Blue Glass Moon

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---

"Mayonaka ni koboreta chi ga tsuki no shikai-nai de insan'na shīn o nokoshimasu."

Throat slit. Wrists slit. Torso cleaved open. Blood everywhere. The same pattern of horrific wounds on every single last corpse. All eight of the victims found in the last two months exhibited the very same patterns of wounds, the same injuries, the same everything. But it was impossible to identify just what had caused these horrific injuries. One would assume it was inflicted by an exceptionally large knife, but even that was impossible to discern. Someone had cleaved into these people and spilled as much blood as was possible with something. But the only leads anyone had were the notes. Each were identical to the last, the same taunting message, the same writing, the same name... but impossible to trace, regardless of how hard it was attempted.
The police force was completely and utterly at a loss. How could they trace the untraceable? How was this even possible?
Of course, it would not be the local law enforcement that solved these crimes.

The murders were the work of a magus. They threatened the secrecy of magecraft, something that could not be tolerated. The Association would not stand by and wait for these crimes to reveal what they had kept secret for so long to the masses. At the same time, the Holy Church had no tolerance for such acts against humanity. Seeking to beat the Association to stopping the murders, they have deployed their own force to put a stop to them. Finally, local magi have reason for interest as well. For three of the eight victims were magi themselves. The two most recent murders weren't magi, but a young couple...

There is no telling when Caravaggio will strike again, or who will be next...

---

For Akiyama Chieko, today was a fairly normal day. Normal, of course, included preparing for practicing her magecraft. As a magus-in-training, Chieko had to be diligent and focused in her studies of the family craft. She also had to ensure that she had plenty of time in which to do it. Depending on how much she had to do during the day, this sometimes included skipping sleep for the night. However, today was not one of those crowded, busy days. For today was the first day of summer vacation.
Chieko, for all her investment in hard work and dedication, did enjoy the break that summer vacation gave her. If anything, how much hard work she put into things made her appreciate it even more. Of course she still studied her magecraft, but the absence of homework and school itself meant that she had more free time to do things she enjoyed. Not that she didn't like studying and practicing her magecraft, but it was hard work. In any case, at the moment she was making use of this free time before preparing to work on her magecraft.

And getting her older, adopted brother to practice his magecraft.

The lazy idiot.

But for now, she was preparing to have a nice walk to the Sagen City shopping district, to drop by the book shop, and(depending how she was feeling) the ice cream shop as well. The fourteen-year-old girl slipped her shoes on before opening the front door. It was a nice day out, the sun was shining in full force, the weather was nice...

Chieko smiled, and took a step out the door.

[Roxas]

Meanwhile, in said book shop, a teenage boy was conducting an investigation. Kind of.

In his hand was a notebook. Said notebook was filled with notes. Obviously. These notes, however, weren't normal notes. Nor were they a list of names of people Takuya didn't like, for those curious. No, these were a list of clues. Clues about the ongoing murders. Takuya had taken care to note everything he possibly could from what's learned through the media. Patterns, victims, possible reasons, connections, murder weapons... how everything was linked... despite the mess of things he'd jotted down, it felt rather sparse to Takuya. Nowhere near enough information... probably because the news couldn't exactly detail everything ever, but still...

However, Takuya was resourceful! While the policve may be stumped, they clearly hasn't tried one method of figuring out this pattern!

And that was why Takuya was looking at mystery novels he hadn't read yet. Skimming the blurb on each book, Takuya looked for any information that might indicate the people killed in these stories matched the killing going on right now. Unorthodox? Maybe, but hey, might as well try! And if this somehow didn't work... well, he could always try getting involved somehow...

[Rain]

Retisviel von Einzbern
Also in the city centre was a homunculus, dressed neatly for cold weather despite this being a completely different time of year. She had never been out on her own before and, having followed her instructions to the letter, she was now trying to find her way to the hotel where she was staying, running across the street repeatedly to check each side of the shop and looking at everything in wonder.

