Be sure to read the author's note at the bottom. Enjoy!
Chapter 21~ Trial #6: Red Herring
The atmosphere was heavy and despairing. All the guests (the living ones, anyways) were sitting in the dining room. Kairi paced the floor, brain working like crazy. I could almost see the gears turning in his mind, trying vainly to put everything in place.
Nadeshiko tapped me quietly on the shoulder and I jumped slightly before turning to her. "What?" I whispered.
"I've just received a call from Fuko." She answered quietly. I blinked.
"I thought all communications were cut." She shook her head.
"Keep in mind, this is a trial. Fuko has to be able to talk to us if she needs something. She told us to check Kairi's room." She said, nudging her head in Kairi's direction. "Something tells me his brain is going to be a key factor in this trial."
I nodded. "Right. Let's go, then. Who should we take? We can't leave the four of them here alone."
She considered. "I'll go, and you should too. Take Kairi, obviously. And Ikuto, in case something requires an adult."
"Okay." We crossed over to where Kairi was restlessly walking back and forth, and informed him what Fuko had told us. Then we got Ikuto and told him the same thing.
I slid over to Amu. "Fuko wants us to do something. Tell the others to keep an eye on the four of them." She nodded, and crossed over to Kukai, Utau, Yaya, Tadase, and Nagi, who all eyed us with curious glances.
The four of us left the room and rode up the elevator to Kairi's room. None of us spoke. Kairi inserted the key into the lock and I felt myself tensing as he opened the door, the memory of the dead businessman flashing through my head.
But all the room revealed was two beds, one for Kairi and the other for Tadase. There was a box on Kairi's bed. We crossed over to it, and grabbed the first thing on top.
It was a tablet, and there was only one button. We pressed it, and the screen flickered to life. Fuko's face, a friendly expression that held hints of seriousness on it, filled the screen. She started talking.
"Hi, guys. I'm going to assume that the right people are seeing this, or else, you're screwed. Hey, Guardians! Is Rima there? If she is, tell her to press her index finger on the screen."
I pushed my finger down on the screen, and Fuko froze momentarily. Then she resumed moving. "Excellent! Now that we know that we have the right people, I'll proceed to give you directions and explanations."
"A man has just died, and you have all passed the fifth trial, which was to see how calm you could remain in the most dire of situations, and if you could use your brains and take charge at times like these. Now, for the sixth trial, you are to use your intellect and deduction skills to find the murderer."
"In this box, there are several practical tools to help you. Have Ikuto and Utau take the police badges. The ID already states their names and has their pictures, verifying them as police. There are also gloves, a camera with both black and white and color film, as well as fingerprint scanning devices, handcuffs, tranquilizer guns, and a body bag. If the need arises, you'll find more things that you probably don't have uses for in the bottom compartment of the box."
"Find the murderer before day comes, which is when the storm will be over and the murderer will be free to escape if he or she can do so. If you don't catch him or her before the storm ends, then you will have failed your trial. It is about eleven at night, and the deadline, while not extremely accurate, will be around eight in the morning. So you have nine hours. Make the most of it, and good luck."
The screen was washed over with static, and Fuko's voice floated out mechanically. "If you wish to replay this message, press the button once. If you wish to turn the device off, press the button twice. To turn it on again, press the button again."
Kairi pressed the button twice and tossed the tablet onto his bed, looking into the box. Fuko had stocked it with most of the necessary things, and Kairi tossed us each a pair of gloves, which we snapped on.
Ikuto picked up the two police badges while Nadeshiko picked up the whole box. "Right, then. We should tell the others and get this interrogation going. Rima, can you get the door?" Nadeshiko asked. I complied, pulling the door open and helping them into the elevator. We arrived back down at the dining room, and as Nadeshiko set the box down and Ikuto crossed over to Utau, Kairi and I commanded everyone's attention.
"Guys, listen up!" I shouted, or as close as a shout could be for me. "We have news."
"As I have previously stated, one of the four of you is the murderer of this man. We will now conduct investigations and hopefully, find out which one of you is the one. Would anyone like to volunteer information?"
The laptop man pointed at the secretary. "It's him! It has to be! He was the only one that even knew the victim, and the rest of us have no motive!"
