Hello -

Ugh.  Whoever said that senior year was fun ought to
be dragged out into the street and have the ****
beaten out of him/her.  

At any rate, here's part B of tragedy, probably one of
the shortest minichapters I'll ever post, but it's
short for thematic reasons. :)

- ling

=====

DISCLAIMER: Ranma 1/2 is property of Rumiko Takahashi,
its use in this original work of fiction generates no
profit and no infringement is intended.  Definitions
are taken from _Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged
Dictionary of the English Language_.

ARCHIVE: Phu, Rakhal, and Reddeath have my express
permission; everyone else, please ask first at
lifebounce@yahoo.com before archiving my work.

RATING: R

SUMMARY: What if something happened that made *none*
of the fiancees want to marry Ranma any more?  What if
he was abandoned, and the home that he'd so
desperately needed and had later grown to love in his
youth became too hurtful to think of?  And then - what
if - years later Ranma returned to Tokyo's embrace and
fell deeply into something he could not control? 
First Hubris, then Tragedy, then Catharsis.

=====

CATHARSIS
- by ling

=====

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
| tragedy (traj'i de), n., a lamentable, dreadful, or
fatal event or  | | affair; calamity; disaster.  [ME
tragedie < ML tragedia, var. of L  | | tragoedia < Gk
tragoidia, equiv. To trag(os) goat + oide song (see  |
| ODE) + ai -Y^3; reason for name variously explained]
               |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

=====
PART TWO: Tragedy/God's In His Heaven, All's Right
With the World (b)
=====

To: rsaotome@police.go.jp
From: mhirugashi@police.go.jp
Subject: [none]

Meet me at Tokyo General at 8:30, will you?  Seventh
floor psyche ward; I've got a friend there who has
agreed to take a look at some of the stuff in the case
file.  Just want to find out if this is really what we
think.  Can't hurt, right?  It'll take an hour, tops.

=====

Somewhere in the Universe, the gods converged with
popcorn and soda to watch with wicked glee as the
partners met in the sterile hallways of Tokyo General
Hospital: both of them rumpled, in last night's
clothing.  Both, being seasoned investigators,
noticed, smelled the sex on each other: it wasn't
satiated, passions-indulged-lovemaking; it was
oh-God-finish-sex.  Ranma got there early, having been
at the office at half past six after stumbling out of
the woman's bed, and had looked for any excuse not to
sit around and stare at the blue screen of his
computer.  Michi had wandered up the hall at around
eight twenty: having overslept still mostly-clothed,
she'd only bothered to zip up her dress and kick on
some shoes; she was halfway to the hospital before
remembering she wasn't wearing any pantyhose.  The two
of them had locked eyes for barely a second before
turning away, both flushing dark red, suddenly
revealed for the terrible people they were.

Out of some sadistic need for normalcy, Michi quipped,
"Good night?"

Ranma suffered a brief, silent mental implosion before
answering with a noncommittal, "Yeah.  Just regular
old Thursday, you know."  He coughed before asking,
"And you?"

She fussed with her collar, and said, "Great."  

They glanced at one another once more, before turning
away again.  The Walk of Shame had nothing on the
Workday of Shame.  Michi sometimes wished that she
didn't have a job that kept people from dying; she'd
feel a lot less guilty about feigning an illness then.
 Ranma often felt the same way, but thought that in
addition to having no guilt, he also wouldn't have to
worry about dealing to the odd persistent reporter, or
the occasional call from the Kyoto Police Department's
psychologist, "just checking up."

Michi knocked on the door closest to her, a
determinedly cheerful expression on her face.  It
opened quickly, and a manicured hand waved them in
while the woman at the desk was still talking quietly
into a phone.  Ranma glanced at Michi uncertainly, but
his partner just shook her head, and motioned for him
to sit.  "She's always like this," Michi confided. 
"Busy all the time."

Ranma, however, was not paying attention.  There was
something unsettlingly familiar with the line of the
woman's back.  "Wait," he whispered, "what did you say
her name was again?"

Before Michi could reply, the woman set the phone back
in its cradle and turned around.  Her eyes were bright
from lack of sleep and very green; her hair was dark,
and pulled away from her face, a few tendrils escaping
and shining red-gold in the morning sun.  Ranma almost
choked as he recognized her from the bar and the
bedroom last night.

