6 Not Always What It Seems

Before this chapter kicks off, just wanted to say that the character isn't a perfect individual, no one is. Everyone out there is vulnerable to having dumb moments and all that, and for a perfect individual to truly be written, that would mean the writer would probably have to be perfect themselves as to always make the best decisions and being incapable of making mistakes.

Obviously, I myself am not at all perfect.

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"Speech"

'Thoughts'

[Phone Calls/Spirits/Spectres]

『Chat Group/System』

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It was now the next day as Toshiro woke up early in the morning as he always usually does, and since there was quite a bit of time before the EX Electronics store opened, Toshiro decided to get some good training in before he went off to visit.

It hadn't been long at all since he gained these new powers, but he was definitely getting better over time. It was as people said, practice makes perfect, at least in most cases. Anyway, he was finding it easier to control his devil fruit powers, and it was getting easier to also concentrate it.

Toshiro had attempted to use sticks to practice concentrating his powers by surrounding them with quake bubbles, just as Whitebeard had done with his naginata. However, it proved far more difficult to extend one's devil fruit powers to foreign objects then it is to do so with one's own body.

He couldn't do it just yet, but he was sure he'd be able to with some more practice.

Anyway, after the training session, Toshiro took a quick shower before driving himself to the store that Inspector Anon had told him about. It wasn't anything special, just your typical electronics store. When he got there, he got in contact with the manager and they told him everything he needed.

Fortunately, the manager working at the store worked during the same time that Raiko was still working. Unfortunately though, the guy barely had any useful information regarding Raiko, they were just simple co-workers after all, and the manager knew close to nothing regarding Raiko's personal life.

That being said, Toshiro found himself at an impasse, he wasn't entirely sure what he could do since he couldn't get any information that was particularly useful from the manager. Though, there was one option left, and it was one that he honestly didn't want to take, but he had no choice.

That option was for him to go try and make contact with the son that is being treated at the psychiatric hospital, and while he wasn't entirely sure if the guy would be willing or even capable of giving him details, or even speaking to him for that matter, he had to at least try.

It didn't take too long for him to reach the hospital, and from the outside, it looked just like any other hospital you would find, just on the smaller scale. Upon arriving, Toshiro made his way inside, but when he did, he immediately felt something off as he looked around.

'What the? No visitors...?' Toshiro wondered as he took notice of the lack of people in the building. While he did see people walking around, they all appeared to be people who worked here at the hospital. He didn't see visitors, nor did he see any patients walking around.

Toshiro wouldn't say that he was an expert when it came to mental hospitals, in fact, he had never even been to one. But, from what he knew, the patients would typically be allowed to walk around as to not feel contained like criminals in a prison. He wasn't sure if all mental hospitals did that, but this one didn't' seem to do so.

"Hm? A visitor?" Toshiro turned his head upwards towards the front as he walked to see that the voice belonged to a lady standing at the front reception desk. From her tone, she seemed quite surprised to see him. "How can I help you today, young man?"

"Hi, I was hoping to see if I could visit Amashima Kento."

"I apologise, we are not accepting any visitors at the moment."

"Huh?" Toshiro blinked at the blunt and quick rejection. Looking at the woman, he wouldn't even be surprised if she didn't even properly listened to what he had requested before rejecting him. "May I ask why? Was I supposed to phone in prior to visiting?"

"There's no need to do so, we are not accepting visitors."

"Wait, hol-."

Toshiro didn't get to finish what he said before a loud crash got both of their attention, and turning their heads, they saw that in one of the hallways was what looked to be a patient who had knocked over a water dispenser. The patient stumbled back onto his feet before attempting to make a run.

"Q-Quickly, stop him!" A doctor seen running down from the hall the patient was in screamed as all the other doctors and nurses quickly rushed over and began blocking the patient's routes. Toshiro blinked in surprise as all the staff began pinning the man down, all while said man was flailing around recklessly while screaming.

"H-Help me~! Pl-Please, don't let them take me back...!" The man continued screaming as his eyes were bloodshot, as if he had been staying awake for god knows how long. The man was holding a hand out towards Toshiro, his unblinking eyes staring at the male who could only watch in stunned silence. "S-Save me...! Th-They're...!"

