The plan was simple: Tilla, Reiko, and Rebecca would walk in like an ordinary trio of sisters hoping to report a crime. During the report, Rebecca would do what an ordinary precocious child would do and wander off. From there, she would find the restroom and crack open a window for Phil to sneak in. Phil would enter through the window and hide in a stall, a move which Tilla liked to call ‘not very smart’.

  She wasn’t too keen on Phil being in the station in the first place, considering pretty much the entire police force wanted him dead for killing one of their own. This was a point Phil acknowledged and then handwaved as, in his words, he ‘wouldn’t be caught dead being benched like a total wuss at any point during a badass operation like this’.

  Then Tilla, on her way out, would also head to the restroom to join him under the guise of looking for her energetic younger sister. Reiko would leave the station to go back home. After that was a waiting game until the darkest part of the night, so they could slip out and search the station while the few officers on the graveyard shift were busy yawning away at their posts.

  Simple enough in theory.

  -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

  Behind the front desk of the Domino City Police Department sat one officer with a beard but no hair, and a second officer with hair but no beard. Neither of them had a mustache, and both of the officers looked quite tired. Their exhaustion was normal, considering it was almost four in the afternoon. Quitting time for them, the day shift officers, was only one sweet hour away.

  “Kitamori.” The officer with the beard but no hair nodded to the young woman approaching the desk. The two other people with her, one a woman wearing a dark, gothic-style dress with a demure expression, and the other an energetic little girl dressed in a light-blue school uniform with her arm in a cast, trailed behind the first woman.

  “Officer Tanaka.” Reiko Kitamori lightly greeted the man. This was not their first meeting, a fact evident by how Officer Tanaka immediately reached for the top sheet on a stack of forms on his desk.

  “What’s it this time?”

  Reiko gestured toward the woman in the gothic dress behind her, who lightly nodded to the officer. “My sister, Tilla, was assaulted this morning by-“

  “Your neighbors.” Tanaka mechanically finished. He fished a cigarette out of his breast pocket, tucked it between his lips, and lit the end with a match. “Right. Any deaths this time?”

  “Nope! Not yet!” The energetic little girl said as she bounced in place. She waved her cast at the officers, who stared back, unmoved. They were completely dead inside – not from any magic, but from the crushing weight of a long day at work.

  "Hush, Rebecca," Reiko smiled and patted the girl's head, which earned a 'bleh!' and a sticking out of the tongue to her in response. "Why don't we play 'I Spy'? I'll go first. I Spy a bag of evidence someone left on a chair in the lobby!"

  The girl with her arm in a cast dashed off with the officer’s tired voice following her.

  “Oi, would you bring that over to me?” The words ‘fucking shitbrains on morning duty…’ followed his voice quietly enough for the girl not to hear.

  Officer Tanaka let out a puff of smoke that curled around his head as he wrote.

  “Reported by… Reiko Kitamori… heard by… Enrico Tanaka… the date… and which one of the Yuta’s was it this time? Is it that cousin from Russia? Or the younger? Couldn’t be the elder, he’s in lockup right now for brandishing a sword at a clerk in a 7/11.”

  “Tatsuya.” Came Reiko’s reply, which was met by a groan of irritation by the officer with hair but no beard. That same officer then lit up his own cigarette and drank a long draft straight from the pot of coffee on his desk. The bag of evidence was thrown onto the desk by Rebecca, who then dashed off the second Reiko made her next ‘I Spy’ choice.

  “Didn’t he just get out of maximum security a month ago?”

  Officer Tanaka scoffed. He grabbed the evidence to tuck it into a drawer under the desk. “He got out? Who the hell let that crazed maniac free? I thought he was stabbed to death in prison. A yakuza hit, wasn't it?"

  Reiko put a hand up to her chin in thought. “Hmm~ no, I think that was Tatsuya’s cousin twice removed. You know-“

  “The one who tried to assassinate the Prime Minister.” Both cops and Reiko said as one.

