Detective at Tokyo's Masquerade

A growing suspicion

Shirogane Naoto had a bright mind that helped her solve the cases she took upon by analyzing the facts she managed to glean from her sleuthing. Many times she would hit a roadblock, but she persevered, paving her path to bring truth to light. The events that transpired in Yasoinaba years ago served to break her shackles of common sense, making her learn how to think out of the box.

Impossible and fantasy didn't affect her view, which made her be yet again be considered almost the second coming of Holmes. Now she had a new conundrum that her gut screamed out to solve. The new Detective Prince of this generation, Akechi Goro. At first, she just dismissed him as another target of media sensationalism, but as his name kept popping up, her instincts flared up, making her realize that there was something amiss.

Tokyo was under a strange surge of crimes, tied to the young man as in that he was the only one able to solve them. Naoto was running her eyes over her collected news clippings, seeing Akechi pop up almost as often as 'psychotic breakdown'. "This seems off, but why?" She couldn't help but compare the breakdowns to the murders perpetrated by Tohru Adachi. The man was only convicted by his own confession, as there was no way to convince people that the TV World existed after Izanami's defeat.

She froze at that thought. "Could there be another world...? It's not impossible..." Those bouts of psychosis were too situational, the people affected were supposedly perfectly sound of mind before the fact. If this world truly existed, then surely there was someone exploiting it for their self-gain, maybe it was Akechi himself, seeing how his fame was linked to the crimes of deranged people.

Akechi Goro solves the case of a lunatic bus driver!

Genius on the rise, Detective Prince Akechi strikes again! Public officer case brought to light!

Akechi Goro gives his theory on the source of the psychotic epidemic.

She made up her mind, she would scout Tokyo for a possible entry point. She couldn't leave it be, her conscience was starting to weigh on her. "Maybe the group can reunite for this case." She shook her head, she was the only unfettered, everybody else had full-time occupations that chained them down. Her virtue of being a detective was what enabled her to look into this.

"First, I will need a base." She already had a convenient excuse to be transferred to Tokyo, her string of solved cases and bonifications were piled up in a safety net, affording her to rent a place for around a year. "I will need to stay away from the spotlight that is those cases, who knows what lies under the water." Seeing how the police and people were more focused on the psychotic breakdowns, she might manage to stay under the radar.

"Yongenjaya sounds like a good bet, a calm neighborhood and with affordable rents..." Naoto rubbed her eyes, feeling dozy. She reached out for her still steaming mug of coffee, hoping it would help her stay up a little longer. "But I don't know if I can solve this alone..." She only prayed that she wasn't getting too over her head.

~Looking cool Joker~

Kurusu Akira pushed his glasses back from the slipped slant, trying to adjust to the feeling of wearing them. His eyes narrowed in annoyance, recalling the brutish drunkard with that woman he tried to rescue. The man had pulled legal action on Akira, claiming that he was the victim and the woman had backed his words.

That event made his mouth feel sour and bitter. Because he tried to do the right thing, he was now branded as a criminal, sent to Tokyo for probation. He wondered how his new school would be like, surely people would shun him and label him as society's scum. The people bustling in the wagon and the scenery flitting by made him bored, not even his pocketbook could do the job anymore.

A sudden weight on his shoulder startled him, someone ended using his shoulder as a pillow, but the person's identity was worse. Shirogane Naoto, an ace detective, he couldn't afford to anger her and get another black mark on his criminal history, so he sucked it up and braced himself for the remaining hours until the stop. He tried to distract himself by flipping through the news with his cellphone, only to see that it was chock full of articles on mental breakdowns.

"That was useless." He decided to play some games on his phone to pass time. The woman was eventually woken up by her phone while he did a gacha pull, apologizing to him once she saw her position, with him returning a half-assed 'no problem', too focused on the game. The pair of strangers lapsed into silence, all while the tram sped towards Tokyo.

~Let's not do that today~

Naoto checked the time, estimating that she had around thirty minutes until she arrived at the station. "Let's see, which were the stations I had to catch? Aoyama-Itchome..." She was reviewing the map, keeping in mind that she had to stay out of notice. She wondered how this case would develop, she might even see the rise of another teen group, as her own did back then.

She felt the amused smile quirk her features, she might even lend her assistance to them. Soon the doors opened, releasing the people into the metro stop. She rose to her feet and set off, intent on bringing the truth behind the psychotic events to light. Following the signs overhead, Naoto wove her path in the milling crowd.