The briefing room was located on the third floor of the Minato Ward Police Headquarters. It was a very large room that could, if needed, house half of the ward's police force, though usually, like that morning, only a handful of seats were taken. Today's occupants were Kuga Natsuki, Detective Tanaka Yuuki, Captain Kumaji, Researcher Ichidouji Eriko (though she was fiddling with the tray-mounted projector at the moment) and, because she could go wherever she damned pleased, Chief Akitori.

"Ah, there we go," Eriko muttered to herself as the projector started up, first displaying a computer's desktop on a white screen up front, but launching into what was obviously the recording of a security camera.

The camera had been strategically placed in the upper right corner of the corner of the jewelry shop, behind the counter where the cashier, a person whose shoulder-length black hair betrayed as being a young woman, yawned in boredom. Or, at least, her hands hinted so. The room beyond the counter had three glass-sealed stalls full of glittering gems with large fluorescent lights over them, and had otherwise no interesting features except for the door and the window, in which a familiar street and museum were plainly visible.

"11:26... that's around the time the attack happened," Yuuki noted, looking at the numbers in the corner of the displayed image.

A few seconds later, a black Toyota Hiace, a large old van with a sliding door and windows that were both tinted and curtained, slowed to a stop in front of the shop. It stayed there, completely still, for about 5 minutes, more than long enough for the assembled police officers to see it as suspicious and correctly guess the thief or thieves were inside it.

01/05, 11:31, told the numbers on the screen.

"Ah, see, that's me and Oyama," he said, pointing as a squad car passed in front of the shop. Almost as soon as the car had passed by, the side door of the van opened a tiny bit and something inhuman the size of a small dog crawled out, disappearing below the ledge of the window.

"The Orphan," Natsuki mumbled, continuing louder with a tone of disbelief, "They were carrying an Orphan in their van!"

"Where did it go?" Yuuki wondered. "If it went on the sidewalk, someone would have spotted it and spread a panic or something…"

"It probably went down the water drain," Natsuki guessed. "It should pop out at the crossing soo---er, now," the latter was delivered as a cloud of dust flowed down the street. A second later, people ran in the same direction as the cloud, mouths open in screams that were not captured by the video-only camera. The cashier got up to take a peek outside and, like any good citizen used to Tokyo's relatively frequent Orphan attacks, was soon running for safety as well.

Almost as soon as she was gone, two people walked out of the van's side door while a third came out the driver's seat.

"What the---" "The hell are they wearing!" Both Yuuki and Natsuki erupted at the same time, respectively. Kumaji, Ichidouji and the Chief seemed to agree with the sentiment.

The first, from the driver's car and the one to pull open the front door, was wearing a white lab coat, latex gloves, a medical mask and protective glasses, with a clashing black and orange 'Yomiuri Giants' cap hiding most, but not all, of his short hair. He was the most "normal" of the three.

The second was wearing a stocking on his head with a hole cut for the mouth and nothing to contain the extra length that flopped behind him like a bonnet. He was wearing a camo suit with a "safety vest" that was painfully fake - even with the camera's poor resolution, even Natsuki rapidly saw it was nothing more than a thin black vest with the sleeves messily cut off at the shoulders. The weird part, however, was the face he had hand-painted on the stocking; it was white, red and yellow, had horns in weird places and red lines trailing below its globulous eyes that were probably meant to be blood. It was probably meant to look intimidating, but the drawing was so amateurish and crude that it only managed to look somewhat less disturbing than a two months old puppy stumbling adventurously on a bunch of fluffy blankets.

But the last one was by far the weirdest.

Whereas the other two had their heads mostly or completely hidden from view, the third's face was hidden by nothing but a monocle and a ridiculous white top-hat (which appeared to be somewhat pointy on the right side, as if the material inside had been taped into a badly thought cylinder) that did very, very little to conceal his identity, despite what he seemed to believe. His pants were white and, like the first, he also wore a lab coat, but he had modified his so he could wear it like an arm-concealing white cloak; it was probably meant to look like a cape, but the arm holes had been badly sown enough to make him look like his arms were simply missing.

And, sadly enough, his body language told Yuuki he was the leader of the group. Yuuki rolled his eyes.

As the three would-be thieves started to break the glass displays - how exactly had they missed the alarm bell? - Natsuki sighed loudly.

"It's Doctor Evil, a Korn reject and Kaito Kid without the tux," she said, eliciting snorts from the others.

They watched as the thieves picked jewels by the handful and stuffed them in big garbage bags for a minute, then Yuuki let out his own sigh.

"They're amateurs," he declared. Both Kumaji and Natsuki nodded in agreement, the latter to his surprise.

"I hope he doesn't think that monocle will stop us from finding out who he is," the little girl pointed at 'Kaito kid'.

"Only one of them's wearing gloves, they're leaving fingerprints everywhere," Yuuki noted. "Plus, they're reaching in broken glass without protection--see, the Korn Reject just cut himself there. That's a blood sample."

"They're being rough with the jewelry, they'll break some of them for sure," Natsuki added. That was true, but…

"Not just that, their bags are way too big; there's never enough jewelry in a shop to fill a whole garbage bag, never mind three. Plus, jewelry on its own is useless; you need to sell it to get anything from it, and I'm betting they didn't think about that." She blinked and thought for a second before nodding in a conceding way.

"Then there's their van, it's an old piece of junk, and there can't be many like it wandering around, never mind with curtains and tinted windows, and they were stupid enough to park in front of the window. If we put up a search warrant, we'll find it for sure," Natsuki said. A dark smile appeared in Yuuki's face.

"I don't think we'll have to do that. If my memory is right, there isn't a lot of room for them to escape the scene with, and really only one way they can turn around. If my guess is right, we'll see their license plate." Natsuki blinked again.

"They can't be that stupid, right? All they'd have to do is drive backward…"

Yuuki raised an eyebrow and silently pointed at the top-hat wearer. Natsuki sighed.

"Good point."

And, sure enough, after the thieves had finished pillaging the store (only a short time after a police car driven by a certain overweight agent sped past in reverse, fleeing the scene) from the incoming Orphan), they returned to the van and, during the inevitable U-turn,

"...argh--did we get it?" Yuuki asked.

"I think so... or at least part of it," Eriko replied. "I hadn't noticed it the first time I saw this, though."

...only the right half the plate became visible, and only for an instant. But it would be enough... hopefully.

"Ok, so we have the license plate, that guy's face, fingerprints and a blood sample from the wannabe Jack Skellington to go with," Natsuki resumed, turning to look her querying green eyes at Kumaji. "This will be easy, right?"

Instead of confirming, Kumaji raised a bushy eyebrow and intoned, "maybe you should ask your partner that?"

