S.I.U. - The Sailor Investigation Unit
by DARK DAY FOR ANIME
Disclaimer - all characters pertaining to the series Bishoujo Senshi
Sailormoon are owned by Takeuchi Naoko, Bandai and Kodansya. All
other characters were thought up by me. Well, its true, isn't it?
Part One
Death Warmed Up
It wasn't really fair, thought DCI Kikotsuka as she sat in the
unmarked police car, staring through the rain-splattered window at
the front of the hotel.
At 28 years of age, almost 29 now, Kikotsuka Aoi had found
herself in a promotional dead-end. The Sailor Investigation Unit,
S.I.U. for short. The laughing stock of the entire police force.
For someone who had spent much of their late teens and early
twenties focused on making a career for themselves at the expense
of their private lives, it was shattering for her to find the glass
ceiling alive and well. Bad pun, she thought.
Not that that was unexpected, this was Japan, after all. Not
a nation noted for its great career prospects for women, especially
when it came to the Major Crime unit, which had been her ultimate
objective. Something she wasn't likely to reach now.
The S.I.U. wasn't a bad concept in itself. In fact, it was
seen as an important information gathering arm of the department.
It had been created as a temporary unit of no more than three
officers to keep tabs on the activities of of the Sailorsenshi, or,
more correctly, Sailormoon. At least there had only been one of the
bitches at the time, now there was something close to a small army.
Aoi chuckled darkly. Well, there was one less to investigate now.
She heard a knock at the door window and wound it down as
Akunatuska Kaji smiled at her through it. Her burly, middle-
aged partner had absolutely no sense of occasion. She often
wondered why she had been partnered with the moron. They had
absolutely nothing in common outside their duties. Often leaving
to go home was something to look forward to if it meant not having
to see him, or listen to his depressed tirades over his separation
from his wife. A situation she understood entirely.
"What do you want now?" She asked huffily.
"What? You still mad at me?" He chuckled.
"Of course I'm still mad at you."
"I only mentioned to Burou that you'd once auditioned to be an
idol singer." He shrugged his shoulders. "What's wrong with that?"
"Not that, you goit!" She took a deep breath. "You going
over my head to the chief when the call came in about this."
"Oh that. Sorry. Its not often you get to see one of the
Sailors live in the flesh. Or dead in the flesh, as the case may
be."
"Bad joke." Aoi sniffed. "So what she look like? Messy?"
"Yeah. Akito and Shinji are taking the shots now. Why don't
you come in and take a look for yourself?"
"I can guess what her body looks like. I have seen bodies
before."
"Yeah right." He stood up. "Fat lot of good playing aloof is
gonna do our cause, Kiko-san."
"Are you saying I'm squeamish?"
"No, I'm saying you're still upset because I got here first."
"Yeah, right."
Aoi opened the door of the car and Kaji stepped back to give
her some room. As she got out she looked back at the police cordon,
and the small crowd of people and media that had gathered.
"Have the brass fed the chooks yet?"
"Nah. All that has been let out was that a body was found.
No specifics."
"Good. It'll give us some time before the others start
looking for her."
"What do you mean?" Kaji frowned at her as she turned back to
him.
"There is a chance they don't know she's dead. The Sailors, I
mean."
"What? Them? Never." He pointed to the crowd. "They're
probably amongst that lot. Well, one or two of them, watching us
right now."
"We can't take any possibility for granted." Aoi shut the
door of the car and stepped around him, pausing to look back.
"Well, are you coming?"
"Where?"
"Inside, stupid. I've decided to have a look for myself."
"Yeah yeah yeah. I hear you." He said tiredly.
He had been right. It was messy.
Lying on the King-size bed was the decerebrated corpse of a
young woman.... A Sailorsenshi. It looked like a dead set case of
suicide. The girl still held the shotgun she'd apparently used to
finish herself off with, both barrels discharged. Aoi rubbed her
eyes and sighed as other officers, mostly from Major Crime and the
local CID, poured over the scene.
"Told you. I told you it was messy." Kaji sniffed and put
his hands in the pockets of his overcoat.
"I heard you the first time." Aoi stepped up to the bedside
as one of the Majors, Shimazaki, who had been going over the scene,
picking around for pieces of evidence, smiled at her.
"Hey, Kiko-san, you're going to love some of the stuff we
found here."
"What?" She stared at the younger man, in his mid-twenties.
