Chapter Twenty Seven - Animosity

  Despite all odds, and in spite of the end that fate has written for me, I have laid eyes on the man who wreaked havoc for twenty-six long years. The being that caused an innumerable amount of deaths by his hands and through his means, the Flawless, sat unnervingly still, facing the door where Sylphie and I came from. My assistant and I stood by the window, only allowing us to see the back of his head. However, I still remember looking into his eyes when I entered. The Flawless’ eyes were empty and devoid of empathy. Everything about his profile fit together to complete the web I came to build. Just as his whole family was, Raziel was Asian – there were no doubts to be made.

  “You are the man I am looking for, Raziel Seishi.”

  I remained composed, for this was no time to struggle. In the face of absolute evil, I will remain calm, and I will see it to the bitter end that this monster meets his fate eye to eye. He was right in my grasp, and what remained to be done is arrest him.

  “Yes. My name – you found out. You did exactly that.”

  He spoke in a harsh voice that seemed to crumble as he spoke. The nuance of human speech was nowhere to be found in his vocal expressions, and only the purpose of it remained.

  “I tried to prevent that from happening. I did. I did. But – I was too late.”

  “You tried to kill your own blood, just as you slaughtered hundreds of people.”

  “Oh. That is my Providence – the divinity embodied.”

  I stayed cautious with each of my steps as I tried to circle back to meet him face to face. One hand was placed on my holster, while the other stood firmly prepared for any possible maneuver.

  “Explain the photos. Explain everything.”

  “Ahh… all around us – the gaze of divinity. What they desired, I provided. Every person, each of them a sacrifice for divinity. That way, they gave me peace.”

  Divinity? The profile of the Flawless was that he is a self-proclaimed artist. That was later proven with the Face’s own words, as she called herself and her father artists. What does that mean? After all of this, is the Flawless working under some influence. Something ethereal?

  “Divinity?”

  “Divinity – the gaze of Providence. You – a sinner going against Providence itself. Ahh… for the sake of divinity, each sinner must be purged or reclaimed.”

  My careful paces moved me all the way to his side, and I finally got a precise look on Raziel.

  “A detective is a sinner. Lilliana was a sinner. Just like her, you need to see divinity.”

  While he spoke, he never even glanced in my direction. In fact, he wasn’t focusing on anything at all, and he was just speaking with no direction. He still sat in the same way that I saw him upon entering, resembling the corpses he leaves behind.

  “Raziel Seishi, do you admit to your limitless range of committed crimes?”

  “Crimes. Crimes. Ahh… you forget. Divinity is true law – one that I was graced by, and one that I perform.”

  “Stop with that nonsense. Why did you do any of this? Why did you tell me to meet up?”

  “Detective Vince Capleaf, my own divinity saw it in you. You understand the strife you went through at the behest of others. Lesser than the divinity of Providence, yet so divine, mine is.”

  I was becoming fed up with his nonsensical ramblings. None of what he was saying was making any logical sense, and the religious utterings offered no help to my cause. For some unknown reason, he invited me straight to him, and all I get from him are senseless mutterings?

  “The divinity of the hotel, the divinity of the detectives, and the divinity on Heather – I saw it all. I witnessed every time you were met with my feeble divinity, and yet you have none of your own.”

  “You saw everything, huh.”

  Now, I stood right in front of him, keeping a few paces of distance, and even a little more than when I stood in front of the Face. Sylphie still stood by the window, providing us with a flank in case he tries anything.

  “I think I heard enough from you. Hands up,” I instructed him with a gun pointed towards his head.

  He himself remained calm. “Ahh… still too blind to divinity. You are in dire need of healing, Detective Vince Capleaf.”

  Even though he was facing down the barrel of my gun, not a tinge of fear emanated from him. I was unsure if he was simply unaware, or if he simply didn’t care, but either way – fearlessness was a trait of his. That is precisely why he was able to get up from his chair and place his forehead on the tip of my weapon.

  “Allow me to show you divinity.”

  What the hell is he doing? I was certain of it now – the Flawless is no sane individual. The religious upbringing and background of his has left a significant mark on him, and as a result, he truly believes in divinity. His material body is no concern of his, and being a few inches from death is almost unthinkable for him.

  “You asked – why I did this? My reason? You succeeded in learning my name – it is only customary that I show you divinity in return.”

  In truth, the case would be over if I just shot him here and now. However, I wanted answers, and killing him is the last thing I wish to do as a detective. As a person, however, I would like to do it without hesitation.

