Light filters through the office windows of the agency, phone calls filter through the air, and the chattering of the office buzz is heard. Atsushi comes in through the door of the agency, urgency in his steps after he received a phone call from Dazai to come to the office as soon as possible. The day before, after he and Aku left the coffee shop the two stayed at the other's highly expensive apartment watching movies and cooking dinner. Atsushi left around 10 at night, with Akutagawa escorting him home, wanting to talk some more about the assignment, and sorts. Atsushi arrives at the office a bit early due to taking the previous day off, to finish his paperwork for Kunikida. He stops to catch his breath when his mentor stops in front of him, his posture stiff, with his hands in his pockets.
"Atsushi let's go talk in the meeting room in private." Dazai says in a serious manner, though for the tiger it was hard for him to read his mentor's emotions, much less know what the other was up to or thinking. He straightens up to look the other in the eye, a curious glint in his eye.
"What is it?" Atsushi asks curiously.
Dazai points his shoulder to the door leading to the meeting room, giving the boy the unspoken message to follow him and ask questions later. It only takes a few strides to come to the door, walking through it, Dazai closing the door behind him silently, and proceeds to pull out a folder from his long trench coat. He motions for Atsushi to sit down as he does the same, before he starts to speak in a monotone like voice.
"Ango got ahold of me last night saying that the police want to speak with the two of us as well as Akutagawa and Chuuya. He got ahold of his informative, and got ahold of some new information the station got yesterday." Dazai finishes off, pulling out a few sheets of paper.
Atsushi pales a bit at the information, biting his lip lightly he asks "But why do they want to speak with us? You know that none of us can afford for the police to dig too deep on any one of us."
Dazai nods "That's right. You still have a bounty on your head, and as for me, Akutagawa, and Chuuya, with our pasts and occupations in life, we can't afford for them to do much digging. I've already forwarded the information I'm about to relay to you, to the two of them. They couldn't come out today because of work being heavy." He slides a photo towards the tiger, waiting for the others reaction to such a horrific image.
For a few moments Atsushi is silent but then looks back up from the photo back towards his mentor, his eyes blown open. "Is that Tobias?"
"Yes it is. Apparently after we left the apartment there was an attack on his life. The attackers hacked his tongue off, nearly broke his jaw, collapsed his esophagus, cut the circulation off his wrists and ankles with electrical wire, and banged him around some more." The older man leaves the photo there, and pulls out another sheet of stark white paper. "You want to know what the strange thing was?"
"What?" The tiger asks curiously, wanting to know more.
"Approximately ten minutes after we left there was a call to emergency services, and the call was located in his apartment. It was from a russian girl by the accent over the phone, she stated that he was her longtime friend and she came by his apartment to check on him. Though the thing is nobody reported when questioned, seeing anyone besides the four of us entering his apartment the whole day previous." He looks at Atsushi with an eyebrow raised "Do you get what I'm hinting too?"
The tiger boy thinks about all the possibilities, leaning back in his chair. Nobody but the four of them had entered that apartment the whole day yesterday, and a call from someone in that very same apartment made a call not long after they had left. That could only be one possibility, as he gives his answer. "That means that whoever made the call, was already in the apartment, even when we were talking to him. That could only point to whoever made that call, being his attacker."
"Attackers, and you're right on the money. By the amount of injuries he suffered from, that could only mean that there was more than one attacker. There were things knocked to the floor, so that points to a struggle, and one attacker couldn't have managed all of that." Dazai replies, putting down the sheet for a minute.
"What happened to this russian girl?"
"I couldn't get ahold of a recording of the phone call, but by the way the report was written, the 119 operator reported that the girl on the other line sounded distressed, and panicked. They were barely on the line for a minute before there was a strange unexplained sound on the other line, the girl telling her that the attacker was still in the apartment, then the call cut off suddenly. Of course being told that an attacker was still in residence the police and emergency services didn't take very long getting to said location. When the police busted down the door, guns armed and ready, they searched the apartment from top to bottom, but didn't find any kind of intruder or attacker. Even stranger, the only one in the apartment was an unconscious Tobias lying on his bed bleeding from his cut off tongue. They did find the phone that was used to call for their services, but that was broken to pieces not far from the bed, like it was stomped on repeatedly." Dazai reads off giving a summary of the events.
"What kind of phone was used?"
