The MPY Kuudere Detective Agency: The Case of the White Wolf, Pt.1 Skyen the Mod, the foremost Wolf Girl in the server, the avatar of Holo the Wise-wolf, had a serious problem.
When members have problems they go to The Deep. They go to talk to people. They go to find help. If the problem is the wrong kind of bad, they go to the MPY Kuudere Detective Agency.
When Skyen walked into the office Yancy knew from her face that the day he had anticipated and feared was here. The day the Goddess would summon him to her service.
Yancy owed Holo a debt. He had her bite-mark on his ear. A spark of her magic glowed there. A spark of her magic ran in his blood. He could not refuse her summons.
Yancy stood in respect. Moon stood in surprise. Skyen had visited them a few times before, once in disguise. Yancy had never behaved like this on those previous occasions.
“Skyen. Please take a seat. Have a cup of coffee.”
They all sat down.
“Yancy, I am here because Holo requires your service.”
“Command me.”
“Yancy, when we quested for the Moon, you were nearly attacked by a pack of wolves.”
“I saved myself because I was carrying the clothes of Skyen/Holo, which held your body scent.”
“That wolves of that pack are the guardians of the edge of the server. The pack has a leader, and the leader answers to Holo.
"I speak to Holo and the server is guarded. This is how it is done. This is how the server is kept safe.”
“Yes.”
“But the leader no longer answers Holo’s call. The pack runs wild. There are rumours in the forest.
"Holo went there. Holo ran in the forest. She discovered a terrible thing.”
“This is going to be good.”
“The pack leader has been possessed by an evil spirit. He has become the White Wolf, a daemon-ridden creature of magic and death.”
“And you need my help to put him away.”
“The White Wolf must be destroyed, or the spirit will spread to the rest of the wolf pack. Then the server will have no protection at its borders.”
Skyen put a brown paper bag on the desk. Yancy opened it and poured out a handful of cartridges, 10 of them. 0.45-inch ACP rounds, made to fit his Colt automatic, the one he had never fired because he was afraid of its totemic power.
The colour of the bullets was odd. He looked closely. The jackets were silver, actual bullion, not just polished steel. There was a sigil inscribed on them. A spell? It made sense, for shooting a daemon.
Yancy looked Skyen square in the eye.
“This is alright for a bit of target practice. I’ll need 200 rounds to do the job for sure.”
“200 rounds! Your pistol only takes seven in the magazine.”
“I’m not going to use my pistol. I’m going to need serious heat for this job.”
“Yancy…”
“Moon?”
“I’m coming with you.”
“This isn’t your duty, Moon. You’re not bound to Holo.”
“Yancy, I’m bound to you, and you’re bound to me. We’re partners.”
Moon and Yancy exchanged a meaningful look.
Yancy secretly wished they could be more than partners. But they were professionals. He kept away from those kind of tangles.
“Skyen, we’ll need 24 magic shotgun shells too. 12-gauge magnum 00 buckshot. High velocity load.”
Skyen knew this would be expensive, but she understood the ties of comradeship which bound Yancy and Moon.
“Very well. It will be better with three of us. Let me explain my plan.”
The idea was to get up into the high, wild forest the day before the full moon and scout an ambush location. When darkness fell, the moon’s magic would bring forth the daemon.
Skyen would assume the avatar of Holo, and hunt in the forest. She would draw the White Wolf into the ambush, and escape up a tree. Yancy and Moon would lay down a cross-fire on the monster.
“If you hit the creature enough times, the bullets will kill its body. The silver and the spells will destroy its evil spirit. Then we must burn the carcass.”
“What if one of us gets bit?”
“Don’t get bitten. The daemon might transfer into you.”
It was a sound plan in outline. Except for the not getting bit part. Yancy had his doubts about that.
The worst thing would be if the daemon wolf caught Holo. A daemon-ridden Holo did not bear thinking about.
He tried to think how else it could go wrong.
“What are the other wolves gonna be doing while all this is going on?”
“I’ll pour bear’s urine all around the ambush site, and on your hides. They fear to approach that scent.”
