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The MPY Kuudere Detective Agency: The Case of the Missing Waifu, part 1


After Moon Potato and Yancy had solved the case of the contraband spuds they decided to take a week or two off. Moon had to do physio for her arm wound anyway. They sat in their office with the door locked.

Sometimes the phones rang. Yancy answered and took notes but made no commitments. Moon threw a baseball against the wall, catching it on the rebound.

Again and again and again.

Again and again and again.

Yancy leafed through old fashion magazines and drank rye and soda water. The Princess, his Husbando, was out of town, busy. He couldn’t go to the Casino to play, or to NSFW for the Catgirls, so he had nothing better to do.

“Moon, I’m going stir crazy. It is okay if I go out for a spell?”

“Sure, Yancy. Where you gonna go?”

“I’m gonna walk the mean streets.”

“Take care no-one’s following you. I want to go with, but my arm…”

“Yeah, I know. You’re doing good with your exercises anyway. Keep in there pitching and you’ll soon be fit.”

Yancy checked his gat and cosh and went out. He took the uptown trolleybus to the Casino. He hadn’t told Moon where he was going because he was still ashamed of not being forgiven by Saki. Yancy hoped that solving the spuds case might redeem him.

Yancy consulted the Oracle: “Is Yancy forgiven?”

“Uncertain.”

“Thanks a bunch.”

Yancy felt blue. He decided to walk back to The Deep.

“Exercise will do me good. What I really need a case. A good case which counts as a quest. Another quest would get me back into Saki’s good books for sure. This detective caper isn’t paying as good as I thought, and it keeps me away from my Husbando.”

Back at the office, Yancy found Moon had admitted a visitor. A tall member in a smart trouser suit. Xe looked worried. Everyone looked worried who came into the agency, or scared, or angry. Except the landlady when she came for the month’s rent. She looked implacable.

“Who’s this, Potato?”

“It’s SilverRose. Xer Waifu has gone missing.”

SilverRose and xer Waifu Mariella were the foremost lovers in the server. Their spoonings and canoodlings were notorious. Kou had even intervened to get them to dial it down in the public channels.

“Tell us about it from the beginning.”

“I came back from the Casino and went to visit her. Mariella was gone. She didn’t take anything. She even left her phone!”

“Phones can be traced.”

“What do you mean, Yancy?”

“I mean I’ve worked a lot of missing Waifu cases. Nine times out of ten, the Waifu doesn’t want to be found.”

“You’re so cruel!”

“Yancy isn’t cruel, it’s just his aspect. He’s hard-boiled.”

“Thanks, Moon. SilverRose, all I’m saying is I’ve done a ton of missing Waifu cases. I can’t go into details cause of confidentiality. Let’s just say there’s not much left to surprise me.”

“Yancy, it won’t hurt to take a look. You said you were getting stir crazy. Say, take a look at their .waifuinfos.”

Yancy dropped .waifuinfo. Both SilverRose and Mariella were Husbando and Waifu and Waifu and Husbando to each other, and had no other Affinities or Waifus. That’s pretty devoted.

“Yeah, you’re right as usual, Moon. OK. SilverRose, you know our terms?”

“Yes.”

“Have you got the clams?”

“Er…”

“It don’t matter. We’re Kuudere. You can pay us later.”

“I can’t thank you enough!”

“Time for thanks is when we’ve got Mariella back. Let’s go to the scene of the crime. Moon, are you carrying? You better be.”

Moon checked her Beretta. Yancy grabbed the fingerprint and evidence kit. He was already packing heat.

They took the trolleybus to the Home district, where Mariella hung out. Mariella’s crib was a typical 1LDK like most members live in. SilverRose had a key of course.

“You go first, SilverRose, in case she's in there. I'll be right behind you. Don’t touch anything.”

The apartment was empty.

“SilverRose, I want you to sit quiet at the table while me and Moon work the scene.”

They put on latex gloves.

It looked to Yancy like a typical single girl’s pad. He’d been in several before, for exactly the reason you think. Yancy wasn’t a monk.

It was tidy, clean, with some cute decorations like teddy bears and stuff, and closets full of girl’s clothes. Plenty of toiletries. A few pornos but nothing to make you raise an eyebrow.

Yancy smelt the pillows. Two different scents. He took a bottle of scent from the dressing table into the lounge.

Moon checked the kitchen and bathroom.

Yancy went through the laundry basket and found a crumpled blouse. The same scent.

“I didn’t take you for a panty sniffer, Yancy.”

He fixed a cold eye on xer.

“Don’t get fresh, SilverRose. Scents are an important part of detecting. Here we’ve got one main scent which I bet dollars to dimes is Mariella’s. We’ll know for sure when we open the bottle. There’s a second scent in the pillows. I’ll bet that’s yours.”

He got close to SilverRose and took a sniff of xer cologne. It was the same as the second scent.

“What do you think, Moon?”

“No body, no blood, no sign of a struggle. But look at the couch.”

The cushions were disarranged. Next to the couch was a phone, a half-empty glass of sodapop, and an open bag of potato chips. Straight up quality brand, not counterfeit.

“I gave those to her.” SilverRose’s lip wobbled.

Yancy smelt the couch. Faint, but the same scent. He saw something metallic stuck down in the gap between the cushions. He eased it out. A kind of big pocket watch, with a gold case. It had an awful lot of dials and winders. Swiss, probably. Lots of complications.

“Why would a girl have a watch like this? This is a rich old man’s watch.”

“I’ve never seen it before,” said SilverRose.

They laid out the various pieces of evidence on the table. The glass had a lipstick print on the rim. The colour matched a lipstick in the dressing table drawer.