  “But first – you need to be stripped of sin. Drop your false wings and descend to the mortal plane.”

  “Are you telling me to stop this investigation?”

  “Yes – quit pursuing the divinity graced by God himself, and become divinity yourself.”

  “Never. I went too far to find you, giving up now would be foolish.”

  “Foolish?”

  That marked the first time his eyes gazed into mine. He seemed to be upset by my words, but I didn’t care. I was only glad that he stepped away from my gun, and didn’t wait for my shot like a lunatic.

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  “If you do that shit again, I will not hesitate to shoot you.”

  “A vision – you will not shoot your gun. My divinity allows me to see further than sinners ever could.”

  From what I gathered, Raziel views his actions as a task given by his “Providence”, whatever that means. It doesn’t change the fact that he is the perpetrator behind MC-13.

  “Then, I take it that you are unwilling to be met with grace and divinity?”

  “Duh. Now, hands up.”

  I was in no mood to playing into the antagonist’s monologue, and with how close to ending this I was, I was certainly not about to listen to this insane man’s ramblings. As for him, my reluctance upset him, as he was now cowering, his hands being on his temples, and he was seething.

  “No. No. No. No. You were supposed to agree! My Providence never lies!”

  “How long are you going to keep me waiting? It’s over for you, Raziel.”

  The situation was as clear as day. The criminal was being held at gunpoint – that should be the end of it. Any regular evildoer would just give up, knowing full well that they were done for. However, MC-13 is a case that has no equal, and even its committer bends the laws of causality against him.

  “You are just a crazy old fool, and that is upsetting. Someone like you could’ve never been the actual Flawless.”

  The tension was escalating, as the facsimile of the Flawless grew angrier and angrier at my declination and refusal of his claims. His decrepit face began losing the little color it had to begin with, and his breathing accelerated. I saw the aggression form in his eyes, and in that moment, I noticed something in his back pocket as he was reaching for it. It took me almost no time to recognize the variant of the Purging Nail he now held in his hands, but it took him even less time to draw it. The feeble old man was about to strike.

  Sure enough, the nail was headed straight towards me. In any other case of a person wielding this weapon, it would have been over. However, the Flawless is a weak and aged man, and his speed was sorely lacking. I took this as a sign, a sign to use self-defense. With all of my pent-up rage against the man who caused all these atrocities, I pulled the trigger of my gun.

  This time, the gunshot was a victorious one. The bullet penetrated his forehead entirely, and the sound generated from the impact only certified his death. I could only watch satisfied as his corpse descended down to the ground, and his blood trickling from the inflicted wound. It was a cathartic sight to behold, knowing that with his demise, MC-13 will truly have been solved. The whole scene was strangely calm and melancholic. The sound around me vanished, and the only things I saw were things that brought me happiness. The fired gun in my hands gave off a warm feeling, and the tip of it simmered with smoke. A dead body lay flat in front of me, but that was not a bad thing – it was my own doing. I just killed a person.

  That marked the first time I have ever had to resort to lethal force. The criminal dubbed the Flawless was the only thing that brought me to my knees, and it is only fitting that it was him who pushed me beyond reason. Yes, that’s right – this is the only case where reason never applied. Everything about MC-13 was unsatisfying to the very end. It was as dull as it could get for a detective, knowing that the reason all of this culminated into such a ridiculous case was because of the incompetence of the fools before me. In the end, I only grew more paranoid of my surroundings, and I turned less trustful of my closest allies. Truthfully, what have I learned? My mind was too clouded to think about reasonable things right now.

  There was still so much left unanswered – is this really the end? Was the old fool in front of me really the source of everything? It felt so unreal, knowing that someone so frail was able to cause so much havoc for over twenty years. It wasn’t satisfying, but it was over. Overall, I never got to learn why he was in the hotel, or why was so important to the Museum of Stillness. He mentioned that he witnessed everything I did – that by itself is strange. It is not uncommon for the criminal to keep a watchful eye out for his hunters, but in MC-13, how could that be? The case was censored from the public’s view, and the only people who had any real semblance of idea as to what our leads were were me, Faust, and…?

  Only just now did I start coming back to my senses. And, truly, something wasn’t right. The whole invitation, this meeting – it felt staged, as if everything I did up to now was intentional. Truthfully, did I ever escape the confines of the Flawless’ grasp? Did I ever escape the third-dimensional prison I was trapped inside?