The secretary stood up with a retort, but Kairi cut him off. "That's for us to decide. All of you sit at this table."
He tapped a table with four seats, and the four of them looked reluctantly at each other, probably terrified at the prospect of sitting in close proximity with a murderer. But they moved eventually, unable to ignore Kairi's piercing eyes.
"Why do you guys get to boss us around, anyways?" The haughty woman asked, her voice trembling and pupils dilated in fear.
Ikuto sauntered over with Utau and both flashed their fake badges. "We're undercover police. We have authority."
Yuki gave a humorless laugh. "How unlucky for the murderer."
"Which may very well be you!" the secretary growled. Yuki turned on him, eyes flashing.
"I would never kill anybody! Besides, I don't even know the person who died. Unlike you!"
The secretary stood up and so did Yuki, both of them looking like they were ready to tear each other to bits.
"Stop!" Amu cried. "Let's work through this in an orderly fashion."
Eyeing each other, both of them sat down slowly before looking away with troubled faces.
"First things first. Room keys." Yaya held out her hand to collect. Hm. I had never even thought of collecting them. The woman glared.
"You're going to go through our things? That's invasion of privacy!" She shrieked. Utau stepped up and held up her badge.
"We have authority. Hand then over." Reluctantly, the woman drew out her keys. The laptop man shakily placed his on the table. Yuki tossed hers to us. The secretary placed them into Utau's hand.
I looked over to see Kairi discussing something with Yaya. I walked over to them. "What are you talking about?" I asked. Kairi responded with a gesture and an explanation.
"We're talking about how to interrogate them. Separately, or together?"
"Together." I answered immediately, surprising myself. Then I figured out why. "Because I don't want any of us to get hurt. Separately, the murderer might charge us and I don't want that to happen." My voice was shaking and tears were forming. That's when I realized myself exactly how scared I was. Kairi patted my shoulder. Yaya gave me a hug.
"Together it is, then."
Ikuto was selected to lead. Since he had been interrogated many times before by Easter, he knew what kinds of questions to ask. He stood up on a table, adding to his already formidable height.
"First. We have determined the time of death to be between when we discovered her about an hour and half ago, and around eight at night, when the victim retired to his room. It is currently eleven at night, which means that there was a two hour timespan in which a murderer could have infiltrated his room and killed the victim. What are your alibis?"
"I didn't understand any of that." I murmured under my breath. Nagihiko leaned over to me.
"Basically, he died between eight and ten o'clock. Ikuto is trying to find out who is entirely innocent because they have an alibi between those times." He whispered. I hated to admit it, but his explanation did make sense.
The laptop man stood up. "We were all playing cards in the lounge, save for that woman!" He pointed to the haughty woman, who was in a bathrobe and still had rollers in her hair. If the situation weren't so horrifying, I'd have laughed at how ridiculous she looked.
The secretary glared at the standing man. "We all took bathroom breaks, you know. You went to smoke a cigarette. I went to go check on-"
He stopped. Yaya narrowed her eyes and pushed forward. "You went to go check on the victim, right?"
He cleared his throat. "Yes, I did. It was about eight-thirty. I can ascertain he was still alive then."
"But how do we know he's telling the truth?" Amu muttered. I slapped my forehead.
"This is so frustrating!" I growled. "Doesn't the room have like fucking security cameras?"
Ikuto shook his head. "I already checked."
Kairi seemed to be deep in thought. "Continue, Ikuto."
Ikuto nodded and turned to face the group. "Any of you have any relation, whatsoever, to the victim?"
They all glanced at the secretary, who scowled. "I'm his secretary, but I'm sure you all already know that." He spat bitterly.
Yuki shook her head. "I asked him to sit next to me at dinner, which you all witnessed, but other than that, I have no direct relation to him." She put a certain emphasis on the 'I', like she was trying to hint something.
The laptop man shook his head. "No relation."
"Same." The woman answered.
Ikuto and Kairi glanced at each other. Kairi coughed. "Full names and ages please."
I felt like tearing my hair out. This was going absolutely nowhere. Did Ikuto even know how to interrogate people? Then again, I didn't have better questions to ask.
