For the few who were lucky enough to know of its existence, the Splacademy was considered to be one of, if not the most prestigious academies that a student could dream of ever being in. While not necessarily known for their academic feats, and infamously housing a community of Electi, the students of the academy were well known for their tight-knit community across the campus. In a place where most would assume that disciplinary measures and strict curfews would be constantly upheld, the school proved itself to be a housing ground for a wholesome and accepting community.
This, unfortunately, was one of the many reasons why the discovery of James McIntosh’s mutilated corpse was so shocking.
The young boy’s body had been found in his own room, next to a large pool of dried blood and shattered glass. He had lacerations on his leg, a crack in his skull, and evidence of a prehumous struggle. To call his assailant’s actions “overkill” would be like calling a mountain “a pile of dirt.” Doing an autopsy on the deceased or searching for DNA evidence in the room was ruled out of the picture, since the school was infested with what were essentially anomalies and sorcerers, so any bodily-related evidence they find could’ve very easily been fabricated. As such, the detective assigned had to resort to treating the investigation like a puzzle, and relying the most on witness evidence rather than objectively correct lab evidence.
Getting assigned to this case was Detective Estevez’s worst day on the job.
The room the body was found in wasn’t the most pleasing sight in the school. The window was broken and had a trail of blood running down from it, the small bookshelf in the room had been toppled to the floor, the bed the body had been found lying against was splattered with blood, various items, such as books and medals, had been scattered on the floor… Estevez already felt pity for whatever poor soul would be assigned to clean up the mess. The detective made his way through the chaos, while making sure not to kick the small bronze statue he didn’t see beforehand (which he still managed to kick), and looked out the shattered window. The first thing he noticed was how pretty the view was. The entire campus was in view, and it seemed pretty well maintained and high-maintenance, to boot. The windows of the other rooms were surprisingly close to each other, and he understood why the school was so proud of its design and its gardening team. The second thing he noticed was how ridiculously high the room was, since despite walking all those stairs up by himself, he didn’t really get a grasp at how tall the building was until he actually had to look downwards at the brick pavement.
“Hey Est,” an investigator said, “where was that trophy at before you kicked it?”
“I think it was next to the wall, between the corpse and the wooden shelf. Did none of you take a picture of the crime scene?”
“As it seems, no,” he said with a hint of antagonism in his voice, “seems that this entire bloody precinct has never heard of a thing called ‘photographic evidence.’ Anyways, you don’t have to bother with this whole ordeal, you know. You do your job, and I’ll do mine, it’s really not that big of an issue.”
“I would rather get a grasp of the events before starting the interrogation. That is, if you don’t mind, of course,” Estevez replied.
“No, no, sure, have a looksie. As long as you promise not to mess with my bloody evidence too much,” the investigator replied while carefully placing the trophy back to where he was pretty sure it originally was. “Honestly, I didn’t expect this case from this kind of school. It doesn’t get more grizzly than this bloody mess. I mean, unless you’re dealing with a serial killer.”
Estevez carefully made his way back to the entrance while receiving several death-glares from the investigator, and took another good look at the room.
“Any theories as to why the bookshelf has fallen?”
“Right now, we’re pretty sure something got knocked into it and it fell down; maybe the kid got knocked into it while fighting his killer. The guys from this room said that it wasn’t that sturdy anyway, and any sort of strong hit to its base would make it fall down like a stack of cards.”
“Did they never bother to ask the administration for a replacement?”
“Eh, might’ve just been lazy. Here, Adam told me to give ya this.”
The detective pulled out a folded piece of paper and passed it onto Estevez. When he opened the paper, he noticed it was a map of the top floor, along with notes on who lived in each room, and some colored markers on whoever the station thought would have pertinent information. The dorm rooms were all placed next to one long hallway, so that the rooms were divided by even and odd. All the odd-numbered rooms were on one side of the hallway, while all the even-numbered rooms were on the other.
“Thanks,” Estevez said. “How long until I get Lucas in the room?”
“Who?”
Estevez pointed at the paper, “the first interviewee.”
“Oh. The guys are supposed to ask him to come over at roughly 4. You got a few hours to kill.”
“Thank you,” Estevez replied, “I’ll be making my way back now.”
Estevez walked out of the room, had a small stroll along the campus, and made his way back to the police station.
“State your name for the record, please.”
“Uhh…My name is Lucas Hiyo – H, I, Y, O – but… umm… everyone just calls me ‘Luke.’”
