[100% OJ, Fanfic] Natsumi Day: The Great Detective, Part III

Genre: Humour/Slice of Life

Length: 5020 words

B/D: And now for the thrilling conclusion of the Natsumi day festivities!

For QP, there were very few things in life more satisfying than a job well done, and one of them was being smug about it afterwards. Not too smug, of course, because even she was not immune to the great swinging hammer of karma, but just enough to add a little spice to the sweet taste of victory.

So when she got to school that morning, her first order of business was to track down Natsumi. Either of the sisters would do, really, but Mei might object to having her face rubbed in QP’s diplomatic triumph.

With the fine-tuned nose of a pedigree hound, QP found her target meandering around the schoolyard, and approached with a wagging tail. Her heart was already pounding in anticipation of seeing the results of her hard work. Maybe there would even be praise. Praise to QP was like the sun to a sunflower, which made the ever-supportive Natsumi very popular in her books.

“Good morning!” she said. The ‘good morning’ was very important. Natsumi was a polite girl, and she liked it when other people were polite back. “Did you and Mei make up okay last night?”

Natsumi blinked. It was at this point that QP realised that her eyes were uncharacteristically bloodshot. The lids were puffy, too. It was like she hadn’t slept at all. This was disconcerting, since she had achieved a mastery of hot chocolate and therefore absolute power over the realm of dreams.

“Q-chan… Oh, Q-chan! You’ve seen my sister?” Natsumi asked. Her voice was… well, it was still softer and calmer than most people’s, but for her it was the height of panic.  “Thank goodness… Did she stay at your house last night?”

QP’s tail ceased to wag. “Uh… no? I saw her, but she was on her way back.” With a pudding guaranteed to knock your socks off, she added mentally.

Natsumi’s brow furrowed. “She never came home last night. I’ve been worried sick. Red and Blue can’t settle down, either… I thought maybe she’d end up with you, so I rang, but you didn’t pick up…”

“I left my phone in my… my other set of pants,” QP said woodenly. There hadn’t been pockets on her superhero leotard.

With the finely honed mind of a dog with a knack for finding, creating, and subsequently annihilating trouble, she considered the situation. Her first thought, of course, was the pudding, because pudding would always hold the top spot in her personal cosmology. Could Mei have simply absconded with the reconciliatory pudding? Had she just been faking crying for sympathy, to get said pudding?

It took her only a second to discard the theory. Mei valued her relationship with Natsumi too highly. Maybe a little too highly in general, but definitely too highly to invoke her sister’s name in the pursuit of gluttony and keep the proceeds for herself.

Could somebody have stolen the pudding from her on the walk back? It was, after all, a very desirable dessert. An exemplar of the species, maybe even a paragon. There were people who’d do anything for a pudding like that, and QP would know. She was one of them.

But again, that line of enquiry went nowhere. She felt in her bones that the pudding was, as of yet, uneaten. It had probably been out of the fridge too long as well. Somewhere in the city, it was crying out to be saved. On a cosmic level, QP heard it. She felt its pain.

Somewhere out there, there was a pudding in danger. And if the pudding was in danger, so was Mei. She had to do something about it.

“Don’t worry, Natsumi. We’re going to find her,” QP said at last. “Syura?”

The school’s resident gamer girl, who could usually be found floating vaguely in QP’s vicinity, perked up her ears.

“Mei’s missing. Tell the teacher me and Natsumi are skipping school to look for her.”

Syura shook her head violently, turning her lobster braid into an impromptu morning star that whirled around her shoulders. “No can do. Mei’s my number one reliable source for real life tips and tricks! I’m not sitting this one out. I’m a required party member for this mission!”

Instead, she darted away to Krila, who was pontificating loudly about her dark eye to basically anybody who failed to run away fast enough. Luckily, such velocity was easy for most students to achieve, for Krila had a top speed of ponderous and negligible acceleration. In a world of go-karts and electric bicycles, she was a rowing boat.

“Krila, can you tell the teacher that me, QP and Natsumi are skipping school for an S rank hunting mission? I’ll give you my lunch tomorrow if you do.”

