Book 3: The Case of the Bloody Beautician
In Which There Are Usual Suspects
I flexed my fingers, gratified to find them at last feeling as if they'd never been severed by the teeth of a berserk fortune-teller. For all the power of magic and technology, I've never yet heard of a healer who can regrow that much tissue without leaving behind odd sensations for weeks. Anya's recovery was taking a mite longer, but she was safe in the care of the finest healers Negi's not inconsiderable influence could provide. Aegis Kai Doru, her brief employer, had been demonstrated to exist more on paper than in fact through some arcane process I don't pretend to understand or care about, although all the big fish had scarpered and were being hunted down by those with a rather wider focus than my little hometown-hung shingle. All in all, my life had settled back into its comfortable routine, which tonight meant I had an assault victim to take a gander at.
The degree to which I was accustomed to being handed cases of students on the down end of a beatdown says quite a bit about Mahora, if not necessarily the bit an outsider would hear. For your meek and mild member of the common herd, I dare say our school's safer than most. Fights take place between the strong, because attacking the weak just gets you a fight with their stronger clubmate anyway, so you might as well go straight for the badass and fight at a time and place of your choosing. Still, the Powers What Are do not officially condone violence as a problem-solving method among the students, and when nobody else feels like doing the legwork they tap me to mark the targets for the hammer of justice. It's rarely particularly interesting or challenging work, but in my line of business that tends to be a plus.
I was trying to explain all this to Torako, who still seemed to consider Mahora essentially an upscale warzone, when we reached the nurse's office, where our vic would be stored until whoever was currently on duty decided they'd been fussed over enough. In the general course of things that would be the nurse, but the woman was only human and at this time of night she'd be off having some sort of non-career-related life while her station was manned by some particularly dedicated Health Club member.
Right now the member in question was Kamiya Kirino, dressed in a camouflage-patterned nurse's uniform. Her dark green hair was military short and her eyes burned like a junkie's cigarette. "Detective Ayase!" she barked, coming to an attention marred only by the fact that she seemed to be vibrating, "Regret to inform you that patient remains unconscious from injuries and unable to provide information!"
I'm convinced. This is a safe place and the students are in good hands, Torako, dry as a salt lick, sent over our pactio connection. My intention in making her my ministra had been more to preserve her rather fragile physical shell than to enhance her ability to editorialize, but our jobs together had been quiet so far. Not too quiet, as every phantom sensation in my regrown fingers had reminded me. Just quiet enough.
I ignored my partner's sarcasm. I am, after all, a professional. I nodded acknowledgement of Kamiya's report and stepped over to take a gander at the current convalescent, sipping from a can of durian juice as I did so. From the bits I could see, Jane Doe looked to be formed mainly of bruise. Probably a noncombatant, to have been taken down that hard without a foe laid out beside her. The perp better pray I got to them before the vic's club champion. I'd just deliver them to the faculty, who had lines they weren't allowed to cross. Fortunately, I had a way to get some answers from our injured friend. Ethically, even. Among the potions I'd brought was a mixture of a little bit of wake-up juice and a whole lot of painkillers, brewed for just such an occasion. I carefully opened up Sleeping Beauty's mouth and dribbled in a little bit. She stirred, his puffy eyes fluttering open.
"Don't worry," I said. "You'll just need to be up a moment. Do you remember who left you beat up like this?"
"No idea," she murmured drowsily, because of course it couldn't be easy. "Felt something hit the back of my head, then woke up here." Since I could see from here she'd been hit worse from the front than falling over would do...had the perp kept whaling on her post-unconsciousness?
"All right then. Can you tell me your name? And your club?"
"Koyama Mari." She yawned hugely, and gave me just two more words before Morpheus claimed her once more: "Beautification Club."
My mouthful of durian juice suddenly took a detour down my breathing parts. Kamiya spluttered in disbelief as Torako clapped me on the back. "What," the only non-Mahora girl asked in bemusement, "do they have nameless Things anathema to reality picking up litter for them?"
Kamiya answered, since I was preoccupied trying to remember that air went to lungs and juice went to stomach. "No, that's more Astronomy Club. Uh, sir. Beautification Club doesn't have anything. They just don't fight. This is...this..." Words failed her, and she was reduced to explaining through vague and expansive hand gestures.
