SailorStar9: With Chapter 78 uploaded, this is Chapter 79 of this fic. (Sighs) Guys and girls, is it too hard for you to leave a review, instead of just putting this fic up on your favorited list and story alerts?
Disclaimers: I do not own Sailor Moon or Detective Conan, I only own this plotline and the pairing.
Pairing: Established!Furuya Rei/Mizuno Ami
Chapter 79: The Unfriendly Girls Band, Part One
Time passes...
"A band." Sonoko told Ran and Sera excitedly in Café Poirot one afternoon. "We should start a high school girl band."
"Where did that come from?" Sera joked.
"The high school girl band I saw in a movie last night was super cute." Sonoko gushed.
"And?" Conan blinked. "Sonoko-nee-chan, what instrument are you going to play?"
"The drums, of course." Sonoko replied. "The drummer in the band looked like me."
"Then, I would play..." Ran pondered.
"Ran, since you have long black hair, you'll play the bass." Sonoko decided. "The bassist had the same kind of hair."
"But, I've never played the bass before." Ran sweatdropped.
"Want me to play the bass?" Sera offered. "My brother's friend taught me a long time ago."
"Then, Sera-chan will play the bass." Sonoko declared. "Ran, can you play the keyboard?"
"But where are we going to perform?" Ran asked.
"Tada." Sonoko flashed the 'Beika City Countdown Talent Show' flyer. "We'll perform at the end of the year talent show in Beika City and walk off with the title."
"But won't our band need a guitarist?" Sera reminded.
"But there doesn't seem to be anyone in our class who can play the guitar." Sonoko sighed.
"Azusa-san." Amuro called out. "Can you wipe down this table?"
"Our guitarist." Sonoko pointed to Azusa. "The high school girl band had a girl named Azusa who was good at the guitar."
"But I've never even touched a guitar." Azusa remarked. "And I'm not a high school girl."
"No one will be able to tell once you put on a uniform." Sonoko insisted.
"Isn't playing the guitar hard?" Azusa winced.
"You'll be fine." Sonoko assured. "With a little practice, you'll be able to play in no time."
"You play it, then." one of the guitarist customers retorted. "You can borrow my guitar."
"We'll hook it up to our portable amp." his companion added. "You can play right away. I thought that with a little practice, you could play in no time." he mocked.
"Allow me." Amuro stepped in. Strapping the guitar in, he struck up a chord. "With some practice, even these girls could play like that." he returned the instrument to its owner. "Sonoko-san, you should watch your big mouth." he whispered. "I can help you practice." he offered. "Would you like to go to a rental studio and practice a little right now?"
"Hey, you." Sera started. "Have we met before?"
"I believe this is the first time we've met." Amuro answered.
At Sound Studio Hakobune a while later...
"No way." Sonoko whined. "All the rooms are full?"
"One should open up in about an hour." the receptionist noted.
"We can afford to wait an hour." Amuro decided. "They have a break room in the basement. If we rent instruments, you can at least learn the feel of a song through chords and tones."
"You can play the bass, too?" Sera was intrigued.
"Although, I can't guarantee I'm as good as your brother's friend." Amuro responded.
"Sonoko, can you play the drums?" Ran wondered.
"I'm great at Drum Master." Sonoko declared.
In the break room...
"Sera-chan, that's amazing." Ran praised, she and Sonoko were applauding after Sera played a basic scale on the rental guitar.
"All I did was play a scale." Sera chuckled. "That's all my brother's friend taught me."
"Do you remember what the man who taught you the bass looked like?" Amuro inquired.
"More or less." Sera recalled. "But, how do you know my brother's friend was a man?"
"Just a hunch." Amuro shrugged.
"Come on." at the other table, Kibune Someka fumed. "At this rate, we won't make it in time. We only have a week until the concert. Tadako, your bass is offbeat and I can't hear you at all. Rumi, your keyboard was off in places. You didn't cut your fingernails, did you? And Hagie, your drums feel more sluggish than usual. Everyone, get it together."