  “Jinx.” The officers once more said in unison while pointing toward each other.

  "Owe me a Coke."

  Yet their words were still perfectly in synch. They stared at each other, something that Reiko was perfectly willing to allow, considering they hadn't noticed that Rebecca hadn’t come back.

  “Truce?”

  “Truce.”

  Officer Tanaka turned his attention back to Reiko.

  “Did he use a weapon this time? Your… sister, was it? Your sister looks unscathed.”

  “Nunchucks. Tilla?”

  Tilla lifted the sleeve of her dress to show a single bruise on her elbow. “You should have seen the other guy.”

  Tanaka took another puff of his cig. “I don’t want to. Already had to spend my lunch hour picking through a stall of pig shit for teeth. It was for a recent case. Have you ever seen hogs go through a dead body? They’ll chow through it like butter. Everything except for the teeth. They can’t do the teeth. I wonder why? Too hard for them? Lazy bastards. I wish they could. It would save me a lot of time picking through pig shit, that’s for sure.”

  By now, the second officer, who offhandedly introduced himself as Officer Bruce, had taken over the paperwork.

  “Nunchuck… attack…” Officer Bruce said through the cigarette clenched between his teeth. “Corner of 27th, I assume?”

  “Y-u-p.” Reiko drew the word out.

  Tanaka stroked his beard wisely. “Ah, 27th. I used to hang out there in my youth. The good ol’ days. I remember that was where I was picked up for the draft. You know, some days I dig foxholes in my backyard and stay in them for the night. Nothing like a good foxhole to make a man sleep like a baby, I tell you. ‘Cept for my old commanding officer. One night, he slept too deeply… didn't hear the grenade drop into his foxhole. Man, after that, there wasn't enough left of him to scrape out and put on a dinner plate. Poor Georgie was closest, had an eye land on him. We had to start calling him 'Three-Eyed' Georgie. You know, on account of our brainless C.O’s eye landing on him. Good old ‘Three-Eyed’ Georgie. What a guy. Weird, but dependable. He kept the eye. Stored it in his tobacco pouch. He said it improved the flavor of his smokes, but I never bought that story. His smokes were terrible on account of how cheap they were. Nothing on this green earth had a chance at improving their flavor."

  “Didn’t he go crazy after the war ended?” Officer Bruce asked offhandedly as he filled out the final few blank spots on the form.

  "Sure did. Kept screaming something about the demons taking the wheel. Honestly, the man was pretty nuts before the war, nevermind after. Last I heard, he’d gotten into some children’s card game after his wife left him and took the kids.”

  Reiko and Tilla slipped away as the officers continued to chat with each other like a pair of gossiping housewives.

  “Good luck.” Reiko whispered.

  Tilla nodded her thanks and then raised her voice. "Becca? Becca? Where are you? Oh dear, you've wandered away! Now I must search through the station for an undetermined amount of time so that I can find you, my sweet younger sister Rebecca! Only then can we return home, because there would be no reason whatsoever that we would ever want to spend the night in this building! Rebecca! Where are you!"

  Reiko shot her a thumbs-up. As always, Tilla was a masterclass at acting.

  -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

  “Psst.”

  “Psst!”

  “…”

  “UNCLE PHIL!”

  What followed Rebecca’s shout was the sound of Phil’s head banging against the open window. That was on him. He’d been daydreaming in the bush right outside the building.

  Phil clambered to his feet to meet the pouty glare of Rebecca’s face sticking out of the window.

  “Hello? Earth to Uncle Phil?” She waved her good arm for additional effect. “Mission Impossible time?”

  “Have you ever seen those movies?” Phil asked offhandedly as he hoisted himself out of the bushes and through the window. Though it was still light outside, there was no one else in sight.

  “Nope!” Rebecca cheerfully said, impatiently bouncing on her heels. Phil finished sliding in and fell with a ‘plop’ to the floor, while Lumina made a more graceful somersault to make a perfect landing next to his head.