"Quiet down!" The doctor who yelled at the start quickly got on top of the patient as well before forcefully injecting something into the patient with a syringe, the injection causing the patient to start screaming in pain as he continued to flail around as the doctors and nurses all continued holding him down.

Not long after, the man went limp and completely silent as a few of the doctors quickly picked him up and began taking him somewhere back down the hall. Toshiro hadn't even moved as he watched the scene, what in the world did he just fucking witness?

"I'll have to ask you to leave now, young man. We are very busy at the moment."

"H-Hey, wait! What the hell was that shit?!" Toshiro regained his conscience after suddenly being pushed by the receptionist towards the door. Toshiro, due to his abnormal strength, easily stopped the woman from pushing him any further as he glared up at her. "I'm not leaving until you tell me what the hell that was!"

The receptionist seemed taken back by the fierce glare that was being sent her way, she obviously wasn't expecting someone like him to have such an intimidating gaze. "Y-Young man, I'm asking you to leave now."

"Then tell me what you're doing to that patient, he sure as hell doesn't look like he's getting any help."

"Please leave now, or I will have no choice but to call the authorities."

"...Fine" Toshiro glared at the woman once more, this time with one far fiercer compared to the first. The woman couldn't help but freeze under the glare, but was relieved when the male turned and began leaving out the door. 'Like hell I'm leaving just yet, something's happening here.'

Toshiro knew for a fact that he couldn't just go in the front and force his way through the place, he didn't want to risk them calling the damn cops on him and getting him in serious trouble. There were way too many risks regarding doing that, but that didn't mean he couldn't sneak in.

Looking around, Toshiro noticed one of the larger trees growing near the building, and with minimal effort, Toshiro ran up at the tree before leaping over towards the building. Since the tree wasn't close enough, Toshiro grabbed onto the edge of the building before pulling himself over.

He wasn't entirely sure if there were any staff members outside or if there was any way for them to see him from below, so just to be safe, Toshiro immediately went to the ground and began quickly crawling his way over towards what looked to be some kind of ventilation duct.

'Looks wide enough, shouldn't be a problem for me to crawl through...' Toshiro examined the vent duct, and if he wasn't mistaken, it should be wide enough that he could comfortably crawl slowly or quickly through it. 'Deep breaths...okay, let's do this.'

Toshiro slapped his cheeks softly before easily ripping the grate off, carefully placing it down onto the ground before crawling inside. He didn't just drop down though, he made sure to slowly move himself down as to not cause a massive crashing sound through the damn building.

'I don't even know where the hell this thing leads...' Toshiro was taking a bit of a risk here, he wasn't sure where this thing was taking him, nor did he know if it was even safe to crawl through. If he ended up falling through, then there would be some serious damn trouble.

As Toshiro continued crawling through the ventilation, he could hear faint voices from within the building, though it was hard to make out anything they were saying. He wasn't sure how long exactly he had been crawling, but he'd probably guess around five minutes now.

'What's this?' Toshiro quickly stopped crawling upon reaching grate that was placed on the bottom of the vent. Toshiro made sure not to crawl onto it, opting to instead peak down it to see just where it lead. 'This looks like... a lab? No, some kind of storage area?'

The room looked to be a mix between a storage room and a laboratory from what he could tell, seeing all the vials and scientific equipment that was around. There were also many shelves around that were holding boxes of different jars and chemicals.

'No one's here from the looks of it...' Toshiro narrowed his eyes as he glanced around through the grate, not seeing a single person in the room. The light was also not switched on either, but he could still at least make out what was in the room. Although barely. 'Should be safe enough.'

Toshiro grabbed the grate he was looking through before pulling it off as quietly as he possibly could, and after doing so, he placed it down on the other side before waiting a bit to see if anyone would come in after possibly hearing him pulling the piece of metal off.

A few moments passed as Toshiro nodded before slowly lowering himself down into the room, he then proceeded to walk around inspecting each of the things that were in the room. He was honestly curious to see just what these chemicals were.

