This is Tokyo, she of the glittering lights and blinding streets. A
metropolis of dreams and stories, of shining towers of steel and glass
and quaint ancestral homes. It is also a city of laws and conflicts,
though often crime can vex those in charge of meting out justice.
      This is the case of one such crime.

The story you are about to read is probably true. The names have been
changed because Tomo-chan said so. All victims are innocent until
traumatised by the guilty.

      The school's parking lot was strewn with wet leaves and petals,
fallen victims of the torrential storm that had just passed. Most, if
not all of the cars were covered under a blanket of pink and green.
Overhead, the blooming cherry trees still dripped heavily from the
downpour.

Bloomin' trees, always drippin' all over th' bloomin' cars...

      An ordinary calico cat was happily licking its paws on the hood of
a small blue sedan, savoring the lingering taste of its most recent
meal. Its peace was interrupted, though, when a sudden, excited shriek
tore through the scene and shook windows up to miles away. Terrified, it
leapt onto the ground and ran as far away as its nine lives would take
it.

Losing three of them in the process as it was trampled by a herd of
wildebeests. Or schoolgirls, which is about the same thing in the long run.

      "But you splurge all the time, and it's always for yourself,"
Nyamo admonished.  She shook her head. "And why did you *have* to leave
it in my car, anyway?"

Because crab a la car tastes better than crab a la road, duh :P

      Yukari faced her again and scowled, "To keep everyone else's dirty
stinking paws off it!" Clenching a fist, she went on, "You saw the look
on their faces when the mail boy brought it to the teacher's lounge!
They were drooling all over it!"

And she still wants to EAT it? EW!

      "AAAH! AAAH! AAAAAH!" Nyamo's trademark freak-out started
full-blast. There was a gaping hole smashed through her car's rear left
window. A small piece of glass from the upper edge swung gently, then
dropped with a *tinkle*.

Japan, land of public urination, where even the cars get in on the act.

      "MY CAR!" she finally yelled.

Followed immediately by a loud shout of "DUDE!"

      "MY CRAB!" Yukari cried, pushing Nyamo aside as tears streamed
down her cheeks. She raced towards the battered vehicle, hoping against
hope that her precious delicacy had escaped unscathed from the ravages
of suburban crime. Nyamo just floated in dismay towards her poor, poor
sedan.

Nyamo's car: "Can't we all just get along?"

      What greeted Yukari, however, instead of frozen seafood from the
finest breeders in Hokkaido, was a violated cardboard box and a few
strips of plastic wrapping that reeked heavily of crab.

Seven blocks away, Tokyo police apprehended an undead sea creature for
aggravated sexual assault of a refrigerator crate. The homeless man living
inside the crate identified the zombie crab in a lineup, and the crab was
sentenced to thirty minutes in an iron kettle full of boiling water.

      "A!" the long-haired one blinked, "Yukari-sensei had crabs?"

Considering Yukari's track record with men, that's highly unlikely...

      "Aa..." Osaka drifted off, then turned to her friend, "Yomi-chan
had crabs once... Have you had crabs, Tomo-chan?"

*SNRK* There's a mental image for ya.

The sad thing is, the one member of the whole group most likely to be thusly
afflicted is Chiyo-chan. Japan...gotta love it.

      In a matter of instants, Osaka came running back, carrying several
rolls of toilet paper in her arms. She set them carefully next to
Nyamo's car, then fixed the end of a roll inside the hood. Then she
diligently unrolled a perimeter of toilet paper around Nyamo's car and
the tree beside it.

One good crime deserves another...

      "Osaka-san, what are you..." Chiyo began.
      "This is a crime scene," Osaka deadpanned.
      "Crime scene?" Tomo frowned quizzically.
      "Crime scene."

XD

      "Shh!" Osaka silenced her and pressed an ear against Nyamo's car.
"The evidence is talking to me." And indeed the car emitted a brief beep
as Nyamo used her key ring to turn the alarm off. "A! It did talk!"
Osaka exclaimed, stepping away from it.

@_@

      Then her face took a quizzical look as she took notice of the
smashed glass and ruined window. "Aa, as I thought..." she said
astutely. "Looks like the perpetrator's window of opportunity."

*wince*

      "Ah, Yomi, Sakaki!" Kagura came forward to meet them while Osaka
and the others examined Nyamo's car. "Hurry over, Osaka says she needs
help here."

I don't think either of them are qualified to give the kind of help Osaka
needs. XD

      It wasn't very long, and had few budding knots growing out of it,
but it was almost a foot thick at its widest point. Narrowing her eyes,
Yomi crouched beside it and examined it. "Hmmm..." She carefully
fingered the jagged and blackened end where it had been severed from the
tree. Looking up, she confirmed that there was indeed a broken branch
jutting out from the trunk just above the car.