“Oho! So, you have come to bargain with dark forces. I warn thee, your meagre excuse for a lunch will never sate the appetite of the dark god dwelling inside me,” the beastmaster cackled theatrically, before saying in a more quiet and reproachful voice: “You always just bring a bag of chips and an energy drink. I’m not even allowed to have energy drinks.”

“Alright, fine! I’ll give you QP’s lunch tomorrow if you do it,” Syura replied. She was always eager to solve a problem today by creating a different problem in the future, on the basis that time heals all wounds and she might have gotten a level up in the interim.

“Ooh. The beast god’s lunchbox is a forbidden trove of delight… very well. I, Krilalaris, who watches over the abyss of the schoolyard, shall discharge this duty. Engrave this promise upon your soul!”

Syura smiled her cat’s smile, and returned to her comrades safe in the knowledge that, even if Krila wouldn’t approach the teachers with diplomacy, she would at least confuse them enough that they’d listen to an explanation later. She returned to her comrades with her head held high.

“Thank you both…” Natsumi said, bowing her head. “Let’s go and find my sister.”

QP nodded grimly. “Sure. But I want to stop by the R-bit Room first. I have a feeling I’m going to need some firepower for this one.”

As the trio casually floated up and over the gate, Krila watched them go. When she was sure they were out of earshot, she reached into her puffy and voluminous skirt and extracted a mobile phone, which she had decorated with various magical arcane stickers. With trembling fingers, she dialled the number of the most dangerous cat in town.

“Hello? Yes, it is I, Krilalaris. I have news of the Beast God’s movements. She and two of her underlings have skipped school to roam in the unbounded wilderness.”

There was a long silence on the other side of the phone, and then a short, sharp question.

“Yes, it seems to be a matter of great import. Perhaps an omen. The Beast God looked quite incensed. It seems that a friend of hers has gone missing, and she intends to extract a great vengeance – hello?”

The phone line had gone dead. But before it did, there had been a sound that Krila had never heard before, and which she sincerely prayed she never heard again: the sound of a cat going nuclear.

She didn’t know what was going on. But she was pretty sure that somebody in the city, at that moment, should take some time to truly appreciate their kneecaps. They wouldn’t have that opportunity for very much longer. 

Mei woke up in the middle of the town’s solitary abandoned warehouse, tied to a chair.

Ebimanyou Town was quite proud of its abandoned warehouse. It had been constructed at the mayor’s behest, for the specific purpose of not being occupied. It was a statement piece. It said: here in Ebimanyou Town, we have such industry – such riches – that we can simply afford to let a good piece of land sit. We have filled it with shipping containers, which contain the air they were shipped with and nothing else, and a few of our copious supplies of boxes, and we have left it there, as a reminder of the vast economic potential that you, too, could enjoy if you lived here.

It also functioned as a meeting place for the town’s collection of gangsters and ne’er do wells, which suited everybody just fine. It was cultural, the mayor rumbled, and implied their town was big enough to be of interest to gangsters. The police chief was also a fan, reasoning that if all the criminals did business in the same abandoned warehouse, at least he knew where they were. Besides, they occasionally left kickbacks for the use of the facility. It was a bit like they were paying rent, he reasoned, and thus declared himself no more corrupt than any other landlord.

As a result, Mei’s first words were not ‘where am I?’, because she knew exactly where she was, and not ‘what happened?’, because she had a pretty good idea of that as well. Instead she cursed, loudly and fluently, until she’d run out of words that were suitably offensive. It took a while. As expected of a journalist, she had a rather extensive vocabulary, and she knew how to use it.

Her kidnapper, who was leaning against one of the communally provided boxes, sighed heavily.

“This is why I prefer male company,” he said, with a voice that was low and smooth. “Women are such boorish creatures.”

His mask was lying on the box next to him.

His features, without the faintly ridiculous helmet, were not unattractive. In fact, he had the kind of sloping, angular pretty-boy face that some women spent their lives searching for, and never found except on the covers of smutty doujinshi. Not, of course, that Mei had any interest in that kind of thing. It was just, well, as a literary creature, she had to examine them for elements she might want to adapt for her own work. The growing library of thin books she kept hidden in the garden shed was strictly for research purposes.

