Being a teen detective was pretty cool.

In theory, that is.

The concept behind it was neat – in between balancing schoolwork, a social life, a job that generally required some form of university education, gaining wicked cool experience for your resume in this modern competitive society, and a level of independence generally awarded to pokemon trainers, this 'teenage sleuth' was helping clean up the streets of their city and supplying justice to the public. That sounded very alluring to most.

That is, until you had to step up your case game from 'child detective' to 'awkward-hormonal-kind-of-an-adult-but-with-fewer-rights detective'. Usually, this was just looking into assaults with fairly straight forward, small wounds.

But sometimes, like today, Saihara, had to deal with murder cases.

Saihara had worked on murder cases in the past – albeit only a few, that is. Three to be exact. A poisoning, a point-blank range execution, and a rather grisly stabbing. Though, it doesn't really compare, in retrospect, to the mess in front of him.

Saihara covered his mouth, struggling not to breathe in the metallic scent of the evisceration and keeping his eyes averted. Jesus – the poor woman didn't even look like a person anymore. It wasn't exactly his first time seeing a body at this level of… gore, so he should be able to handle this better, but it was the first time he had dealt with one in real life. He'd looked at the files in preparation for today, seen the photos of the previous victims, but… seeing it in real life was a very different experience to say the least. He could hear the other detectives muttering quietly close by; police department officials and private individuals like their own agency.

"Third one like this, this month."

"Christ, really? How many in total?"

"Uh, first official body was five months ago and, um, all the ones indisputably connected are at nearly twenty. The ones that we aren't too sure of… well."

"God damn – no wonder the police are in a panic and pulling all the agencies together to catch the sicko."

The conversation was drowned out as Saihara ventured another glance at the body. Bad idea. Turns out, bodies don't get any less knee-weakening horrific in less than a minute. Saihara raised his eyes to stare up the alleyway to the sliver of indigo sky peeking out and try to let out a steadying exhale. What a nasty place to die – though, there was probably nowhere nice to die, exactly, beyond the stereotype of surrounded by friends and family. But the architectural fat roll of the city, to be found by an unlucky dog walker, was an especially unfortunate spot to end up smeared.

The teen detective surveyed the detectives crowding around the alley, all sticking close to their colleagues and keeping their eyes averted as the police photographers and other official record-takers swooped about like vultures. Saihara's uncle was close by and, upon seeing his nephew's paler than usual complexion, signalled him over.

Saihara made it over on fawn legs, luckily not stumbling. The last thing he needed was embarrassing himself and the family agency in front of all their respective competition. His uncle rubbed his chin, clearly seeing through Saihara's cool. "Look, Shuichi, you should probably head home for today – you don't have to deal with investigating the corpse."

"Uncle, I'm not-"

"If you're going to say you're not feeling unwell, save it – you can hardly look at her. Though…" he paused as a detective dashed past holding his mouth whilst looking green, as his senior pursued, barking at him for not having enough guts, "you've certainly done better than quite a few older detectives… like you usually do."

Saihara's lips quirked up at the gentle jest and his shoulder relaxed the tiniest bit. "I… I can stay."

His uncle shook his head and pressed Saihara's back to begin steering him to the exit of the alley. "You probably could, but it's useless. The police recorders and photographers will do a good job and you can read over the case in the comfort of a chair. Tomorrow."

Seeing as struggling was beyond helping anymore, Saihara gave a resigned sigh. Getting home sounded good right now. "Alright. I'll… I'll be in the head office before eight."

"Kid, sometimes you really sound like a salaryman and not a boy in his prime. Come around in the afternoon – sleep in and chill out before you come in, got it?"

"Sure, Uncle."

"Then, travel safe and tell your parents I said hi." Saihara's uncle gave his nephew a pat on the shoulder before returning into the maw of the bloody alley and leaving the teen in the dazzling city street as nosey pedestrians try to catch a glance of the gore while exchanging thrilled whispers. Saihara was half tempted to shove them away before they could scar themselves, but that was what the burly police men and vibrant orange tape was for.

Saihara set out, heading for the train station and pulling his cap forward to hide his eyes as his mind began to analyse what's been happening. Perhaps over twenty murders, all likely committed in a similar fashion, within less than half a year, with a pattern yet to be established or suspects to be picked out. What was the link between the victims? Age? Appearance? Hobby? Routes? Familial connections? Underworld connections? And what about the perpetrator? Is it one person? That seems unlikely – singular serial killers so rarely committed their murders within such a short time span, often having months or years between their next kill. Then, multiple people? An organisation? If so, what is the purpose of their killings? To silence? To spread a message? What if it was copycat killers? Then how did this information of the murders spread?

