A/N: Thank you for the lovely reviews.
And today on The Muggles Aren't Completely Oblivious and Want to Know What the Hell is Happening...
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SIEBEN
TIMELINE X + N
Isshin found the girl to be an efficient helper in the clinic. Her familiarity with general clinic structure and procedure was obvious in the ease with which she began tidying and arranging the rooms and supplies, avoiding that which was not to be touched without instruction. When a young mother hauled in a bawling toddler with blood all over his front from his adventures in climbing up to a medicine cabinet to play with Daddy's razor, Homura was unruffled. She silently assisted with supplies while Isshin cleaned and sutured the boy's cheek, displaying no aversion to blood. It seemed a bit odd, but Isshin chalked it up to the medical history she had so casually alluded to.
After an otherwise slow morning, Isshin ordered lunch to be delivered from a little takeout place down the street. Homura ate neatly but was politely distant in the face of every attempt Isshin made at conversation. He found himself amid one of the rare times when he was at a loss for what to do. There were many questions he wanted to ask her, but he worried that the poor girl was barely holding herself together as it was. Isshin had seen how she had kept herself from flying apart at the seams when he had brought up waiting for news at breakfast. Had seen her face twist and fists clench, had seen the shimmer of tears she refused to shed. Had seen, worryingly, that she felt some degree of blame. Between his time leading the Tenth Division and his time as a father, Isshin had become very good at reading behavioral cues to decipher emotions a person tried to hide. Years of ferreting out who was playing innocent— and playing the fool himself— prepared him to spot guilt. And Homura Akemi reeked of it. Her body language screamed of it no matter how hard she tried to stifle it. Even her unusually well-developed and well-controlled reiatsu was threaded with guilt. Isshin wondered if she was blaming herself irrationally or if there was something more behind it. He wanted to poke at what she knew, but the girl was fragile behind her cool front. Better for now that he tried to gather information independently.
When Homura claimed she didn't feel well after lunch and asked his leave to take a nap, Isshin gladly agreed. He sat tapping a finger on the clinic's front desk as he sensed her reiatsu shifting around the house. When her little cloud of gloom settled in the twins' room, he snapped open his laptop and continued his research.
BOMBSHELL NEWS CONFERENCE!
MITAKIHARA DISAPPEARANCES LINKED, SAY AUTHORITIES
April 22, 20XX 10:42 AM
Stunning information was revealed at this morning's press conference. Mitakihara Municipal Police Department spokesperson Kuroe Mura stated that evidence in the cases of the three Mitakihara Middle School students who have disappeared in recent weeks ties them to each other and additional suspicious activities in town.
Though initially unreported, third year Mami Tomoe (15) was the first of the girls to fail to attend class. Teachers describe her as studious and positive, but a loner. She is an emancipated orphan and lives alone. Authorities searched her apartment through the night. An anonymous law enforcement source reports that the living space appeared as though someone stepped out and intended to return shortly: There were dishes in the kitchen sink, a stale cake on a cooling rack, a pot and cup of mostly-evaporated tea on the coffee table, and a school bag near the table. Dates on the assignments correspond with April 4th, the last day Tomoe is known to have attended school. Curiously, a spiral-bound notebook labeled as property of Madoka Kaname (14), the girl who disappeared only yesterday, was found neatly placed on the coffee table, said a second source. Police hope to find further clues within its pages, which also have no dates beyond April 4th. Our source says it contained some assignment lists and a large number of doodles. It has not been dismissed as unimportant, as at least five of the doodles portray a figure with Tomoe's distinct hairstyle.
"Evidence implies that Kaname knew Tomoe before her disappearance despite never being in the same class and never having been known to meet," Spokeswoman Mura said after confirming the details given in anonymous leaks. "This is perhaps corroborated by Kaname's parents. They report that about a week before Tomoe's disappearance, their daughter came home late and said she had been invited to an upperclassman's home. Our working hypothesis is that this upperclassman was Mami Tomoe. What seems more ominous now is that Kaname's parents report that their daughter was tearful on the morning of April 5th. Both recall that she specifically said something like 'nothing's wrong with me, I'm alive.' Based on the timing, we are concerned that Kaname may have known something about Tomoe's case. Upon speaking with Miki's parents, we found that Miki showed similar behavior at the same time, leading us to speculate that she also knew Tomoe."
