The Defective Detective
Impetia 30th, 542
Fall dropped his weapon and lifted his arms up into the air the second he sensed the guards move. He shifted his head to eye them carefully as they pointed their polearms at his back, just a few hairs away from poking holes into his bellowing coat. Bell allowed herself to flutter up into the air above the reach of every human whose eyes were now directed on Fall, as she wanted nothing more to do with the situation on the ground.
“You… Detective Fall…” the mayor muttered.
“Don’t go turning on me now, mayor. You asked for my help,” he responded.
The mayor clenched his fist in anger. That the crowd had erupted into outrage was enough of a travesty. Mothers covered the eyes of their children as shrieks filled the open space. Some of the more warrior-like men rushed to the front of the stage in anger where the peacekeepers on the ground level were doing everything in their power to keep the elevated podium safe. However, it was all irrelevant to Fall, who recognized ostensibly that the true threat was lying elsewhere.
“Why did you kill her in front of all of these people…?”
“I warned you to send them away,” Fall responded.
The mayor sucked air in through his teeth and sighed, twirling his moustache. “Cuff him.”
Bell smacked her forehead. It seemed like things were not going as planned. Of all of Fall’s gambles, this might have been the worst one yet. He should have considered himself lucky that he wasn’t ran through the second he pulled the trigger, she thought. With a cool expression, he allowed his hands to rest against the back of his head. He felt one of the guards grab his wrists, twisting them down to his lower back before the iron of the cuffs kissed his hands gently with a click.
“Can we get a doctor up here?!” The mayor called into the rowdy crowd.
“Fool, a doctor isn’t going to piece her brains back together,” Bell said, floating above as if she were laying comfortably on the inside of a hammock.
What bothered Fall wasn’t that the guards had placed him into custody for allegedly taking the life of the poor woman before them. It was only natural that he should be tried de jure considering the bold-faced execution he had just carried out before law enforcement. The x-factor of this situation, however, relied on the fact that Mayor Herron was but a dog on a leash when it came to the whims of his constituents.
“How dare you!”
“Hang him!”
“Kill that murderer!”
The masses of this town gave no consideration towards due process. And after all, they had seen it for themselves. Motives and post-mortem were but foreign jargon espoused by upper-class dogmatists who deified the pretentious ramblings scribed within philosophical and political writing. The only thing the masses cared about was the truth their own two eyes had given birth to: that Fall had murdered a poor widow in cold blood. And for all they knew, he may have murdered her husband as well. So why then, wouldn’t they wish to skip through the process of holding a tedious trial and simply have him executed straight away?
Droplets of sweat trickled down the hard, round face of the mayor as he continued rolling his mustache. He eyed Fall, who offered no resistance to his capture. His face was crumbling under the pressure he was facing to acquiesce to the mob’s desires, but Fall could tell that he realized that something was amiss.
“Doctor coming up!” one of the peacekeepers shouted from the ground. A man in a black robe hurried up the staircase carrying a briefcase and stared down at the woman who had been alive mere moments earlier.
“Well?” The mayor asked.
Fall wasn’t exactly sure what Lang was expecting. Her head had been smashed open by the point-blank shot, and the pink matter inside of her cranium had been splattered out the other side. The woman was beyond even healing magic, much less traditional medicine. The doctor was no fool and had grasped as much. However, recognizing that if he didn’t at least attempt to examine her then he might have been admonished by both the mob and the mayor, he knelt down and began opening the suitcase near the woman’s remains.
“Mayor Herron, I think it’s time we talk about why I shot that woman,” Fall said.
“Silence, murderer! What kind of detective executes a woman before ascertaining whether or not she’s guilty of her crime?! No evidence, no cross-examination… as a matter of fact, why should you receive fair trial if you didn’t offer her the same kindness?!”
“Feel free to kill me then,” Fall said, lowering his head as if resigning himself.
“Heh, you think I won’t? Guards!”
The peacekeepers stood at attention, slamming the butt of their polearms against the wooden stage. Fall’s life up until that point had been a series of bad gambles, one after another. He figured that if this was to be his final gamble, then perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad way to go. Taking in a deep breath, he closed his eyes and accepted his fate.
