Chapter Text
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He roamed the archipelago as the whim or wind drew him.
Behind him lay the ruins of Tatarasuna and the mortals he had loved and been loved by, betrayed by one of their own.
He didn't understand the greed that had created the disaster and saw his loved ones dead, nor how Niwa had lied so effectively for so long. He had asked Nagamasa and other survivors of the disaster, but none of them had been able to help him understand because they were just as distressed and bewildered as Kabukimono.
He didn't understand the strange feelings that made tears run down his cheeks and made his chest and throat hurt either, but he knew he really didn't like them. He thought about what Katsuragi would say – how he might explain it to the puppet who'd never experienced such things before – but that made the tears worse.
(He missed Katsuragi more than he had thought possible)
He hoped that his wandering might lead him to wherever Niwa was hiding so he could seek answers to his questions.
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It was autumn now and Kabukimono had been drifting for seven months. In his aimless wandering he found himself on Kannazuka once again.
Obeying the prompting of morbid curiosity, he followed the beach that cut beneath the bulk of the Mikage Furnace. He had no fear of the electro-charged seawater nor of the Tatarigami; he already knew he could survive both.
From there, he climbed up to the Arsenal and hiked along the cliffs.
It was there, tucked into a narrow crack in the cliffside that surely couldn't claim the term cave, that he found answers and more questions.
Looking back at the sight lines, he realised that no-one in the Furnace or looking down from the village would see this spot and what it held.
‼Four bodies stacked carelessly, sheltered enough from the elements that they were still largely intact and readily identifiable: Niwa Hisahide, his wife and their two oldest children‼
He felt something in his chest throb painfully and tears sprang to Kabukimono's eyes again. How could he get answers if those that held them were dead? Although, he supposed that his hope of finding Niwa had been granted if not in the way that he had wished.
Perhaps… the hope of answers was here too.
Katsuragi and Nagamasa were investigators. They had done their best to teach him to think and observe and to apply those thoughts and observations to known facts. He used those skills now because he remembered being told that even if the answer wasn't easy or obvious, it might be possible to learn something that gave a direction to look for other clues.
Crouched over the remains of people he had loved – people who had betrayed everyone they had professed affection for and in the wake of whose betrayal so many others had died – he wondered how these four had died. Who had hidden them in such a disrespectful manner?
He treated the bodies as gently as possible as he lifted and turned them, and saw that none of them bore the horrible burns caused by the Tatarigami. Instead, he found deep wounds to the necks of each. The injuries had been precise and had severed an artery which, from Kabukimono's limited understanding of human anatomy, would have caused them to bleed to death in moments.
‼Even now, months after they died, their garments were covered in the blood that had poured out and dried to a rusty-brown‼
The heart had been removed from Niwa's chest with surgical precision.
Even if Niwa had slain his family, the injury to his own neck would surely not be so neat nor so precise a match for the wounds on the other three. He certainly couldn't have carved out his heart afterward.
Kabukimono suspected someone else had killed the family. If that was true, that might well mean that someone else poisoned Tatarasuna and was responsible for all the other deaths too.
In those first moments of clarity and the consequent blinding rage, he decided he would find that person and make them regret their deeds.
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Kabukimono remembered witnessing the villagers handling the bodies of the dead, and the explanation of funeral rites. There were still enough villagers in Tatarasuna that he could obtain help to get the bodies to the small cemetery and in performing the rites.
Of course that meant he had to explain what he had found. Nagamasa listened in horror to Kabukimono's words. Had he executed his friend in expiation of crimes committed by a cunning and evil perpetrator?
The villagers wrapped the bodies so that they could be extracted from the nook and returned to their home, which had stood empty for months since the disaster began. There, the evidence was examined by Nagamasa. He concurred with Kabukimono's interpretation of the facts; if Niwa had murdered his wife and two of his children, he wouldn't have done it in that nook, nor stacked them disrespectfully like cordwood; and he would surely have killed little Yoshinori too.
The death wound on Niwa's body was as precise as those on the family, which was improbable for the reasons Kabukimono had already considered. No matter which wound occurred first, the second could not have been made by Niwa and thus someone else was involved.
The murder weapon and the missing heart were not with the bodies, which they would have been if Niwa had killed himself; neither of his wounds would have allowed time for concealment; and even if he could have lived long enough to do that, why would he bother?
There were enough discrepancies to make the surviving villagers doubt the original story presented by the foreign engineer, Escher, who had left Tatarasuna once Kabukimono cleansed the Tatarigami.
That acceptance meant that Niwa and his family received proper and honourable funeral rites.
Kabukimono was still deeply confused by the whole affair. What did the killer hope to gain from murdering so many people? What was the point?
Nagamasa prepared a new report to the Tri-Commission exonerating Niwa based upon the new evidence, which brought into question Escher's testimonial. An extensive search for Escher was unsuccessful. There was no trace of the man anywhere – and, when the Kanjou Commission checked their records, they found no record of his passage through Customs at Ritou in either direction.
His stated history remained the only clue. After a long meeting with the Tri-Commission, Nagamasa received orders to travel all the way to Fontaine on the other side of the world in search of the engineer.
"Come with me," he suggested to Kabukimono. "You might like to see more of the world and I think you would wish to follow the investigation as far as it takes us."
Kabukimono agreed to the proposal. He wanted answers and it now seemed unlikely that he would find them in Inazuma.
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