"Misaki Yuki. Age nineteen."
Kairi held out a pad. "Put your fingers on here, please." She did as she was told, and the thing scanned her fingerprints. Then Kairi moved to the next person, the secretary.
"Yamamoto Natsume. Thirty-five." The secretary said, and then placed his hands on the fingerprint thing.
Next was the haughty woman. "I am Matsumoto Reiko*. Although it's impolite to ask, I'm twenty-four."
Fingerprint. Next.
Or last, rather. The laptop man raised his hand and placed it on the pad. "I'm Nakamura Aoi. Age thirty six."
"We're going to search your rooms. Kukai, Utau, Ikuto, and Nagihiko will stand guard." Kairi said. "The rest, come with me." He turned swiftly and went up a set of stairs. Amu and I exchanged glances, then followed, Yaya not far behind.
Tadase and Nadeshiko came up behind us, while the designated four stood guard. I felt my stomach twist a little, imagining a brutal murderer attacking them. Then I shook my head. There was a reason those four were chosen. They were the oldest and strongest.
"Let's start with Yuki's room. 306." We went up the elevator and arrived on the third floor, and went to Room 306.
Her room was incredibly messy. She didn't seem like the type to be so cluttered, but her room proved otherwise. How long had she been here, anyways? The place was unrecognizable from the normal hotel rooms.
Kairi picked up a tube of oil paints. "Well, we'd better start searching."
"For what?" Yaya asked, picking up several paintbrushes. "Geez, Yuki needs to start taking better care of her tools."
"Why don't we start with that?" Amu suggested, gesturing to the drapes on the wall. "Maybe she's hiding something behind them."
We pulled the drapes (actually, I stood by and watched them do it, since I was too short to reach the stupid things) and revealed paintings. We gasped.
"They're terrible." Yaya muttered. In actuality, she didn't mean that the paintings were bad. In fact, they were amazing. But several of them depicted fires, and the fires were so lifelike that they made it seem like you were burning up.
"This one is beautiful." Amu pointed to a particularly large one of a forest. The leaves were all different colors, some crazier than others, gently drifting down from smooth white bark. There were several colors, but they all worked together in harmony.
"Yuki's amazing." Tadase said in awe.
Kairi sighed. "Let's take them down."
One by one, our team worked together to get the paintings off the wall. I stood on the ground while they passed me paintings as they stood on Yuki's bed.
"Do you like them?" Yuki had suddenly appeared in the doorway, Ikuto behind her. I jumped.
"They're lovely." I answered in my usual monotone. "But it doesn't mean you aren't a killer."
She nodded. "Say what you will. I'm innocent. But what are you looking for, anyways? Gloves? The murder weapon is in the victim. You're not going to find anything."
She was right. After probably an hour of through searching, all we found was a bunch of art materials, her laptop (which we confiscated) and her clothes.
Kairi checked his watch. "About seven hours left. Let's move on. Ikuto, take Yuki back down."
I sighed, bending down and picking up two identical bottles. They had colorless liquids in them, and the only difference was the color of the cap. One was blood red while the other was light sky blue. I set them on the table, and noticed Yuki watching me.
"I'm not going to hurt your art supplies." I stated with an eye roll. "That's some kind of medium for your paints, right?"
She nodded. "Turpentine. Used to thin out oil paints. It creates that effect." She pointed to one of the paintings. "Looks smooth, right?"
I smiled softly. I wished that this had never happened. Yuki would have been a great friend, if only she wasn't a suspect. We hadn't found anything, but it didn't mean that she was innocent.
Ikuto led her away as we moved on to Natsume, the secretary's, room. His was orderly, but there were several papers scattered everywhere. There was a briefcase and two laptops. His clothes were minimal, suggesting that he and the victim had only intended to stay for one night and were passing through. Kairi checked the computer and found that they had a flight leaving from an airport near here tomorrow at noon.
We searched, but there wasn't much to see. No sleeping pills or masks or gloves. Everything was starting to feel futile (even though it already did.)
A tingling suspicion was lingering, but I couldn't pin down whether it was Yuki or Natsume. Something seemed off, though.
