CHAPTER 1: "I Rose above the Noise and Confusion."
SATURDAY MORNING. 7:03 A.M.
"Nyaaa~"
The robotic sounds of a cat mewing was accompanied by the weight of a toaster on his chest awoke Shinjuurou Yuki from his slumber bright and early on a certain Saturday morning. "Nrg..?"
"Nyaaa~" The toaster cat repeated.
"Yeah, mornin', Kato..." Shinjuurou yawned and went to sit up, which wasn't an easy task what with a toaster cat on his chest, and a girl at his side holding his arm tight to her chest. Well, she technically wasn't much of a girl these days, but the analogy of difficulty in terms of removing oneself from bed still matched up rather well.
Rie Kaishou, daughter of former Chairman of JJ System's Rinroku Kaishou and one day in the future to be Rie Yuki instead, was his partner in detective work and in other affairs. Around two, now almost three, months earlier on her seventeenth birthday, they had gone out on their first date, and ended up in bed that very evening after a case had suddenly been sprung upon them.
That...had been a rather stressful case lasting all of a week and a half.
Izumi Koyama, at the time then part of the Prosecutors Office, had set into motion a series of murders and world wide global changes that had become a sort of trial by fire that had ended up with a rooftop confrontation between the rogue Prosecutor and Shinjuurou himself being broadcast to the entire world thanks to a Math Equation called P Versus NP that had been released into the world as a "Universal Remote Hack," as the program and it's derivatives had soon come to be known.
But that had not been the only change to the world during that time. Due to Kazamori, then an R.A.I. construct, and Inga, then a "Truth" Eating Demon, messing around with powers they did not fully understand, Inga's many powers had left him, and Kazamori had been turned into a human girl. In the process of that transformation, a wave of energy had escaped from their former apartment in the middle of the bombed city, and had spread out into the world, beginning a series of dominoes that lead to every appliance and technological construct around the world coming to life with the personalities and behaviors of the various life forms on earth.
Such as Shinjuurou's toaster.
In any case, Izumi Koyama had made several mistakes- some of which Shinjuurou had not even noticed until a thorough review of everything once he'd had time to review everything in retrospect- and had been caught due to them.
First there was the fact that there had been no ties to the previously existing "Rising Sun" Group to the one Izumi's group had started, and in retrospect, the fact that Izumi had never even brought up the idea but instead ran with the assumption that it was a separate group should have been a warning sign. The fact that the one case involving the original group had been left out of all of Izumi's fact broadcasts... That should have been a tip-off as well.
Secondly, the hacker group "Full Circle", weakened as they had been after the Bettenou Incident, had been ignored as well in all of the events, and actually had even gone so far as to distance themselves from "Rising Sun" after Mitsuku Asahina had blown up the Kaishou household, stating that while they wanted the truth to get out about Kaishou, Rinroku, they derided the methods used to get those facts out there.
Thirdly, Shinjuurou had realized with amusement, had Izumi told Seigen Hayami about her plans, or even the other way around, that they might very well had been able to pull off both of their plans seamlessly.
Alas, each had the wrong opinions of each other during those times. Shinjuurou could only hope that they could find common ground in prison now.
Hell, maybe Hayami would finally 'get the girl' as the old trope went.
Shinjuurou looked Rie over as he ran a hand through her hair. She was, for once, sound asleep and he had managed to wake up before she did. She smiled at the motion, and sleepily sighed in contentment.
Shinjuurou gave a sigh of his own. Adding on top of all the chaos that was his life, Shinjuurou and Rie had somehow fallen for each other, much to the dislike of Rinroku Kaishou.
Speaking of that man, the entire world had seemingly turned on him.
Initially, Full Circle's hacking had put Rinroku on the world's stage as a person of interest- then the Bettenou incident occurred, and Rinroku had faked his death. But after the reveal of Hayami's plotting, Rinroku had returned to the world stage triumphantly for only a day before the world's governments set a hearing outside of Japan, to be held not too long after that.
