This didn't turn out quite like I wanted to, but meh... Oh well.
I was looking forward to getting it over with so I can move on to the NEXT chapter.
Which should be much more fun. <3
^_^ Chapter 30 at last! And I'm not even halfway done yet. <3
[Chapter Thirty -- Elementary, My Dear Watson]
It was warm inside the station, and there was this faint scent of stale coffee that drifted through the air, making me feel a little less nervous about what I was possibly getting myself into.
The walls were cluttered with notice boards that had various bits of paper pinned to them… clippings about missing persons, items, and animals… wanted posters… newspaper articles… an ad for a restaurant that had been opened about ten years ago… Basically anything and everything…
Once I was bored with that, I took the time to examine the rest of the room. There was a long desk at the end of the main room, and a few other tables off to the side, various papers scattered about them as well. I could see doors that probably led to smaller rooms, and hopefully one of them held the information I was looking for.
There were two girls seated behind the long desk… Or rather, one of them was more or less laying in a somewhat awkward position across the arms of her rolling chair, and I think she was asleep. I’m pretty sure that she was, because even though her face was obscured behind her uniformed hat, I could hear light snoring.
The other female was deeply engrossed in some kind of magazine, absently twirling a strand of her hair between her fingers while she produced a rather large bubble from the gum that she was chewing.
This was going to be so much fun…
I sighed, and decided that I would try talking to the one that was awake first. I cleared my throat, and only her eyes moved, flitting up from the pages of the magazine to scrutinize me. Her gaze was like that for a moment, before she judged me to be unimportant and returned to reading. A jolt of annoyance shot through me, and I frowned before clearing my throat again, a bit louder this time.
She rolled her eyes and popped the bubble she had made, pulling the gum back inside of her mouth with her teeth and tongue so that she could talk. But she didn’t look up at me again.
“If you need somethin’, kid, ask Tanaka. I don’t feel like dealin’ with you right now.”
My eye twitched a little bit after that. Of all of the rude things someone could say to me… That just about took the gold medal for being the most impolite. I was fully aware that I was… vertically challenged, but… I was an ADULT, damnit! At least… in some countries, anyway… It wasn’t like she even looked any older than I did… well, anyway. I didn’t even bother to argue, because I didn’t think that it would get me anywhere.
So I turned to the sleeping female, weighing my remaining options in my mind. I could either wait until someone more kind or competent showed up and have them help me… or I could attempt to wake this girl up and get her to do it instead.
…Unfortunately for her, I was impatient at that point, and in the end, the latter of my two options won out. I leaned over the desk, carefully lifting the hat from the girl’s face. She was cute, and her eyes were a little bit uneven… the word ‘wonky’ came to mind out of nowhere. She looked so small, though, and there was no possible way that she was much older than me, either.
“Ah… miss?”
She didn’t even twitch, continuing to sleep as if nothing had happened. I tried again, my voice a little louder the second time, and I received the same results. Immediately I was reminded of Risako, and if this girl could sleep like my cousin did, there was really only one thing left to do…
So I took the hat and hit her hard in the shoulder with it, which caused the girl to jump about three feet out of the chair, and when she landed again, both she and it toppled over in a very ungraceful sort of manner. She shot back onto her feet soon after she was reunited with the ground, and instantly started to slap the crap out of the other officer, who could do little more than defend herself with the magazine.
“WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU, NONO?!”
“I didn’t do it, I swear! It was that girl- OW, WATCH WHERE YOU’RE HITTIN’, WOMAN!”
I watched their quarrel for a minute, slightly amused, before I decided to intervene. There were more important matters at hand. But trying to get their attention with my voice didn’t work, and so I brandished the hat like a weapon for the second time, slapping them both in the head with it. They rubbed their new bruises morosely, and the wonky-eyed female glared at me, snatching the hat from my hand to put it in it’s proper position on her head.
“Do you have a death wish, kid? Because usually people who wake me up are lucky to get away alive.”