“Go on,” Fall said.
“Guards, kill-“
“M-mayor, something’s happening…”
The doctor squeaked the words out.
The mayor, Fall, the guards who had already lifted their weapons, they all turned to face the corpse, where traces of black magic swirled around the body.
“Mayor!” Fall called. “Have them uncuff me right this second!”
“Huh? But…” The mayor glanced at the crowd, who was still horrified and angered over the death of the innkeeper. The hesitation caused Fall to grimace.
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“Bell!” he called out.
“Oh goodness me. Is my one and only job to bail you out of these baffling predicaments you seem to fancy worming yourself into?”
With a reluctant sigh, the fairy dove back down like a bird of prey, swooping near one of the peacekeepers who was distracted by the whirlwind of black dust being sucked into the body of the deceased woman.
“Detective, what is that…?” the mayor asked.
“Does it matter what I have to say right now? Your voting base wanted me executed the second I shot that thing.”
“N-never mind the damn voters! Just tell me what’s going on right now!”
Fall grinned. “Have you heard of a monster called a shifter?”
“Shifter…?”
“They’re a type of cannibalistic creature that feeds on creatures with mana. Back on the monster continent of Dragolia, they primarily fed on fairies, as they’re the only monsters capable of producing mana from the inside of their bodies.”
“A great joy those times were,” Bell said, flying over to Fall with the hoop of keys that she’d sneakily procured in hand.
“But… that wasn’t a monster. That was… that was the innkeeper’s wife,” the mayor said.
“It’s a parasitic monster,” Fall said. “The innkeeper’s wife has probably been dead for weeks now. Her mind, her body, all of it has been in the hands of the shifter for a while. And if I hadn’t destroyed her brain, then she would have continued feeding on the humans of this town without anyone knowing.”
“Then what’s this?!” one of the guards yelled. “Is this what happens when the creature dies?!”
“No. This is what happens when the shell it’s been occupying is cracked open. Bell, are you done yet?”
“I’m… doing my best… it’s heavy.”
Fall sighed. “Doctor, you’re going to want to run away. And Mayor Langley, if you value the lives of your voters, you will tell them to leave right this second.”
The doctor nodded, then frantically hurried off stage as quickly as he could. The mayor, on the other hand, shifted his gaze between the corpse and the crowd. “H-huh? But… the guards can handle it, can’t they?”
Fall clicked his tongue and closed his eyes. There was no reasoning with the power-hungry fool. Bell had been correct. Fall’s decision to clue the mayor in too much would cause a great catastrophe to befall this town at the current rate. “Another day another gamble, huh friend?”
“We’re parting ways after this one, Fall! I truly do mean it this time!” Bell complained.
“Yeah, yeah…”
A hush began to fall over the rowdy crowd, who began to notice the sheer magnitude of the dark magic that was now swirling around the corpse. A mountain of black particles descended from the sky onto the body, causing even Fall to look on in concern.
“This is a big one,” he said.
“I wish you knew how much I despise the way you do things,” Bell said.
“Your moral support is appreciated as always.”
Bell struggled with the keys. Not only were they far too heavy for her small body, but finding the correct one for the lock had proven to be another gamble in itself. And to make matters worse, she had taken so long that the dark matter was now fading from the world around them. An ominous silence whisked over the town once the prolonged whirring of the tornados had disappeared.
“Detective,” the mayor said frantically. “During your investigation, did you happen to meet a harlot by the name of Hil?”
“Hil?”
“She was a beautiful young girl. Soft-spoken, thin figure, blonde hair, and the most soothing voice I’d ever heard. Her singing could serenade a rampaging orc if it heard her.”
“Can’t say that I have, mayor. She’s probably dead with the other one.”
His head hung down. “I… see…”
Considering everything that had been going on, that he went and asked about a prostitute struck Fall as odd. Had he fallen in love with the girl, or did she have something that belonged to him? Bell had been eyeing him with the same curiosity, but her gaze returned to the corpse.
