Sherlock's body had a faint pink glow around it. It fluctuated wildly like an aurora. The pink detective's eyes were shining brightly. She placed her magnifying glass in front of her right eye, and pointed her finger at Kokoro's nose. "I've never done an unmasking before... I hope this works. Psychokinesis!"
The pink energy, focused through the magnifying glass, shot towards Kokoro's face. The soft, pliable gold began to wrench apart. Kokoro let out a scream as the electric sparks reappeared. Sherlock pulled the mask apart and outward at the same time, fighting against the magical, nearly magnetic, force trying to keep it in place. Her body became sweaty, and her heart beats louder. The gold started to bend at the edges, revealing Kokoro's frightened eyes.
"Henriette, help me out!" Sherlock said.
Henriette wrapped her arms around Sherlock's body. Her magnificent breasts pressed against Sherlock's back. The weight of her warmth and her strength radiated through Sherlock's body. Her pink aura transformed into a pillar of energy shooting through the Earth's atmosphere. "I'm always supporting you," Henriette whispered softly. "You're my most important person in the world... Sheryl."
Sherlock smiled widely. Hearing the student council president call her "Sheryl" made her feel like her power had doubled, maybe even tripled. Cracks appeared in the fragile mask. The tiny glowing orb of light, the form of a Toy in the wild, radiated from the gaps. Sherlock took a deep breath, and let out a deep, long scream. "I'm going to save you, Kokoro-chan!"
Kokoro gripped the sides of her mask. She tore the mask in two, and threw the pieces on the ground. The Toy embedded within flew into the sky. Mori Arty grabbed the light ball and stuffed it in her pocket.
The chief of police pounded her feet against the asphalt. With every passing step, her body became shorter and less developed. Her clothes, several sizes too big for her natural shape, hung loosely around her shoulders. Kokoro flicked Sherlock on the head. "Don't call me Kokoro-chan!" she retorted. Then she looked down at herself.
"What's going to happen to me now?" Kokoro said. "Kokorohama is eternal! I'm not going to back to being just a genius beautiful teenage leader of a highly specialized police squad. I want more than that!"
"You can go to Holmes Academy," said Sherlock, patting her on the head. "We can be classmates."
"The hell I'd do that!" said Kokoro.
For everyone but Arsene, Sherlock and Mori Arty, the world froze. Genius 4 faded out of existence, and the bright colors of the nighttime cityscape were washed out into a single, sickening shade of bluish-purple. Mori greeted her two captives from a higher point of the vortex. "Good job, Arsene. You survived my little game. I'm sure you understand what you put Sherlock and her friends through now."
"Mori, I don't know what you're talking about," Sherlock said.
"Don't engage her any further. She's dangerous," said Henriette.
Mori Arty laughed politely. "No more dangerous than you. I just enjoy higher stakes for my games. You're forgetting, Arsene, that you don't have control over this world. Your powers may have made it, but I'm the one calling the shots. So I'm going to finish things off with a bang! Have fun."
Her body became one with the shadows, until all that remained was her head antennae, bobbing back and forth. The city of Yokohama began to crumble. The land began to rumble at the edges of the city, and pieces of street and building fell into the cracks of the infinite abyss below. The Akechi Police Academy was swallowed up by a whirlpool of lard. The buildings smashed into each other. Their components became pieces of the swirling storm of the abyss.
"What are we going to do?" asked Sherlock.
"If I can use my Toys..." Henriette said. Her eyes flashed. "Illusion!"
Sherlock gasped. "You're Arsene?"
Henriette blinked. She wasn't sure if she should laugh or slap her hand against her face in frustration. "Now's not the time for explaining things. Sheryl, I need you to lend me your power. Skinship is important for a detective's growth."
"Okay!" Sherlock said. She wrapped her hands around Henriette's waist. Her body felt warmer. The wind kicked up around Henriette's feet, and lightning struck the ground around her. Sherlock moved her hands further up her partner's body. She cupped Henriette's breasts, gently massaging her nipples through the cloth. Sherlock pinched down on the hard points. Henriette blushed and let out a small moan. The barrier instantly faded.
"Sheryl... save it for later," Henriette said. "If you want to give me your power... be direct about it." Henriette leaned down. She planted her lips on Sherlock's, and the two crossed tongues in a wet and passionate kiss.
A glowing avatar of the two girls, in pink and black, shot to the upper point of the vortex. They moved like homing missiles, streaking through the sky with a roaring noise. They punched through the cracks. The blue sky outside became visible. The sickly blue of the false dimension was stripped away, and the two were left floating in a world of pure white.
A cube of talking pork fat, its six faces waving through random patterns in red and fleshy tones, materialized between them. It drifted closer to Henriette, and spoke in a deep, booming voice. "The God of Lard does not wish for these sorts of things to happen. Lard should be added to mankind's body through eating, not through force. The fat in your breasts is natural, but is it truly the size you want?"
"I was fine with my original size," Henriette said, blushing furiously in Sherlock's direction.
"So it is said, so it shall be. This lard should be used for a more noble purpose," said the strange deity. The cube rotated. Henriette's uniform was ripped open. A stream of lard poured out of the pores in her breasts. Sherlock watched them bounce as they shrunk back to their regular largeness. "Return to your world, and live in the Lardmas season."