Most striking was his blue hair, and a pair of eyes that were just brimming with cold disdain. Not the kind of bad-boy disdain energy that inspired crushes and sold magazines, but the kind that was genuinely cutting and slightly worrying on someone who was not a war veteran.

Mei considered her situation. She was tied to a chair. Her condition, which was previously not good enough to allow flight, had not improved by being hit in the face and falling unconscious for an indeterminate period of time. She was a vulnerable teenage girl, completely helpless and in the power of a teenage boy. Diplomacy was called for.

“You dirty, cheating, sexist mother--” she began, and carried on with a stream of raw vitriol that would have shivered the cockles of an eighteenth century pirate captain.

When she had more or less tired herself out and had to catch her breath, her captor stood up. He walked over with a measured, deliberate pace. With what almost passed for tenderness, he brushed her bangs aside to examine the lump where he’d smashed her in the face. With equal tenderness, she tried her hardest to sink her teeth into his wrist.

“It won’t scar. You might not be a beauty, but at least you won’t get any more ugly,” he said consolingly. He had to hurriedly jerk his hand back to avoid the retaliatory bite. “You know… ‘QP’. I saw you together yesterday. Tell me about ‘her’.”

Her brow furrowed.

The air quotes around QP were strange, but acceptable. People sometimes didn’t believe that was her real name, because who the heck had a name like that?

But the air quotes around ‘her’ were weird with a capital woof. QP was definitely a girl. She had never claimed not to be a girl, and having endured a number of impromptu wrestling holds at the dog’s hands, Mei could confirm she was biologically a girl as well. A domino mask and a skintight leotard did nothing to disguise it.

“I’m not telling you a damn thing about my friend, you skeevy pervert,” she fired back, eyes flashing. “And don’t think you can intimidate me. I’ve covered wars, you know.”

“I’m sure.” His lips curled. “But you will tell me what you know. I serve a force so powerful that not even the most boorish of maidens can resist it.”

Mei rolled her eyes, but had to make a legitimate effort to stop herself from smiling. Working as an information broker was so much easier when you could get the people who wanted info to give you info by accident.

Ignoring her, the man stood up to his full height, posing like a magical girl about to enter her transformation sequence. For a brief, glimmering moment, a ray of sunlight infiltrated the warehouse through a skylight and illuminated him in dazzling clarity. All that was missing was a choir of cherubim to chant something in grammatically unsound Latin for the complete effect.

“True love,” he pronounced.

It was at that moment that Mei realised she was alone with a total freak.

“You’re in love with QP? Gross.” She narrowed her eyes as she spoke, to really put the venom over. “In fact, super gross. And you’re just kidnapping me to get date info for your crush? Turbo gross. You make me want to barf.”

“I’m not in love with that… thug,” he replied witheringly. “My heart is reserved for a gentler, nobler creature, who just so happens to look exactly like her.”

Mei dignified this with the response it deserved, which was none.

“The spitting image of her, actually. But he’s missing. I can’t find my dear, sweet Kyupita anywhere in this world… Our love has been crossed by the stars,” he sighed dramatically. “So I turned to his doppelgänger. She’s the only lead I have.”

“I don’t get,” Mei said patiently, “how this ties into the whole bomb-throwing maniac thing you had going on. Why’d you suddenly decide to become the man in the iron mask, huh?”

He shifted uncomfortably. “That dog and I have had… disagreements. Things were said. Places were touched. She tends to react aggressively. I can’t observe her properly while she’s trying to kill me.” A shadow fell over his face as he stared off into the distance, lost in memories that Mei hoped were very traumatic. “But then she started patrolling in costume, and I thought to play along. It allowed me a chance to view her… anonymously.”

“Until she found you and assumed you were a weirdo. Which you are.”

“At least I’m not tied to a chair.”

There was a tense moment as they stared each other down. True, she was tied to a chair. But she wouldn’t always be tied to a chair. At some point in the indeterminate future, she would not be tied to the chair, and at that moment she was going to pick it up and hit him with it.

“So, final question. Why the heck did you kidnap me?”

“Because,” he said slowly, “You know QP. You can give me information.”

