Author's Note: Two updates in a row! I guess I just felt a little lonely not having any reviews...Probably because this is way off kilter from KaibaCorp Shorts. Maybe I shouldn't write Suspense. Oh well. Onward!
Black Shadows: A Gamer and a Detective Walk Into a Parking Lot...
Sugoroku Mutouh wasn't a young man. He wasn't middle aged, and he certainly wasn't just over the hill.
But tonight, more than ever, he was feeling his age.
A thousand thoughts ran through his head, but he never could focus on one. Doing so drew his attention away from driving, and he almost hit a tree while his thoughts sifted and broiled through his grip, like trying to fill a sieve with sand.
So he focused on driving.
Soon, he had reached the normally dimly-lit building of the Domino City Police Station. Normally being the key word. All the lights were on, and he could see people running around, arguing in groups, or looking stunned. And he could hear them too, which was startling because he was still in his car 50 meters away.
Parking his car in the empty (and what normally would've been creepy without the large amounts of activity inside the police station) parking lot, Sugoroku cautiously got out. A man who had been lounging in the doorway watched Sugoroku get out, before rubbing his stubble and walking over to the older man.
"I assume you're Detective Griggs?" Sugoroku asked the man, unperturbed.
"You assume right. The FBI sent me into Japan to deal with an…unusual case. When the job was finished, I was stuck here for a few months. Then the kid pops up on the radar, and the case looks like what I had to first deal with."
Sugoroku had studied Griggs's face while he had been talking. His gaming instincts told him that the detective wasn't lying, but he knew the man wasn't telling him all that information for nothing. "Why should I believe you? You've talked quite a lot for someone in your business. What purpose do you have telling me this?" Sugoroku questioned, after a pause.
Griggs chuckled. "I'm an honest man, through and through. I just wanted to make sure that you knew me before any crap was slung, so that you would maybe believe me. Your intuition is very good, but I just wanted someone on my side in this thing. They all think I'm crazy in there, so if you'll listen, I'll be very appreciative."
Sugoroku grinned. "I've dealt with a lot of strange things being told to me by my grandson. You can't seem crazy after you hear about the Millennium Items."
Griggs threw back his head in a loud guffaw. "I've heard stories, but-Ahahahaha! Maybe I've struck gold with you."
The two men shared another laugh before Griggs got serious. "But, Sugoroku-may I call you that?"
Sugoroku sobered up as well. "As long as you don't mind me calling you Griggs."
Griggs gave a fleeting smile. "Fair enough. I never liked my first name of Samuel anyway. Anyway, Sugoroku, at first this case started to look like a car accident, plain and simple."
The two men began to walk towards the Station, which had become an uproar over a folder that was being torn apart by all of the people. Papers were flying everywhere, and even some of the more sane-looking persons were almost foaming at the mouth to get something. Griggs sighed and shook his head in disgust, before continuing.
"The reason they're brawling in there is that…things got complicated. As in…the kid who got 'hit'-and here I use the term loosely, because as you'll see later, it looks like the kid trashed the car instead of the usual other way around-was completely unharmed. Unconscious, yeah, with a few scrapes from where he had hit the pavement, but mostly unharmed."
Sugoroku gave Griggs a look. Griggs saw it in the chaotic light that streamed from the madhouse, and grinned. "Yeah, I don't get it either."
Griggs caught Sugoroku staring at the Station, puzzled. "Oh, we'll attempt that later," Griggs told him, "But for now I want to show you the car before Forensics or whatever takes it and turns it into even more scrap metal for the sake of 'analyzing' it."
The two men walked in silence, Griggs occasionally running his hand through his dirt-brown short hair, Sugoroku giving a furtive glance over his shoulder whenever the noise from the Station peaked.
After a minute, they had reached a side lot that neighbored the Station. Sugoroku immediately knew which one of the many junked cars, police, civilian, or otherwise, was the one that had 'hit' Joey.
Three spaces down from the end, what used to be a black sports car sat in a heap. From the back it would have looked normal enough, but from the front…
A pile of charred scrap metal lying next to the car used to be the motor. But it had taken little damage in comparison to the framework of the car. The entire front of the car was in all directions, melted and warped into an eerie resemblance of an explosion, except that the metal went in all ways except frontward. Sugoroku mentioned this to Detective Griggs in a cowed voice.
"Yeah…apparently the kid was right in the front of the car…looks almost like the car hit a landmine, huh?" Griggs reflected, "But all the tests that we took on the metal…well…"
Sugoroku looked at the other man. "After seeing this, and knowing what my grandson's actually been doing when he duels, it's hard for me to not believe something."
Griggs chuckled. "I shouldn't have worried." Then he composed himself. "You have to understand…that boy'll disappear lickety-split as soon as this gets around."
Sugoroku made an impatient sound. "I know when to keep my mouth shut!"
Sighing, Griggs said despairingly, "I suppose I can't hold off telling you. According to lab analysis, it looks as if the kid had some sort of…spherical barrier made of lava protecting him when he trashed the car."
Stunned, Sugoroku gaped at Griggs. "Now shadow magic, I can understand, but…lava?"
Griggs gave him a sarcastic smile. "Yes. Lava. And before it was carted off, there was a piece of metal that had an unknown symbol on it that apparently matches a burn on the kid's left shoulder."
"But…you wouldn't have called me here to just tell me that you don't know anything, right?"
"Right. The massive chaos back at the station is due to the fact that the unusual case I was called in for originally involved someone who had been carrying a book filled with as-yet untranslated symbols in it. Lucky for us the government didn't want to acknowledge the existence of…magical powers, and so the guy was given a visa. This guy disappeared, but I contacted him about an hour ago. At first he wasn't interested, but then I described to him the symbol. He's at the hospital now, with the kid. We're going there next, if you don't mind."
Overwhelmed, Sugoroku just said, "Well, I'm glad that you had that woman call me, because I'd rather see all this for myself than have to hear about it secondhand, such as in the newspaper."
Griggs had been pulling out his car keys when he was talking, but at Sugoroku's innocuous comment he stopped. "Woman? I had Hardt Vedras call you. He's a renowned forensics professor, training new agents for us, but we needed him on the team for his expert advice. He'd finished his part of the work first because there was nothing logical he could say to explain what happened. Another reason I had him call you is because I knew he'd be able to contact you without raising a fuss."
The two men stared at each other. "But…if that wasn't Professor Vedras…who was it?"
Detective Griggs seemed to be at a loss for words. "I…don't know. I'll look into it later. We'd better see our 'victim' now before he disappears on us, though."
And with that, the detective and the gamer drove to Domino City Hospital in silence, each absorbed in their own thoughts.
Author's Note: suspenseful music plays in background What's going on? What could have happened? What will happen next? One thing's for sure, whoever can spot the easter egg in this chapter gets bragging rights for being really smart! If nobody gets it...eh, it'll be revealed later on anyways.