It was as she ran across for the half-dozenth time, people having finally decided to ignore the weird gaijin and focus on their shopping, that a car came. Unable to stop in time for the girl that had just ran into the road and with more people on either side, the driver slammed on the brakes... only to find the front of his car crumpling on a silver wall.

"This is weird..." Retisviel mumbled after the Volumen Hydragyrum repeated back into her body, walking up to the car and poking it, "The car didn't do this to me when grandpa got mother to drive me to the airport..."

---

Hitomi
Sat in her grandparents' house, Hitomi wasn't actually doing much today. She'd come back to check that they were okay despite the serial killer thing going on and... well, she'd decided to stay and try to stop them. Besides, this city had an unusually high amount of maguses, so there was bound to be something interesting to steal. Nothing as interesting as stealing from El-Melloi, certainly, but it would still be interesting...

Maybe she ought to check up on the Einzbern homunculus, the family had contacted her and asked her to do so if she was in the area. She wasn't sure why they expected her to... but she was a nice enough girl, so maybe she would.

---

Rachel
Waiting for Jack to get back from school, Rachel was once again making an attempt to finish the story she'd been working on for the past week. She thought it was best to start with short stories and work her way up... but she was having no luck and these papers were mired with crossings-out and rewrites and spots where pens had broken. Maybe she ought to invest in something higher-tech, even if she had no idea how to use any of it...

[Deleted]

Chieko arrived in the shopping district just in time to see the briefest of glimpses of a silver sheen, and a car crumpling on it... and then a white-haired girl. Everyone nearby was... surprised, to say the least, but from what she had seen the wall simply hadn't existed long enough for them to notice it. To them, well, a wall of silver couldn't possibly spring up in the middle of a road to crush the front of a car... or at least that's what Chieko had assumed. All these people, those who didn't really know what was really going on, could be kind of stupid like that. Still, they had seen an inexplicable car crash and as such there was a flurry of activity. And the white-haired girl had walked up and poked the wrecked, as the bewildered driver sat there wondering what the hell had just happened.

There was a few things Chieko could assume. One was that the white-haired girl had been the source of the silver wall, since by the looks of things she had been in the path of the car before the crash. The second was that... well, beyond that Chieko wasn't good at identification of the tools of other magi, but she could guess it was either some sort of magecraft or possibly a mystic code.

Used in broad daylight. Where people could've seen it. Thankfully it hadn't really existed long enough for it to register to them, but still. What was the white-haired girl thinking?! There was but one course of action Chieko could think of: Reprimand the girl for her idiocy. Determined, she approached.

---

It wasn't the first time she had been in Japan. She'd been there a few times before, enough that learning the language was somewhat crucial. It made her wonder, slightly, about why this 'Caravaggio' had attacked in Japan. Did he have a specific reason? Or did he just desire to wreak havoc everywhere, merely starting with Japan? It was important to think of such things. Magi sometimes used specific locations because of some sort of natural aspect of that region to facilitate a certain kind of magecraft.

Alessandra continued down the street. To blend in, she had taken to wearing a simple black shirt and skirt as opposed to her habit. She was on her way to a certain spot in the city that was, previously, where a particularly grisly murder had taken place. As she maneuvered her way through the crowds, she contemplated her task. It was undeniably a simple one, but the difficulty of the task was thus far unknown to her. Find and kill the murderous magus who had taken to calling themselves Caravaggio. The church had instructed her to do this due to her fairly rampant success in eliminating magi. To think, someone who looked fairly innocuous would have such success in slaying even the most ruthless of rogue magi. Perhaps it was that her abilities were so unexpected?

[Falkon]

Brad got off his motorcycle, pulling off his goggles as he did so, before heading into the hotel he was soon to call home.

He had come to Japan only a few days before, the murder of a few magi catching his interest. He figured that if he could find this murderer before the Association, he might be able to make a good earning off of him. Plus, it was a challenge!

He finished paying for his room, and went up to look at his info. Later, he would check out the town.