The little bluette frowned a bit and turned the now much colder eyes toward the Kansaijin, who noticed he was now the center of attention. He nervously cleared his throat and replied, "It should be easy - I mean, we saw his face and the plate, but the best thing is those fingerprints. There must be dozens of them all over the glass that we can use to--"

He cut himself off as, on the still continuing video feed, a huge piece of the Orphan's pincers broke through the window, breaking and upturning the stalls and spilling torrents of broken glass as it went, before bursting into green flames - the scene was now a complete mess of shattered wood and glass.

Four pairs of eyes turned toward a green-eyed fifth.

"Sorry," Natsuki muttered sheepishly. Yuuki sighed.

"Ok. So getting the fingerprints will be a little harder than expected. We still have his face and the plate, and the DNA will be easier to find, not that we can go very far with that."

"Why not?" Natsuki asked. "I mean, it's like fingerprints, right? Everyone's are unique."

"It's easy to find someone based on his fingerprints because everyone's are registered at birth. DNA samples need to be compared to another, so you can't use them unless you've got some idea of who it is and another sample to compare it to; they're not an investigative tool, they're incriminating evidence."

"Oh," Natsuki noised.

"So you'd start with...?" Kumaji asked. Yuuki had the distinct impression the older police officer was testing him.

"I'd start with searching Top-hat's home, since we know his face," he replied after a short thoughtful pause, weighing his answer like an exam's, just in case. "But first I'd need to know his name and address—"

"Oh, I did that—" Eriko suddenly piped up in the middle of shutting down the projector, freezing when she saw everyone looking at her. "I-- I mean—I--- I started the search… It… it should be finished… maybe… I mean, I saw the video and his face and I thought… uh…"

"Cute and efficient. I like," he said flirtingly with a smile, then chuckled inwardly as the shy brunette's cheeks turned a fiery red.

"Allright, enough out of you, Casanova," the chief declared, speaking for the first time. The grimness in her voice rapidly killed the researcher's blush rapidly and brought the whole room to a cool seriousness that had been conspicuously missing from the moment the thieves had appeared on the screen.

"Normally," she started, "I'd let a more experienced officer handle a group of thieves like this, even if this group seems to have all the brains and common sense of a doped-up moth between the three of them. The problem, however, is their distraction. If they are indeed behind the robbery of the Umi no ki as well as the Murasaki, which follows the same MO, then we have to assume they have the ability to manipulate Orphans somehow."

"There was a jewelry shop in front of the Umi no ki," Natsuki piped up. Yuuki gave her a surprised glance; he hadn't noticed that. "Maybe it was their first target, only the Orphan was too pathetic to be a big enough distraction…"

"You're assuming a lot, princess," Kumaji pointed out warningly. "Still, it's possible; using an Orphan to steal so little yen seems kinda silly… Then again, so do their costumes."

"In any case," the Chief said loudly, "because they have the ability to use Orphans in some way, I have little choice but to assign Tanuki and Princess to the case, since she's specially equipped to handle them. Ichidouji, you and your colleagues will treat any of their requests as priority; as well, I want the whole team to research on ways to control, manipulate or in some other way affect Orphans to make them do your bidding, whenever you're not handling this or another high priority case. I want to know what we're dealing with here."

"Yes ma'am," Ichidouji saluted.

"You know anything about that?" Kumaji suddenly asked. Yuuki had to look at him to see he was asking Natsuki, who had been frowning thoughtfully.

"No… I mean, I've seen a Child that could do something like that to an Orphan—control it or trick its senses or something, I didn't ask its HiME how it was doing it – but from what I remember, it was nothing strong enough to stop an aggressive Orphan like that one from going nuts, especially with three people so close to it. It should have gone crazy and killed them in the first place. Besides, that Child was pretty damn big, and I'd have noticed a giant chess piece hovering around."

"We didn't see the van," Yuuki pointed out. Natsuki rolled her eyes.

"I was busy knocking some sense into the old gheez---I mean, Rokubungi," she amended as the Chief raised an eyebrow, "and you were busy trying to get yourself squashed by a giant lobster so yours truly could save you," she finished derisorily. He gave her a glare, she replied with a toothy grin.

"If you're quite finished acting like a pair of kids?" The Chief cut in like a Katana blade; the partners understandably shut up and turned to look at her (though Yuuki resisted the urge to point out the brat was a kid). "As I said, you're both assigned to this case, and you've got the highest priority. Their last stunt did over twenty million yen of damage, not to mention it'll take weeks before the street is back in order, never mind the wrecked buildings. I can't allow a bunch of low-lives like them to do that kind of damage to my ward. I want them caught and rotting in their own wastes where they belong, and I want them there yesterday."

"That's illegal in most countries," Kumaji pointed out. The chief turned his way.

"What part is?"

"The 'rotting in their own wastes' part."

"Hm… Is it illegal here?"

"Last time I checked, it was."

"What's the closest country where it's legal, then?"

"I'd say North Korea, probably. And before you ask, they don't let anyone in."

"We could use a catapult."

"We don't have a catapult."

"Curses. I guess I can't have everything." A small smile appeared on both Kumaji and the chief's faces, showing they hadn't exactly been serious. "Jokes aside, Kumaji, give Tanuki a Flash-stick, I'll fix the red tape for it."

The older officer nodded. Yuuki made a confused sound. A Flash-stick?

"Ichidouji, get working."

"Hai," the brunette replied with a salute, and she left immediately.

"Any questions?" The chief asked.

"Just one," Yuuki put in. "You do remember my name isn't Tanuki, right?"

A frosty blue-eyed glare was his answer.

"Right, never mind, no questions then." He muttered meekly.

"Thought so. Dismissed, everyone; get back to work."

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MyHiME

Book 1

Fresco

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Disclaimer: While the My and the HiME don't belong to me, ∞ does. Since ∞ means infinity, then infinity belongs to me, except what exclusively belongs to someone else. Since infinity means everything, it means that while I own the people working at Sunrise and the city it's built in, I don't own Sunrise itself or My HiME. Thus, in a roundabout way, I don't own My HiME, but I do.

P.S: I did some minor edits to the last scene of chapter 3; some Shizuru-Natsuki interaction, because I'd been in a hurry last time.

Special Thanks to my Betas, Sebastian Palm and ifhaseth!

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Chapter 4: Red Herring

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The shooting range was a fairly large room that made up about a third of the headquarters' third floor. Ten meters wide for forty long, of which only three were on the other side of the security blockade, it was a fairly straightforward range; its far right wall was heavily padded to absorb bullets, whether they hit or missed the human-silhouette paper targets that were hanging at regular intervals from holes in the ceiling whenever someone was using the room. The left side held various regulation or commonly used guns (common being a word to be taken relatively, considering how strict Japan was about guns), and on the wall in front of the thick metal door built to be nigh impossible to force open, there was a large locker sealed with an impressive padlock that would probably have given a metal saw or a torch some trouble to cut through.