“You’re a gal, Moon. What’s your feminine intuition tell you about this situation?”


“Mariella was waiting for a friend. She got made up and put on scent, so probably the friend was a lover. The lover was late. Mariella was bored of waiting and started to play on her phone. Let’s see the phone. Look. It’s the game, as in The Game, DGF.”

“That means zip, we all play it.”

“But look at the screen. There’s a weird effect going on.”

It made your eyes hurt to look at it. Like all the wrong angles at once, crowding in. They stopped looking.

Yancy smelt the perfume bottle. It was the same scent.

Moon and Yancy took prints off the phone, the glass, the scent bottle, a couple of other items, and finished by printing SilverRose.

Most of the prints were matches for an unknown member. They had to be Mariella’s. The rest were from SilverRose.

The big watch didn’t have any prints on it at all.

“Odd! Let’s have a good look at this thing.”

It was like a large fob watch, the type that old-fashioned guys wear in their waistcoat pockets. It had far more dials and hands and winders than anyone needs, and strange calibrations which were difficult to read.

“Okay. Here’s my take on it. Moon is right. Mariella was expecting you, SilverRose. Everyone knows you’re lovers, so that’s a given. She got made up nice because the two of you were going to have some fun. You turned up late. Mariella was bored. She started playing The Game to while away time. Something happened and she disappeared. Whatever that thing was that disappeared her, it’s got to be something to do with this watch, because it’s too out of place.”

“I already told you I came here, Yancy. What next?”

“Yancy, hadn’t we better check SiIverRose’s crib too?”

“You’re right, Moon. Don’t try to refuse, SilverRose, me and Moon ain’t got the legal authorities but we got friends uptown, if you follow me.”

“It’s OK, Yancy. I can see you’re doing your best for Mariella. I want to help.”

They bagged the evidence and went over to SilverRose’s place. They found nothing, except that they confirmed the second scent was SilverRose’s cause xe had a spray bottle of it in xer bathroom.

“Look, SilverRose, I believe you’re on the level with us. Something weird happened to Mariella and you could be next in line. I want you to come and stay in the office. We’ve got a sink and a camp bed. Grab some stuff quickly.”

SilverRose put some clothes and toiletries in a duffel bag. They cleared out and took three different trolleybuses back to The Deep, to throw off any tails.

>>>>>

Back in the flat, Mariella woke up from a strange dream. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the door just closing.

Mariella shrieked! She ran to the bathroom and locked herself in.

“Where’s my phone? Where’s my phone? Where’s SilverRose, why is xe is so late?”

Nothing happened.

After a while, Mariella stopped feeling so scared. Maybe it was a trick of the light or something. She went back to the lounge. Stuff had been moved around. Her glass was gone. Her phone was gone. Her bag of chips was gone. She found it in the garbage along with two sets of latex gloves. The glass was waiting to be washed up.

“This is seriously weird! This is scary! I’m going to SilverRose’s place.”

But SilverRose wasn’t there.

No-one was around. Wherever Mariella walked, it was like people had gone round the corner just before she could see them. Like she saw their heels disappearing. The channels were full of strange chatter, like it was coming in from a far distant station on long wave. She could nearly understand and then it faded away. It reminded her of the time she accidentally tuned into the BBC’s Test Match Special.

Mariella was too scared to go home. She was too scared to stay in the channels. She was too scared to go to SilverRose’s place. She didn’t know what to do, where to go, who to ask for help. Then she saw a “missing person” poster pasted on a streetlamp. The face was hers.

Mariella fainted.

<<<<<

In the agency office, Yancy got all the evidence arranged. They sat and looked at it. The phone screen still hurt your eyes to look at.

“We need a photo of Mariella. We need to make a missing person poster.”

SilverRose had a good one in xer wallet. Xe gave it to Yancy. He went down to the print shop and got 1,000 copies done with a short piece of text and the agency number. He paid some n00bs 100 clams to paste them up everywhere and leave them in cafes and the Casino.

When Yancy got back, no-one could think of anything.

“Let’s try free associating.”

“What’s that mean, Yancy?”

“It means we get drunk. That’s what the ancient Persians did when they had a difficult problem to think about.”

Yancy got a pint of rye out of his desk and poured three glasses.

“I don’t drink hard liquor,” said SilverRose.

“Sure, kiddo. Better stick to coffee, then. It’ll boost your brain a different way.” Yancy poured SilverRose’s rye into his own glass.

The two detectives sipped, and felt the hard liquor slide over their tongues and down their throats. It lay in their stomachs and glowed. Their brains began to work on different wavelengths.

After a bit, Moon said, “Look, this is going to sound like a weird science story, but what’s the main event in The Game at the moment?”

“It’s time travel.”

“And what’s this watch thing look like? It’s not a watch. Maybe it’s a time travel doohickey.”

“You mean, the game glitched when Mariella was playing, it spat out a time travel gadget, and that’s done something to Mariella.”

“It makes as much sense as anything.”

“Let’s wait for the morning. Maybe something will turn up. If not, then I’ll start to believe your time travel idea.”

They ordered Chinese food, and get ready to rack out in the office.

>>>>>

Mariella came back from her faint. She looked and the poster was still there and it was definitely her on it.

“But I’m not missing! I’m right here. It’s everyone else who’s missing. What’s happening?”

There was still no-one in the streets. There was still alien radio in the air.

Mariella read the poster carefully. It offered a reward for anyone with good information about her. Apply to the MPY Kuudere Detective Agency, address and phone number.

Mariella had lost her phone. She had left her purse at her flat, so she didn’t have change for a pay phone. She decided the only thing to do was to walk down to The Deep and visit the detective agency herself. It seemed to take an age, but probably was about an hour. The sky got dark.

