Moriarty's Brief Jaunt to Japan

Prologue - Catalysts

When Jim was a teenager, back in Ireland, there were two events that changed his life significantly. Without them he could not confidently state he would have reached the dizzying heights he had since risen to, the heights that came before a fall, oh but not yet, not yet. It would come later, in time. 'That which goeth up must cometh down', or some shit, and so on and so on, blah blah blah.

The two events were as follows: the discovery of worlds beyond what people knew and an encounter with a stranger from Japan. Sometimes he questioned which was more abnormal: the headless rider who passed by him down the street one night or the clinically insane doctor who arrived not long after. Perhaps it wasn't so much that they were his specific starting point, but in his head when he looked back, that was where it all began, sneaking out as a kid after dark and wandering aimlessly, until those two events fundamentally changed him. Or no, not changed, awoke a sleeping dragon inside. Something poetic, like. Even then he had a flair for the dramatic. Even then he had all the formative materials for a criminal mastermind, even if he did say so himself; and of course he did. All he needed was the kick.

Would something else have inspired him, he wondered, him, who was already a conniver already a murderer even then? Poor, poor Carl Powers, his death might otherwise have been a one off, it would have been such a waste. Regardless, he knew without adequate motivation he would never have thrown himself into his particular line of work. His talents might have gone to waste. Heavens forbid, he might have been an ordinary thug, a common criminal! A useless, directionless zombie. Honing himself had taken time. And as with any reaction, it required a catalyst.

The incident of the first event took place on a Sunday evening, or early Monday morning, whichever, when Jim had gone out for the night to observe and explore. He'd briefly amused himself with the trifling matter of throwing stones at a cat, until the mundane violence became tedious. Then he walked, hands in pockets, pulling his coat around him and praying that for once it didn't bloody rain. He was interrupted by the clatter of hooves, which seemed a bit odd at three in the morning. Late night pony club?

Well, shit. He wasn't strictly trespassing, but he didn't want to get caught, did he, especially not by whatever kind of person picked the middle of the night for a ride. Quickly he had turned his torch off and ducked behind a hedge, peering over it just a little and holding his breath. The hooves had got closer, with them came the creak of wheels, a carriage. A chill ran down his spine involuntarily but he didn't shiver. He pulled himself together and watched, waiting. This wasn't normal. This was a spice of abnormality to an otherwise ordinary day.

He waited as the wheels rattled closer, around the corner into view. A dark carriage, pulled by a horse with billowing black smoke in place of a head. He had almost laughed, thinking it had to be an illusion, a trick of the early morning shadows. For the briefest moment he had a clear view of the rider, a woman who sat controlling the reins. Was it called a rider when they were directing a carriage? Semantics aside, more importantly she had no head, like the horse, fog rising from her neck. In her arms, a beautiful head sat, an unforgettable face, and then the carriage carried on into the night.

Impulsively he followed it. That was who he was. Always curious. Always inquiring. He tailed it as far as the abandoned cottage, where he watched it - her - stable her horse and vanish inside. There he held off. It was common gossip at school that the house was haunted, and though Jim didn't believe in ghosts, he hadn't believed in dullahans until about ten minutes ago and so was inclined to caution. For now, at least.

He was on his way home when the second of those events found him, the stranger from Japan, who was for some reason carrying one of those swords from the cheaply-made ninja movies you saw on TV. He kept muttering away to himself in Japanese.

Jim wasn't an idiot. Far from it. He had come top in maths every year since starting secondary. He knew how to put two and two together. These events were linked. The question then became how could he profit from this?

"Excuse me?" He began, stepping out of the shadows like a vampire, or a villain from a fairytale. The Japanese man visibly jumped.

"Aaaah!" He screamed, waving the sword frantically with the all the poise and grace of a drowning bluebottle. "Leave now or I will be forced to use this ancient cursed blade!" His English was technically accurate, but highly idiosyncratic and eccentric. Mind you, a cursed blade would have been mundane by that night's standards.