  I feel like I haven’t solved anything. Perhaps I was never meant to solve things in the first place.

  “Well done, Detective.”

  My assistant stood by the window, gazing outside of it with her hands behind her back. Sylphie, who was dressed in a perfectly-fitting suit, watched wistfully out of the only window in the room. The sight before me consisted of a dead and bloodied man, the chair he sat on, and Sylphie Moore, who stood behind it all.

  Of course, Sylphie was there since the beginning. She is the detective closest to MC-13, as she went side-by-side with it since the three-year inception. An A-tier detective who specializes in unusual cases – that is what you told me. You told me that you were my Assistant Detective since our meeting. And since then, we only did everything together, ranging from boring office work to even the most hectic of encounters. You were a true detective, even though you never seemed like it.

  You never seemed like it…

  “Congratulations on killing the Flawless.”

  Yes, it is so simple now. There was always another figure in the background, someone that made the case impossible to work with. There was always someone with game-changing information that changed the whole course of the investigation. There was always the third person of the Flawless, who the Face warned me about. The second accomplice.

  When I first stepped out of the Trelton Hotel, there was only one thing on my mind, and that was the keycard door that opened seemingly out of nowhere. That was when I first came up with the theory of multiple accomplices. Who could have guessed that my own assistant wouldn’t show up that night?

  When we were at Good E’s, the seaside warehouse, there must have been someone to warn the Face about our arrival. With how obscenely over the top our efforts that day were, when we showed up to the scene of the crime mere minutes after it was committed, it is certainly hard to believe that the Face could’ve known of our arrival.

  Then, back at the Detective Precinct Department, there was one person who orchestrated the efforts to incriminate Watkins. There was someone who resorted to leaking that insider information in order to prove their innocence to me. Without that entire effort on your behalf, Detective Debrief wouldn’t have antagonized me for much longer. In that one day, you proved your innocence, and even got the Genius Detective to chase after me. Not only that, but you manipulated me into removing one of your enemies, Watkins, who was one of the few individuals who possessed knowledge of you and your operations. You used me to get rid of him.

  Then, when me met after that, you were afraid. I remember that clearly now – you were beyond surprised when you came to learn that I made significant progress on the case overnight. The day before that, you saw a stupidly confident detective who knew barely anything. And the day after, you saw a detective who seemed to find out everything in barely any time in-between. You became nervous when you found out that I learned of the Seishi name, the name of your kind. It would only be natural for you to try and intercept my efforts by sending the Face to kill me and the only lead I had.

  Further down the line, it was you who gave me that letter – the invitation to the Museum of Stillness. That is where we are now, right where you wanted me since the start. We are standing by the opposite ends of the room, and everything suddenly makes sense. I can see you looking over your shoulder, carefully examining my reactions to suit your next course of action. You, Sylphie Moore, are the final piece of the puzzle that is MC-13. You are responsible for anything I didn’t know at the time, because you led me astray whenever you thought I was becoming dangerous to your plans. Your clever position as Assistant Detective, who overlooked their own case, gave you an incredible opportunity to not need to hide. If there was evidence against you, you could just burn it. If people doubted you, you could just show your badge.

  That badge was always off to me – a detective I have never even seen bore the badge of an A-tier. Now, knowing how involved Watkins was, it would be no surprise for him to give you this novelty. I still recall that screaming match between me and the former director – he called you a devil back then. Now, I understand what he meant, even if it’s probably too late.

  The notes and letters from Watkins’ safe were your doing. You were the only one who directly accessed them, and I still remember your sudden offer to go fetch them. While me and Watkins were in the middle of a fight, you made sure to erase anything that incriminated you, or your subordinates. That is precisely why there were torn paged at the end. They must have contained the encounter between Watkins and you, undoubtedly.

  In the present, you are standing there, fully aware of my thought process right now. You know that I know, and you have no need to hide yourself anymore. I followed everything you did, everything you wanted me to do like a blind fool. And with that in mind, I only have one question for you – what now?

  Yes, the culmination of all of my actions on this case were a result of your own will. There was no investigation to begin with, only the efforts you yourself desired.

  Ichor of the Dawn World. If you have a heart for a mix of Fantasy and Sci-fi with a bit of Progression, then this one is for you. Highly recommend at least checking it out, as it is something I would consider my passion project. I put a lot of thought into it and am releasing new chapted each day, eventually every week.