"A burner phone. One that is easily destroyed, untraceable, but hard to find out anything on it because criminals tend to not put important information or any personal information on the thing." He looks further down the page "I said attackers because Tobias had carpet in his bedroom, and they found three different shoe prints in the carpet. Two shoe prints that look like that of a girl, and one that looked like that of a man."
"So was that all a set up?" Atsushi asks in realization.
"Don't know yet, but with the way the facts are piling up it seems like it. I suspect that she had some kind of listening device hidden in his apartment, and was listening to our entire conversation with that man. So she waited in that apartment, I have no idea how she got into said apartment so quickly, but she was hidden from our view. In other words Tobias was attacked because he talked to us." Dazai says crossing his fingers together.
"Why cut off his tongue though?" Atsushi squeaks out in slight horror.
"In the past whenever someone betrayed someone and or knew too much. They would cut off the tongues of said people and burn the end of it. Most people would end up in slavery, or on the run from hunters. Tobias has been running, and he was finally caught. Though he did have a lead on him, they just let that lead be loose enough to let him know they could always pull it back on him."
Dazai pulls out another set of sheets altogether, clearing his throat "Another thing that was brought up by a witness that was brought in for questioning, she told a detective about a long time case of a gang made up entirely of kids." He slides a sheet of paper across the table, for the tiger to see the file.
Atsushi picks up the sheet reading along with Dazai's description of the gang. "So are these two cases related somehow?"
Dazai nods "Yes they are." He crosses his fingers under his chin, looking down at the same sheet as Atsushi was reading through at the same time. "This gang goes by the name of Nacht Dämonen or Night Demons. Now you'll notice that the gang doesn't go by a japanese name either, that's been a puzzling factor for years with the police, considering that the gang's location is located in Amamatsu. Though yesterday after a woman that goes by the name of Juki gave a story about seeing the symbol of the gang in an interview."
"What symbol would that be? How do these two things relate towards each other?"
He slides the same photo that was shown to Juki the day before. "That's the gang symbol for this gang, For years nobody knew what the leader's symbol looked like, nor who the leader actually was." Dazai says holding his finger up. "Yesterday this Juki woman gave a very interesting statement about one of these symbols. She stated that she was on a train heading to work years ago, and saw these two kids sitting on the train as well. One was a boy that had pale skin, red eyes, and wore a lot of black. He told her that Yokohama would be a good opportunity to start a new life. The other one was a girl, she had a german accent, and eyes that looked cold and calculating when the girl flicked a gaze over at her. She wore black gloves as well, even after accidently spilling some drink on them, she didn;t take them off to clean her hands. A few hours ago she went back to the police station and gave a very descriptive account of what the kids looked like to the sketch artist. The boy had that same symbol on a necklace around his neck, and the girl's symbol was different."
"What was different about it?" Atsushi asked the taller man, eyes shining with curiosity.
"The colors on it. Her symbol was red and white." Dazai pulls out two sketches from the folder, that he may have gotten behind the police's backs, but he wasn't going to tell them that small piece of information. "Do one of these two look familiar to you?" He asks with a smirk.
Atsushi's eyes go wide as he is quick to flick his gaze back up to the other. "That's Beatrix!"
"Exactly. The features are the same. As for the other one, the identity is still unknown. So we can confirm that Beatrix is the leader for the Night Demons. She has many people under her disposal, that's most likely why she can move around so easily." Dazai says smartly. He held up a finger then pulled out another photo of a young boy, the boy was a missing child. "This brings us to the next topic. A missing child's case!"
"Uh not to be rude, but what does this have to do with our case?" Atsushi asked a bit nervously.
"Good question my little protege!" Dazai points to the poster. "This child has been missing for some time now, and the parents are at the end of their ropes in worry. So they've handed the agency this case, in hopes that their little boy would be found, whether dead or alive. The police haven't produced much results, and he's been missing for a month already. Now the two of us aren't going to be taking this case, someone else from the agency will be doing so. Though we can help just in case."
"Why is that?" Atsushi asks the other, his head tilting to the side in both curiosity and confusion. Curious as to why they would be helping with the case, but confused at the same time because they were working on their own case right now.
"I have a hunch about this missing child's case, and I want to see if the puzzle pieces I have in place will come into fruition." Dazai replies with a small smirk, and Atsushi has seen that look on the older man's face enough times. He couldn't even count those times on his 10 fingers, to be well informed of whatever Dazai was planning wasn't going to be a smooth mission where one can slip in and out with ease. "Now do you want to know of some of the eyewitness statements that some people gave, among other details involving this child's disappearance?"
