Playing For Keeps - Ch 40 (Adv.) - CSI Mistral (Patreon)

“I agree, but why do you say that?” Qrow asked, glancing up at me from where he was squatting next to the bloodstain.

“Because the desk is flipped onto it’s front, suggesting it wasn’t done by the attacker trying to reach the person sitting at it — presumably Lionheart since this is his office. Rather, Lionheart probably kicked it over to stall the attacker. And,” I pointed, “the papers in the corner there are soaked in the blood but have no splatters on top, meaning they were scattered after that blood was spilled. Plus, the window is broken, but there’s hardly any glass inside, so it was probably done for an exit, not an entrance.”

Qrow nodded. “Agreed. The question is, if that’s Leo’s blood, where the hell is he?”

“And who attacked him in his own office?” I added. “And why?”

I cycled through my sensory suite again, but still didn’t pick up anything mortal, Grimm, or magical, in the building.

Qrow started gingerly lifting papers, trying not to disturb the scene too much. “And why didn’t he call for help? …Okay there’s a lot of questions still to be answered,” he admitted. “But this is still a major red flag.”

“No kidding,” I muttered, fishing out my personal Scroll and snapping a picture of the bloodstain in the darkened office. “You sure you don’t want me to get Grandma’s resources on this?”

“Not yet,” Qrow declined. Then, begrudgingly, he said, “But I’ll admit it’s getting more likely we’ll have to.”

“Let’s ‘duce this out, then. Presumably this happened at least a bit before the call he missed. That was after Beacon classes let out yesterday, so at least some staff should still have been here. Judging by the marks on the walls he didn’t go quietly; why didn’t anyone notice a struggle?”

Qrow shook his head. “It’s Flower Week.”

“Huh?”

“A week of public holidays,” he clarified. “Some Mistrali, some Animan — rather than eliminate Animan holidays the old Kings of Mistral incorporated the cultures they conquered as much as they could. Tonight is Konohanasakuya no Hi; there’s probably a huge festival going on in Mistral Below.”

“There were still students on campus,” I pointed out.

Qrow shrugged. “Then I guess not everyone wanted to go, or else they’re from other Kingdoms and don’t celebrate. Either way, there wouldn’t have been classes since dawn on Wednesday, and the teachers probably have time off.”

“So most likely Lionheart was the only one here when our intruder showed up.” Something occurred to me. “Why was the door locked?”

Qrow blinked, then looked at the shattered window and the ransacked room. “That’s a very good question.” After some consideration, he shrugged. “Maybe the meeting didn’t start out hostile, just secret?”

“So he let the intruder in and locked the door behind them, meaning it was someone he knew,” I reasoned. “Then the meeting turns hostile; our intruder manages to injure the headmaster — assuming that’s his blood — who fires back wildly…”

I paused, then walked over to stand roughly where the desk had been, pointing gun-fingers at each of the scorches on the wall in sequence.

“Given he missed at least four times, his assailant must have been damn fast.”

“Leo’s no pushover,” Qrow agreed. “Not the strongest in terms of brute power, but he earned his position as headmaster.”

Glancing over my shoulder, the bloodstain and broken window were both behind me. “He backs away and breaks the window, which is probably when the enemy tags him,” I conclude. “He somehow gets away still, and our intruder ransacks the room before leaving, presumably by the same route.”

“Pretty well reasoned,” Qrow gave another nod. “So how do we go about proving it?”

I cast another look around. “If whatever information the intruder wanted was on paper, I don’t think there’s any way we’re finding it in this mess, particularly since they probably took it with them. Plus, Lionheart’s computer is missing, so it was most likely on there.” I started back toward the door. “But that just means it’s the secretary’s computer is more valuable, especially if it has access to the cameras in here. Come on.”

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With Qrow hovering over my shoulder I sat back down at the receptionist’s desk, cracked my knuckles, and starting clicking around. I wasn’t sure what the security application was called, but there were only so many programs installed and I eventually found it.