We moved and checked the other two people's rooms, but there was nothing. Then suddenly, I realized what I had felt.
"Hey, we forgot to check in one place." I told everyone. "Under the closet."
Yaya blinked. "But the closet touches the carpet. Nothing could be under there without the closet being off balance."
"Not even something as small as a pair of gloves? Put it on something thin and hard, like cardboard, and you could easily slide it under since the carpet is soft. Creates sort of like a pocket, see?"
I ran to one of the closets and demonstrated. Everyone seemed surprised.
"Rima, you're smart!" Amu cried. I was slightly offended, because I was sure she meant it in a wow-you're-not-as-dumb-as-you-look kind of way. You could just tell. Nagi smiled tiredly.
"Okay, let's check." Kairi ordered. "Check under the nightstands, too."
We worked backwards, and found nothing in Aoi (laptop man) or Reiko's (haughty woman) rooms. Then, as I reached under the secretary's closest, I pulled out two pieces of cloth.
Gloves.
"Guys!" I said loudly. "Look!"
Everyone rushed over and gaped, then stood silently.
"Well," Kairi said grimly. "I guess we have a clear suspect."
We went back and checked under Yuki's closet and nightstand, but there was nothing there. I noticed that she had come back into the room with Ikuto, probably, and moved her things around into a suitcase. Only a couple of art supplies were still sitting around.
We walked down and held the gloves up for everyone to see. The secretary's eyes widened.
"I didn't do it, I swear!" He blurted out. Kairi narrowed his eyes.
"We never said we found it in your room."
His eyes widened, then narrowed. "Well, I didn't do it."
Ikuto leaned down towards him as Kairi continued. "Well, all evidence says you did. There's a cake stain on your doorknob, probably from after dinner, when you went inside to get something. Likely, the murder weapon. Then, on the inside of the gloves is the same cake stain. You grabbed the doorknob again, and the cake stain got on the gloves."
"Guess what was on the knife handle?"
The secretary trembled.
"A cake stain."
"Damn, some resilient cake stain." I muttered. Tadase cracked a smile, but no one else noticed me.
"Utau? You do the honors." Ikuto said, gesturing to Natsume. Utau nodded and stepped forward, cuffing him.
"Wait!" The man said. "I have something to say!"
"You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be and will be used against you in court of law. You-" Nagihiko started chanting the Miranda rights, but we all glared at him and he stopped.
The man struggled and glared at Nagihiko, too. Funny, even criminals thought he was annoying.
Kidding.
"People are supposed to bleed when you stab them, right?" Natsume asked. We all nodded.
"Duh." Amu rolled her eyes. "That's kind of the point."
He continued, ignoring her 'cool 'n spicy' comment. "Well, he didn't."
I sniffed. "What do you mean? Did you not see that huge bloodstain on his bed sheets?"
He shook his head. "No. When I stabbed him in the stomach, he didn't bleed. I got scared and flipped him over, and stabbed him again. This time, he did, but only onto the bed sheets below."
"What is that supposed to mean?" Tadase asked worriedly.
"It means," I said slowly, trying to process. "That his blood flow wasn't working normally. It didn't start flowing until he flipped him over."
"And what does that mean?" Kukai asked.
"That means that something caused the blood to pool on the bottom. Something unnatural." Nadeshiko answered, sharing a glance with me.
Amu sighed. "I know this is getting old, but what does that mean, exactly?"
I swallowed, not sure if I dared to say it.
But Kairi did.
"It means he was already dead."
Silence.
"It's a double murder?!" Yaya exclaimed.
Utau tugged on Natsume. "Well, it doesn't mean he didn't do it. He could've poisoned the man first, and then stabbed him to try and mislead us."
"It's not me!" The secretary insisted, but we all ignored him.
"You're still under arrest for attempted murder, even if the victim was already dead."** Ikuto informed him.
He didn't move. "I know. But I didn't kill him."
Poison. Poison… something was tugging insistently at the back of my mind, but I couldn't pin down what it was.
"We need to re-check the rooms for poison." I turned back to the group. "Look for needles, too. Anything like that. Check inside pens, between drawers, everything. We need to be through."
"Four hours left." Nadeshiko muttered in my ear. I nodded briskly.