The kind of bright spark that was on his way up the ranks and really
shitted her off.
"If what we found around her was any sign, she's stuck enough
narcotics into her system to kill a herd of elephants. Some
illegal, some prescription, but mostly over the counter stuff. Be
interesting when the report gets back from the coroner."
"You're sure that she took them all?"
"Nope."
"Hmm?"
"From what the owners of the motel said, more than one person
had booked into the room. They didn't see her at the time, though.
She must have been slipped in afterwards."
"Were the others young women?"
"Nah, a couple of youths, coundln't have been much older than
eighteen, the both of them. One was tall, pretty thin and reedy.
The other was a this heavy type. Dressed well, they said, like
Yakuza."
"Yakuza? Great, just what we need." Aoi shook her head.
"Puts a whole new light on things."
"What do you mean?"
Kaji stepped up beside Aoi. "About a month back, the Sailors
were involved in busting a narcotics ring one of the families had
set up. Twenty members, including the local boss, went down for
that one. This could be a retaliation."
"In which case we're looking at homicide rather than suicide."
"Indeed." Aoi scratched her head, feeling somewhat tired with
life all of a sudden. The concept of a war between the Sailors and
the Yakuza was the kind of enthralling news she needed right now.
Shimazaki leaned forward over the bed and fingered the fabric
of the corpse's fuku skirt with his gloved hand. "Strange fabric."
He muttered. He stopped and looked back at Aoi.
"Well, you're the experts. Is this really one of the Sailors
or just some poor cow whose got herself mixed up in things?"
"That's one of them, alright. The uniform, the physical body
shape, the colour of the hair. What hair colour we can see." Aoi
screwed up her nose, not trying to gawk at the head of the corpse.
Horrified fascination was hard to stifle in situations like this.
"Even the face. It all matches with the evidence we have."
"Big break for you guys, finally being able to catch one.
Pity she had to die for it to happen." Shimazaki grinned. Right
at that moment, Aoi could have socked him one.
Kaji took Aoi by the arm. "Come on, there's nothing more we
can do until they've finished."
"What do you mean, nothing more to do?"
He didn't answer, just dragged her from the room. Shimazaki
watched them to go, shaking his head. Course there was nothing more
for them to do. All SIU were nothing more than glorified
librarians, wouldn't know jack about real crimes like this.
He turned and looked back at the corpse, then noticed
something lying just under her shoulder.... He reached over and
lifted her slightly. It appeared to be a kind of pen. An
ornamental one, of course, but a pen all the same. Slowly, he
eased the pen out with his gloved hand and placed it tentatively in
a plastic bag, all the while one of the police photographers
covering his actions.
Kaji had opted to drive, and Aoi had protested. In fact, she
had whinged and whined ever since they left the scene at the motel.
He was used to it, though. If there was anything about Aoi he DID
understand, it was her persistent necessity to get things off her
back by vocalising them.
When they hit the motorway, however, she went quiet.
Worryingly quiet. He looked aside at her, and saw her sitting,
slightly hunched in her seat.
"You'll get a bad back if you do that too often."
"Ha Ha Ha." She droned humourlessly.
"So what are you mulling over this time? I hate it when you
go into the long silences."
"Its just the girl. The Sailor."
"What about her?"
"She looked so young."
"That's probably because she is. Reports indicate the
likelihood that most of the Sailors aren't yet 18. She, in
particular, is 17."
"I was finishing high school at that age. Just thinking of
entering University...." She trailed off. "I had boyfriends and
music and schoolwork on the brain. I wasn't going around, trying to
save the world or society from itself...." She turned to him. "I
must sound like an idiot."
"Not really. I can barely remember what I was doing at that
age." he chuckled. "I think I met Keiko, then. Probably been
trying to forget on an instictive level...." He chuckled to himself
as Aoi turned to look out the window at the passing streetlights.
"So many times, they've just popped out of nowhere and done
the job we should've been doing. And still, nobody within the
hierachy or the government is willing to give them any credit. Its
like they're afraid of what the Sailors represent."
"A challenge to their authority." Kaji sniffed. "Wouldn't
surprise me if someone in the Diet planned this from the start."
Aoi shook her head, not turning to him. "You're into too
many conspiracy theories, you know that?"
"So would you if you've seen and heard half the things I have.
Remember, I was thrown off a taskforce investigating the activities
of Aum Shin Rikyo before the Sarin Gas Bombing. I knew something
was going to go down, and I said so." He huffed. "My biggest
mistake. They had members everywhere, even within the department."