'Sleeping pills, pain killers...' Toshiro looked a the different things, seeing nothing really too out of the ordinary. They probably used the pills to calm down the patients and all that, so that didn't strike him too much as odd. 'Wait...alkaline hydrolysis? Isn't that used to dispose of dead bodies? Why do they have this?'

Toshiro looked at the jar in shock, definitely not expecting a chemical used for alternative cremation to be in the damn storage room. Looking around, he saw that tons of the liquid stored in countless jars and even entire tanks. Just why did a mental hospital have so much of this stuff?

'This definitely isn't some normal psychiatric hospital, no doubt some shit's going down here...' It didn't take a genius to come to the same conclusion as he did, they definitely weren't just storing this body destroying chemical for no damn reason. 'What the hell's going in this place...?'

"The patient seems to have calm down."

"What about the others? Showing any abnormal signs?"

"No, nothing at all. They seem to be cooperating just fine."

Toshiro widened his eyes as the conversation entered his ears, he quickly noticed that the voices were getting closer so he silently but quickly jumped back up into the vent and placed the grate back over the top. Just in time as the door to the room open and the light came on.

He looked down from the grate once more and saw two male doctors walking over towards where he just stood, they seemed to each take hold of one of the crates full of the alkaline hydrolysis. The both of them looked to be relatively young, probably in their early to mid thirties.

"We better hurry, if we take any longer we'll get yelled at."

"I know we've worked here for a good while, but seeing those dead bodies still creep me out. Just glad that I don't have to be the one touching them..."

"Cheers to that."

'So, there really are dead bodies here...' Toshiro narrowed his eyes dangerously as he watched the two walk out of the room after switching off the lights. They no doubt came to get the alkaline hydrolysis so they could dispose of said bodies as well. 'I have a really bad feeling about this shit...'

After making sure that the vent grate wouldn't fall due to the hinges being broken, Toshiro continued on his way through the ventilation. It didn't take long at all before he reached another grate leading down towards another area of the building.

From the looks of it, the place he now found himself was a small private office area. After force open the grate, he peaked his head through to check the corners of the room, once he made sure that there were no cameras he lowered himself down.

'Let's see here...' Toshiro quickly made his way to the desk and began looking through, though there didn't appear to be anything worth note. He then moved onto the cabinets on the side and began searching through them, there were a lot of files so he was a bit overwhelmed.

However, the few that he had gone through were quite shocking to say the least, but above all else, disgusting. As he read through the files, a number of them were details regarding various experiments that were being done to each of the patients here in the building, dating back many years into the past.

'Just how long have they been doing this? Considering Raiko's son has been here since over sixteen years ago...' Toshiro could only twist his face in disgust as he read the various experiments. 'Mind control, chemical reactions to patient's bodies, sleep experiments...'

Despite this place being a psychiatric hospital, it was obvious that the true goals behind it were the complete opposite of what it was supposed to be. With all the experiments he could see being detailed in these files, it was more like they were trying create people with mental issues.

'Patient files...?'

Toshiro's attention was soon caught by another file he grabbed, when he opened it, he saw numerous names being listed alongside simple pieces of information written next to each name. Each page had more than fifty damn names, and there were more than ten pages for each file.

The file he currently was flipping through seemed to be dating back from 2010 to the present date, obviously meaning that more was still being added to this list. Along with the current list possibly being the patients that were currently in the hospital.

As he quickly flipped through the pages and glanced at each name, he felt more and more disgusted at the information. However, he stopped flipping through as one name stood out among the rest, causing him to freeze when he saw it.

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『Patient Status List - Page 6/10』『2010 - 20XX』

● Hanayami Kaito - [Age: 43 (At Death)] [Status: Deceased] [Experiment: Physical pain endurance]

● Furuha Emi - [Age: 12] [Status: Alive] [Experiment: Drug injection]

● Amashima Kento - [Age: 22 (At Death)] [Status: Deceased] [Experiment: Electrocution]

● ...

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The third one down from the list on this particular page was the name of the person he had come here for in the first place, and from the looks of it, the guy was dead according to these files. Meaning, his visit here was pretty much for nothing, he couldn't get info from a dead guy.

