_-_-_-_—___

  A young girl was sitting alone in a colourful, decorated room. Her expression a mismatch for the joyful atmosphere… Moments prior, an automaton she had not bothered to get a good look at had caused the other children in the room to go away.

  Perhaps it was for the best. The girl was in no mood to be near other people…

  A shadow was cast over her.

  “You seem sad. What happened, pumpkin pie?”

  Looking up with her watery eyes, she met the colourful eyes of a colourful character. A female clown with thin proportions, wearing a multi-coloured clown suit.

  Her eyes were only confused for a split moment. She recognised the clown. She had seen her before.

  “...This… This morning…”

  The girl began crying as she spoke, prompting the clown to lean over, petting the girl’s long brown hair and giving a comforting hug.

  “...Before my parents brought me here, I… I found out that our dog had died…”

  After several more moments of comfort, the clown took a step back. There was an odd moment of silence, but eventually…

  “I know just the way to make you feel better. Come with me”

  The clown extended one hand, soon leading the girl away.

  ____–_-_-_-_-_

  “I got something just now”

  Standing amidst ruins no one had bothered to clean up, Binibelle and Jupo were seemingly looking for something.

  “What did you get, Master?”

  “I am pretty sure I just managed to extract an old memory from right as the tragedy of this place was about to occur, or was in the process of happening… I didn’t see anything violent, but it already makes my skin crawl… But anyway! Jupo. Our clownish, murdering monstrosity definitely has something to do with this place”

  “How can you tell?”

  Jupo wasn’t yet anywhere near as good as Binibelle when it came to all of those nifty investigative spells. He could manage generating pictures about certain things as long as he had the proper catalysts to help him, but it stopped working if the event he was trying to focus on was a little too old.

  Meanwhile, Binibelle had apparently just pulled something from a tragedy that had taken place more than twenty years ago. She was on a completely different level…

  “Listen, I saw a clown girl in this memory of the past. Not the exact same one we are dealing with–But basically an identical copy! Our monster looks like a black and white version of this other clown. Of course, they have some differences, but overall? They look like they could be part of the same show, as a contrasting duo”

  “I don’t know about you, but I bet that she was created in the image of this other clown because of what happened here. Something so vile and terrible that enough negative energy coalesced into the creation of a living creature”

  Jupo scratched his face.

  “But… The tragedy took place nearly a quarter of a century ago… Why would it take so long for this being to manifest? Shouldn’t it have been spawned much earlier? When the tragedy was still fresh? Since then, the negative energy associated with this place must have faded, no?”

  “As always, you ask good questions, Jupo–But I honestly don’t have a good answer to this. Maybe the negative energy wasn’t enough on its own, and there was a need for a trigger of some kind? I am frankly no expert on such matters. Negative energy is not the most common type of energy…”

  “...Regardless! It would be too big a coincidence for our killer to choose this appearance for no good reason. Therefore, let’s dig up what happened here–We only know that five young girls were killed in the diner that once stood here, but apart from this, we don’t know any details”

  Binibelle led the way. Being that she was Jupo’s master, and that Jupo was now employed by Leton Nebulo, she had every right to look through the archives of the city and find out what had happened.

  There had been a change of city lord since the tragic events, but it had only been a switch from father to eldest son–One would be forgiven if they hadn’t even noticed the difference. The son was basically a clone of his father in every way… But this was advantageous right now, as the previous lord had taken archiving very seriously.

  As unlikeable as the current and previous lords of Tolten may be, they were very organised, always keeping their matters in order.

  Thus, Binibelle and Jupo were able to quickly find the documents which compiled everything about a case from twenty years ago.

  The Lost Quintet

  A rather nice name for a horrible act of slaughter.

  The documents were much more numerous than the master-disciple duo had expected. It seemed like the investigation had been given quite a lot more means and funding by the city lord back then… Which was odd. The lord had been a stooge about anything non-essential… And as awful as it sounded, the disappearance of five girls in a common neighbourhood would have been far down the list of priorities.

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  “Strange already…”

  For some reason, the city lord had been instantly invested in the story. Even as the girls were only said to be missing, he had already deployed means beyond the norm. The reason why was not specified in the documents, though.

  Regardless, an interesting detail quickly came up. Namely, mages with similar spells as Binibelle were called, but failed to actually find anything conclusive. They only managed to corroborate certain claims of the eyewitnesses. Beyond that? They had proven utterly useless.

  “Sounds like they managed to get the same, or similar memories as me”

  “This… This is actually impressively well-made… I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a level of investigation for anything else”

  Jupo was more used to the guards being glorified hall monitors. He supposed that the lord had put his own guards on the job rather than just the regular city patrollers.

  The two mages took the documents and sat down at a table within the archives, reading through the detailed reports. The first thing of interest they ran into was the descriptions of the victims, alongside impressively detailed drawings of them.

  Poppy:

  Last spotted speaking with the person wearing the costume of ‘Glown, The Clown Girl’. She was led away by the hand. Showing no signs of resistance or unwillingness. The costume-wearer had her trust.