Atsushi nods his head, his curiosity winning over his confusion. His soft heart wanting to help find this poor child as soon as possible so the family can have some kind of closure no matter if the child was found dead, or alive in the end. "Yeah, start out with the basics first if you would Dazai-san."
Dazai looks down at a stack of papers, picking the first one off the neatly stacked pile that was held in another folder. "Last month on the 3rd, the boy got up that morning to get dressed for school. His mother gave him his lunchbox, and kissed him on the cheek before sending him off to the bus station, which wasn't even a few houses down from their own house. It could be seen from one of the windows of the home, though while the boy was heading to the bus stop, his mother said that she went into the laundry room to pick up a new outfit that she had ordered the day previous, and to get ready to run a few errands for the day. Her husband had left half an hour earlier heading into work to the office, so she got dressed up, and headed into the deeper parts of the city. About 5 hours later she came back home, put away the groceries that she had bought while out, and started to cook dinner. When the clock hit the time for her son to be dropped off at the bus station, she made sure dinner was covered, and went out to meet him with a bag of cookies the boy had always loved. The bus eventually stopped, but her son didn't get off the bus with the few other kids dropped off. She questioned the bus driver asking him where her son was, and he told her that her son didn't get on the bus that afternoon. After coming back from the bus station she called the school up asking where her son was, asking if he was still at the school. That's where she got the horribly shocking news that her son didn't even show up to school that day. They assumed that he was sick at home, but was planning on calling her later for confirmation. That's when she filed a missing persons report with the police department, though as the more time passed with little to no leads, the case started to grow cold."
"That's horrible, I can't imagine the pain and loss that family is going through, even to this very second." Atsushi murmurs lowly, his fists tightening up slightly against the papers held in his hands. "Were there any eyewitnesses?"
"Yeah a couple of people, though their identities have been kept anonymous." He flips the paper over continuing to read. "A woman around her mid twenties was in the middle of her morning run, and reported seeing a young woman approaching this kid at the bus station. The kid panicked at first, and she was going to intervene, but halted when the kid started to laugh at something the woman had told him. The woman didn't look like she was the kids mother, but she also assumed that the kid could have been adopted as well, and went on her way. She heard about him disappearing later into the day, and told the police that if she had another chance to play that scene all over again, she would have intervened, and tried to figure out the situation." Dazai pauses before reading once more "An elderly man sitting on the bench by the bus station reported the same thing as the previous woman. He said that the kid was humming a tune under his breath while munching on a small puff pastry, when this same woman approached the boy. He said that the boy acted genuinely scared, and tried to get away from the woman, he could hear the boy asking who the woman was. She told him that she was a friend of his mother, and that his mother asked her to take him to school that day, that his mother had a treat for him. The boy did calm down, he agreed to go with her telling her about the last treat his mother gave him. She took his hand in hers, and walked to a vehicle that was silver, and small. The boy got in the backseat, while the woman got in the driver's seat, and she drove away."
"So the boy was kidnapped?" The tiger boy asks not really knowing what to say in response.
"That's what you would think isn't it?" Dazai questions as he pulls out another picture, showing it to the other. In the picture it showed a badly burnt vehicle, some parts still intact, except the inside of the vehicle. "This was the vehicle that the old man identified, it was found deep in the woods the next day burnt so terribly that the police weren't able to find any clues inside or outside of said vehicle. To make matters worse the police tracked down the owners of the vehicle, only to find out they were killed in their sleep, both laying in bed with a bullet each lodged in their brains. They then tried to identify the bullets dug out of the couples skulls. Though that ended up being a dead lead, for the gun that killed them was one that they owned. They didn't find any fingerprints on the gun either, and the house was spotless, except for the missing car keys."
"So whoever took him knew about what the police would be looking for, and how to get away with it long enough to slip out of their grasp? They did all of that so nothing would lead back to themselves? It would all be just a puzzle that was scrambled up. Were the people targeted or at the wrong place at the wrong time?" Atsushi asks the other, leaning forward a bit in anticipation.
"Most likely at the wrong place at the wrong time. The house wasn't ransacked, nothing was broken, and everything was in perfect order. They just took the car so they wouldn't be tracked, and killed the people so they wouldn't alert the police too early. Then when they had the child, they did god knows what with him. They burnt the car after soaking it thoroughly with lighter fluid in the middle of nowhere as to not draw any attention to themselves, and so they could slip away into the cover of the darkness back to wherever they came from." Dazai details out.