By the time Mariella reached The Deep, the office was closed. No lights on and the door locked. Mariella banged but there was no answer. She couldn’t think of anything to do except lie down in the doorway.

“At least if anyone goes in or out they can’t help but stumble over me”, she thought. It was a long, miserable night but she fell asleep eventually.

<<<<<

The next morning Yancy was up first, because he had a headache. He made a big pot of coffee, took four aspirin and a finger of rye and started eating cold noodles.

“This detective business isn’t as glamorous as people think. I need to make a big score and get out. The Princess wouldn’t like me doing this kind of stuff. I should be up at the Palace, rebuilding the Imperial Fortunes.”

Yancy began to feel better as the various drugs mixed in his body. He had a wash and a shave. His morale built up and he felt ready to face the day.

The others also got up and prepared themselves as well as the meagre facilities of the agency would allow them. They turned their noses up at cold noodles, thinking to grab a bag of hot bagels from the local bakery.

“Before we do that, let’s try an experiment. Moon, you think this watch gizmo is a kind of time travel machine and it’s gone wrong, right.”

“Yep. Screwy I know but I can’t think of anything better.”

“Okay, let’s try magic.”

Yancy rubbed the watch against his ear.

“What are you doing, Yancy?” asked SilverRose.

“This is the ear what got bit by Holo a couple of months back, when we chased the Moon together. She left some of her magic in it. I didn’t know at first, but Moon noticed it.”

Sure enough, sparks of mana emerged from the scar on Yancy’s ear. They flowed over and around the watch. Nothing happened.

“It was a long shot, anyway. I reckon if this is a time machine, it works by science. We’ve got to study time science to learn about this thing.”

“How are you going to do that, Yancy?”

“We’ll go to the Palace. Princess Onecornchippy is sweet on science stuff. She’s got loads of discs. There’s bound to be some time travel stuff in there.”

They put some useful gear into duffel bags and went out to catch the trolleybus uptown. They grabbed a bag of hot bagels on the way. Yancy bought a bottle of good wine in case the Princess came home early and had to be charmed.

>>>>>


TO BE CONTINUED…

First off, I was really happy to see a new installment posted — that means you have at least one person hooked!

I’m still pretty confused about the setting. So the world is clearly structured like a digital space. For example, there’s a place called NSFW. Some of the “people” there are bots rather than actual beings. Moderators are in charge, to some extent. A key feature of characters, albeit a mutable and somewhat superficial one, is their “aspect,” which sounds like a “skin” or maybe “class” to use game terms. And the names seem like online handles, or at least some of them do.

But, on the other hand, no one seems log out and have a life beyond this world. The characters wait, eat, sleep, and even faint “online,” so to speak. When it comes to eating and drinking, however, nutrition apparently isn’t a major concern (e.g., Yancy packs Pocky for his quest is the first story). Then again, characters have cell phones on which they play games — a strange thing to do for somebody who was already “in” a game-like VR world. Also, aspects aren’t all there is to physical appearance, as we can tell by the fact that Mariella uses lipstick. And both she and SilverRose use perfume/cologne.

Also, when Yancy comes back to the office, he doesn’t recognize SilverRose but knows SilverRose uses xe/xer for pronouns, or at least that’s the impression I have from the use of the third-person narration.

Style-wise, the terse sentences — is this a function of the pot boiler enterprise Yancy is currently sampling or is that the style you are working on more generally? Like, if Yancy decided to be a questing knight in the mode of Lancelot, would the language become more flowery?

I’m very pleased someone likes the story and wants to comment. Thank you!

The setting is a Discord server for players of Dream Girlfriend, a Japanese dress-up doll/dating simulation game for mobile phones. Players have accounts to discuss the game, and in general to chat with each other and play mini-games like gambling and collecting Waifus. It’s saturated with popular anime and manga culture, hence references to Holo, and Boss Coffee and Pocky.

I’ve taken that as the basis and developed the idea of a larger online world which might be something like a virtual environment with human personalities running in computer simulation. I haven’t bothered to work this up into a fully fledged concept because I’m just writing stories as they occur to me, for the fun of it.

Aspects are my idea for the way that characters can vary their appearance and abilities by channelling different concepts around the kind of character they want to change into.

This works partly by feedback. When Yancy wants to become a hard-boiled noir detective, he starts to act like the ones he has seen in films, and he gets clothes to suit. He starts to change himself, and the rest of the aspect follows naturally, changing him all the way. He doesn’t have to buy a gun and a bottle of whiskey. They are there in his desk because noir detectives have guns and bottles of whiskey in their desks. He acquires the ability to shoot and fight the same way.

This is just a way of playing with the characters, to justify different speech patterns and situations and skill sets, without having to write a new set of characters for each story. These are very short stories, after all.

The clipped delivery arises from two causes. Part of it is the identity of Yancy currently as a noir detective. A more important part is that I’m trying to write these stories for delivery on mobile devices, so the prose needs to work in short paragraphs and sentences. However, I hope you’ll notice how Yancy’s speech changes when he changes aspects in the rest of the story.

I’m also trying to concentrate on dialogue rather than exposition.

My assumption is that characters in the world wouldn’t constantly explain to each other what’s going on because they already know. I hope that readers will go with the flow and begin to get a sense of the world structure by seeing it through the characters’ eyes. This is working to some degree as you’ve already picked up the concept of aspects.

The second part of this case is now ready.

The MPY Kuudere Detective Agency:
The Case of the Missing Waifu, part 2


<<<<<

Mariella woke up with a start and found herself inside the agency office. She knew because she could read the name backwards on the glass of the door. It was locked.

