SailorStar9: This is Chapter 24. Read and review.
Disclaimers: I own nothing, except the pairing, I hope.
Chapter 25: Tragic on the Net
"Excuse me." Ryu started.
"What? You guys are still standing here?" the officer on guard asked.
"Excuse me, please let us check inside." Ryu requested.
"No way." the officer replied. "I told you, civilians aren't allowed in here."
Ami sighed and revealed her DDS notebook, the three mimicking her.
"I'm Mizuno Ami from DDS." she showed the officer the notebook.
"DDS?" the officer echoed, before he straightened and saluted.
In the building...
"No wonder you didn't seem like a normal student." the detective beamed. "You're with DDS?"
"Here it is." Ryu found what he was looking for.
"Yeah." Ami noted, the four peering closely at the group of ants carrying something.
"There's a bunch of ants!" Megumi added as Ryu used the tweezers to pick up the object.
"Detective, send this to forensics and have them analyze it right away." Ryu requested, having placed the object in a zipper bag.
"Yes." the detective replied.
"You do it." he told his subordinate.
"Yes!" his assistant saluted.
"There's no doubt about it." Ryu added. "The criminal used an alibi trick in the first crime too. The fog's cleared."
"Then, we'll get all the suspects together and..." Kyu suggested.
"No, we don't have enough definitive proof yet." Ami objected.
In campus...
"I get it..." Kyu noted, after Ryu explained what Ami had meant.
"The criminal was extremely careful during the first crime." Ryu told him. "But when he attacked Asabuki-san, it was a sudden thing, so he made a mistake."
"A mistake?" Kyu echoed.
"Yeah." Ami replied.
"We're just about to go and make sure." Ryu added.
"What's wrong?" Kyu asked when Ami stopped in her tracks.
"Somebody dug that flower up." Megumi noted as Ami knelt by the plant plot, the plant from the third last of the second row having being dug up.
"These flowers are..." Ryu mused.
"Wolfsbane." Ami concluded.
"Need me to prepare some antidote for you?" she quirked a brow at Ryu.
In Asabuki's room...
"What's this video?" Kyu asked after Ryu slotted the tape into the VCR.
"The video recorded right after before Asabuki-san was attacked." Ryu replied as he fast-forwarded the tape.
"This is it." he stopped the tape when the 'World Cinema Paradise' credit rolled in.
"What's the counter's timer say?" he asked.
"Um... 30.12." Kyu replied.
"There's no doubt about it." Ami confirmed."Butr how the hell did he know it was 30 minutes?"
"But..." Ryu added.
"Ryu, we can't just sit here." Kyu warned. "If we don't hurry, they might come after your life!"
"Life?" Ryu echoed.
"Let's try it." he concluded.
Later, on the Internet, he had posted a message that read, 'From Amakusa Ryu. To all concerned parties. I've discovered the identity of the 'Collector' please head to the meeting room now. Amakusa Ryu.'
In the meeting room...
"Amakusa-kun, you said you had found the criminal, is this true?" Murasaki-sensei asked.
"But why did you call all of us here?" Sakuma inquired.
"I'm sorry to make you all come here." Ryu replied. "You see, the real criminal is one of you."
"What?" Sakuma gasped.
"Well, let's drink some coffee and talk about it." Ryu remarked as Ami entered the room with a tray of cups, a coffee powder container and a electric kettle.
I knew it, he's figured out everything. The culprit thought as Ami prepared the coffee. I need to shut him up somehow.
"Here you go." Ami offered the tray.
"Thanks." Ryu took a cup and placed the cup onto the table when he went out to answer a call just as Ami offered a round of coffee. "Yes. It's Amakusa."
Now's my chance. The culprit noted, slipping some wolfsbane powder into Ryu's cup.
"Sorry for the wait." Ryu returned, everyone else having settled in.
Now, drink up. The culprit smirked as Ryu took his cup. That'll finish everything.
"Excuse me." Kinta entered with Kazuma and Kyu, the three decked in cleaner's outfits.
What? The culprit was stunned.
"We're here to fix this room's air-conditioner." Kinta replied.
"Now?" Ryu asked as Ami bit the inside of her cheek to stop laughing.
"Yeah, I'm sorry." Kinta replied.
