Noirration
One glance at the shining façade of Crystal Prep Academy and even a fool could tell this wasn’t an ordinary high school. Its sparkling front shined so bright just staring at the sun’s reflection too long could burn away your eyes. In this elite high school, reputation and perfection were the only things that mattered. However, like every place that casts such a brilliant light, it casts a very dark and deep shadow, and the polished glass windows only try to cover the darkness and despair hidden behind its noble walls. If you want to find the truth, you have to see past the shining and beautiful front and take a look at the school’s ugly backside…
“That’s a very complicated way to say we are standing behind the school” Sugarcoat cut into Sour’s monologue.
The wanna-be detective scoffed at her new assistant. “It’s called ‘Noire narration’ – and I was just trying to create a proper atmosphere!” she told her.
Bearing an indifferent look Sugarcoat shook her head. “You’ve read too many of those detective novels” she stated dryly. “Also, how can you hide anything behind polished glass windows?”
“It’s a metaphor for…” Sour grunted “You know what? Screw it! Let’s just get this over with.”
Sugarcoat shrugged. “Fine by me.”
The two Shadowbolts were standing behind the school building. Putting the lack of a large entrance and the absence of windows on a large part of the lower levels aside the school’s backside largely resembled its front, though of course there were fewer decorative elements. The main difference was a large steel door on the window-less part, located a few feet over the ground. Compared to the old-fashioned architecture of the rest of the school it seemed somewhat out of place. Sour and Sugarcoat were standing in front of it.
“Alright!” Sour declared, turning towards the asphalted area behind the school. It connected the street next to Crystal Prep to its parking lot, a wide open space half the length of the school building. Beyond it one could see the bushes and trees of the large wooded area behind the school. “This is where the deliverer probably parked his truck earlier” Sour stated.
Sugarcoat looked at the wide, open space. “Most likely.”
“He tried to open the door, but it was jammed” Sour went on, looking through the notes in her pad. “So, he had to take the long route through the school.”
“Makes sense.”
“While he was on his final ride, the thieves snuck into the store through the kitchen, took the pudding, and then escaped with it through the back door, which could still be opened from the inside despite being blocked.”
“Sounds plausible.”
With the eraser on the end of her pencil Sour rubbed her cheek. “The question is: Where did they go? And where did they hide the pudding?”
Again Sugarcoat shrugged. “Beats me.”
There were so many questions hanging in the air, buzzing around like a swarm of bugs. Gross bugs, of course, not cute ones. Most bugs are gross, like flies and cockroaches, but even when faced with the most hideous abominations one should never forget about the cute bugs that exist in the world. Like that ladybug that once landed on my finger, with its cute red wings and the tiny black dots-
“You’re getting off the point.”
“That’s because I can’t hear myself think!” Sour shouted. Annoyed she turned towards the steel door. “Do you have to do this now?” she asked the janitor. He was kneeling on the small ramp leading from the door to the asphalted area, creating some very unnerving noises as he used his various tools on the door.
“Just doin’ my job” he replied, picking a screwdriver from his toolbox. The screws squeaked miserably as he turned them, Sour shielding her ears with her hands. Unfazed Sugarcoat looked at the toolbox, which blocked the door as the janitor fumbled around the closing mechanism.
“If the deliverer had done something like that he wouldn’t have needed to walk around school all the time” she remarked.
“Great observation!” Sour praised her, taking a hand off her ear to give her a thumbs-up. “Tell him the next time you meet him.”
Ignoring the sarcasm Sugarcoat turned towards the janitor. “Can you tell us why exactly the door doesn’t open from the outside?” she asked.
“Hey, I am asking the questions here!”
“Too late.”
After loosening all the screw of the lock the janitor leaned back, wiping his forehead with the sleeve of his uniform. “Well, from the look of it the lock seems to be broken” he told the two girls. “I guess the constant cold inside caused one of the gears cracked, and when the fella tried to open it with his key earlier it snapped. Luckily we installed that security lock a year ago – when pushed from the inside the door opens no matter what’s wrong with the lock.” With a ponderous face he looked up at the sky. “Maybe I should have told the lunch ladies and delivers about that…”
Meanwhile Sour scribbled into her notepad. “So even if the door wasn’t jammed, one would need a key to open it from the outside?” she asked.
The janitor nodded, while Sugarcoat glanced incredulously at the detective.
“Did you think they’d leave the place where they store the dessert open for any student to go in?” she asked with her fast and dry voice, making Sour blush slightly.
Clearly the mockery of my assistant resulted from her jealousy to my genius. But despite the ill meaning of her words, as a professional I am standing above her snarky remarks.
“Stop hitting me with your notepad!”