Desperate for leads, Mura went into unusual detail about what is known about Sayaka Miki (14), found dead in an upscale hotel room yesterday evening. Her disappearance was the first to be noticed. She and Madoka Kaname were longtime friends. Like her friend, Miki had no previously known relationship to Tomoe. As previously reported when she went missing, Miki regularly traveled to and from Mitakihara General Hospital to visit a friend through March and into mid-April. Like Kaname, Miki also displayed distress on April 5th. Her behavior became erratic after her friend was released from the hospital. On April 11th, Miki's mother reports she was depressed and obviously ill. This was the first day Miki did not attend classes. Miki attended school on April 12th and another friend reported that she went to a cafe with Miki after school. Sayaka Miki never went home after her last known appearance at the cafe. Authorities previously speculated that a schoolgirl rivalry discussed by the girls had caused Miki to run away, but this theory is now in question.
Miki's body was found in a room at Hotel Nikko Mitakihara now thought to have been reserved fraudulently. The online payment for the room has been traced to a prepaid credit card purchased with cash in Kazamino City. Police have requested surveillance footage from the store where it was purchased. Hotel Nikko lobby footage shows a red-haired girl of perhaps fourteen to sixteen picking up the room key on April 9th. The desk clerk is being interviewed about the transaction. Sayaka Miki does not appear on any of the tapes, so it is unclear how she came to be in the hotel room. The mystery girl is seen coming and going at odd times of day and night, often with food. She is never accompanied by anyone and has not been seen since the morning of the day the body was found. Police are working on a composite sketch to release to the public in search of clues to this girl's whereabouts. "At this time, the unknown girl is simply a person of interest in this case," said Spokeswoman Mura. "Considering the demographics of the other missing girls, we are also concerned for her safety."
A forensic team is still combing through the hotel room, but initial fingerprint collections have brought up an interesting link. The prints match those collected at the sites of two ATM "break and bust" robberies on the east end of town in the last two weeks. Considering the proximity of these crimes to the edge of town nearest Kazamino City and the purchase of the prepaid credit card there, Mitakihara Municipal Police Department has requested the cooperation of the Kazamino City Police Department to investigate leads and look for similar incidents in their jurisdiction.
MYSTERIOUS "MASS HALLUCINATION" EVENT MAY BE LINKED TO DISAPPEARANCES
April 22, 20XX 10:58 AM
The April 5th event during which eleven people woke in a warehouse in the middle of the night with no memory of how they got there is being scrutinized more closely in light of today's revelations regarding the missing girls from Mitakihara Middle School.
Two of the disappearances have a common witness: Hitomi Shizuki (14), heiress to Shizuki Architecture & Engineering CEO Yasuhiro Shizuki. Miss Shizuki is on record as the last person to see both Sayaka Miki and Madoka Kaname before their disappearances. The three are good friends. Shizuki purports to have invited Miki to a cafe to talk about personal business after school on April 12th. She has a receipt to prove she was there and a waitress corroborates her statement that she left by herself afterward. The waitress said Miki sat at the table and stared at her food for perhaps twenty minutes before also leaving. Shizuki's testimony regarding Kaname isn't as easy to corroborate. Shizuki says that shortly after they met up and headed toward school, Kaname stopped, said she decided to go home, and ran away. All this would simply be a curious and sad coincidence if not for a third point of involvement.