"Is there a chance he could still be alive? Could they be holding him for ransom because his parents are rich?" Atsushi asks, holding a little bit of hope the kid was still alive, and that he hadn't suffered under that persons, or peoples hands.
Dazai flicks an unknown look over to the tiger before clearing his throat. "I don't think they took him for a ransom, otherwise they would have made a phone call, a move or something by now towards the parents or the police. It's been a month, no kidnapper is going to wait this long for a ransom deal before playing their hand. Since that day, and finding the dead couples home, nothing has shown up. No phone calls, no mail, absolutely nothing. They took him for another completely different reason, the same unknown reason for which I believe he was killed not long after snatching him, or holding him somewhere to never come home. Most likely they took him underground, and sold him. Or killed him if he fought back against them, after all he's not the first kid to disappear like he did."
"You mean recently?"
"Yeah that is what I exactly mean. There is an underground black market for just about anything and everything. That includes snatching children and selling them in the underground market to a gang, or to some old rich bastard to use as a slave. They don't just snatch any child off the street, that would be too risky, instead they watch and observe from the shadows just waiting for the right moment to strike. Someone preferably that woman was the one to do that job, and she chose to risk snatching the child where there were a few people in the area. They chose her because a man would have pushed those boundaries a bit too far. Resulting in a failed mission to get the child, usually they send a woman that doesn't look like she would hurt a fly." He looks up from the papers, folding his arms in front of him on the table's surface. "It's been a month, with as much time that has passed, there is only a very small percentage that he's ever going to be found. If he is found, most likely they'll slit his throat, or kill him execution style before disposing of the body, and fleeing from the area."
"Did any of the two eyewitnesses give a description to the police as to what the woman looked like? Maybe we could track her, or have our informative look into it." Atsushi asks once more, his interest in this case drawing him more and more into it.
The older man pulls out a sketch handing it to the younger boy. "That's the woman, both the woman and the elderly man gave the same descriptions of that woman. Now the police have tried looking up anyone in the record books that looks like that but nothing came up. They posted the pic out to the public a few days after the boy disappeared, but there hasn't been any calls, or leads towards this individual. It's like this person had never existed, it's like she just simply disappeared from the world itself." He holds up a finger "Though as I was searching through a book last night after receiving this information, I came across a woman in a book I was reading and she looked exactly like this eyewitness picture of this woman. Now this woman from the book is a serial killer that goes around abducting children while giving the people around her the perfect image of being a mother. She gave off the feeling to the people that she wouldn't even hurt a fly, when in reality she was a horribly evil person with hidden secrets. That took great pleasure in what she did to the kids she came across, mostly selling them to the black market in the underground. The woman in the picture fits the description of the woman in that book to a T. That tells me that this is the work of an ability user, an ability user that has the ability to change her image at will. That's why the police or any database in the world wasn't able to find her, because the image she took was the woman found in the book, a fictional character that doesn't exist. Once again we'll have to ask Ango for help on finding an ability user with an ability to change their appearance at will."
"That's pretty smart if you ask me. Changing one's appearance to a fictional character, so nobody would know your true appearance. That way you can slip away really easy from the law." Atsushi says his hand on his chin. He flicks his gaze up to Dazai "I've never heard of an ability user that is capable of doing such a thing, that's frightening if you think about it."
"Yep, you could have walked past them a million times by now, and still be clueless. That is one very useful ability if I do say so myself. Though we have no clue who this user's true identity or gender is for that matter." Dazai informs him pushing up from the desk. He puts everything back in the folder, stuffing the fat yellow envelope under his arm. "I would be careful walking around, try sticking to the back streets, and alleyways until we can clear everything up with the police." His mentor tells him with a serious face, walking out of the room.
Atsushi follows out of the room, back into the office. He sits down at his desk, filing through his paperwork when he sees a small pink letter stuffed in one of the books. Raising an eyebrow he pulls it out examining it. 'This looks like a love letter, but who would put a love letter on my desk like this?' The tiger thinks as he silently pulls the pink colored envelope open, and pulls out a small slip of paper. His eyes widen when he sees a picture of him asleep in his bed, curled up in the covers. On the clock by his bed he sees it's late at night, and above that a calendar where he marks the days off, is hung on the wall. A cold chill runs through his backbone when he discovers that the photo was taken that night that girl whispered in his ear.
He covers his mouth in horror, Dazai turns in his desk chair, and sees his protege frozen looking at a picture in his hands shakily.
When his eyes land on the photo he asks lowly "What the hell?"