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Thomas and Senna finally reached home in the early hours of the morning. The sun had not risen yet, but a faint red glow over the horizon warned of its impending appearance.
“Like I said, the school will need to be investigated more. There is definitely something happening there that is heavily supernatural.”
Senna rolled her eyes and responded, “And as I stated, you can investigate it on your own. I don’t spend all day lazing around playing games like a certain somebody. Instead, I am forced to attend ‘school’ by a that somebody.”
Thomas didn’t respond and froze in his steps as he instinctively felt something was wrong as the two approached their home, Thomas’ Supernatural Private Investigator Office.
His eyes opened wide as if coming to a sudden realization as he exclaimed “My treasures!” before abruptly sprinting up the stairs and entering their home.
Senna twitched her nose and sniffed the air, but she didn’t detect anything unusual. Walking into their home and shutting the door behind them, she also didn’t see anything out of place.
The first sign of any unusuality was a burn to the flooring in the corridor, but she still hadn’t detected the presence of any intruders which deeply bothered her.
Walking to the back of their apartment, she found Thomas in the sealed cursed item room hastily checking each and every item in a panic.
“It’s gone, my new gladius is gone!”
Thomas was on his knees with an expression of heartbreak that Senna could only consider over exaggerated.
The fae girl immediately understood who had broken into their home. It was the two hunters who Thomas had stolen the cursed gladius from. Considering their line of profession, it also wasn’t unusual that they would have items that could conceal and traces of their presence and elude a sense of smell.
It still didn’t explain how Thomas detected something was wrong before entering the house. She could only chalk it up to his queer obsession with cursed objects
He then picked up a cursed Russian nesting doll that was supposedly created to trap and punish the entire family of a traitor in eternal suffering. It was unknown what the person had done, but it was enough that someone went to great lengths in a manufacturing their revenge.
“Ah, Charlotte, look at you! Several of your hairs have been burnt!”
Thomas lifted the small french porcelain doll out of its glass cabinet. He tidied its long curly blonde hair and adjusted the light red bonnet on its head.
“Eh, what’s this?”
Inside the doll’s hair, there was a pair of white metallic cards that were bent and twisted. Considering the alloy they were made from, they would have had to have been subject to an incredibly powerful force.
They were the invitations for the new Dragon’s Awakening VRMMO game being released in several months, the same two invitations the hunters Scott and Sean had tried to bargain with to get their weapon back.
“I know who did this! Those two bastards are dead!”
Senna looked at him incredulously and commented, “You didn’t realize by the fact that the only item stolen was the item you stole from them?”
“Anyone could have stolen it!”
“…You are a failure of a detective.”
Thomas seemed to come to an epiphany and abruptly rushed to Senna before grabbing her by the shoulders and looking down on her with a gaze of unshakable pride.
“I know what to do. I need you to catch their scent and track them d—uck!”
The fae girl stamped her heel on his foot in annoyance, causing the immortal to bite his tongue and mess up his words.
“I am not a sniffer dog! In the first place, how did they break into this room? The seal on it was not something someone with a hint of inner force can ever hope to break through.”
“…That… well, it appears to have been broken.”
“Obviously!”
Thomas placed the french poupee doll back down and left the room with Senna. When he closed the door, the magic seal appeared over the door, but it was fragmented and not functioning.
The magic circles and formulae revealed themselves as the seal attempted to reactivate, but they were like broken gears that kept grinding into one another, or a monitor that was glitching. The seal was well and truly broken despite fragments of it still functioning.
Senna also looked over the damaged seal before asking, “Can it be fixed?”
“By me? No.”
“You can’t even do basic detective work, why would I expect you to be able to fix this?”
Thomas gave an exasperated sigh before stating, “Young ones these days, they just don’t see things the same.”
“…I’m over 200 years old.”
“Young ones these days~”
He repeated himself in a more playful, borderline mocking, manner.
“…I meant can Yuri come and repair it?”
Thomas didn’t respond but instead pulled out his phone and showed a news article from a little over half a year ago.
42 Villains Brought to Justice! A Class Supervillain “Animator” Apprehended!
A Class Supervillain “Animator”, real name Yuri Amarkov, was defeated as a part of a major operation against terrorist organization Villain-E by the Protectorate. The heroes who took part in this operation recently promoted A Class Superhero “Galaxi” alongside the B Class Superheroes “Mistress Hex”, “Hercules”, and “Longshot”. 12 C Class heroes also participated in this operation.
Intercepting the villains in the town of Ungandur, Iceland, where “Animator” Yuri had turned half the town into empowered animated corpses…
Senna stopped reading at that point and shook her head.
“The last I heard, he is still locked away in The Deep with mana sealing bracelets.”
The Deep was a giant supermax prison located at the bottom of the South Pacific Ocean. The only way in and out was via deep sea shuttles that had to go through multiple security checks before they could leave.
It was said to be inescapable as anyone dumb enough to break out would immediately be crushed to death by the sea pressure, especially mages wearing mana sealing bracelets. Without access to mana, even a Fifth Circle Mage such as the Animator was almost as powerless as an ordinary person.
Of course, there had still been three prison breaks from this supermax in the past.
“Eh, is that really all right? There is still that corpse he has under life support, isn’t there?”
Thomas shrugged nonchalantly in response and combed his fingers through his curly blond hair.
“Its just an empty meat suit.”
“He attaches a lot of importance to an empty meat suit.”
“Then he probably has it arranged to be fine on its own for at least a decade.”
“What are you going to do about this seal then?”
“Nothing a can do~”
Thomas laughed helplessly before remembering about the new cursed pen and quickly depositing it in the room alongside all the other cursed items.
