r/Perman

5:31 p.m.
Shibuya Scramble Crossing

The usual chaos of the crossing had been replaced by flashing blue lights and a tight police cordon. Officers moved with practiced urgency, guiding civilians away from a black sedan parked near the edge of the scramble.

A middle-aged man in a wrinkled shirt was being handcuffed. Tears streamed down his face as he shook his head repeatedly.

“I didn’t do anything! Please, I swear—I don’t even know how that thing got under my car!”

Beside him, a young woman tried to keep her voice steady while the officers pushed them forward.

“He’s telling the truth. We just finished work. We were only going home. We have no idea what this is about—”

“You’ll say whatever you want at the station,” one of the officers replied flatly, guiding them toward a waiting police van.

A short distance away, a small team of specialists knelt beside the sedan. Their movements were careful and precise as they worked on the device attached beneath the vehicle. Soft metallic clicks and quiet radio chatter drifted through the air.

Officer Kuriowa stood a few meters back, arms crossed, watching the scene. He turned to a younger officer beside him.

“Is this everything?”

The younger officer checked his notes and nodded. “Yes, sir. No other devices found in the immediate area. The crossing is clear... for now”

Kuroiwa exhaled slowly. “Good. Situation’s under control here.”

Behind him, the two detainees continued their justification of innocence as they were led away. A small crowd of onlookers and reporters had already gathered beyond the tape. Cameras flashed. Microphones were thrust forward.

“Officer! Officer Kuriowa! Why weren’t the Permans involved in this operation?”
“Is it true the police are distancing themselves from the Perman team?”
“Do you think the increase in incidents is connected to—”

Kuriowa didn’t slow down. He walked past the microphones without answering, his expression unreadable, and disappeared into the waiting police car.

The crowd remained behind, still confused, still shouting questions that went unanswered.

-------------

5:41 p.m.
Sensō-ji Temple

The usual evening calm of the temple grounds had been broken. Three young men sat on the stone steps near the main gate, breathing hard, shoulders slumped. Bruises were already forming on their faces and arms. In front of them stood Payan, holding three confiscated handguns and a single folding knife.

He looked down at them with a tired expression.

“Why try to force the gate open?” he asked. “What were you planning to do inside?”

One of the men—roughly Payan’s age—glared up at him.

“Like hell we’d tell you.”

Booby, perched on a nearby stone lantern, immediately hopped down and delivered a sharp slap across the back of the man’s head.

“Wiki ki ki! Wiki!”

Payan raised a hand. “Leave them. They’ll have plenty of time to explain everything once they’re in lockup.”

He looked at the three again, voice quieter but firm.

“You could have seriously hurt people here. Do you even understand the consequences of what you were about to do?”

None of them answered.

"Well.. who am I explaining?... they are criminals for a reason."

An elderly woman in temple attire approached slowly, hands clasped. She bowed deeply to both of them.

“Thank you… both of you. Because of you, no one was seriously hurt.”

Payan shook his head. “There’s no need to thank us. It’s our job.”

The old woman smiled gently. “No. I know it’s not that simple. You two have been going through a lot lately… trying so hard to prove you’re still the good ones.”

Payan’s expression softened.

She held out a small bag filled with seasonal fruits and sweets, then handed a pair of bananas directly to Booby. The monkey accepted them with an excited bounce.

“This is our way of saying thank you,” the woman said.

Payan accepted the bag with a small bow. “We appreciate it.”

Payan glanced down at his wristwatch.

5:44 p.m.

His brow furrowed.

"He should have finished by now…"

He looked over at Booby.

“Didn’t he say he’d keep his badge tracker on?”

Booby tilted his head. “Weee…”

Payan sighed. “He didn’t turn it on.”

A quiet unease settled in his chest.

“Wonder what happened to him…”

-----------

5:17 p.m.

Mitsuo stepped past the temporary wire fence and into the construction site, the soles of his shoes pressing into the dry, uneven ground. He glanced at his watch and immediately felt a sharp twist of irritation in his chest.

"Five-seventeen."

His fingers curled against his face as he muttered under his breath, voice tight with frustration.

“I needed to check this place before anything else… I ended up wasting time.”

He had wanted to walk the ground first — to understand the layout while it was still empty — but the university had pulled him in longer than he meant to stay. Now the light was already shifting, the sun sitting lower in the sky.

He lifted his eyes.