"Right. How's the background check coming along, Ikuto?" He sighed.
"Slowly." He admitted. "I can say that the woman, Reiko, seems to be clear, though. She doesn't have any connection with the man. The laptop man- sorry, Aoi, seems to have worked for a branch in his company at one point."
Aoi tensed, but didn't say anything. I narrowed my eyes. "Did he fire you?"
He paused for a second. "Indirectly, I suppose. But I wouldn't kill someone over that."
"Okay, then. Search." I commanded.
We all rushed upstairs and continued searching. We did a quick sweep of Reiko's room, but didn't go to in-depth. Then I sighed.
"We don't know what we're looking for. We don't know whether the victim was poisoned by mouth, or by needle. Someone's going to have to…" I swallowed. "Someone's going to have to check the body for needle marks."
There was a pause, and then Nadeshiko spoke up. "Oh, don't worry. I'll do it."
Right! I had totally forgotten that she was a robot and wouldn't be traumatized or disgusted by touching a dead body. And she would probably be better at spotting something as tiny as a needle mark, too.
"Thanks, Nade." We all chorused, glad it wasn't us. She smiled and walked away.
After searching Aoi's room thoroughly, we moved on to Natsume's. Nadeshiko came back. "No needle marks. Not even between the toes, where nobody would've noticed it."
We all looked at each other. We had lost one of our precious leads. "Also, there's only three hours until daybreak." Nadeshiko added. I opened my mouth, about to respond, where there was a loud noise downstairs. Our heads snapped towards the sound.
"Grab him!" We could faintly hear Kukai's voice.
We all tumbled down the stairs to see Utau slumped on the floor, cradling her chin. Kukai was knelt over her, while Nagihiko and Ikuto, along with Natsume, were gone.
"What happened?" Yaya cried. Kukai looked up.
"Natsume jerked backwards and hit his head into Utau's chin. She let go and fell over, and then he ran. Ikuto and Nagihiko went after him." He explained, eyes more serious than I had ever seen them.
We all were silent for a moment. Then I spoke, feeling heartless.
"This sounds bad, but Utau is going to be okay. We can't afford to waste time. We have to keep searching."
The others nodded, looking scared and frightened. I turned to Amu. "Amu, you stay. With four charas, you'll be able to deal with something. Kukai, look after Utau. The rest of you, keep searching."
Kairi nodded. "After Natsume's room, there's just Yuki's. Let's keep going."
We finished searching Natsume's room and found nothing. Finally, we went back to Yuki's.
"She packed up." Yaya grumbled, sounding annoyed. "More work for us."
We all attacked the suitcase, scouring every corner. We found nothing, until I unzipped a secret pocket by accident. Inside was one of the bottles I had seen before, with the red cap.
"She probably just keeps it there because it's toxic and she doesn't want it on her clothes-" I stopped.
Everyone gaped. "Toxic!" I exclaimed. "Turpentine is poisonous!"
"Rima, how do you know?" Tadase asked. I waved him off.
"I wanted to learn how to paint when I was younger. We learned to be careful around this stuff." I explained. I unscrewed the cap and took a whiff of it.
Everyone seemed cautious, and Yaya actually gasped. I crinkled my nose at the disgusting smell. "Turpentine, all right."
"How did she get it in the victim?" Kairi asked. I shrugged.
"I don't know, let's ask."
We went down the stairs and I walked over to Yuki, slamming the bottle on the table. She raised her eyebrows.
"Turpentine is poisonous. You're the murderer, aren't you?" I accused. She scowled.
"Almost everything I use to paint is poisonous. You might as well accuse me of squirting a tube of my oils down his throat. I didn't kill him using turpentine."
I faltered. She had a point. Then I remembered something. "Where's the other one?"
She blinked. "What other one?"
I growled. "Don't play innocent. I've already seen it. Where's the other bottle? The one with the blue cap."
She frowned. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Liar!" Before I knew it, I had tackled her and was patting her down. "Where is it?"
Suddenly, I felt a lump in her boot. I reached in, ignoring her shrieks of protest, and pulled out a half empty bottle of colorless liquid. The cap was blue.
