HouseDerouxScribbles

  "Argh?!"

  The is a tumbling of paper boxes when I knock my back against the store shelves. W-where did THIS chara setting come from?! Oracion is... No, Oracion was...

  "You're also a fakking culti---OWWWW!"

  "(You) are the cultie, daemon-heart!"

  That big-boobed idiot just smacked the back of my head! Swinging a rge wooden stick with a plunger attatched to the end really hurts if you are hit by the wooden part! I gre back at Madi-san who is pointing the accusatory finger at ME!

  "Don't >you be going around sussin' on our friends!"

  But Oracion literally just SAID that she was the 'goddess' of a certain cult! How much more proof do you want that she's a cultie...!? Are you going to try and handcuff her to a chair and get her to say it in red?

  Puffing her chest out, the purple-haired fiend makes the most ridiculous argument!

  "Piinku SAID she was a 'goddess', she never said she was part of the cult...! You can be part of something, but still not be completely there too, ehehehe!"

  My eyes had to just go completely wide at this wild blue truth. What kind of nonsense logic is this! How can a 'goddess' not believe in their cult's teachings?! If you are part of a faction, you are part of a faction! If you don't believe in a faction's ideals, then leave it already!!!

  Oracion narrows her eyes, looking straight into Madi-san's.

  "You know of the [Bylonic Cults]."

  "Of courseeeeeeeee, moi' am the [Exposer of Conspiracies]!"

  Oracion opens her mouth slightly, as if to speak, but stops herself again.

  "Of course Madison would know a lot about that, she's been breaking cults up in this region for ages."

  Behind us, Val-sama had poured tea into five cups, carrying them over for us in a tray. It seems that she has seen ahead of time that this little story might take up more time than expected! Wringing my hands, I guess your detective has to hear this slice-of-life segment!

  "Let's hear Oracion out... We might find a clue to what Fox-Mask is up to..."

  ">storytime thread? >storytime thread!"

  Madi-san grabs my wrist in one hand and Oracion's in the other, lifting them up before her. At this moment, dark swirls of magick start to mennifest in those grabby ghost hands of hers...!

  "W-wait! Don't open your [Deroux Theater] here...!"

  "Theater...?" Those pink eyes blink twice at the foreign word, but there's no time to expin to someone who hasn't experienced it before...!

  "Too te Aya-chan! The thread's already baked---!"

  In a swirl of darkness that covers the entirety of [Hauntsgirl], my vision goes completely dark!

  In the darkness, a pair of eyes open with sluggish difficulty, staring at the low cavernous ceiling. However, these are not ocean-blue detective eyes, but a pair of pink eyes with silver highlights...!

  "..."

  The girl with unmistakable pink hair is lying on the top of a three-tiered bunk. Simir bunks are id out in the custrophobic cavern room, arrayed in three by three rows. Hard pnks serve as mattresses, each yer stacked at a discomfiting distance against each other. The younger-looking but far more emancipated Oracion is lucky to have the top bunk, for the other faceless girls lying in the lower bunks might as well have been filed away like corpses, having to lie completely ft and still in the narrow confines of this domicile.

  The only light in this low cavern comes from the barricaded entrance, seeping through the iron grilles beyond. The sound of flickering and weak torchlights hung on walls draw the pink-haired girl out of her bunk, leaping with a lightness onto the dark floor. The clinking of chains and colrs on her body cause some stirring in the bunks around her.

  So she held her breath.

  But nothing happened. Her hand traces the sides of this cave-prison in a crouch towards the grilled bars. Along the way, she had to evade the stench of rot in the array of ominous burp sacks pced inside the cell. This cell was more like a storage room than anything, its inhabitants treated little better than unmoving mannequins.

  "..."

  She made an attempt to say something, but no matter how much she tried, only empty air escapes her throat, not even an 'a'!

