The last clients and workers left the store a few minutes earlier. Still, the security guard, appropiately named John Bodyguard, could sense that something was off. And it was not even that he accidentaly added salt instead of sugar into his usual evening coffee. He wiped the desk with a tissue and decided to once again go around the store and check if everything is in order. He lazily got up and left his little office. The store was obviously quiet and empty. However, and it was something mr. John Bodyguard noticed with terror, the door to one of the administration offices were open. The guard gasped and carefully came closer to the door. "Now what" he heard someone talk quietly "Where is that stupid Ring!?" Mr. Bodyguard was relieved to recognize the voice of Raphael Dooserdorf, his boss and the manager of the store. He decided to enter the office and check what for the other man was looking for. The boss stood there facing the other way. He did not see Bodyguard entering, so John decided to be the first one to speak. "Um... excuse me... sir?" "Ah, my slave" Dooserdolf did not even turn around "I do not suppose you know where I can find the Ring of Synthax?" "Um... WHAT!?" Bodyguard raised his eyebrows "Don't worry about it. I see you cannot help me, with great sadness." The other man suddenly turned his head 180°, which obviously should have broke his neck. The security guard took a few staggering steps back. He looked at his boss and noticed his eye pupils were completely black. "But I think I may just have to borrow your body now." the man spoke in a different voice. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Do NOT tell me you still have not caught Lord Lanthra!" Mrs. Ayumi Aruta angrily slapped her fist into her desk and looked at the two men in front of her. Aruta was a 70-something Japanese woman that just happened to also be the head of the 9th PISF departnment. She was a quite nice woman, personally,but demanded results from her employees, so it should not come as a surprise the two men in front of her bowed their heads in shame and a bit of fear, even though she spoke with a strong Japanese accent, which in other conditions would be pretty funny. "Well... no, ma'am, we did not" the older man, general Hussein Abedi spoke quietly "Do you two even know, what he will do after he will find the Ring of Synthax? " the woman asked rhetorically, taking her glasses off and looking at them "He will be able to escape into any of the alternative dimensions, and perhaps then return here to gain more, but armed with technology we can not possibly understand and cause more chaos then he already did!" "Who knows what he has already done?" Asked the second man "I mean Lanthra is a shape shifter. That means he can basically become anybody he wishes to. Maybe he actually has made even more damage than we suspect?" "We know what he is, LeBlanc" Aruta shook her head "I am asking how to stop him. Do you two even have a plan?" "Do not worry, ma'am" said Abedi "from the intelligence we've gathered shape-shifters are exactly as mortal as we are. Two, maybe three bullets should do it". "Okay, but how will you actually find him!? You were supposed to act when he was in Miami, yet you two and your experienced officers, as you two call them let him escape!"