Chie's wandering had given her ample opportunity to make some conclusions on the grounds of the Kirijo's mansion. Firstly, the whole place was as generic as could be, the dusty front of the building and its fountain as if being picked out from some exclusive catalogue, while the bushes and grass elsewhere provided an eerily perfect symmetry. Secondly, the person who designed the place was somewhat paranoid, not content with the tropical forests of Yakushima Island being enough to protect the land, and instead surrounding the complex with sheer white wall, topped with an array of imposing spikes. Finally, she could tell the gardeners must have been very good at their jobs, with the flowerbeds laid at the back of the mansion being dotted with a huge variety of colours and types, arranged into intricate patterns, all following that familiar pattern of symmetry.

It was an incredibly precise place, leaving Chie impressed, but also, a little sad. All this space, she thought wistfully, and you're not even meant to run around. Sure, this was a typical example of upper class sophistication, but the mansion was owned by a CEO that could only be described as ultra-upper class. Where were the eccentricities, a race track perhaps, a stable of exotic stallions, or even something as small as a collection of fine china? Chie would have appreciated a giant statue of Mitsuru more than the sterile environment she seemed to have made for herself. Sitting on the grass behind, the martial artist scowled at the building. Man, if I was rich I'd have a lot more fun with it…

A door swung open at the foot of the mansion, springing Chie to attention. Half-scared Takenowa's spectre would be pouncing on this one instance of laziness, she was pleasantly surprised to see the professionally-garbed Labrys stepping out into the sunshine. Quickly spotting Chie, she raised an arm in greeting and skipped towards her. "Heya," the maid smiled, "Kanji said I'd find ya out here!"

"Oh," Chie replied, stretching her arms. "You've seen him today already?"

"Yeah, had to show the dummy directions to the not-so-secret lab." Worry flashed across the girl's forehead. "You're on the level with that too, right?"

The brunette's eyebrows shot up. "We have a secret lab?!" She could only enjoy Labrys' dumbstruck expression before she crumpled into laughter. "'Course I am, me and Kanji are a team. Man, the look on your face…"

The younger girl scowled and sat down on the grass. "That's a mean trick to play on a girl."

"You have a point," Chie admitted, plonking herself down beside her friend, "Especially on one who's like a mental age of two."

The maid looked at her incredulously. "The hell are you sayin'?"

She shrugged, but treaded carefully, knowing she may have hit a nerve. "Your amnesia? You said yourself you only remember the last couple of years, so…"

"So?" She scoffed back. "I didn't like, forget how to read and write and stuff. And I can do math pretty fast in my head y'know…"

Labrys drew in her knees and adopted a sulky posture, making Chie feel mostly awful. "I'm sorry," she apologised, "that's not something you can joke about to someone you've only known for a day…"

The amnesiac looked up to her, bottom lip trembling, which halted with a mischievous wink. "Hah, I can pull a trick too!"

Chie snorted, glad to see she hadn't actually offended her co-worker, and also glad to see she wasn't thin skinned, a trait of Kanji's that annoyed her to no end. "Still," she started remorsefully, "That's not cool. I can't ever imagine not being able to remember-"

"Hey." Labrys looked at her seriously. "Cut it out with that depressin' crap. I've gotten enough sympathy from people already, its fun to have someone who'll actually give me shit for it."

Her friend wasn't particularly convinced. "Uh… Really?"

"Dude, you have no idea how boring everyone else is round here. The other maid's idea of humour is the same five knock-knock jokes over and over, and the cooks and gardeners all just have weird cliques." She laid herself down on the grass, and stared at the sky. "Trust me, jokes at my expense are preferable. Besides don't think I won't fire back when I eventually get dirt on you!"

The martial artist placed a dainty hand on her chest, the picture of innocence. "Dirt? There's no dirt, I'm pure as pure." While her friend looked wonderfully comfortable in the dirt, Chie knew she still had a lot of ground to cover for her shift. Standing, she held out a hand to her companion. "I've gotta do some more patrolling around here, you coming with?" While ticked she had to get up so quickly, the maid took the offered assistance, her friend making a silent note she was much heavier than her small frame made her first believe. Now that's something that might be too sore to bring up, Chie thought humourlessly.

