~1795 words
Alighting the carriage, Kiyotaka and Xio began to walk towards the western periphery of East Borough.
As Xio looked to her side, she almost jumped in fright as she saw the flesh over Kiyotaka's face wriggle and reconstitute his features. His normal features were replaced by sharp and angular ones with good facial symmetry, brown hair and brown eyes.
"You can change your appearance?"
"I can." Kiyotaka admitted without bating an eye.
Xio had some questions, but she kept them to herself. Keeping an eye on him, the two walked side by side.
Before long, the two of them arrived at their intended location. The entire area was reduced to rubble and the the heat from the explosion was still present in the air. The ashy air, mixed with the natural pollution made it nigh unbearable.
There were many charred cadavers everywhere and authorities were excavating the calcined remains.
There was almost no way for them to identify them.
Just as the two were about to approach the cordon demarcating the perimeter, the two of them were suddenly stopped by a man dressed in a black and white checkered uniform with rank epaulette, complete with a peak cap embroidered with the logo of the police department.
The rank epaulette suggested that the man with classic Loen features was a Superintendent. He looked young so Kiyotaka assumed that it was a newly promoted officer.
"You two, go away. This site has been sealed by the Police. All civilians are to evacuate immediately." There was no arrogance in his tone.
As he finished saying basic protocol, Xio reached inside her pocket and produced a small badge.
'Doesn't seem like an official MI9 badge, but it might grant us entry.' Kiyotaka made a preliminary judgement.
The superintendent looked at the two newcomers with a complicated expression before lifting the cordon up and motioning with his hands to walk in.
Kiyotaka tipped his hat towards the unassuming superintendent and followed closely after Xio. The ground crunched under their feet as they crossed the threshold, with Kiyotaka moving slowly, hands clasped behind his back and eyes tracking the debris field with no apparent urgency.
There was a calm look on his face, however, if one could look inside his head, the gears were already churning.
Xio looked around for someone and when it looked like the person she was looking for was not there, she crouched near a section of blackened earth, pressing two fingers into the char.
She looked up at him and then pointedly glanced at the Superintendent standing a short distance away. When she finally dis speak, her voice had dropped to just above a murmur.
"Does not look like a gas rupture."
"Was it not?" Kiyotaka looked around. He closed his eyes for a moment, but kept his ears towards Xio, listening her out. He felt his mind leave his body for a split second, as he tried to put himself in the culprit's shoes, reenacting the scene and the mindset behind it.
Xio, on the other hand, gestured at the damage surrounding them. "Look at the scorch marks on the walls." She stood and walked to the nearest surviving wall that had half crumbled inward. "The burns aren't radiating outward from one point. They're on multiple surfaces at different heights, but none of them are mirrored. That wall is burned on the lower half. That one, the upper half. This one is barely touched, but the one beside it is gutted."
Kiyotaka said nothing, letting her continue.
"This can only mean one thing." She speculated.
The world around Kiyotaka began to move in reverse. The blast radius sucked back and the walls erected themselves once again.
In his mind's world, Kiyotaka turned his head and saw a lean figure stood at the western entrance of the street.
The figure of the person was tall and firm but curvy at the same time — clearly unconventional for a woman from Loen.
As he saw the woman walk forward, the cobblestones under her feet began to melt.
She ignored Kiyotaka and moved towards the center of the supposed blast radius as flames began to cover each and every inch of her body. Flames compressed and then detonated into a white flash as Kiyotaka opened his eyes.
From the western entrance, he could see almost fading foot marks etched into melted cobblestone. The size of it was small, indicating that it indeed belonged to a woman. He then looked towards the east, where most of the corpses — or whatever was left of them — were located.
'Too many corpses in a single place. Panicked crowds usually, scatter but these ones were funneled. Someone had already cut off the popular exits, but why make a show of it when it could be divined by high-Sequence Beyonders? Or is this person too confident in hiding their tracks?'
Kiyotaka closed his eyes and watched the self-conjured, hypothetical scene play to its conclusion and then let it unspool again, rewinding, looking for a thread he had missed, however, he found nothing that could tell him why.
There was nothing left that could tell him why exactly this street, why exactly these people, who were ordinary by every surface measure, such as dock workers and their families, tailors, a woman who had been carrying bread. He could not tell why exactly tonight or why exactly with this particular degree of visibility.