And then Izumi's plan had been set off, blah blah blah, stuff we already covered twice over, blah blah blah, and now here we are at the present day.
And the present, presently, was all about Shinjuurou deciding what to do now. Either get up and risk waking Rie, or wait for her to wake up on her own...
And then the phone rang.
"Hullo?" Inga sleepily answered as he picked up the receiver next to the couch he'd been sleeping on.
"Yo!" Came the familiar, chipper voice of Mayoi Katawase, Police Chief.
"Oh, hey Mayoi-chan. What's up?" Inga asked, wiping the sleep out of his eyes.
"Murder, Inga, don't'cha know?" was the witty response.
"ooooh," Inga said with suddenly wide eyes, "a case! But we haven't really done any cases lately." He frowned, "Why call now?"
"This is a pretty weird one, right up your alley. We only just started processing, but I figured I'd call you guys in early, it's a bit of a drive," Katawase said. "Seriously, Inga, you've gotta see it to believe it."
"Lemme write the location down then and we'll be there asap.." Inga said, and went to find a piece of paper to write down the location. "So where are we going?" He nodded as he wrote it down, "uh huh, uh huh...Really? Wow...Uh huh... Okay! I think I've got it down! See you in a bit!" He hung up and took a deep breath, fully waking up before yelling: "SHINJUUUUUROOOUUU! WE'VE GOT A CASE!"
Kazamori Sasa, a former R.A.I., watched as the detective and his assistant rushed about in preparation to head out with a calm fascination.
"I know we haven't taken a case over the last month," Rie said in between spoonfuls of cereal, "but were they always this unorganized with early morning cases?"
"I don't know," Kazamori replied before taking a sip of chocolate milk. "This is the first time in my time with them that they've been called to an active crime scene while it's still being processed."
"Ah," Rie said with a nod.
"And also, it's the first time that they've been called in to a case by the police at all," Kazamori continued. "Typically? We've either been asked by a relative to investigate, or have been invited to an incident before it happens."
"So this is all unfamiliar territory for them, then?" Rie asked.
"Inga!" Shinjuurou shouted from one corner of the apartment, "Where the hell did Kato take my shoes?"
"How should I know!?" Inga shouted back from another corner, "I'm trying to find where he took my panda hat!"
Kazamori took another sip of her drink, and then answered, "Pretty much."
A Camera flashed as Shinjuurou and Inga crossed the crime scene tape in front of the door to the small motel room.
"Welcome to Casa de Murder," Mayoi Katawase joked as she greeted them, "formerly known as Casa de Sex-Motel." She lead them over to the bed where the victim lay spread out on it- hidden from view by a tarp. "Be warned, this is not for the faint of heart." With that, she pulled the sheet back down to the victim's waist.
Immediately, Shinjuurou and Inga's eyes widened at the sight of the murdered victim: The man's skin was grey, almost decayed, and withered tightly to the bones, as if all of the water had been pulled out of his body, and the eyes were blackened, soul-less husks.
"Shinjuurou," Inga gulped, "doesn't that...?"
"Yeah," Shinjuurou nodded faintly.
"I take it you've seen this sorta thing before?" Katawase asked before putting the sheet back over the man.
"I'd rather not talk about it here, but yeah," Shinjuurou said, "we've seen something like this before." He shook the ghosted expression off his face, and asked, "Who is he?"
"According to the wallet we found in his pants half-way across the room?" Katawase asked in return as she jabbed her thumb over her shoulder towards the discarded clothing item. "His drivers license says his name is Atsuhiko, Hirokazu. But his business cards on the other hand...well, let's just say it's a pun on the English Phrase "Top of my Game" and leave it at 'this Guy's a player,' which means the only thing missing is the cash he paid with."
"A robbery gone wrong?" Inga asked.
"More than likely, the gal who killed ol' Atsuhiko-san here took his money and ran after the job was done. Maybe to make it look like a robbery, maybe they just didn't have any cash on hand," Katawase said with a shrug. "She didn't pay for an extra day at the counter though. Maybe we wouldn't have found him if they had."