  “Ten points all around! The crowd goes wild!” Lumina shouted with her hands raised to the otherwise empty restroom. Phil clapped in appreciation for her efforts. By now, Rebecca didn’t even bother shooting him a weird look.

  Phil adjusted the surgical mask on his face. It covered everything from the bridge of his nose all the way down to the bottom of his chin. Atop his head was a baseball cap, though it was not the same cap he’d stolen the day before – that one was still jammed snugly over Rebecca’s head, the girl having refused to give it up or even take it off for any longer than a few seconds. His own hat, however, was still a Yankee’s hat (on Rebecca’s insistence that they be ‘twinsies’). The brim of the cap was pulled low over his eyes. Combined with the mask, only his eyes could be clearly seen. In addition, he had swapped his clothes once more, throwing on a pair of jeans and ditching the stolen t-shirt for a bright floral Hawaiian button-up borrowed from one of Reiko’s many uncles.

  A lock clicked into place as Phil settled into one of the stalls along the wall, shutting the door behind him and climbing on top of the toilet so that his feet could not be seen from under it. Rebecca squirmed through the gap under the stall door to join him.

  “It’s crowded in here!” She exclaimed.

  Phil rolled his eyes. “Take another stall, kiddo. We’re gonna be here for a while.”

  “Nope!” Rebecca stuck out her tongue and made a ‘bleh’ noise at him. She then pulled out a stack of Duel Monsters cards. “I made this last night with Auntie Tilla’s help! Wanna take a look?”

  Phil’s face immediately took on a look of interest. He accepted the deck of cards, noting instantly that it felt slightly thicker than 40 in total.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “50 cards!” Rebecca proudly announced.

  “50 cards…” Phil echoed. He stared at the deck and shrugged. Not his first choice, but whatever floated her boat. “Right then. Let’s take a look.”

  The minutes bled into hours, yet the bathroom was silent other than when the door opened to admit Tilla only a few minutes into Phil’s stay. The woman did not speak much, preferring to sit patiently in silence in her own stall while Phil and Rebecca discussed the girl’s new deck with hushed whispers.

  And so it continued until the wee hours of the morning.

  -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

  3 A.M.

  Phil stretched his limbs. He could hear Tilla doing the same in the stall next door. He nudged Rebecca awake, who had passed out like a light from her precarious seat on his shoulder sometime around midnight. It had been quite the tricky feat to keep her from falling to the floor, a task which, in all honesty, Phil didn’t mind in the current situation. It had helped with the boredom.

  “Party time.” He whispered. Rebecca blinked owlishly back at him with a pair of sleepy eyes. Her Duel Monsters deck was still tightly clutched within her hand.

  The door creaked open, but no footsteps followed – a sign that Lumina had slipped out to scout ahead. The sound of Tilla stretching immediately froze in response to the noise until Phil whispered a quick ‘all clear’.

  The hallway was like a ghost town. Not a living soul to be seen, other than the heads of Tilla, Phil, and Rebecca peeking out of the cracked-open door to the restroom, one head on top of the other like a cartoon. Lumina popped her head back around the corner, a sight only Phil could see.

  “Clear! Two losers snoozing away at the front desk, one man in the break room that’s more focused on his box of pizza than anyone suspicious.”

  Phil relayed those words to the others, which caused Tilla to nod once in understanding and Rebecca to scrunch her brows in confusion.

  “How do you know?” She asked.

  Phil tapped the side of his head knowingly. “It’s what I do, I know things.”

  Tilla, of course, knew a little bit about Lumina's existence, as she had a duel spirit herself in the form of Vampire’s Curse, but the smirk on her face revealed a small amount of amusement at Phil’s teasing.

  "If I were boring paperwork, where would I be…" Phil said. He looked across the hall. The reception room was out of the question. While there very well could be a stack of reports behind the front desk, it wasn't worth chancing the officers on duty waking up.