There were a few moments of silence as Aoi rubbed her face,
trying to keep herself awake. She turned back to Kaji. "I've still
got to pour over the psych assessment files. I have to work out
what the other Sailors might do when they discover she's dead."
"I have a pretty good idea what they might do. Or what some
of them most certainly will do."
"Yes, but we won't know for sure until it has happened, will
we?" Aoi huffed. "That's why I want to go over the files. At
least we'll be able to make some kind of prediction. Whether or not
they'll act as a group, or whether they'll run off individually and
hunt down those responsible."
"That's the point, though. We're not sure who is responsible.
And I have a feeling they won't be, either."
"What makes you say that?"
Kaji just shrugged. "Experience, I guess. If it was a
planned execution, then those responsible would have made sure their
tracks are well covered."
"No matter how well covered they may be, there is still the
strange time powers of Pluto. She might have even predicted this."
"In which case, we have to ask the question... Why didn't she
do anything about it? The only answer I can come up with is that
she didn't know."
"But she MUST have known. Their powers are inhuman ones. Who
knows what they are truly capable of. Even with all the records
we've kept, we still don't know who they are, or what they
represent."
"I know that. That's not the argument here. The point is, we
have just identified a dead Sailorsenshi, lying in a motel room on
the edge of town. We identified her because we have poured over all
the photographic and witness sketch evidence. Repeatedly." He
paused for effect. "Now, if they knew something beforehand, they
surely would have been warned and would have done something about
it. Well, wouldn't they?"
Aoi nodded mutely.
"So, we have to face the fact that they probably didn't know.
Not even Pluto. We also have to face the possibility that they
STILL don't know she is dead. But with each passing moment, that is
becoming less and less likely. The news about the body will have
been seen by at least one of them. Soon, the news will get out that
the body is that of a girl, and they will begin to wonder why they
haven't seen their friend, for social gatherings and the whatnot,
which they have arranged. Eventually, they are going to start
putting two and two together. On top of that, the brass will tell
the media that the body found is that of a Sailorsenshi, if for no
other reason than they would like to know why we are being so
secretive about this case." He paused for a breath, this time. Aoi
just sat back in her seat, resting her head against the back. "I
give us 48 hours, Aoi, before they start to miss her. I mean,
REALLY miss her."
"Then we should put out an APB to all departments to take note
of any report handed in about a missing girl."
"If they bother to report her as missing."
"What if her family kicks up a fuss?"
"Who said any of them have a family?"
"Well, they've got to have someone."
"We don't know diddly squat about them outside their
activities. They could be from the moon, for all we know."
"What? Aliens from another world? Yeah, right."
Kaji looked at her for a few moments. "So just where the hell
do they get their powers from?"
"They're psychic espers?"
"Aww, not that old theory of yours again."
"Well, I have to have one. And I'm not going to believe the
mindless, illogical, paranoid crap that you believe in, either."
"Well excuuuuuuse me." He huffed, hitting the steering wheel
with his hands. Aoi wasn't intimidated. She knew exactly how far
she could rile him.
"Look, as you said, we know nothing about them outside their
activities. So we have to assume they are living as close to normal
lives it is possible for them to live. That means families who may
or may not know of their capabilities."
"And if they do know, and realise she is missing, they aren't
very likely to do anything for fear of raising suspicion."
"But even if they DO know, they will fear for her safety.
That means it is likely that they, too, will be active. Suspicious
neighbours reporting strange behaviour can be an effective weapon."
Kaji went silent as he steered the car from the motorway, onto
the main road that lead to their offices. Aoi, satisfied, reached
into the glovebox.
"Did you leave that muffin in here? I'm starving."
"Aoi..."
She turned to him. "What?"
"What did you mean by 'effective weapon'?"
She looked at him for a few moments, trying to work out what
he was trying to say. "I mean, an effective weapon in our
efforts..."
"To catch them? To stop them and arrest them as vigilantes?"
"Well, nothing like that. At least register their true
identities...."
"Why? For what purpose? Why do we really NEED to know who
they are?"
"I would have thought that was blatantly obvious."
"Because it is our job? Or because it may mean promotion, and
an ending of the unit?"
She stared at him, pondering his words. Then she shook her
head as her hand grabbed a paper bag in the glovebox, pulling it
out. "You know, I've never really thought about it. I just want
their identites on paper. It lends a sense of completeness about
the issue."