"I am gonna find something to tease you about though," Labrys declared, as the pair began following the patrol route, "And when I do, you aren't gonna forget it!"

The security guard shook her head, smiling. "Why is that a big deal for you?"

"Umm…" She stalled awkwardly, before sighing. "It's what people in TV and movies do to their 'best friends'." She shyly looked to the ground. "I'm hoping you and Kanji-kun might become…"

Chie smirked. "Wow, you are sooooo lame," She teased, and afterwards, before the girl could protest, laying an arm across her shoulders. "I hope so too. And I bet he does as well."

The girls smiled at each other, for a few moments enjoying the good company and the pleasant weather. Then Labrys clapped her hands together. "Alright! Finding dirt on Chie: part one!" She pointed at her with a fierce intensity. "Are you and Kanji-kun together?"

The implication was sudden and obvious, leaving Chie spluttering. "I- What- I mean…" She struggled. "What makes you think that?"

Labrys looked at her oddly. "What? You're a girl, he's a guy, and you moved thousands of miles here, together. You're obviously close."

"And?" She took a step away from her friend, and held her arm awkwardly. "We're friends. That's what good friends do?"

To the maid's credit, she looked legitimately confused. "Wha? All the movies I watched, just looked like the guy an' gal were close, friend-like, and then they got together. I thought it was like, a convenience thing."

It was at this moment, Chie realised how truly sheltered this girl was. With no real reference for how any kind of relationship worked, she had to make her best guess from whatever she had available. "Do you always try to learn about that kind of thing from movies?"

She looked away, but the martial artist knew that if she could see her eyes, there would only be sadness. "It's all I had. No-one my age to talk to, films TV and the internet were the only things available, and movies are much easier to binge through than a buncha articles or blogs."

"Labrys-chan…" Chie wished she had something to say, but her own experience was just so minuscule compared to the burden her friend had to carry. "I'm so sorry…"

"Oi!" The martial artist could see her friend's face now, and while her eyes still had a certain melancholy, her stern expression at least had energy behind it. "I said none of that depressin' sympathy, alright?"

Chie nodded firmly. "Okay."

"Moving on," Labrys drawled, looking ahead, "Have you like, ever had a boyfriend or anything?" A question that forced her to think back to her first boyfriend, her only boyfriend, her ex-boyfriend, that made her stop in her tracks. Blanking out for a few moments, it took a concerned Labrys taking her hand to snap her back to reality. "Hey, you alright?"

Chie tried to smile, but it was only weak. "Yup, completely I- Nope." She couldn't keep lying, not to herself, or to her friend, who needed every dose of what was 'real' she could get. "I'm really not. I mean, who moves away from home, takes a completely random job, all to get away from one boy?"

Labrys tilted her head. "That's why you're here? Bad breakup or something?"

"The worst," Chie said tersely, leading the pair of them to the nearby perimeter wall, and leaning back on it, sinking to the floor. She noticed Labyrs shiver slightly. "Something wrong?"

She was staring the wall up and down, judging the smooth concrete. "I don't like walls like this… They just make me feel… I dunno, they block everything…" She turned to her friend, joining her on the floor, determined to help if she could. "Never mind that, we need to talk about this boy."

Chie's eyes were half open, staring into nowhere in particular. "Do we?"

"Of course, that's what girls do!" This had been announced proudly, but the maid quickly shrunk. "In the movies at least."

The security guard looked back to her co-worker, who was spacing out like she was. Sighing, she came to an interesting realisation. She had never really told her side of the story. Her mom had pried, of course, but she really didn't feel like spilling her soul, and letting her mother spill her private life across the intricately networked parents' web of Inaba. Even Kanji she felt was too close to the incident, and things had become so easy in pretending nothing had happened. But now, she had the perfect audience, willing to listen, and without the experience to be able to judge or comment. "Do you want to hear a love story, Labrys?" Her friend turned to her, interest raised. "This is a real love story, and it's not pretty. You'll have all the dirt you'd ever want from me by the end. Hopefully you'll learn something about how these things actually work."