"Are you lost?" Jim had asked, ever the public spirited citizen with absolutely no ulterior motives.

"No, no!" The man said, waving his hands. "Not that you'd be able to help if I was but I'm not so-" here, he stuck his tongue out, in a show of immaturity.

"And if I could?"

The man looked around covertly. "Alright. You wouldn't happen to have seen-"

"A woman with no head?" Jim finished casually. Once again the man jumped as though he had been shocked, then, recovering, started to point at Jim dramatically and shout.

"Esper, esper! Aaaaagh, you read my mind! What am I thinking now? Now? Ha! I have defeated you with my quick thinking!" The man's over-the-top reaction settled down and he leaned in closely. "Did you?"

"Read your mind? Please, I'm not that good."

"No! See a woman with no head around here?"

Jim smiled and folded his arms. "If I did...you want directions, right?" The man nodded furiously. "Sorry, it's gonna cost you." He clicked his tongue against his teeth and whistled.

"Damn!" The man frowned, folding his arms. Even this was conducted as though it were an elaborate gesture. "You're robbing me blind. I realise you haven't named a price yet, but whatever it is it's too high! I have a son to feed!"

"Really?" Jim narrowed his eyebrows suspiciously.

"Yes, really! He's waiting back at...never mind where! I'll have you know I resent your doubt!"

"How old is he?" Jim asked, feigning an interest in order to make small talk and try to trick this man into giving up more information.

The man beamed. "Four!" He replied, proudly.

"You left him alone aged four? Well, I can't say you'll be winning any parenting awards soon."

"Whaaaaat? It'll teach him independence. He needs to learn to stand on his own two feet sooner or later."

"Preferably at least ten years after he's learnt to stand."

"Ha! Hypocrite! Who are you to talk, your parents are so distracted they let you come sneaking out at this hour? You can't criticise me. I happen to be a doctor."

Faced with the bizarre situation of arguing parenting with a lunatic, Jim rolled his eyes and decided to get the topic back onto business, fun though their tangent was. He made a show of checking his watch, adding a time-sensitive element to their deal.

"Do you want to know where the headless woman is or not, Dr…"

"Aaagh, Dr Kishitani, Shingen. But you don't need to remember that! You can forget this ever happened!" Jim fixed him with a look, and the man hung his head, dejected. "Fine. How much do you want?" Jim named his price and Dr Kishitani sighed. "I don't have time to haggle, dammit." He rifled through his wallet and threw the money at him. "Lead the way."

So he did. He showed the sword-wielding weirdo the way to the house and assisted him with what followed, bagging the head and carrying it back to the car, at which point the man drove off and was gone. During this time he learnt, in addition to the man's name, the name of the company he was working for, Nebula. He noted all of this down for future reference.

Jim wondered if they'd killed the dullahan. He wasn't sure. He headed back home and took a stolen lock of hair out of his pocket, and put it in a sealed container next to Carl Powers' stolen shoes, at the bottom of his wardrobe. After that he fell asleep. The next day he had school and he spent the day thinking of the previous night's events. He was intrigued by Nebula, by Dr Kishitani, by the dullahan. And so he found himself on the path to becoming the man he was now, for better or for worse. For better, he thought anyway.

Now he wondered what Sherlock would make of the whole thing. Probably he'd write the whole thing off as delusional. Poor Sherly, so fixed and rigid in his worldview, free of those impossible possibilities, sending him spinning off in directions he never planned to go. But not Jim. Jim knew all these things. He became himself, and that brought him to where he was now, on the precipice awaiting a fall.

When that day came, he sure as hell would drag Sherlock Holmes down with him.