"It'll also look good on your record if you were marked down
as the woman who 'exposed the Sailors', so to speak."
"Yeah. So?"
Kaji chuckled and shook his head. "You are a presumptuous
little woman, you know that?"
"Better than being an embittered old bastard like you." She
looked into the bag. "Whoo, double choc-chip. Want any?"
He held out his hand.
Aoi stepped into the office of the SIU, her heart sinking at
the sickening pale green of the walls. She had grown tired of
seeing these walls. At least, she had come to associate them with
the pitiful experiences she had had ever since being posted here.
As the light to the office flickered on, she stepped over to the
mainframe, checking who had access in the past 24 hours.
"I'll leave you here." She heard Kaji mumble in the
background. "I can't stand hanging around, watching you dose
yourself with more radioactive rays."
"Yeah, yeah. Fine. Whatever you want."
"I'm going over to the Majors, see what little gems they are
going to come up with."
"Go! Go then. I'm busy."
Kaji chuckled mirthlessly and shook his head. "Damn
computers, can't stand the things." He said on his way out.
Aoi stepped over to the door and closed it behind him. She
looked through the glass partition at some of the other offices,
but they all appeared to be dark. Most of those within the SIU
were either at the scene now, or working with the other divisions.
She liked that. It gave her the peace and quiet she wanted.
She sat down and entered her access code. The mainframe
chewed that over and then asked her what areas she wanted to look
at, giving her a choice. She chose Psychological Assessment.
It then asked her which Sailorsenshi, or affiliated figure,
she wanted to look at. Now there was a choice. Where does one
start with a group like this. Well, she knew she couldn't choose
one of them. She was almost tempted to look in her file, too. A
pity that she was dead, really. It meant an end to the file. A
REAL end. No more activities for whomever followed her to cover.
Just a grim FILE CLOSED to deal with. She sighed. This was
getting her nowhere. They surely should have known that their
activities could get them killed.... Whomever she REALLY was, she
probably accepted death as a potential. Only, not quite THIS way.
Aoi came to a decision, and hit the icon for PLUTO.
END OF PART 1
DDFA ayanami@internode.on.net
5th Feb 1998
by DARK DAY FOR ANIME
Disclaimer - all characters pertaining to the series Bishoujo Senshi
Sailormoon are owned by Takeuchi Naoko, Bandai and Kodansya. All
other characters were thought up by me. Well, its true, isn't it?
Part One
Death Warmed Up
It wasn't really fair, thought DCI Kikotsuka as she sat in the
unmarked police car, staring through the rain-splattered window at
the front of the hotel.
At 28 years of age, almost 29 now, Kikotsuka Aoi had found
herself in a promotional dead-end. The Sailor Investigation Unit,
S.I.U. for short. The laughing stock of the entire police force.
For someone who had spent much of their late teens and early
twenties focused on making a career for themselves at the expense
of their private lives, it was shattering for her to find the glass
ceiling alive and well. Bad pun, she thought.
Not that that was unexpected, this was Japan, after all. Not
a nation noted for its great career prospects for women, especially
when it came to the Major Crime unit, which had been her ultimate
objective. Something she wasn't likely to reach now.
The S.I.U. wasn't a bad concept in itself. In fact, it was
seen as an important information gathering arm of the department.
It had been created as a temporary unit of no more than three
officers to keep tabs on the activities of of the Sailorsenshi, or,
more correctly, Sailormoon. At least there had only been one of the
bitches at the time, now there was something close to a small army.
Aoi chuckled darkly. Well, there was one less to investigate now.
She heard a knock at the door window and wound it down as
Akunatuska Kaji smiled at her through it. Her burly, middle-
aged partner had absolutely no sense of occasion. She often
wondered why she had been partnered with the moron. They had
absolutely nothing in common outside their duties. Often leaving
to go home was something to look forward to if it meant not having
to see him, or listen to his depressed tirades over his separation
from his wife. A situation she understood entirely.
"What do you want now?" She asked huffily.
"What? You still mad at me?" He chuckled.
"Of course I'm still mad at you."
"I only mentioned to Burou that you'd once auditioned to be an
idol singer." He shrugged his shoulders. "What's wrong with that?"
"Not that, you goit!" She took a deep breath. "You going
over my head to the chief when the call came in about this."