Saihara probably shouldn't be delving so deep in thought as he tried to navigate his way through the station – there was a specific reason why detectives were encouraged to do their work in one select location. Besides having an easy place to store documentation, access resources, and meet up with others, it also meant that detectives wouldn't easily be interrupted from their train of thought.

By, say, a kidnapper?

Human watching wasn't really one of Ouma's past times. Nowadays, he rarely got much free time as it was, so he'd rather spend them doing other things than watching fragile mortals mill about and bleat like a sheep who had suddenly realised a wolf killed one of their own. Well, that wasn't too far off the current situation, actually.

And Ouma wasn't exactly on leisure time, per se, if he was to be honest (which he rarely was). Oh no, there was no way he could possible take a break whilst on the brink of a crisis – the earful he'd get if he did. He was on 'no-one-else-was-available-for-this-and-it's-too-big-an-issue-to-let-slip' time. AKA: watch humans find dead humans and try and leech off any information about the culprit and direct the humans on away from the true killer to keep them safe. Not really Ouma's style.

That was until one of the detectives caught his eye.

It wasn't the stereotypical 'love at first sight' feeling, it was more of a 'jesus, who let this child onto a gorey case?!' feeling. The teen stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the stubbly, wrinkled, jaded detectives, so it wasn't hard for Ouma to notice him. Ouma watched over him in curiosity from day one; what on earth lead this youth to be amongst them? Was he a witness for questioning? Then shouldn't he be brought back to the police station? Some form of apprentice? He was awfully for young for this, then. He looked too fresh-faced to even have left the academy.

So who was this enigma?

He first saw 'Saihara Shuichi', as he was apparently named, when Ouma was monitoring the police station on the day of the debriefing. Nearly 100 detective agencies, both internal and external of the police department, were assembled to formally have the case explained to them, little over a week ago from when the alleyway woman would be found. It was supposed to be a way for Ouma to extract all the known information the humans had already obtained on the case in order to get a jump start on his own case, but it had been difficult to focus when his eyes kept being drawn to the young man. He had caught a few curious glances from the other detectives and at the break Ouma had heard whispers of 'teen detective genius'.

Oh boy, that was certainly interesting.

One of the perks of being able to distort the perception of weak mortals was that it made it very easy to monitor someone, or as Ouma's co-leader liked to call it 'creepily stalk' – but to be fair, pretty much anything done was considered creepy when your eyes glowed in the dark and had predatory fangs crammed into your mouth. And it wasn't stalking either! If this Saihara was as legendary as he was whispered about, he was more than certainly a worthy point to monitor in this investigation. That was all.

But then it wasn't all.

Ouma was going to blame it on a lack of company from his fellows during his observations, and watching the same person for pretty much twenty-four hours a day, that resulted in a boredom that rolled into a… favouring for Saihara. It wasn't too hard, to be honest. The teen was extremely clever, and Ouma was a sucker for those that could unravel a puzzle with ease.

So it'd be a waste to let this gem be torn up like the unlucky fools the police were struggling to keep their donuts down upon seeing them.

Ouma could tell that it wouldn't take too long before his object of observation figured out the supernatural nature of these murders. And then it would inevitably lead to his murder for this taboo discovery. It made Ouma pout at the idea. He didn't want the youth to be slain for following his nature. Low growls would prickle at his throat each time he followed Saihara and picked up the presence of the soulless beasts. No, no, back off, this one isn't for you.

Ouma knew intervening was very against the rules but he was going to give himself an aneurysm if this kept up much longer (could he even get an aneurysm, though?). His bored fantasies had switched from talking and charming the beautiful brainiac to whisking him off to where the circling monsters couldn't reach him.

Aw screw it, Ouma thought by day seven. Fuck letting those nasty demons getting their claws on his human. He'd just solve the whole issue by doing exactly as he wanted. Who the fuck was going to stop him anyway?

On the evening when the next murder was discovered, Ouma decided to launch his plan. Any lingering doubts were dashed when he saw how Saihara did his best to keep himself together despite the carnage. How sweet – he wasn't used to blood. Ouma's lips licked at the thought of getting the detective desensitised to the sight with his own 'training'. His thoughts even scandalously danced around the idea of enthrallment – now wouldn't that be fun!

He knew the route his query would take and followed just a few meters behind. He could try and pull the detective away once they were alone, but that was a difficult feat in the sleepless city, and it was a rather primitive and callous plan – no way to get off on the right foot.