However, while this fact did annoy him to no little extent, he was more focused now on getting this place shut down. The more he read, he understood just what torture these patients were going through, and these people didn't seem to even care as they continued doing these experiment despite their victims perishing.

He quickly checked the other patient files as well, and he couldn't help but feel a swirling anger flow through him as he saw that they had been doing this stuff dating back to even 1980. Just how many hundreds of people had suffered from the hands of these psychos?

'I need to call Inspector Anon...' Toshiro wasn't dumb, he knew that he had powers that placed him far above any human, but he was still one person. He couldn't just up and destroy this place, he had to break it down from the inside. 'If I just start tearing this building down, who knows what'll happen to the patients...'

He had to be smart about this, and breaking everything down with his fists was not it. One method could be knocking out every staff member, but he risked the fact that a knocked out body would be discovered. If he wanted to knock them out, he'd have to try and hide the bodies from sight.

It wasn't just the staff here that he needed to be concerned about, the patients were also a problem. There was a reason they were mental patients, and he wasn't sure if they'll lash out or not if they saw him. It didn't help either that these experiments probably made their conditions worse.

'Fuck, I don't have many options here... I'll just have to take the risk and hope the bodies don't get discovered.' Toshiro sighed as he quickly took hold of a few files, not too many though as that would raise some serious red flags. Once he took them, he quickly placed them into his inventory. 'I need to show Inspector Anon these files, it should be more than enough to warrant a full-scale police investigation and arrest.'

"Direction, are you here?"

'Shit...!' Toshiro quickly dove behind the desk upon hearing the voice and the sound of the door opening. He wasn't sure who spoke, but he could definitely hear their footsteps as they soon entered into the room. 'That was way too close...'

"Must be somewhere else... hope he doesn't mind me taking a few files." Whoever this person was then walked over towards the cabinets that Toshiro was looking through before, and since the cabinets were right next to the desk, Toshiro got a full view of the person from behind.

The person looked to be one of the doctor's of this place, a man probably in his forties or so from the looks of it. Toshiro didn't waste time and snuck behind the man as he searched the cabinets, Toshiro didn't hesitate as he then grabbed the guy by the mouth to prevent him from speaking as he pulled the man down to the ground.

Toshiro then punched the guy once across the temple, effectively knocking the man out instantly. He then checked to make sure the guy was alive, and once he was done, Toshiro nodded before using whatever he could find on the man's body or in the room, such as the man's coat and such to restrain his limbs and tie around the man's mouth.

He made sure to keep the guy's nose expose though, he didn't want the dude suffocating and dying. This doctor may be one of these psychotic maniacs, but he'd rather not get into serious trouble with the authorities by them finding out he killed the guy.

'Alright, that should be good.' Toshiro nodded as he saw that the guy was now fully restrained, to which he then picked him up before pulling him over and up into the ventilation. He doubted that many would check here, so it would be best to keep the guy in here for now. 'I should head back to the roof, I'll call Inspector Anon there...'

After thinking this, Toshiro proceeded to head back the way he came, bringing the body of this doctor with him just to make sure the guy didn't wake up while he was on the roof. Once he made it back to the roof, he quickly dropped the doctor to the ground as he took out his phone.

A few seconds passed before the call was picked up,

[Toshiro? Did you need something?]

"I'll make this quick, meet me at the abandoned warehouse near the docks. You know what I talking about."

[Why? Did something happen?!]

"I'll explain at the docks, meet me there as soon as possible]

Without waiting for a response, Toshiro ended the call and turned back towards the unconscious doctor before walking over and picking him up. He was going to bring this guy along, perhaps they could interrogate him for some information regarding everything.

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『New Quest』

Objective: Save the mental patients from the immoral experiments of the psychiatric hospital [⚫]

Side Objective: Free the souls that are being confined to this building [⚫]

Difficulty: ★☆☆☆☆

Rewards:

● Spiritual Essence [Amount: 12,000]

● Ability or Item Wheel

● ??? [Side Objective Reward]

Failure:

● Mental patients perish

● Possible death of Inspector Anon and police members