It's been a while.

"At last..."

The small figure in blue triumphantly raised his balled fists into the air in an expression of victory, chortling to himself things intelligible to the normal unaltered ear.

However, a few words that tumbled from the boy's mouth weren't as mangled as the rest, so the little Blade Bunnies hiding in the foliage nearby could, if they had the power of human speech, understand that he was laughing about, "Vinay del Zexay."

(Never mind the fact that the Blade Bunnies actually understood the incoherent mumblings better)

"Haha! I'm here at last! Fame, here I come!"

The Blade Bunnies watched with some regret as Kidd strode off down the path into the looming gates which marked the entrance into the human-infested town of Vinay del Zexay.

Not that they knew that the city was called thus. They're just bunnies, anyway. With sharp pointy axes.

Never mind.

Kidd strolled into the town, a determined smile on his pointy face.

"Greetings, Vinay del Zexay!' he spread his arms. "Sorry to keep you waiting."

Yes, this was the day that the city of Vinay del Zexay would witness the brilliant kid detective Kidd solving a mystery! There was no better place for intrigue and intricate plotlines than the city of Vinay del Zexay. With a town that large, there were bound to be dozens of loose ends floating around for him to tie up.

But where to start searching for them?

He looked around the square. Aha!

Drawing himself up to his full height and putting his noblest expression on his face, Kidd purposefully marched past the fountain to where three young girls sat in a close huddle on a bench. Clearly, something was distressing them, he observed, putting an extra stride into his step.

"Distraught young ladies need someone strong," he murmured to himself, mentally patting himself on the back for discarding the kiddy pants he used to trot around in.

Never mind that it really wasn't his choice. That Miss Lilly was far too open with her temper and much too quick with her fire spells and Kidd was far too slow to avoid either of the two deadly projectiles.

"Good morning," Kidd bowed grandiosely to the three girls.

They looked at him in surprise.

"Pray tell, my ladies," Kidd began, lowering his voice to hide the fact that puberty had yet to set upon this little detective. "I must ask you, what is afoot in Vinay del Zexay?"

After a pause, one of the girls slowly answered him, looking bewildered. "Well, it's the same thing in every other place, I suppose."

That was intriguing.

"So there's a nationwide plot," he mused to himself, striking a pensive pose. "Something going on here is happening everywhere else. But I have yet to hear about it." He looked back to the girl. "Would you mind explaining it to me?"

The girl's face grew even more perplexed. "Well," she started, looking quite regretful that she had said anything at all. "If a foot is a foot in the Brass Castle, I'm sure that it's also a foot here in Vinay del Zexay."

He blinked.

"You've got two of them," she went on, looking at him curiously. "So you should know what they are, unless you're a pegleg or something."

"Unless he's talking about a foot," another girl put in thoughtfully. "You know. The measurement. I forget exactly how long it is."

"It's this long," the other girl supplied, holding her hands apart in what was approximately a foot.

"Well," the first girl said, looking back to the baffled detective, "if that's what you're asking, then the system of measurement here in Vinay del Zexay is exactly the same as the one in Toran or Harmonia." She paused. "Not in Duck Village, though. I think they measure things with their feathers there."

"Um," Kidd tried to get a word in, his voice doing a strange little squeak. "That's not exactly what I was—"

"I thought they measured things by their beaks," the second said, although she didn't really seem interested in the topic.

"You know what, I don't even see the point," the third girl said gloomily, looking ready to burst into tears. "Why are we even talking to this shrimp? It's all so pointless!"

Now that, in Kidd's slightly biased opinion, was uncalled for. He knew a few kids—and even a few grown-ups—who were a lot shorter than he was—and he wasn't even short! He was just...vertically challenged.

Drawing in a breath to shoot out a retort, Kidd was interrupted by the first girl.

"Oh, don't cry, Mella," she said, putting an arm around the shaking Mella. "They'll be back, one day. This is their home, well, not Sir Percival's, but it is Sir Borus' home, and since those two are such good friends, then I'm sure they'll both come back."

Kidd's snappy reply was pulled up short as his proverbial bunny ears perked up, and his nose began to twitch in anticipation. Well, well, well. What was this?