The building rose in front of him, unfinished and skeletal. Six floors of concrete platforms stacked unevenly into the air, held up by thick pillars. No outer walls had been raised yet; the structure stood open on every side, some sections of the floors still missing entirely, leaving gaps that looked down into the levels below. Half-exposed steel rods jutted out from the edges of the concrete like unfinished bones. A set of temporary stairs climbed along one side, and beside the building a single functioning elevator shaft clung to the outer frame, its metal cage quiet and still.

Scattered across the ground were the usual signs of work left behind: mounds of sand and dust, bags of cement, broken stones, hammer, screw, and the faint grey film that settled over everything.

Mitsuo’s gaze moved across it all in a few short seconds —

"This place isn’t even fully done yet…"

He stood still for a moment, the thought hanging unfinished.

"Are they really gonna target this place?"

There was nothing here that looked worth the risk. No occupied rooms. No equipment valuable enough to justify the attention. Nothing obvious to gain.

"There’s nothing to gain."

Doubt crept in. Maybe he had been wrong. Maybe the real target was the university after all — the place full of people, noise, and attention.

He lowered himself slightly and, without thinking, scooped a little sand into his palm. The grains slipped slowly through his fingers, falling back to the ground in a thin stream while his mind kept turning.

After a few seconds he brushed his hand clean and straightened.

“Nah… let’s move. I should keep an eye on the university.”

He turned to leave.

Then he heard it — footsteps.

He stopped.

More footsteps followed, closer this time, the sound of several people moving across the unfinished ground.

Without another second of hesitation, Mitsuo slipped behind the nearest pillar and pressed himself into the shadow of the concrete, listening.

Mitsuo kept his back pressed against the pillar, breathing as quietly as he could. The footsteps grew clearer, then slowed. Voices drifted across the open construction ground — low, casual, and already in the middle of an argument.

“…this place isn’t even worth it.”

“Yeah, I know. Boss is stupid. We should’ve hit the university instead. At least there’d be something to show for it.”

“Don’t start giving lectures. Just do what they told us.”

“You think you know better than the boss now?”

“I’m not saying that. I’m saying this is a waste of time and resources.”

“Then shut up and plant the damn things. Let’s just get this over with.”

Mitsuo stayed completely still. He couldn’t see how many of them there were — the thick concrete pillar blocked most of his view — but he could hear at least four or five distinct voices moving around the unfinished floors.

One of them crouched near a support column a short distance away. There was a soft metallic click, followed by the sound of something being fixed into place.

“We’ve got about twenty minutes once these are set,” the same voice said. “We need to be gone before anyone shows up.”

Another figure shifted somewhere to the left. Then a younger-sounding voice rose, almost excited.

“Hey, look. I took this when the boss wasn’t watching.”

A short silence followed.

“Is that a gun?”

“Yeah. Real one.”

“Give it here.”

“Why should I? I found it.”

“You’re gonna get us killed waving that thing around. Hand it over.”

“No way. It’s mine now.”

“Idiot. You don’t even know how to use it properly.”

“Neither do you.”

“Just put it away before someone sees it.”

Mitsuo’s brow furrowed in the shadows.
"Are they new to this…? Arguing over a gun like that?"

While the two continued bickering, another voice cut through.

“I’m going up for a minute.”

Footsteps moved toward the functioning elevator attached to the side of the building. The metal cage rattled faintly as two people stepped inside. One of the others called after them.

“Where are you going?”

“Need some air, y'all are damn loud for me to handle” he answered. The elevator began to rise with a low mechanical hum.

By then Mitsuo had counted exactly four separate places where something had been planted against the pillars.

A different voice — thinner, nervous — spoke up.

“I don’t feel good about this… Can we just finish and leave?”

“Stop being such a scared pussy cat.”

The group started moving again. Their footsteps slowly drifted closer to the pillar Mitsuo was using for cover. He could hear the scrape of shoes on concrete, the soft shift of clothing, the quiet clink of something metallic.

He lowered his hand to the Perman set in his pockets.

"Time to end this."

He took one careful step backward, preparing to pull the set free—

—and his heel came down hard on something soft and warm.

A sharp, bark exploded right behind him.

Mitsuo’s whole body jerked.
Shit—! They have dogs here—

His foot slipped on the loose sand. He hit the ground hard, palms scraping against concrete. The dog, startled by its own noise and the sudden movement, yelped once and ran away.

In that single second of exposure, someone’s eyes locked onto his.

A man near the nearest support column froze, staring straight at him.

Their gazes met.