"Oh that. Sorry. Its not often you get to see one of the
Sailors live in the flesh. Or dead in the flesh, as the case may
be."
"Bad joke." Aoi sniffed. "So what she look like? Messy?"
"Yeah. Akito and Shinji are taking the shots now. Why don't
you come in and take a look for yourself?"
"I can guess what her body looks like. I have seen bodies
before."
"Yeah right." He stood up. "Fat lot of good playing aloof is
gonna do our cause, Kiko-san."
"Are you saying I'm squeamish?"
"No, I'm saying you're still upset because I got here first."
"Yeah, right."
Aoi opened the door of the car and Kaji stepped back to give
her some room. As she got out she looked back at the police cordon,
and the small crowd of people and media that had gathered.
"Have the brass fed the chooks yet?"
"Nah. All that has been let out was that a body was found.
No specifics."
"Good. It'll give us some time before the others start
looking for her."
"What do you mean?" Kaji frowned at her as she turned back to
him.
"There is a chance they don't know she's dead. The Sailors, I
mean."
"What? Them? Never." He pointed to the crowd. "They're
probably amongst that lot. Well, one or two of them, watching us
right now."
"We can't take any possibility for granted." Aoi shut the
door of the car and stepped around him, pausing to look back.
"Well, are you coming?"
"Where?"
"Inside, stupid. I've decided to have a look for myself."
"Yeah yeah yeah. I hear you." He said tiredly.
He had been right. It was messy.
Lying on the King-size bed was the decerebrated corpse of a
young woman.... A Sailorsenshi. It looked like a dead set case of
suicide. The girl still held the shotgun she'd apparently used to
finish herself off with, both barrels discharged. Aoi rubbed her
eyes and sighed as other officers, mostly from Major Crime and the
local CID, poured over the scene.
"Told you. I told you it was messy." Kaji sniffed and put
his hands in the pockets of his overcoat.
"I heard you the first time." Aoi stepped up to the bedside
as one of the Majors, Shimazaki, who had been going over the scene,
picking around for pieces of evidence, smiled at her.
"Hey, Kiko-san, you're going to love some of the stuff we
found here."
"What?" She stared at the younger man, in his mid-twenties.
The kind of bright spark that was on his way up the ranks and really
shitted her off.
"If what we found around her was any sign, she's stuck enough
narcotics into her system to kill a herd of elephants. Some
illegal, some prescription, but mostly over the counter stuff. Be
interesting when the report gets back from the coroner."
"You're sure that she took them all?"
"Nope."
"Hmm?"
"From what the owners of the motel said, more than one person
had booked into the room. They didn't see her at the time, though.
She must have been slipped in afterwards."
"Were the others young women?"
"Nah, a couple of youths, coundln't have been much older than
eighteen, the both of them. One was tall, pretty thin and reedy.
The other was a this heavy type. Dressed well, they said, like
Yakuza."
"Yakuza? Great, just what we need." Aoi shook her head.
"Puts a whole new light on things."
"What do you mean?"
Kaji stepped up beside Aoi. "About a month back, the Sailors
were involved in busting a narcotics ring one of the families had
set up. Twenty members, including the local boss, went down for
that one. This could be a retaliation."
"In which case we're looking at homicide rather than suicide."
"Indeed." Aoi scratched her head, feeling somewhat tired with
life all of a sudden. The concept of a war between the Sailors and
the Yakuza was the kind of enthralling news she needed right now.
Shimazaki leaned forward over the bed and fingered the fabric
of the corpse's fuku skirt with his gloved hand. "Strange fabric."
He muttered. He stopped and looked back at Aoi.
"Well, you're the experts. Is this really one of the Sailors
or just some poor cow whose got herself mixed up in things?"
"That's one of them, alright. The uniform, the physical body
shape, the colour of the hair. What hair colour we can see." Aoi
screwed up her nose, not trying to gawk at the head of the corpse.
Horrified fascination was hard to stifle in situations like this.
"Even the face. It all matches with the evidence we have."
"Big break for you guys, finally being able to catch one.
Pity she had to die for it to happen." Shimazaki grinned. Right
at that moment, Aoi could have socked him one.
Kaji took Aoi by the arm. "Come on, there's nothing more we
can do until they've finished."
"What do you mean, nothing more to do?"
He didn't answer, just dragged her from the room. Shimazaki
watched them to go, shaking his head. Course there was nothing more
for them to do. All SIU were nothing more than glorified
librarians, wouldn't know jack about real crimes like this.