  "Reiko told me there should be a large room with more desks further inside," Tilla spoke up. "She’s been back there once before to look over a suspect lineup. It’s where the bulk of the force takes care of busywork.”

  “And if not that, there’s the chief’s office.” Phil added on. Two places, each with a solid reason to have what they were looking for, if it existed in the first place.

  “When does the next shift start?” Rebecca said, bouncing in place from impatience. Not a single bit of her earlier exhaustion was to be seen. In fact, her eyes were gleaming with excitement. She didn’t seem to realize the potential danger – or perhaps she did realize, and she simply did not care.

  Phil scratched his chin in thought. That was something that could have only been confirmed by a stakeout, which hadn’t quite been in the cards due to the time-sensitive nature of the problem.

  “Five would be my first guess. If not that, then each hour past that could see a shift change. Though no matter what, I wouldn’t want to stick around here past six at the latest. Running into any early risers or people trying to report issues from the night would be a risk I don’t want to take.”

  “We have two hours, then.” Tilla concluded. Without wasting another second, she began to walk down the hall toward the room Reiko had mentioned. Phil and Rebecca trailed after her. The lights above flickered, casting deep shadows across ceiling tiles stained dark yellow from untold decades of constant smoking from the inhabitants of the building. Wanted posters were liberally sprinkled across the walls, many of them showing faces none of the three recognized, while a few featured Phil’s self-described ugly mug, though thankfully, the pictures were of his appearance in the park, back when he'd still had a beard.

  Phil paused at the closest poster of himself and squinted at it.

  “Man, I really do look different with a beard.”

  “Like a devilish rogue.” Rebecca agreed. She stood next to him and mirrored his movements. “Ugly bastard.”

  “Hey, I could still punt you through a window, runt. You’re short enough to be a makeshift football.” Phil replied in a mild tone.

  Rebecca hissed and bared her nails like claws. “Try it, baldie uncle!”

  “Focus.” Tilla snapped her fingers several times to get the attention of the bickering pair, though the slight smirk was still on her face.

  -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

  Tilla couldn’t help but smile softly. These days, it had felt like an oppressive mountain had settled across her shoulders to join the dark cloud choking her heart. Yet whenever she saw Phil and Rebecca bicker away, it almost felt like… her Jean was with them too, watching and laughing as if nothing had changed. If she turned her head, would she see her beloved behind her, in the shadows? Tilla couldn't bring herself to try. It would be much too sad if he weren't.

  Phil had changed, too. The hard edges that had gathered in his expression, while still there, softened somewhat each time Rebecca spoke.

  The kid was like a small ray of light piercing through their shared smog.

  Tilla glanced back just in time to see Phil pick Rebecca up by her arm to toss her in the air, all for Rebecca to settle catlike on the scruffy man’s shoulder like it was natural.

  And then a room filled with desks and all sorts of assorted clutter opened up before them. It was exactly as Reiko had described. A cluster of chairs was arranged in a semi-circle around a whiteboard in the corner. Two more whiteboards were on the side of the room, each one covered in pictures of evidence linked to each other with yarn and thumbtacks. The desks were filled with so much clutter that it made the Kitamori household look spotlessly clean. Overflowing ashtrays, dead potted plants, bags of evidence, a few discarded uniforms hanging on the backs of chairs, a collection of samurai swords in a bag with a bright red EVIDENCE stamp on the side, a pair of dirty boxers, all of that and more littered the room to the point that Tilla could almost feel her head spinning from the enormity of it all.

  “Ewww…” Rebecca squirmed on Phil’s shoulder, pinching her nose in disgust. “It smells like dirty socks…”

  Tilla could agree with that. If she hadn’t been illegally trespassing while accompanying a wanted fugitive, she would have been tempted to leave, find a store, buy some Febreeze and zip ties, and toss every last can into the room with their triggers zip tied back until the smell of stale B.O. was eliminated for good. There was nothing like a good Febreeze bomb to clear up a stench.