Upon coming out, Senna sent him a warning glare before stating with animosity, “I swear if that damn doll starts causing problems again, I will grind it up into powder and flush it down the toilet.”
“No worries, no worries, Charlotte has already learned to behave.”
One man spoke with utter conviction whilst a supernatural demi-fallen nature fae held him under a gaze that practically stated “you are full of sh*t”.
“Hahaha, you bastards want to steal from me?”
Completely ignoring the moral conundrum of a thief accusing another of thievery, Thomas laughed maniacally as he used his phone to scan the codes on the Dragon’s Awakening invitations that he had forcibly straightened out.
His expectation of it just linking to a page with a product key embedded in it proved to be wrong as the moment it was scanned, the invitation itself emitted a small holographic display and holographic pen for him to use.
“Holy hell that’s high tech! How did they even do that!? I can’t see a single pinhole for the projection to come from!”
Thomas ran his hand around the card, like a magician showing there were no strings around the floating object, looking for the source of the projection. Despite his best efforts however, the hologram seemed to have no source and instead operated on magic rather than technology.
He briefly muttered that DragonByte, the creator of Dragon’s Awakening and the required virtual reality full dive gear, were showing off.
He immediately filled out both invitations, one for himself and one for Senna, before signing his one and forging Senna’s signature on the other.
The cursed items in the formerly sealed store room had been so quiet over the past several days that the duo had placed the matter of the broken seal to the back of their minds. However, Thomas did not forget his grudge against the two hunters.
He departed several mornings to snoop around motels or other locations where they could be, but they seemed to have vanished into the wind.
It was likely that they had deemed the case not to be of supernatural or otherwise of monster origin and departed for another job, but he still wasn’t willing to give up. Thomas had seen the tear in space above Laurence Academy of the Gifted, and he believed there was definitely something supernatural afoot.
Less than a week since the break in, Senna came home from school one day with her brows furrowed. She was so preoccupied that she didn’t notice Thomas had cleanup up his work desk and there wasn’t a trace of cigarettes or even an ash tray.
“What’s the matter,” Thomas probed her as she entered.
“The principal called me into his office while a bit overly happy and kept asking if I needed any assistance.”
“With what?”
“New text books, uniforms, transportation to and from school, and a couple other things.”
“Well, did you accept anything?”
“Of course not. I told that meddling old man I would be happy if he understood his position as a human and stopped bothering me.”
Thomas chuckled in response before swapping over to another topic.
“By the way, I have something for you.”
“?”
Thomas opened one of the drawers on his desk and retrieved a small pile of freshly printed paper that had been stapled together. Senna accepted the papers and briefly ran her eyes over the first page before throwing it back in his face.
“What the hell! Transfer papers!?”
“Yep~ Starting next week, you will be attending the Laurence Academy of the Gifted as a special admittance under a fully paid scholarship. I tell you, they were extremely excited to have a genuine nature fae attend at their school.”
“It took me so long to stop the people at my current school from bothering me! And now that has all gone to waste?”
“You are going to school to make friends and get to know humans better. This way, you won’t hate them as much.”
“In what way do you think me sitting in a crowd of human infants would make me like them?”
“They’re not so bad.”
Senna leaned forward with her hands on Thomas’ shoulders so she could bring her face closer to his. The painted nails on her long and slender fingers were almost piercing through his shirt and into his skin, nails that carried at toxin so potent they would poison to death anyone but someone unkillable like him.
She peered deeply into his pale blue eyes with her crimson red pupils as she spoke in a serious tone.
“They are ruled by jealousy, pride, and lust. They are selfish and become envious of others’ success, lashing out and bringing harm to them. They segregate themselves into groups to gang up on those deemed outcasts, despite all being of the same species.”
Senna paused momentarily as her voice dropped in volume, a deeply concealed sadness rising to the surface.
“I know what I am – a monster, a disgrace to my race by giving in to these dark emotions, but these creatures you call humans, especially the infants, are filled with even more sin than I am.”
Thomas saw her showing her weaknesses and didn’t adopt his usual lackadaisical attitude. He wrapped his arms around her in a hug, the blonde-crimson haired demi-fallen fae breathing silently with her face buried in his chest.
“You are no longer a fae innocent to the world and the cruelty of humans. This is a part of you – an irreversible mutation within your soul. Learn from these humans and how they balance it within themselves. Also…”
“…Also?”
“Make some friends~”
Senna didn’t force her way out of Thomas’ grasp and just continued to quietly respond.
“I don’t need to be friends with these sinful creatures to learn from them.”
Senna softly pushed Those away before turning to go to the kitchen and get something to eat, but halted in her steps at Thomas’ follow up words.
“Humans never erase their sin, Senna, they just become better at hiding it. The greatest monsters in this world are none other than humans themselves.”
The fae girl then continued into the kitchen before returning with two plates, a large french vanilla slice and tea spoon on each along. In the brief moment she was gone however, Thomas had retrieved his ashtray from an unknown location and had lit up a cigarette.
With the faint stench of cigarette smoke beginning to fill the room, Senna was immediately unhappy.
“Stop smoking!”
The lit cigarette was snatched crushed into powder in her hand before being lunged out the window, shortly followed by an ash tray that could only be described as a shooting star due to the extreme force applied in throwing it.
“Hey! We just had a great father-daughter bonding moment! I can at least have one cigarette, can’t I?”
“Eat spit!”
Senna huffed before plonking herself down on the couch with her french vanilla slice, the other slice still on Thomas’ desk as it had been left for him to eat.
“Spit? No, no, the phrase is ‘eat sh*t’.”
Senna turned her head and looked at him with a gaze of utter repulsion as she genuinely asked, “Do humans eat feces?”
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