Having been woken up - very rudely, might he add - at the early morning hour of 4:30 in the afternoon, Luke wasn’t too excited about the idea of an intense interrogation with someone he’d never seen before in his entire life.
“So, Lucas, from what I understand, you bore witness to some unusual developments last night, yes?”
“Man, why are you talking like someone out of shakespeare-“
“-Answer the question, Lucas.”
Luke arched back in his chair, and looked straight up while trying to recall the previous night’s events. “I mean… I guess? The only reason you could consider anything from last night ‘out of the ordinary’ is because someone was killed, but, on its own? It’s not really the most exciting stuff ever. People make a lot of noise in the dorms.”
“Listen,” Estevez responded, “allow me be the one to determine how relevant or irrelevant each detail of the story is to the topic at hand. Now, let’s begin by talking about what you were doing at the time of the incident.”
Luke readjusted his chair, and tried to recall the previous night’s events to the best of his ability, but when he opened his mouth to speak, his face quickly turned beet-red once he realized what he was actually doing at the time of the incident.
“Do- do I really have to say what I was doing at the time?”
Estevez looked up from his notepad, and stared right at Luke. “Preferably, yes.”
“I-I mean, look,” Luke said, nervously shifting in his seat, “it’s really not all that important, really, I mean, I was like just minding my own business and it’s not like I was really doing something important outside a-and-”
“Lucas,” Estevez interrupted, “why are you so amandmant on hiding what you were doing at the time of the murder?”
“Well, b-because.. uh.. umm..” Luke tried to find anything else to talk about, but at this point, Estevez was really starting to get tired of having to interrogate unresponsive students…
“Listen, you can either tell me what you were doing at the time, or, I swear to god, I’ll make sure that you’ll never have another chance to-“
“-PORN! I was jacking off to porn! I was beating my meat! I was spanking my monkey! I had a goddamn date with Rosie Palms! That’s what I was doing!”
…But not quite as tired as he was of listening to the student body’s ludicrous addiction to sex. If the walls could talk, he was convinced that the first thing out of their mouths would be complaints about the amount of screwing they had to witness daily.
After rubbing the bridge of his nose and casually regretting his previous life choices, Estevez reconsidered his previous strategy. “Ok, If you’d agree to keep your voice down this time, I’ll allow you to skip over some unnecessary and possibly embarrassing details,” he explained, “but if you intentionally gloss over any non-pornographic details, or willingly leave out anything important to the case, you’ll be considered an accomplice, and subsequently trialed as such.”
“I-.. Yeah, yeah, I gotcha, I gotcha, give me a second…”
Luke tried to calm himself down - which proved to be quite the hard task when in an interrogation room covered with cameras - and then proceeded to recount last night’s events.
“So.. the whole thing happened around 7:40, from what I understand, so I’ll start with around 7:30.. My.. activity, let’s call it, made it so I don’t really have too much stuff to tell, but I’ll tell you of a few noises I heard that were kind of weird. The first thing was that I heard something break, like, a glass something break. Broken hard too. It wasn’t just slightly bumped into, someone straight up took it and bashed it against a wall.”
“Another thing,” he added, “was that uhh… I heard a metallic bump. Like, someone took a bat and took a swing at at a lamppost.. Not that I’d ever, uh, know what that actually sounds like, obviously, I mean, I wouldn’t be the one to… Yeah…”
Estevez didn’t bother to look up from his notepad. “Anything else?”
“Oh yeah, there was ano- Wait, wait, wait! Sorry, sorry, forgot to mention that the bump happened before the crash. A few seconds before, probably, I’m not really sure. The final thing I heard, which I think might’ve had something to do with James, was a huge - and I mean huge - thud against the floor. It wasn’t just one thing either, it was like a bunch of stuff, all crashing in slow motion, and then ending with a big KABOOM of something big hitting the floor..”
“Colorful commentary,” Estevez replied. “Is that all?”
“Yeah, that’s all the stuff breaking that I heard.”
“Did you happen to hear any sort of human noise? Humming, whimpering, moaning?”
“… Well, I mean-”
“-Poor wording on my part,” he quickly added, ”did you happen to hear any people outside of your room?”
“Oh, no, none.”
Estevez finished writing the final details his notepad, while Luke wondered how come no one thought of changing the one lightbulb in the interrogation room that was in a different color than the other light bulbs. “Anything else you want to add?” Estevez asked.
“Oh yeah, that.. uh.. everything I heard was on my left, so it probably came from like the end of the hallway where James got killed.”