“Hello?”

No answer.

“How did I get in here?”

Mariella searched the small office. There was no-one around. There was a lot of stuff lying about, some of it hers. Her perfume bottle was on the desk, and a dirty bunched up blouse. Some Chinese take-away food cartons, mostly empty. A nearly empty pint bottle of rye whiskey. Some yellow legal pads with notes and pictures scribbled on them.

She read the notes, which went on about odd stuff like time travel and magic. On another page was some writing in SilverRose’s hand:

I miss you.
I love you.
I’m going to find you.
Come back to me.

“Oh, what am I going to do?”

Mariella started to cry. She seemed to be alone in a mad world. She was cold and hungry. She had slept in a doorway. She had no money or resources other than the clothes she stood up in. All she had was a shred of hope and a message of love.

After a good cry Mariella began to feel a bit better. She dried her eyes and blew her nose. She found coffee and set up the drip machine. She made a big cup of joe and put some whiskey in it. She scoffed some cold noodles. It was better than nothing.

She had a sponge bath and guiltily borrowed someone’s toothbrush, which was kind of yucky but she dipped it in whiskey before and after, to sterilise it. Better than furry teeth, anyway.

Finally Mariella refreshed her perfume. She felt a lot better now, even though she was starting to think her clothes might be a bit whiffy.

She tried dialling her phone number from the desk phone. Out of service. Odd! Perhaps whoever had got it had let the battery run down. She tried dialling a place she knew in NSFW. Answering machine. Well, it’s early in the morning. She dialled the speaking clock. 08:37.

Mariella thought what to do next. She could wait and see if the detectives came to work, or she could go somewhere and look for people she knew. She decided to be proactive. She wrote a note for the detectives and a note for SilverRose.

She put some useful looking stuff in a duffel bag and thought where to go. The Palace! Yancy was Waifu to the Princess, so he could easily be there. It was where he lived, after all. SilverRose obviously was with the detectives too. If not, perhaps the Princess was at the Palace and would help.

Once everything was ready Mariella went out to walk uptown.

>>>>>

SilverRose, Moon Potato and Yancy got to the Palace. Yancy used his key.

“How come you’ve got a key, Yancy?”

“Yancy’s Waifu to Onecornchippy. He’s the Frog Prince.”

“Yeah. I’m working the detective agency to try to get back into Saki’s good books. My main job is supposed to be restoring the fortunes of the Imperial House. I can’t do that until Saki forgives me.”

Calling it “The Palace” made it sound real fancy. But actually it was a good size modern 4LDK near the top of a swanky block. Even with the Imperial Fortunes in decline, the Princess couldn’t slum it too much.

Yancy put the wine on the table with a sweet note on a card, just in case the Princess came home. He tied a ribbon in a pretty bow round the neck of the bottle. Sometimes even a hard-boiled gumshoe has to show his feminine side.

He showed Moon and SilverRose the facilities and the coffee machine. They made coffee and ate bagels with lox and cream cheese.

SilverRose wanted a shower, so xe did that while Moon and Yancy set up the TV and looked for useful reference discs. They came back with a pile.

“What’s first?”

“Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.”

They watched the flick. It was pretty good.

“This explains a lot about time travel and how to use it, but really these boys are bozos. Their hearts’re in the right place, but they get real lucky. We can’t just rely on luck and good intentions.”

“Also the technology is completely different to what we got here.”

“What’s the next one?”

“Back to the Future.”

They watched the first one in the series; there were three altogether.

“We’re getting warmer. The kid’s a nice boy but he’s just a kid. No detailed knowledge. This Doc character knows a lot about time travel though. If we could get hold of him he would be a lot of help.”

“He would be a difficult aspect, though. Let’s keep him in reserve and check out the next disc.”

“Don’t you want to look at Back to the Future 2?”

“We’ll come back to it in the future if we have to. Funny how that came out.”

The next disc was first of a big pile of Doctor Who. There were so many that they decided to take a break and set up a second TV to get through the research as fast as possible. It was time for some lunch anyway.

Yancy made a plate of sandwiches while SilverRose sorted the Doctor Who discs and found another TV. Moon had a shower.

Yancy was worried if the Princess would get back soon. The kitchen was a war zone, the fridge was half empty, and the living room looked like a geek festival. The bathroom wasn’t getting any cleaner too.

Onecornchippy had a touch of OCD and would either be horrified at the mess, or delighted at the opportunity to do a lot of tidying up. It could swing either way, and Yancy wasn’t too eager to wait and see the result.

He wanted to get the research finished, clear up, and clear out. He remembered what happened when the Princess was re-organising her audio collection into alphabetical order of their names -- Beatles, The; Clash, The; -- and got to the albums by The The.

Yancy watched several Doctor Whos and was impressed. This guy knew his time travel, also his shtick was going around helping people, which was the basic idea of the detective agency. It looked like a good fit.

“How’s it going, youse two? From my angle this Doctor is the guy for us.”

“Guy? The Doctor is a lady!”

“What? No, he’s not. Come and see.”

They compared research notes, and skimmed through some more discs to confirm their findings. It turned out there were lots of Doctors, some of them guys and some of them dolls. Or it was one Doctor, and he changed sex when he “regenerated” and came back after being killed. Also, being time travellers, sometimes Doctors from different eras teamed up with their other selves. The whole thing was pretty confusing, actually.

“Look, the basic point is that the Doctor is a kind of Kuudere space detective. He wanders the channels of space and time helping people who’ve got troubles. That’s what we wanna do. The Doctor has the straight dope on time travel. He'll figure out this watch thing pronto.