"Please explain why you lied, Yuki." Kairi said, pushing up his glasses. Yuki shrugged.
"I didn't lie. I forgot about that. It's a medicine that I take for headaches sometimes. I keep it in my boot." She said, looking like the picture of innocence.
"Take it, then." I dared. She glared.
"Fine. Probably not healthy to take random medicines when I don't need them, but fine." She snatched the bottle a drank a bit of it. She set it down and she was perfectly fine. "Satisfied?"
I stepped closer to her, and stared into her eyes. She was so close I could smell her breath. I wrinkled my nose. "Why does your breath smell like garlic? There wasn't any served tonight." She hesitated.
"Well, garlic smells don't just go away. They can last for longer than a couple of hours, you know. That's why breath mints don't work. I had some for lunch today."
"I was sitting next to you during dinner." I countered. "I didn't smell anything."
"Must've been all the other food smells." She replied smoothly. I gritted my teeth.
"Rima!" Nadeshiko suddenly exclaimed. "I remembered something. The victim's breath smelled like garlic, too."
I whipped around and stared at Yuki. She shrugged again. "So what? He must've had it for lunch, too. It's not exactly an uncommon ingredient in food."
Yaya seemed to be deep in though. "Wait… Garlic smell, clear, odorless liquid?"
We all looked at her expectantly as she thought out loud. "I think I've read about it in a book before. Kairi and I were studying animals for a paper, and it talked about horses using this substance to take medicine. Uh, what were the details again?"
"DMSO!" Kairi yelled, making us all jump. I saw Yuki flinch. "Is that what you're talking about, Yaya?"
She nodded excitedly. "Yeah, yeah! It absorbs through the skin. When the horses didn't want to take their medicine by mouth, they would rub it on their skin. DMSO has this unique property. It's able to take other drugs into the skin with it. It absorbs into the central systems very easily. It's colorless and odorless, but leaves a garlic smell on the victim, even if it's not taken by mouth."
"In other words," I said, narrowing my eyes at Yuki. "You could've mixed the turpentine and the DMSO, and then just placed it on his skin. It would've absorbed and killed him while he was napping. You didn't expect the secretary to try and kill him, so that's why you looked so shocked when you found him dead."
I frowned. "But when? And why?"
She nodded. "Exactly. I was with you guys the whole time, except those last few minutes when I went to go call him. But your little autopsy indicated that he was dead before then."
She was right. She hadn't left our side, so when…?
"The coke!" Amu said. I raised my eyebrows, confused, and then I understood.
"Right, you poured some colorless liquid into the Coke! You said it was water, but it was probably the turp and DMSO mix! Then it spilled onto his arm, and-" I was so excited I could barely finish the sentence. "Then he died!" I finally stuttered out. Probably not the smoothest sentence, but I knew with unwavering certainty that I was right.
Kairi pushed up his glasses. "We've found our killer."
Yuki was silent for a second. Then, the creepiest smile crossed her face. "Yes, that's right. I killed him. And I don't regret it at all."
"You're sick!" I shouted. "Even if he did something bad to you, it is never okay to kill someone like that! It wasn't for justice, just your own personal revenge."
"Shut up!" She snarled, and snatched me up by the throat. I choked, struggling against her grip. "You have no idea how horrible he was."
"Everyone, we found out something-" Nagihiko rounded the corner and came in, only to stop at the sight in front of him. It must've looked quite scary, since Yuki had me in the air with both hands around my throat. I was clawing and kicking, and making some pretty bad choking noises.
"Too late!" Yuki spat. "You're going to tell them about my history, right? About how my dad used to work for him? About how my dad accidentally found out some scandal, and paid for it with his life?"
Her voice caught a bit. "About how that building he was in caught on fire? About how it was the business man who set it off?"
She clenched me tighter, and my arms dropped to my sides.
Her voice was full of sadness, and she sounded broken. Insane. "I lost everything that day. My father was gone. My mother went crazy. What was I to do? No job. No money. I had lost two people I loved."
"I worked for this day. I swore that sick man would pay for what he did. I planned everything out carefully, down to the storm." She spoke softly, but her grip was anything put. I was quickly running out of air.
