Book 1: The Case of the Missing Mech

In Which There is Hard-Boiled Exposition

The sky was the color of a digital television tuned to a dead channel, and the sun plodded across the sky with the joyless determination of someone beginning to realize that slow and steady won very few races in the real world. My office smelled of a mixture of ozone, desperation, and my orange-and-curry-flavored drinks. To a stranger, that might sound like an awful reek, but to me it was homey, like the nicotine odor of a hobbit-hole. Nevertheless, I was about to exit the fragrant premises at the behest of someone willing to pay good money for my discerning intellect and atrophied sense of self-preservation. My name's Ayase Yue. I'm a private eye.

Experience is a strict teacher, fond of throwing chalk. It had long since taught me that when life doesn't deviate from your plans, it means you're walking into an ambush or dancing on puppet strings. That said, I can usually get through "Step 1: Egress place of business" before the monkeys bring their wrenches. The fact that the wrench came in the form of a dame was rather less surprising.

"Hello? Detective? I'd like your help with something."

She had long, toned legs fit for an athlete or a dancer, displayed to perfection by her long boots and short skirt. She had big black eyes, pits you'd get lost in without a trace if you leaned in too close. She had hair the same color, an uncommon sight in Mahora, topped by even rarer cat ears. I knew her. Even with the little time I'd seen her, long years ago, I could recognize her. I may never have seen those lovely long limbs covered with that lovely black hair, or those caliginous eyes turn to gold, but our acquaintance had been...memorable enough.

"You're...Koyomi, right? Or you called yourself that when you worked with Fate." I noticed her tensing when I said his name, going from the same kind of nervous most folks have when they first walk into my office to bowstring tight for a moment. Either she hated him and hated to hear his name or she loved him still and hated me saying it. "I only have a few minutes before I need to get going, but if you let me know what you need my help with I can at least tell you if it's the sort of thing that I do."

"Me and a few others from Cosmo Entelechia are working on recreating the Libri Sibyllini. We came here because we heard your library has a fragment of it. As long as we were here, we thought we'd do a little sightseeing. It's a beautiful campus. As we were crossing a certain rooftop, we all started feeling sick and weak at once. The feeling went away after we'd walked a bit, and after we spent a little time checking things we figured out that we only felt weird when we were standing in one specific spot. It's marked on this map," she said, unfolding said item and handing it to me.

"Interesting," I said, tone and face and slouch all putting the lie to my word. "I'll check it out sometime after I deal with this case for the school. Oh, who else is with you? In case I need to ask you all for further details, you understand."

"Besides me, there's Bri- er, Shirabe is how you'd know her, Tamaki, Homura, and Cassandra. She's a naiad, and she was one of Master Fate's orphans but never a fighter." Master Fate, huh? Guess it's love after all.

Now, I have not always risen to my full scholastic potential, but none have claimed that I am incapable of basic arithmetic since I was halfway through the first grade. I could tell that something didn't add up. The story itself I neither believed nor doubted just yet, obviously rehearsed though it was. My suspicions were aroused by something else entirely, and I figured my best shot at satisfying them would come from shaking my guest until something fell out.

"So Shiori or Luna or whatever she goes by now couldn't make it, huh? Guess she had better things to do than hang around a bunch of has-beens stuck in weak artificial bodies, huh?"

"Don't you talk about my friend like that." Her fists were clenched and her voice heated. It was a start.

"You know, ''Master'' Fate could probably sort out your little weirdness no problem if hadn't ditched you all years ago. That's rough, the way you got punished and he and Shiori didn't because they stabbed you in the back ten seconds before Negi won."

"Shut up! Master Fate and Shiori fought hard for us! That's the only reason we were allowed to walk free at all!" Her knuckles were white, her decibel levels had made a jump upwards, and she'd gone into that head forward, shoulders up stance some folks think makes them look tough. If she'd had a tail, she'd have been lashing it. Come to Mama.

"No kidding? Guess there's some honor among terrorists after all."

"WE ARE NOT TERRORISTS! WE WERE FIGHTING TO SAVE THE WORLD WHILE YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS WERE WHINING ABOUT SCHOOLWORK, AND I WILL NO-"

I cut her off with a thunderclap, courtesy of an unincanted spell I'm fond of. It's a mere parlor trick, without the force to rattle the glass on my desk, but it does get people's attention.

"Why did they send you, Koyomi?"

"What?"

"They sent you to ask an old enemy for help. Not Shirabe, the one Fate trusted to perform the ritual with Asuna. Not Tamaki, who never loses her cool. Not this Cassandra chick who never attacked me or my friends. You. What makes Miss Angry Kitty the best spokesman, huh?"

She took a moment to collect herself, chewing her lips and looking everywhere but me. Either she was a terrible liar trying to come up with a decent or a brilliant one trying to appear terrible. I figured the first, since if it was the second I might as well resign myself to bamboozlement. I let her get as far as " " before letting loose the thunderclap again.

"That's a lie and you know it!" I roared. "Now tell me the truth!"

"We know you like beastgirls!" Koyomi blurted.

"What."

It looked like all the blood in her body was having a get-together in her face, and she was toeing the ground like a kid getting lectured about breaking the expensive vase. "We, uh, heard about you and those girls from Ariadne, and we thought you'd be more likely to help us if it was me that asked you."

That was too inane and insulting to be taken as anything other than the absolute truth. I knew about those rumors. Between my close relationships with Colette and Emily and the minor celebrity I'd gained as part of Ala Alba, they were inevitable. I'd just never expected my old enemies to try to weaponize tabloid gossip. If Koyomi was lying right then, I would consider it an honor to be cozened by such a master. For a moment, I could only stare silently and marvel. "Look, I really do have a case I should have already left for, from someone who didn't start out with some clumsy manipulation and never attacked me or my friends." The second part of that is both absolutely true and a bald-faced lie, but I had no interest in getting into that with the catgirl right then. "Why don't you just step out of my office so I can lock up. I'll check out your weird hot spot later tonight, and if you drop by tomorrow, I'll either tell you that I can deal with it or direct you to someone who can. Or let you know that it was all nothing, or that it's a sign the Great Old Ones are going to eat us all, or whatever. Sound fair?"

She nodded and bolted. No wonder. That last revelation must have been about as pleasant to relate as it was to hear. I locked the locks both mundane and magical, and took off towards my patient contact with a fair turn of speed myself.