And, after Kumaji and Yuuki entered the deserted room with an echoing high-pitched metallic squeak of the heavy door's hinges, it was toward that locker that the former headed to.

"Why didn't the brat come with us?" Yuuki asked.

"Princess isn't allowed in this room without a good reason," Kumaji explained as he fiddled with the padlock's relatively tiny key, muttering epithets under his breath (and Yuuki's pet theory about the origins of Natsuki's dirty language was proven to be true). "Back when she could, she kept coming in here to blast a few holes through the targets, but her elements damaged the mat in the back, so Akane ordered her not to."

"They're that powerful?" Yuuki blinked. He remembered oh-too-well the freezing feeling her shot had left on his arm, but it didn't seem enough to do any kind of serious damage to a hardened bullet-stopping mat.

"It's not a matter of being powerful, it's a matter of causing a kind of damage they weren't made to handle," Kumaji replied.

Oh. Right. That made sense. "Why didn't she use regular guns, then?"

A small smile appeared on Kumaji's face, and while Yuuki couldn't see it, he certainly heard it in the reply, "She hates them; says they're too loud, too smelly, shoot too slow, are too heavy… the list goes on, but I think the real reason why she never wants to use a real gun is that the first and only time she tried, she ended up flat on her back from the recoil."

Yuuki snickered at the mental picture this offered. Maybe someone had taken a picture he could see… And—wait. "Akane?" he repeated.

"Akitori Akane---ah, finally" Kumaji replied just as he gave a sharp tug and the padlock finally gave up. "That's the Chief's full name, but I'm the only one she'll let call her that way, since I met her as a sergeant when she was still a cadet; if you try it, she'll put fishing hooks through your balls, tie them to the back of her car and drive all the way to Sapporo."

Yuuki winced. "Gotcha."

Kumaji noised a bear-like chuckle in reply as he opened the locker's doors – they gave a slight screech, as if they hadn't been opened in quite a few years – and extracted something from inside, something heavy enough to make the broad officer grunt with effort at lifting it. Then he turned around, and Yuuki saw what it was.

"Whoa." was his reaction.

It was white and sleek, shaped slightly like a hourglass, about half a meter long, nearly two decimeters high at the cannon, a long nylon strap connecting the front and the back and had blue lamp-like pieces sticking out along the back, but it was otherwise recognizable as a rifle. That is, a rifle that had been pulled right out of a high budget science fiction movie. And from the way Kumaji handled it, it seemed to be quite heavy.

"This, Tanuki, is a Medium-level Photon Phase Disruption Rifle, or Photon phasing Rifle or Phase Disruption Rifle or whatever, I forgot its name, and it's not important anyway; everyone here calls it the Flash-stick," Kumaji began. "As I'm sure you already know, regular weapons can't do much against Orphans; they leave small holes that are healed in a matter of seconds, and nothing but a high power missile can cause any kind of decent damage to it. This gun, however, was built with them in mind."

Yuuki remembered the damage yesterday's Orphan had taken and dealt, and the trouble it had given the brat, who was naturally equipped to fight them. How powerful would a weapon meant to hurt Orphans be? For an instant, an image of the gun firing a steady beam of energy, blasting buildings, cars and other urban features left and right floated through his mind before he shook his head to clear it.

Heh. Yeah right. This wasn't Gundam, after all.

Then his train of thought suffered a fatal derailment as Kumaji pointed the rifle straight at him and---

Hnnnnnzzzzz----KERZAP!----

"AHH!—aa--a…---ah?" was Yuuki's reaction. Surprised at not being reduced to a shapeless splatter on the wall, he looked down at himself, expecting a huge cauterized hole or a blasted chest or something so fatally major he wouldn't feel more than the mild warmth he was feeling from his uniform's front.

…nothing. Not even a scratch, not even a scorch mark.

"Now, as I said," Kumaji resumed, sounding more smugly amused than probably or should be legal, "this gun was built with Orphans in mind. That means it's completely useless against anything else."

"A warning would have been nice," Yuuki grumbled. The older officer chuckled gruffly and continued his speech,

"I'll skip the big explanation since I barely caught it myself, but Orphans are made of solid light at a certain phase, and this gun fires a beam of light that dephases them... whatever that means. I'm a police officer, not a physicist. What I do know is that this gun causes wounds on Orphans that take a lot longer to heal than regular firearms, and that's all that matters."

"Why isn't everyone using them, then?" He asked as Kumaji handed him the rifle - urgh! It was heavy! At least fifteen kilos! - the brat could have used the help against yesterday's Orphan.

"Except for their weight?" Kumaji replied wryly, seeing the trouble Yuuki was having at finding a comfortable way to hold it, "They're pretty damn expensive, for one; you're holding about five million yen in your hands at the moment."

Yuuki froze and boggled. Five Million...?

"And second, they're not very efficient - sure, it'll hurt an average Orphan, but you'd be lucky to kill anything or do any kind of damage that'll last longer than a minute with this gun; it's about as strong as a derringer with black powder pellets. If you two face an Orphan, I suggest you leave it to Princess, who can do better with what nature's given her than anything science can make so far."

"If it's so useless, why bother giving it to me?"

"Because," Kumaji said as he shut the doors with a noisy clang and a metallic clink from the padlock, "While this is a bit much to carry around all the time, since Tokyo as a whole gets about one or two attacks a week and there's one chance in 23 that it ends up in our ward, you'll be going against thieves that use them as diversions and who probably have the ability to summon them somehow, so it's pretty much certain you'll need it.

"Plus, Princess is like quite a few HiMEs; she has this nasty tendency to think she's invincible and sometimes takes risks she really shouldn't, and while you can't kill an Orphan with this gun, you can at least be a distraction if she gets in a jam. And trust me, she probably will. Now go ahead and try it out; I need to teach you to hold it right..."

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Natsuki watched as her old and new partner left to the shooting range. She'd have loved to follow them (if only to see how bad Tanuki's aim was compared to her pinpoint one (at least, with her Elements, one of the perks of being a HiME) and rub it in his face), but the chief had forbidden her to go after she had deep-frosted and burned the mat to the point it had to be removed with a good part of the wall.

Hmph. Like it was her fault they hadn't bothered to make it freeze and burn proof...

She knew Kuma-jiji and stupid Tanuki would be busy for a while, and she wasn't about to spend it waiting there standing in the hallway. With a grin appearing on her face, she realized she was alone, and since there was probably no one in the break room (which was usually empty at this time, she knew), there would be no one to stop her from taking a coffee.

Honestly, she sighed as she climbed down the stairs. It wasn't like she was nine anymore... She was old enough to drink coffee-- besides, no one said anything to Shizuru when she drank her tea, and that had caffeine in it too!