"Help-" I gasped, but she kneed me in the stomach.
"And now you've all found out. You won't tell anybody, unless you don't want little Rima back." Her voice had regained it's creepiness and hard tone.
Black spots were dancing across my vision, and I was about to faint, when-
Whack.
Yuki fell to the ground, unconscious, her fingers loosening against my neck. I pried them off and rolled into a ball, gasping for air and rubbing my throat. I lifted my head to see the most beautiful thing.
Amu, in her ridiculous cheerleader outfit, was holding her Heart Rod above her head. She had evidently hit Yuki in the back of the head.
"Couldn't-you have-done that-sooner?" I gasped out. She dropped her rod and rushed to me, hugging me.
"Oh, Rima, are you all right?" She asked, worried. I nodded, holding up a finger.
"Just a sec." By now, everyone seemed to have come out of his or her initial shock Nagihiko ran over to me, and everyone else followed. Kukai cuffed Yuki and dragged her away, while Ikuto came back with Natsume in tow. He was unconscious, and had several suspicious claw marks in his suit.
A short while later, it was daybreak. As I saw cops lead Yuki away, a twinge of sadness tugged at my heart.
It was so sad to think that people like her existed. So sad to think that they became twisted because other twisted people had made them that way. I wished that Amu could just perform an Open Heart on Yuki and wash all the darkness inside her soul away.
It used to be like that, when we were Seiyo Guardians. When our biggest problem was some candy throwing kid with confused dreams. Or when our biggest fight was against a certain rosette loving cat boy with a weird violin.
I hate growing up.
Then, suddenly, the scene vanished, and we were standing in a large room.
"Fuko!" I shrieked.
"Yes?" Her voice sounded behind me, and I turned, startled.
Then I glared. "So none of this was real?"
She shrugged. "Yes? No? I don't know. No one really died, if that's what you mean. But this was a real scenario back in the 1900's. Something like this really did happen, but this was only a simulation to test your deductions skills."
She smiled. "And I'm happy to say you passed."
"Thank god!" Utau groaned, still cradling her cheek. "If it was fake, why does my chin still hurt so much?"
Fuko laughed apologetically. "One of the control operators got a little carried away."
We all laughed for a bit, then slumped from fatigue. "I don't exactly have a prize to give you, but I can say one thing." Fuko told us. "Why don't you rest for a bit?"
That sounded better than anything else in the world.
*I actually was not trying to make a reference to Natsume Yuujinchou. I originally chose the name Leiko, meaning arrogance, for the haughty woman, but Reiko just looked so much prettier.
**I don't know if you can get arrested for trying to kill a dead body. Apologies if I'm wrong.
Damn. These chapters just keep getting longer.
Also, thank you so so so much for 100 reviews! (102, actually :D) I'm so glad you guys like this story, and I'm really sorry for not updating sooner D: I didn't really know how to go about writing this and I hope I did okay ;_;
Anyways, you know what this means? Omake time! Also, I'm kind of debating on something. I want to hold a contest or something, or write a fanfic on how to write a fanfic. So I'm wondering which one I should do, or if I should just do one first and then the other when I reach 150 reviews (if.)
The contest rules would be simple. Basically, you just have to leave a good review. Length isn't super important, but it should be honest. Try to include constructive criticism( try to be nice, I'm an egotistical person ;_;) what you liked, what you didn't like (specifics!) And cookies. Specify which kind. (Kidding.) What should the prize be? A shugo chara oneshot, requested? (No M-Rated stuff.)
Then the fanfic would be titled "The Art of Writing a Shugo Chara Fanfic!" With my tips and personal rules. You could check it out for fun, but obviously you don't have to swear by it. I don't even know if I'm qualified to be teaching D: But yeah. Maybe I'll write it from some of the character's perspectives? That could be fun.
Actually I've decided (haha sorry I'm weird like that) the contest starts now! It is ongoing until the end of the double update (which might take a while.) I'll have the omake up really soon, and write the how-to fanfic at 150. Please enter the contest, and comment what you think the prize should be! (Writing-related. Or reading.)
Sorry for this super long A/N. Next chapter will be the omake and review replies! Unless you'd rather I PM?