“She. The Doctor's a dame.”

“Moon, you can be a lady Doctor. I’ll be a man Doctor and we can work together. It’s ideal.”

“We’ll have to nix the gats. The Doctor doesn’t like guns.”

“I want to come. I can be a Companion.”

“Sure, SilverRose. That’ll work good because the Doctor always has to explain stuff to his Companion. It will be a cinch of an aspect for you. The Doctor has all sorts of Companions, even aliens. Pick any one you like and get started.”

“Moon, this is going to be a difficult aspect for you and me. I’m gonna have a shower and think about how to manage it.”

Yancy thought about changing his aspect. He figured the best way to do it was to return to his base aspect, then work from that to Doctor Who. It was probably too big a jump from a hard-boiled American gumshoe to a foppish alien British scientist in one go.

Yancy had a shower and put his detective clothes in the laundry. He hung up his trench coat and snap brim hat. He hid his revolver and cosh in a drawer.

Yancy got his Combat Accountancy tools out and worked with them for a while, sitting naked in his bedroom to get rid of the traces of his detective aspect. He began to feel like his real, original self again. Time to get dressed.

He looked in his wardrobe and found a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows. Good start. He put on corduroy trousers and a shirt. He found a bow tie and tried to tie it. Not good. He tried to think himself slim and wiry instead of chunky and muscley. His hair began to grow out rather Eton floppish. The aspect was starting to come together. He re-tied his bow tie neatly and went out to see how the others were getting on.

Moon was wearing an outfit of baggy trousers with braces and a long coat. Her hair had gone honey-blonde and shoulder length. She looked the part. She looked pretty good actually!

SilverRose was dressed the same as before, but now wore an expression of excitement and puzzlement, and her hair was metallic silver.

“Yancy, what on Earth are you wearing?” asked Moon in a flat northern British accent.

“I’m wearing a bow tie. Bow ties are cool.” His accent was practically BBC English. He fiddled with his tie and smirked.


“Wow, you guys! It’s worked. You’re the Doctors now.”

Yancy and Moon both could feel the server turning beneath them. They felt the clock chips ticking off milliseconds. They sensed a knot in the continuum; it was close by. They went to the table. Moon picked up the pocket watch.

“It’s not a watch, it’s a time jumper. Is anyone excited? Cause I’m really excited.”

“What’s a time jumper, Moon?” asked SilverRose.

“I’m glad you asked. It’s basically a small time machine. They’re not very accurate, and they give a bit of a bumpy ride compared to my Tardis, but they are compact. Look at the size of this one.”

Yancy reached out to fiddle with the knobs, and Moon slapped his hand away.

“Oi! I was first.You can have a go when I’ve finished looking at it.”

Yancy shrugged and smiled and looked a bit helpless. “Age before beauty.”

“What’s he mean, Moon?”

“My Doctor’s older than his. Pearls before swine, Yancy.”

“I was only going to suggest you look at the stochastic assymptator dial.”

“I was just about to do that, thank you very much.”

With a moderate amount of bickering the two Doctors came to the idea that the time jumper was last used with a setting a few seconds in the past.

“But it didn’t go with the passenger, who must have been Mariella. She was projected into the past and is stuck there now. That’s why we can’t find her. Her timeline is behind ours”

“Can’t we jump back?”

“It’s not that accurate. We would need to hit the precise microsecond. We should be able to cope though.”

“Have you got a plan?”


“We will have by the time we need it.”

“The other thing is that we need to work out a way to communicate with Mariella. That isn’t hard actually. We can just write notes and leave them in the places she is likely to go to.”

“How can she communicate with us?”

“Our notes will tell her to write a reply. Then we jump back maybe 30 minutes and wait to go forwards and read it if there is one. We’ll be following her.

“I feel so close to her!”

“That could be true, SilverRose. For all we know she’s here now, only one second behind us.”

“I say, everyone. We should get out of here, because if Onecornchippy comes back and sees this mess, there could be fireworks.”

“I can’t let you get into trouble on my behalf, Yancy.”

“It doesn’t matter. Mariella is the priority. I’ve done lots of silly things and Onecornchippy has forgiven me, because she knows my heart is in the right place.”

Yancy crossed his fingers for luck.

“SilverRose, where are the places Mariella likes to go apart from your two apartments?”

“She used to go down to NSFW sometimes. I never asked what for, in case I didn’t like the answer.”

“Well, really, I’m not going down there. We should put notes in both apartments and here and the agency office.”

“What if she hasn’t got keys?”

“Good point. Stick them on the doors.”

It took a couple of hours to get this done. They found the notes Mariella had left in the agency, which proved she was alive and operating in their past.

“What now?”

“We’ll jump back one hour and go round the places we left notes, and see if there are any replies. We’ve just got to take care we don’t bump into ourselves.”

“Is that dangerous?”

“It’s more that it’s embarrassing, really.”

<<<<<

Mariella slogged uptown on foot. Whenever she came to a trolleybus stop the trolley was just leaving. Not that she had any money.

There was still no-one in the channels, at least only the people just disappearing around corners like ghosts. The noises she heard were weird and spoopy. She tried not to listen to them. Test Cricket was mad enough when you heard it clearly. All those busses and cakes.

Mariella was tired and hungry. She thought of going to her own place, then realised she had rushed out and left her keys locked inside. She decided to go to The Palace as originally planned.

When she got there she realised her mistake. The main doors were shut. She rang the intercom, not expecting a reply, and didn’t get one. She sat down and leaned against the doors and cried.

Suddenly she found herself inside the doors. It was as if invisible people had come out, opening the doors and letting her fall in. Mariella got up and went to the directory. The Princesses apartment was on the fifth floor. The lift wasn’t working. She slogged up the stairs.