It was probably supposed to be encrypted, but my Pawn-infected Scroll was still lying on top of the machine and had quietly accessed all of its passwords before cloning it. One thing that still blows me away about Remnant is the computers’ memory capacities. Processing power is a few degrees better than on Earth and that’s nice, not to mention the advantage Remnant has in holography, but this spare Scroll I bought off the rack in Atlas must have terabytes of shit on it by this point.

Finding the camera overlooking the current room, I marked the moment Qrow and I came in, then started scrubbing backward. All of Saturday before our arrival was empty, as was Friday. Overnight Thursday looked much the same, but as I continued to scrub back to just after dinnertime, a figure powerwalked backwards across the room, and I quickly hit pause, then played it forward at normal speed.

There was no sound, but the stranger’s predatory gait was obvious as he shoved open the doors at the far end of the room, causing them to slam into the walls before swinging closed behind him. He was wearing a hooded coat, though it was short-sleeved, revealing a pair of leather vambraces with some kind of collapsed weapon strapped to them. He reached the secretary’s desk and leapt up onto it, dropping into a deep crouch before twisting one of the weapons into a crescent-shaped blade and using it to pick the fingernails of his other hand.

The noise from his entrance must have gotten Lionheart’s attention, because the office door opened a moment later, the headmaster’s weapon preceding him out the door as he looked around nervously. His gaze fell on the intruder, and his eyes widened fearfully, but he lowered his weapon anyway, waving the stranger inside.

The intruder hopped down, causing his coat to flap and revealing tall boots, white pants, and a white shirt worn open underneath it, crisscrossed by buckled suspenders. He never showed a good view of his face to the camera, but I hit pause anyway, because I recognized the outfit and the weapons.

“Why,” I asked softly. “Is Lionheart meeting with Tyrian Callows?”

“I know that name… Wasn’t he a serial killer?” Qrow asked, leaning closer to peer at the frozen video. “How can you tell?”

“Bunch of small things.” I glanced over my shoulder at Qrow. “That infosec agreement we made… does that go both ways?”

Qrow paused, looking at me seriously. After a moment he gave a short nod. “Yeah. You tell me something can’t spread, and unless it’s getting people killed you can consider it secret. And for the record, the same goes for my personal secrets; they’re not worth people’s lives.”

“Notwithstanding the lives of the civilians the Tribe kills or leaves for the Grimm,” I drawled, then grimaced in self-remonstration and apologized before Qrow could say anything. “Sorry, that was uncalled-for. I know you can’t control what your sister does and I know you’d stop them if you could.” Qrow was silent. “If I suspect one of your secrets could save more lives being shared, I’ll do my best to talk to you about it first. Fair?”

Qrow glared at me for another moment before sighing and pulling out his flask. “Yeah. Fair.”

Taking a deep breath, I looked back at the frozen image of Tyrian. “Last October, I was in Atlas and tipped off the Specialists about an Arthur Watts who was coding a worm that would give him a backdoor into Atlesian military databanks and the CCT. It was almost done, and he would probably have gotten away with it if he hadn’t been cocky enough to bring his Scroll into a CLEO office.” I pointed at the Scroll on the desk. “This is a clone I made of that Scroll, before I handed it over to the Specialists. While the access isn’t active — or complete — it has quite a lot of data on it that isn’t exactly publicly available.”

I paused, but Qrow didn’t say anything.

“Atlas intelligence has a report on Tyrian Callows’ arrest, which was a joint operation with a Mistrali Huntsman named Pickerel, who was later removed from the case for trying to insist on more security for the prisoner transport back to Atlas. The transport in question crashed under mysterious circumstances and the entire crew was found dead at the scene, but Callows’ body was missing. Pickerel was later found murdered in his home, and so it was presumed that Callows is still at large.”

I stepped the video back to where he was crouching on the desk, then tapped my finger against the blade on his arm.

“Pickerel’s initial report indicated that Callows’ preferred weapon is a pair of folding blades attaching to his bracers, each of which conceals a set of gun barrels. The report describes Callows as highly unstable, manipulative, sadistic, and psychopathic; prone to fits of uncontrollable laughter, and unable to conceal his disturbed and paranoid mind for more than a few minutes. It’s also noted that he prefers to crouch rather than sit on elevated surfaces, though Pickerel wasn’t sure whether that was a compulsion or just an extension of his childish antics.