There was dead silence in the room before Michi
cleared her throat.

"Right, so, lets just skip introductions."

=====

To: mhirugashi@police.go.jp
From: rsaotome@police.go.jp
Subject: [none]

...You know, if it ain't dead and underground, it's
high up, and with crazy people.  There something you
want to tell me?

- RS

=====

Michi fiddled with the buttons on her jacket, and
slouched in her chair.  She glanced up intermittently
to stare at the ceilings, the walls, and The Desk. 
Michi had known Mio since they were fellow insomniacs
at Kyoto University; there, they had shared a mutual
passion for medicine, but in widely divergent areas. 
Whereas Mio was fascinated by the mind, Michi was
fascinated by the inner workings of the body.  Though
they were not close friends, they were good
acquaintances, and depended upon one another for
occasional help.  

And since they knew one another fairly well, it
explained why Michi was more interested by the
conspicuous absence of photographs on Mio's desk.  The
woman she remembered from the dinner party over a year
ago was wild about her husband; she'd had wallet
photos of her husband, and them as a pair, ready and
willing to flash them at the slightest encouragement. 
That she'd remove them from her desk was almost
inexplicable.

Ranma, on the other hand, was trying desperately to
maintain his heartrate: it was one thing to have a
nearly-anonymous fuck with someone once in a while to
drown away ones miseries, it was a whole different
ballpark to see one another in the light of day. 
Hearing about someone's gay husband before stripping
them out of their clothes and rutting like dogs was
markedly different than smiling politely while said
woman calmly leafed through your least sensitive files
on an increasingly puzzling case.  Theoretically,
their "relationship" was supposed to be lacking in all
consequences; practically, they'd never factored in
the fact that they might see one another outside of
their practiced sins of flesh.

Mio was much changed from the liquor-soaked tragedy of
the night before.  Inside her head, she was a flaming
mess of twisted emotional wreckage, but outside, with
learned calm, she managed to hold herself together. 
She and Ranma were both good-aged adults, and knew the
art of denial better than their respective career
educations.  Half her mind was on the favor she was
doing Michi, and the other half on the horrified
expression painted all over Ranma's face.  He had gone
before she'd awakened, and that morning, she'd been so
grateful for it: the luxury of being able to ignore
ones sins until some other time was an unthinkably
precious thing.

So, she said the only thing she could:

"It's not a serial killer."

Simultaneously, two voices cried, "I *told* you!" and
"How can it not?"

Mio Tanekada slaved away for twelve hour days in one
of the many state-run hospitals that littered the
country, and was generally considered to be at the
tops in both psychiatry and psychology.  Those who had
spent any appreciable time with her knew the
distinction between the two.  She had been verbally
abused, scratched, bitten, and masturbated on by
patients and hospital administration alike by the time
she'd turned thirty-one, a little tension should not
have bothered her.  Still, it was disconcerting to see
the man you'd carelessly slept with the night previous
dressed nicely in front of you while his partner was
asking professional questions.  It was all she could
manage to remember to answer.

Mio, with an amazing amount of willpower, replied,
"It's just not."

Michi, who had known Mio since they'd spent fourteen
nights straight in the Kyoto University library,
puffed up in anger.  "Based on what?"

Mio plucked her silver-rimmed glasses from her face,
rubbing the bridge of her nose tiredly.  She
recognized that tone in Michi's voice; they hadn't
been close, but they'd known each other long enough to
know when one or the other was irate.  Michi irate was
the mathematical equivalent of "itching for a fight."

"Serial killing is a rare and precise thing," Mio
explained gently, easing the investigator in the idea
of being wrong.  "There's a motive, and eventually,
escalation."  She glanced down at the files again. 
"From what I see here, while calculated, these deaths
aren't done for any specific revenge."  She pursed her
lips.  "This looks more like a contract killing to
me."

"What about the sexual mutilation, then?" Michi asked.

Mio smiled.  "Well, think of it as a career perk."  

Ranma looked on in still-numb surprise, barely
processing what Mio had just told them.  Michi, on the
other hand, regarded her old friend with mute disgust:
it was *just like* a psychology major to find this
type of thing funny.

"So the sexual mutilation," Michi said, "just
a...happy coincidence?"