Mitsuo scrambled up instantly and threw himself back into the shadows, pulling the hood lower and yanking a piece of cloth from his pocket to cover the lower half of his face.

“Hey! Who’s there?!” the man shouted. “Someone’s there!”

Another voice answered immediately, louder.
“He saw us! Catch him!”

“Dark circles under his eyes—I saw his face!”

Mitsuo pressed himself against another pillar, heart hammering.
"SHITTT!! He saw my face… I can’t use the Perman set."

Two of them were already running toward the spot where he had fallen, snatching up whatever they could find— a length of rebar, a heavy wrench.

Behind them the rest of the group started to panic.

“Did he really see us?”
“What if he calls the police?!”
"What if he is from the police?"
“We should just leave the bombs and run—”
“Shut up and find him first!”

The two pursuers reached the empty pillar and skidded to a stop.

“Where the hell did he go?”

“He was right here!”

The fading sunset light made everything murky. Shadows stretched long between the unfinished floors, swallowing shapes and movement. Mitsuo stayed low and moved quickly, keeping pillars between himself and their line of sight.

While the others began spreading out, calling to each other, the nervous one from earlier stayed near one of the already-planted bombs, shifting from foot to foot.

“I don’t like this… maybe we should just—”

A hand slammed hardly into his back.

He stumbled forward and hit the ground. Before he could shout, Mitsuo was already over him, a heavy construction hammer raised and pointed straight at his face.

“Don’t try anything,” Mitsuo said in a low, menacing voice, “or I’ll blow your face open.”

The man’s eyes squeezed shut. He turned his head away, body shaking.

Mitsuo kept the hammer steady with one hand while his other hand moved to the device fixed against the pillar. His fingers worked quickly, guided by knowledge he had never expected to use on Earth.

"Huh… Bird Planet’s knowledge came in handy after all."

In less than a minute the bomb was disabled. He pulled the main component free and slipped it into his hoodie pocket.

“There he is!”

The shout cut through the open air. Mitsuo’s head snapped up. In one quick glance he counted them.

Two went up earlier… one still down here… five left.

The unfinished building offered almost no cover between floors — only bare pillars and the thick iron rods sticking out of the concrete edges. Without hesitation Mitsuo sprinted toward the nearest exposed rods, planted his foot, and leapt. His hands caught the cold metal. Using pure momentum and the strength in his arms and shoulders, he hauled himself upward in two powerful pulls until he rolled onto the first unfinished floor.

Below, the men who had been running after him skidded to a stop, staring upward in disbelief.

“How the hell did he do that?!”

“Shut up and take the stairs! He shouldn’t get away!”

Five of them immediately turned and charged toward the temporary staircase.

Mitsuo was already moving. He raced along the open floor toward the top of the stairs, scooped a handful of dry sand from a nearby pile as he ran, and reached the landing just as the first two men came pounding up.

He flung the sand straight into their faces.

Both men cried out, hands flying to their eyes. Mitsuo didn’t give them time to recover. He launched himself forward and drove a hard kick into the nearest one’s chest. The man toppled backward into the one behind him. The sudden tangle of bodies sent all five cascading down the stairs in a chaotic heap of limbs and shouts.

Mitsuo twisted in mid-air, caught the edge of the concrete with one hand, and dropped cleanly back to the ground floor. He landed in a low crouch, already glancing over his shoulder.

The five were still tangled and groaning at the bottom of the stairs.

"That should buy me some time."

A flicker of doubt crossed his mind as he looked at them again.
"Did I do too much…? Nah I don't have time for this. . . ."

He pushed the thought aside and sprinted toward the next pillar that still held a bomb. Dropping to one knee, he began examining the mechanism, fingers moving quickly over the device.

A long, dark shadow stretched across the concrete in front of him.

Mitsuo’s head jerked up.

The same man who had the gun stood several meters away, arm extended, the stolen gun pointed straight at him. He pulled the trigger. The shot cracked through the open site.

Mitsuo threw himself sideways behind the pillar where the bomb was planted. The bullet still slightly touched him — a burning line of pain tore across the outside of his thigh.

"Why did I forget the gun guy"

He hit the ground hard, back pressed against the concrete, and immediately clamped a hand over the wound. Warm blood seeped between his fingers.

He sat there for a second, jaw clenched, breathing through the sharp pulse of pain.