"Attacking a member of the Beautification Club is like boxing a soup kitchen volunteer with brittle bones and their hands tied behind their back. And fouling." One of the fringe benefits of detective work is that it makes you good at pulling out similes at short notice. "They're protected not by their own strength but by the fact that anyone who messes with them will be regularly getting their ass kicked on general principle until they graduate. This is, quite simply, unprecedented." I gave Kamiya my best penetrating gaze. "I'm going to have to ask you to keep this completely under wraps until I know what's going on. Someone starts asking you questions and you can't think of a good lie, you don't know anything. Understand?"
Kamiya made a salute that could have taken my eye out if I'd been closer. "You have my word. Whatever it takes to bring this fiend to justice."
I returned the salute. Kamiya might be a touch odd in the brainpan, but she was good people. That put her a solid step above some of the people I was going to have to palaver with to get this done.
Since my employers didn't appreciate me pulling random students out of class to be suspicious at, I whiled away the hours until school let out drawing up a list of the least unlikely people I could think of to have attacked a Beautification Club member. I made sure I would have plenty of time to think by attacking the astrophysics book that would be my eventual gateway to work in space. It had long been my observation that attempting to study produced a time dilation effect that could make minutes take hours, the effect being reversed if there was a test the next day. Those principles had to be the key to Chao's time travel technology, I was certain of it.
When class let out later that day, after a span of roughly two weeks, Ito Chidori was my first target. The Cheerleading Club president was a compact thing with big blue eyes, pink pigtails, and a fuse small enough to be subject to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle where her chosen sport was concerned. She'd first come to my attention after Barahime of the Boxing Club and Hanagata of the Hockey Club had clumsily ran into her tiny fists a remarkable number of times after being less than respectful of the noble and strenuous art of cheer in her presence. The thing was, she'd never done as much damage to those who invoked her ire as Koyama had evinced, even when they actually had the chops to resist. Sure enough, she showed no recognition of a pre-beating picture of the vic I'd acquired. Ito didn't have that kind of emotional control. Dead end.
Osawa Tsutomo came next. Like many luminaries of Mahora's tech clubs, the underfed, hollow-eyed bioengineer was known to have the occasional lapse where it came to keeping his creations in the lab and under control. Unlike the others, he was prone to incorrectly assume he could handle it himself until matters had moved well past the crisis point. I don't understand why anyone would try the "I am your creator, you were created to serve me, obey my commands, and crush my enemies" speech twice, given how well it generally works the first time, but Osawa never seemed to learn. On the other hand, the lack of any devastation other than that to Koyama was most uncharacteristic of his escapees. Plus, as I swiftly determined, he'd been preoccupied for weeks with something called "floss crabs" that were too small and delicate to do the damage I'd seen on Koyama. Another deceased conclusion.
Lucky number three was the Drama Club's Katsura triplets, Rei, Rie, and Rio. Evidently, they were born to parents with a very limited concept of what constituted a proper name.
So how exactly do these three act their enemies into the hospital? queried my faithful if bemused companion on the way to where I'd been assured the trio could be found.
Mainly by going "hey Chiwa" and letting her take care of it, I replied. And before you ask, it wasn't her. She's a doppelganger, so she's very strict about making sure someone in authority knows exactly where she is at all times. That way she doesn't have to worry about getting blamed for disguising herself as whoever's most recently transgressed.
What about when she gets in fights, does she just go and tell a teacher she beat someone up?
You have no idea how much the faculty loves her for that. In any case, they aren't much inclined to violence. "We are here," I called out now that I was in ear- and eyeshot of my quarry, "because there is a secret here, and the time has come for it to be secret no more!"
Rie opened her mouth to no doubt assure me that all three were so open and transparent they regularly had birds run into them, but I forestalled her by holding up a finger. "See, I took the trouble to get good looks at these three until I could tell them apart from one another. No twin impersonation shenanigans will succeed on my watch. While so engaged, I noticed some reactions curiously similar to those of people who are hiding something from those whose job it is to uncover the hidden. Some get nervous and jumpy, like Rio to your left. Others, like Rei over there, get more calm and confident than any innocent, because they're certain they've covered their tracks."
"This is ridiculous!" cried Rie with precisely the mix of fear of authority and indignity at its ill-use the unjustly accused would have. "Being jumpy is suspicious, being calm is suspicious, that's just how my sisters are!"
I nodded in response, then let out the loudest chicken noise I could, making Rio, Rei, and Torako all jump slightly and look confusedly at this madwoman in their midst. Rie joined in the staring after a brief moment, which was plenty long enough for me. "And some," I said, "are very good at acting like an innocent would, but get so focused on keeping the mask up that they can't react naturally to surprises." I bared my teeth in smile-like fashion.