"Oh, don't mention his name again," the second girl said, her eyes narrowing harshly. "Sir Borus is an absolute disgrace to the Knighthood, and to Vinay del Zexay."

"Don't call him that, Nettil!" Mella snapped, her eyes flaring up. "I don't believe any of the rumors, they're stupid, and so are you, if you think that he really did all that!"

"Ah, excuse me," Kidd said then, and the three girls snapped their heads toward him.

"What?"

"Well," Kidd started neutrally. "I'm sort of new here, and I've heard nothing of this...issue concerning Borus and Percival. Would you mind—"

"That's Sir Borus and Sir Percival to you, shorty!" Mella abruptly shot at him.

"You'd do better not to say Sir Borus' name at all, though," Nettil sniffed. "He's not welcome here anymore. Ever since that scandal..." She made a disgusted noise.

Really?

"Oh?" Kidd tried not to sound too excited. "What happened? I know that he's got something of a temper and he's really possessive and weird about his wine, but Borus—ah, Sir Borus isn't such a bad chap, really. Whatever did he do?"

"You knew him?" Mella suddenly looked hopeful. "Do you know where he is?"

"Stuff and bother, Mell," Nettil snorted. "He doesn't look like he'd be consorting with any knight. If you ask me, he looks like a rat."

"I'm right here, you know," Kidd reminded her.

She turned her nose up at him. "Oh, sorry. Guess I just looked right over your head. You might want to think about tiptoeing, people'll notice you faster. If at all."

Now that just went too far.

Drawing himself up in offense, he started to snap back at her but the first girl (who still remained nameless) quickly put a foot in.

"Um, I'm really sorry, um..." she looked at him.

"Kidd." He slightly puffed up his chest, looking at her proudly. "I'm a detective."

Nettil looked like she was about to say something, but the first girl stepped in again, saying, "Well, Mr. Kidd," she seemed a little dubious, "I'm sorry if you caught us at a bad time. We're just not really happy at the moment."

Shooting Nettil a smug look, Kidd turned back to the first girl and shrugged. "I'm all right. But do you mind filling me in a bit? I seem to have put my head in the dirt for some time."

Nettil's eyes suddenly lit up in malicious glee. Kidd knew in an instant that he had said something wrong.

Hastily, he went on, not giving her a chance to poke another hole into his already speckled ego. "I'd really like to know what had happened, so would you tell me? It would be really helpful to my work, if there's a case to solve."

"I suppose," the first girl said, standing up. "But it would really be much better if I showed you." She turned to the other two girls on the bench. "I'll see you guys later, all right?"

"She's in no danger from me," Kidd said, noting the cautious look on Mella's round face.

"Duh," Nettil rolled her eyes. "A crippled ant with its antennae torn off could beat you up."

Choosing to be the better man (figuratively: he was not yet a man and she was, after all, a girl, clearly not a man), Kidd decided to ignore that.

"In that case..." He offered the girl beside him his arm—she was no taller than he was, after all—and strolled off with her, eager to hear about this whole fiasco.

"You may have guessed that something happened in Vinay del Zexay," his companion started, looking a little hesitant. "And that it's stirred up a little conflict with the townspeople. Everyone's a little distraught about it."

"You don't seem too bothered, umm..." He looked at her expectantly.

"Oh, right." She laughed. "My name is Ciryl."

"Yes, well, if you ask me," Kidd remarked. "You seem more irritated with those two back there than the situation."

She made a face. "The two of those are head over heels for the whole idea of damsels in distress and knights in shining armor."

"I don't see why you hang out with them."

Ciryl gave him a look. "They're my sisters."

Kidd paused, turning a little red. "Well, they're, uh, lovely people. So about this business with Borus and Percival? How are they doing?" he quickly asked.

She threw him an arch little expression. "For a detective, you don't really keep your ear to the ground. You haven't heard anything about it at all?"

He shook his head.

"Well," she started. "Take a look at this."

She had led him to one of those notice boards that seem to crop up whenever people have a messy sort of government that can't control itself. He peered at it and blinked.

"What's with all the hate notes?" he asked her. "I thought everyone here loved Sir Borus?"

"A week or so ago, Sir Percival left," she explained. "The supposed reason is that he wanted to stop being a knight for some reason, so he disappeared. Well, people couldn't really take that, since Sir Percival is supposedly something like the paramount knight of the world, or something." She made a face. "Mella gets really extravagant about it sometimes."