The break room was a claustrophobically small room on the second floor, near the administration - or, as she referred to it, "the boringest place in the station" - and the Chief's office. It was equipped with a counter long enough to hold a perpetually busy sink, a constantly full dishwasher and a bunch of cupboards that were forever empty, which incidentally caused it to fill up a third of the room's area. The rest of it was either occupied with one of the twelve chairs or the three tables that made the rest of its furniture.

Despite it being called the break room, most of the agents preferred to take their breaks in the lobby on the first floor, which had the same useful amenities (meaning, the coffee machine, as almost everyone already had their own cups - they were quite popular presents at the station) with the advantage of being much less claustrophobic. This, of course, meant that it was almost always empty.

Emphasis on "almost", because, to her surprise, it wasn't empty when she entered; Lieutenant Ishigami, pretty much the only agent she knew for whom she didn't have a (semi-disparaging) nickname for, was sitting at one of the tables when she entered. He looked up, apparently as surprised as her at finding someone else in the break room, but softened when he saw it was her.

Natsuki liked Ishigami. The thin-eyed officer with square rimmed glasses was the very first agent she had opened up to when she had started 'volunteering', even before Kumaji. Back then, she had been used as a general helper and handled like a parasite by the bureaucrats (in hindsight, she could see they simply hadn't trusted a nine years old girl's sense of organization to deal with sensitive paperwork), he had been the only one who had been willing to talk with her and relieve her of her boredom. In fact, it was thanks to him if she had ended up as Kumaji's partner in the first place - or, at least, she seriously suspected it, and as Kumaji had taught her, she followed her gut feeling and what evidence she had.

There was no question in her mind, however, as to why the chief hadn't put her with him; first, he already had a partner, although she'd been out for the last two weeks on maternity leave. Second, he liked her too much; the chief needed someone whom she could trust wouldn't hesitate to hit the button on the remote if she went nuts or something (not that she would, Natsuki mentally protested, but the chief was well-known to be protective of her precious career). And third, she added as she watched the cup she had freshly extracted from the dishwasher being filled by the instant coffee machine, he was willing to overlook just about anything she did, except her potty mouth (which he proclaimed to be Kumaji's fault, an accusation to which the newly promoted captain would only comment in the presence of his lawyer).

Coffee in hand, she sat on the chain in front of him (noting with a bit of joy that her ankles almost touched the ground), then picked the sugar jar and added five generous spoonfuls; the only way to drink coffee, she knew, as the damn thing was way too bitter, and it made mayonnaise taste bad - she knew from experience. How the chief could drink it black, she had no idea.

She then glanced at what he'd been doing; his notebook was open in front of him, just below a pair of pictures of girls who appeared to be near her age. She raised an eyebrow.

"Who's that? Your daughters?" she asked teasingly.

"It's a case," he replied distractedly, while underlining something in his notebook. She sobered up immediately; Ishigami was a field officer (the polite word for "grunt") of the major crime department (unlike she and Tanuki, who were a detective team for minor crimes only (current case and occasional Orphan-busting excluded), which was probably a fourth reason for her current partnership), so if they were a case, it wasn't good news for them.

"Can I look?" He smiled and nodded, she quickly took the pictures in her hands and inspected them thoroughly, to find that neither were very special; the first had a pair of ponytails that her hair seemed to be fighting against with everything it had, making her look somewhat like she'd had a bad meeting with an electric plug, while the second had glass bottle glasses and a large amount of freckles, which did nothing to make her snout-like nose any less evident.

"The first one, with the ponytails, is Nijino Sora, twelve years old; she vanished last Friday on her way back from Shinagawa middle school, as far as the information we have says. The other one is 13 years old Ayasaka Saya – yes, made me pause when I heard it the first time too – she left her friend's house in Aoyama late on Saturday; she never got home. Considering the timing and the general similarities between the victims and MO – we're thinking both of them were taken while using alleys, we were told they both tended to use shortcuts like them – we're thinking the same person is doing this. And we know they're not just runaway cases, because Nijino-san is the highly responsible top-of-the-class type and didn't appear to have any kind of problems, and Ayasaka-san's family are just about the nicest people I've ever seen – I just came back from seeing them."

Natsuki winced. "Ouch." A wry smile appeared on Ishigami's face.

"Yeah. That'd be one of the joys of being a grunt; handling worried parents."

She smiled and went back to inspecting the pictures, mulling over what he had told her.

"Shinagawa… Aoyama… they're pretty far apart," Natsuki noted. Ishigami nodded.

"It is; we're thinking whoever's behind this is using a car during his crime; what we can't figure out is why they're doing this; there was no ransom notes, and while Ayasaka-san's family is rich, Nijino's isn't. And kidnappers in for money wouldn't take two girls like that unless they were related somehow - and they aren't."

"Maybe it's a pervert?" Natsuki suggested with some distaste.

Ishigami gave her a small smile. "That's a possibility we're considering; seems like the most likely possibility; right now, though, unless a witness pops out of the woodwork or he makes a mistake, we're stuck for now. The good thing is that he has no reason to stop -- if that's a good thing."

Natsuki made a disgusted sound. "So who's the detective handling this?"

"Kumaji – he insisted," Ishigami added at seeing Natsuki's surprised face. "I know it's not supposed to be his job anymore, but the chief agreed to it since it looks like it'll be a pretty hard case."

"You think the chief would let me help him then?" she piped up. "I mean, if it's a pervert, I could act as bait--"

"Get that idea out of your mind, princess," Ishigami interrupted chidingly. "First, you have your own case with Tanaka-san. Second, the chief would kill me for suggesting it, then you for thinking it; even Kumaji wouldn't get out of that one without at least a lashing – and I don't mean with words. Third, your friend Fujino would go on a rampage inside the station if something happened to you; you're impossible to fight if you're awake, but imagine he manages to knock you out before you can summon Durhan? Especially if it's a pervert?"

Natsuki winced. "Point taken."

"And lastly, we want him caught, not turned into an omelet by Durhan."

"I have more control over him than that!"

"My point exactly," he replied with a small smile as she spluttered additional denials. The break room's door took this time to open, allowing Yuuki and Kumaji inside. The older officer wordlessly picked the cup of coffee from Natsuki's hands - who only now noticed she had forgot to drink it, rats - and took a sip. He winced at the taste.

"You always put too much sugar in it, Princess."

"It's bitter and yucky otherwise, old bear," Natsuki replied grumblingly.

"It's meant to be bitter so little kids don't try to drink it."

"I'm not little!" she huffed and crossed her arms childishly while Kumaji went to empty the cup in the sink, giving her a pat on the head along the way.

"So, when are we going?" Ishigami asked the captain, who put the empty cup on the counter before replying,

"As soon as Ichidouji pages us."

Natsuki blinked in confusion. Wasn't Ichidouji supposed to handle her case? Why was--

"You're coming with us?" Yuuki's question at the lieutenant cut into her confusion. The officer nodded, while Kumaji was the one to reply.