"Can't be helped." Ryu replied, placing his cup down.
"OK then, let's go to the next room." Ami suggested.
"I'll carry your drinks." Kyu offered.
What? The culprit was shocked as Kyu took the tray as Kazuma took Ryu's and Ami's cups.
"I'll bring this to the other room." Kyu added, lifting the tray.
What? The culprit was startled as Kyu moved off. This isn't good.
In the next room...
"I'll leave it here." Kyu put down the tray after Kazuma placing the two cups on the table.
"We can just give the coffee out at random right?" Ami asked as the two exited. "It doesn't look like anybody's drunk it."
I can't tell which cup has the poison in it. The culprit thought.
"Drink up." Ami smiled, taking a drink from her cup after the coffee was distributed and everyone had settled down.
There's a 1 in 7 chance. The culprit wondered as Ami drank.
"It's good." Ami noted.
That's not it. The culprit pondered when Ami was unharmed.
"Everybody, drink up." Ami told the rest. "It'll get cool."
Who.. who has it? The culprit thought as everybody took up their cups without hesitation.
They're all fine? The culprit was stunned after Oobayashi, Touya, Sakuma and Murasaki-sensei came out unscathed after drinking from their cups.
That means... he looked down at his cup. It's either mine or Amakusa's. Which is it? Which cup has the poison?
No way... he panicked after Ryu drank from his cup, unharmed.
"What's wrong?" Ryu broke his thoughts. "You aren't going to drink your coffee? All of you just proved your Innocence by drinking that coffee without hesitation."
What kind of nonsense? The culprit mused.
"The reason you haven't drunk your coffee is because it contains the wolfsbane you put in." Ryu showed the plant in the zipper bag.
"Wolfsbane?" Oobayashi echoed.
"I'm sure some of you know this already." Ami added. "But the root of wolfsbane contains deadly poison. One plant was taken out of the school's flower bed so we thought there might be another murder planned."
"So, we thought we'd give you a push." Ryu continued. "And you did just what we thought."
"So then we come." Kyu entered the room, along with the rest of Class Q.
"We're actually students at DDS." Megumi added, as the three boys took off their caps.
"Nice to meet you." Kyu and Kazuma beamed.
"DDS, that's..." Oobayashi echoed. "That famous..."
"So are Ryu and Ami." Kazuma added.
"I am a Recorder." Ami added. "All I had to do is simply dig out from my memory to tell which cup has the poison in it and made sure he got it."
"Then you know who did it?" Oobayashi asked.
"Yes." Ryu replied. "And we knew the criminal was panicked by my actions. So, we decided to put on a little play. If you hadn't done anything, we wouldn't have any proof. You can't get out of this one. The murderer of Kogure Junya and Asabuki Maya, the 'Collector', is..."
"YOU!" he pointed at the revealed culprit.
"Tominaga Mashashi." he looked over at Tominaga. "You're the 'Collector'."
"Tominaga-kun is..." Touya gasped.
"Just with that?" Tominaga scoffed, smashing the cup against the wall.
"My stomach hurts today, and I just don't feel like drinking coffee." he added. "What are you saying? I was with you when Kogure was killed and anybody could've done the alibi trick with Asabuki. Where's your proof it was me?"
"You've already given that proof yourself." Ami replied.
"This is how it happened." Ryu added. "Asabuki-san set her clock to 9 that night. But because the criminal advanced the clock, she pressed the record button earlier than she wanted to, and the quiz show was recorded. But, I didn't know how much the clock had been advanced."
"What?" Tominaga gasped.
"Even then afterwards, when I gathered everyone and showed them the tapes when they were in middle school," Ryu continued. "You were so worried about whether you'd given any hints that would identify you as the criminal, that you slipped and said something only the criminal would know."
Flashback
"Yeah, to think the clock on the video was set 30 minutes ahead." Tominaga has said.
"I was able to determine that, just like you said, the clock was advanced by 30 minutes for the first time just a short while ago." Ryu added.
"Then, Amakusa, how do you explain the fact that I was with you when Kogure was killed?" Tominaga challenged. "We could see the clock tower in the window from that video. And its time is 5:15. At that time, I was looking for Mizuno with you!"