"Someka, your guitar was too fast." Fuekawa Tadako chided. "You seem irritated."
"Because we're running out of time." Kibune refuted.
"You haven't noticed that your button's nearly fallen off." Yamaji Hagie pointed out. "On your left breast pocket. We'll resume once we've cooled our heads. Until then, I'm going to take nap in the studio."
"What should I do about my nails?" Kogure Rumi sighed.
"Want to use my nail cutters?" Fuekawa offered. "Someka, want me to sew your button back on? I brought my sewing kit. I forgot my sewing kit in the studio." she rummaged through her handbag. "I'll go wake Hagie while sewing your button on."
"Now that you've decided you'll be playing Okino Yoko-san's 'Dandelion', who's going to play the vocals?" Amuro posted a question.
"Sonoko, right?" Ran gaped.
"I can't multi-task." Sonoko added. "Sera-chan, can you sing?"
"I'll pass." Sera answered. "What about your boyfriend, Shinichi-kun?"
"Shinichi can play the violin." Ran answered. "And his singing... he sings like Conan-kun."
Suddenly, a unison scream from the girls before alerted the group.
"It came from the studio upstairs." Amuro noticed and the three detectives sprung into action.
In the studio down the corridor...
"Is she dead?" Fuekawa gulped, the three girls were clustered around Yamaji.
"Yoshikawa lines on her neck." Amuro instantly noticed the telltale wound.
"She was strangled." Sera agreed.
"Strangled?" Kibune echoed. "Who would strangle Hagie?"
I think we'll know right away." Conan spotted the security camera. "We can view the footage from the security camera on the ceiling."
At the reception counter...
"What is this?" Sera rebuked, the security footage showed half of the screen was blacked out. "Half of the image is black. "The drums are blocked entirely."
"That might be the back of a phone." Kogure explained.
"We were filming ourselves practicing." Kibune added.
"We stuck a selfie stick to a mic." Fuekawa spoke.
"Under these circumstances..." Amuro frowned.
"Even if someone did something next to the victim..." Sera expressed.
There's no way for us to know what it was. Conan realized.
After Megure's team was called in...
"Because the cell phone was on a selfie stick you attached to a mic stand to record your performance, the security camera's image is cut in half, obscuring the area around the drums and preventing us from knowing who killed her." Megure noted.
"Who put this here?" Takagi pointed to the selfie stick.
"It was me." Fuekawa answered. "I wasn't trying to block the security camera. I just put it where I was told."
"While watching the image on the phone, we told her to move it more to the left or farther back." Kogure recalled. "Although in the end, I think we decided where to put when Hagie said, 'That's fine. Let's start practicing.'"
"In any case, we should probably question the three girls while watching the security camera footage." Sera suggested.
"Apparently, the three of them came to this studio one at a time to wake Hagie-san." Conan supplied.
"It's the café detective, the high school girl detective and the boy who thinks he's a detective again." Megure moaned.
"This city sure has a lot of detectives." Takagi noted.
"Inspector, you should really consider retiring." Ami jested. "I was kidding." she rolled her eyes after an uncomfortable silence.
"Tell me if this sounds right." Megure started, after Am's team brought the body to autopsy. "While the four of you were taking a break in the basement, Hagie-san said she was going to take a nap and returned to the studio. One at a time, you went to wake her, but she remained asleep. Since she'd been sleeping for more than thirty minutes, you finally decided to go wake her together. But when you got there, she had been murdered. Who went to wake Hagie-san first?"
"It was me." Fuekawa answered. "I called out to her a few times but there was no answer. She was still asleep by the time I finished reattaching the button. So, I went back to the break room where Someka and Rumi were waiting. When I agreed to sew the button on Someka's jacket that was coming off, I realized I forgot my sewing kit in the studio."
"This must be it." Takagi spoke, the security footage showing Fuekawa patching up the button. "When Tadako-san entered the room, half her body is hidden but you can tell she's sewing something onto the jacket."