“I’m not a kid. And no, I’m not looking for an early grave… I was actually wondering if you could help me with something. I need some information.”
She blinked at me, before letting out a short, sharp laugh, as if I had said something really absurd. Her voice adopted a lazy sort of slur and tone, and I realized that she didn’t think very much of me at all.
“Kid, we got more important things to worry about than some little research project, so why don’t you just move along and-”
“TSUJI! TANAKA!”
A loud, roaring voice burst forth from somewhere in the back of the station, and the two young officers quickly slid into their assigned positions, trying to straighten up and look as though they had been hard at work all along. One of the doors behind the desk slammed open, and out walked a rather intimidating woman who I automatically assumed to be the head of this little station. Her hair was a funky shade of blonde that I knew wasn’t natural, and I thought for a moment that her eyes were a little bit discolored before I realized that she was wearing greenish-blue contacts.
“Why the hell is there so much noise in here, hm? I’M THE ONLY ONE ALLOWED TO GIVE THE CIVILIANS TROUBLE, DO YOU HEAR ME?!?”
She gave the two of her subordinates each a good thump to the back of the head, and they mumbled quiet apologies. She seemed to be satisfied with that for the moment, and she turned to appraise me with those fake contacts of hers.
“And who are you, hm? We live to serve the people, but if this really WILL be a waste of my time, I suggest that you turn around and leave right now.”
Her voice was constantly loud, and it was kind of growly with the way that she rolled her ‘r’s and such. But she didn’t really scare me at all, because it seemed to be mostly for show and to keep the other officers in line, and since I wasn’t them, I had no need to worry. I pulled the scrap of newspaper from my pocket and handed it to her, speaking while she scrutinized it carefully.
“Something big happened on that day… Something that I need to know about, so I’d be very grateful if you could help me out anyway you can. I assume that you keep records here in this place?”
The police captain was stroking her invisible beard, and after a few moments of silence she turned and began walking towards one of the doors in the back, beckoning for me to follow. I swear I heard the wonky one snickering behind me.
We entered a large file room, and unlike the theatre’s music library, everything in it had been meticulously organized and alphabetized and any other –ized that you could think of. The woman wandered over to one of the steel cabinets and simply kicked it at it’s base, causing one of the drawers to slide out effortlessly. This she began to sift through until she pulled out a tan folder and tossed it onto a nearby table. She walked over and sat down at that table, waving at a chair at the opposite end. As soon as I was also seated, she began to talk.
“Only one thing happened on that day, two years ago… I remember it very clearly in my mind, because I was one of the first ones to arrive on the scene when it all started to happen.”
She opened the file, and pulled out a newspaper identical to the one that my scrap originated from, handing it to me. Eagerly, I began to scan through the story, now that I knew that I was going to get some answers to the questions that were swimming through my head.
“Theatre owners die in raging fire; daughter also presumed to be dead.
The latest proprietors of the city’s only still-operating theatre for the arts perished last night in a fire that claimed not only their lives but their entire home as well. Though it has not yet been confirmed whether or not the fire was an accident or intended arson, witnesses to the event have claimed to have seen at least three unidentified figures fleeing from the scene.
Police arrived at the house after much of it was already engulfed in flame, only to discover that the owners had already passed away. The whereabouts and condition of the daughter are currently unknown, but officials say that it is quite likely that she suffered the same fate as her parents…”
It was eerie, reading through that… I had a feeling I was about to learn something that I didn’t want to hear, and yet… still I pushed for those answers.
“…What happened to the girl?”
“Well, technically this is classified information, but… we don’t normally get kids like you that wander in her and ask for specific things, so I don’t mind bending the rules a bit, considering how I’m the boss and all. Apparently she survived the attack, but after spending time to heal in the hospital, some stuff came up and she started acting weird… they diagnosed her with something… oh, shit… some acronym… P-something. No idea. Anyway, turns out she didn’t have enough money to pay for any therapy or medicine or anything since she lost it all in that fire, and they ended up letting her leave with this friend of hers…”
I’m pretty sure I had stopped breathing at that point. My throat was very dry and I choked as I attempted to ask another question.