Both women noted that Ranma crossed his legs.

"It makes some sense, if you really think about it,"
Mio continued, feeling less tense as she realized that
Ranma wasn't going to say or do anything damning, and
Michi was going to pretend that there was nothing
wrong.  "I mean," she added, flipping through the
file, "what kind of person takes on a job killing
people?  There's got to be rage underneath all of that
somewhere."  She shrugged.  "This time, it just
happened to be vented out through slicing the test- "

"We *get it already*," Ranma interrupted hurriedly.  

Michi smirked and stood up, brushing off her skirt. 
"Thanks so much for all your help, Mio.  And for the
new perspective."

Mio stood, too, handing the files to her friend and
casting Ranma a faintly questioning gaze before
saying, "Even though you disagree."

Michi, though she might have been brash and more
careless than her parents and Japanese society would
have liked, turned blind eye, and ignored it, saying
only, "Even though I disagree."

=====

To: mhirugashi@police.go.jp
From: junko@wed_tokyo.co.jp
Subject: Reservation Confirmation!

Dear Customer,

We have your name registered for an appointment
between

1:30PM

and 

4:00PM

on

SATURDAY.

To confirm or cancel this appointment, please press
"Reply" and alert us sometime before FRIDAY.  Thank
you!

=====

It hit him with a profundity that he did not think
existed: 

He would *always* be surrounded by women.

He thought he'd left that all behind in Nerima, but
going to Kyoto had given him loads of female friends
and lovers at school.  Going to work had led to dates
and introductions made by bosses to daughters of
various acquaintances.  Blowing up buildings and
killing child pornographers led to female reporters
finding his address and camping out on his front lawn;
no stereotypical Japanese politeness impeding their
utter violation of his privacy.  

Moving to Tokyo had led him to Michi, who confused him
with her compassion and tortured him with the memory
of her coral-colored nipples.  He wanted her, but not
*like that*.  It didn't scare him, but he was jealous
about her attentions; overwhelmingly possessive of her
time: she was his friend; he didn't want to share. 
He'd spent more than one afternoon sulking at work
because she'd abandoned him during lunch for one of
her friends from the lab department, or if she'd hung
about the secretarial pool too long instead of smiling
at him from across the room.  The thought of claiming
her, covering her body with his own and marrying her
seemed alien; but the thought of having someone else
have her friendship wrenched something inside.  

Kodachi didn't confuse him, contrarily, she'd lulled
him into false security with soft kisses and caresses
and whispers.  She was *so good* now; understandable
since she'd been *so bad* before.  What made it worse
was that she'd lied to him, denied him information and
had allowed him to fall in love with her before
telling him the truth: now he was shackled by his want
for her, but disgusted by her past.  All he could *do*
was linger in self-loathing, pestering his coworkers,
annoying his partner, anything to take his mind away
from the fact that in a short thirty-three years, he
had now thrown his heart to *two* women who had only
managed to hurt him.

All of this had hit him like a load of bricks some ten
minutes prior.

As a result, he panicked and dialed the first number
that came to mind.  He was pacing about his house
madly, his jeans open but not unzipped, his shirt
half-unbuttoned, his hair a wild mess and his eyes
shining with confusion.  She *had* to answer the
phone.

And finally, there came a voice over the line, but it
wasn't her.

"Hello?" it asked impatiently.

'Fuck you,' Ranma thought hatefully, 'for not being
Michi.'

Out loud, he said, "May I speak with Michi please?"

There was a long pause before the male voice replied,
highly disapproving and somewhat angry, "*Michi*," it
said, drawing out the tone, "or *Mrs. Hirose* is  - "

There was the sound of muffled voices, the abrupt
brush of cloth, and the sound of skin slapping skin
before Michi's voice came over the line in a
comforting, "Hello?"

Ranma released a breath that he had not known he'd
been holding.  "Hey.  Can I talk to you?"

Michi paused, covering the receiver with her hand
before yelling, "Yeah.  Because if someone calls me by
my first name, we're obviously having oral sex in
elevators."  A male voice cried something petulant in
return, but Ranma couldn't tell exactly what was said,
only that Michi added, "Yeah, that's *exactly* the
reason your father was so tired last time we met!" 
But there was warm affection in her voice, and Ranma
swore that he could hear laughter echoing in the
background of the apartment.  Ranma wondered whether
or not his partner knew that covering the phone with a
palm and then screaming made the first action
completely moot.  

