In Which There is Magical Detecting
I alighted from my staff and sprinted the final stretch to the engineering building, so as to appear properly winded in my apologies. Nijūin Rina, the person who would actually be paying me, would forgive much, but the Robot Engineering Club members loitering about were a different story. I expected theater to be the better part of not having the road in front of my office mined. Granted, the traps would be nonlethal by the club's liberal standards, but having potential customers spending money on hospital bills rather than my fee would be very bad for business.
Rina was the daughter of another mage teacher, and the second-youngest teacher in Mahora history. She had a rather inflated opinion of me dating back to our first meeting, where I was able to identify her as an illusion specialist and explain how I would escape if she tried to trap me in one. For some reason, explaining that I had the advantage of her due to chronal shenanigans tied up with a thwarted plot to reveal magic to the blinkered masses failed to remove the stars from her eyes. Kids these days. So easily impressed.
In the meantime, I was her go-to gal for identifying the culprits in things like Mahora's intermittent inter-club warfare. The students usually stuck to things like shouted insults, thrown produce, and the occasional light brawl. This time, some enterprising soul had turned one of the walls of the Robot Engineering Club room into a brand-new entrance you could drive a decent-sized mech through.
Once my contrition was judged sufficient by those present, I took a quick nip from my hip flask. My specialty concoction provides an all-around enhancement to my sensory abilities and a pleasant strawberry-pepper aftertaste. The increased glare, din, and reek of the world at large that comes with the drink seemed a little less excruciating than I remembered. I idly wondered if I'd been using it enough to build up a resistance before focusing on the actual job I could get paid for. Turning my attention to the scattered debris, I found scrape marks. Some sort of tool or claw then, rather than just a spell or chi technique. The scrape marks yielded something that had never been wall to my probing brush, and a quick test confirmed that the particles were once part of something magical. That meant magical weapons or summoned monsters. That could be a couple of the occult clubs, most of the art clubs, the History Club, or the damn Strolling Club. It could always be the Strolling Club. They knew enough ninjutsu and old-school ninja philosophy that damn near anything could be the Strolling Club trying to shift the blame to someone else, and it was all Kaede's fault for teaching them. Just goes to show that anyone who won't open their eyes will be trouble.
"Got all I can from here," I told Rina and the passel of unsubtle eavesdroppers. "Lemme see what I can get from the room." I got quite a lot from the room, as it happened. Fingerprints, footprints, strands of hair and all manner of other Clues. Unfortunately, it all looked standard human, and if I had the resources to suss out what belonged to who and whether they should be there, I wouldn't need the money from this job. A shame my quarry hadn't been thoughtful enough to leave a signed note implicating themselves. It's hard to get a decent phantom thief these days. "Was there anything taken? It looks like there's still a bunch of widgets and full robots here, and nothing looks vandalized."
A girl who looked to be in the tail end of high school swept up to me from the crowd of loiterers. She wore cat-eye glasses, short green hair, and the expression of a queen condescending to speak to the royal rat-catcher. "I am the Club President," she deigned to inform me. "The thieves didn't take much, really. Just a couple of old powered armor suits and an early iteration of the 'Damn Gun' mech, all from before we started etheric tech. Plus the locators for those items, which is why we have to turn to your parlor tricks instead of finding them ourselves." Prof couldn't have invented etheric tech without standing on the shoulders of a long line of mages studying "parlor tricks," you twit. Magic is magic, whatever you call it. I briefly considered contacting Hakase to have her tell this upstart the same thing with more jargon and much greater length, but as usual my sloth overwhelmed my spite.
"Thanks, Pres. That helps narrow it down." The Occult and Fortune-telling Clubs wouldn't have much interest in the nonmagical machines, and the militant faction of the History Club would have purged more technology. It was probably one of the art clubs purloining them in a fit of esthetic avarice. I turned to face the general mass of roboticists. "There are just a few clubs that could reasonably be behind this, and a handful more that could be unreasonably be behind it. It's too late in the evening to interrogate them tonight-"
"And whose fault is that?" called a malcontent slouching on the edge of the group.
"Her name's Koyomi, she never went here, find her if you want to yell at someone. In the meantime, trust me, I'm a professional, justice will be done and you'll get your stuff back soon. Just don't go haring off after anyone you think probably did it, because that'll just lead to more fighting and Ms. Rina being sad." Nobody wanted that. Rina has a set of puppy dog eyes better than most genuine puppies. "If you have suspicions or any other information that might be relevant, talk to the faculty about it or drop by during my office hours. Any questions?" There were none. As I left, the club members were hashing out who would be on what shifts to protect the unexpectedly remodeled room until it could be repaired.
As for me, I had to figure out what abnormality had Koyomi worried, and how much I could justifiably charge for it.