The Palace’s door had a note pinned to it. Mariella grabbed it and read it eagerly.

******

Dear Miss Mariella,

If you are reading this note, it means our surmises about your situation are correct.

You are living in a timeline a few seconds or minutes behind actual server time. This is why you can’t see anyone. They are ahead of you.

The reason this has happened is that you have had an accident with a time jumper.
However, we have got the time jumper and we only need to zero in on your timeline and we can rescue you.

Please write a reply on this note and put the time. It will help us to locate you.

Keep your pecker up!

Moon Potato and Yancy, The Doctors.

After this was a tearful plea from SilverRose for Mariella to follow The Doctors’ instructions carefully. And “I Love You.”

******

Mad though it was the time jump idea made a kind of sense.

Mariella checked the time on a clock in the lobby and wrote it on the paper. She put “Mariella was here” and signed the paper. Then she wrote a short love note to SilverRose. She sat down, leaning against the door, to wait for the detectives to return. She fell asleep.

Suddenly Mariella found herself inside the apartment. There was a load of junk lying around, dirty plates, piles of video discs, all kinds of stuff. It was vanishing like fog or ghosts or something even while she looked at it.

There was a shadow going around the place. Mariella was scared and hid in a corner. Then she smelt SilverRose’s eau de toilette, and started to cry again. This was definitely a day for tears.

>>>>>

Yancy and Moon were squabbling about whose turn it was to try the time jumper. They both thought it was a neat gadget and wanted to play with it.

“Doctors! Please!”

They looked at SilverRose in surprise.

“Sorry, SilverRose.”

“We’re forgetting ourselves.”

“This is your fault,” Yancy hissed.

“Shut up, you numpty.”

They both smiled at SilverRose.

“Doctors, what’s our next move?”

“We’ll go around the places we left notes and see if there are any replies.”

When they got to the Palace, they found no note from Mariella.

“Bingo! Someone’s been here.”

“Shut up. Can’t you hear the Princess in there?”

There was a bustling noise inside. Yancy looked glum.

“Onecornchippy is back. She may not have taken it well.”

“What can we do?”

“I need to make myself scarce.”

“Let’s get out of here and think about our next move.”

They got down to street level and found a greasy spoon cafe.

TO BE CONTINUED....

I really enjoyed the description of Yancy changing aspects. If only it were so simple to “put on” a POV, complete with a whole set of knowledge. Probably not so enjoyable to “shed” it, though.

The MPY Kuudere Detective Agency:
The Case of the Missing Waifu, part 3



Yancy wanted Earl Grey tea. He was annoyed they only had English Breakfast. He ordered toasted tea cakes to go with it.

“Stop making such a fuss, Yancy. We’ve got work to do.”

“I think better with a decent pot of tea inside me.”

“Doctor, what are we going to do?”

“This micro-jumping with the time jumper is tricky. What we need to do is find a way to jump outside of normal server time. We should jump into a myth time.”

“Yes, good idea, Moon!”

“What do you mean, Doctors?”

“If we jump into a myth time and get Mariella in there with us, it will resynchronise all of our timelines. We need to think of a myth with the most congruence to all of us. That will be the easiest to get into.”

“And we need to get Mariella to increase her congruence and join. How are we going to do that?”

“Pick the myth time first, then we’ll think about how to bring Mariella into it.”

“What’s the most recent myth there has been in an event in The Game?”

“Wonderland. Alice in Wonderland. A couple of months ago.”

“That’s perfect, SilverRose. That’s a good congruence already. First, we all played it. Second, it’s a British story and Yancy and I are both British now.”

“My prime, the baseline Yancy, used to live and work there. Where they published it, I mean. In Oxford. The author lived there. He imagined Wonderland in the countryside around Oxford.”

“Even better.”

“How are we going to get into Wonderland?”

“We have to get to the edge of the server, where the channels are plastic. Then we use our imagination to create the countryside around Oxford, since that was where Wonderland was first imagined. Yancy has to help with that, he knows Oxford in IRL reality.

“Yancy must describe it to us and we all help to imagine it. If we are strong enough, it will become Wonderland. Then we jump down the rabbit hole. Mariella, who must become Alice, will jump down to us and she will be re-united with us in myth time.”

“The problem is how to get out afterwards.”

“We can get out with the time jumper. We just need to get ahead of server clock time, then we will have been missing from the server for a few hours. It won’t be noticed.”

“But before we can start, we have to communicate with Mariella. She needs to be as similar as possible to Alice. The blue dress, the pinafore, the Alice band. It’s all important. Everything that increases her congruence will help.”

“SilverRose, you know Mariella’s wardrobe. Has she got any clothes like that?”

“Yes. She’s got a blue dress. It’s not the puffy skirt style, like the real Alice, though.”

“Even a bit of similarity helps increase congruence. The closer Mariella can dress to Alice’s appearance, the easier it will be to assume the full aspect and get into the myth time.”

“She’s got a kitchen apron which is a pale yellow colour. And several Alice bands.”

“That will do nicely.”

They worked out the plan carefully.

SilverRose went to get the Alice clothes from Mariella’s apartment. Xe also got a broomhandle. Xe hoped this, together with xer silver hair and red suit, would make xer look like a Queen of Heart’s guard with a spear.

The two Doctors went to the agency office in The Deep. They prepared a flier to give Mariella the necessary instructions. It asked her to go to the agency office and read more instructions left for her there.

Yancy had it printed. He borrowed the time jumper and went forwards an hour so he was ahead of Mariella. He paid n00bs to distribute the flier around the channels. Then he jumped back. SilverRose had returned with the Alice costume, and Moon had written out careful instructions for Mariella.