"My case isn't going anywhere for now, I'm afraid," he said, "and since there's a chance that you'll find all three thieves at the same place, Akane decided to send me and Ishigami along with you two, so you don't end up outnumbered. I only learned this morning. And yes, Princess, I know you technically count for two, but Akane isn't going to risk her all-important career on making it appear she was less than careful if something goes wrong."

"What could go wrong exactly?" Natsuki asked.

"Word from the wise: Never, ever ask that question, Princess," Kumaji replied.

"Oh? Who's the wise?"

Kumaji opened his mouth to snipe back at her, but at that moment, the PA system interrupted them. A short crisping noise came through the wall-mounted speaker, a second before a female voice came through:

"Captain Kumaji, Lieutenant Ishigami, Detective Tanaka and Volunteer Kuga are requested by Researcher Ichidouji in the archives. Repeat, Captain..."

"That would be our cue," Ishigami said, stuffing his notebook and the pictures in his shirt pocket while getting up.

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The Archives were a large space that spanned some of the first and a lot of the second floor. Directly connected to the officers' area and the reception on the first floor, and the administration on the second floor, it bustled with activity as uniform-clad officers and researchers and casually clad bureaucrats wandered like ants between the many rows of preciously ordered paperwork sealed in large chromed filing cabinets.

Ichidouji's desk was in the frontmost section of the first floor, near the reception and a large bulletproof window looking on to the parking lot. The section appeared to be the main area for her co-workers as well, as there were a dozen other desks, arranged similarly with a single computer and wide working areas delimited by inch-tall 'walls', which were really the only separation between them; the researchers were apparently encouraged to peek at what their neighbors were doing, which made sense after one thought about it a little. However, the general lack of organization and haphazard mess that could be found on most of those desks made it appear like this was the workspace of a bunch of frat programmers on a test crunch.

Her spot was no exception; it was a literal pigsty of multicolored papers, forgotten documents and discarded handwritten notes surrounding a half-drunk cup of coffee ("Shh! I'm looking for the kitty!" told the super deformed dog drawn on it to the aforementioned 'kitty' poking its back). Around her computer screen, a dozen yellow sticky notes of varying importance and age hinted to their owner being a forgetful or easily distracted person.

When she spoke, however, there was nothing distracted about her.

"Ueda Tetsuo, 27 years old, unemployed for the last year but somehow lives in a relatively expensive apartment in Akasaka, so he probably does work under the table. He was arrested two years ago in a library in Chuo, for trying to seal a beginner's book on magic tricks, pleaded guilty and spent a month in prison. His behavior was described as 'delusional, but harmless', which pretty much means he's a crackpot that doesn't want to kill people. He's left-handed and his blood type is AB."

Yuuki gave a long impressed whistle while Ishigami slowly and loudly applauded. Or at least, she seemed to believe it was loud; her job accomplished, her professionalism vanished and the brunette's cheeks reddened under the praise, and though she did her best to hide it by looking at her computer, her ears could not be so inconspicuously hidden.

"Nice job, Ichidouji. You have the exact address, I believe?" Kumaji asked. She nodded and handed one of the many papers on her desk, with the address having already been written on it.

"It…it was easy enough…" she stammered. Natsuki smirked.

"I'll bet it was, since we had his face… looks like our bozo dropped the 'harmless' part, though."

"Well I got his 'harmless' right here," Yuuki said with a grin, tugging at the handcuffs hanging from his belt. "How about we go and give it to him?"

The little girl shot him a blank look.

"…that was awful, Tanuki." she noted matter-of-factly. He scowled.

"Shut up, brat."

"What about the license plate?" Kumaji asked. Ichidouji shook her head and answered, once again with perfect professionalism,

"Nothing for now; we only got half the digits. I ran a search and got about seven hundred hits; about a hundred of them are Hiaces, forty of them are black – but we can't rely on that to narrow it down, since they can be repainted easily enough – and I'm still cross-referencing to see which ones are likely to be in Tokyo right now." She shrugged. "Hopefully, if you don't catch him, you'll at least find something to narrow the list down, otherwise I'm getting nothing from that angle."

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The people who lived in the seven stories tall apartment building at the inner limits of Akasaka were quite surprised that morning to see three police cars stop silently in front of their door. They were just as surprised when three officers came out, accompanied by a little girl. Questions arose among the growing number of curious onlookers watching from their apartment windows or balconies, but no one remembered ever seeing that little girl before. Who could she be and what could she be doing here, with police officers?

At ground level, the officers opened the door leading inside the building under the eye of the nosy man who was its owner – nosy not in the curious sense, but in the 'gifted with a voluminous nose' one – who had been forewarned of their arrival. He led them downstairs, away from the somewhat expensive-looking habitations above and toward the less glamorous ones below, finally stopping at a door marked 013.

"They haven't been here in a few days, though," he said before opening the door.

"They just had to have that bit of common sense, I guess…" Yuuki sighed, then paused. "Wait, they? Three people, by any chance?"

With a puzzled raised eyebrow, the owner shook his head. "Two; Tetsuo-san and his little brother, Sunao-san."

"We'll have to get Ichidouji to look at him next," Kumaji noted darkly.

-

The apartment was home to two grown men, and family to boot. This, by what could only be some of the more obscure laws of nature, meant that it was—

"Urgh!" noised Natsuki.

…a total and utter mess. The first room they saw was the living room, of which virtually every surface was littered by random junk and instant food packaging – many of which would later be shown to have seen the expiration date marked on them weeks ago, which said a lot about their age and how long the place had spent without a good cleaning. A strong, nauseating smell of trash hovered about the room, prompting the less stoic ones among the visitors (namely, Natsuki and the owner) to pinch their noses forcefully.

"I'll take this room," Kumaji said, and headed straight for the corner, where the phone was barely visible, partially hidden by an empty instant spaghetti meal.

The kitchen was actually worse – the sink was full of dirty dishes and the line-shaped sauce stains on a nearby dish towel on the dirty counter told of inhabitants who hastily washed their utensils at the very last second. In the back of the room, a large number of garbage bags were piled up, apparently laid aside to be taken out "another day" repeatedly for a few weeks; the building's owner, whom Yuuki gave a short glance at after seeing them, was giving those bags a very disapproving look that promised a throughout chewing out about it when his irresponsible tenants returned.

Understandably, no one volunteered to look around there.

The bathroom was thankfully clean (Yuuki had almost been afraid of what they'd find when he opened the door), though the towels hanging near the shower – itself in dire need of a scrub – were rugged and grayed with age. The bedroom was more interesting, though; arrayed haphazardly around the two unmade futons that stunk of sweat were a large number of VCR tapes. Ishigami picked one of them up.