She took a deep breath. When she spoke, it came out as a hiss, much like the fuse of a piece of dynamite. “Yes, that’s true. I know a lot about QP. Do you know why? Because I’m AN INFORMATION BROKER!” she roared. “I investigate people! I have an office! I hand out BUSINESS CARDS! YOU. COULD. HAVE. JUST. PAID. ME!”

She shouted so loud that a box of hammers, startled, tried to escape from its perch and tumbled to the floor. Not many people have heard a box of hammers hit the floor, and even fewer have lived to tell the tale.

“Ah. I see,” he said stiffly, thoroughly wrong-footed. “I… don’t suppose that offer would still be open?”

“NO! You stalked me home, you hit me in the face, and you tied me to a chair! I’m not telling you ANYTHING about QP! But I’ll tell you one thing for free. I’ve got a sister, and she’s going to be looking for me. And as soon as she finds out what you’ve been up to, hoo boy, it’s gonna be a murder!”

“I very much doubt that,” he replied, although a little more uncertainly than he would have liked.

“You’ll know her when you see her. She’ll be the one carrying the huge knife.” Not that she’d ever use it, Mei thought. But it was definitely there, at all times, and she had no greater desire in her life right now than to see the guy in front of her soil his trousers in pure fear.

It occurred to her that she had absolutely no doubt her sister would be coming. Nacchan could do it. Even if they’d had a fight, and even if she was usually as soft as butter, Natsumi would pull out all the stops to see that she was safe. That was what sisterly love was all about.

The thought of it sent a warm, fluffy feeling through her tired body. She felt almost comforted.

It was at about that point that the door exploded.





“Goodness… This is very exciting,” Natsumi murmured.

She had never had her own personal army before. Or her own personal zoo. She had somehow managed to find herself at the head of a mix between the two.

She was flanked by QP, Syura, and Aru, who already represented somewhat of a menagerie; behind them were a crack squad of Rbits, a motley assortment of chickens, Red and Blue, and a small detachment of ReBits, led by Aru’s close personal friend Rein.

(The ReBits almost didn’t come. They had a union, and union rules specified that they didn’t work outside of seasonal events. Rein had apparently convinced them that, between Natsumi and Aru, there was enough seasonal representation to justify it. Aru had promised an advance on their carrot allowance to sweeten the deal.)

Ordinarily, it was the type of group that only formed if they were looking for trouble. But Natsumi had a gentle heart, and so they were just a kind of… diplomatic instrument. The first rule of diplomacy was that you showed the opponent the stick before you hit them with it; if you were lucky, the stick was big enough that you might not have to hit them at all.

She had always spoken softly. Now she had completed the idiom.

As the injured party, Natsumi was calling the shots. But QP, Aru, and the penguins had gradually drifted to the head of the column. QP, with her finely honed nose, was tracking Mei’s last known movements; Red and Blue, their master’s shadows, were relying on their bond as pets.

Aru, as a guardian of children and semi-legal businesswoman, already knew exactly where they’d end up, and was gently steering them towards the warehouse whenever they looked like they’d wander off. She was mostly considering how to get in without revealing her extensive talents at housebreaking to a squad of impressionable teenagers. In the end, she decided she’d just point QP at the door and tell her to get on with it.

At some point, Natsumi had handed out boxed lunches. How she’d made boxed lunches for four mostly human people and an entire fleet of assorted animals – and how she’d concealed them upon her person, when she had no visible knapsack or backpack to store them – was a question Aru would very much like to know the answer to, but the only reply she’d gotten was a sweet smile and a potentially conspiratorial wink.

All in all, it was a bit like being on a company picnic: loud, noisy, most of the people attending didn’t really know each other that well, and there was going to be a lot of violence before they wrapped the whole thing up.

“Do you smell smoke?” QP asked.

The procession ground to a halt. This was the kind of ominous question QP was not allowed to ask, under any circumstances.

“You’re the one with the dog nose,” Syura batted back.

Natsumi, whose senses of smell and taste had been refined by hours in the kitchen, scented the air. “Yes. But it’s not wood smoke… I don’t think it’s a cooking stove.”