When she finally uncovered the receiver, she said,
"Yeah, where?"

He rattled off something about seeing her at work the
next day, idly wondering if one of his universal
truths had been broken.

=====

To: nerri_y@yahoo.co.jp
From: mhirugashi@police.go.jp
Subject: [blank]

Nerri -

So, it's your first week away from home (read: near
me), and I thought I ought to give you your latest
Tokyo Pop/Subculture update!  And first, for the
statistics that Really Matter:

Cocaine use among teenagers is up fourteen percent
since 2003!
Premarital sex has become an "epidemic" in Japan. 
(Duh.)
Microsoft now owns about 14.9% of everything in the
Universe.

It's been dull around here without you!  Honestly,
I've been fiscally responsible, have been taking my
vitamins, and no one tells me that I should have been
a lesbian.  It's getting on my nerves, all this
endless heterosexuality.  (You know, if anyone really
*read* this email, I think they'd just die if they
found out how old we actually are.  I mean, come on,
two mostly-married women in their thirties - one
knocked up at that! - talking about becoming
lesbians...)

Ranma's being a bastard to his ex-girlfriend, though
for reasons upon which I cannot elaborate, I really
can't yell at him for it.  I mean, if I were in his
situation, I'd have to act like a bastard, too.  

Mom is going stark raving mad; Dad still wants to
strangle Kazuaki.

We spent the night together (fianc� and me, not
parents and me) laying around in shameful excess.  We
ordered something like half a million yen worth of
things from the home shopping network, bought takeout,
and played with each others' hair.  :)  (For future
reference, if you want a *fabulously* done French
Braid, seek out my husband.)  You know, I know you
think he's wrong for me, that I never allowed myself
to love/be loved as much as I did with Takashi...but I
don't know.  It's not the same kind of love, but is
that necessarily so bad?  I feel safe with Kazuaki,
and yes, financial stability is in it as much as any
other kind.  I don't think he'd ever betray me: either
maritally or emotionally.  ...He's so *soft* around
me, you know?  Like he's happy just that I'll be here,
and that I'll listen.  He's gotten *so much better*
recently since we broke him of that "talking about
work" habit he used to like so much.

I don't know; when he's not around...I miss him.

...Shit.  It's the hormones, I swear!

Later - Michi

=====

Of the 500,000 that Michi and Kazuaki had squandered,
a large part of it had been on maternity clothing. 
And overnight shipping was her best friend.  She'd
awoken that morning to the salty-soft scent of her
fianc� and the wonderful safety of being pressed up
against his chest...with hundreds of thousands of yen
worth of clothing waiting in a package with the
delivery boy knocking on her door.  She'd tossed on
the nearest article of clothing and signed for them,
flouncing back into the bedroom and playing dress-up
until she had to leave for work.

Which probably explained why she had been in such high
spirits and a fabulously cut business suit so
God-awful early in the morning.

Ranma had already been waiting, staring at her in some
sort of awe: she was now undeniably, gloriously
pregnant, and instead of trying to hide it, she seemed
to conform to it, glowing softly.  She'd gone through
the morning sickness, stopped being ravenous, lost the
biting edge of hormonal anger, and had settled into a
wonderful gentleness that seemed to overwhelm.  Some
ancient part of himself had buckled under assault of
her maternal pheromones, and he'd rushed to her, had
led her toward a chair, pampered and coddled and
teased smiles from her for near ten minutes before
she'd finally stopped him and asked what had been
wrong the night before.  He'd told her that he was
drowning in women, and then she'd blinked and told him
that wasn't a problem, not *really*.  He'd nodded
stupidly before she'd smiled and patted his cheek. 
"You," she'd said, "think too much."  He'd laughed and
told her *no one* had ever said that before.

He had wanted more softness, more welcoming friendship
without the promise of midnights or obligation for
fidelity: he had wanted more unconditional presence. 
But there had been work to be done, cases to be
solved, and as the flashbulbs exploding in his face as
soon as they stepped out of the building suggested,
press to be dealt with.