The younger girl scratched her chin. "Like what?"

"That you can't really know a person. That they'll hurt you. That boys freakin' suck…" Her audience laughed at that last blunt assessment, while Chie smiled solemnly, and began her tale. "His name was Yu Narukami, he was a transfer student from the city…"

When the new kid had back chatted King Moron after only a minute in the classroom, Chie was not only impressed, but awed. She half berated herself for offering the seat next to her to save him from their teacher's became wrath, curious to see how far this guy would could've taken it. "Wow," she whispered as he sat down, "We've never had an entrance like that before."

"You've never had a guy like me before." The line was corny, but luckily he chuckled, so he was thankfully being ironic. "Sorry. Too good a setup. I'm Yu Narukami, if you've already forgotten."

Chie was almost ashamed to admit she had, what with the spectacle he had made for himself after his initial introduction to the class. "I'm Chie Satonaka. Guess we're desk buddies for the year."

He smiled, and Chie felt her stomach stir in a way unfamiliar, and strangely exciting. "I'm looking forward to it."

"Hey, new boy!" Mr. Morooka shouted mid-lecture, "Quit trying to impregnate the class, I deal with enough of you babies as it is! As I was saying…"

Chie blushed a whole new shade of pink, and tried to focus on the boring old man in the front of the class, difficult when there was an interesting young one right beside her. She rubbed her eyes furiously. 'What the hell is up with me today?' she thought to herself, fully knowing the answer, while not quite wanting to admit it

The announcement of the incident outside of the school sparked furious speculation. Chie would have best friend Yukiko Amagi wasn't paying attention. She looked tired, tired like she had been for the last few weeks, and Chie had all but given up on trying to help. She just hoped the reporters for the Yamano story would leave town soon, and give her heiress friend the rest she deserved.

So instead, she just chatted to the new kid, Yu, trying to give a detailed rundown of how the school worked, and give him a picture of the Inaba life. It was only natural to invite him to walk home with her and Yukiko, and tried not to think about what he thought to her crippling of Yosuke Hanamura, courtesy of her broken copy of 'trial of the dragon'. The violence of the day didn't stop there; she had been very close to knocking the lights out of a creepy stranger who had tried hitting on Yukiko- he didn't even go to their school!

On their way home, past the floodplains of the sleepy town, she asked Yu a not totally innocent question. "So, you think Yukiko's pretty, right?"

It made sense. Yu, Yukiko, it seemed like they should fit together. Every boy in town figured they would fit with Yukiko at least, why should the newbie be any different? And it was okay. She wanted her friend to be happy, and figured it was about time she found her special someone. Why would it concern her, she was just trying to help…

Yukiko's sigh and blush was expected, and admittedly the whole point of the exercise. Why she was hoping for something similar to come from the transfer student, his cool reply left her in the same state as her best friend. "Of course. I've already noticed this town has an abundance of that quality." It wasn't his voice leaving the martial artist staring at her feet. It was his gaze, piercing, accompanied by an assured brow and sly smile. It was directed at her, but it wasn't supposed to be, was it? Surely it was meant for Yukiko, but looking back up, their pupils locked, and she snapped her head away before her heart started fluttering too quickly.

Their arrival at a crime scene pushed thoughts of Yu Narukami to the back of her mind, but only barely. The body of a famous announcer, Mayumi Yamano, had been found, grotesquely displayed on a TV antenna in the suburbs. That was to only be the start of the troubles Inaba faced that year. Soon, their upperclassman Saki Konishi was found in a similar circumstance, and all of a sudden, the most boring town in Japan held residence to a serial killer. It excited Chie, when she wasn't being horrified by it all, but the heavy atmosphere around the town, and other strange events besides, left her feeling stressed. So there was only one thing to do.