They all looked at each other, and took a moment to decide if, collectively, they were the type of people who ran toward burning buildings as opposed to away from them.

“I think,” Natsumi said slowly, “that it might be a clue.”

“I was just thinking the same thing!” QP joined in, nodding her head emphatically. “We should totally check it out.”

Neither of them said anything about Mei being the kind of person who might cause fires to spontaneously happen in her vicinity. At least not out loud.

Aru, who knew how much fire insurance cost for a business premises, sighed but nodded. “We’d better hurry up then. Before our clue goes up in smoke.”

“That was a very good pun, Miss Aru.”

“Thank you.”

Pleasantries dispensed with, they broke into a run.

Or, perhaps more accurately, a stampede.





Tomato idly stamped out a small fire as she looked around the warehouse. Force of habit, really. Much like Natsumi had accepted Mei would never stop challenging random people to fights, Tomato had accepted her own sister would never stop blowing things up, which usually also set them on fire. She’d learned to live with it, because that was what sisters did. As a result, her jumpsuit might never be the most desirable item in the new Fall fashion line, but it was very much flame retardant.

She was aware, in a dim way, that the blaze in front of her was dangerous. But she was also aware that Yuki was behind her with a gun, and considerably angrier than the fire was. She strode forth as though she were the Terminator and she’d just watched John Connor’s dog poop on her lawn.

Yuki followed right behind her, and Mimyuu brought up the rear with a face flushed by post-explosive bliss. They surveyed the room with practised eyes.

“Well, well. If it isn’t the detective! Looks like you found your man. In record time, too! I ought to leave you a tip!” Yuki crowed when she saw Mei. There was a smile on her face, but it didn’t reach her narrowed eyes. She jerked her gaze sharply at Mimyuu. “This the guy?”

“Sure is, boss.”

“That makes things easy.” The smile disappeared. Yuki bared her fangs in contempt as she pointed to her prey. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, bringing this much attention to yourself – and to us. But it ends now.”

The man sniffed. It wasn’t clear how sniffing was going to help him get out of his current situation, but it seemed like a good first step. “I’m sure there’s some way we can settle this where we all come out ahead.”

“Sure there is. Do you want to know how it goes?” Yuki asked theatrically. “Here’s the story: we just so happened to find a kidnapper and a girl inside this old abandoned warehouse, see? So we roughed him up and saved the girl. Now we’re the heroes of the town, the cops aren’t asking questions, and that dumb mutt owes me for bailing out her friends. Easy, ain’t it?”

She turned to her underlings. “Work him over, but keep it clean. We want him in the hospital, not the morgue.”

Tomato grinned. From the same convenient space in which Mimyuu stored an infinite amount of explosives, she extracted a well-worn baseball bat. It might once have had nails in it. It was hard to tell.

Mei locked eyes with her, and sensed a kindred spirit: a girl who would fight anybody for any reason, but especially for her sister. For just a moment, their souls vibrated in a strange and violent harmony.

“Hey! Untie me so I can hit him with the chair! It’s all I want!”

The man looked back as if he’d been bitten by a snake. “I poured my heart out to you!” he hissed.

“Do me a favour and pour your teeth out as well, ya freak!”

He licked his lips nervously as the Waruda approached. Could he outrun them? A look at Yuki and Tomato’s figures told him no. Three on one was bad odds; if they managed to get Mei loose, it would be even worse. He was out of options.

“I hate to do this,” he said, loosening the top button of his shirt. “But it seems it’s time for a distraction.”

With one suspiciously well-practised motion, he tore off his shirt to reveal a wall of well-kept muscle. Mei, upon seeing the sculpted physique of a handsome blue-haired boy, almost forgot she was angry as her mind went back to the pages of her doujin collection. Yuki stopped, her face twisted in pure confusion. Mimyuu, who wasn’t even in the guy’s weight class to begin with, kept her distance.

“Pfft. I’ve got better abs than that,” Tomato said, and swung.

With lightning-quick reflexes he tightened his pecs, hoping to deflect the blow with his hardened muscles. This might have helped, if Tomato hadn’t been swinging for his kneecaps. He hit the floor like a salmon getting slapped out of the air mid-jump by a grizzly bear.