"This is your fault, you know," Michi had accused
angrily, locking the driver's side door angrily,
seeing reporters with cameras, microphones and plenty
of determination continue to bang on the window.  "You
and your little cult - "  Ranma had narrowed his eyes
at her and shifted the car into drive.  "Look, there
was only that *one* photograph and the *one*
interview!  How was I supposed to know what would
happen?"  She'd huffed and turned around, patently
ignoring him as they pulled slowly out of the
department parking lot and saw through the rearview
window that most of the reporters were being detained
by bored patrolmen, who knew that Michi and Ranma had
actual work to be doing.

And now, they stood toe to toe in the forensics labs
of the Tokyo Police department, twelve city blocks
from their offices, trying to solve a mystery.  All
fourteen technicians on duty in Lab C had crowded
about to stare, some of them nudging and elbowing and
giggling like middle school children; others studied
the scene carefully, intrigued by the mystery and not
the proximity.  Ranma and Michi studiously ignored all
of this.

"See, here's my problem with this scenario," Michi
said distractedly, her hands resting on either side of
Ranma's shoulders casually and holding them within a
breath of each other.

Ranma glanced down at her patiently.

"If," she started, shoving him a bit only to find that
he behaved like a brick wall.  She narrowed her eyes
and glared upward as if to say, 'Work with me here,'
and Ranma dutifully stumbled a bit till his back met
cold plaster.  Michi had him pinned against the wall,
her tiny frame reaching the edge of his shoulder, her
face thoughtful, and her foot between his own,
maintaining her shifted-forward weight.

It was getting more difficult to ignore the hoots and
snickers now.

"If it's just a normal-sized woman, how did she manage
to stab him with the needle?  Without breaking it, or
causing some sort of violent reaction that would lead
to snapping it?  How did she subdue him?" she asked
herself.

Ranma smirked.  "Maybe if it wasn't a her."

"I mean," his partner went on blithely, "all of these
men were of considerable size.  It'd be hard for her."
 And almost as an aside, she said, "Well, they *were*
stinking drunk."

"If they were too drunk to react," Ranma countered,
"then they would have been too drunk to move: if she
wasn't strong enough to stab them unless they were out
like a light, then she wouldn't have been able to haul
them into the alleyway."

She scowled.  He held up his hands.  "I'm just
saying."

"Sure you are," she muttered.  Noting this
discontinuity in logic, she pressed forward,
murmuring, "But then how?  And why?  And who, most
importantly."

Ranma frowned.  "I was thinking about what your friend
said," he paused, vaguely uncomfortable to be
mentioning Mio's name out of the cigarettes and vodka
rocks context, "about this maybe being contracted."

Michi looked thoughtful, and said, "There's a
possibility."

The technicians still stared.  

It wasn't simply that a tiny woman was pretending to
overpower a large, built man, it was their total
proximity, the secret whispers that having a person
pinned against the wall tended to make.  They looked
very comfortable like that, and more than a few of the
lab techs entertained the brief, mental image of Ranma
playing the bitch in their hypothetical affairs.  It
wasn't so much that it was them, the novelty had worn
off of simply teasing male-female partnerships, it was
how comfortable they were in typically taboo
positions.

Perhaps, a few onlookers thought, the rumors *were*
true.

Ranma was silent for a beat before saying, "Then..."

Michi sighed and released him, taking a step back, she
pursed her lips in an expression of resigned distaste.
 At that moment, Ranma really wished he hadn't
muttered his last word: it led to more speculation,
and that took more time.  He'd heard her say earlier
that morning that despite the long sleep, the
pampering, and her general good mood, her day was a
slightly blurry warmth - post-coital confusion.  She
always seemed to want a nap.  He didn't have the right
to monopolize her time and energy, did he?

And then he gave himself a mental slap to the head:
she was an officer, she knew what she was getting into
when she took the job, and she was more than prepared
to take on any challenge tossed in her direction.  

"Then?" she asked.  "Then why the rage in these
killings?  Then why at all?  Then why not all at
once?"  She shrugged her shoulders and allowed herself
to look defeated for a moment.  "Why anything?"

Ranma blinked, and hesitated before saying, "I was
gonna...I was just gonna ask then where did the money
come from?"

There was a dumbfounded pause before Michi put it most
eloquently:

"Well, shit."