Sherlock rested her head in Henriette's chest. They waved goodbye to the God of Lard, and the world around them faded away. Each one of them felt the other vanish from their arms.
Sherlock regained her trajectory, and landed on the dock of the Nippon Maru.
Henriette fell to the ground, tired and confused. She looked at the clock. Less than half an hour had passed. There was a gap in her memory; it refused to accept what had happened She remembered the sensations. Her Arsene outfit was ripped, exposing her chest. That was the only clue. The Yokohama around her was unchanged, with signs advertising the detective pavillion opening soon.
"I've had enough being Arsene for one day," she thought. Henriette covered her body with her cape. She was back in her school uniform. Her stomach rumbled. She had smelled nothing but lard for the longest time, and was hungry for something. She put in a message for the Three Cards. Ishinagare's cooking was sounding really good right about now.
Nero, Hercule and Cordelia boarded the Nippon Maru. Sherlock was being questioned by the staff how she got on board without paying. Hercule grabbed Sherlock by the arm and ran off the ship.
Milky Holmes sat on the pole of the slingshot clock, eating the cheapest bread they could afford. Sherlock had brought leftovers from her job at the ramen shop. They ate it joyously, using the lardflakes as flavoring. It was better than what they usually ate.
"Where were you?" asked Nero. "We were getting worried about."
"I got something to eat, and then I got into a fight with Genius 4, and then Henriette and I were trapped in the space between worlds, where time is meaningless," said Sherlock. "I never got a chance to show Kokoro-chan my Baritsu."
"It's a miracle~ that you made it out alive~!" sang Cordelia. "I'm glad you're safe. Henriette can't be far from here. We'll find her as soon as we're done eating."
"It's suspicious that something like that would show up. Everyone keeps talking about how useless we are, but we're always being targeted. I'm glad we have the police and Henriette looking after us," said Hercule.
"Mori too!" Sherlock cheered.
"What happened to Mori anyway? She vanished just before Greasy started rampaging," said Nero.
Mori Arty watched over Yokohama from a car at the top of the Ferris wheel. It was a magnificent city. Now that she had her Toys back, it would be easier to lay waste to it and claim it as her own. Now was not the time.
"Let them celebrate. It's all another step in my plan. With their main campus taken out, they've been scattered across the continent. Across the world. The only ones left. Milky Holmes are no threat to me. That Sherlock girl, I should keep my eye on her. She may be able to turn Mystere's heart, and that could be a problem," Mori Arty mused.
Henriette had forgotten why she was infatuated with Milky Holmes. Dorothée wasn't coming back. Sherlock wasn't a good detective, nor a good lover. She wouldn't be aware of Henriette's feelings until she earned her approval. That day might not come for years. Their honesty and smiling faces, in spite of all the failure that came their way, made them resilient. Henriette didn't have their fortitude.
She departed for the detective pavilion. Henriette glanced behind her, looking for any traces of the vortex in the sky. It was a bright, sunny day. The lard had ceased falling from the sky. The world was at peace.
Large crowds gathered at the detective pavillion. Among the faces, old and new, were two who had not been seen in Yokohama until today. The first was a girl with long, blue hair and golden yellow eyes. She was dressed in a white uniform from a different city. A girl one or two years older, with short, messy silver hair, placed her hand on her shoulder. She wore the uniform of the now exploded Holmes Academy. She also had a sizable chest.
"Look on that stage, Ellery," said the girl who looked a lot like Henriette, "The idiots my little sister's been fighting with will be entering this contest. I want you to study everything about them. That's the sort of thing a junior officer does."
"Aren't we training to be detectives, Josephine?" asked Ellery Himeyuri.
"Detectives, police, both investigate things. Genius 4 is hardly worth our time. What I want you to focus on is how to counter their Toys," said Josephine.
"Why would I want to counter them? I thought I was supposed to make friends," said Ellery. Josephine led her into the front seat of the auditorium, where the mascot girl contest was about to begin.
"Keep your friends close," said Josephine, sliding a patch over her right eye, "and your enemies closer. Cagliostro isn't going to make the same mistakes as Lupin. My sister may have gone soft, but she wouldn't concern herself with foolishness like this."
A busty girl in a golden mask walked across the stage. Sherlock Shellinford was mystified by her warm face and warm chest. The final competition of the night was a dance. Josephine, who had been occupying herself with strategizing, leaving the actual observation to Ellery, caught a glimpse of the woman called Germaine.
"Henriette, you traitor!" whispered Josephine.
"You've never danced with me like that," Ellery said quietly.
Germaine and Sherlock's dance awed the crowd. The night came to a calamitous close when a loose bag of wash basins fell onto the heads of Milky Holmes. Henriette's warmth became tepid. She, too, was used to dealing with failure.
Josephine would postpone her Yokohama heists. She put in a call to her own underlings. Her sister's were clearly unreliable. "Dorothée, we may have to rethink our plans. It's time for the new Phantom Thief Empire to teach this city how valuable it really is. Au revior."