10 minutes after the night meeting was over, a scream was heard coming from the same meeting room. The number of people that was inside the room was seven people including the one being attacked, Hunter Frost. Hunter received a blow to his forehead from something hard. Probably metallic. He also had bruises on his wrist. He might perhaps, got himself into an altercation with one of the six other people.

Just as I was about to ask Hunter what happened, another incident happened at a different location not far from here. I went to where the scream was heard only to find out that, Tara Riya was attacked the same way as Hunter had. The difference was that Tara Riya was locked inside a room. Nobody else was inside and only Jenna Lionheart, who founded her, was at the crime scene. Tara has woken up after a few minutes have passed; I decided to ask her what happened.

“What happened, Tara?”

She responded, “I don’t know…” she was still dizzy, “I was asked to come here by Jenna and then wham! Is this my blood?” She touched her forehead as she said the last sentence.

“Jenna, huh?” I figured that this was an obvious case and decided to go and talk to Jenna who was waiting outside. “Are you alright? Can you walk, Tara?”

“I’ll be fine for now…I’ll just patch this up with my healing magic.” Tara begins healing her wounds.

“Are you a healer?”

She shakes her head, “Not really. It’s just part of my ability, Photosynthesis. It allows me to tap into the forces of the Earth. In combat, I would be able to use the floral and the depths of earth. But since we’re not on ground floor, I’m useless.”

“So there’s a weakness to you as well?”

“I can charge up my power from sunlight. Just like how plants and other organisms grow through photosynthesis. Converting light energy into chemical energy that can later be released to fuel the organism’s activities. Simplifying that, chemical energy in this case is the Infinitum Energy.”

“I see. Well then, I’ll go and find Jenna for now. You take care of yourself.”

She nodded as I leave the room. I thought I would be able to ask something to Jenna but she was no longer waiting outside. This just increased her suspicious level. I don’t really have the time to be looking for her right now because we also the Hunter incident as well. I decided to head back to the first crime scene and searched for clues. Some of the onlookers were already gone while only half of the remaining suspects stayed.

“Where is everyone?” I asked them.

Aspye, who was still there replied to me, “They already went back home when they found out that Hunter is okay.”

“That’s good and all but we need to know who did this. Have you asked him yet?”

“Not yet. He is still recovering, Shiro. You don’t need to get worked up in all of this, you know?”

I gave him a waving index finger gesture and said, “No, no, no. I can’t leave this case hanging. This has got to be sabotage.”

“Sabotage?”

“Tara Riya was also attacked the same way as Hunter on a different room not far from here.”

Aspye was surprised to hear that, “What? Is she alright?”

“She’s fine for now. She can heal herself.”

“But what do you mean by sabotage, Shiro?”

I brought him out of the room and whispered to him, “I believe these two attacks is related to The Battle Royal.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“What is it then? All of the involved are the participants. And I could probably guess their motive already.”

“And that is?”

“The attacker intends to get the upper hand in the Battle Royal. So they attack their opponent to make sure their opponent would be having a hard time defending themselves.”

“Sounds pretty petty when you think about it like that.” Aspye rubs his chin and said, “One of the rules of the battle royal did said that you can’t cheat what so ever. This does count as cheating in a way…”

“I knew you would agree to me, Aspye. Now come on, we got a case to close.”

We went back inside and began asking question to everyone involved. We didn’t get to talk to the other half of the participants because they were already gone by the time I returned from Tara’s Locked Room incident.

Firstly, I asked Hunter what happened and this was his account on the incident…

“To tell you the truth, Shiro…I think I was the one who started the fight. Yeah, I started a fight with Chrom Bayonet and Aero Dyne. We got ourselves in a disagreement about teaming up in The Battle Royal. Aero was pissed because what I planned was very cheap of me but think about it, Shiro. It’s better if we thin out the numbers by allying ourselves with other participants. Isn’t that what you call strategy? And Chrom, he actually agreed to my ideas only to be refuted by Aero. The three of us then got heated up into an intense argument. The girls just simply watched us as we raised our voice to each other. During the heat of the moment, I turned away from a second but before I was able to even realize it, my vision blanked out. Probably from the attack. I bet it’s one of them!”

I managed to prevent Hunter from attacking either Chrom or Aero by talking it out to him. I then switched my perspective and asked the suspects. According to Chrom every part of the story from Hunter was correct. He added by saying that it was Aero who attacked him. Only for that to be refuted when Aero barged in and said that it was Chrom who attacked Hunter. Plus, Aero said that he wasn’t the one who got angry. He politely declined to join Hunter while Chrom was the one who started the argument by mocking him for being lonely.

Looks like I can’t really get anything good coming from these two. Both of them are telling conflicting stories and Hunter didn’t even look at me while he was explaining what happened. I smell a lie from him. No, not just him. A lie from the three of them. Not a single good clue from them. I decided to move on and asked the girls that was observing the three’s argument.

One of the girls was, Vixen Xena. She said that she didn’t really heard what was happening because she was wearing a headphone when it was happening. But she did made sure that there was nobody else except her and three other girls plus the three boys were inside the room.

The 2nd girl involved was, Marina Orb. She was busy talking with the other girl and then she suddenly heard and saw the three boys argued. She tried to stop them from fighting but was shut down by the boys because they said she shouldn’t get herself involved in boys only stuff. She was a little bit pissed about that and left them. As she didn’t look at them for a few second, the attack happened. Marina wasn’t able to tell who actually attacked Hunter.

The 3rd story involves, Evette Gold as she was the one who was talking with Marina until Marina decided to stop the boys from arguing. She watches Marina being verbally shut down by the boys and then she said that it was Hunter who attacked Aero first, only to be countered by him with a metallic object.

The last story I got today was from, Isla Kreshnik. She was the one who screamed as the attack happened. Her story was almost the same as Marina except that she actually saw who attacked who. She said that Chrom tried to punch Aero only to be countered by him, which leads to Hunter trying to split them apart but he was quickly taken out with a metallic object from Aero.

All of these stories don’t really tell the same stories at all. Their all conflicting with each other except for Vixen Xena’s story. She did confirm that it was only the seven of them that was in the room before the incident happened. Three other people shown up after the blunt attack. Petra Newton, Shieldra Que and Uriel Wisp was the three people that entered the room after the scream from Isla was heard.

If you add it all up with both Jenna and Tara, that’s 12 of 13 of the Battle Royal participants. The only one who wasn’t at both incident was Zero Yohna. In fact, he wasn’t even at the meeting. He probably wasn’t even at the building. But he is still considered as a possible suspect. Why? Because right now he is the only one who doesn’t have an alibi. It’s time for me to go and see what Zero thinks about this…

TO BE CONTINUED