Adventures In Parodyverse: The Late Hour Part 1

Adventures in Parodyverse - The Late Hour Part 1

    Jack Burns shook off his umbrella as he walked into the Paradopolis Police Department all the way to his office, seeming unconcerned when it splattered a few desks along the way. He threw open the door to the office and set down the umbrella leaning against the door jamb.

    "Can you shut the door?" Vicky Cameron complained from behind her desk. There were now two desks crammed into that office facing each other. "Those guys out there are loud, and they keep peeking in here."

    Jack complied, ignoring the attitude, and noted the position of the desks. The office was a long, narrow room with a window at the end. Vicky's desk was always placed so the window was behind her and the door was directly across. The other desk was sideways between the door and Vicky's desk. Jack slid in behind the other desk and sat down.

    "How come you're here so early?" Jack asked.

    She smiled mischievously. "Cause I heard you were moving in here and I wanted the window seat. You snooze, you lose." To prove her point she leaned back and put her sneakered feet up on the bookshelf in front of the window.

    "Yeah but now if I need one of those heavy books you'll have to lift them."

    "Small price." Vicky shrugged and sighed as she glanced at the laptop on her desk. She obviously brought her own, the department would never buy such a nice one. "Paperwork is bullshit," she whispered.

    "It's part of the job," Jack pointed out calmly as he turned on the archaic PC on his desk.

    "I know. It still sucks." Vicky sighed again. "I'd rather be out there."

    "In the rain?"

    Vicky looked outside again. "Yah," she replied. "It's kinda boring and stuffy in here."

    Jack looked up and listened to the rain pounding the roof above them. The third floor was the top story of policy headquarters. He craned his neck to see that Vicky had both a jacket and an umbrella. No wonder she didn't care that it was raining.

    The sudden silence was broken when Commissioner Graham opened the door to the office and looked inside. "Oh, there you are," he said. "I couldn't tell if you were in with the door shut."

    Jack gave Vicky an 'I told you so' look. She ignored it.

    "We have an unusual suspect in custody." Graham continued, ignoring the nonverbal banter between the two. "A woman suspected of murdering the Brass Bushi. And she's not speaking to anyone."

    "What's so unusual about that?" Jack asked. "He has a list of enemies as long as winter at the north pole."

    Graham frowned as he shocked at least one of them with the name. "It's the Psychic Samurai."

    Jack nodded. "We'll handle it."

---

    "So she's not with the Lair Legion?" Vicky asked Jack as they walked down the hall to the interrogation room. The suspect was being brought there promptly by officers. "I always thought she was. She works with them, at least."

    Both of them froze as they took in the shocking scene outside the interrogation room. A small Japanese woman was bound hands and feet, and being carried by two officers into the interrogation room. She wore jeans and a wrinkled long sleeved shirt, and her hair was a mess. The Psychic Samurai's eyes were angry and defiant even as she was handcuffed to a chair in the room.

    "What the hell is going on here?" Jack asked the two cops. "You two should be ashamed of yourselves, treating a woman like this!"

    "Commissioner's orders," one of them said. "She's supposed to be a martial arts expert and he doesn't want her escaping."

    Jack frowned at the officer one last time before both officers retreated. He then looked at Vicky. "You talk to the suspect first. I'm going down to the morgue to check on something."

    "You don't think she did it!" Vicky whispered enthusiastically. "Wait...what do I talk to her about?"

    "Anything. The weather. Just look busy so those two cops don't come back and bind her again." Jack sighed and bit his lip. "No...I think she's innocent. I've spoken to her before, and I know why the Lair Legion works with her. Her sense of morality is beyond reproach."

    As Jack walked away, Vicky looked at the arrest report he handed her. The Psychic Samurai's real name was Chiaki Bushido, and she listed her address as an apartment near the expensive east coast of Paradopolis. Confiscated from her was a hand-made Samurai sword. The charges listed were suspicion of murder and resisting arrest.

    "Resisting arrest?" Vicky whispered to herself as she flipped to the narrative part of the report on the second page. Apparently Chiaki was arrested after being followed from the Lair Mansion to Mangatown. The 'resistance' turned out to be passive, she offered to discuss the problem with the officers rather than simply dropping her weapon and surrendering.