“You were staying in room 14, directly below room 4, correct?”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“Good,” Estevez finished, “thank you for your cooperation. You’re free to leave now.”
Luke appreciated the gesture, left the interrogation room, and then came back to the interrogation room to ask for directions to the dorms.
“State your name for the record, please.”
“My name is Stephen.”
“…Last name?”
“No, that’s - uhm - that’s my first name.”
Stephen was one of the more obvious candidates for a crime of this verity. As each room in the dorms had a unique door key which was only available to the room’s residents and the administration, an Electi with the power to unlock any lock was one of the prime suspects to be able to commit such a murder. Stephen knew this, and was practically sweating bullets since the moment his was called on the school’s intercom.
“So, Stephen, from what I was told-”
“-uh, I think there’s something you really need to know before we start, mister-”
“-Do not interrupt me, Stephen,” Estevez said.
“no, seriously, I think this might make me not a suspect because I think you don’t know-”
“Silence.”
Stephen promptly shut himself up.
“Thank you. So, as I was saying,” Estevez continued, “I was told you were one of the last people to see the victim while alive, yes?”
“W-Well, I’m not sure if I was the last-”
“Yes or no.”
“yeah i’m pretty sure i was last, yeah”
Estevez realized that this type of aggressive approach might only make things harder on him, once he noticed Stephen was staring at him like a deer in the headlights, so he decided to be a bit more lenient.
“Stephen, may I ask what was that which you wanted to comment earlier?”
“Uh, you… won’t interrupt me?”
“I will not.”
“Uh ok.. so, quick question,” Stephen asked, “you guys do know that our door locks work with keycards and not actual, y’know, physical keys, right?”
“Yes, I was told.”
Estevez had absolutely no idea of this.
“So, I’m not a suspect in this?”
“Not moreso than your peers, no.”
Estevez was astounded at the incompetency of whoever set up his interrogations.
“Just one more question to you about this whole keycard business, Stephen… Why is there a keyhole in each of the rooms’ doors, if the doors do not operate with keys?”
“Oh, because it looks pretty.”
“…Interesting.”
Stephen gave out a big sigh of relief after being told he wasn’t the prime suspect, while Estevez considered changing professions once he was done with this trainwreck of a case.
“So, as I was originally saying,” Estevez said, trying not to lose composure, “you were one of the last people to see the victim alive, yes?”
“Uh, yeah, probably.”
“If that is so, would you mind recounting the events leading up to your seeing of the victim?”
“Well… I was walking around the campus with some music, like most of the people were… I mean, they were walking around, not alone with music, but anyways, I was walking around and then I noticed my iPod’s battery started to run out, so I started to walk back upstairs to my room…-”
“Excuse me for interrupting, but do you happen to recall who you saw walking outside?”
“No, not really. Sorry about that,” he sheepishly replied.
“Don’t worry, it’s understandable. You may continue.”
“So, I was walking upstairs, and I-I got to my room and… as it turns out, I forgot my key inside. Yeah, master of unlocking over here was locked out of his room, heh… When I realized I was stuck outside, I was pretty sure Jinu would be back any minute, and I didn’t really want to walk around the campus looking for him, so I just sat down next to the door and waited for him to come back. After like 30 min the door opened behind me, and I got asked why I was just sitting next to the door like a moron… Turns out Jinu was asleep in the room and never left, haha…”
“Did you see anyone during your time outside?” Estevez asked.
“Oh, umm.. Not really? I don’t think anyone was… Wait, actually I did see some people, my brain just forgot,” Stephen corrected himself, “I saw Mooka go up to Hudachi’s room, knock on the door, and have them give him a huge box of.. a box full of things, I’m not sure what exactly. I saw some wrapping paper, scissors, cloth, a bowling trophy for some reason…”
“A trophy?” Estevez asked.
“Yeah, Hudachi’s bowling trophy,” Stephen replied, “I’m pretty sure they were gonna use it as a big paperweight. Anyways, he took the box, went to his room, and I’m pretty sure he left the box there because he left the room without it. Other than that.. I saw Mooka and Hudachi go downstairs, and Heavy and Chroma go to their rooms.”
Estevez wrote something down on his notepad. “What did you do after the door was unlocked?”
“Oh, I put my iPod to charge, and went back downstairs with Jinu. When we went downstairs we saw James going up to the dorms.. so there’s that.”
“Do you know what James was doing at that time?”
“No, I really have no idea.”