You might want to clarify this sentence a bit--since the boot of a car is
often called a "trunk" also, it might confuse people slightly. Specify she's
looking up at the tree. ^_^

      "But that doesn't explain where the crab went," Yomi contested.

Tokyo Disneyland.

      Kagura grimaced. "Uh, Yukari-sensei kinda got mad at the guards
and scared them away. They, um, they won't come back because they're
afraid of her."

XD

      Yomi snorted in annoyance. "Huh. Figures they'd weasel out just
before a long weekend. Anyway, we'll need some equipment if we're really
going to help figure out who stole that crab." Standing up, she ran the
necessary items through her mind and continued, "Sakaki, Kagura, take
this branch back inside to one of the storerooms, see what you can find
on it. I'll get Chiyo-chan to come with me so they let us use it for a
day or two."

Another bit that needs clarification...that last bit's a little rushed, she
doesn't say where she's going, or what for, or why Chiyo-chan's going with
her and what purpose that serves. It becomes clear later, and you can pretty
much guess what she wants Chiyo there for, but you might want to elaborate
this a little.

      "What are you gonna find in that branch?" Tomo clucked. "It's just
a hunk of wood, right?"

Yomi: Exactly. *glasses flash*

      "Someone must have pulled it out and placed it here," Sakaki
explained, following Yomi's train of thought. "They might have left
something of themselves behind."

"Hey. Something's missing."

"It's just some of your intestines."

"Ah."

      "Exactly," Yomi nodded. "Tomo, I want you to look around the
parking lot and see if you can find anything unusual."

That shouldn't be too hard...depending on how long it takes Tomo to find
herself.

      "We'll just have to hurry and take everything we can back inside."
She exclaimed, "Ah! That's right, Kaorin was using a digital camera
during gym class

Taking lessons from the Daidouji Tomoyo School of Stalking, I see...

      "My craaab... my craaab..." Yukari, her face a mask of absolute
despair, whimpered as she suckled on one of the leftover plastic
wrappings from the box. She was convinced there was still a little taste
of Hokkaido left in it.
      "Yukari, that's... disgusting," Nyamo shuddered.
      Osaka pouted slightly. "Aa, sensei, please don't eat my evidence."

XD That's perfection right there.

                  ~who are you?~

Do you really wanna know?

      The parking lot yielded a few more clues to the mystery, in the
shape of a few largish spots of spilled blood and a discarded tissue
under the car, also stained with blood. Chiyo shivered a bit in
queasiness and dutifully documented her findings.

Osaka: The perpetrator must have seen Sakaki-san changing for gym.

Aside from the expected blue and brown strands, there were a couple of
short, thick hairs as well as an invisibly-thin thread that she couldn't
identify. She stored these in a plastic zip-loc after removing them from
the tape.

She then wiped sweat from her brow...forgetting to remove the duct tape from
her hand first. She was of no use to anyone for the next few hours.

      "A!" Osaka pointed at the sky. "The guy we're looking for must be
waterproof! Or maybe a crab-eating thunder god..." Looking upwards, she
continued, "The sacrifice of crab must have appeased its anger, and the
rain stopped."

...brilliant Osaka logic there. @_@

      The girls just watched the car continue onwards while a miniature
combat erupted inside it. "Yukari-sensei knows kung-fu..." Osaka said
dreamily.

*snrk*

      "Just this," Kagura showed her a trio of plastic zip-loc baggies.
The first contained the odd hair and thread from the back seat; the
second had shards from the window itself, a few of them showing small
drops of some strange blue substance similar to hair gel. The Hello
Kitty band-aid wrapper was stored in the third bag.

It was a Slime! A Slime stole the crab!

      "Puzzle?" Osaka tilted her head, contemplating the word while the
others took the evidence to their impromptu "lab." Letting out a tiny
gasp, she quickly stepped towards the blood drops on the asphalt and
kneeled beside them. "The thief is hurt," she whispered, her voice
betraying a hint of worry.

Awwww.

      Almost as an afterthought, she glanced at the camera's display,
which was still set on the last picture it had taken: the glass shards
strewn over the back seat. There was no blood at all among them. She
blinked.
      "He hurt himself on the way out," she deduced. With a frown, she
concentrated on the dried blood spots, her sight zooming onto them. "He
stole sensei's crabby fish after it rained, too."

Nice deduction work there for Osaka. Of course, given how she is, this is
actually the kind of thing one would expect her to excel at figuring
out...she's useless for anything normal, but sees things nobody else cares
to notice. She probably also watches too many crime dramas. ^_^

Very nice start, and it'll be interesting to see more of this, and to see
what solution to the mystery the gang comes up with.

--------------------------------------
The Eternal Lost Lurker
www.lurkerdrome.com



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