The Late Bird's Tale: A Tale of the Floating World

Part 1 || 2 | Sakura | Their Next Case I, Two Gunslingers II

She waited, letting Momo collect herself.

And waited. And waited.

Then Momo said, "Sakura, do you remember taking your entrance exam for the academy this year?"

"The Judy Windermere case?" she said.

"That's the one," Momo said. "Have you heard?"

"Yeah, I have," Sakura said. "There were problems all week."

"You've heard right," Momo said. "You're one of the lucky ones who didn't need to have their exams reassigned on the first day of exams."

"What happened?"

"Ryder and I were finishing up on the George Garland case," Momo said, "when the Muse Inspector informed us that the Chief wanted to see us before the end of our shifts. We went to his office and listened to what he had to say. The Chief said that he'd received reports of Judy's disappearance from the muse officers conducting this year's entrance exams for prospective muse cadets into the academy. Aside from the first day when you took your exam, the ones during the other six days all said that Judy disappeared during the examination period and reappeared five hours later. After receiving these reports for the rest of the exam week, the Chief had the muse officers reassign their examinees to another case for their exams and placed Judy's case on hold pending an investigation. He wanted three available muse officers on her case. One from the upper Grades: that's me. And two from the lower Grades: one is Ryder, and the other one the Chief left for my choosing. I wanted you, but since you're barely a cadet, I had the Chief arrange an impromptu training case to prepare you for our investigation of Judy's case. Do you understand now?"

Sakura gaped at the lengths her sister had gone to prepare her for it, going so far as to assign her one of the most difficult cases in the Muse Bureau's backlog of solved simulation cases: the Trevor Waltman case.

"No way," Sakura said. "Is Judy's case that dangerous?"

"Not as dangerous as that, thank God," Momo said, "but I want you prepared for this one. That means no messing around during work hours, and I mean it this time. That stunt you pulled on me back there, turning me into a damn cherry blossom and taking off my clothes, won't fly with the Chief. And since I'm recommending you for this one, I expect you to be professional at all times during the case, got it?"

"Okay," Sakura said. "I get it."

"Good," Momo said and got up off the couch as Sakura stretched out her arms and legs on the couch, then turned back to her with a wry smirk on her face. "Are you sure you don't wanna play another round?"

"Nope. Not happening," Sakura said and entered the hallway.

And Momo followed, saying, "What do you wanna do then?"

Sakura thought about it as she ascended the stairs towards the bedrooms, feeling her fingers grasping at an invisible sidearm. She yelled back over the railing, "Fifty-two pickup with guns. I'll get the cards and guns."

"All right," Momo said. "I'll prepare the gun range. Which setting do you want?"

"Your choice," Sakura said and entered her bedroom on the second-floor hallway, where she took up a pack of playing cards off the shelf and put it in the waistband of her shorts. She took up her holster and gun hanging from the hook of her door, then entered Momo's bedroom next to hers and took up Momo's holster and gun from her door, as well. She went back out and down the stairs, where the neon light of a hologram scanned across the lower part of the staircase along the wall, setting that part of the interior aglow.

A holographic version of Momo's voice reached her ears, saying, "It's all set up. Come to the basement."

"I'll be there," Sakura said, rounded the post of the stair rail, and headed towards the end of the hall, where there was another staircase beneath the soffit of the stairs above her. She followed it down into the basement into the holographic haze of Momo's domain, where she crossed the threshold and heard the snap of Momo's fingers.