“It’s coming,” Bell said.
“The cuffs?”
“Almost…. done!”
The second Fall heard the click, he kicked off the ground to lunge himself at the fallen gun beside the corpse. His arm outstretched; he flexed his fingers over at the black grip.
“Fall!” Bell screamed.
A violent gust of dark particles ripped his arm away the second he grabbed hold of the gun, tossing them both up into the air. The explosion was so sudden that he hadn’t even a moment to brace for the feeling of his shoulder being dislocated by the sheer force.
“Oh, for the love of…”
Bell soared through the turbulent winds that had been tearing through the wood of the podium, knocking the guards, the crowds, and even the mayor himself down, and found herself near the now airborne detective, whose good hand was holding his hat down firmly onto his head.
She extended her arms as she flew near Fall, who was mere seconds away from crashing onto the hard ground below. A blue light beamed out from her body, and the momentum of Fall’s trajectory through the air began to slow, until it eventually yielded entirely just a second away from him crashing onto the barren Rotteson grounds. The magic Bell had cast caused him to float harmlessly in the air alongside the gun that had been blasted alongside him.
“Fall… you need to fix this. People are probably already dead,” Bell said.
“I think I broke everything in my arm,” he winced.
“You…” she sighed then snapped her fingers, causing both the gun and Fall to land harmlessly onto the ground. The two of them were now a decent way off from the podium, having flown in the opposite direction of the crowd that had formed before the elevated structure. “This couldn’t have gone worse, you know.”
As she extended her arms once more, producing a green light as she hovered her palms over his dislocated shoulder, Fall found himself chuckling. “Oh, it certainly could have. We could both be dead right now.”
He felt the pain slowly dissolving from inside his arm like the easing of a cramp as his shoulder locked into place with no help but that of the spell Bell had been casting. As she stared on at the damage that was done to his body, her expression warped into one containing an unbridled anger Fall was all too familiar with.
“You incomprehensible buffoon! Why wait with warped weariness when we’ve witnessed way worse worries while working? This encounter was bound to be an exceptional one, Fall. Consider the missing women it’s had the opportunity to devour. Its mana pool must be through the roof right now! Do you truly believe that you’re capable of defeating that thing while keeping everyone alive? If you are such a delusional gambler, one beyond even my current understanding of yourself that you would even contemplate entertaining answering me with some delusional sort of positive outlook, then let me be the first to tell you that the real answer is a resounding NO! People will die, and it’s all thanks to your inaction. Do the souls of the dead not haunt you when you make such boneheaded decisions at the cost of their lives? Why is it so incomprehensibly difficult for you to be more assertive with other people?”
“They haunt me every day, Bell.” The green light around her hands faded, and Fall took the opportunity to rotate his shoulder. There was not a hint of the discomfort or pain from earlier remaining in his body. “But you knew that, didn’t you? There isn’t a single other reason I’d risk my life everyday hunting down these terrifying creatures. It’s just that… this is the only way I know how to do things.”
Her eyes shifted to the ground. She knew that Fall was right. He had labored tirelessly thinking over this way of living he’d fallen victim to. Even now, he felt the heaviness in his chest as the angry roars of the innocent townsfolk who’d wished death upon him earlier had morphed into screams of terror as the monster no doubt ran them down now that its identity was blown.
But it isn’t easy to change, is it? It’s not as simple as getting yelled at by your best friend or making a couple mistakes here and there. Who you are is who you are, and the defective detective was a gambler through and through. If there were any mistakes made throughout this case, Bell realized, it might have been that she pressured him to step out of his comfort zone when he wasn’t ready. His gamble this time had endangered far too many people compared to normal.
“I’m sorry Fall, I shouldn’t have…”
He lifted his finger. “No time for that. I need you to cast one more spell.”
The man picked his gun off the ground and lifted it her way, and she offered a resigned smiled. “I understand.”
Once Bell was done, he slipped the gun back into the left holster within his trench coat and began making his way back to the podium, where terror had consumed the air of frustration from earlier.