“So we’re going to end up stinking of rancid bear piss. Great.”
“It’s a chance to shop new trench coats, Moon.”
They looked up the next full moon. Five days. Plenty of time to prepare.
Skyen went to order more silver bullets and shotgun shells. The detectives made a list of useful equipment and started to collect it.
Blankets, ground sheets, first aid kit, a bottle of gin, a bottle of whiskey, steel thermos flasks of hot coffee, a bag of bagels with lox and cream cheese, pastrami on rye bread sandwiches, some camping gear like cups and a paraffin stove.
Three days later they were ready, except for the new magic ammo. Then a delivery boi brought a carton to the office. It was heavy. It rattled when Yancy shook it.
“Okay, Moon, you need to check your shotgun.”
Moon brought out her 12-gauge slide-action with five round magazine, She started to clean it.
Yancy went to a corner of the office where there was a loose floorboard. He pulled it up. Underneath was a small steel case, locked. Yancy took it out, unlocked it and got out another key.
He went to a steel cupboard which had been locked for a long time. Inside was The Gun. His pistol was a kid’s toy in comparison.
The Gun was a Thompson sub-machine-gun, with two fat drum magazines, empty at the moment to avoid stressing the clockwork which fed the cartridges. It was dull blue steel. It had a wooden stock, a pistol style front grip, and a leather sling.
Also in the locker were three metal boxes. These contained the casings, explosive fillings, and fuse assemblies to build six pineapple hand grenades. There were two cardboard boxes of standard 0.45-inch ACP cartridges. 200 rounds in total.
“Won’t need all that stuff on this job.”
Yancy picked up the Tommy-gun hesitantly. Its totemic power flowed into him, strengthening his aspect. He became harder boiled.
Moon looked at him with a sideways look. There was something dangerous in his eyes.
He brought everything to his desk. He got the cleaning kit. He disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled the Tommy-gun, checking the action carefully. Then he checked the drum magazines.
He opened the boxes of special cartridges Skyen had sent. 200 silver bullets with a high velocity load.
A serious amount of precious metal. A serious amount of special death.
He carefully loaded each magazine, winding up the clockwork click by click as he put the shells in one by one. He checked and polished every single bullet, to see it had its magic sigil engraved in the bright silver.
The drum would take 100 rounds, but Yancy put in only 88, partly for luck, also to avoid over-stressing the clockwork.The filled mags rattled, so he tied rags around each of them to muffle the sound a bit.
“Probably don’t need two mags,” he thought, “But nothing succeeds like excess.”
When the killer had to kill someone, or something, he liked to over-kill it to to be sure. That was part of how he had got his name. The name no-one in the server knew about.
He loaded two magazines for the Colt as well. There were 10 cartridges left over, plus the first 10 Skyen had brought on the day she came to require his service.
Yancy thought if he needed the spare shells he would already be dead before he could load them. He put the mostly empty box in his desk drawer and locked it.
“Never know when some silver bullets may come in handy.” he thought.
“Goddess, Yancy, you sure look mean.”
“This Tommy-gun, the power in it. It’s almost made me back into… him.”
“You never told me his name.”
“Don’t want to.”
“Is there a lot of cross-over?”
“Yeah. That killer aspect was very hard-boiled. But he was British, so it’ll be OK. How’s your rod?”
Moon had reassembled her shotgun. She racked the slide, and dry-fired it.
“Ready to load.”
She took the box of shotgun shells and fed 5 into the magazine. The rest of the box she wrapped in plastic and put into her pack.
“Yancy, we’re just trusting Skyen that these shells are silver and magic.”
“You can trust her. She’ll be out there with us. We’ll all die together if something goes bad.”
Moon gulped quietly and wondered if she had made a wise decision to go with Yancy. But she was kuudere, so she didn’t show any doubt.
TO BE CONTINUED...
The story of how Skyen and Yancy quested for the Moon is in
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/778071.page © 2019 Yancy08620163 | 8J3U37
aka Starship Captain 88