There's no TIME 2 (after battle)

You...

EEEEK!!!

Quiet… Or you'll attract even more of 'em to us.

Shut your gob right now or we'll feed you to the meat grinder back at our rickety, cannibal bus. Is that clear?

T-then...

You're not here to kidnap me?

No. For the… I don't even know how many times we've told you.

Of course not, indeed! For we are the Limbu - Fix - Justi -

… She is trying so, so hard not to say it.

… the passers-by. Of justice. Sir Heathcliff here can be rather brutish in his manner of speech, that is all...

R-right… Passers-by of justice...

So why are they asking us for time, not money?

… Maybe time's just another commodity to be sold and bought here.

Guys… is it just me again…? The T Corp. pamphlet guide... did no one really...?

…Ishmael's eyes start to glaze over. Once again, she may have been the only Sinner who bothered to read up on our destination…

In T Corp… also known as TimeTrack Corporation...

… its citizenry utilizes timepieces as personal identification. They oft trade with 'time' instead of physical currency; their means of transaction done via the timepieces they carry. Most laborers in these lands are rewarded for their efforts with time.

Haah… thanks for the explanation, Yi Sang. I'll let it slide this time.

<So… is this going to be a problem? Outis is the only one of us who carries a watch.>

Ohh~ you mean her broken wristwatch? I always thought that wearing a stopped watch was a neat fashion statement -

… It's not a fashion item. It never was. How insolent of you to assume.

Right, I've been meaning to ask… what got ya so freaked out about a kidnapping earlier?

Oh… There's a pretty scary rumor of indiscriminate kidnappings going around these T Corp. streets.

These are abandoned streets, so when I saw a dozen or so people running around together, I was scared that you guys might be the infamous kidnapping Syndicate or something...

We need more details. I want the who, when, where, what, how, and why. Proceed.

P-people have been going missing around here.

This kinda became the last known location for a bunch of missing people. Everyone becomes a shut-in during the foggy days 'cause they don't wanna get kidnapped.

L-look, it's even on the front page of this T-Times newspaper here. Mysterious Kidnapping Fear Sweeps District.… Not Even A Single Body Found… I can keep reading, if you want...?

Meursault, Rodya, and Don Quixote began enthusiastically reading the sensationalized titles and the attached articles on the newspaper he showed us.

Hm...

Oh… Ohoho… I gotta check out that award-winning eatery… it's not so far from where we are...

Aha, so the time retrieval Fixers have said as such in these interviews...

<Are you guys even reading the same article?>

... Lad's right. There's a lot less people around here than I remember.

This street used to be packed with workers headed to their factory jobs and inventors selling their useless trinkets… It's never been this... empty.

This empty street of T Corp. was thick with fog, the bustling crowd from Heathcliff's memories nowhere to be seen.

Maybe the lack of color made the fog appear even thicker.

This reminds me of the kidnapping 'rumor' we heard when we were working on the Blade Lineage case.

Missing people… Maybe there really is a messed-up kidnapping, human trafficking Syndicate roaming this area.

I've never heard of such Syndicate strutting about this place. Back when I lived here, at least.

It is a statistical impossibility for a human trafficking Syndicate to leave zero evidence behind. There is bound to be one or two they let slip between their fingers.

Especially if this 'Syndicate' is so prolific to the point of indirectly discouraging the public from leaving their homes, a body or two will invariably be found.

If they really didn't leave any bodies, then maybe it's worse than just your usual murders...

Maybe it'll be more dangerous the more we look into it?

<If it's not just another violent tragedy… then maybe there's more to this than we think. Maybe there's some powerful organization pulling the strings...>

Y'know, that's a lot of conjecture to make just from the fact that no bodies have been found.

I'm sorry?

Guys. The Night in the Backstreets.

A single sweep from those Sweepers leaves nothing behind. Every trash in the Backstreets, including corpses, is completely cleaned up.

Right… They'd clean up even the corpses, yeah.

'Course, it's kinda scary that they clean up more than just trash~

<Yeah… The idea of Sweepers really freaked Sinclair out for a while.>

… That's because Rodya kept making funny noises and Sweeper impressions at me every night…!