What happened next would become very fuzzy in Mei’s mind, what with the adrenaline and the fire and the lack of proper dinner. But at some point Mimyuu sidled over and undid the ropes, and at that point a chair was picked up and smashed over somebody’s head. One of the Waruda must have done it, she reasoned, when she wasn’t looking.

They were all still kicking him – and, honestly, bonding over the experience a little – when they heard somebody shout: “Fire!”

It seemed like a good thing to shout, all things considered. Fitting for the situation at hand.

Right up until they heard the “...at will!” that immediately followed it.

For a brief second, the entire warehouse lit up with an unearthly rainbow glow.

The glow stayed for a little while. But the warehouse, and everything in it, mostly disappeared in a hail of bullets so violent that even the fire didn’t survive.

There was, however, a single survivor, miraculously untouched: one brave, noble box of hammers that had struck out from its brothers, and now had a tragic superhero backstory of its own.

She woke up to the smell of penguins, which was largely an amalgam of fish and cowardice. For Mei, it was the most comforting smell in the world. She tried to lurch upright, but was blocked by a stern hand pushing down on her forehead.

“Hey, hey! Don’t get up. Your HP hasn’t fully recovered yet!”

She thought about this particular combination of words, and she thought about the somewhat bony thighs that her head was resting on, and she realised that Syura was giving her an honest-to-god gamer girl lap pillow. She lurched upwards again, with more urgency this time.

She opened her mouth to ask a question. Really, what the question was didn’t matter; there were so many good ones that any would do. But before she could say a word, a fork swooped into her mouth with expert precision. The flavour of white chocolate and raspberry floated across her tongue, and the only sound she could make was an appreciative “mmpfh”.

“It’s so good to see you wake up… Q-chan said she was going to get rid of some of the building so the fire didn’t spread, but it seems we had more firepower than we thought we did…” Natsumi’s voice was soft, gentle, sweet. “I was so worried about you.”

“Nacchan, I – I’m so sorry. For worrying you and, just, y’know, everythi–” she tried to say, but then another bite of cheesecake was presented to her.

“Is it good? Q-chan said you’d bought a cheesecake when you saw her yesterday, and I knew you had your eye on it, so I baked one myself as an apology.”

“I bought that one as an apology to you.”

“I don’t need an apology. I never did. All I wanted was for my sister to be safe and sound.”

Mei felt tears starting to form in her eyes, although that might be because she was recently in a very smoky building. It didn’t matter. Natsumi provided what even emergency waffles could not: a cast-iron guarantee that everything was going to be okay.

“Do I get cheesecake?” Syura asked.

“Maybe not this cheesecake. But I’ll think of a good thank-you later.”

“Can you call it a quest reward instead? It feels better if it’s a quest reward.”

“Okay. I’ll get you a ‘quest reward’ soon.”

The world felt peaceful. In the distance, Mei could hear QP and Aru arguing with the police over why completely demolishing a burning warehouse was their duty as law-abiding citizens, and how they had saved three gangsters and a known pervert (which QP was very vociferous about) from the blaze. They seemed to be winning, although no matter how much the dog shouted, the officers refused to put the man in handcuffs and wanted to put him in an ambulance instead.

She hugged her penguins. She hugged her sister. She ate an amount of cheesecake that qualified as a sin in some religions, and she let the world slowly return to its usual shape, content that the whole escapade would make a fantastic article in the school newspaper and would no doubt be mentioned as an aside on one of her sister’s cooking blogs. It was the way it should be.

She never did get around to asking why QP had decided to dress up as a superhero, or demanding proper payment from Yuki for services rendered. But a few weeks later, a somewhat bruised young man walked into her office, to ask her about a boy named Kyupita.

She greeted him, chair in hand.

A/N: This was a really fun story to work on, and I felt like I was in fine form for the majority of it. Even though it was for Natsumi Day, Mei ended up stealing the spotlight... but she also turned out to be a very fun protagonist to follow around, so it all works out in the end. I hope everybody has enjoyed the ride -- I know we don't get that many opportunities to hang out in the QPverse setting any more, so it's fun to be back for a bit.