He turned and looked back at the corpse, then noticed
something lying just under her shoulder.... He reached over and
lifted her slightly. It appeared to be a kind of pen. An
ornamental one, of course, but a pen all the same. Slowly, he
eased the pen out with his gloved hand and placed it tentatively in
a plastic bag, all the while one of the police photographers
covering his actions.
Kaji had opted to drive, and Aoi had protested. In fact, she
had whinged and whined ever since they left the scene at the motel.
He was used to it, though. If there was anything about Aoi he DID
understand, it was her persistent necessity to get things off her
back by vocalising them.
When they hit the motorway, however, she went quiet.
Worryingly quiet. He looked aside at her, and saw her sitting,
slightly hunched in her seat.
"You'll get a bad back if you do that too often."
"Ha Ha Ha." She droned humourlessly.
"So what are you mulling over this time? I hate it when you
go into the long silences."
"Its just the girl. The Sailor."
"What about her?"
"She looked so young."
"That's probably because she is. Reports indicate the
likelihood that most of the Sailors aren't yet 18. She, in
particular, is 17."
"I was finishing high school at that age. Just thinking of
entering University...." She trailed off. "I had boyfriends and
music and schoolwork on the brain. I wasn't going around, trying to
save the world or society from itself...." She turned to him. "I
must sound like an idiot."
"Not really. I can barely remember what I was doing at that
age." he chuckled. "I think I met Keiko, then. Probably been
trying to forget on an instictive level...." He chuckled to himself
as Aoi turned to look out the window at the passing streetlights.
"So many times, they've just popped out of nowhere and done
the job we should've been doing. And still, nobody within the
hierachy or the government is willing to give them any credit. Its
like they're afraid of what the Sailors represent."
"A challenge to their authority." Kaji sniffed. "Wouldn't
surprise me if someone in the Diet planned this from the start."
Aoi shook her head, not turning to him. "You're into too
many conspiracy theories, you know that?"
"So would you if you've seen and heard half the things I have.
Remember, I was thrown off a taskforce investigating the activities
of Aum Shin Rikyo before the Sarin Gas Bombing. I knew something
was going to go down, and I said so." He huffed. "My biggest
mistake. They had members everywhere, even within the department."
There were a few moments of silence as Aoi rubbed her face,
trying to keep herself awake. She turned back to Kaji. "I've still
got to pour over the psych assessment files. I have to work out
what the other Sailors might do when they discover she's dead."
"I have a pretty good idea what they might do. Or what some
of them most certainly will do."
"Yes, but we won't know for sure until it has happened, will
we?" Aoi huffed. "That's why I want to go over the files. At
least we'll be able to make some kind of prediction. Whether or not
they'll act as a group, or whether they'll run off individually and
hunt down those responsible."
"That's the point, though. We're not sure who is responsible.
And I have a feeling they won't be, either."
"What makes you say that?"
Kaji just shrugged. "Experience, I guess. If it was a
planned execution, then those responsible would have made sure their
tracks are well covered."
"No matter how well covered they may be, there is still the
strange time powers of Pluto. She might have even predicted this."
"In which case, we have to ask the question... Why didn't she
do anything about it? The only answer I can come up with is that
she didn't know."
"But she MUST have known. Their powers are inhuman ones. Who
knows what they are truly capable of. Even with all the records
we've kept, we still don't know who they are, or what they
represent."
"I know that. That's not the argument here. The point is, we
have just identified a dead Sailorsenshi, lying in a motel room on
the edge of town. We identified her because we have poured over all
the photographic and witness sketch evidence. Repeatedly." He
paused for effect. "Now, if they knew something beforehand, they
surely would have been warned and would have done something about
it. Well, wouldn't they?"
Aoi nodded mutely.
"So, we have to face the fact that they probably didn't know.
Not even Pluto. We also have to face the possibility that they
STILL don't know she is dead. But with each passing moment, that is
becoming less and less likely. The news about the body will have
been seen by at least one of them. Soon, the news will get out that
the body is that of a girl, and they will begin to wonder why they
haven't seen their friend, for social gatherings and the whatnot,
which they have arranged. Eventually, they are going to start
putting two and two together. On top of that, the brass will tell
the media that the body found is that of a Sailorsenshi, if for no
other reason than they would like to know why we are being so
secretive about this case." He paused for a breath, this time. Aoi
just sat back in her seat, resting her head against the back. "I
give us 48 hours, Aoi, before they start to miss her. I mean,
REALLY miss her."