"It's true that you were with Amakusa-kun that whole time." Touya noted.
"Take a look." Tominaga added. "I couldn't have advanced that clock like with Asabuki. The clock tower's securely locked."
"Unfortunately, that alibi is gone too." Ryu added.
"What?" Tominaga gasped.
"Tominaga-kun, you managed that alibi trick by killing Kogure Junya twice." Ryu replied.
"Twice?" Sakuma echoed.
"Yes." Ryu answered. "The hint was that one day space between Kogure's disappearance and his death. Actually, the 5:15 we saw on the footage over the net, wasn't on the say he was killed. It was the day earlier."
"In order to get your alibi, you made a fake snuff video on the day before the crime." he looked at Tominaga. "And the next day, using Ami as a witness, you killed him for real and then edited the two videos to make them look like one."
"Wait." Murasaki-sensei raised her hand. "The criminal hit Kogure's head with that bottle hard. That he had no wounds whatsoever the next day, when we saw him, which is impossible."
"Then let's just give it a try!:" Kinta added, as Tominaga smirked.
Raising the bottle in his hand, Kinta smashed it onto Tominaga's defending arm.
"What are you doing?" Oobayashi demanded before he blinked when Tominaga remained unharmed. "He's fine?"
"Here, lick it." Kinta offered the smashed bottle to him.
Oobayashi took the bottle and gave it an experimental lick.
"It's sweet." he gasped.
"Yeah, you see this on TV shows and movies as props; a candy beer bottle." Kinta replied.
"Candy?" Touya echoed.
"It seems that, when you hit somebody during a movie, you use a candy beer bottle so it won't hurt them." Ryu explained. "That's what he used in his fake snuff video and afterwards, while he thought he'd cleaned up carefully, small pieces were still left on the floor."
"The line of ants I saw was carrying that candy beer bottle." Kyu added.
"I remember now." Sakuma noted. "Didn't your dad let us see a movie set when we were in middle school, Tominaga-kun? That day, they were recording a scene where somebody got hit with a beer bottle. And it was Asabuki who was doing the taping. "
"The master tape of that was still at her house." Ryu supplied, Kazuma showing the said tape. "The video #7 that was taken from her room was a copy of that. He probably went to her room as she had seen that at the time she called me about it."
Flashback
"Actually, now that you mention it, it's a middle school movie of Kogure." Asabuki had told him. "The same middle school as me. The others are Oobayashi, and Touya, and Tominaga. They were also from the same middle school. And actually..."
"Ah, it seems like someone came." she added, hearing a knock on her door. "I"ll call you back."
"Coming!" she answered the door. "Oh, it's just Tominaga, come in!"
"I was watching a video from our movie club." she showed him the tape. "I thought Ryu might learn something from if we showed it to him."
"If I had seen this tape, it might have given me a hint to break your alibi." Ryu added. "So you attacked Asabuki-san to take her tape."
"Tominaga Mashashi, admit your guilt." he pressed.
"Yeah, you're right." Tominaga confessed.
"Why? Weren't you all friends?" Ami asked. "How could you kill them?"
"Friends..." Tominaga scoffed. "I don't have any friends."
"I had plenty who pretended to be my friends, but no real friends." he added. "Except for one, Ogura Emina."
"Ogura Emina?" Sakuma echoed.
"What?" Murasaki-sensei inquired.
"Emina and I had been dating." Tominaga replied.
"No way. When did that start?" Oobayashi asked. "Dating at a dorm school like this; everybody'd find out right away."
"No, you wouldn't." Tominaga corrected. "We'd only been dating over the net."
"I fell in love with a girl called 'Anime' on a movie-lover's web page that the school ran." he added. "And one day, I noticed..."
Flashback
"Huh?" Tominaga blinked as 'Anime's' name flashed in front of him.. "If you read this backwards, ti becomes Emina. It's Ogura Emina."
"I was happy." Tominaga confessed. "I'd liked her since middle school. But one day..."
Flashback
"What's this?" Tominaga demanded after seeing the numerous hate mail.
"I tried my best to make them stop, but it kept going." Tominaga added. "And, at last... Emina left what seemed like her last words, and vanished from the school and from the net. I frantically searched for the identity of the person who'd done this to her... and at last, I found it. They were all Kogure Junya's comments."
