Re:Love Chapter 18: Devious Rescue Failure, a re:zero fanfic

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The following is a fan-based

FICTION

Re:Zero and other products related to the this series are all owned by Tappei Nagatsuki.

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Chapter 18: Devious Rescue Failure

EDIT: Chapter gets a bit graphic and gruesome later on.

Natsuki Subaru was not a detective, nor he fancied himself one in training.

This thought didn't come out of nowhere, but rather from a predicament which had plagued the entire land owned by the Margrave in the last two weeks. It's been that long since Anastasia left and... the conversation they had was still impressed in his mind. It had been nerve-wracking to push off the girl's aggressive flirting, but it came quite easy if compared to what had happened previously with Emilia. At least he wasn't dealing with the aftermath of some nightly molestation.

Subaru made a friend, and he wasn't sure this one would be wanting to remain just that from the few other interactions that came from that night. The lingering kiss on the cheek the plum-haired young woman dropped would have irked Emilia if not for the fact she too was given one. It was a teasing act, one that worked surprisingly well with the two of them due to how confidently the businesswoman behaved around them. Nonetheless, Anastasia had left with a positive mood and happier outlook over a potential alliance in the near future. That was good news when it came to elections but...

Peace was not meant to last for long within their lands. Subaru was aware that new issues would have come to them, just not from anything beyond the royal elections. It all started one morning when Roswaal brought up a peculiar news which caught the whole room's attention.

"It's veeery troublesome," The nobleman started to say. "There seems to have been two deaths yesterday night. Two rangers have been found poisoned at the edge of the forest."

"P-Poisoned?" Emilia stuttered briefly due to the shocking way they died. "An assassin?"

"Maybe. Or... It could be worse~!"

Why does he sound so excited?

"Do we have any details about it?" Subaru ultimately inquired and... he found his plate replaced by some documents Ram happily delivered to him. "Oh."

"These are comments from fellow rangers and a few hunters that looked into the body. The local doctors all agreed that the poison was injected via stab-wound."

"...So, it was an assassin," The NEET remarked and Roswaal smiled.

"Indeed."

...Then why did you make it seem like it was still not known?!

The young man sighed, but then he realized something. The papers had been dropped on his lap. Just his lap. Not Emilia's. A detail she noticed too, same for Puck- the trio stared at Roswaal for an explanation. Something the Clown had been prepared for by the way he smiled earnestly at the development.

"Since Subaru has been veeeery exceptional with his hard work, I believe he will have a good chance of securing the culprit to justice."

That was a bit excessive. As mentioned earlier in this entry, Natsuki Subaru was not a detective.

He had read Sherlock Holmes, he had seen some movies- all of that because his mom was an avid fan of the series and... Subaru did like that sort of stuff too. Not just as obsessively as the woman. He could understand the fascination and he too was into seeing a brilliant man in action, bringing baddies to jail through clever deductions. But Subaru wasn't that smart. He was not too dumb, but he was about as average as one could be with his upbringing.

No, he knew the job was going to be a tough one and... it was. As he went into his room, he listed down what he will need to start his efforts. Using just the villagers' account on the matter was not going to help entirely and he needed to be... there. Two hours later, close to mid-day, Subaru and Rem were calmly standing by the area where the corpses had been found. The maid acted as his guard, a duty she took with a patient look while glancing around but mostly at the young man as he was moving around... oddly.

"Why are you pacing like that?"

Formality had long been forsaken, something that Subaru didn't mind as he smiled back at her. He was more intrigued by the question than anything else.

"I'm trying to get some approximate distance from the trees to where the bodies were found. Since they are no longer there, I can't say it's precise but... it's something."

The blue-haired girl nodded, her gaze back to look around as she left the young man to resume his peculiar task. Then she glanced at him, writing down the various distances in steps. Soon they wandered back to Arlam where they checked the nearby clinic, the doctors having finished what Subaru called an autopsy. One of the men that had been found was without family, and while it was unusual for dead bodies to be checked by doctors, it was as scandalous as some traditional minds would want it to be. Not when magic worked around this sort of business too.