"Then we should put out an APB to all departments to take note
of any report handed in about a missing girl."
"If they bother to report her as missing."
"What if her family kicks up a fuss?"
"Who said any of them have a family?"
"Well, they've got to have someone."
"We don't know diddly squat about them outside their
activities. They could be from the moon, for all we know."
"What? Aliens from another world? Yeah, right."
Kaji looked at her for a few moments. "So just where the hell
do they get their powers from?"
"They're psychic espers?"
"Aww, not that old theory of yours again."
"Well, I have to have one. And I'm not going to believe the
mindless, illogical, paranoid crap that you believe in, either."
"Well excuuuuuuse me." He huffed, hitting the steering wheel
with his hands. Aoi wasn't intimidated. She knew exactly how far
she could rile him.
"Look, as you said, we know nothing about them outside their
activities. So we have to assume they are living as close to normal
lives it is possible for them to live. That means families who may
or may not know of their capabilities."
"And if they do know, and realise she is missing, they aren't
very likely to do anything for fear of raising suspicion."
"But even if they DO know, they will fear for her safety.
That means it is likely that they, too, will be active. Suspicious
neighbours reporting strange behaviour can be an effective weapon."
Kaji went silent as he steered the car from the motorway, onto
the main road that lead to their offices. Aoi, satisfied, reached
into the glovebox.
"Did you leave that muffin in here? I'm starving."
"Aoi..."
She turned to him. "What?"
"What did you mean by 'effective weapon'?"
She looked at him for a few moments, trying to work out what
he was trying to say. "I mean, an effective weapon in our
efforts..."
"To catch them? To stop them and arrest them as vigilantes?"
"Well, nothing like that. At least register their true
identities...."
"Why? For what purpose? Why do we really NEED to know who
they are?"
"I would have thought that was blatantly obvious."
"Because it is our job? Or because it may mean promotion, and
an ending of the unit?"
She stared at him, pondering his words. Then she shook her
head as her hand grabbed a paper bag in the glovebox, pulling it
out. "You know, I've never really thought about it. I just want
their identites on paper. It lends a sense of completeness about
the issue."
"It'll also look good on your record if you were marked down
as the woman who 'exposed the Sailors', so to speak."
"Yeah. So?"
Kaji chuckled and shook his head. "You are a presumptuous
little woman, you know that?"
"Better than being an embittered old bastard like you." She
looked into the bag. "Whoo, double choc-chip. Want any?"
He held out his hand.
Aoi stepped into the office of the SIU, her heart sinking at
the sickening pale green of the walls. She had grown tired of
seeing these walls. At least, she had come to associate them with
the pitiful experiences she had had ever since being posted here.
As the light to the office flickered on, she stepped over to the
mainframe, checking who had access in the past 24 hours.
"I'll leave you here." She heard Kaji mumble in the
background. "I can't stand hanging around, watching you dose
yourself with more radioactive rays."
"Yeah, yeah. Fine. Whatever you want."
"I'm going over to the Majors, see what little gems they are
going to come up with."
"Go! Go then. I'm busy."
Kaji chuckled mirthlessly and shook his head. "Damn
computers, can't stand the things." He said on his way out.
Aoi stepped over to the door and closed it behind him. She
looked through the glass partition at some of the other offices,
but they all appeared to be dark. Most of those within the SIU
were either at the scene now, or working with the other divisions.
She liked that. It gave her the peace and quiet she wanted.
She sat down and entered her access code. The mainframe
chewed that over and then asked her what areas she wanted to look
at, giving her a choice. She chose Psychological Assessment.
It then asked her which Sailorsenshi, or affiliated figure,
she wanted to look at. Now there was a choice. Where does one
start with a group like this. Well, she knew she couldn't choose
one of them. She was almost tempted to look in her file, too. A
pity that she was dead, really. It meant an end to the file. A
REAL end. No more activities for whomever followed her to cover.
Just a grim FILE CLOSED to deal with. She sighed. This was
getting her nowhere. They surely should have known that their
activities could get them killed.... Whomever she REALLY was, she
probably accepted death as a potential. Only, not quite THIS way.
Aoi came to a decision, and hit the icon for PLUTO.
END OF PART 1
DDFA ayanami@internode.on.net
5th Feb 1998