  Phil, however, appeared completely unaffected, a fact Tilla realized was most likely due to his sense of smell still being damaged from his escape through the sewers. Though… a thought flashed through her mind. He had been homeless for a good period of time. Perhaps his standards were simply nonexistent to begin with.

  "Let's split the room up into three columns. Speak up if you find anything fishy." He said. Rebecca nodded and hopped off his shoulder while Tilla rolled the sleeves of her dress up to her elbows, a determined expression on her face.

  Time to get to work.

  -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

  An hour and a half passed by the time they were forced to admit defeat.

  “Nothing on my side.” Rebecca groaned. Her hands were covered in ash and grime after she’d become so desperate for answers that she even rooted through the overflowing ashtrays on the off chance the report had been burned. Alas, her effort had been for naught.

  “Nada.” Phil quietly called out as he shut the final drawer.

  Tilla merely shook her head.

  “Which means there’s one last place to look.”

  All three of them looked in unison at the door at the edge of the room.

  Chief of Police

  Kenta Heihachi

  Phil walked up to the door. The bottom half of it was solid wood, while the top half was one large pane of frosted glass with the title and name of the chief engraved in the middle of the glass. He cautiously tested the handle, raising an eyebrow when it swung open.

  “Open sesame?”

  Phil was the first one in, closely followed by Tilla and then Rebecca. The latter of the three posted herself right at the door so that she could keep it cracked open to peek out for anyone entering the main room.

  “Inbox, outbox, filing cabinet.” Phil pointed out the obvious locations one by one. Then he walked around to the front of the desk and tested the drawers one by one with his hands. All of them smoothly opened, except for a small drawer at the top of the desk. “Locked.”

  Tilla began to shuffle through the stack of papers in the outbox. Phil picked up the inbox, but his hand soon halted once Tilla made a shocked exclamation. In her hands was a single sheaf of paper.

  “It’s… a request for more resources. For missing children.” Tilla breathed out. On her face was an uncharacteristic look of alarm. She looked up to meet Phil’s eyes. “Phil, 99 children have gone missing in Domino City alone over the past month. There’s a denied stamp on the bottom.”

  There was a sharp intake of breath from Phil. He tilted his head slightly in thought.

  “99? It said that exact number?”

  “Yes?” Tilla’s brows furrowed in confusion.

  Phil took off his baseball cap to sweep his hand through his hair, only speaking when the cap was once more tugged snugly over his brow.

  “99’s an ominous number. Not to mention the timing of it all. It took 99 villagers from Kul Elna to make the Millennium Items.”

  Horror bloomed in Tilla’s eyes. “You can’t mean…”

  “I hope I’m wrong.” That was all Phil could say in response. Regardless, the fact that such a large case was denied resources was interesting in its own way. No normal police chief would do such a thing. Even if it was a particularly apathetic chief, one word from a whistleblower would be enough to end his career in an instant. Forget the local news, this shit would be national news getting milked by journalists for months on end. But still… 99… did they plan to make their own items, or was this for some other foul ritual?

  Phil shook his head. No. It couldn’t be. The items required Zorc Necrophades. While there was indeed a shard of the dark god embedded in the Millennium Ring, that was all there was to it. A shard. The rest of it was locked away in the past, requiring a shitload of magic, all seven Items, the Pharaoh's true name, and a Dungeons and Dragons ripoff game to access. Though… Phil could never claim to be an expert in matters of magic and gods. Who knows. Perhaps that asshole Red Summer had found something after all, or Phil was so far off in his guess that he wasn't even in the ballfield anymore.

  The memo was set aside for future reference. The inbox in Phil’s hand was set carefully back in its place. No sense in alerting anyone by making a mess.

  “Got it!”

  Rebecca’s shout jolted Phil out of his worries over the memo. She was holding a report in her hands with a look of triumph on her face, her post at the door abandoned from impatience. It was one page only, crumpled from where Rebecca had dug it out of the trash can from its place under a rotten banana peel and the contents of an emptied ashtray.

