Case 2: Hocus Pocus Occultus: Part 2

“I’m not really sure where to start.” The detective stirred his coffee. “This is...well, it’s sure to end up nowhere good and it’s unnatural, but it’s also the weirdest thing I think I’ve ever seen.” Tsubaki raised an eyebrow as she unwrapped her burger. ‘This guy has delt with carnage caused by magical girls for years! What’s gotten him so stumped?’ The two were sitting on the upper level of a fast-food restaurant. The seating area was closed for the night, but the detective was able to convince the employee cleaning it that they’d never know that anyone had been there after the two left. Tsubaki wasn’t going to let the opportunity slip her by, so she’d told her friends that her uncle had shown up to explain her sudden departure. It wasn’t exactly true, but it worked. And it wasn’t completely a lie; Mr. Detective was the closest thing she had left to an authority figure, even if they weren’t close on a personal level.

“Someone has been swapping cats. A few other animals too, but mostly stray cats.” Tsubaki paused, unable to conceptualize what she had just heard. “What?” “Someone is literally dismembering cats and then putting them back together like some sort of Frankenstein's monster. I have no other way to explain it. Different head, body, legs and tail all put together. It looks like something that had to be done surgically, but there’s no sign of surgery or even blood. It’s just like someone magically mix-and-matched their bodies to make new cats.” Tsubaki stared, unable to believe that this was something she was actually hearing. “But why? What even is the point?” The detective put his hand over his eyes. “I know. This sounds like something out of an anime. Way too harmless for something related to a magical girl. But as ridiculous as it is...” He sighed. “The swapping doesn’t kill the cats. They’re still alive. But a bunch of them have died from medical complications due to multiple different bodies being meshed together. Blood types not being able to mix. Bad chemical or neurological reactions to different conditions that some of the cats had prior. Being able to chimera living creatures without automatically causing death and there being no blood isn’t something that a normal human can do. And if it’s a magical girl, can you imagine what will happen once their sanity starts to deteriorate? Though, they have to be a bit...off already to be doing this.”

“They’ll move on to humans.” Tsubaki concluded his thoughts for him. “And who’s to say that it’ll stay bloodless and painless? If it can be deadly for cats, it’ll be deadly for humans. Probably even more dangerous.” The detective nodded and took a sip of his coffee. “Exactly. It’s not an inherently dangerous power, but we know that magical girls are just hosts for extraterrestrial parasiteswho want to cause maximum harm and destruction. In the hands of the girl, it can be harmless, but we know she’s not going to be acting rationally and of her own volition for long.” Tsubaki took a bite of her burger and chewed thoughtfully. “Where are the live cats right now?”

“The doctor and nurse are currently taking care of them at their clinic. The unit couldn’t house them in the station, and I knew that I was going to ask you for help, so I figured this was the best way for no one to ask questions.” Tsubaki nodded “Good. I want to see them in person to get a feel for what we’re dealing with. And Dr. X should be able to help me understand the medical breakdown on how the power works.” “Yes, that’s a good idea.” The detective nodded. “But-” He hesitated. “I don’t want to make anyone panic, but I think that they might have already started moving on to humans.” Tsubaki’s hair stood on end. “You could have brought that up sooner!” The detective shrugged. “Well, I’m not entirely sure if it’s the same person and the other agents aren’t even sure if it’s magical girl related or not. Maybe it isn’t, but, at this point, I’ve learned to err on the side of anything that feels off being the work of a magical girl.” He reached for the file folder and riffled through it.

“So, in the last couple weeks, there's been some strange reports. It’s not to the level of there being multiple victims in a short period of time, like the Todo case, but they’ve been occurring sporadically in the last few weeks. And there’s no precedent for similar cases happening before this.” The man laid a large picture on the table. Tsubaki wiped her hands on a napkin before picking it up and frowning. “It’s some person with only three fingers on one hand. From the looks of it, they lost their fingers years ago in an accident. What does this have to with someone playing mad scientist with the local cats?” “What would you say if I told you that they had all five fingers up until a few hours before this photograph was taken?” Tsubaki stared at him incredulously.

“Last Saturday. A second-year university student goes out to a drinking party. He's a bit buzzed, but he’s not noticeably drunk or impaired. His house was nearby, so he chose to walk home alone instead of taking a cab. Next thing he knows, he’s waking up behind a dumpster at sunrise, and his right pointer and middle fingers have disappeared. Drug test came back negative, and both his account and eyewitness reports ruled out him having been drugged at the party. His blood alcohol level was elevated, but not over the legal limit, let alone anywhere near enough to make him black out for hours. One minute, he’s rounding the corner by a 24-hour service station, the next, he’s slumped against a dumpster four blocks from his home in the opposite direction from the way he had been walking.”