“Right. Now we wait to see if Mariella comes and collects her clothes. When she does, we jump an hour ahead of her and get to the edge of the server first, to prepare the way.”

<<<<<

Mariella hid in a corner until the whirlwind of shadows had finished clearing up the apartment. Things went quiet. She wanted to get out of there. It was too spooky seeing things happen that way. She went back down to the empty street and walked aimlessly, not knowing what to do. Then she saw another poster with her face on it, different to the Missing Person poster. This one specifically told her to go to the detective agency, so she did.

At the agency the door was open but there was no-one there. There was a bag on the table, with some of her clothes inside. As well as the Alice costume, SilverRose had thoughtfully included some clean underwear and a packet of sandwiches. Mariella had a wash and put on clean clothes and ate. She felt much better. Then she read the notes which had been put in the clothes bag.

*****

Dear Mariella,

Here is the plan which will reunite you with SilverRose.

You are going to become Alice and visit Wonderland. We will meet you there and bring you and SilverRose back to the channels.

First, put on the new clothes and imagine that you are Alice. Walk to the east edge of the server. When you get there, you will find Wonderland.

Cross the river and jump into the rabbit hole. We will be waiting at the bottom with SilverRose.

Write a note to tell us you have read this one, and leave it here.

It was signed by Moon and Yancy and SilverRose.

*****

Although it sounded weird, it seemed as sensible as anything else which had happened in the past day, so Mariella decided to do what the note said. She scribbled a note of her own to confirm, grabbed up her stuff, and left.

>>>>>

Moon nudged Yancy.

“The stuff’s gone. She’s been here. There’s a note from her.”

The note confirmed that Mariella understood the plan and was following it.

“No time to waste,” said Yancy. “Let’s jump ahead an hour.”

“My turn, I think, Yancy.” Moon reset the time jumper. They held hands and jumped through time.

After an hour’s walk they had reached the ill-defined channels far from the civilised centre of the server.

“It was different when I was here with Skyen and Holo,” said Yancy. “It was wild and rugged.”

“Now you must make it like Oxfordshire countryside, with rivers.”

Yancy began to describe the scene to them. The dreaming spires of the city behind them. The meadows and pastures, the woods, and the two rivers, the Cherwell, which he pronounced Charwell, and the Isis.

As he spoke, they all tried to envision the scene in their mind’s eye. Gradually, the plastic channels assumed the new aspect of reality.

They came to a river. There was a small boat tied up from its stern, a Thames skiff. Yancy climbed in confidently and shipped the blades. He handed Moon, then SilverRose down into the boat. Moon sat in the stern and SilverRose in the bow.

“I’ll scull you over.”

“Row, you mean.”

“No, this is a sculling boat. An oar for each hand, only they are not oars, they are sculls. If they were oars they would not be called oars, they would be sweeps or blades.”

“Sometimes I wonder about you, Yancy.”

“Doctor, please would you cast off the line?”

Yancy deftly shoved off and turned the boat to face the slow current. He sculled easily, being an experienced boater. It took only a few strokes to get to the other side.

“Um. Moon. Doctor, I mean. I’m going to have to leave you here.”

“What! Why, Yancy? What’s happened?”

“I’ve become me. I put so much mental effort into creating Oxford and Wonderland for us, that it has claimed me. I’m not the Doctor any more. I’m not a Kuudere detective, or a Frog Prince. I’m just Yancy, a young guy who works in an office, who thinks he is dreaming.

“I can’t go any farther. I’m not sure I can go back. Doctor, you and SilverRose must complete the quest without me.”

Moon saw in Yancy’s eyes that he was serious. She dropped .waifuinfo @Yancy. Blank. As if he didn’t exist. She did not try to argue any more.

“We’ll complete the quest, Yancy, don’t worry.”

Yancy nosed the boat into the bank. SilverRose and Moon clambered out.

“There isn’t time for long farewells. Just remember that you can go anywhere in this universe, and what you really need is a hand to hold.”

Yancy shoved off with one blade. He backed water with the other, and took a stroke to get away from the bank.

As they watched, his boat began to change. It grew narrower and longer. It became white. It turned into a sleek racing shell with outriggers and hatchet type blades that were black with a red stripe.

Yancy changed too. He got taller, broader shouldered and deeper chested. His hair got lighter until it was honey-blond. His donnish jacket and bow tie melted away, and he was wearing a form-fitting black and red rowing costume.

Yancy held both sculls in his left hand to steady the boat, and waved at them with his right. They waved back. Then he put both hands to the blades, leant forward, slid up the slide and dug into the water. He took a powerful stroke and disappeared in the mist.

Yancy had written himself out of the story.

Moon’s eyes pricked at the corners. She had to fight back tears. She and Yancy had been partners for a long time. “It’s all down to me now”, she thought. “I must be strong and carry this through.”

<<<<<

Mariella walked steadily to the eastern edge, past the Scarlet Cathedral, past the Casino, past NSFW.

The channels gradually became more plastic and ill-defined. They started to blur into greenery, the mellow pastures and hedgerows and fields of English countryside.

Mariella herself changed. Her hair became long and blonde. Her blue dress plumped out its skirts with crinolines. Her cream colour apron became a white pinafore. She took on the full aspect of Alice.

She came to a river, followed it downstream until she reached a footbridge. She crossed over and continued east, searching for the rabbit hole.

>>>>>

SilverRose and the Doctor had no difficulty finding the rabbit hole since it was created out of their own imagination. They held hands and jumped in. The long float to the bottom would have been fun if the whole situation was not so tense and worrying.