Estevez wrote down a few things, and then looked up back at Stephen. “Thank you for your cooperation, you’re free to leave now.” Before even fully getting up from his chair, Stephen sat back down and asked Estevez, “So, I’m not a suspect anymore, right?”
“We first need to verify that your testimony is credible. As of now, you’re still a person of interest.”
Stephen’s eyes darkened once more. “O-oh. Ok. So, can I, like, try to convince you that I’m innocent, or-”
“-Just go back to the dorms and let us handle that.”
“Got it.”
Stephen then proceeded to get up from his chair and run back to the dorms.
“State your name for the record, please.”
“Fuck you.”
Estevez’s next interrogation was of a… peculiar student, to put it mildly.
“Refusing to cooperate will only make this harder on both of us, miss.”
“Listen, I know this might come as somewhat of a shock to you, but drugging someone, kidnapping them, and then strapping them to a metal chair against their will… kind of makes them hate you, if you didn’t know.”
Handling Electi had been widely known to be problematic for investigators.
Having to antagonize someone with supernatural powers not fully comprehended more often than not ended in either the death of the interrogated person, or having that same person’s hidden abilities shine through in particularly gruesome ways. Fortunately enough for Estevez, this student only had the ability to give people mind-altering drugs which made them incredibly susceptible to influence.
The interrogation of this specific student was so troublesome, that it was one of the main reasons why Estevez was the one chosen for the task. For once, being asexual had its perks.
“Miss Splats, you more than anyone should know how volatile and unstable your power is. These are mere precautionary measures in case of any unforeseen abilities.”
“None of my friends had this kind of fuckery going on.”
“Their abilities weren’t as nonspecific.”
“That’s a load of horseshit.”
Splats was one of the more interesting faces on the campus. She had been born with the natural ability to influence people around her. For most people, this would mean they were extremely charismatic, or had their way with words, but for Splats this meant that the people around her literally changed whenever she was around. Her power was an invisible aura, where anyone caught within it would be more susceptible to whatever Splats was interested in at the moment. If she was hungry, people became generous and giving; if she needed help with a test, people suddenly became very interested in that particular subject.
Due to being a teenager, more often that not, that particular interest was “sex.”
“This power can’t even affect you! Why do you even care!?”
“It is impossible to know the limits of any given quirk due to their unpredictable nature. In any case, this is not about you; this is about your dead colleague. With you being one of the most popular students among his group, we assumed you had the most information regarding his previous activities and intentions.”
“Here’s a better question, why the fuck should I help you?”
“Because this is your dead friend.”
“Nah.. I ain’t buyin it.”
This power, combined with her natural horniness, resulted in it eventually just transforming and stabilizing as a “horny aura.” This new “horny aura”s effect was somewhat similar to the previous abnormality, wherein everyone caught in it started acting differently than usual, but this time everyone caught in it just became extremely attracted to Splats and incredibly interested in sex. The unfortunate side-effect of this power was that it didn’t make it so people were actually attracted to her, but more so as if they had taken suggestion-inducing drugs and told to be attracted to her. They didn’t actually want to do it, but were forced to, as their consciousness took a backseat to the driving force of her omnipotent will.
“You either put me out of this seat, or I won’t tell you shit.”
“That is not a request I will comply with.”
“I don’t give a shit. You either let me go, or we’re gonna wait here until the end of time.”
“The end of time, is it? I’m free to leave whenever I want, you’re the one unable to move.”
“End of time it is, then.”
Students have attempted telling the administration to expel her, but whenever she was called to the office, she would leave seemingly unharmed and much more sexually fulfilled. The administration tried calling a guard team to take her out of the campus, but by the time they reached her door, they seemed much less interested in taking her out, and much more interested in eating her out. Eventually, everyone just gave up on trying to get rid of her,
and decided to just ask some therapists to move into the campus (and also ask them if they could pay for sessions in bulk).
She and her group of friends were moved to the top floor of the dorm building, where gods and reality warpers were kept for the safety of the other students, and that was the most that could be done. The problem wasn’t solved, but they all accepted it never will be.
“Well, if you’re so unwilling to cooperate, then I will take a short break, if you will. Whenever you feel like talking, just start talking to the walls, and I will be buzzed back into the room.”
“Hey, get me a Kit-Kat while you’re at it, dickhead!”
Estevez left the interrogation room, and went to the other side of the double-mirror. “The moment she cracks,” he said, “be sure to tell me.” He then went out of the room and decided to go get some coffee.