"Did you never have secrets at our age?" Give the girl credit, she didn't fold easily.
"Maybe one or two. But this is a dark hour, when secrets become suspect."
"Does she hear herself talk?" Rie asked Torako.
"I think it's supposed to be intimidating," she replied.
"The point stands," I said, trying to get things back on track. One of the people present was well aware I'd helped save her world. You'd expect that to produce a modicum of respect, if you were quite naïve.
"What's this big crisis, then?" asked Rie, folding her arms and raising an unintimidated eyebrow.
"There's been an attack," I said, trying to watch all three faces at once. "On a Beautification Club member." Three identical expressions of shock and horror greeted me, like someone who'd found a corpse in a hall of mirrors. "And with the suspicious behav-"
"I'm a guy," said Rei.
"-vviioorrr...Wait what."
"I'm a guy," Rei repeated, missing the actual point of my question-like statement. "That's the secret. We are not three identical triplet sisters, we are two identical twin sisters and a fraternal twin brother and yes I know the odds against are simply astronomical but, hey, so are the odds against winning the lottery and someone always does." I'd gotten back enough presence of mind by the end of this to note that the general air among her, rather his, sisters had been "Damn, Rei's admitting it," than "What on earth is Rei talking about I mean oh yes that is absolutely true" throughout. Which was nice, because the only methodology presenting itself to me to determine the veracity of Rei's claim was not one I was particularly sanguine about performing on a student, especially with Torako present and observing.
"You realize I'm going to have to check that," said Torako.
Rei's face assumed the cast of one promising to hold the line as long as possible, Rio's that of one attempting to percolate through the ground by sheer force of desire to be elsewhere. Rie smiled with a knife-edge that made me wonder if Chizuru gave lessons. "It's a great pity that statements such as 'over my dead body' are considered overused these days."
"Wha- gah! No!" Torako explained. "N-not that! Not that at all!" she clarified. She took a deep breath and let some of the blood flow out of her face. "Look. You're aware that there are people with abilities beyond normal humanity, right? Given how terrible this school seems to be at keeping it under wraps."
"The only people who don't know about magic by this point are some of the techies, who think it's all science in disguise, and Misato, who might just be messing with everybody," said Rie.
"Right then." Torako let her cat ears appear. "I myself have keen senses. So keen, in fact, that if I get impolitely close I can smell whether someone is male or female." If her nose was that sensitive in her less furry form, I thought I might need to be a bit more scrupulous about keeping things cleaned up.
"If it'll get this conversation over with," Rei spoke for us all. Torako gave him a quick but thorough sniffing and pronounced his scent suitably male.
"Which raises the question," she continued, "Of why, in the name of everything, does there have to be this whole conspiracy?"
"He's family!" snapped Rie. "We're not going to be separated just because our middle school won't take boys!
"There's a boy's school on this very island! I have seen boy students your age! I have seen boys and girls in the same club! Is there something in the drinking fountains here? Why is everyone on this island out of their damn minds?" Torako looked like she was about to cry from sheer frustration.
"Now maybe family doesn't mean anyt-" At this point Rie was distracted from her angry retort by the business end of my staff suddenly poking her in the nose.
"I think you wanted to stop talking about half a sentence back," I said, very calmly. It was gratifying how seriously she was taking the moon-topped stick leveled at her. We really had come a long way from the CG Excuse. "So let's all agree that that's what you did. Right, Torako? Torako?"
My partner slowly returned her knives to their sheathes and unclenched her fingers. "Yeah. Sure. We're done here." She strode off without waiting for me to follow.
While my education has been thorough, and was eventually attended to with diligence, comforting ones girlfriend after she has had an unpleasant reminder of childhood trauma is a subject entirely absent from the standard curricula of either Mahora or Ariadne. Perhaps it was in an elective I missed. Still, one picks up a trick or two over the years.
"That was certainly an exciting waste of time, but now I find myself in need of nourishment," I said. "Would you care to head over to the Chao Bao Zi with me?"
She nodded, to my relief. While not quite what is was when Satsuki helmed it, the eatery's wares could still serve as an all-purpose balm to troubled souls. Torako remained silent until our meal arrived, and only picked at it when it did. I tried for a safe conversation topic. "I had no idea your olfactory abilities were so strong in your current body. I'll have to make some adjustments to our living quarters."
"What? Oh, that. I just made that up to see if they thought they had anything to fear from it. I didn't use to be sneaky like that, you know. You're a bad influence on me."