Said heiress was one of the people found in varying states of consciousness and confusion when police were summoned to a television station by a silent alarm around 9:30 PM April 5th. The television station has been closed for renovations since mid-March. The group's initial entry did not trigger an alarm as a member of the station's security staff was in the group and used his card to gain entry. The fingerprints of other adults at the scene were found on empty bottles of household chemicals which are deadly when mixed. The alarm was triggered by the breaking of a window. Investigation outdoors found that a bucket full of chemicals had been thrown out the pane. Whoever did this saved the lives of those inside. Authorities had isolated a set of fingerprints on the bucket, window sill, and a doorknob, but they didn't match any of the victims left on the scene.
Today, authorities cited the presence of Madoka Kaname's notebook in missing girl Mami Tomoe's apartment to get samples of her fingerprints from objects in the Kaname home. The samples match partial prints on the doorknob of Tomoe's apartment, which was somewhat expected. What was a complete surprise was for the database to identify the prints of the mystery savior at the television station as belonging to Kaname, who was previously not known to be involved in any way.
In light of this development, all evidence regarding the "mass hallucination event" is being reevaluated and the victims are being interviewed further. Police ask the public to refer to their official tip site for this case if they saw anyone behaving oddly on the evening of April 5th.
When asked for a statement, Yasuhiro Shizuki commented with condolences for the Miki family, support for the Kaname family, and an announcement that while his family will cooperate with police, he will withdraw his daughter from school temporarily in case she is being targeted. He expresses concern that the April 5th event was a botched attempt on his daughter's life or thwarted human trafficking and urges the police to solve the case swiftly.
BREAKING: MISSING MIDDLE SCHOOL GIRLS SEEN IN SURVEILLANCE FOOTAGE EVIDENCE IN EARLIER DISAPPEARANCE OF 6TH GRADER
April 22, 20XX 12:53 PM
An eagle-eyed detective investigating the April 4th disappearance of Nagisa Momoe (12) has spotted a major clue to the Mitakihara Middle School disappearances. Authorities now suspect there could be a larger problem at hand than originally thought.
Though from rural Kinuma, Momoe spent considerable time visiting her terminally ill mother at Mitakihara General Hospital, which she had traveled to in order to receive treatment for pancreatic cancer. As we reported earlier this month, Momoe was present for her mother's death around 4:10 PM April 4th. A few minutes after her mother passed, Momoe became upset and said her mother's death was her fault. No one could calm her and she escalated to hysterically yelling that she could have made her mother get better, but was stupid. When nurses moved to restrain her, she dodged around them and ran away.
Restored security footage shows her run into a stairwell, descend to the ground floor, pass through the main lobby, and run out of the main entrance. A camera positioned to monitor the bicycle racks shows her run into the frame and fall to her knees sobbing. To everyone's dismay, the camera went offline at this moment due to electrical problems which crashed the surveillance network for the north wing of the building's first floor, including the lobby. No other cameras show Momoe leave, but the outdoor cameras in areas unaffected by the outage are focused around points of entry and the bicycle racks face an open park. The footage from the lobby was not immediately available to those seeking Momoe due to the outage, so they did not know to focus their search by the bike racks.
The initial search for Momoe focused within the hospital building itself. An expansion of the search did not begin until 25 minutes after she left the oncology ward. By then, Momoe could have run through the park herself or been abducted. The search has been stymied by the camera malfunction and a total lack of other evidence.
Detective Kentaro Tachibana was assigned to the sixth-grader's case on April 6th. He went over the security footage repeatedly over the last few weeks. "I just thought that maybe I had missed something and if I watched enough, I could find it and bring Nagisa home," the detective explained at a press conference today.
When the pictures of the missing girls circulated the police headquarters, Tachibana felt a nagging familiarity though he had never met them. He was particularly certain he had seen Kaname. When he heard the detail that Miki had been known to frequent the hospital, he watched the security footage again on a hunch. He was stunned by what he found.
