Kamaitachi Chronicles

By: Aviantei

Twelve

Given that I'd spent most of my life since leaving home on prioritizing my own survival, I had a theory that wasting time and resources when you could be efficient was fucking stupid. So, naturally, the fact that Mustang wasn't about to use me as a piece of bait even though I was the obvious solution didn't sit well with me. I was more than willing to put myself in danger if it meant getting the damn job done.

The problem is that Mustang definitely won't see that as a solution.

Back in the office, I scowled in my seat. I'd been around the team for decently long enough to get a basic grasp on everyone's personalities, and I knew that Kain was an honest guy. He'd definitely report to Mustang about our little talk. So the best thing was to go ahead and act like I was going to behave for a while so he wouldn't get suspicious.

Sure, it pisses me off to waste time like this, but it's not like I'm about to make any progress in broad daylight. If I were a serial killer, I wouldn't be trying to murder anyone in the middle of the day, and especially not while I was being tailed by several military officers. I'd spread out my scythe notes on the table, but they were serving as more of a prop than anything helpful.

"Hey, Falman," I said, shuffling around my notes for about the tenth time in the past twenty minutes without even paying attention to the mess I was making of everything. Having a much more productive time with his work, Falman inclined his head to let me know he was listening. "How do you handle being in the background whenever there's something going on?"

Falman's naturally stern expression slipped into a slightly harder frown. "Are you talking about the case we're working on?" Since there wasn't any point in pretending otherwise, I nodded and leaned back a bit in my seat. "Being helpful doesn't always mean setting foot on the field. Without at least one of us being on support here, we wouldn't be able to call for backup if necessary."

"Well, that's good and fine for you; you're actually doing something." Sighing, I spread out my arms to indicate the office. "Mustang won't even let me take care of something like that. What am I supposed to do being just a warm body on the sidelines?"

"I'm sure once you get some training, you'll be able to help out, Caiman." I scowled without meaning to, and Falman chuckled, proceeding to make my mood worse. "Look, I get where you're coming from. But the fact is that you don't have any experience, and we'll train you as soon as we can. The Lt. Colonel brought you in, so we know you're capable. It'll just take some time first. The best thing you can do is refine your skills, and you'll be contributing."

Sounds like a bunch of damn placating nonsense to me, I thought, just stopping the words from coming out of my mouth. If I argued too much, that would be just another reason for Mustang to be suspicious of my intentions, and then I'd never get into the north end of town to clean up their mess for them. So I sighed and shifted gears. "I mean, I get that, but it's just hard to not be able to help. I've been responsible for myself most of my life, so letting other people take care of me gives me a nasty taste in my mouth."

I had a feeling that Falman was pretty good at noticing whenever people were lying—hence why I told the truth. I just didn't let the bitterness into my tone. Falman had a pretty strong poker face, so I couldn't tell if he bought what I was saying at face value, but he at least didn't call me out, so I was willing to count that as a victory. "Well, the good news is that you're part of a team now. You don't have to be one-hundred percent responsible for yourself now." I pulled a face before I could stop myself, earning a chuckle. "That's just how it is, Caiman. If you're going to want to contribute to the team, you're going to also have to accept that the team is going to contribute to you at the same time."

Yup, placating nonsense, all of it. But I gave a slight nod and even a small smile for good measure. "I'll try to keep that in mind, Falman. Just don't be surprised if I have a hard time acting like it for a while."

I spent the next three days laying low, just to be safe. There was always someone playing sentry in the office, so it wasn't like I had any chance of getting out of that without trouble. Mustang swung by once during that time, and he seemed satisfied upon hearing a report about Rito's latest adventures in kicking my ass. The goodie two shoes act was doing its job, but I knew Mustang didn't wholly believe that I wasn't still thinking about dragging myself into the heart of the matter.

How did I know, might you ask?

Easy. The ass had put guards on me for anytime I wasn't reporting to work like usual.

I sat in the dining hall for dinner, sipping at the somewhat bland cup of soup I'd gotten. My military dorm had a lot of amenities, but the kitchen was a more public affair, and I'd already decided to not put myself into any unnecessary social situations outside Mustang's team. Half of the officers were a substantial fraction older than me anyways, and most of Amestris's forces were men. I didn't fancy getting dragged into any of that at all. At least in the cafeteria people left me well enough alone. Even the few times I'd had people sitting nearby, they hadn't asked for conversation.

'Cause, you know, that'd make it obvious they were keeping an eye on me.

Swapping out my soup for a chunk of semi-passable bread, I continued my surveillance of the blonde woman sitting the next table over. She was talking to a male officer with brown hair and the traces of a not-so-well-maintained stubble. They were just two of the handful of people that I assumed the Lt. Colonel of Assholes had asked to watch over me. They were good at blending in with the crowd, yes, and anyone else wouldn't have thought a damn thing of familiar faces passing by—but most people didn't remember things the way I did.

I'd intentionally headed to meals at different times on a day to day basis, but, sure enough, at least one of the spy group was there, and usually more than one. They did a good job at sitting in different places in the dining hall, but there was always someone on watch. I'd done the same variation with heading back to my dorm and using the bathroom and such, and one of the ladies was still around. I wouldn't have been surprised if someone was watching my door whenever I went out.

Having confirmed that I once again had company for the day, I focused back on my dinner, dunking the bread into my soup. I knew they were there, but that didn't mean I had to give it away that I was onto them. Besides, they were just following orders, I presumed. I could get irate at Mustang once the whole mess was done for.

Which will be tonight if I have my way.