“You know anything else about him?” Qrow prompted me.

“He’s also a scorpion faunus, his trait being a tail complete with stinger that he normally keeps hidden.” I hesitated, then went on, “His Semblance is to disrupt or disable Aura, which he can do with his hands or tail. The stinger on the latter is most likely venomous, although I’m speculating at this point.”

I cued the camera footage forward, but other than some flickers from the light under the door, there was no further sign on that recording. Nodding, I set about trimming a large section of the empty Friday night footage.

“What are you doing now?” Qrow probed.

“Replacing our arrival in the recordings with a shot of the same room from yesterday so it looks like we were never here,” I replied, pasting the video file and setting the cameras to begin recording again in ten minutes. “Won’t be perfect, and I don’t know if a psycho like Tyrian will even think to check, but better to err on the side of caution.”

[Computers has increased by 1!]

“And with that, I no longer need this machine,” I finished, locking the computer again and grabbing the Scroll. “I can check if there’s any more useful data on it later. Are we done here?”

“Yeah. If Leo took off using his Semblance, then it makes sense he was able to ditch this Callows guy. I think.”

“You think?”

Qrow shrugged as we filed back into the headmaster’s office, locking the door behind us once again. “To be totally honest, I’ve never quite understood Leo’s Semblance. It’s weird and complicated and really flexible; we’re talking Schnee-tier in terms of how many different things he can do with it. But that’s the only reason I can think of for how he could have gotten injured through his Aura and still gotten away, if Callows is as dangerous as you’ve described.”

My frustration must have shown on my face, because Qrow glanced back and made a soothing gesture.

“I’m not saying I don’t trust your analysis, I just mean there aren’t that many people in the world who can step to an Academy headmaster, y’know? Especially in their own office. Leo might not be the biggest badass in a straight fight, but that only matters if you can get him into a straight fight. He’s the kind of guy who does exponentially better with some prep time, and this is his home turf. I don’t know if I could take him in a fight, especially here.”

That caused me to pause and look around again. “You think he had traps or something in here?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“Maybe,” I admitted. “But then, why didn’t he use any of them when Tyrian attacked him?”

“Maybe he did, and they only gave him the time to get out?” Qrow speculated. “Or maybe he disabled them to let the guy in. I know I put safeties on the traps in my office; didn’t want kids setting them off when they stop by to ask a question between classes.” He smirked. “Well, I put safeties on the lethal ones, anyway. I had a couple of prank traps rigged up that would make a good object lesson; paint the hair of a careless little shit green for an afternoon, things like that. I remember one time Tai dropped in while I was reloading that one–” He trailed off at my raised eyebrow, looking sheepish. “Eh, I’ll tell you later.”

“Do you think there’s any benefit in looking through or under these papers for more clues, or should we go back to trying to find him in the City? Because Tyrian is that dangerous, and now we know that tracking Lionheart is going to be even harder since he’s hiding from a murderous psychopath.”

“There probably is… but only if we already knew what we were looking for,” Qrow sighed. “You were probably right earlier; we’re not likely to find it in this mess. Let’s see if there’s any kind of trail to follow outside. I suspect there’s not, in which case we’ll need to regroup and think of a different plan.”

Qrow hopped out the broken window, and I followed. “In that case, the question becomes: who do we look for now?”

“What do you mean?” Qrow asked, though it didn’t sound like he was confused by my question. He seemed to be prompting me to explain my reasoning.

“Do we try to beat Tyrian to Lionheart, or focus on finding Tyrian himself?” I clarified as we followed a dwindling trail of blood droplets to the edge of the roof. “Or split up to do both? You know the Professor better, you might stand a better chance at finding him.”

“Leaving you to track down a serial killer on your own?” Qrow paused before jumping back to the ground and looked at me skeptically.

I met his gaze squarely. “There’s two targets and there’s two of us — actually, potentially three targets, because let’s not forget the rumor you heard that there was supposed to be a Grimm within the city. I recognize it’s dangerous to split the party, and I’m not saying we go out without a plan, but there’s no such thing as a risk-free mission and only moving together means covering half as much ground.”