Tsubaki stared at the smooth, pink skin where fingers had once been. “And this was how his hand looked when he woke up?” “Yep. He was checked out at the emergency room but there wasn’t anything they could do. There were no injuries. As you said, it looked like a years-old healed injury, but it was obviously not old because pictures, medical records and his family testified to him having always had all ten fingers.” “Someone just...took them. Just like with the cats.” The detective nodded. “Only, we didn’t find the fingers. We’re assuming the perp took them.”

‘Why the hell would someone just walk off with two fingers?’ Tsubaki couldn’t make sense of it. ‘Even for a magical girl, that’s just pointlessly bizarre. What would she want them for?’ “You said there was a pattern?” “Yeah.” The detective grunted. “We assumed it was a one-off but, when I started looking back through old police incident reports that were flagged for our unit, there were similar cases.” He threw another picture down in front of Tsubaki. “Three weeks ago, a little girl was playing in her backyard. When her mother went to check on her, she couldn’t find her and called the police. They ended up finding the little girl asleep in her own bed and missing her nose. Again, no blood or evidence. It was like her nose just vanished and she looked like some sort of dark lord. Needless to say, the poor kid was terrified and couldn’t remember what had happened or how she’d got back inside the house.” Tsubaki’s mouth dropped open as she looked at the picture of a puff-eyed, distressed child that looked like something out of a toxic waste zone.

“Beginning of the month. Elderly man living on the outskirts of the city.” Another picture. “Out for his morning walk along the highway. Work up at midafternoon in a bus shelter just inside Tokyo, now missing a big toe.” The detective didn’t pause as he launched into more cases. “Five days before that, a housewife out grocery shopping woke up in her car, parked in the parking lot of a mall. Missing an eye. Week before, a boy's track star practicing on his middle school’s grounds and a high school girl staying late to do laps after swim practice both woke up in their street clothes in the locker room. Both missing an ear. Two weeks before that. A middle-aged office salaryman seemingly falls asleep at his desk. Wakes up at midnight to find both of his thumbs gone. Toddler who wandered away from her daycare group on a field trip to the park. Missing all her fingers but her two pointer fingers and thumbs. A young father making dinner wakes up in his child’s room to discover he’s missing a toe. A set of teenage twin girls. All the nails on their left hands, gone.” The detective kept laying down one picture after another in a pile of impossible horrors. "All in the last four months. And now, dozens of cats are having their body parts scrambled. Doesn’t feel like a coincidence to me.”

Tsubaki couldn’t look away from the photographs. Every single person in them looked bewildered, confused and terrified. They were all normal people who had no clue what had happened to them. Every single one of them was now maimed for life and they didn’t even know why. “The person is escalating." She realized. "If they started with just fingernails or single fingers and toes and moved on to entire eyes...” The detective nodded. “And if they are the same person that's swapping the body parts of cats, who’s to say they aren’t just practicing to do the same thing on humans? Practicing on smaller mammals before they move on to bigger ones so that they don’t accidentally kill people?”

The possibility was beyond Tsubaki’s imagination. Would someone actually go so far as to exchange the body parts of live humans? “But it still can be fatal with the cats, even if the switch itself isn’t what kills them.” The detective tapped his finger on the table. “Bingo, Tsubaki-San. Now do you see why I came to you?” Tsubaki continued staring at the pictures. “Yeah. Even if it was only cats, it’s still unnatural and wrong. But if they’re messing around with the bodies of people, that’s worse. And you’re right; there’s not really a better explanation than a magical girl. Occam's razor and all that. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Good. I knew you wouldn’t be able to stay away.” He gathered up the papers. “Here, I’ll give you this file. I can’t give you all the information we have, but this covers all the important stuff and should be good enough to get you started. Let me know if you have any questions or need anything and I’ll see what I can do. I’ll let the doctor know that you’ll be stopping by on business soon, so he’ll be ready for you.”

Tsubaki turned her attention back to her food but, in spite of the overall weirdness of the body disfigurement cases, one question stood out and wouldn’t let go of her. ‘Why are they collecting body parts? If they can take apart and recreate organic life, then what do they plan on using those parts for?’ Even though she’d promised to take on the case for Mr. Detective, she didn’t know if she really wanted to know the answer to that particular question.