“Now we just have to wait for Alice. Don’t eat or drink anything.”

“Don’t worry, Doctor, I’ve read the story.”

<<<<<

Alice saw the White Rabbit. She followed him as he scurried to the appointment for which he was late. He jumped into the rabbit hole and vanished.

She looked down. It was a long fall. She could not see the bottom. She plucked up her courage and leapt into the middle of the vertical tunnel.

She floated for ages until eventually she reached the bottom. There she found SilverRose, changed into a red soldier with a spear, but she could recognise her lover anywhere. They flew to each other’s arms, burst into tears of joy of their reunion. They kissed and kissed, hugged and hugged.

“SilverRose, I’ve been so frightened and lonely.”

“There, there, Mariella, you’re alright now. I’ve found you.”

There was a theatrical throat-clearing noise, a woman’s voice.

The lovers split apart. Mariella saw a tall woman smiling at her with sad looking eyes.

“This is the Doctor, Mariella. She and Yancy helped find you.”

“Where is Yancy?”

“He’s… gone.”

“Oh nooo!”

“It’s not as bad as it sounds. He’s gone back to his true home. Anyway, it’s time to get you home now. Hold my hand. SilverRose, hold Mariella’s hand.”

Moon reset the time jumper and pressed the button. There was a jerky movement, and they found themselves standing in a field in the hot midday sun. They could see the spires of Oxford in the distance.

Moon felt for the rhythm of the clock chips. Everything was normal. They were back on server time.

“We’re back, but the time jumper’s run out of power. Probably a good thing. A gadget like this could cause a lot of mischief in the wrong hands. Anyway, we’ll have to walk from here. At least it isn’t raining.”

>>>>>

Yancy floated in the myth time on an imaginary River Cherwell, a foolish man impelled by magic and dreams.

At first he just sculled. His mind was blank except for the parts dealing with balance and steering. He enjoyed the sensation of his body working, the rhythm, and the run of the boat, the sound of water chuckling under the bow.

He sculled upstream, past Parson’s Pleasure, until he got to the weir, and the rollers where punters bring their boats down into the lower Cherwell. There he turned and paddled with very light strokes, to move as slowly as possible while keeping steerage way on the boat. The sun burnt the mist off the river. Yancy could see the dreaming spires of Oxford in the middle distance, and beyond them the hills, dotted with sheep.

He remembered his life there. Starting a new career. The terrible shock that summer, and the dark time that followed. Lots of hard work in the effort to forget. The unexpected transfer to Tokyo. The first meeting with Hikaru. “We were so surprised at each other!” He remembered how he and Hikaru began to grow close. “But that story is not finished yet,” he thought. “I have to go back and finish that story.”

Nostalgia and anticipation pulled him in different directions. Yancy’s mind wavered as he thought about what he should do. His memory of Hikaru called him. He longed to see her again.

“Later. For now I have a duty. I have a duty to Moon and SilverRose and Mariella. I have a duty to the Princess. I started this quest. I must return to the server and finish it.”

Yancy stopped at the Lady Margaret Hall boathouse. He lifted his single scull from the water, washed it, and put it on a rack. Someone would return it to the Academicals club in time. He borrowed a punt. He equipped it with paddles and seat cushions and two poles. Life jackets for the non-swimmers. He found a pair of Crocs that fit him and threw them into the punt.

By will-power he forced his rowing all-in-one to change into a white shirt and a blazer with black and red stripes. Baggy linen trousers tied jauntily with a striped tie instead of a belt. He topped off his aspect with a straw boater. He felt a bit of the Doctor in him again, and hoped it was enough.

Yancy stood on the deck in bare feet, his trousers rolled halfway up his calves. He shoved off and set a course downstream, poling his way towards the edge of Wonderland.

He punted downstream slowly, hoping to catch sight of three weary travellers. Eventually he saw them in the distance, and waved his hat.

They saw him and waved back. They started to run towards him.

Yancy brought the punt into the bank and tied up at a convenient spot. He climbed up and waited for his companions to reach him.

Moon was first, because she wasn’t busy holding hands.

“Hello, Yancy. You came back!”

“Evidently.”

“Stuff you’ve got to do?”

“Yes. There is a certain amount of unfinished business.” He held out his hand.

Moon took it with hers, then hugged him close.

“Steady on, Moon. We’re British.” But he hugged her back.

The lovers arrived, and kissed and hugged Yancy, and thanked him. He took it in good part.

“Erm, I’ve got a punt here, actually. Does anyone fancy an hour on the river?”

They did.

Yancy went upstream. They drifted in the hot air, on the cool water, in the middle of nature, as if they were drifting in a beautiful idle dream. He moored the punt at the Cherwell Boathouse, and took everyone into the bar.

“SilverRose, I know you don’t approve of drink, but I deserve a pint of beer.”

It went down in one long gulp, hardly touching the sides. The others had whatever they wanted, and Yancy had a second pint.

Then they walked back to the server. Wonderland and Oxford faded behind them. Their aspects grew weak. The channels became normal, filled with members going about their lives.

They caught a trolleybus up to Home. SilverRose and Mariella went their way, arms closely linked.

Moon shook Yancy’s hand again, and headed for her own place.

Yancy went home to the Palace, hoping that the Princess would remember the bottle of wine he had left her rather than the mess.


THE END

Yancy’s reverie on the digital Cherwell was your best effort yet. Really excellent! Fraid the time travel left me a bit cross eyed.

It's a big ball of timey-wimey stuff.

Actually another reader told me they cried at the bit where Yancy disappears from the story. Hopefully that shows my prose is starting to get some power.