In the videos of the main lobby, Momoe is seen running down the center aisle and out the front door. In one of the camera angles, Madoka Kaname is clearly visible sitting in a chair. 31 minutes after Momoe left the screen— 10 minutes after an initial perimeter sweep by security found nothing suspicious by the bike racks— Sayaka Miki approached Kaname, who stood up and left with her. Cameras show the two exit by the front door and turn toward the bike racks. It is unknown what happened off-camera, but Kaname is spotted on a camera aimed out the emergency room entrance about 10 minutes later. She is not carrying her school bag as in the tape immediately before and is running.
Security services focused on not allowing exit from the building while it was thoroughly searched, as it was then believed Momoe must still be indoors. The bike racks were left unattended.
Kaname reenters the ER camera about 20 minutes later. She is running back the way she had come. Following her is Mami Tomoe, verifying that the two did know each other and establishing Tomoe's last known location. None of the girls appear in any subsequent camera footage, causing authorities to speculate that they left by way of the park.
"This is a major break," says Mitakihara Municipal Police Spokeswoman Kuroe Mura. "Many threads are gathered together in one place. However, this also raises many more questions."
One new curiosity centers on Tomoe's school bag. She is plainly carrying it in the video. It was found in her apartment weeks later near Kaname's notebook. One could infer that she returned to her apartment at some point later in the evening. The question now becomes one of whether she was alone when she did so. Did some or all of the girls go to Tomoe's apartment after the events in the video took place? Did the three girls encounter Momoe? Did Momoe leave with them? Authorities are reexamining the evidence gathered from Tomoe's apartment to see if they can find anything indicating Momoe was there.
One theory from a source who wishes to remain anonymous is that Kaname and Miki found Momoe crying, then Kaname ran to get her older friend for help. Whether they all went to Tomoe's apartment afterward or not, there is now speculation that the three middle schoolers may have interrupted an attempt to commit a crime against the younger Momoe and become targeted in turn. Tomoe had disappeared by the next day.
"If only that camera system hadn't malfunctioned," sighed the source. We can't help but agree.
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Isshin frowned worriedly and scrubbed a hand over his face. No mention of Homura, and yet... He wondered just what she knew. What she had seen or heard. Something bothered him. He scrolled through the articles he had saved the night before and focused on the time stamps. Sat up sharply and looked them over again more critically.
He had been to a medical conference in Mitakihara once. The ride by commuter train was roughly four hours. There was no way Homura could have heard about even the first news— Miki's death— in time to get on a train and make it to Karakura by the time she had. He did some math. The news about Kaname would have been released more than halfway through her journey; the announcement of Tomoe's disappearance, not until three-quarters through her travel time. And the tie to the "mass hallucination" hadn't been released until morning.
Homura knew about it all before any of it was made public.
Given the faded Hollow reiatsu that clung to her... well. Homura's reiatsu was strong and controlled. She should be able to see spirits. What if there was a Hollow hunting girls in Mitakihara? What if at least some of the missing girls were also spiritually aware? What if they had been trying to defend themselves, been overwhelmed, and Homura was left alone in a world of grownups who would call her crazy if she told them the truth? What if she had kept in touch with his girls from a happenstance meeting on a field trip because she found out Karin could see the same spirits she could? He knew Karin had long since learned to use her reiatsu to defeat Hollows. Had Homura, too, but been outclassed?
Gently, Isshin reached out with his reiatsu to gauge Homura's. It was muted with sleep, yet easier to read without her conscious control.
Grief. Resignation. Fear. Guilt. Determination. Uncertainty. Desperation. Exhaustion. Hurried, then sluggish. A tumultuous storm. Nightmares.
Isshin withdrew and stared blankly at his computer screen, hand covering his mouth as he leaned on his elbow and considered his options. At length, he sighed, rubbed his eyes, and picked up the phone. He completely ignored the singsong greeting when someone picked up at the other end of the line.
Still staring at the frozen image of one of the security videos, he interrupted with a grim, "Hey, Kisuke. I have something I think you should look into."
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This chapter was replaced with an edited version on November 1, 2019. Reviews with timestamps before that date refer to a slightly different version of the chapter.