The healer came back with more details: the kind of poison that was used was not of Lugnican descent. There was a chance the attacker was a foreigner.

The duo was soon back to the manor, with Subaru walking off with these new clues back to his room and... then to pester a certain blonde spirit. At first Beatrice saw no point in entertaining Subaru in this regard, but when he mentioned that it would have been an adventure without leaving her sanctuary... the girl indulged him on a few questions.

By the end of a lengthy hours-long debate, two blackboards were filled with various words, drawings and lines connecting all at once in what looked to be an attempt to unsolve a conspiracy. And one that neither could decipher.

"This is frustrating, I suppose," The petite librarian remarked dryly, a feeling shared by the taller man beside her while both stared at one of the blackboards in particular.

"Well, there isn't much we can get beyond what I found. The attacker is definitely a professional since they left no footsteps, no signs of approach- they cleaned up after themselves."

"And that doesn't limit the hundreds of options in the list," She argued and Subaru nodded.

"However... We can make some assumptions. If the assassin killed two innocent men that had nothing to do with this, then that means they are experienced enough to use fear as an incentive. In fact, that would explain the unnecessary killing- it's to show off their skills and create dread in others' minds."

"That would be reasonable, yes. But it's still an assumption, and I don't like assuming about these kinds of important things, I suppose," Beatrice argued flatly, turning around and fishing some books out of a couple of shelves. "Knowing the poison doesn't help much either. Not when this strain is known to be sold in both Kararagi and Gusteko in equal quantities."

This was plain infuriating. Fast-forward to two days into this investigation and a new double murder ensued. This time they had a direct witness. It was a young boy that was walking around the forest with his parents for a picnic. The kid was a mess, crying himself to sleep a few times before he managed to get a proper description of what happened. A 'shadow', or a cloaked individual, which used daggers (two). It decapitated his parents before his eyes. And he spared him. Why? He didn't know, and no one could tell what really happened. In front of this new case, Roswaal decided to implement a curfew and limit the villagers' means to move alone in the area, and to always be around militia that was raised for the occasion. Also, Roswaal would now have Rem check round the manor for any surprises during nighttime.

It was a few hours after that announcement that something finally came to his mind. Subaru felt something click with the details he was picking up as he tiredly re-read his own notes. It was something he thought that made him realize the potential truth and... he gritted his teeth as he realized how fucked they were. Ram was definitely upset at being yanked off her bed, but she was the closest as Rem was still making the rounds around the castle to check for any infiltrator trying to get inside. The pinkette didn't understand at first, but Subaru was talking, fast and unforgiving.

"Th-The assassin- they are not trying to kill any of us here. They just wanted us to be distracted, confused," The young man explained, pausing and stumbling in his speech as his mind was burning while they tried to reach the dungeons. "They are after Meili. They are here for Meili."

The fact this killer struck by poison and then decapitation- both were without M.O. which was unheard off from assassins of this time. Unless the assassin was purposely using patterns different than their own so that no one could track them. Yet, they spared the child to narrate the scene when it was not necessary. They weren't after kids, which meant they were willing to overlook young survivors of their onslaughts. The attacks were randomly caused, a distraction for the main event.

Meili was without a guard to keep an eye on her for any potential escapes right now. Despite her long stay in the dungeon, she had been given a comfy room there with books to read and proper food to be satisfied. She was still a prisoner, and one that had still much to say from what Roswaal admitted about it.

Also, she had been relentlessly mentioning that Elsa would come back once she was 'free from missions'. One could miss it as a child making up an excuse to leave her captors paranoid, but her narration and devotion to the woman suggested that they were quite close. This meant that a rescue attempt would have to happen eventually... but Elsa wouldn't have risked doing one without covering her tracks about it. If she wasn't there on an official mission, then she was doing this in secret and couldn't be detected by anyone.

