HATE YOU PLOTBUNNIES! This is what I get for thinking 'Why did Toichi steal?' and letting another doggone plot bunny sneak up on me... *Story now also entirely reedited for better sentence structure, longcat sentences were long*
"But you don't understand," cried Korinoko Kagome, a twenty year old raven-haired, brown-eyed female stage assistant as her tears flowed freely. She was standing on the left side of the stage as the onlookers in the crowd clapped and cheered wildly in the packed college events stadium, her pleading protests drowned out by the sheer volume of the masses' whistling and general decibel level. Her tear-streaked and grief-filled face went unnoticed by everyone due to their wholehearted, intense focus on the massive red velvet curtain that was currently sitting at center stage, the crowd patiently waiting for the star of the show to make his daring, dramatic escape and reappear in front of them. The magician currently performing onstage, real name of Korinoko Morinou but far better known by his stage name of the Great Vizar, had as of yet failed to reappear from his attempt to extricate himself from the large upright glass-walled prison tank he had inserted himself into a few minutes ago. The crowd was expecting him back at any moment with a triumphant grin on his face, holding the handcuffs his assistant had used to bind him in his right hand and uttering his trademark cry of 'Another escape for the books!'
The young woman continued her protests to no avail, raising her voice and trying desperately to be heard over the crowd after she had rushed out from behind the curtain in a panic. "Stop clapping!" she yelled as loudly as she could muster given her current emotional state, her voice cracking with sorrow and panic in the process. "Please, listen to me and quit! Dad's actually vanished! For real! This isn't an act! This isn't ANY of his magic tricks! He's just GONE!" she managed to wail before she found herself unable to so much as whisper anymore, her voice roughened beyond the point of usability thanks to both her efforts to be heard above the din and her throat feeling like a vise grip was on it from the crying she'd been (and still was) doing.
She had made the horrific discovery after her father began the final routine of his act, his patented escape trick involving his custom-made cage that they referred to simply as 'The Box' during their frequent practice sessions. After allowing a few seconds for everyone's focus to shift onto the huge curtain, she surreptitiously slipped behind it from the side- just as she always always did in order to ensure that her father made a safe, quick escape from his self-devised cage, and to assist him in getting out if he needed it. To her initial puzzlement and confusion, she had found that her father was just plain gone and this was very curious because this was way too fast for him to have broken out; they'd timed his best, quickest escape at three and a half minutes and that time had only come after years of perfecting the routine.
That puzzlement and confusion had all too quickly turned into equal parts of stomach-churning horror and fear for her father's safety as she looked around more and realized that not only was her father nowhere to be seen backstage, but the cage he'd been occupying just a few moments ago now had a small, faintly tinny-smelling and scary-looking pool of thick red stuff in the bottom of it that had caused her eyes to shoot open as she'd realized that it looked a lot like blood. A hasty, panicked search backstage by her had revealed nothing more than a few more small drops of that substance leading directly to the rear stage exit, which was slowly swinging back and forth in the balmy summer night breeze currently.
It took a good two or three minutes before the first onlooker had taken their eyes off the curtain and noticed the assistant's panic and fear, getting out of their seat walking over to inquire about what was wrong as around them the clapping slowly faded out and the cheering turned into concerned-sounding murmurs and whispers because the Great Vizar was taking too long to reappear.
"Damn it," hissed Megure-keibu under his breath in an uncharacteristic bout of total anger, an exasperated huff accompanying the curse as he moodily surveyed his newest crime scene at the arena a few hours after the vanishing of the magician- the newest and most current one, that was. He turned his back to his subordinates that had gathered for a crime scene meeting before continuing his tirade, an angry glare directed at the bloodstain on the bottom of the glass tank that hadn't fully finished congealing yet. "Not another one of these stupid, impossible magician disappearances! We never find a single thing but traces of their blood leading out some door or side window somewhere! I have absolutely had it with these things and being called to them! What the hell is going on here?"