When it came to my not-so-secret guard detail, there'd been a lot more of them at first. Now, whenever I headed back to my dorm at night, I only saw one person hanging around. They'd been diligent the first few days after my encounter with Kain, but that had started to relax. I didn't think that was because they were slacking, but, rather because Mustang was likely starting to trust that I wasn't about to do anything reckless.

That was, naturally, right where I wanted him.

Draining the last of my coffee, I returned my tray to the dish area and stretched out my arms, sending a strain of muscle cord through my senses. Rito had managed to leave a rather nasty bruise between my shoulder blades during our last spying session, plus I'd spent my whole day hunched over my alchemy notes with a map of the city mixed in for preparation's sake. Even if I could remember the layout of the streets without so much as trying, it still took me some time to pick out the most suitable routes without a guide, and I needed to prepare a few more options in the event that my guard detail was more creative than I gave them credit for.

Sure enough, the blonde and brunette both started to wrap up their own meals in my peripheral vision, and I left them to it. Once outside, the sky was a pale lilac of sunset, and I wasn't about to head out at such an hour. Besides, I still had to change out of uniform and finalize a few things. Whoever wanted to stare down my door for the night was free to do as they liked.

The few hours until late night were somewhat of a drag. I would have liked to take a nap, but having an alarm go off close to midnight would have been a key give away—so I took care of the few transmutations I needed in the first place and finished prepping back up circles in case of emergencies. One of the last things I needed was reaching into my pocket for an important circle only to find it torn up or something else.

By the time it was inching close to midnight, I'd already drawn way more circles than I could ever use, but at least a few were prototypes for later adjustments to my scythe. I separated them out gathered up the rest of my supplies, flicking the light off before opening the curtains and the window after it. My room was on the second floor, and there wasn't anything convenient like a tree or statue to climb down with. Still, it didn't take a genius to make a rope that could let me make it to the ground without issue, and no one in Mustang's guard squad was at the ready outside. Behaving enough that he hadn't considered that route of escape as a potential option was well worth the boredom and frustration of the past few days.

Since I wasn't a stranger to such methods of evacuating a building, it didn't take long for me to hit the ground. A quick transmutation detached my rope from its anchor point, and the weather was nice enough that leaving the window open wouldn't seem odd, especially since several other rooms had done the same. I tucked the wound-up rope into a nearby bush and focused on getting away from the dorm, shoving my hands into my pockets. Once I helped catch this killer or whatever, it wouldn't matter if getting back into my room wasn't as easy as getting out.

East City wasn't anywhere near as active as a place like Central, so most streets only had streetlights on at this hour, though there were a few bars still in the full string of things. I didn't have a perfect understanding of the nightlife areas (info like that tended not to be on standard maps), but it wasn't too hard to not attract too much attention with a hat hanging low over my eyes. Sure, if someone looked close, it'd be obvious I was still just sixteen, but that was fine.

I didn't know if the investigation's target was into girls my age, my body type, or with my physical features, but at least one of those things had been enough for Mustang to keep me away from trouble, so I had to assume just being in the north end of town would be enough.

I took one of my chosen detours just to doubly check someone hadn't managed to tail me without my noticing (no one had), and then I headed for the target space. The further north I got, it was easy to tell why this target had chosen it as his area. Sure, there were shops, but not many of them were open, and even the residential areas had fewer cars along the streets, suggesting a potential income gap. Sure, there were streetlights, but the architectural layout was such that most alleyways were mostly dark. All it would take was someone headed home at the wrong time, and they could easily be a goner. The new moon meant that there wasn't any extra light to help.

Now the hard part is going to be finding this suspect without running into Team Mustang.

For all that I'd figured out, exactly where Mustang and the rest were staking out was one part I hadn't gotten a hold of. Considering Kain had already let one piece of info slip, I had guessed that everyone would be especially tight-lipped about the case, so I hadn't even bothered asking. There wasn't even a guarantee the murderer would be out and about with such a guard on them. I mean, Rito had said they were at a stalemate.

Whatever. I made it this far, and I have several hours until day breaks. Might as well take advantage of my good luck and see how it goes.

And thus began my adventures in wandering East City's streets at night in search of a serial killer. It was a novel idea in concept, though it felt like meandering at night for the most part, which was something I wasn't a stranger to. It would have been much more effective if I knew the locations of the previous cases to see if there was a common trend, but rifling through the newspapers for info was just another one of those things that would have given me away.

It turned out I didn't need to worry much, though. After at least an hour and a half of aimless exploring, I felt it. That undeniable presence of someone watching me, though it was faint. Either I'd gotten the attention of a random passerby, one of Mustang's crew, or the target. Maintaining a casual gait was the trickiest part when my instincts were screaming at me to make a move, but I insisted on enduring, making a turn to where I remembered the closest set of apartments being in the guise of making it look like I was heading home.

Soft footsteps.

The just visible form of an approaching shadow beneath my own on the orange glow of a streetlamp.

A foul smelling rag slapped over my nose and mouth.

[Author's Notes]

Merry Christmas and happy holidays! Welcome to the latest chapter of "Kama makes poor life decisions"!

An extensive amount of thanks go out to AlecLightwoodMagnusBane, 1233moon1233, totaalt, breeswalkingaway, Draggon Dancer, and Esdeath22 for the favorites and follows since last chapter! Seeing the support on this story makes me feel giddy, especially since it feels like a struggle to write sometimes. May this latest update convey even a fraction of my thanks.

This year was certainly a messy one, I don't think anyone's arguing with that. I know my own updating plans got completely thrown out the window. Hopefully I'll have something a little more substantial for 2021, but we'll see how that goes. I've got all sorts of things I need to organize first...

This arc is almost at a close, though, so we'll just keep moving along, yes indeed. I look forward to sharing the next update with you, so please look forward to it!

-Avi

[12.25.2020]