Neuro's sister has arrived for a visit, what chaos will she bring?

A Push in the Right Direction

Mystery 52: Visitors

The door to the detective office was noisily thrown open, startling Godai, who peeked from behind the newspaper, "a client?"

"Are you my brother's pet? Honestly, Neuro has such bad taste," Nera grabbed Godai's head with her clawed hand and dragged him out, returning her hand to a human appearance afterwards. "Shoo, ugly one, shoo, I must try to make a passable sister-in-law out of this even uglier creature." Before Godai could protest, the door was closed on his face.

"It seems Neuro went out somewhere," Yako observed, it was a fine time he picked to disappear. "Do you know where he went Akane?"

"Stop talking to the corpse and pay attention," Nera insisted, looking at Yako with disapproval, yet at the same time a certain inexplicable fondness. "Before my brother left our world, he collected 777 special tools and took most of them with him. However, he left this with me, claiming that he had no use for it. He also poked fun at me saying I really needed it, but it's clear his mate is the one that needs it the most." Nera held up a tube of lipstick, "evil makeup," she handed it to Yako.

"You want me to wear this? Doesn't it have some kind of crazy side effect?" Yako wasn't too trusting of any of the evil tools, though some of them actually did what they were supposed to do without consequences, but those were rare.

"Unfortunately no," Nera's sincere disappointment made Yako believe there really was no danger involved. "Now put it on and say 'bird demon make-up'. Say it or I'll have to force you to."

Yako laughed nervously. When she wanted some 'me time' Neuro was always there, popping out of a dark corner, sneaking up behind her, hanging from the ceiling, or making an equally unexpected, yet somehow predictable, entrance. Now that she needed him there, he was gone, off to a place unknown to Yako. "Okay..." Yako gulped and removed the tube's cap, twisting the end to push up the blood red lipstick bar. She looked at Nera, the shades of gray in her black hole eyes swirled with impatience. "Here goes..." Yako took a deep breath, "bird demon make-up!" Putting on the lipstick and shouting such a silly phrase made her feel like one of those magical girls on TV. Shining swirls of color surrounded her as she blinked in surprise and spun around, taking a new form.

The door was thrown open again and Neuro entered the office. "Sister, what an unexpected surprise and you've even brought a friend."

Nera didn't see or hear Neuro, she was staring at Yako's new form in surprise and pointing at her; then suddenly she wailed, "it's not fair," and cried uncontrollably.

Yako felt very odd. She touched her head to find that it was much bigger than it used to be, and very long. She held her hands in front of her face and saw clawed wings with a golden ring around each claw finger. She was covered in light pink feathers and was wearing the silliest hot pink outfit, a little too tight for her liking, with a flowing white sash around her waist. She noted that she had a feathery pink tail, and her feet were a bird's claws matching the claws in her hands and scratching the floor where she stood. She examined her large beak again, multiple large fangs sticking out from it.

Neuro was looking at her closely, "Yako?" He took a good look and perceived in her familiar scent, "it is you; you're really the top slug now!" He laughed at her distress.

"Mirror!" Yako rushed to her desk, which was next to the empty space where Troy would go when it, or she, was returned. She bent down to look at the open drawer's contents and stabbed her beak into the surface of the desk, causing the desk to be broken into two halves, the miraculously undamaged drawer falling to the floor between them. Not quite used to her large head, Yako turned it over to the side as she bent over to pick up the mirror between her clawed fingers, causing it to shatter.

"That's seven years of bad luck, clumsy worm," Neuro went over to Akane's desk, borrowing her mirror, the one Yako would always hold up for Akane to see herself after she had been brushed. "Take a look." Yako approached, but Neuro extended his arm, holding her back so she wouldn't peck the mirror and break it, since her head was a lot longer now and she was not used to it.

"It was the evil make-up! How do I change back? Is taking it off enough?" Yako lifted her claw wing hand to wipe off the lipstick, but Neuro stopped her.

"Leave it on for a while longer," he insisted.

Yako's worry faded, her guess about how to change back must have been right. If she could return to normal without consequences then this didn't seem so bad. "Just for a little while."

As Nera kept complaining about how unfair the world was and crying dramatically for reasons still unknown, Neuro took some time to point and laugh at his sister. Yako attempted to console her sister-in-law, only to be pushed away by both Nera, who didn't want her pity, and Neuro, who didn't think Nera deserved any compassion.

Thus Yako went over to the refrigerator she now kept in the office, since she spent a lot more time there as a fulltime detective, and started going through her stash of emergency snacks. She took an entire cake and put it easily inside her large beak, she had never eaten a cake of that size in a single bite before. She found it to be a pleasant experience and continued stuffing her face

Yako was enjoying the food when suddenly Neuro pulled her away from the refrigerator in alarm and wiped the lipstick off her beak, ripping his sleeve on her fangs in the process. Yako changed back to normal, exactly as she was before and looked into Neuro's serious eyes. "I forbid you from disguising yourself as one of my species ever again. With a stomach like yours, it's too dangerous to allow you to have a bigger mouth."

Yako pouted, "but I was enjoying it!"

"Absolutely not!" Neuro took away the evil make-up and put it in his pocket. "Nera, stop crying, it's not fair that only Yako gets to make you cry. I flew out to get a surprise to upset you, but I can't make you cry if you're already crying!"

Nera stopped crying and sniffled indignantly. "I can't believe this, evil make-up only changes certain aspects of people, but the basics remain, her eye and hair colors for example were the same. As for the rest, it is as it would have been if she had been born of our kind and I just can't believe it; such an enormous beak for such a worthless creature and with huge fangs too!"

"Ah yes, you grew up pretty quickly, but stopped relatively early so you started as the biggest and ended up as the smallest," Neuro morphed his head to his true form and stuck out his tongue at Nera.

"Yako's fangs would have been bigger than yours!" Nera argued.

"Please get along you two!" Yako pleaded.

"Yeah, Neuro, be nice to me because I'll be staying with you for a while," Nera smiled mischievously, her jealousy of Yako's large beak was forgotten in an instant at the pleasant thought of tormenting her brother.

"How nice, I'm sure we can find some room for you, even if we have other visitors staying over too," Neuro sneezed as Angelus and Yukari entered the office on cue.

"Hi!" Yukari cheerfully exclaimed. "Neuro invited Angie and me to Japan!"

Angelus bowed, "we thank you for your kind invitation Neuro; we will try to be good house guests."

Nera shrieked at the top of her lungs and snatched the mirror away from Neuro, screaming at her reflection and throwing it at Angelus, who fortunately caught it. "I'm allergic to angels!" Unlike Neuro, Nera did not sneeze; instead she became covered in multicolored spots that looked like rainbow chickenpox. "Forget the visit, I'm out of here, I'm going home!" Nera left in a hurry.

"I hope you know that was just an act," Neuro warned Angelus with a sneeze after Nera had left.

"Yes, I understand," Angelus assured.

"But I do have my own house here in Japan so Angie and I can stay for a visit after all!" Yukari cheered, "we're going to have so much fun!"

To be Continued

Disclaimer, I don't own Majin Tantei Nogami Neuro. Yako's magical girl style transformation scene is a reference to Sailor Moon. I have a drawing of Yako as a bird, go to the fanart page on my site to see it, there's a link in my profile.