  Annie:

  Last spotted speaking with the person wearing the costume of ‘Glown, The Clown Girl’. She had seemingly hurt herself by running around the crowded diner. The costume-wearer led her away by the hand. Supposedly, under the pretext of helping her with the bruises. No signs of resistance or unwillingness. The clown had her trust.

  Gigi:

  The youngest of the missing girls was spotted interacting with an entertainment automaton, which the owner assured us should not be functioning. It is a beastfolk-like machine in the likeness of a coyote–Hence the name, ‘Coco, The Coyote’. The young demon girl was seen following the robotic mascot of her own free will.

  Nessa:

  She was last seen with ‘Glown, The Clown Girl’. A group of young boys was bothering her at the time, and the costume-wearer came to her defence. Sending the boys away with what witnesses described as ‘literal kicks to their asses’. Then, the missing girl was led away whilst being comforted by the clown. Once again, no signs of reluctance.

  Elowen:

  She was apparently dropped off at Harvey’s Diner nearly every day by her parents. Spending most of her day at the diner. She was seen interacting with both ‘Glown, The Clown Girl’ and ‘Coco, The Coyote’, but seemingly did not follow either of them. She eventually got into a fight with another youth before suddenly vanishing without anyone noticing.

  “Mmh… And no one at the time thought it was strange?”

  “Jupo, you would be surprised how much we are willing to rationalise before deeming something suspicious…”

  The report continued with rather ominous words.

  Several other children reportedly interacted with the two mascots, but did not follow them. The clown and coyote both made a quiet and sudden escape when a parent appeared nearby. Thus, we conclude that the goal of the culprit(s) was not to lure anyone in particular, but to lure as many as possible.

  The motive remains dubious.

  This did not actually tell much. All this told Binibelle was that the girl she had seen in the memory she retrieved had seemingly been unrelated to the disappearances… She doubted that a sixth disappearance would have gone unnoticed with the efforts deployed on the case, so either the girl had been saved in extremis by the approach of someone else, or the clown in the memory had not been trying to kill her at all…

  Why had Binibelle ended up seeing this memory, though? She had been aiming for something bearing some evidence.

  “Mmh… I also struggle to get intel on the clown in black and white, so is the same thing interfering here as well? The mages employed by the guards at the time also seemingly came up empty-handed… Seems like the culprit back then, and our monster share some sort of ability allowing them to completely evade special methods of investigation”

  “That’s very odd. They say this probably wasn’t targeted, but with such an ability… It makes it seem like the killer was a professional assassin of some kind. If not…”

  “Indeed, Jupo. If not, it means that a lunatic with a desire to kill young children is in possession of an ability very useful to those ends… It only makes it weirder, though, the death of those five girls was a mostly isolated event, wasn’t it? You would expect the killer to do it again and again until they were caught”

  The case was more than twenty years ago, and no similar events had taken place since then, despite the increase in diners featuring robotic entertainers.

  In any case, they read further through the report, eventually arriving at the autopsies. Apparently, the corpses had not only begun to rot quite severely by the time they were found, but they had apparently been doused in some sort of acidic substance as well. This made figuring out the causes of death difficult when coupled with the interferences when spells were used to try and gather information.

  Poppy:

  Cause of death: Believed to be from a stab wound to the front of the throat.

  Annie:

  Cause of death: Believed to be from blunt force trauma to the back of the head.

  Gigi:

  Cause of death: Believed to be from repeated blunt force trauma to the face.

  Nessa:

  Cause of death: Unknown, no visible wounds or marks.

  Elowen:

  Cause of death: Believed to be from repeated stab wounds to the chest and stomach area.

  The weapons used were not determined due to the state of the bodies.

  Apart from painting gruesome images, these details did not matter much. What was more interesting was the list of suspects. The witness reports and thoughts of the investigators on the matter.

  Although the case had never been solved in the end, perhaps they could figure out a likely culprit, allowing them to understand how the monstrous clown could be dealt with–Maybe…

  Jupo was also very interested because this case also seemingly had a lot to do with the steel abomination that is responsible for Benait’s death. The apprentice mage-blade had not forgotten what that vile creature had done.

  Now, though… It seemed like its origins were more complicated than he had first assumed. Right now, it was likely that it had been born from this tragedy, just like the dark clown had… Thinking about it, could the steel abomination represent a twisted image of the coyote mascot, and the clown a wicked reflection of the clown mascot? It seemed plausible since the latter was pretty much confirmed already.

  “Oh boy… That’s… That’s quite a lengthy list of suspects. You can tell that they had no good lead at the start”

  The list included every single employee of Harvey’s Diner, even the people who had no longer been working there by the time of the disappearances were on the list.

  The owner was also there, and the local suspicious characters of the neighbourhood and its surroundings were also present. From the looks of it, even the establishment’s patrons were under suspicion.

  Clearly, the investigators truly had no evidence or clue to point them in any direction when they picked up the case.

  Nonetheless… They seemingly quickly found suspects more likely than others.