"So he wanted to take a vacation. What's so odd about that? What's that got to do with Borus?"

Ciryl shrugged. "I think it has something to do with the Knight's code, or whatever. In any case, he left, and people thought that it was all Borus' fault."

Kidd blinked. Why would Borus do that? He and Percival were best friends, if he recalled correctly. The two idiots were always bumping antlers, but that was to be expected in the sort of macho friendship bit. Rivals, or whatever.

Ciryl read the question on his face and nodded. "I think it had something to do with Lady Chris. The two of them are supposedly in love with her, so Borus is supposed to have forced him to leave so that he could have the Lady all to himself. The council got together when he left and sort of exiled him for a while, supposedly because of bad conduct or something."

Kidd frowned. "I hear a lot of 'supposes' in that statement."

She nodded again, her pensive face growing serious. "It's a little risky to be talking about it in the open, but honestly, things are bad. Everything about the accusations was flimsy."

"Something else has to be going on," he agreed. "They wouldn't get rid of a knight because he behaved badly toward another knight. Sir Percival leaving was a bad thing, but deliberately losing two like them is a bit idiotic. There has to be some underhanded scheme in this." He pondered at it.

She laughed. "That's the Council for you," she commented. "You just summed them up: idiotic and underhanded. But you forgot to mention unable to hold in its secrets."

"Oh?" he asked, interested.

"A few days before Sir Borus was asked to leave Vinay del Zexay, when he was still traveling here, I guess, there was this mass inquiry about his accounts. You did know that Sir Borus is something along the lines of the richest man in town, right?"

He blinked. Borus?

"No way," Kidd laughed. "Borus Redrum is..." He paused. "A Redrum. Oh..."

Ciryl bobbed her head. "Yeah. Goes back a long way. It sort of sheds a bit of light onto the whole situation. Funding the whole Flame Champion war and dealing with the aftermath had the City Treasury a bit short on change." She laughed. "When they realized that they might have to actually stop stealing from the taxes to go on the way they did, they decided to turn to the Redrum treasury, which, I heard, goes on for digits and digits. Borus pays a great deal in taxes, but he's still got enough to buy a whole continent."

"Would you imagine that," Kidd murmured speculatively.

"The Council certainly did," Ciryl said with obvious disapproval. "I suppose they thought that all that money was useless if it wasn't in their pockets. They sent pleas for aid to Sir Borus and the first few he granted, but when it became apparent that the Council was just lining its own pockets instead of tending to the broken villages the war left behind, he withdrew all his support, which left them a little wanting on money to use to buy more useless jewelry."

"Wow," Kidd whistled. "Didn't know Borus had the brains to figure it out."

Ciryl rolled her eyes. "Sir Borus is a lot smarter than many of the other knights loafing around in the city. Besides, the Council members weren't exactly discreet about their savings, if you know what I mean. They seem to have a bit of difficulty comprehending the notion of keeping things low-key."

"So now that he's gone," Kidd said, frowning slightly. "They've got his money in their pockets?"

She grinned. "Nah. The Redrums didn't get all that money by being careless with it. Somehow, the Council can't get their hands on his money. I think they're beginning to regret sending him away. The notion of all that money so close by and the fact that they can't spend any of it is sending them into fits of anguish, I think. You can hear them chewing on their own livers all the way across town." She actually sounded pleased.

"There's something else, isn't there?" Kidd asked, struggling with something. "Why would the townspeople agree to his exile? Many people in Vinay del Zexay probably know that sending him away because he supposedly kicked Percival out is a flimsy reason to suspend him from his knightly duties."

She nodded. "There's something else, and it has to do with the money." She smiled. "Give it time, and the Council will probably tell us anyway. They're physically incapable of keeping a secret."

Kidd grinned, anticipation growing in his eyes. "I'm not very good with waiting. You think they'd mind if I snooped around in advance?"

She shrugged, an evil little smile dancing on her lips. "Maybe. They probably wouldn't like it that much if they were caught with their proverbial pants down, but we'd all love to see that." She laughed naughtily.

He blinked. "You're not very lady-like, are you?"

She just grinned.