[Scene: The halls of Hentai High. Usagi and Mamoru are looking over a quiz.]
Mamoru: 30%, Usagi? Really?
Usagi: [near tears] I'll do better on the next one.
Mamoru: [frowning] Well you can't do much worse.
[Mamoru and Usagi cross paths with Zoi, who is looking troubled. He ducks into a room and teleports to the police station. There is a door tagged Police Chief Midori.]
[Zoi knocks and his father opens the door]
Chief Midori: Hi, there. Shouldn't you be in school right now?
Zoi: I wanted to chat really quickly between classes. [anxious] Dad, why haven't you been talking about the bear attacks?
Chief Midori: [grins] Come in, son.
[Zoi enters his office and the first thing his eye is drawn to is a corkboard with a map of the Hen Tie area with a set of snapshots tacked to it. The form a jagged semicircle around a box labeled "O'Sama mansion."]
Chief Midori: So I take it your friends have been talking about the so-called "giant bear sightings"? And they think they are related to the missing hikers?
Zoi: Aren't they?
Chief Midori: No. There is no bear.
Zoi: But Haruka has seen it. So have Mamoru and Usagi.
Chief Midori: No. What they have been seeing is a phenomenon called "Pareidolia". It's when a person sees something inherently frightening to them out of the corner of their eye, like a dog or a ghost, but when they turn to look at it, there's nothing there, or it's just a shadow. It's a pseudo hallucination brought on by anxiety. Your friends are literally jumping at shadows.
Zoi: My friends aren't the nervous type. Usagi maybe, but Haruka and Mamoru are pretty cool and collected.
Chief Midori: Mamoru's been under a lot of pressure lately.
Zoi: Haruka said the bear tore apart one of the campsites.
Chief Midori: [nods] Someone certainly wants it to look that way. In fact, all of the campsites were staged to look like bear attacks... Except there were no bear prints...No pawprints, no blood... Each looks like a violent struggle took place, but the only tracks we can find belong to the people who are missing.
[All Zoi can think is "youma"]
Zoi: That still sounds pretty ominous. I can talk to Kunzite.
Chief Midori: No need to bother Kunzite with this. The FBI has been dealing with it, since the missing come from all over the country, but I must admit this whole thing has got me curious.
[Chief Midori takes the photos down from the board and hands them to Zoi in groups.]
[Middle aged woman in expensive clothing] Sylvia Chang. Stockbroker. Investigated for fraud for running a fake charity. She booked a flight to Washington, and vanished from her campsite two days ago.
[Two average men and an average woman] Jason Tate, Jose Rodriguez, Lauren Fisher. Followed a radio personality that preached Federal Income tax is not mandatory. Found out the hard way he is wrong. They are looking at heavy fines and/or jail time. They just met last week, but decided to go camping together. Vanished from their campsite three days ago.
[A young man with a soul patch and a plain looking girl with straight hair] Jack Clemens. Seventh grade math teacher and married father of three. Arrested for having an inappropriate relationship with a student...Alicia Jones. The student in the inappropriate relationship. Sadly, from the looks of her homelife she's used to dysfunction. They ran off together after he made bail, and they vanished from their campsite five days ago...So what I ask you, do all of these people have in common?
Zoi: [giggles with relief when he sees what his father is getting at] They are all people who don't want to be found.
Chief Midori: See why I didn't want to bother you with this? Only... this one doesn't exactly fit the profile.
[A square jawed older woman with short red hair] Athena Black Opal. Born Nathaniel Kendall. A married grommet heir who came out as a trans woman two years ago. Her male lover left her shortly afterwards, and her adult children are unhappy about it, but both her wife and her longterm mistress have been very supportive. The marriage had been strained for years, and this whole thing brought them closer together. They were to fly to Thailand for reassignment surgery, but Athena cancelled unexpectedly and flew to Hen Tie instead. Her wife and mistress have been frantically searching for her...she had millions of dollars, a loving and permissive wife, a chance to realize her dream...why leave all that behind?
Zoi: [shrugs] She probably wanted a fresh start. To begin a simpler life where nobody knew of her past.
Chief Midori: That's what I've been thinking. That there is someone out there selling faked deaths and forged identities. But why not wait until after her surgery? And why Hen Tie? And how is the person or persons who is orchestrating these "violent disappearances" reaching out to these people? We've scanned phone records, emails, browser histories. A lot of research, but no contacts.
Zoi: That does seem puzzling.
Chief Midori: Fortunately it's not your job to worry about it. Your only job right now is to get your butt back to school.
[Zoi giggles and teleports back to school and goes to class.]
[Usagi and Mamoru are still standing in the hall arguing over the quiz. In the distance El spies on them with a bitter expression on her face. But her frown turns upside down when she hears what they are talking about]
Usagi: That's so mean. I can't believe how mean you are. Can't you see I'm upset?
Mamoru: You're going to get grounded again for sure when progress reports come out. No more dates. No more volunteer work on Saturdays-
[El grins behind her fingers]
Usagi: [With false bravado]The semester is still young. There is plenty of time to improve before progress reports come out. I'll study harder. I promise. This quiz is just the wakeup call I needed.
[Usagi balls up the quiz and tosses it over her shoulder before she walks off to class]
[El drifts over and picks up the balled up quiz and teleports away]
[Scene: Usagi's house. Usagi's mother is vacuuming the living room.]
[El teleports in behind Usagi's mother and tosses the ball right into the middle of the floor. Then ducks behind the stairwell to spy on Usagi's mother as she discovers the balled up paper.]
[El hides her chuckles behind her hand as Usagi's mother uncrumples the quiz and lets out an earsplitting scream.]