Sitting in his chair, Cid watched Sona Sitri swiftly pin her older sister to the ground and almost felt like applauding the clean, decisive move. He had not expected that, aside from her impressive water magic, Sona Sitri was also so skilled in close-quarters combat.
"Sorry, Cid. You had to see something embarrassing."
After pressing her sister down onto the icy chair she had conjured herself, Sona Sitri turned back to Cid with a bright smile and apologized.
"It's nothing, President Sona. If anything, I'm honored to see a side of you so different from your usual self…"
Cid said it with a smile, thinking that Tsubaki Shinra would definitely be shocked if she saw Sona Sitri looking this disheveled.
"...Please don't tell anyone."
At Cid's teasing, Sona Sitri only blushed faintly before making the request with a perfectly calm face.
"What are you planning, black-haired guy? Are you trying to threaten my Sona? I knew I should've just..."
Perhaps imagining some doujin-style scenario, Serafall, standing behind Sona Sitri, suddenly snapped and pointed at Cid, ready to say something outrageous.
"I get it, I get it."
Ignoring Serafall, who was silenced by a single glare from Sona Sitri, Cid nodded with a meaningful smile. He understood what Sona Sitri meant.
"Still, President Sona, where did Tsubaki and the others go? Why are you here alone?"
Jokes aside, there was still business to handle. But when Cid glanced around the room and realized none of Sona Sitri's Peerage Members were there, he could not help feeling puzzled. Usually, by this time, most teams would already have gathered. How could there not be a single person here?
"Hmph, you don't understand at all. Sona-chan arranged this so she could spend time alone with her big sister. So give up on your foolish dreams. Sona-chan belongs to me."
Before Sona Sitri could answer, Serafall jumped in with a smug look, speaking as if she were staking her claim.
"I get it. President Sona, you were worried your sister would embarrass you, so you found some excuse to send Tsubaki and the others away. You planned to deal with His Majesty Leviathan first, then go meet Tsubaki and the others afterward."
Serafall's words were cryptic, but based on what he had just seen, along with Sona Sitri's utterly defeated expression when facing Serafall, Cid only had to think for a moment to grasp the real situation.
Sona Sitri had just turned around, about to scold her sister, when she heard Cid's words. She immediately looked back at him, surprise appearing on her face.
Clearly, she was a little shocked that Cid had figured out the truth within seconds despite having so little information.
It was not exactly an especially difficult mystery to solve, but to say it almost instantly, with barely any thought...
"What's wrong? Why are you looking at me like that?"
Meeting Sona Sitri's astonished gaze, Cid tilted his head and asked in confusion.
"No, nothing. I just think you really do have some skill. At least when it comes to analyzing information."
She gave Cid a few strange looks. To be honest, before this, Sona Sitri had simply thought of Cid as a lucky pretty boy who had somehow managed to get together with both her best friend Rias and the Queen Tsubaki Shinra. Her attitude had been neutral, waiting to see whether Cid had any actual ability.
But now, this talent for analyzing information made Sona Sitri wonder if she had been a little too biased before.
"Hmm... For some reason, President Sona, the aura you're giving off right now reminds me of a few people."
Cid looked at Sona Sitri with an equally strange expression, inexplicably seeing traces of the Seven Shadows in her.
"Stop it! Sona-chan, don't stay with this dangerous guy anymore. If this keeps going, you really will leave your big sister."
To the two of them, they were only looking at each other strangely. But to an outsider, they looked like a young couple gazing affectionately into each other's eyes.
That instantly set Serafall off. She cried out and rushed between them.
Looking speechlessly at Serafall as she stood in front of her, staring nervously at Cid, Sona Sitri clenched her fist.
"Sis, please sit here for a moment. Cid has serious business with me. Can you wait until I'm done talking to him before you interrupt?"
"But Sona..."
"If you interrupt again, I'll apply to His Majesty Asmodeus right now and have her come here to take charge instead."
After forcibly pressing Serafall into a chair, threatening her, and even using water magic, Sona Sitri finally sighed and sat back down in front of Cid.