Qrow was biting his lip now. After a moment, he hopped off the roof and we made our way back toward the wall we’d entered from. “I’ll admit, there are a few resources I could tap that probably won’t meet with me while you’re around. At the very least, you’d look a bit out of place.”

“And setting aside my personal family connections, I’ve got one or two myself where you’d be out of place,” I agreed. “Either Haven students, the other Familias, or this Venetian Redd that Neo mentioned — I know you have plenty of less-savory contacts, but if this guy’s an info broker he’s more likely to recognize you as a Huntsman, and he’ll sell the fact that you’re in town without a second thought.”

“If we’re gonna do this, we need to be smart about it,” Qrow sighed. “You have to stay in contact. Keep me apprised of where you’re at and what you’ve found, and don’t try to approach either Callows or Lionheart without me. Agreed?”

We boarded the furnicular again, going down the mountain, and I gave Qrow a sardonic look as he dropped into the seat opposite me. “Does that go both ways, Mr ‘I go dark in the field whenever I feel like’?”

Qrow grunted, but didn’t answer, so I pressed on.

“We need to make sure we’re not wasting time covering the same ground, or we may as well not bother splitting up. This only works if we both share info.”

“It’s one thing for you to call me for help,” Qrow snapped. “But if I get in over my head, what are you going to be able to do about it?”

“Qrow, I may not be as strong as you, but frankly I suspect most of our enemies aren’t either,” I said bluntly. “In which case you should only need a small advantage to turn things your way, and we both know the advantages I can provide are pretty sizable.”

Qrow took a swig from his flask. It looked like he wanted to drain it entirely, but reluctantly he capped it again and put it away. “You’re still in training.”

Something in his tone told me that his objection wasn’t about my age, like it appeared to be. This isn’t about me at all. “The entire reason you took me on as an apprentice in the first place was because you thought I could hold my own,” I reminded him. “Bear in mind that I have a Journeyman license; I can’t hold a candle to your experience but we are in the same profession. I appreciate that you want to look out for me, but you’re my mentor, not my mother.”

I gave him some time to process that, as we exited the rail car and headed back to our base of operations, picking up some takeout on the way. Once we were settled and eating, I fixed him with a look and continued as if there had been no pause.

“Regardless, this is still your mission. I gave my argument for how I think we should tackle it, but working at cross-purposes won’t help us, so what’s the plan?”

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Name: Jaune ArcLevel: 59 (Next: 67.87%)Title: Academy StudentRace: HumanAge: 18Job: Journeyman HuntsmanClass: PaladinSemblance: The GamerHP: 7834/7834MP: 4369/4369STR: 222 (100)CON: 274 (102)DEX: 160 (54)INT: 136 (51)WIS: 110 (52)CHA: 151 (52)Points: 102Money: 951,788LStatus: Cursed – Yellow Death [High]

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A/N: If you’re enjoying this story, feel free to check out my discord server at https://discord.gg/H6V854Fvbg

I’m not trained in crime scene investigation, obviously, but when no apparent effort is made to conceal a crime it’s not that difficult to sequence basic events or notice which side of a broken window the majority of the glass is on.

Point of order, it is 2nd May in-universe at the time of Jaune and Qrow’s arrival in Mistral, meaning Leo probably went missing around 29th or 30th Apr.

‘Flower Week’ (フラワーウィーク) is a take on the real-world Japanese festival series Golden Week (ゴールデンウィーク, ‘Gōruden Wīku’), which is a series of multiple public holidays officially falling between 29 Apr and 5 May. As a result, it is also known as Haru no Ōgata Renkyū (春の大型連休; lit. ‘Long spring holiday series’).

Also at the end of April was a Roman festival called Floralia, celebrating the goddess of Spring, who was called Chloris in Greece and Flora in Rome. Since Hanami (花見; ‘flower viewing’) is also popular this time of year in Japan, we’re syncretizing the two cultures even more into Konohanasakuya Day (木花咲耶の日), who is the goddess of Mt Fuji and is also affiliated with flowers.