Chapter 30: Chapter 29

“Ripple, great news! We’ve made some progress on the case. You know those bodies that were found north of the city? Well, it's almost certain that whoever killed them was also responsible for the murder here in the city.” Charlotte told me as I arrived at our morning training.

 

“Should you be telling me this? I’m just a civilian.” I replied. “Isn’t there some sort of restriction of what you can tell the public about ongoing investigations?”

 

“I guess there might be, but I haven’t heard of such things. Anyway, we’re so certain because of our rookie with a seance ability. The ‘spirits’ of these guys exhibited the same unnatural confusion or memory loss about their death- which means that whoever is doing this likely has a black Ability!” She continued, “I guess I shouldn’t have existed about that last bit- it’s bad news.”

 

“Them having a black ability? What does that even mean?”

 

“Well, I’m not too sure myself, but it’s something about categorization. Black abilities activate or grow when their holder kills someone or something with whatever property they steal. In this case, some people are guessing that the perpetrator steals bits of the victims mental nodes or mana in such a way that it screws up memories from around their death or whatever they were thinking of at the time. However they can steal more literal things like mass or more conceptually things like lifespan.

“Black abilities are generally seen as problematic or dangerous as they encourage killing, but just because someone has one does mean they are evil. It’s also likely that more people than thought have them as the activation condition is something most people are loath to do.”

 

“Aye, had an encounter with a monster with one. They were huntin’ people in a town few days away ‘nd my group was sent to deal with it. Nasty thing, was hard to kill, heard some scholars were thinkin’ it stole ‘vitality.’ Shrugged off mortal blows like they were nothin.’ Must’ve killed it ten time ‘fore it went down for real- and even then we kept stabbing” Deryl added, getting us started on jogging.

 

“Damn, that sounds bad. You’d definitely want to deal with things like that as early as possible” I replied. “Are there many monsters like that running around?”

 

“Unlikely, deal’n with ‘em is high priority- probably why Charlotte and the rest are being added to the investigation. If it’s true, the killer already had five known victims and could easily have more. We can hope they only pull a little from each kill- but there ain’t a way to know.”

 

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“Although morbid, it is nice to have some action- I mean it’s only my first year so I don’t know how busy investigators are normally, but there doesn’t seem to be much else going on around here.”

 

Both incidents had happened near me, at a time when I needed help- which combined with the lack of other connected cases likely means that whoever is doing it either is stalking me or wants to frame me. I haven’t noticed anyone following me around -but I also haven’t been looking- so I don’t think it's the first case. But why would someone want to frame me? I can’t remember anything from around the times the killings happened due to blacking out from stress or forgetting what happened. Wait… if the killer is stealing bits of mental nodes, then they likely have a mental power- like whoever messed with my emotions the night of the first case. Which means that they might be able to remove my memory of the event so I couldn’t report them or so I didn’t have a story to defend myself with.

 

I have a method, but I’m missing a motive. My best guess would be that they want someone to take the fall so the investigation stops- either letting them escape or lay low before continuing. I probably was just at the wrong place at the wrong time the first night, and was considered an acceptable scapegoat on account of my more monstrous appearance. I’m already tangentially related to both cases so I don’t want to draw more attention by reporting my theory. It might also look like I was the killer and cooked up an insane story to protect myself- which would be really bad.

 

I was still sciently worrying about my theory while waiting in the counseling office waiting for my second session to start. I had no clue how many I had to do, and I felt fine so all I needed to do was prove I was- I guess. 

 

After a few minutes I was led to the same room as last time and met the same counselor as last time. However, this time, there was another person waiting in the room. As I entered, my counselor explained that they were here to take a look at my mental node. Apparently, a lot of particularly odd disorders could be traced back to issues with it, and having a baseline image of it would help id comparisons needed to be made later for diagnosis or whatever. I was understandably hesitant, but got assured that the person doing it wouldn’t read or alter my mind. I was still concerned, but tried to hide it- this was likely a pretty standard thing to do if you had someone that could.

 

The whole process took about ten minutes of having a hand on my head. I made sure that they didn’t get close to my ears- or more accurately feathery protrusions- and simply thought of the same bit of music over and over just in case they could read my mind. By the end I was quite tense and almost collapsed from relief when they said they were done. I was then informed that the actual drawing process would take a few days, and that we would take a look at it next session- implying that I was coming here next week too.

 

Like last week, I was put through a careful questioning which appeared to focus on if I was doing fine with my new body. I briefly panicked before remembering that Meredith already knew I had been reincarnated or something. The whole line of questions made me uncomfortable. Wasn’t there something else they could be asking about- I had been avoiding asking myself stuff like this since I came here. It wasn’t that important and I always had something better to do!

 

I think my counselor picked up on my agitation and shifted the questions towards batter subjects like how I was fitting into the new world and how I had been adapting. We ended up going on a tangent about how my old world didn’t have Abilities or magic or aether until time was up and I was let go.

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