=====

To: ntendo@pricewaterhouse.co.jp
From: rsaotome@police.go.jp
Subject: wedding confirmation

Nabiki -

Look, I know you don't want to have an empty seat at
one of your "lusciously decorated tables," but where
the hell am I supposed to find a date this last
minute?  I mean, come *on*!  

- RS

======

It may not have seemed like it, what with the chaos
surrounding her return to Tokyo and Ranma and
Kodachi's subsequent "falling out," but Michi had kept
to her promise well.  On the outside, she'd done
enough searching into different suspects, into diverse
avenues; but on her own time, or when Ranma wasn't in
the office, she was digging into the Kunos'
background; what she had found did not seem to be
encouraging.

Noriko Kuno had been released from the Kinoyaka
Psychiatric Institute nearly two years previous.  It
was an extremely prestigious (and by natural
association nowadays, extremely expensive) private
psychiatric hospital that catered to those less
fashionable problems of just over one hundred and
fifty patients.  Over its fifty years of existence, it
had a nearly 90% reintegration rate: it defined this
figure as the percentage of people who, after
receiving treatment (with follow-up outpatient
checkups) who were able to survive successfully in
normal society.  From the reports that she'd been able
to weedle from her sources at the Kinoyaka hospital,
Mrs. Kuno had been one of their more difficult
patients, not because her condition was any more
complex than their other patients, but rather as a
result of her violence.  Contrary to popular opinion,
most mental patients are not violent, nor are they a
danger to anyone save for themselves; Noriko Kuno had
been a marked exception to this statistic.  She'd
lashed out at the nurses, even broken one of the
doctor's wrists.  She'd been at the Institute for well
over a decade, Michi had been informed, and
improvement of her mood disorder had only come in the
last three years of her stay.  

"We didn't *really* want to let her out," a nurse had
admitted grudgingly, "but her husband signed the
forms.  And since she'd been checked into the hospital
by him, he had the right to pull her out again." 
There'd been a pause over the line.  "But then again,
she seemed pretty stable when we were packing up her
things, that's...better than how she come to us," the
young woman had noted cheerfully.

Michi had an ugly suspicion that the Kinoyaka
Institute was one of those horrible places where one
would find the staff rubbing muscle relaxant into
their cheeks after a long, hard day of fake smiling.

"You sure about this?" she asked, glancing to her
left.

Kenji Kinamoto smirked jauntily.  "Sure."

Kenji was her ex-partner, and had been a steadfast
friend: he'd stood by her throughout the Hanazawa
incident.  After her good name had been dragged
through several kinds of mud with varying degrees of
shit mixed in, they'd been separated to different
departments.  Kenji remained with the Tokyo PD, while
she'd been shifted to the less press-conscious Special
Operations division.  They were not *constant*
friends, but absolutely inseparable when within
distance of one another: they called it filial
magnetism, after a certain distance, there was no
draw, but within a hundred yards, there was no chance
for division.

Michi sighed and looked down.  "I feel really bad
about this."

"Hey," Kenji murmured.  He put his hand on her
shoulder, in the heavy, comforting way that he had
always gone about doing things with her.  "Don't worry
about it, okay, Hirugashi?"  She raised her eyes to
meet his, and he smiled at her reassuringly.  "You
looked at this from all angles; you did this perfectly
legally.  You're just checking out a lead.  And
besides," he added, "didn't you say that they weren't
dating anymore?"

Michi grinned weakly and knocked on the door.  "But
they still care."

They waited for a moment before Kenji said, "That's
something."

"Isn't it?" she replied.

There was the sound of activity behind the door and
Michi turned to Kenji one last time before putting on
her game face.

This was her job, she kept reminding herself.

=====

To: rsaotome@police.go.jp
From: mhirugashi@police.go.jp
Subject: Re:[PLEASE!]

Ranma -

Very cute.  These following facts submitted for your
approval:

1. Am engaged, very much so, to crazy-jealous man who
has sulked for week when I looked at nearest male. 
(Doesn't matter that male was nearly naked on
billboard for Calvin Klein.)
2. Am pregnant.  Your playboy past will have you
crucified at said Blessed Event before you can say
"Not mine!"
3. Am busy.  Go get someone else to go with you.