The rest of the currently gathered police force looked at each other nervously out of the corners of eyes, none wanting to openly admit that the string of inexplicable vanishings was stumping them as much as their keibu. They also all shared in his sense of frustration and feeling like they had to be missing something in this string of odd disappearances. There hadn't been a break yet, that lucky event, happy coincidence or piece of critical evidence that would finally set them down the trail towards the truth of this strange series of kidnappings. Or at least, they were assumed to be kidnappings and currently being worked as such by the force; at the present time they still couldn't quite even tell what precisely was occurring beyond magicians in the greater Tokyo prefecture vanishing like ghosts in the midst of their final-act performances with no warning, rhyme or reason behind the dissappearances.
"This one is what, the third or fourth of these weird cases in as many weeks?" inquired Detective Takagi tenuously to the room in general after a few moments of tension-filled silence while his eyes roamed the faces of the squad, getting a weary nod of agreement from his partner Detective Sato after he'd asked the question.
"This makes the fourth, actually," she replied softly in a voice tinged with defeat and frustration. "All under similar- OK, make that extremely identical to absolutely identical- circumstances. The magician suddenly vanishing during the performing of their finale and almost no evidence left behind at all that they were even taken, just the little bits of blood here and there. Nothing else at all left behind at the scenes, no notes, no weapons, no anything, almost as if a ghost stole in and made them vanish." She sipped her coffee before tacking on "If they're being kidnapped, that is."
"Why can't some other precinct besides us catch one of these stupid things for once?" grumbled Inspector Chiba, who was highly irritated at being called in on his day off and also currently only running on half of his mental cylinders due to not being early enough to snag some coffee from the pot Satou had made at headquarters and brought with her.
The group of detectives had descended on the pot like hummingbirds to a nectar-rich flower once they'd realized what it had contained and drained it very quickly. "We're being made a laughing stock out of thanks to these stupid magician vanishings. There are magicians in more places than just Tokyo and the surrounding areas, why aren't any of them getting kidnapped or vanished or whatever-ed?" he continued as he waved his hand around in frustration.
"Well, remember, we don't know that they're being kidnapped for sure," pointed out Megure irritably. "If we really face facts, we don't have a clue what the hell is going on here and it's getting very old very fast. No leads, no clues, not a damn thing but magicians pulling actual vanishing acts."
"There's still been no contact from any of the first three magicians that vanished, by the way, keibu," stated Takagi as he flipped open a notepad. "I checked into the files earlier like you asked. No ransom demands or anything from anyone, either. It's like they've all just vanished off the face of the earth..."
"N-no contact?" cried Kagome as she approached the detectives she'd been spending the last few hours giving statements to, having heard the last statement and feeling dread come over her quickly. "What do you mean? None of them have been seen or heard from since they vanished at all? The other magicians who've gone missing that you told me a bit about?"
"Unfortunately, I meant exactly what I just said," replied Takagi softly but firmly to the girl, trying to put his sympathy training to good use but also not wanting to give the magician's daughter any false hope about them solving a case (well, cases now) that had the police completely stumped and with zero leads at the present time. "These other magicians that have disappeared haven't made any contact since the performance that they vanished, and there's been no contact from kidnappers or anything along those lines either, someone demanding a ransom or something like that."
At the glare that he received from the rest of the detective team for imparting this information, Takagi shrugged and asked "What? It's not like the public doesn't already know all that. The media has been sticking to us like glue on this series of cases, unfortunately."
"This...this sounds horrible for him...I'd heard about the others, but...Dad..." she finally managed to stammer out before a uniformed officer gently began escorting her back to the area where they were still taking and finalizing her statement.
"Megure-keibu, if I may offer a suggestion that Takagi and I have been mulling over since the second case?" asked Satou respectfully of her superior a few moments after the girl's departure. "We're really getting nowhere in a hurry with these dissappearances, and the families have pooled together a reward fund for information because of that. Why don't we call in that tantei friend of yours who sometimes consults for us, Sleeping Kogoro, and see what he thinks? He seems to have a knack for solving his cases, no matter how strange or lacking evidence they are initially, and I'm sure we can convince the families to pay him for his time out of that fund."
"Mmm." Megure narrowed his eyes and gazed dead ahead for a few moments at no one and nothing in particular, engaging in his familiar habit of holding an internal consultation with himself. "That guy has death follow him like a shadow, but we really are getting desperate and we need some leads quick," he replied after a few minutes while turning to Satou and nodding, apparently having made his mind up. "Go ahead and have someone call him first thing in the morning- but offer to pay the taxi fare or the lazy bum won't bother coming to the station."