Estevez decided to use the two hours of his allotted break to their fullest. He went to get himself some coffee, and then remembered that he forgot to buy coffee beans and the most he could make was some hot water mixed with milk. He then proceeded to go down to the local market, look through the available stock, bargain with the shop-owner for a discount, get kicked out of the store, go to a different store, try his luck there, and then come back to the station to make his coffee. By the time he remembered he was supposed to be interrogating someone, he already made himself a sandwich and watched the sun go down. Eventually, he decided to begrudgingly make his way to the interrogation room, and went in there knowing full-well that Splats was most likely kicking and screaming for being left in an empty room for two hours.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said to himself, “I’ll give you this, Miss Splats, your patience
is remarkable.”
The scene Estevez was greeted by was not of someone begging to be released, but more so of someone who had found the most uncomfortable position for a human being to sleep in. When he noticed that Splats would not be awoken by anything less than a freight-train passing by, he motioned to the people behind the double-mirror, who then proceeded to play - over the speakers - the sound of a freight-train passing by.
“JESUS!” Splats shouted as she was startled awake. “Did you not have any… literally any other way to wake me up?”
“Legally, playing loud noises is the only way we’re allowed to wake up an interviewee.”
“…you mean to tell me that everything else here is legal?”
“You’d be surprised at the extent of ‘potential evidence’ laws.”
“So,” Splats said, while simultaneously trying not to fall back asleep, “I guess that I’m not getting that sweet sweet freedom, huh?”
“We’re not about to let loose a brainwashing Electi, no.”
“Eh, t’was worth a shot. Anyway, what did you dickweeds want to ask me?”
With great relief, Estevez finally took out his pen and notepad, and began the interview.
“Please begin describing what you were doing at the time of the incident.”
“When the murder happened, I was hanging out with Adian, Mooka, and Lady Skyber. Honestly, I had no idea what was going on until I got a text from Shinya to come back to the dorms, and that’s when… yeah, you get the idea.”
After writing a measly half-line on his notepad, Estevez looked back at Splats. “Is that it?”
“Yeah, that’s the whole deal really.”
“Anyone else you’ve seen during your encounter?”
“We didn’t see anyone,” she responded, ”we were kind of busy.”
Estevez hesitated for a moment whether to ask about their activities during said time, but decided against it.
“Your lack of alibi isn’t the largest concern on our mind, as the main reason we took you into interrogation was due to your connections to the top-floor students. If you could tell us a bit about James’ social life and interactions before his death, we’d appreciate it.”
“Well.. James was alright. He didn’t really mesh with everyone, and was on a lot of people’s bad side, but he wasn’t really hated. He was the kid that everyone just made fun of whenever they could, but didn’t really mind having with them. The last thing he really put his mind to was this competition we have going on.”
“We have going on?”
“Yeah, we put in on hold because of the whole… dead guy thing. He partnered up with Shinya, who he was supposed to meet in his room before this whole thing happened, and they decided to go build a really big robot. Like, a giant mecha that could also think kind of big. It was a big deal.”
“What other teams were in this… big competition?”
“Uhh.. there were Hudachi and Sakii, Adian and Heavy, and Lady Skyber who teamed up with Nova. She’s still kind of salty about not being god anymore, I can tell.”
“Anything else you’d like to say?”
“That you’re a bunch of dicks.”
“I’ll pass that along to Richard and his team.”
Estevez pressed a button, and a small needle went inside Splats and injected a significant amount of a power-suppressing drug. He left the interrogation room, and watched as three seemingly completely normal and average men went into the room, and then left the room with Splats’ unconscious body.
As nighttime finally came, and the interviews came to a close, Estevez could breathe a sigh of relief that his part of the job was over. He went back to the station’s lunch room, took out his notepad, and proceeded to go back on all the evidence he had gathered about the incident.
After a few hours and quite a few coffee cups, he finally had his answer. He took out his phone, sent a message to the head of the station, and headed back home to finally get some well-earned rest.
The morning afterwards, a squad was sent from the station to the Splacademy’s dorms. As the campus’ students watched in a combination of confusion and shock, the armed personnel ran to the dormitory building, up the stairs, and stopped next to a particular student’s room.
*THUMP THUMP THUMP*
“THIS IS THE POLICE! ALL RESIDENTS OF ROOM NUMBER █ ARE TO COME OUT IMMEDIATELY. ANY USE OF ELECTI ABILITIES CAN AND WILL BE RESPONDED TO WITH LETHAL FORCE.
COME OUT PEACEFULLY, AND YOU WILL NOT BE HARMED.”