The man with the gun stood frozen, arm still half-raised. His eyes were locked on the blood stains on the floor and the pillar. It was the first time he had ever pulled a trigger on another person — the first time he had seen blood that he himself had caused. His hands began to tremble violently.

One of the five men who had been struggling to their feet at the base of the stairs suddenly shouted, voice cracking with panic.

“What do you think you’re doing, dumbfuck?! There’s a bomb planted on that pillar! You’re gonna kill all of us if you shoot it by mistake!”

The gunman’s face went pale. The weapon in his hands shook even harder.

Mitsuo used the moment.

A metal bucket sat near his feet. He snatched it up and hurled it hard to the side. It clanged loudly against another pillar, the sudden noise jerking the gunman’s attention away. In that split second Mitsuo closed the distance, grabbed the man’s wrist, and twisted. The gun came free. A sharp kick to the chest sent the man sprawling onto the concrete.

Mitsuo removed the bullets from the gun and threw it away. Then he dropped back to the pillar and finished disabling the second bomb. four of those five men somehow regained their balance and went towards mitsuo at the same time. It caught Mitsuo off guard as he was focused on disabling the bomb.

One pair of arms locked around his neck from behind. Two others seized his wrists. A fourth hand clawed at the cloth covering the lower half of his face, trying to rip it away.

Mitsuo kicked hard into the solar plexus of the man in front of him. The man folded with a choked cry and collapsed. Without pausing, Mitsuo snapped his head backward, the back of his skull cracking against the face of the one choking him. At the same time his free elbow smashed into the ribs of the man still gripping his arm.

Mitsuo snatched up a discarded wooden plank and swung it in short hits, striking the hands and forearms of anyone trying to rise again. The sharp cracks of wood against bone echoed across the open floor.

"This should do it."

He didn’t wait to check. Turning, he sprinted toward the next pillar that still held an active bomb.

Behind him, the battered group was already arguing among themselves, voices raw with pain and frustration.

“How the hell are we getting played by just one guy?”
“Because you froze like an idiot!”
“Shut your mouth— you’re the one who got sand in your eyes!”
“I can’t even feel my arm properly…”

Mitsuo ignored them and finished disabling the third bomb, slipping the core into his pocket with the others.

"Maybe they don’t understand I’m going after the bombs…"

Most of them were already too hurt to stand properly. One man tried to push himself up, then collapsed again with a groan.

“I can’t move anymore…”

“Then stay down,” another muttered through clenched teeth, “unless you want another kick in the ass.”

Mitsuo moved toward the fourth pillar.

Halfway there he slowed.

The construction site had gone strangely quiet. The sun had dropped lower; the last orange light was fading fast, leaving long shadows and almost full dusk. His eyes lifted toward the upper floors.

"What happened to the two who went up…?"

He saw that same guy slowly coming down from the elevator, gun aiming at him. A gunshot cracked through the open air.

Mitsuo noticed the flame of the gun's muzzle, and he involuntarily dodged the bullet, almost too close, the bullet hissed past his shoulder and punched into a cement bag behind him. Mitsuo threw himself sideways and rolled behind a neat stack of bricks that had been left near one of the support columns.

Two figures came down the stairs, one of them holding the gun. They stopped short when they saw the state of the others — bodies sprawled, weapons scattered, faces bruised and bloodied.

For a second they just stared in utter disbelief and fear.

Then their eyes found Mitsuo’s position. They raised their weapons, one with guns, another with a broken glass bottle, arms not entirely steady — a mixture of confidence from the guns and clear nervousness at what one person had already done to the rest of the group.

Mitsuo didn’t give them time to settle.

He snatched a brick from the pile and hurled it with full force. It struck the nearer man’s knee with a hard, ugly crack. The man screamed and went down, clutching his leg.

The second person flinched so hard at the sudden scream that the bottle slipped from his fingers and clattered onto the concrete and broke into further pieces. Both hands shot up immediately.

“I-I surrender! Don’t—!”

Mitsuo stepped out from behind the bricks, collected the gun, and ejected the magazines in two quick motions before tossing them far out of reach. Then he walked straight to the fourth pillar and began disabling the last device, fingers moving with practiced speed even, the pain in his thighs still irritating him..

A few minutes later the entire group was secured. Mitsuo had used leftover construction rope and torn pieces of cloth to bind their wrists and ankles to the nearest pillars and rebar. Most of them were in no condition to run even if they had been free.

He walked over to the man whose knee had been injured by the brick. The man glared up at him with pure hatred.

“Just because you caught us,” the man spat, “doesn’t mean you won this.”