'Are they trying to promulgate a statement? Is this deliberate provocation? The conditions in colonial islands is not as bad for either Intis Republic or Feysac Empire to attack the capital of Loen Kingdom. This could be the work of Aurora Order as well, however, they do not possess fire power such as this.'
"A Beyonder was involved," Xio concluded beside him. She had reached it on her own while his mind had been elsewhere. She checked over her shoulder toward the Superintendent and then back at him. "And not a low-level one, either."
Kiyotaka looked at the wall she had been pointing to. Lower burn on one side, upper on the other. It indicated towards the asymmetry of a moving source rather than a static one.
"Walk me through where you think they entered from," Kiyotaka said, without inflection, hoping to find some answers himself.
Just as he said that, the Superintendent walked over to the two of them and pointed towards the western side of the street. "If you are curious, the barbaric terrorist came from that side."
"Thank you." Xio thanked him and the two slowly walked over in that direction.
Just as Kiyotaka had assumed, the attacker had indeed arrived from that side. Due to the falling ash, wind and dust, the footprints were mostly gone, and it seemed like Xio was not paying much attention to it anyways.
As he stared at the young woman's face that was contorted into a grimace, Kiyotaka inched a little closer to her.
Xio looked up at him and blinked. "Hm?"
"You seem to have a theory." Kiyotaka had his own thoughts, but he was not in the mood to contribute, unless very necessary.
Xio pressed her lips into a thin line. "It looks like there were two of them. One drove them from the west and one of them closed the escape from the east."
Her eyes moved across the ruins and her voice dropped even further. "This was not a fight. There is nobody here worth fighting. These are ordinary people... How cruel!"
Kiyotaka nodded. 'How strange. Humanity prides itself on reason, yet its greatest spectacles are always irrational. Even monsters usually have a motive.'
"Any idea on who could've done this, Williams? I know you have left this life behind, but seeing as how interested you looked, you certainly have your fingers deep into the criminal world and informants. Any intel? Anything? If someone decided to do this right in the middle of the capital, then that means that they are quite smart.
Otherwise, who could dare do something this cruel right in the middle of Backlund?"
Kiyotaka slipped one hand inside his pants pocket. "Cruelty and intelligence are rarely found together." He buttoned his coat and shivered. "Regardless, there is nothing we can do here, you and I. We are too low level for any of this." He admitted and began to leave.
"You are going to leave just like that?"
Kiyotaka looked back over his shoulder. "Yes. And you should too. It's not something we can or should be dealing with." As he turned around, the wind whisked both of their hairs' as he gently patted her shoulder and a warm look appeared on his face. "You should leave with me as well. I cannot afford to lose you."
Xio was stunned for a moment. After a few seconds of looking back and forth and deciding on what to do, she sighed. "I have to meet someone... But I will be back soon after."
"That works just fine with me." Pausing for a bit, Kiyotaka thought about something before bending down quite a bit to reach Xio's ear. "Did you advance?"
Xio shivered in the night air and nodded her head only slightly. "I did... Thanks."
Kiyotaka nodded before turning back around. "Congratulations. Bring something to celebrate when you are about to come pick your wife."
Waving his hand once, he left and boarded a carriage.
Xio waved her hand at him back. Only when the carriage started rolling did she discern what he had just said. "S-She's not my wife!" She stammered, exhaling several times in exasperation before turning away.
Meanwhile, as the driver pulled the reigns of the carriage and it rolled forward, Kiyotaka cleared his throat. "Take me to Minsk Street."
The hunched driver who had a crooked nose looked back and nodded, flashing his canines in a polite smile. "Yes Sir, as you say."
*****
"I see." Setting down his coffee, Klein fell into deep thought. "What do you think might be the reason?"
"That is what I am curious about as well." Kiyotaka answered, still holding the mug in his hand and looked at Klein through the messy and ruffled hair that fell messily over his eyes.
"And how do you think we do that?"
Kiyotaka raised his elbows. "I wish to do a divination there." He said and pointed towards the ceiling.
Klein understood what he meant, and smiled. "Maybe it's there." He motioned towards the ground.
"Didn't know you had tendency for dry humor."
Klein chuckled. "Well, you aren't the only one. Anyways, that is feasible, however, I am unsure if you would be able to do that. If you want, you can give the clues to me, and I can perform it for you. You can read the results there and plan your next course of action."
Kiyotaka nodded slightly. "Sure."