"You were there for more than ten minutes." Megure pointed out. "Does it really take that long to sew a button?"
"When I looked more closely, I realized her cuffs were frayed, too." Fuekawa noted.
"Who went to wake her up next?" Megure questioned.
"Me." Kibune answered. "My guitar's out for maintenance, so I borrowed one from the studio. One of the strings broke during practice. I thought I'd try waking her while I replaced the string. The broken string is the reason the four of us stopped practice and went to take a break."
"This is Someka-san, right?" Takagi was still focused on the security footage. "Doesn't tuning make noise?"
"I was making noise on purpose so she'd wake up." Kibune argued.
"How did Hagie-san seem then?" Megure inquired.
"She was sleeping with her head on the high tom-tom and covering it with her arm." Kibune replied. "Hagie always slept like that."
"So, if she's already dead by that point..." Sera pointed out.
"You wouldn't have known." Amuro noted.
"Are you trying to say I killed her when I went first?" Fuekawa demanded.
"We're just speaking hypothetically." Amuro defended.
"Rumi-san, were you the last one to go wake her?" Megure asked.
"During practice, there was actually a section of the song I wanted to change." Kogure explained. "I thought I could wake her up while working on the song. You'll see if you look at the sheet music that was in the studio."
"There does seem to be a section that was rewritten." Megure flipped through the score sheets.
"You made this section up-tempo, right?" Fuekawa took the book from Megure and pointed to the amended part.
"She's in the video." Takagi spoke. "Rumi-san, you're moving the keyboard."
"I moved it away from the drums so I wouldn't wake Hagie." Kogure stated. "I wanted Hagie to hear the song once I fixed it so I played as quietly as possible. I called to her when I finished, but she didn't answer."
"It looks like you were in the studio for ten minutes, as well." Megure noted. "We're going to look for the string used to strangle Hagie-san. After undergoing a body search, I'd like the three of you to wait in the break room in the basement. You can't find the weapon?" he echoed after Takagi reported back. "Did you search the entire area?"
"From the studio to the drains." Takagi nodded.
"Mizuno-san's estimated time of death was when the three of them went to the studio to wake the victim." Megure mused. "According to the store's security cameras at the entrance, the three of them haven't gone outside. If a body search didn't produce a weapon, then it must be around here somewhere. Search harder."
"What's wrong, Sera-chan?" Ran asked, seeing Sera's expression as she looked at the two guitarists entering the rental studio.
"When I see people carrying guitar cases on their backs, I'm reminded of four years ago when I saw Shuu-nii standing on the opposite side of the train platform with a guitar on his back." Sera recalled. "I was surprised. I thought he was in America. I'd never seen him play any instruments before. I was on the way back from the movies with my friends, but I ran onto the other platform and got on the same train as Shuu-nii. I really wanted to hear him play the guitar. He found me on the station platform after changing trains a few times. He got mad at me and told me to go home, but when I told him I didn't have any money and didn't know how to go home, he told me to wait there while he bought me a ticket and left me on the platform. I wanted to cry, but the guy with Shuu-nii said 'Hey, you, do you like music?' He then took his bass out of its case and taught me how to play a scale."
"Maybe he's your brother's bandmate." Ran suggested.
"I don't know about that." Sera chuckled. "He had his bass in a soft case. But even after he took it out, it retained its shape and stood straight up. It's possible that the base was camouflage for something hard he had in the bag. Another man came to the platform and called him 'Scotch'. He was obviously Japanese, so maybe it's a nickname. But the man who called him that was wearing his hat low over his eyes, so I didn't see his faced clearly." she cast a suspicious look at Amuro. "I have a feeling he looked like you, Amuro-san."
"You have the wrong person." Amuro insisted. "Why don't we solve the case that's happening right now?"
SailorStar9: Any OOC-ness is regretted. *Sighs* Don't you just hate plot bunnies sometimes? Read and review.
