-The Many Lifetimes of Detective Ring, Ch. 4
Rin Kagamine woke up early on Friday, which was actually 2:00pm for her. She had just met the most amazing boy the other night, cute, funny, deep, and he had an adorable accent to boot, but he disappeared the minute he saw her bodyguards. Ah, the pains of being a model.
Oh well, she had already moved on. She stretched her arms above her and slid out of bed.
'Poor Len,' she thought as she strode down the brightly lit staircase, 'I made him sleep on the couch again, I'll have to apologize one of these days,'
When she had reached the ground floor, she was surprised to see the couch untouched, just as it had been the night before. Where was Len? She searched the house. He wouldn't be at work, she had made sure he had Fridays off, so where could he be? Rin looked outside.
His car was gone, too.
oOoOoOo
Ring spent the rest of the Saturday night mulling over what Rin had told her about what the police had found, but she just couldn't figure it out.
Even after taking the train and walking down to the crime scene the next day, there was no evidence in sight that pointed to Len Kagamine being dead or alive. It was almost as of he just didn't exist anymore, which made her a tad worried.
There was, however, a car, but it wasn't even smashed to bits, it was still in a state that the driver could crawl out of it alive. If they could survive the 50 foot drop of the cliff, that is. There were no footprints in the mud, either, the chances of him surviving seemed slim, but indeed, there was no body.
"Hey," Lui called from the wreckage, "Look at these,"
Ring hurried over and leaned over the front of the car to see what he was looking at. "Cat prints?" Her eyes widened, "why are there cat prints here, of all places?"
The small, strangely shallow footprints lead down off the hood of the car and off into the distance for who knows how long. They didn't seem to start anywhere, as if whatever made the prints fell out of the sky and onto the car.
"Hell if I know. Are there wild cats around here?"
"No- I don't think so,"
"Pet cats?"
"There aren't any houses around here for miles! Why would a domestic cat want to come out here?"
"Well then, Sherlock, what do you suggest?" She paused and puffed out her cheeks, ignoring the nickname.
"I'm not sure, but I'm almost certain that this is not your normal crime scene," Ring turned and started walking off, following the cat tracks, with Lui following closely behind.
oOoOoOo
In the middle of a muddy plane, Len Kagamine stared into the ghostly eyes of the cat, which he had lovingly named, "killer cat, the killer of dreams".
He hated this cat, it was the reason he was dead. Was dead the right word? He still seemed alive, except not, at the same time. For the sake of simplicity, Len was going to call it dead.
If he was dead, what would happen to him? What would happen to his job? What would happen to Rin? For some reason, Len didn't really care. He was free now, he guessed. No more accounting job, no more stone-cold accounting machine, now that he thought about it, this was great! He had never felt happier in his (after)life!
That's when he saw them, two specks on the horizon. We're they looking for him? Wait, no, he was dead, why would anyone be looking for him? Killer cat purred softly beside him and suddenly floated off towards the specks. Len followed and they soon came to a group of trees a few metres away from the two people. He could make their features out better now, the first one was slouched slightly and had a tired look on her rounded face. Her long sky-blue hair swayed as she walked and phased in and out of the other person. The other person, who was also dead. Len was shocked, there were more ghosts than just him?
He kept a close eye on them as they trudged through the field. He could pick out parts of what the blue one was muttering to herself as she passed by his tree.
"Did Len ever have a pet cat?" She asked. Surprisingly, the other one responded.
"How would I know?" He said flatly as he phased through the side of a tree.
Len shook his head. He never had a cat, Rin was allergic to them and neither of them liked how much they would shed.
He watched as they circled around to where Len had been situated a minute ago, and it hit him. They were following killer cat's tracks, which meant any minute now they would catch up with him, and they could quite possibly see him. Was that a bad thing? Was there some sort of rule about not being seen by the living? Being a ghost reminded him of his high school days, wandering about and being very confused.
oOoOoOo
Ring and Lui weren't doing much better themselves. Ring was beginning to lose faith in this lead, maybe she should just go back and claim that a hungry housecat decided to have a late night snack made out of Len's corpse.
On second thought, she probably shouldn't do that if she wanted to get paid.
The two of them kept walking in what seemed like large circles in a stupid muddy field, when they came to a small wooded area. Saying wooded area would be an overstatement, actually. In the middle of the dead field were three spindly trees. This was also where the prints stopped.
"Great, so our cat decided to disappear on us too. Does this happen a lot around you?" Lui sighed.
"Yep," she replied, "Get used to it,"
That's when Len bolted out from behind one of the sad looking trees and yelled "You're-"
And suddenly Len wasn't there any more. Just Ring's small, yet useful kitchen.
-End of chapter 4
-Author Note-
I am ever so slowly forgetting where I was going with this...