"Why's that?" Shinjuurou asked.
"The hotel manager came up here to kick 'im out when he failed to check out at the specified time," Katawase said. "Said he thought maybe the guy was just going at it a few times with the girl he came in with and lost track of time. Found this instead."
"Nothing so nice as that, though," Shinjuurou frowned at the body. "How do you know it's a girl who's the culprit?"
"Manager saw him check in with her," Katawase said, "we've got him with a sketch artist right now since the cameras in the loby are all duds."
"No cameras?" Shinjuurou asked.
"Nope," Katawase said. "Atsuhiko-san checked in under an alias. Paid in cash. This is that kind of a place, you know."
"And who was it who said R.A.I.'s corrupted youth again?" Inga asked as he examined a discarded shirt, and wrinkled his nose at how it smelled. "Ew...What is that...? Perfume?"
Katawase chuckled grimly- "Probably off of the girl. I'd see about getting it analyzed, but...Yeah, that was Aranea's job."
"You haven't gotten the position filled in yet?" Inga asked.
"Nobody's willin' to take it," Katawase grumbled. "Everyone's afraid it's cursed or something, Even the Interim guy I assigned is bolting once his time's up. Cashing in every vacation day he's not used for the last few years." She sighed- "Also! Aranea password locked all the lab equipment. Nobody's been able to crack it yet, and like I said, Interim guy's bolting and didn't even order new stuff to replace it."
"So...Ah, you said something about a sketch?" Shinjuurou asked, trying to change an awkward subject.
"Yeah..." Katawase nodded, "c'mon, they're downstairs."
The Woman who had been the last one to see Atsuhiko, Hirokazu, alive appeared to be in her late teens, probably not even in her twenties, with hair color going just past the shoulders. She looked only like the woman whom Inga had once borrowed his older form from in passing. Perhaps if the suspect were older, she might have looked the same.
"So much for Yuuko being alive again," Inga said with a frown. "This girl's way too young."
"So you've basically got no leads then?" Katawase asked.
"Not at the moment, no," Shinjuurou frowned. "Let's retrace Atsuhiko's steps."
"What steps?" Katawase asked. "All we've got is the name, and not much else to go on."
"Well, his name and the fact that he likes sleazy dumps like this place," Inga remarked as he wriggled his eyebrows at the Hotel Manager- who gave off a protest of "Hey!" at that remark. "That says a lot about his personality, in my opinion."
"He probably picked this girl up at a bar," Shinjuurou deduced, "that or she picked him up."
"Smart assumption." Katawase nodded, then turned towards an officer and ordered, "Go canvas the area, see if there are any bars close to here."
"Right," The officer nodded, and went off.
"So what now?" Katawase asked, "We search all the bars in the area and see if Atsuhiko left something behind?"
"Something like that," Shinjuurou nodded. "If he's a regular at any of these places, the owner might know him, or one of his friends is looking for him like we are."
"Guess we're waiting, then," Inga shrugged.
THURSDAY EVENING. 5:50 P.M.
Upon arriving in the clubroom after school that one Thursday, I was greeted by Shiguma, Rika, with her hair dyed blond and styled into twin tails. She was just standing by the door, perfectly still, as if a model posed for a painting...
I wasn't sure what to make of that, but having recalled her rather upset reactions from before at my apparently lack of making note of her hairstyle changes, I thought it best to make a comment. "Hey, changed your hairstyle again I see."
I went to move past her so I could work on my homework when she suddenly whirled around and shouted "That's It!?" at me.
We shared some seemingly trite exchange of remarks that was my trying to tease her a bit about her hair changes, and it ended up with her being even more mad at me than she had been before.
Before I could even begin trying to pacify her, she crossed her arms and remarked: "Why are you being so dense?!" She said about as seriously as she could.
"Eh?" I didn't quite get what she was trying to say there.