“Do you know what her name was?”
“Tokunaga… Chinami? Chi-somethin’. I dunno. Apparently the media lost interest in her and the fire pretty quickly, and so they never announced it to the public that she survived. Probably a good thing, too, being so sick like that…”
I really, really didn’t want to know anymore. I felt kind of sick, like my stomach was trying to eat itself. However… I had to learn all that I could if I was going to piece together what had happened to try and stop it from happening again.
“What about the three suspects that the witnesses saw? Did anyone ever catch them or identify who they were?”
“Oh yeah. But we kind of suspected at first, it being arson and all… See, back then, there was one kid who basically controlled all of the crime goin’ on in this place. They called her the ‘Miracle’. Not because she had caused anything wonderful to happen… but because of how she always managed to slip just out of reach of being slammed behind bars. That, and because I think everyone sort of forgot about her real name somewhere along the way. The stories about her are numerous, each one much more wild and fanatical than the rest. But they say that there are three things about the girl that have always been true:
She can get someone to do whatever she wants just by looking at them.
She doesn’t believe in mercy, and if she considers you to be a liability, she’ll just mow you down.
She is completely and utterly obsessed with anything that has to do with fire.
They say she was only somewhat insane. Like in a mad genius kind of way, where she wasn’t really all there, but somehow managed to think of these brilliant plans that kept her one step ahead of the law. We know she was one of the ones that started the fire: she always left her mark on the things that she burned, leaving at least some area untouched so that she could carve into it. She got away that night, though… We’ve been trying to track her ever since, but have always turned up empty-handed.”
Okay… so there’s one. This… ‘miracle’. Obviously the mastermind behind it all. Probably the most dangerous, too.
“One of the others involved was this girl named Suzuki Airi. She had been a part of the theatre at some point in time, but they ended up kicking her out because she got involved with the wrong crowd—Miracle mainly, I’m told. Apparently she even tried to beat up one of the other dancers thanks to the influence of some of her new friends.
I guess resentment was one of her motives, but either way, she helped out. I’m pretty sure that’s she was just another one of the Miracle’s pawns, but you’d have to be a fool to label her harmless. We actually ended up apprehending the kid after chasing her down, but she slipped out somehow…”
The woman slammed her fist down on the table at that point, gritting her teeth like she was still angry about ‘the one that got away’. I wouldn’t want to be in that criminal’s shoes if this captain ever got a second chance to deal with her…
Suzuki Airi. Hot-headed… could probably beat me up. That’s comforting.
“There was one more, though… She got away too… I always have trouble remembering her name…”
She began to sift through the file in front of me, and was in the middle of pulling out a sheet of paper when a short blonde woman burst into the room, wild and out of breath. I could see fear and panic in her wide eyes, and perhaps even more alarming was the fact that blood was running down from a wound beneath her hat, somewhere on the side of her head.
“Captain- they’re back- and- I just- ran into them around the corner. I tried to bring them in but- the younger one grabbed me- nearly beat the shit out of me- I got away, though- came straight here.”
It was hard to make out what she was trying to say through that jumbled mess, but the police captain seemed to understand, and immediately she and the other officer darted out of the room, leaving me behind without so much as a goodbye. I really was insignificant after all that, though, and so I guess I understood… The file remained open on the table, and the paper that the captain had been trying to show me before the interruption was face down… tempting me.
I almost reached out to turn it over, but resisted. These things were classified… and I wasn’t about to go breaking the law… I had gotten most of what I needed anyway, and so I walked out of the room, leaving the now empty station.
I wonder… if I had learned what I know now… at that point … would things have turned out the same way?
Topic: ::Heartbeat Tempo:: [Chapter Forty-Six -- Nightmare] (Read 145350 times)