No, his plan would work easily in the crowd of the train station. Ouma picked up his step to keep up the long stride of his prey. He surpassed him and turned his head back, making direct eye contact with the detective. The last thing the mortal saw before his mind blacked out was violet, reptilian eyes. The entranced human's pace slowed, until Ouma tilted his head and continued his walk. Obediently, the detective followed behind, looking like a merely drained high schooler to any of the commuters who bothered to glance their way.

The two stepped onto one of the trains and that was the last known sighting of Saihara Shuichi for weeks.

Saihara woke up to a deep pounding in his head and the same feeling in his whole body when one was tangled in seaweed while swimming. He couldn't even move a single joint in his fingers, finding it taxing just to focus on controlling his breathing. His eyes remained closed and he groggily heard the sound of yelling – though garbled as though heard from the other side of water, as cliché as it sounded.

He couldn't pick out what was being said, beyond a few words, but he could certainly hear the emotion behind the voices.

There was a woman's voice, or maybe a girl's; young nonetheless. She spoke the most, and sounded furious and exasperated, like a mother whose child had knocked over every piece of decoration in a tantrum – no, more like a mom friend who had witnessed their friend pull some bullshit; a mother would keep her language controlled and try and supress the tone of outrage.

Then there was a boy's voice – definitely a boy's since it didn't have quite the aged timbre his older colleagues had. It sounded more like his classmates, so the speaker was probably also a teen, and was likely the source of this mom-friend's worry. Saihara struggled to hear their voice since it wasn't spoken at the same volume as the other's. It was flippant and nonchalant at the anger from the others, and Saihara heard multiple times "it's fine" which only seemed to make the other speakers all the more not fine. Saihara briefly wandered what on earth this boy did to frustrate the others so, and if this was a regular occurrence.

Saihara could hear a cacophony of other voices who spoke in support of the mom friend and in varying levels of agitation. They spoke too infrequently and were too wide a range of voices for Saihara to pick out specific ones and give attributes to, but there seemed to be at least over ten. They ranged from a small girl's grumbles, to the rancorous snarls from adult men, from polite reprimands, to imaginative combinations of cusses. It seemed that the boy had really stuffed in their opinion.

Then Saihara slipped back into unconsciousness with no room for anymore analysis of the situation.

The next time Saihara awoke, he was at least able to pry open his eyes. He had been startled out of his slumber by the load boom of books hitting the floor and a sudden hiss of swears. Saihara peered between his lids at a figure bending over large volumes that had tumbled to the floor from their desk, and Saihara could blearily make out the shapes of extensive tables – was it some kind of accounts book? The figure raised their head and froze when they saw that their roommate was very much awake.

Saihara hadn't been known to lucid dream, but as he stared at the man made of smooth metal, that was the only fathomable option. The… automaton? Gasped and straightened up, letting their previously collected books fall back onto the thick floor carpeting. They shifted on the balls of their feet for a moment before they swivelled around and sprinted from the room.

With nothing to hold his attention, Saihara's rest-starved brain pulled him back into dormancy.

The next awakening was probably the rudest yet, and was thankfully the last for now.

"Ouma, with all due respect, you're a fucking dumb ass."

"Aww, Akamatsu, so mean."

"Can you be serious for one minute, for fuck sake!"

"Gees, Akamastu, what's got you so worked up?"

"The same thing as usual – your complete and utter bullshit."

Saihara opened his eyes and was greeted by the sight of two people, who he was fortunately able to label to the two prominent voices he had heard in his first waking. One, the girl, was a blonde who had an arm thrown back to gesture where Saihara was currently lying, and had a look of utter aggravation on her face as she glared at her companion. The boy was smaller than her and had a cheeky smile spread across his face, looked the same age as the other two room occupants, and vibrant purple eyes and hair – he seemed undeterred by the blonde's fury.

"You bring an unaffiliated human into our coven because you got a god damn crush on him! And then you thought you could walk free of the consequences?!" The blonde yelled, her mauve eyes practically lighting up in her shouting. "And not just any human, but one that will be certainly noticed when he vanished off the face off the fucking pla-aaaaah." The girl trailed off into a small awkward hum when she realised that Saihara was awake and looking directly at her.

The boy poked his head from behind her and his smile grew even brighter on seeing the detective. "Oh! Saihara! You're awake! How are you feeling?"

It was then that Saihara's sleepy brain finally caught up with what was happening and realised: he was in an unfamiliar location with a pair of very much strangers who were discussing what sounded all too much like kidnapping.

So who was to blame him when Saihara let out a bloodcurdling scream?

A/N: Future chapters should be much longer, I mostly blitzed through this chapter to get it finished earlier so I could get it uploaded for the first release date. Guess who is an Australian who has to wait for the 6th for ndrv3 release? And guess when the next chapter is aimed to be uploaded?