"You keep pretending not to notice- pretending not to hear! Always running away, brushing it off! Avoiding the issues!" She was yelling, "And I'm getting tired of you saying 'what was that' or 'what'd you say' all the time!"
Honestly, I wasn't sure what was more scary at this point, the fact that she was calling me out on my pretend ignorance or the fact that she'd dropped the third person. This Rika before me was someone I had no clue how to respond to. She was someone completely new.
"Don't you think it's time we moved on from all this stupid child's play?" She concluded. "Aren't we all-"
"STOP IT!" I hadn't even realized I'd said it at first, but when I saw her blink at me expectantly, I wanted to run. I wanted to hide away. "I..." I really didn't have any choice but to answer honestly. "I don't want to ruin it," was what I went with, "I don't want things to change!"
Rika opened her mouth to counter, not that she'd get the chance. At that moment, Sena burst into the room, eyes wide in horror, "Yukimura's on the tower!"
Okay, I suppose it wasn't that big of a rewind, and the logical jump from there of "Running to the tower" to "Climb the tower to save Yukimura" wasn't a really big one warranting a whole bit of narration.
Not with a life at stake.
Yozora was still standing near the bottom of the bell tower, calling up to Yukimura to try to get him... Her? Damn gender pronouns... to climb back inside the tower, and Sena had rushed off after finding me and Rika to find one of the Sisters, so who knows where she was at the moment.
Rika had decided to climb the stairwell of the tower to the top, having ordered me to climb the side and grab Yukimura in case he- she jumped off.
I didn't hesitate. A surge of strength rushed through me as I tried climbing up to the top of the tower. I grabbed bricks off of the side of it and used them as footholds and hand holds, climbing up as fast as I could.
"Come on, Yukimura!" Yozora was yelling, "Just climb back inside already!"
Kusunoki, Yukimura- a girl raised to think she was a boy and recently discovered otherwise- shook her head. "I can't...! My parents...! They're-!"
Damn it. All those previous, seemingly casual, references to committing suicide that she'd made before suddenly came crashing down full circle.
Normally, the tower access was restricted to students just to prevent this sort of thing. I had no clue how Yukimura got past it, or how Rika would also get past it, but it explained why Yozora and Sena hadn't already been climbing the tower when we got here.
But it didn't matter- The tower was only (Only?) eleven stories tall. Eleven floors- eleven sets of stairs- something that seemed really annoying.
I was climbing rather fast, despite that, but I'd never reach the top in time.
Neither would Rika.
The bell in the tower rung, and Yukimura took a step off of the outside of the top of the tower.
You might think that this would be the moment where things get messy, and for a single moment, I might have thought the same.
But instinct took over, and without even thinking, I jumped off of my barely stable climbing spot, grabbed out towards the railing on the nearest floor and held on as tightly as possible as I grabbed Yukimura by the arm mid-fall.
I'd been high enough to stop her from gaining enough momentum, but also low enough to have enough time to pull off that crazy stunt, however that bizarre timing worked out.
She looked up at me, eyes wide as she mouthed, "Aniki?" I couldn't hear her. The bell was still ringing.
But as I smiled back at her, I wondered, "When did my life become an Anime plot?"
All in all, this really smelled like a bad plot. The moment where the dashing knight pulls the falling damsel in distress back to safety at the stroke of a bell. It simply wasn't going to happen: I couldn't hold on for long, since I didn't get a good enough grip when I jumped across.
We'd both fall, and then I'd probably get another nasty rumor added to my name...posthumously.
It was the exact moment that I began to slip that Rika grabbed my own arm- somehow managing to support both me and Yukimura. "Rika's got you!" And despite the ringing bell, I could her her voice call out over it.
I don't know what was more comforting: the fact that she'd managed to catch me as well as Yukimura, or the fact that she'd returned to speaking in the third person.
Rika'd managed to hold onto me long enough for me to get a better grip on the railing, so I could pull Yukimura back up towards Rika so she could pull her over the railing. After Yukimura got taken out of my hands, I climbed over about as well as anyone could, and settled down on the stairwell next to them.