  Reaching the rounded cell door which blocks off her escape, she tiptoes to peek out the grilles, spying a hallway of identical doors. The hallway is dyed in an eerie pinkish-purple light, low colored mist clutches the floor at ankle-height. Hooded and faceless red robes with long bck batons shuffle around the hallways, occasionally peering into a window grille before shuffling on. The source of this suffocating atmosphere hangs in uniform on each door; a ntern emanating a pink mist...

  "Wait, is this real?"

  I'm not exactly a stranger to being locked up in a dank cell by cultists, so your detective is not too shocked by this scene, but the rest of the details are a little too shocking for my tastes! When I speak those words from the red-cushioned audience's seat, the scene being pyed out on familiar red-curtained stage before me freezes; I look to the younger looking Oracion onstage, then across Madi-san to the Oracion sitting in the front row with us...

  ... who is looking onto the stage at 'herself' with visible confusion!

  As a repeat victim of this insane theater, I suppose it is up to your senpai in solving mysteries to expin!

  "Ah don't worry Oracion, this is Madi-san's mennifest, [Deroux Theater]. It creates illusions..."

  "I can tell its magick. But why am 'I' up there..."

  "U no liek?" Madi-san shovels a handful of popcorn from an red-white striped tub into her mouth, passing it into my p. "As long as piinku is telling us a story, might as well tell it through moi' [Theater]!"

  "Simply put, Madison's [Theater] can bring 'stories' to life upon that stage, right?" seeing that I am not touching that tub of golden goodies, Val-sama lifts it from my p, pinching a single kernel before passing it to an overjoyed Annalie at the side! Val-sama and Annalie don't seem to be surprised at seeing [Theater], so its probably not their first time! However, I want to say that's not entirely accurate, since Madi-san frequently abuses this stage as an execution ground for glowies and abusing small and cute detectives! Something you two have never had the ill-fortune to experience!

  I also want to confirm one more thing...

  "Stories are one thing, but how can you know if they are real...?"

  "I can prove they are real, Aya-chan! Ora-sis told me this story before, even before I met you! Ora-sis has no reason to lie to me, so its real!"

  Annalie's poor logic absolutely disgusts me, and I am not afraid to show it to her beaming face passing the popcorn back this side! To be honest, I don't know if Ora-sis is pying a long con, or if Madi-san is distorting the truth with her [Theater] somewhere, but for purposes of our mystery, I have to assume that the things that happen out of the case's timeframe are true, right?

  I invoke Madi-san's mystical [Two More Weeks] cuse!

  For purposes of this case, only events which happen within two weeks can be affected by colored text! I can neither prove nor disprove Oracion's recounting, since its just me against Oracion's word! Even if I used [Detective's Authority] to force a truth out of Oracion, I'll probably get the same story, but with a rge knife stuck up my forehead at the end of it!

  "Its a good thing that we're using [Theater] then, because that thing is most suspicious."

  I point to the frozen scene onstage, straight at the ntern emanating pink mist!

  "A ntern with that same exact design was used at Galopin Chateau!"

  Oracion also verifies this, nodding her head with eyes closed. She definitely saw the same thing there! A lot of things are starting to come together; the scene on stage converging with the odd auction. Lanterns, an unsettling pink mist, a girl in rags and chains... Wolf-ears didn't say a single word during the entire execution auction didn't she? Maybe she was suffering from whatever was stopping Oracion from speaking then...

  "There are far too many simirities. Leaving conspiracies aside, this modus operandi [1], matches....! It is not unreasonable to deduce that the cult that held Oracion has some link to Fox-Mask!"

  Val-sama raises a questioning gloved hand, "But senior, there's something odd with your story. You said you were treated like a 'goddess'. In fact, it almost looks like they are holding you prisoner..."

  A dark look crosses Oracion's face!

  Ah, maybe that was not a good question to ask, Val-sama?

  "... you aren't wrong, Valerie.

  The cultists called us 'pythings' to 'revive a goddess'.

  I was 'it' because at the end...

  I was the only one left.

  And the methods they used..."

  The lights in the theater flicker above us and the scene on stage melts away, forming half-visible and incoherent dark shapes! Our pink-haired friend breathes in heavily, closing her eyes like she were trying to purge a nightmare...