Mitsuo looked down at him, voice flat.
“Yeah, yeah. Whatever. The one who loses always talks like that.”

He crouched a little closer.
“By the way… I want your help. Mind telling me why you’re doing such things with these shitheads? What do you want?”

The man let out a short, bitter laugh.
“I may have lost… but you didn’t win this shit either.”

Mitsuo’s eyes narrowed.

The man’s laughter grew louder, almost hysterical.
“Oh, masked guy… you don’t even know why I went up there, do you?”

A cold jolt ran through Mitsuo’s chest. He spun and sprinted toward the stairs. He took them three at a time to the first floor, then yanked the Perman set from under his hoodie and pulled it on in one fluid motion. The cape snapped open as he launched upward, flying straight to the sixth floor.

There it was — another device fixed against a support column near the edge of the unfinished floor.

Too late.

The digital counter was already flashing single digits.

5…
4…
3…

Mitsuo turned and threw himself backward with everything he had.

2…
1…

The explosion tore through the corner of the sixth floor in a violent burst of fire and concrete. The shockwave slammed into him mid-air, spinning him hard before he managed to stabilize. Birds that had been nesting in the surrounding darkness scattered into the night sky with panicked cries.

Below, the bound men stared up at the burning upper floor, faces pale with genuine shock. pieces of concrete and some clothes from above fell down which were already caught on fire. None of them had realized the bombs carried that much force. They were terrified to their core too..

The man with the ruined knee started laughing again, louder this time.

“We didn’t know you planted that one!” someone asked him.

“Yeah,” he answered between laughs, “that’s why you guys are absolute assholes.”

Another voice, still staring at the flames, muttered, “If our bombs had gone off too… the whole building would’ve come down.”

The laughing man only laughed harder.
“That’s why you guys are worth nothing. Absolute sons of bitches. Couldn’t even handle one guy when there were six of you — and you had the GUNS!”

High above them, Mitsuo landed heavily on the edge of the third floor. He sat down hard, head bowed, the helmet still on. Shame and sharp disappointment settled over him like a weight.

He glanced at his watch.

5:39 p.m.

"If I hadn’t been such an idiot… if they hadn’t seen my face… I could have ended this cleanly."

His eyes dropped to his thigh. The bleeding had finally slowed, the dark stain on his pants no longer spreading.

He stayed there for a long moment, listening to the distant crackle of the fire above and the low, bitter laughter rising from the ground floor.

6:33 p.m.

By the time the last of the daylight had completely faded, a small crowd had already gathered beyond the temporary fencing. Blue police lights flashed across the unfinished concrete and the dark smoke still drifting from the damaged sixth floor.

A young officer stood near the edge of the site, notebook open, taking statements from witnesses.

“I heard gunshots,” one woman said. “Several of them.”

Others nearby nodded in agreement.

Further inside, officers were carefully moving the bound and injured men onto stretchers. Four disabled bomb cores had been laid out on a plastic sheet under portable lights. The fifth device — or what remained of it — was still being examined by the specialized team near the scorched upper floor.

One officer crouched beside the man whose knee had been shattered.

“What happened here?”

The man gave a weak, bitter smile.
“We don’t know. Some motherfucker did this… He had dark circles under his eyes. That’s all I could see.”

“Where did he go?”

The man started laughing again, the same uneven, almost hysterical sound from earlier.
“Maybe he’s dead. He tried to disable the bomb that went off.”

The officer frowned. “How do you know that?”

“I didn’t see him after the explosion.”

High above them, on one of the unfinished middle floors where the darkness and remaining structure completely hid him from view, Mitsuo listened in silence. The Perman helmet was still on. He stayed perfectly still, back against a pillar, thigh throbbing dully.

Nearby, a junior officer picked up one of the discarded guns and turned it over in his hands, brow furrowed.

“It feels… oddly familiar,” he muttered under his breath.

A senior officer’s voice snapped across the site.
“Hey! Idiot, what are you doing? Are you new at this? Don’t touch that. The specialized team will take it for further investigation.”

The junior officer immediately dropped the weapon as if it had burned him.
“Sorry, sir! Extremely sorry for my incompetence. I completely forgot—”

Mitsuo had heard enough.

The situation was now fully in the hands of the police. He pushed away from the pillar, stepped off the edge of the floor, and let the cape catch the night air as he rose silently into the dark sky, leaving the flashing lights and voices behind.

End of chapter 7