Flashback
"Damnit, I hate that girl." Kogure hissed as he sent hate mail after hate mail.
"He hated Emina for having better grades than him." Tominaga added. "I couldn't forgive him for driving Emina to kill herself. So I..."
"Wait!" Touya shouted.
"Umm... I..." she stammered. "I have something to say about that."
"I didn't know why Ogura-san vanished, but I know it wasn't because of Kogure-san's bullying." he admitted.
"What do you know?" Tominaga scoffed. "You don't have any friends, let alone a boyfriend. Listen, Emina and I really understood each other. She..."
"You're wrong!" Touya screamed.
"Figures." Ami muttered.
"No way!" Ryu looked at her, realizing who 'Anime' really was.
"Touya-san." Ami blinked at the outburst.
"That's not it." Touya replied. "Anime wasn't Ogura Emina. It was me!"
"Just like you, I always admired her." Touya admitted. "She was so pretty, cheerful and had so many friends. I wanted to be like her. So then I thought: I could be her on the net. And so, I changed my handle to a variation of her name: 'Anime;. And eventually, I got to be friends with somebody named 'Spielberg', and I was so happy!"
"You're lying!" Tominaga hollered, slapping her across the face.
"Why you..." he hissed."You're lying, bitch!"
"Hold it!" Kinta held him back.
"Touya-san!" Ami hurried to her side.
"It's true!" Touya insisted. "I remember. You told me your dreams for the future in that chat room with only the two of us in it."
"You said you wanted to make a good movie, with a good script, really good actors and without any expensive special effects."
"You're..." Tominaga gasped. "Are you really Anime?"
"I am." Touya replied. "But all those people were saying horrible things about me, so I decided to 'kill myself' by stopping posting. And then Ogura-sen really vanished!"
"No way." Ami blinked. "Then, the motive for this case was a misunderstanding on the net?"
"What?" Tominaga shook after Kinta released his hold. "So I vowed my revenge over nothing? I was an idiot... such an idiot."
With a cry, he banged his head against the wall.
"Hey, stop it." Kinta rushed to stop him.
"Let me go!" Tominaga struggled against his grip as Touya sobbed, Ami pulling her into a comforting hug. "Let me go!"
Later in hospital...
"Yes?" Asabuki took her eyes off the TV screen after hearing a knock on her door.
"Asabuki!" Oobayashi dashed in. "You're alive!"
"Yeah." Asabuki replied.
"If he knew she was alive she might've been attacked again, so..." Ryu added. "We didn't tell everybody she'd survived."
"I see." Oobayashi replied.
"You're really amazing, Ryu-kun." Asabuki noted. "It's too bad you're leaving."
"Huh? Where's Touya?" she asked.
"She was more shocked than anybody by this." Oobayashi replied. "She said she'd be going back to her home for a while."
"I see." Asabuki noted.
"That's?" Ami blinked at the screen.
"Videos from our movie club." Asabuki replied.
"Everybody looks like friends." Ryu remarked.
"I knew that Tominaga's parents had divorced and that a lot of other stuff had happened." Sakuma supplied. "But he acted fine. We all pretended like we didn't care. Just like he said, we can't say we were really friends."
"But it's better than having people whom you've thought to be sisters, only to have them backstab you in the end." Ami added.
Giving everyone else a sad smile, she gave Asabuki an apologetic bow and stepped out.
Back in DDS...
"Mizuno-kun, Amakusa-kun, you did very well this time." Dan-sensei told them.
"Thank you, sir." Ami replied.
"Dan-sensei, what happened to the student who vanished, Ogura Emina?" Kazuma raised his hand.
"That was actually settled in a very surprising manner." Dan-sensei replied.
"Actually, we got a message from her herself." Katagiri-sensei added. "It seems she's eloped with a lover who her parents opposed, but she read about this incident in the papers, and contracted the school."
"Then I feel really bad for Tominaga, somehow." Kyu sighed.
"Heh, you can't feel bad for a murderer." Kinta snorted. "Right Ryu?"
"Yeah." Ryu replied after a while. "But... he's better, maybe... than somebody who was born to be a murderer."
SailorStar9: Another chapter down. Read and review.