Description:
Golden Calf came up with their most devious scheme against the Guardians to date: They decided to kidnap Emma Verde, the nicest and purest idol in the industry, and turn her into an empty shell in order to gain an easy advantage over their rivals, most notably Team Niji and the Guardians. With the rivals mourning for Emma, Golden Calf would be able to take over their territories with ease. After kidnapping Emma, they planned on traveling across the US in the hopes of depleting the Guardians' resources should they tail them, before ending up in Switzerland, Emma's birthplace, where the "experimentation" would take place. As an added bonus, they even planned on tricking Emma's family into seeing it happen by making it look innocent on the outside, before revealing their true colors. The Guardians' search for Emma led them to Phelan, California, the home of three of Jeremy's relatives. There, a Golden Calf cargo train, as part of a larger cargo network, was waiting to transport them to the East Coast.
As an added bonus, Jeremy also invited Jinsei Kuramoto, one of the TDF's first major villains, to help out in exchange for the latter meeting up with Chihiro Yamahara. As it turned out, Kuramoto only did all of his harsh deeds, including the attempted mass murder, just to keep Chihiro safe from harm, mainly from the gang that they were a part of, as he believed that she didn't fit in.
During the search, Sabu came across a missing person case. A woman named Ingrid Hagen had gone missing some years ago, prompting her husband, Albert Strand, to call the police, having been shunned by local librarian, Bethany Reynolds, the wife of local resident Troy Reynolds, whom he saw driving a car that Ingrid entered on the night she disappeared. For unknown reasons, Troy killed Ingrid and buried her under his house's patio. Albert would get revenge by opening a bank account under Troy's name, and stealing money from a gang leader, prompting said leader to send an assassin to decimate Troy with a shotgun. Years later, Ingrid's body was found and given a proper burial.
As it turned out, the two cases were connected, as the Guardians discovered that Albert Strand later became [Redacted], who had secretly intended for the Guardians to find Ingrid's body, while killing Troy's younger brother, Jeffery Reynolds, who had been stalking Sabu upon learned about the identity of his brother's killer, though he thought that it was Ingrid, believing that she had somehow escaped and ran away. After finding [Redacted]'s old house, where Emma was being held in, the Guardians then found a coded message, leading them to the local train station. Upon arrival, Golden Calf attempted to create chaos to escape, but although they did so, the Guardians rescued Emma, while Jeremy and Kuramoto went after her captors, only to lose sight of them in the train yard.
In the aftermath, as the Guardians and Kuramoto bright Emma back to Nijigasaki, Jeremy stayed in Phelan to be with his relatives. Meanwhile, Kuramoto got to meet up with Chihiro, who forgave him for his attempted mass murder. While not part of the deal, Kuramoto was pardoned for his crime, and Goro Komatsuki gave him the new role of spying on Shujin Academy to keep his peers in check. Back in Nijigasaki, Sabu told everyone present a dark secret of his.