"Batman returns," he read the title out loud, before picking up a handful of them, "and Spiderman one and two, and the Fantastic Four, all in original English with subtitles…" he looked at Yuuki with a raised eyebrow, "an Ameri-otaku?"

Yuuki nodded while Natsuki stepped around him to have a look around too. "Probably; if that was their inspiration, it sure would explain their costumes." Ishigami snorted in response.

"More of them here," Natsuki said, looking at a small pile she had found. "Superu... Supru... um... Supaamann ibu, Ikusu-man, Bu—k...uh... bu..."

"Anyways," Yuuki said, ignoring her bumbling attempts at reading English letters (honestly, had she missed three years of school or something? And since when was "IV" read Ibu?), "Ishigami, go look around in the kitchen. Kuga and I will look---"

"Ishigami, what's a Buck Cake?" Natsuki asked, as if Yuuki hadn't been talking. The thin-eyed man gave her a startled look.

"Buck--where--" she showed him the tape she was holding, on which a shapely and scantly clad woman grinned pearly-white teeth under the English title of 'Queens of Bukkake'.

"You think Fumi-obaachan would make one if we ask?" she asked honestly.

"On second thought, Ishigami, you stay here, Kuga, er---go to Kumaji or something," Yuuki quickly put in, taking the tape and pushing the young teen outside, ignoring her protests.

"H-Hey--Why--"

After shutting the door behind her, he sighed.

"It really figures she'd stumble on their porn on the first try--- and not a word out of you, lieutenant!"

"Sir, yes sir!" the other man saluted stiffly with a large amused grin. Yuuki sighed again.

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Natsuki grumbled under her breath. That stupid Tanuki, trying to push her out of the investigation like she was nothing but a little kid running around and playing police… Hah. She'd told him she was used to this stuff - it wasn't her fault if her English wasn't advanced enough to know things like "Buck Cake"... Maybe she'd aught to look it up on the internet... how was it spelled again? B-u-k-k...something...

Bah, whatever. In the meantime, she knew just the right way to pay him back for pushing her away - by finding a brilliant piece of evidence before he does and rub it in his face! That'll teach him not to underestimate her!

...not that she cared what he thought about her, come to think about it, but it was the principle of the thing.

She easily found Kumaji in the living room, near the phone, by following the sound of his voice asking questions to the building's owner.

"...ndard rate is about three hundred thousand yen a month for these apartments; those on the higher levels are almost twice that much," he was replying when they came into her view.

"Isn't that a bit expensive?" Kumaji asked while kneeling in front of the phone and noting something down in his notebook - she knew from experience that he was noting down the phone numbers and times of the last people who had called them recently.

"This is a three room apartment, sir. And the location is very good - there's a bus stop nearby that leads to two different train lines, both of which are within ten minutes of walk if you don't want to wait. My apartments are very worth their price," the owner replied defensively, sounding piqued.

"Hm," Kumaji noised noncommittally (another trick he had explained to her: people unsure of what you think are more likely to be defensive, and defensive people talk more… sometimes), "and you say they never paid late?"

"Yes, that's right," the owner replied with a smile. "They were excelle—"

"And yet only one of them worked," Kumaji interrupted.

The smile froze. "Ah... yes."

"And you didn't think it was suspicious?"

An offended frown replaced it. "Sir, I am not someone curious as to pry on the private lives of my tenants. Being suspicious of everyone and everything is your job, not mine."

"Hm-hn. In other words, you'd led a bloodthirsty Yakuza goon live down here, and as long as he didn't hurt anyone nearby and paid his rent, you wouldn't care."

"Ah--- that is to say… uh…"

Kumaji made a gruff snort, the kind meant to lead the owner to believe he was digging his own grave. Having seen him interrogate someone like this before, Natsuki allowed a small smile to come on her face; he had explained to her why he was always so aggressive while interrogating: it kept whoever was being questioned on the defensive, and thus made them more likely to accidentally spill things to cover their own skins… though he had warned her that it didn't always work, and sometimes entirely had the opposite effect.

The captain noted a final number down (she assumed), then looked up and saw her standing in the short "hallway" connecting to the kitchen and the bedroom. He let out a sigh.

"Why aren't you with your partner, Princess?"

"I was finding things way too fast and he kicked me out to save face," she joked. As she had expected him to find it amusing, the irked frown that fell on his face took her by surprise.

"The truth, Natsuki," he said in a deep voice that, if the fact that he had used her real name wasn't enough, told her he wasn't amused.

"He sent me to you, I'm not sure why – and I'm not lying, either," she added quickly when his frown turned suspicious, something so tiny on his broad face that only someone very used to reading him like she was could notice. Only now did she notice she was on the defensive, and had she known anything, he would have been aware of it.

Damn he was good. Oh, why did he have to go and get himself promoted!

"Hm. I expect his reason was good enough. I've got this room covered, so you can go look in the kitchen. And yes, you can use Durhan."

She nodded with a grin at his answer to a question she had asked so often it was almost rehearsed, before turning toward the kitchen. As she entered it, she heard the owner's voice ask:

"Say, about that girl, why is she here anyway?"

To which Kumaji replied: "I thought you said you weren't curious?"

"Ah…"

Natsuki snickered. Her amusement vanished as she cast her second look at the Kitchen, and realized once more what a pigsty it was.

Sigh. Oh well, off to work; after materializing her elements, she called,

"Durhan!"

…and he started to appear. In the relative silence of the apartment, the icy explosion that accompanied her Child's summoning seemed incredibly loud. The mechanical howl he released after he materialized was no less, to the point that—

"What was that!"

…it alarmed the owner, who erupted behind her and stopped suddenly when he saw Durhan.

'Danger?' came from Durhan as he tensed up. She sent a negative reply and he visibly calmed, though she could feel he was still ready to jump in and protect her if need be.

"Ah… you're… a HiME?" the owner stuttered, suddenly nervous (understandable, as most people were as scared of Childs as of Orphans, like they were as likely to jump at anyone's throat as the other; it didn't stop it from irking Natsuki, though).

While she nodded with stiff lips, Kumaji came up behind him and said: "I trust that's not a problem," in a tone that said it had better not be.

"Ah…. Uh… no… um, but… but we have a no pet policy…"

Kumaji raised an eyebrow. "I'd like to meet the person who's allergic to this dog."

"Ah… right… I'll… I'll make an exception… ah… if you're looking for me, I'll be… um… outside…"

"Right. We'll ask you if we have more questions for you."

"Hn…" And with that, the owner left (read: fled) the apartment. Kumaji gave her a nod, then another one at the open bedroom door from which Tanuki was looking in curiously, before leaving back to the phone. The Kansaijin officer gave a shrug, as if telling himself that if Kumaji was alright with it, he had no reason to tell her to dematerialize Durhan, before returning to the bedroom and closing the door behind him.

'Safe?' Durhan asked; he was visibly wondering why he had been summoned.