  “Let’s see… park, crazed man… officer… officer down but alive!”

  Phil stabbed his finger at the sentence. “The officer taking this report noted the guy I handcuffed to the pole was alive when he found him!”

  “Which means one of two things-“ Tilla began, only for the door to crash open behind them.

  “Either someone dealt with him after the report, or the main man in charge of the station had something to do with it.” An oily voice spoke from the doorway.

  Phil and Tilla spun around as one to face the newcomer. Rebecca followed suit with slightly slower movements.

  In the doorway, his body framed with a sickly light created by the struggling fluorescent lights above, was a barrel-chested man in a blue police officer’s uniform. Every inch of his uniform was completely free of even a single speck of dust. His black boots were polished such that Phil could see his reflection in their tips, and so was the badge on his chest. His duty belt was absent, meaning there was no gun at his waist, nor a nightstick, a taser, or even pepper spray. A long, droopy walrus mustache fell from the top of his lip like a hairy waterfall. Perched on his head at a jaunty angle was a cowboy hat, one that looked extremely out of place within the Japanese police station.

  Despite the odd choice of headwear and his rather relaxed way of speaking, there was no light in this man’s eyes. They were dead, revealing neither emotion nor life. His chest moved unnaturally, as if it were controlled by someone who was attempting to look like a normal human, but had spent so long without the need to breathe that they had forgotten what the motion was supposed to look like.

  “That would be me.” The man pointed with his thumb toward the top of his badge, which bore the title ‘Police Chief’. He then sucked in a deep breath that saw his massive chest expand so greatly that the buttons on his uniform threatened to pop right out, and gave a mighty yell that felt like it was shaking Phil’s very bones. The surrounding furniture, the windows to the office, and even the light fixtures above all trembled under the force of his manly shout.

  “I… AM THE CHIEF OF POLICE, KENTA HEIHACHI!”

  Then the Chief of Police, Kenta Heihachi, grinned and licked his lips, which Phil belatedly noticed were extremely chapped, and spoke with his earlier soft and oily tone. The man’s hand carefully dipped into his breast pocket to withdraw a stack of cards. Phil sneered and wordlessly revealed his own deck.

  “Or that was this man’s name and style of speech, before I ate his personality to leave nothing but an empty shell behind. Oh, and I wouldn't worry about finding the officer who made the report in your hands. I expect…" He glanced at a golden watch strapped to his wrist, "That, after an anonymous tip was received half an hour ago, several still-living officers should be finding what remains of his body soon enough. I wonder… who will they blame then? The only choice might be a one… Phillip Jenson. How tragic that a murderer so vile still breathes the air of free men.”

  His eyes glimmered cruelly under the harsh overhead lights. Phil had no response. Nor did Tilla, other than to put herself between Rebecca and the Police Chief. Tilla’s action was soon proved pointless, however, as Rebecca wiggled free of her grasp. She extended her middle finger toward the Police Chief and then went back to rooting around the office for any other important-looking papers that might be lying about.

  “Yet you did arrive after all.” Kenta Heihachi broke the silence. His voice was no longer oily, but dead. Utterly empty. “Wait for the rats to gather at the trap to catch the fattest, and all smaller rats that scurry, scurry, scurry along with it. So sayeth… the wise Red Summer.”

  Then Kenta Heihachi smiled an empty smile. “Caught so easily. I wonder, just what does Red Summer see in you? You appear to be nothing but a cockroach, scurrying around until a boot descends. Was it your friend, then, that caused so much trouble in our sanctum under that fool’s island? It must have been. You hardly seem to have the ability to do so. What was his name? Well, it hardly matters. He died like a dog.”

  “Haha! That’s great! Perfect!” Phil said with a sincere smile. He let the possessed man’s words wash over him like water. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t heard before. “You have yee’d your last haw. I’m gonna feed you alive to my frog!”

  Phil:4000 Kenta Heihachi: 4000

  https://discord.gg/jfRn8j5GaE!