‡

Anyway, that was all history. Whether that was the cause of who he became or not, he would never know. Frankly he didn't care. He was James Moriarty, consulting criminal, working with everyone from the lowest of the low to smuggling rings to yakuza, to multinational corporations like Nebula, whom he took an interest in. He researched them, from the 1930s Flying Pussyfoot incident to their recent forays into Yagiri Pharmaceuticals and human testing. And their other, more esoteric interests. He kept a careful eye on Nebula.

So when the job came up he decided to look into it further. It didn't instantly ring alarm bells, but it should have.

Nebula had been having problems on the Yagiri Pharmaceuticals side - they were approaching a merger and wanted everything to be spic and span before they brought the Japanese company into the fold. The problems seemingly stemmed from young Seiji Yagiri stealing a particular head from the labs. This was followed by an incident with a girl stalking him, who was presumed dead and forced to get plastic surgery, in a twist of coincidence, at the hands of Dr Kishitani's son. Seiji's sister Namie took charge, resuming possession of the head. She was supposed to return it to the labs, ready for the merger. Instead she had vanished. Nebula requested Moriarty's help locating Namie Yagiri and, of course, the head. He took a look at the photos and immediately booked flights, business class.

This case was personal.

He recognised that head. Of course he did. Clapping his hands together excitably he laughed. How appropriate that this case featured the same two elements from his past, tying into that incident in his youth. He was getting excited, making his plans, gleefully getting his house in order. God, he hadn't been this excited since he first heard about Sherlock, but then he hadn't considered Sherlock inconveniencing him to this degree. Finally, he contacted Nebula assuring them he would be attending in person. This case was of pressing interest. Oh, and he put in a call to Sebastian Moran, asking him to keep an eye on certain elements of the business while he was away in Japan.

"Could you have our Tokyo informants send me their relevant files, those pertaining to Ikebukuro, please? Something for me to brush up on on the flight. Alright, ta, talk later. Bye!" With that, he hung up.

From what he knew about the area, Ikebukuro was a hotbed of young delinquent gangs and local yakuza (several of whom he'd had dealings with in the past), and the files confirmed this. It had its share of urban legends and strangeness, including, he noted, after a session of googling, an invisible online colour gang, that he promptly joined after weedling the password out of someone else; and an allegedly headless rider on a black bike, who the previous gang claimed as a member along with someone called 'Heiwajima Shizuo' and a few other parties. Reading the files while nursing a glass of excellent whiskey, he rehearsed and practised his Japanese, which was serviceable but required a little studying that the flight would resolve. So he scrolled through his phone, reading the files and noting details that repeated between accounts.

'ex-assassins running a Russian sushi restaurant…'

'the Slasher'

'black bike'

'the Dollars'

And an interesting one: 'Whatever you do, avoid blond bartenders RUN AS FAR AS POSSIBLE I SPEAK FROM EXPERIENCE'.

Many of the emails, except that last one and a few others, were sourced to a particular informant, a dealer in information who cropped up in other emails as someone deeply suspicious. 'Orihara Izaya', Izaya Orihara. According to Nebula he was a person of interest in this case, an excellent information dealer who operating out of multiple apartments in Shinjuku. He would be the first port of call in this investigation. Then maybe he'd pay the Awakusu-kai a visit or have someone do it on his behalf, pull some strings with them, alongside other outlets like the Medei and Asuki. On another note, he wanted to look into the Black Bike and the Dollars more closely while over there, the former out of the same personal interest that drove him to Ikebukuro in the first place, the latter for fun. They seemed like a laugh.

After reading over all this two or three times, he got bored and decided to watch some amusing children's cartoons for the rest of the flight. Heathrow to Narita International Airport. Eleven hours 35 minutes in total. It was driving him insane. He regretted coming already.

Sliding down in his seat, he slouched so far he was almost on the floor, then started fiddling with the buttons controlling tilt. That occupied him for all of five minutes. After that he resorted to flicking pellets at the half-asleep businessman opposite until the man woke up and all the magic went out of it. He looked at his watch.

6 hours left. Great.