, planting itself between them and the bullets.
A calm voice came from inside.
"You guys get out of here. I'll hold them off."
Fudge stared at the massive metal figure in shock.
"Who the hell are you?"
Luke smirked.
"Just a friend."
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