"President, you and your sister really are close."
"I suppose. So, Cid, what exactly did you come to see me about today? As you can see, I'm rather busy..."
Sona Sitri answered half-heartedly. As she spoke, she even glanced back at Serafall, afraid she would cause more trouble.
"Uh... I'm here on the mission President Rias gave me. I need to investigate the movements of your Peerage Members from the day before yesterday."
After a brief pause to organize his words, Cid calmly explained his task.
"Then, Cid, could you investigate someone else first? You know my situation here. I sent Tsubaki and the others away in advance to deal with my sister, so they won't be able to come for a while."
She was not surprised. After all, the suggestion to let Cid, a pure human, conduct the investigation had come from Sona Sitri herself. At the time, she had planned to use it as a chance to observe him.
"That... might not work, President Sona."
"Why?"
"Because you're basically the only one left."
Cid said it plainly, his eyes fixed straight on Sona Sitri.
"That fast?"
"Yeah. I asked a few friends for help, and they work pretty quickly. So aside from you, President, and your Peerage Members, along with President Rias and Koneko, I've basically finished investigating all the Devils who were present that day. Everyone has been cleared of suspicion."
Facing Sona Sitri's surprise, Cid very naturally shifted the credit onto his friends. Then he took out the notes he had spent the whole morning organizing and laid them on the table.
"Let me see!"
Sona Sitri quickly picked up the notes from the table and skimmed through them. After a rough look, she glanced at Cid suspiciously.
"All right, but I can't exactly call Tsubaki and the others back right away. Cid, why don't you go investigate Rias and the others first? I'll tell Tsubaki and the others to write up their schedule from that day and send it to you later."
Without questioning him on the spot, Sona Sitri held the notes out toward Cid, intending to return them.
"Sure."
Cid nodded and reached out to take them, only to stop suddenly and follow the block of ice that had snatched the notes away before he could.
Looking at Serafall as she flipped through the notes page by page, Cid showed just the right amount of confusion.
"Hey, Nee-san, stop messing around. Give that back to Cid."
"If you, a prime suspect, can read it, then why can't I, the person sent here to resolve this incident, read it too?"
Faced with Sona Sitri's order, Serafall looked even more displeased and fired back as if it were only natural.
"...Sorry, Cid. As much as I hate to admit it, my sister is right. She really is the person the Underworld sent to handle this incident."
After a few seconds of silence, Sona Sitri sighed and turned to Cid to apologize and explain.
"I don't mind her taking my notes. There's nothing in there I need to hide anyway, so she can read them if she wants. It's just... President Sona, is your sister reliable?"
Cid shook his head to show that he did not care about the notes. What he was questioning was whether Serafall, who had attacked him with ice magic without the slightest hesitation, could really be considered reliable.
"No matter what she's like, my sister is still one of the four current leaders of the Underworld government. It should be fine... probably."
By the end, even Sona Sitri sounded unsure as she thought of how unserious her sister usually was.
"Aaah... I only looked away for a second, and you already got close to my Sona-chan! I knew I shouldn't have let you stay here... Ah!"
While Sona Sitri and Cid were whispering to each other, Serafall had also finished reading the notes. She looked up and was just about to say something when she saw Cid and Sona Sitri leaning close as they spoke. She immediately tried to rush over and separate them, but forgot about the water magic connecting her to the chair and fell straight to the floor.
"..."
Are you going to help her up?
Cid and Sona Sitri exchanged a look. Cid's eyes clearly conveyed that question.
Sona Sitri did not answer. She only stared expressionlessly at Serafall lying on the ground.
"Oh no, the super-duper beautiful magical girl Nee-san got tripped by Sona-chan's water magic. She needs Sona-chan to hug and kiss her before she can stand up."
Noticing Sona Sitri's gaze, Serafall put on a pitiful act and looked back at her with watery eyes, her voice deliberately affected.
"Smack!"
Sona Sitri slapped a hand over her own face, completely unable to watch.