She strolled to the riverside, taking her usual spot, and started hopping on the spot, warming up her muscles. Kicking the ass of some phantom bad guys was just what she needed. Sure, she wasn't professionally trained, or combat ready, but she was certain she could send some of the bigger guys in school crying home to their mothers. In any case, she was about to throw out a few kicks, when she saw a clumsy combat stance being adopted besides her. "Yu-kun!"

They had gotten friendlier in the last couple weeks, to the point where they could easily call each other friends. She still had this weird feeling about him, but she decided it was refreshing to talk to a guy who wasn't inquiring about Yukiko every five minutes. She loved the girl with all her heart, but she was an imposing figure to stand besides, being not only elegant heiress of local heritage, but being damn beautiful to boot. Chie had to shove off so many questions, what food did she like, bigger guys or leaner ones, where did she hang out, what was her phone number, etcetera etcetera. Being Yukiko's best friend, her only friend, her shield to the horrors of the high school boys, and the rest of the world besides, had become so important, so essential, she had started to wonder what their friendship really was. Was it a story of two girls, giggling their way through their teen years, or that of a stoic bodyguard to the larger than life celebrity?

But she knew that was a childish way to feel. Yu had an instrumental part in helping her realise that, discovering and working through that shadowy side of herself. She was going to be a better friend to Yukiko, and was starting to be better to herself.

Still, she couldn't help but be surprised Yu had taken up her offer. Training by the river sounded like hard work to the other people she discussed her exercise routine with, and it had only come up by accident when talking to the grey-haired transfer student. Yet, here he was, with her, ready to get to work. She told herself the sweat in her palms was from her drills.

She started running through the fundamentals. Chie was pleased to see he moved his body with every strike; he was making a real effort, and his technique was improving with every motion. "You sure you haven't done this before?" She teased slightly.

"I don't think so" he replied, going through the punches she had shown him, "Unless I actually am black belt, who was far too lax about head protection." He twirled his index finger around his temple, with a small smile.

His humour was dry, a form she usually found grating, but he found a way to make it sound assured. Mature. Strong. "Whatever," she groaned playfully, "I just think you're one of those people whose good at everything. You answer every question in class after all."

He lowered his arms after a final swing, and turned to face the girl, shrugging his shoulders. "I don't think so, you haven't seen my cooking yet."

"You haven't seen mine," she countered, moving over to the bench near them, and gesturing him over. "Break time."

He sat down beside her, and they were quite for a while, simply listening to the river, and Chie avoiding snatching glances at the handsome boy to her left. "You're a good teacher," he said suddenly.

She wasn't used to praise, and her expression grew befuddled. "Eh?"

"It's true," he insisted. "Your passion really shines through, it makes me want to improve. That's a powerful thing. Not many people can really focus what they love into that positive energy." He nodded firmly. "You're something special."

She could swear her ears were burning. She tried using bravado to contain her internal girlish squealing. "You're not too bad yourself!" She clapped him roughly on the back. "I'll make a man of you yet!" A thought rushed through her brain before she could stop it, leaving her a whole new shade of pink. 'Can't you make a woman of me?'

"Those murders…" Labrys shivered, shaking her head. "Must've been scary."

Chie leant her head back on the wall. "It affected everybody in town, even in tiny ways, it was there, the idea you could be next." She scratched at her knee and exhaled. "I think they made everything with Yu more intense, which only made things worse afterwards..."

Her friend pulled a face. "I'll be honest, that all sounded like everything out of a movie. 'Cept for your best friend. Did you patch things up in the end?"

The brunette got to her feet, sighing. "Oh we did then. It was a real non-issue looking back on it."

"Oh. What's the matter?" Labrys asked, feeling her friend already growing more distant. "Did she steal him from you or somethin'?" She guessed, regretting her callous tone as the words left her mouth.

Chie's stare told Labrys the answer was both that simple but somehow much more complicated. "Look, I'll tell you more later, alright? It's a lot to go through in one go."