Later - Michi

=====

"You have no right to do this!" 

"Not according to this little piece of paper," Michi
answered.

When she told her friends of her occupation, she
oftentimes joked that one of the main reasons she was
into law enforcement was the thrill of defiance and
the glimmer of hatefulness in the eyes of her suspects
and their families when she busted into their homes
with a search warrant.  The rush of knowing she was
stepping all over hallowed ground of one kind or
another was the same one she used to get when she lit
up behind one of the endless shrines in Kyoto during
her college years.  

She only *wished* that she was kidding about it.

The maid was wringing her hands hatefully, glaring at
her and crying over and again that she had no right to
be lingering about the Kuno family grounds.  "Contrary
to popular belief, ma'am, I have ample jurisdiction
here to do anything I want!" was what she'd been
tempted to yell at the high, nasal insistence that she
was behaving illegally.  "Ma'am, I assure you, we're
only checking things out," was what actually came out
of her mouth.

The Kuno estate was labyrinth-like, winding and
twisting, with so many false walls and trap doors that
it blew Michi's mind to think of what kind of human
being would design and build such a thing.  Outside,
it was such a beacon of wealth, beauty, and posterity;
inside, there were wings and rooms that were locked
and boarded with dust so thick she could see her
footprints on the floor.

The main house and the westernmost wing were in good
condition, as spoken by Kenji before, "Effusively
beautiful."  He was not lying: every square inch of
the grounds was decadent with splendor, dripping with
wealth and covered crowning to tile with careful
planning.  Someone had lovingly decorated all that
empty space, filled it with a great loveliness that
didn't all stem from money exchanging hands.  Red
brocade clothed the windows; the chairs were all
upholstered in the finest cloth of some unknown
origin: Michi had never been wealthy of curious enough
to learn about the great designers and their brands. 
All she did know was that if she were to live in that
house, she'd drown in all of that gorgeousness.

And then there were other rooms.

Rooms equally rich with things, but empty of all life.
 The windows had been drawn and boarded, furniture
left uncovered to rot in the mildewed air.  At her
best guess, it had been over a decade since someone
had ventured into the northern wing of the Kuno
mansion, and no one in the house seemed to want to go
there now, either.  The officers that Tokyo PD -
ecstatic for a potential break in the case, regardless
that it had been made by Michi - had dispatched for
the detail seemed edgy, almost afraid.  One of the
more superstitious of them claimed that there was some
sort of dark presence in the house; for once, Michi
did not strike down this claim.  She could feel it as
heavily as anyone else: an aching, screaming gulf of
something that ate away and into the brightness of the
sunrooms in the front rooms.  It seemed to hide in
corners nearest to the northern wing, waiting until
one was caught unawares and snuck up like a brush of
frigid air.

"I'm calling Master Kuno!" the maid had cried, running
toward the phones.  "I'm calling him, and having your
arrested!"  Michi had just snorted derisively, and
headed toward the northern wing.  "Anyone in there?"
she'd tossed over her shoulder.  Those words had
stopped the maid cold in her steps, and before Michi
knew what had happened, the maid was being forcibly
restrained while she screamed, "YOU STAY AWAY FROM
THAT WING!  STAY AWAY!"

"Guess we're just going to have to see for ourselves,"
Kenji had muttered darkly, brushing off his suitcoat. 
He'd cast a smile at Michi and said, "Hey, worse comes
to worse, I'll shove a newbie in front of you, 'kay?"

As if that, in any way, shape, or form, comforted
Michi at all.

Oh, but Michi would have rather gnawed off a body part
than to admit weakness before the entourage of
frightened officers.  She was the only one on scene
who carried a second X chromosome: damned if she was
to shame her kind.  She took a deep breath.  "All
right, folks, brace yourselves," she said, and pushed
through that final barrier.

She opened the door, and felt the iciness descend
without mercy.

=====

To: mhirugashi@police.go.jp
From: rsaotome@police.go.jp
Subject: Re:[Re:[PLEASE!]]

Damn it.  I know you're right, but still.

Kazuaki's *jealous*?  Then how the hell do you explain
away all those seven till nine days that we spend
looking at microfilm and being so bored in
departmental meetings that we think our brain is going
to fall out of our skulls?

- RS

=====

All feedback is welcome!

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