'Search,' she ordered. It wasn't the first time she used Durhan as a sniffing dog, so he easily figured out what she wanted. Putting his nose to the floor, he took a whiff—

'Stinks!'

Unfortunately for Natsuki, the message was less a word or a meaning and more of a sensation; she winced and reflexively blocked her own nose, with no effect at all. It did stink! When was the last time that floor had been washed, the feudal era!

"Soey," she apologized nasally. Understanding he was making her uncomfortable, Durhan cut their connection partly and sent an apology that she waved off. She let out a relieved sigh and began her own search, looking at places she had been lucky at before, like under the table (nope, no hidden drugs there this time) behind the garbage can (she did not want to know how long that empty yogurt cup had spent lying there on the floor) and inside the counters (Urgh! Spider web! Gross!), to no avail.

She was in the process of climbing on the counter to gain access to the upper cupboards when Durhan tugged at her attention through the link; the mechanical wolf was inspecting one of the garbage bags (she was privately surprised he had even approached them; he must have been unwilling to let her do the dirty job, hopelessly loyal as he was), one near the top that, Natsuki noted, was oddly shaped, as if something big and square was in it, like a box.

Curious, she asked Durhan to pull it out, which he did with a great yank of his jaws. Unfortunately, this brought the few bags around it down on his head – she distinctively heard something glassy shatter inside one of them.

'Not hurt,' he sent to reassure her; she smiled at his thoughtfulness, though she hadn't been worried; she'd seen him take hits much harder than a simple glass bottle.

He brought the bag to her and dropped it in front of her feet; the box-like object inside was about the size of a shoebox, a bit taller maybe, and didn't appear to be alone in the bag. With a lack of hesitation borne from her young age, she reached for edges and pulled it open completely…

…her eyes then widened in surprise.

"Kuma-jiji!"

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"A bunch of broken kitchen knives, a bent and melted butter knife, broken bits of metal, a few burnt playing cards, and, more interestingly, a small-scale high heat oven, and two pairs of ripped sleeves, one white and one black," Kumaji listed what the now empty and discarded bag had spilled on the table.

"Those sleeves come from their costumes, right?" Natsuki guessed. The captain gave her a nod.

"Probably. That'd mean we're going after the right guys, and that the Korn Reject is none other than Ueda Sunao. And the oven is weird, too; there are only so many places you can find a piece of equipment like this."

"The other bags had nothing but regular trash, though there were quite a few beer cans for two people," Ishigami reported, removing the gloves he had put on to inspect them.

"We didn't find anything in the bedroom, either, except for these," Tanuki put it, pointing at a handful of tapes he had brought with him. It took a few seconds for Natsuki to notice that their titles, all written in squiggly English letters she couldn't begin to read (they were weird, like one uninterrupted line), were the same. "Looks like our thieves were into bootlegging. That explains their income, I guess."

She smirked. "Heh, I found more than you."

He raised an eyebrow. "You found a bunch of trash that told us something that we could easily have guessed, and an oven that we're not even sure if it's is relevant. I found how they were making cash, and it's something else to put them behind the bars for," he pointed out. "I'd say what I found it a bit more important than what you did."

Natsuki crossed her arms and huffed. Stupid Tanuki…

"Now now, children," Kumaji said, acting like the voice of reason, "this is not a competition, so it doesn't matter who found more or less. That being said," he extracted his notebook from his uniform pocket and opened it, "I noted the names and numbers of everyone who called those two in the last three weeks; we're just about certain Doctor Evil is among those, all we need to do is cross-reference. Not only that, but unless the Hiace was stolen, which I doubt considering I don't think they have the skills needed to hijack a bicycle, never mind a car, it most likely belongs to him, since this place has no parking lot. Meaning, what I found allows the investigation to go forward by finding clues on the identity of the third culprit."

Both Tanuki and Natsuki could only stare while the captain grinned smugly and slid the notebook back in his pocket, then picked up the discarded bag and started filling it with the gathered evidence. "I'll be taking all this to the lab now, I need to get back to the station anyway. Oh, and I took the liberty of calling Ichidouji and giving her the list, so you don't need to worry about that." He picked up the now full bag in his hand, grunted as he lifted it up from the table, and left the apartment, his thin lips twisted lopsidedly in amusement the whole way.

As the door closed behind him, the two partners shared a look.

"He's got decades of experience," Natsuki said.

"Yeah, it's normal he knows where to look." Yuuki agreed, if only to preserve his pride. Ishigami snickered.

Silence covered the room for a few seconds, and before it could get too awkward, there was a sound, like the furious purring of a cat high on catnip, or the growling of an angry dog. After a short glance at Durhan, who tilted his head in a "wasn't me" way, the two adults turned to look at Natsuki. She blushed embarrassedly and put a hand on her stomach.

"Sorry," she muttered. Yuuki gave a glance at the clock on the oven; it showed 13:30, well past dinner time.

"I guess I'm kinda hungry too," the Kansaijin said, passing a hand through his long hair and sighing. "Not too sure what I want, though."

"How about—"

"Not Pizza."

"Hmph."

He was startled when Ishigami put a hand on his shoulder and gave him a grin. "Has princess shown you the Linden Baum yet?"

"The Linden Baum?"

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As they entered the Linden Baum, Yuuki shot a frown at the little girl who was his partner.

"Why didn't you tell me about this place?" He asked. "We could have spared ourselves from a few headaches Sunday."

"They don't serve pizza here," she replied with a shrug and a grin. He rolled his eyes, then looked about.

The Linden Baum was a nice restaurant, with plenty of room and a comfortable, clean atmosphere. It was modeled after stereotypical American restaurants, with plushy brilliant crimson and white bench-seats framing each of the rectangular wall-hugging tables, and somewhat comfortable (if for limited amounts of time) chairs surrounding those closer to the center, six chairs for each. Small lamps hung low over them, while potted flowers similarly hung much closer to the ceiling, spreading their scent agreeably; the night atmosphere, Yuuki reflected, was probably pretty cozy and private, perhaps even romantic.

All and all, it seemed like a very nice place to eat. And another plus point for it was that it was built on the other side of the street in front of the Headquarters. As a result, it was probably the most secure restaurant in all of Minato, and seeing officers in uniform eating at the tables was nothing unusual, hence why he almost overlooked the three women sitting at one of the central tables near the cashier counter: Ichidouji, a very pretty black-haired girl he hadn't met yet and what's-her-last-name-again Haruko, the receptionist, who was the only one with any food left in her plate, and who was talking animatedly about something he couldn't quite tell.

"I think you got the wrong idea," the unknown girl interrupted Haruko's tirade about something being wrong with her. "I heard he and princess were right next to the attack, his shirt probably got damaged there. And you know how she is with her Mayo."

"But... I mean..."