    Vicky entered the interrogation room and was immediately awestruck. The Psychic Samurai was indeed a small Japanese woman. But seeing wasn't everything. Even with her hands and feet bound, and handcuffed to the chair, her whole physical being was a center of calm. Her eyes looked sad but not defeated. She still had some defiance left in her.

    "Hi. I'm Vicky." She nearly extended her hand, but then she remembered what she read about different Eastern traditions. She bowed quickly before sitting, and noticed the slightest smile on Chiaki's face as the Asian woman returned the favor. "Look, I'm not here to crucify you. My partner doesn't think you did it."

    "I appreciate the vote of confidence." Chiaki's voice was gentle as a spring breeze. She looked at the table as she spoke.

    "So tell me something," Vicky prodded gently. "Tell me some clue, some reason I can use to send you home. Maybe you know who might have killed the Brass Bushi, or something about his enemies."

    Chiaki finally looked up. "The Brass Bushi hated me," she said. "But I never hated him. I lack the motive to kill him."

    The Psychic Samurai had such honest eyes and voice, Vicky thought to herself. "I need something more concrete." She leafed through the report again quickly. The murder weapon was a Samurai sword. No wonder Chiaki was arrested.

    "The Brass Bushi wore armor," Chiaki said briefly. "Yet my sword was not scratched. And if I were to stab a man in armor through the heart I would need to grip the handle of the sword with both hands close together, and drive it upward or downward for the required force. Not straight on."

    Vicky was making notes at the time. Those were very important facts that the detective investigating the murder overlooked. Vicky not only wanted to see Chiaki released, she also loved proving the more lazy detectives in the department wrong. She was made for this job. Her self-satisfied smile disappeared when she realized something. "Why are you telling me this and not the guys who arrested you?"

    "You are very attentive," Chiaki replied. "It is not worth speaking when there is no one to listen."

    "You got that right." Vicky smiled and finally looked up from her notes. "I think I can get you out of here real soon."

---

    "So what's up?" Vicky asked Jack just outside the interrogation room. She still stayed close enough to the door to discourage any officers from escorting the Psychic Samurai back to a cell.

    "I don't think it's him," Jack replied. "There's a man of the Brass Bushi's description wearing his armor in the morgue. But the fingerprints aren't on file anywhere and no identification was found on him. The coroner is still trying to locate dental records."

    Vicky folded her arms and looked down. "Jack, I don't know as much procedure as you."

    "You want to know how to get her released?" Jack asked.

    She nodded quietly yet sadly, as if she wasn't hopeful about that actually happening. She and Jack both knew this arrest was a witch hunt and it would be difficult to put a stop to it.

    "Bring that laptop of yours to the interview room," Jack suggested. "We'll write up a quick report, and as soon as it's ready she'll be ready for release."

    "But all our evidence is circumstancial," Vicky pointed out.

    "So is theirs," Jack replied. "Only once we enter our report the first judge to see it will throw out the case and release the Psychic Samurai. The prosecutor knows that, he won't be able to object when we release her."

    Vicky smiled brightly at that point, and she held up a small handcuff key. "Look what I got."

    "Go get your laptop," Jack urged her. "I'll keep an eye on the Psychic Samurai."

    "Her name's Chiaki," Vicky pointed out before she raced off to get her laptop.

    "Chiaki it is, then." Jack entered the interrogation room and closed the door, greeting the Psychic Samurai before sitting down.



TO BE CONTINUED?

-- Story written and copyrighted (C) 2007 by Jason Froikin, and may not be
-- reprinted without permission.
-- Yuki Shiro designed by Jason Froikin, based on designs by Masamune Shirow
-- Liu Xi Xian and the Psychic Samurai are original design by Jason Froikin
-- Lara Night is an original creation by Jason Froikin

Post By Anime Jason Sun Mar 18, 2007 at 01:42:58 am EDT	Subject Adventures In Parodyverse: The Late Hour Part 1

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