It was a risky situation nonetheless and he wasn't going there unarmed. After what happened during their botched first return from the capital, Subaru felt like he needed to have something to defend himself. He was still struggling with magic, so it had to be something which could help against supernatural creeps. The answer to that was a conversation with Roswaal about him worrying about a potential return of the Bowel Hunter which resulted in him gaining a precious knife which was imbued with an unique rune meant to nullify healing factors.

"Elsa is known to be veeery tough to kill after all~."

It was good enough for him. At least, it was something. They finally reached the dungeon and... the main door was open. No one had passed by today and the place was normally closed once Rem was done with her paces picked up, with Ram realizing that someone was indeed in there to free their only prisoner.

She stood by the door as Subaru entered inside, expecting to find trouble and handle it himself somehow. Meili was... awake. And smiling.

"Hello Niichan!"

"Meili."

"She is here, isn't she?" The grinning child inquired. "I can tell she is~."

So, he was right.

"Elsa Granhiert is really here, then."

"You got me~." A familiar voice congratulated, stunning Subaru in shock as he turned around and... was greeted with two blades closing in on his stomach.

He was confused, why didn't Ram say anything? His question was answered when he noticed two details which showed the pinkette was very dead. First, the pool of blood near the entrance, then... the head rolling on the side.

D-Dammit.

He grasped her by the arms, unwilling to let go but... he stumbled on his blood and fell backward. Elsa just allowed the fall to happen, uncaring of the circumstance beyond its usual exciting view. She was so close and personal with her latest victim, to see his despair and pain drain his life away while his guts poured out of him. That was something Elsa loved to see and thus was utterly in love with the horrified look on his face. He was close to death and she had made it. The bastard was dead, and Meili would be free to return to her.

And in her moment of victory and success... Elsa froze in surprise.

Her beautiful eyes widened in shock as she felt Subaru's last move as he died, something so sharp and yet so unforgettable. She lowered her gaze down, her stare stolen by the sharp blade firmly piercing her stomach and slowly opening it. It wasn't a normal dagger, it was enhanced. It was disrupting her healing factor and she couldn't do much against this. The Bowel Hunter felt weak, but not for the reason many would have expected.

The woman just admired the slow but steady action, driven by pure pettiness and vengeance and... her guts fell on his, entangling and 'smooching' with one another. She shouldn't have been feeling happy, yet there was something artistic in the sight, something that resonated with her mind and heart, tingling her enough to leave a blush on her gorgeously pale visage. Her lips parted and her sight was raised to his face. His glassy eyes, his paling cheeks, his lips losing that vivacious pink and yet remaining enticing.

Should she kiss this devious bastard? Her arousal almost urged her to. Such a clever bastard. If only, oh, if only~.

But miserable is Elsa's fate, as much as Subaru was at the moment, as both found death in each other's arms, within a sight that was dreadful to many, and yet so beautiful to the rest. Meili didn't understand in her grief, Emilia didn't understand in her sorrow, Rem didn't understand in her sense of loss, and Roswaal... just wondered how it was possible for two mortal enemies to look so at peace in dying in each other arms after what looked to have been an intense struggle.

But that's now what mattered to Subaru. After all-

Yet now Subaru knew the truth and had to just crunch down the amount of proof to favor his current 'assumption'. A trap was to be prepared and he knew just how to do it.

Two things I want to say about this chapter: 1) The Elsa/Meili Arc will come to a new turn by the next chapter and it will be amusing to a degree. And quite demented to a common perspective; 2) The Loops are happening, but Subaru is reacting 'differently' than he did with those in Canon. And the truth of this will be fully explained by the Sanctuary Arc.

P.S. I now have a discord server! Discord .gg/ceBMM2Zz6c

REVIEW Q&A!

A. J Savage: I will say it will happen quite soonish (in less than a few chapters from now), but firstI have to wrap up this 'mini-arc' for good.