"Next thing you know I'll corrupt you into committing acts of terrorism."
"I thought I saw your schoolgirl face on those wanted posters." The familiar snipes had evidently done their job relaxing her. At least, she was now smiling and actually seeming to enjoy her repast.
As was generally the case with Satsuki's recipes, by the conclusion of our meal the world had become a brighter, more welcoming place than when we'd sat down. Which brightness dimmed a bit when a shadow fell upon be, cast by none other than Kitsu Megumi, the current manager. Oh dear. The day had left me in no mood for this.
Kitsu was dressed, as ever, in an artfully rumpled suit accented by a pair of sunglasses and the edge of a dragon tattoo peeking out at her collar. I knew the tattoo was temporary, and reapplied every morning. All who were aware of the tattoo were fully cognizant of its transient nature, but few dared speak of it. The unspoken consensus was that pressing Kitsu too hard on her pretenses would lead to her severing a finger digit or two in an attempt to bolster the illusion.
"Ah, Ms. Ayase. Always a pleasure to have your distinguished patronage." Kitsu was smiling. She always smiled around me. It was roughly as convincing as an indifferently carved pumpkin.
"Thank you, Ms. Kitsu. I can't imagine why the manager herself might need to come over and mention it over a little thing like a meal I'm going to be paying full price for because I know you're not stupid enough to try bribing me again." I wasn't smiling. Not that I'm particularly prone to such expressions in general.
Just take the bribes and do what you were going to do anyway, sent Torako, who I very firmly ignored.
Kitsu's mannequin smile remained in place. "Perish the thought. I just wanted you to know that my resources are at your disposal, should you require them."
Eh, why not. It wasn't like I had any other leads. I pulled out the picture of Koyama to see if I got a bite.
"Ah yes. Koyama Mari. The member of the Beautification Club so recently attacked."
Wait what.
"That was the matter I was offering my humble assistance with. Since you don't take the trouble to keep up with the news, let me just casually discard this issue that I'm finished with in a manner nobody would take for bribery."
I snatched up the broadsheet before it hit the table. There on the front page of The Mahora News was Koyama's injured face, so clear I wanted to wipe the fresh blood off her. Kamiya would've committed seppeku with a lemon-juice-soaked spoon before letting paparazzi at a patient, so they must have gotten the picture through some new form of guile. "This is why I don't subscribe to the newspaper. When it isn't limited to articles not worth the money, it's doing things I have no intention of financially rewarding."
"Wait a second," interjected Torako. "The school newspaper costs money? I thought clubs for that just gave it out for...free..." She trailed off in the face of Kitsu and me staring blankly at her, for once united in our utter bafflement.
"How...how else are they supposed to make any money?" asked Kitsu, after a moment.
I coughed lightly. "She's had, ah, a rather nonstandard scholastic experience. It seems to have produced some rather odd ideas in her about how normal schools function." I ignored the sputtering from Torako about what was and was not standard or normal, and occasionally about suppositories.
"Anyway," said Kitsu, adopting a sorrowful expression that I swear she was deliberately making as insincere as possible, "I'm deeply wounded that you might think I was involved in this atrocity. I'm a businesswoman, not a butcher. My only concern is the tidy profit my perfectly legitimate establishment turns under the status quo. I shouldn't have to explain this, but when order is threatened, you should look to the malcontents and the unfortunate, with the least to lose and most to gain, not," and she regally placed a hand on her chest, "the most successful people around."
I nodded pensively. "Your only concern is profit, eh? Maybe you should trouble yourself more about, say, your English grades. I happened to see them the last time the scores were posted, and that shockingly low number next to your name just jumped out at me. Oh, how the youth of today has fallen." Her score hadn't, strictly speaking, been as horrendous as I implied, but I certainly wasn't about to let some henna-bedecked pretender think she'd gotten the best of me. Especially given her valid points. Thus, I dropped the money for the meal and the newspaper on the table and swanned off quickly, before she could recover enough to retort.
"So, inspiration hit?" Torako asked once we'd left earshot of the Chao Bao Zi. "You've gone from frustrated to determined for the first time today."
"I didn't realize I was so transparent."
"Fate. I worked under Fate. I know a thing or two about reading expressionless faces."
A fair point. "Hopefully she's right, and it's merely some student who feels like an outsider lashing out."
"And not so hopefully?"
"It's...someone more outside than that. A force external to the island, willing to inflict such damage on a middle schooler? I fear for the devastation they could bring."