Her tired smile was obviously forced, but the maid was glad she was opening up, and at least trying to be chipper about it. "Alright. You got more of the grounds to scout, right? I'll leave you to it." Chie waved in farewell, but before the older girl could move away, she found herself wrapped in a tight embrace. "I'm glad you're talking," She whispered, "It's nice to hear thoughts that aren't mine…"

She pulled away, and the martial artist watched her as she trudged back to the mansion, to whatever duties were calling her. Knowing she had her own to perform, she turned on her heels, and carried on through her route, crisscrossing the garden. She was walking slightly easier than before, the burden on her shoulders, her anguish of the last few years, somehow being lightened

At the dead of night, in the mansion's Laboratory, Fuuka and Mitsuru had already carried out the more covert side of their operation. Labrys lay on the table, a wire stuck in her neck. Her visor, reminiscent of the medieval knights of Europe, was visible on her forehead, the Kirijo's groups concealment device being turned off for convenience sake. Fuuka was sure seeing her friend in her true form during her mechanical check-ups only made it harder for her to keep up her own part in the deception, but it was unavoidable. You have to be able to see a model before it could be painted.

Scouring the girl's memory banks was an entirely different breach of her moral code however. She had convinced herself, with prodding from Mitsuru, that the girl's situation was preferable in blissful ignorance, but this used that ignorance for their personal gain. Of course, Fuuka reminded herself, it's not really our 'personal' gain…

Mitsuru believed in doing whatever was possible in finding ways to combat the ever-present threat shadows posed to the general public, in some ways only possible for her. Fuuka believed the same, however, she sometimes pined for her early days in S.E.E.S, where the enemy was obvious, and there was no thoughts required into personal ethics.

Mitsuru's voice brought Fuuka back to work. "What is this about a string of murders in Inaba?"

The technician was disappointed she couldn't keep listening; she was becoming rather engrossed in Chie's love story. When she remembered she was looking at a private conversation rather than a film, she started talking, rather contemplating how perverse that was. "I've already looked into it, seeing as the subject's one unifying trait was their hometown, and, frankly, um, the killings were its only unusual news in the last few decades."

Her boss mulled this over for some drawn out seconds, ears still pricked to the recording. "And?"

"It's unusual. Only three deaths…" She cringed at her use of only. Is that who I am now, she thought sadly, attributing the loss of three lives as a trivial event? "In any case," she continued, "One was the work of a copycat, but the other two were unique. No marks left on the bodies, or any trace of a killer that could be found by forensic analysis, and they were left hanging at TV antennas that would be by all accounts difficult to reach, especially when carrying such," she gulped, "A load."

"Interesting…" Mitsuru mused, scratching her chin. "Was a culprit found?"

"Yes, one of the detectives working on the case, who admitted to everything months after the killings. Apparently an earlier suspect was almost prosecuted, before the real killer confessed. There was also some hysteria surrounding an influx of fog around the town immediately prior to the culprit's capture…"

"Was there any information on his testimony?" The older woman asked. "His method?"

The blue-haired girl shook her head slowly. "Not in public databases…"

"Then go deeper. Get me a copy of the culprit's confession. Such strange events in a town that's generated at least two persona-users can't be coincidental." She got to her feet, and stared into the ceiling. "Hmm… How long ago were these murders?"

"They occurred over a period of two and three years ago."

Mitsuru smiled softly. "Our security guards would have been in high school, around the age we were when we had our own incidents to deal with." She roughly brushed some stray hair out of her eyes. "Perhaps it is always the young that are chosen for such power…" Failing to stifle a yawn, and blushing at Fuuka's giggle when she did so, she straightened herself. "I must retire for the evening. You can finish up here, Fuuka-san."

"Goodnight." When her boss left, she let out a sigh. There were some other technical tasks on Labrys that had to be completed before she could turn in. Disconnecting the wires that they used to see in her memories, performing some routine checks, and of course, ensuring the behaviour she had designed so she would essentially 'sleepwalk' back to her own room with minimal fuss was guaranteed to work. Labrys was certainly a lot of work to keep operational. She didn't give much thought to how it meant she neglected herself…