Seeing Sona Sitri's reaction, Cid shrugged and walked straight toward Serafall.
"What are you coming over for? I want Sona-chan to help me up..."
"No, I just wanted to ask, since you're done reading the notes, can you give them back? I still need to go question President Rias and the others."
Cid tried to take the notes back, only to find that Serafall was gripping them tightly.
"No. You can't take them. There are a lot of problems here that need to be investigated again."
"Huh?"
Are you looking for trouble?
Cid did not say it out loud, but his eyes made the meaning perfectly clear.
"There are problems. Aside from Sairaorg, Sona-chan, and Rias, everyone else has already been cleared of suspicion. So doesn't that mean you're saying the culprit is among those few?
"There's no way they would do something like this. Are you trying to frame Sona-chan?"
"It's no use saying that to me. These are the results of the investigation and questioning. I'm the one you appointed to carry out the investigation, remember?"
With her own sister involved, Serafall finally stopped playing around. She casually froze the water chains on her body, broke free, and started arguing with Cid.
"I'm saying your investigation is wrong. Sona-chan and the others couldn't possibly do something like this, so the culprit must be among those people. Those villains must have used some trick to create false evidence and make you point suspicion toward Sona and the others."
Your reasoning is really... something else. You decide the answer based on feelings, then work backward to force the logic to fit.
"Couldn't it be possible that everyone is innocent? That the culprit isn't among them at all? Rias and the others aren't the culprits, and the other student Devils' alibis are all genuine."
While Cid complained inwardly, on the surface, he still offered a very reasonable explanation.
"Ha, how could that be? Shadow already gave us the range of possible answers. The culprit is hiding among the Devils who were present that day."
Serafall glanced at Cid in surprise, as if wondering how he could say something so foolish, then flatly rejected his guess.
"Then couldn't it be possible that Shadow was actually lying? That he isn't the mastermind behind the Black Spot Curse at all, and he just made the whole thing up?"
"...Did Shadow's brain short-circuit because he was bored?"
After a moment of silence, Serafall asked back with a strange look.
"Maybe it really did. No one ever said Shadow couldn't be a lunatic whose brain randomly goes haywire from time to time..."
"All right, Cid. I understand what you mean. I also wish this had nothing to do with us, but that's no reason to deceive ourselves. The chance that Shadow was lying is too low."
Sona Sitri spoke in an understanding tone and patted Cid on the shoulder.
"Sona-chan is right. Deceiving ourselves won't help at all. Don't say anything that stupid again. The priority now is finding the culprit."
Serafall nodded in agreement, then looked at Cid with a faint trace of admiration. At most, she had been stubbornly arguing out of bias, but Cid had gone straight outside the range of possible answers and answered however he wanted.
"..."
But I am Shadow!
"In any case, your investigation is definitely wrong. As the person in charge, I order you to investigate everything again."
After taking back the notes and tearing them up to show his determination, Cid quietly left the conference room. At this point, he could no longer bring himself to say that the whole "the culprit is hiding among the Devils" claim was something he had made up.
Honestly, Cid now felt like a scriptwriter who had gotten halfway through the plot, only to realize he had gone too far earlier and had no idea how to make the story work.
"Sona, are you sure your Peerage Members weren't involved?"
After Cid left, Serafall suddenly spoke.
"...I don't know. All I can say is that I believe they aren't that kind of people, and they had no motive."
"What about Rias and her Peerage Members?"
"Rias wasn't involved. She was with me that day. As for her Peerage Members, I don't know."
"What about Sairaorg..."
After a round of questioning, Serafall held her head in pain. Her earlier claim that Cid had problems really had been nothing but stubborn talk. If the commoner Devils had no problems, then the issue had to lie with the heirs of the Three Great Families and their Peerage Members.
If the culprit were a commoner Devil, it would not be too serious. They could treat it as an individual act, explain things to the Church, and pay compensation.
But if the culprit was Rias or Sairaorg... the Great King heir of House Bael, the sister of a Transcender, the Underworld really would be in trouble.