"Oh!" Ichidouji cut it, pointing at them. The two other women looked ("erk!" went Haruko), and while Yuuki gave them a smile and a nod, Ishigami walked toward them and pulled one of the empty chairs, sitting next to Ichidouji.

"Mind if we sit here?" he asked. The unknown girl shook her head and smiled.

"We were nearly done-- just waiting for Haruko-chan to discover the actual 'eating' function of her mouth."

"Ha-ha. Funny."

Following his lead, Yuuki and Natsuki sat down, the little girl, to Haruko's chagrin, taking the chair right next to her, leaving Yuuki to sit at the end, between Ishigami and the bluette, in front of the girl-whose-name-he-didn't-know-yet. Now that he was closer, he could easily tell she wasn't Japanese by her (very attractive, he noted) features, and while her pronunciation was perfect (in Kanto-ben, that is), she had an odd lilt, and a very variable tonality; she was obviously a foreigner. Her voice was also strangely familiar, but he couldn't quite place where he had heard it before…

"Oh, that's right, this is the first time the two of you meet, isn't it?" Haruko asked. "Ai-chan, this is Detective Tanaka Yuuki, A.K.A Tanuki. Tanuki, this is Ai Hăng Lê, one of the radio operators."

"Pleasure to meet you," he said smoothly. Radio operator, huh? That explained why her voice sounded familiar. She smiled.

"Likewise," she replied; he correctly placed her accent as Vietnamese, though her name had been enough to tip him off. She continued, "So you're the one who peeped on Princess and ran around the station half-naked with Durhan chasing him?"

Whaaa! What kind of rumors were spreading around? Before he could deny them, the little brat gave a confirming noise.

"Yup! He tried to put in a spy camera, too," she lied outrageously. He shot her a glare, which she replied with a raspberry. To his surprise, though, Ai simply giggled in amusement.

"Don't worry, I already knew it wasn't true; that was just the most extreme version I heard," she explained. "The spy camera's a new one, though, although it doesn't beat the 'trying to drill a peep hole in the door' version."

Yuuki sighed. Great, so this place was like that, huh? "So I'm in the middle of the rumor mill. Great."

"Good," Ishigami said, "that means they'll leave me alone about that parking thing."

"Actually, that's not quite true; the latest one has you having parked your car in front of the Amercian Embassy's driveway and had it towed all the way to Shinjuku," Ai replied. Ishigami let out a defeated sigh.

"I just can't win, can I?"

"Nope!" The Vietnamese woman grinned. To Yuuki, she continued, "don't worry, I gave the other radio operators Haruko-chan's version; she gave me a pretty detailed description of what happened—too detailed, I feel."

The brunette shrugged. "Just because you can't appreciate it…"

Hn? What could she mean by that? Before he could think about it more, the black-haired woman continued, "so they'll spread the real version around… if they feel like it, I mean."

"That means: 'don't count on it'," Ishigami warned. "The radio crew are the worst bunch of rumor-spreading gossips in the station."

"Ehh, hidoi, Ishigami!" Ai whined, while Haruko gave an unladylike snicker at her. Ichidouji (with cheeks flushed a bit from the memory of the event) raised her hand shyly, voicing a dim "Ano…"

Haruko rolled her eyes. "Speak loud, Eriko-chan!" she crooned.

The busty brunette took a steadying breath, and continued, "I…I did the research on Sunao-san, and—"

"ARGH! Not work! We're on lunch break!" Haruko protested.

Ai raised an eyebrow and looked down at Haruko's half-eaten salad. The receptionist sheepishly replied by taking a quick bite. Ai turned toward the researcher. "That's the brother of the guy who was wearing a leprechaun suit, right?"

"Leprechaun suit?" Yuuki repeated. Ishigami gave a shrug.

"As I said, they're hopeless rumor-mongers," he said, then ducked as Ai swatted at him, almost poking Ichidouji on the nose in the process.

"So, what did you find?" the little girl asked. Ichidouji cleared her throat, then fished in her purse for a bunch of folded up papers, which she promptly read out loud.

"Ueda Sunao, 24 years old. Has college education but failed the entrance exam at Temple University twice. His criminal record is mostly clean, except for a minor even in middle school when he apparently brought a knife inside the building and started playing with it in the classroom. No one got hurt except himself: he apparently cut his own vein on his index. He's also noted as being quite clumsy."

"A knife?" Natsuki repeated in disbelief. Ichidouji nodded.

"He got expelled for it, too," she added, before continuing, "he's not mentioned as having any hobbies, but then I haven't had time to cross reference everything yet. He works full time as a janitor in a major research lab in Meguro-ku."

"Is that out of our jurisdiction?" Yuuki asked. Ishigami shook his head.

"Naa. We handle the crimes in Minato-ku, but if an investigation takes us to another ward, we don't need permission to follow it, so long as it's not outside of Tokyo proper. It'd be an administrative nightmare otherwise," he explained. Yuuki nodded, then looked promptingly at Ichidouji.

"What kind of lab is it?"

"Orphan Research," she replied. Yuuki and Natsuki immediately perked up and, understanding them, she quickly added, "nothing about controlling or creating Orphans—or at least, not as far as I could see." When they deflated, she continued, "it's a pretty high-security place, though; if you want to look in it, you'll need an authorization."

"How long do you think we'll have to wait?" Yuuki asked. Ichidouji grinned weakly.

"Not long—the Chief's handling it. I pity those she'll have to step on to get it."

"Always the receptionists and secretaries…" Haruko bemoaned, then grinned. "Boy am I glad I won't ever have her calling me!"

"No, she just pops in behind you while you're playing solitaire instead," Ai teased. The brunette's grin vanished in embarrassment.

"Does this lab have a name?" Yuuki asked. Ichidouji nodded.

"The lab itself doesn't really have one, but the company that owns it does… It's Glearcorp Incorporated."

Only Ichidouji, who had looked pointedly at her, noticed how Natsuki suddenly tensed up.

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Akuma-sama's notes:

The thieves, as you might have guessed, are something of a parody of fictional thieves. No, a monocle and a top hat will not hide your face from cameras. -pokes Kaito Kid-

Don't bother looking up "Ameri-otaku", I made it up. Its etymology makes sense, though, and I like it; that's what counts. :p

Sorry if the chapter was long, but I just couldn't logically cut it anywhere; at least, not without breaking the flow. And I did not want to do that. I also don't like how it turned out; I'll probably have to revisit it later to edit it… like I did for the last scenes of chapter 3.

And about Natsuki, I hope I didn't make her look too ignorant; there's a reason why she knows less than regular 13 years olds would, but I'm having issues keeping track of how much she should know; if she seems schizophrenically puzzled sometimes, it's my fault entirely. XD

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Japanese notes:

Erm… scratch that 's'

Hidoi: Horrible, mean. When used lightly, it's very feminine.

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