Rika looked over to me as she held onto the somewhat shocked Yukimura and said, almost with a laugh that seemed inappropriate given the situation: "Rika doesn't think you have to worry about keeping the club the same anymore, Kodaka-Sempai!"
I couldn't help but groan.
On descending the tower, I found that the security gate that should have kept people from getting through was absolutly demolished. It looked like it had been just kicked off of it's hinges, going by the massive dent in the center of the solid steel plate that was lying on the ground.
Rika just shrugged when I looked at her, stating, "Rika swears it was like this when Rika got here!"
Liar. I doubt Yukimura could have done this.
Sena had returned at some point, accompanied by her father and- oh joy- one of the Sisters, Kate-sensei, Maria's older sister.
This would be a "fun" evening.
After we all had a long talk about everything that had happened, Kate-sensei had flat out told us that under no circumstances should Yukimura be left alone, "lest he try again."
It didn't take much for me to see the hurt in Yukimura's eyes when Kate made that slip up, although... There was something about Kate's tone that sounded...almost clinical? She's only fifteen and to be able to pull off that sort of tone... I can see why Maria calls her an 'old hag' sometimes.
However clinical the statement was, however, it was still a good idea, and Sena had decided immediately that everyone should come over to her place that night. Her father agreed with it just as immediately, stating that the best thing at the moment was for word of this to not get out.
There was something off about how he said it. I just couldn't place it.
So, with that said, Rika and I went back to the club room to retrieve our forgotten stuff.
"I think this might be left field, but I think we could pull a certain trick off from one of my favorite comics," Rika said out of nowhere during our quick march.
I wasn't sure where she was going with this, but I noticed that she'd swapped back to first person. "What kind of trick?"
"It's a triangle romance of sorts, two people who hate each other are kept stable by one person interfering, but I was thinking of inverting it. Two people stabilizing one person."
"You really think we could pull that off?"
"For a little while, anyways," she nodded. "I think something stabilizing could keep the club from falling apart around us."
As silence fell down on us, I took that as my cue to resume our previous conversation.
"It hit me a while ago," I said some what reluctantly, "that even though we're doing all of this in the name of 'practicing for having future friends', we've all sort of become friends through it all. I don't want to see that go away at all."
"I see..." And that was all Rika said before we reached the club room.
Much to my surprise, Kobato and Maria were both in it, sitting awkwardly across the table from each other. Shouldn't they have been busy with something else somewhere else? Or maybe they'd been let out if the teachers had heard about what had happened with Yukimura...? But that didn't make sense for Kobato. Shouldn't she be working on her own Class project for the Festival?
Although, it looked like they might have gotten into a fight, considering that Kobato had some blood on her lower lip. How long had they been in here alone for? Maybe it was later than I thought it was.
"Yo," Oddly, neither of them said anything in reply to that greeting. "Kobato, Sena invited us over tonight-" Kobato seemed to tense up at the mention of Sena's name.
"And by us, Kodaka-sempai means the whole club!" Rika helpfully added, as if sensing the way Kobato feared heading over there. Kobato and Maria both seemed to relax somewhat... Odd, why weren't they saying anything?
"So if you're not busy with anything, we can get going," I continued. "We just needed to get our stuff before we go," and with that I walked over to where my bag had been haphazardly left on the floor.
"Ah, Onii-chan," it was Maria who spoke up then, oddly with a slight lisp to her words as she spoke. Sigh. She'd probably bitten her tongue or something, "I can come too?"
Not the question I was expecting, but I didn't see why not as long as she asked Kate-sensei first.
Rika laughed for some reason as she grabbed a book bag, which seemed to contain a few bottles of gel, going by the sound it made. Ah, probably the hair dye she'd used earlier.
Wait, did I just do that thing where I said exactly what I was thinking?
"Yes," Kobato and Rika replied at once.
Damn it.