We left the janitor with his work and began looking for clues. Now, searching the plain, empty loading zone of a high school sounds like it’s a breeze, but that doesn’t mean one can take it lightly. Even the faintest of winds can turn into a wild gust blowing into your face, and when you’re not prepared, you shouldn’t be surprised when your hair gets messed up. Then you have to borrow your friend’s comb to fix it, but the comb breaks because your hair is too stiff, and all that’s left are the shattered remnants of a friendship and broken pieces of plastic carried away by the wind.
Hm. That didn’t really sound noire – need to practice on that.
“You found anything yet, Sugar?” Sour asked while searching the area around the door.
Standing behind her Sugarcoat let her eyes wander over the plain, empty field of grey asphalt behind the school. “I don’t see anything that could be considered a clue” she replied. “In fact, I don’t even see anything that could considered not to be a clue, either. Because here is absolutely nothing.”
Turning around Sour smiled sweetly at her. “Well, maybe you need to look at it from a different perspective?” she suggested.
Sugarcoat looked flatly at Sour. “You want me to crawl on the ground, right?”
“If you don’t mind♥”
“What if I do?”
The face of the detective took on a grim expression. “You better don’t want to find out…”
Under the stern look of her self-proclaimed superior Sugarcoat knelt down, sighing. As she put her hands on the seemingly empty asphalt she felt the small traces of dirt typical for a place frequently used by cars poke into her palms. The usually reserved girl turned up her mouth, slightly disgusted as she crawled over the asphalt in search for clues.
“See anything now?” Sour asked, causing her assistant to grunt.
“Sour, there is nothing here!” she insisted as she crawled further away from the door, looking around in annoyance. “Crawling around here will do nothing but make me dirty!” Sugarcoat then widened her eyes as she felt some oily substance on her hand. She raised her hand to her face, seeing a slick, viscous liquid running over her fingers. “Quod erat demonstrandum” she mumbled, rubbing the greasy stuff off on her vest.
“Keep looking!” Sour told her. She kicked a stone lying next to the door, and inspected at its underside. “Nobody can steal so much pudding and leave no clues!”
The girl with the three pigtails got back up on her feet, brushing some dirt off her leggings. “That’s the smartest thing you said all day” Sugarcoat remarked, earning herself another glare from Sour. “Still, it seems whatever clues they left behind, we can’t find them.” Facing the forest behind the school Sugarcoat gazed once more over the empty field of asphalt, then began turning around. Before she had completely turned however she stopped. On the edge of the asphalt, on the border to the sidewalk she spotted a black spot. She squinted her eyes, trying to identify it. From the distance, it seemed like it was part of a transparent object. “What’s that?” she asked, walking towards the object.
Sour, who was intensely staring at a butterfly sitting on the janitor’s back turned to her assistant. “You found something?” she asked eagerly, quickly dashing after her. Together the two girls arrived at the possible clue. As they approached they could already see it was a one-liter plastic bottle, lying on the brink of the sidewalk. Sugarcoat bent down and picked it up, Sour curiously peeking over her shoulder. As Sugarcoat got back up the bottle suddenly slipped through her fingers, falling back on the asphalt and bouncing around. A little embarrassed Sugarcoat rubbed her hand off on her uniform again while picking the bottle up again with her other one.
“A bottle of lemonade” Sugarcoat noted, turning it in her hand to look at the brand on the black wrapping. “Blackberry-cranberry.”
“Is there still something inside?” Sour asked. Sugarcoat stared oddly at her. “What? I’m thirsty!”
Rolling her eyes Sugarcoat held the bottle up to the sun. “Seems empty” she stated. “One of the thieves could have dropped it while they carried the pudding outside.”
“Finally!” Sour exclaimed, clenching her fist. “Our first lead to track those bandits down!”
“Or maybe some random person passing by just dropped it” Sugarcoat continued to speculate.
Sour frowned at her assistant. “In any case, we should take the fingerprints and see if we can take a DNA-sample from the leftover liquid inside” she stated.
Sugarcoat raised an eye-brow. “Sour, we are high school students” she reminded her. “Neither do we have the means to take fingerprints or DNA-samples, nor could we actually do something with them – unless you want to take samples from every single student in Crystal Prep to compare them to.”
Frowning again Sour slumped her shoulders. “Alright, forget that.” She stared towards the forest in front of them. “But if we assume one of the thieves really dropped this bottle here, that means they probably took the pudding into the forest” she concluded, confidently putting her hands on her hips. “All we have to do to find it is search the woods!”
Sugarcoat turned to the forest with its tall trees and numerous bushes, spanning over an area far many times larger than the schoolyard behind Crystal Prep Academy. “That would take forever.”
“I KNOW!!!” Sour shouted, throwing her arms into the air. “If we only had a clue so we could at least narrow the number of suspects! I mean so far, everybody could have done it!”
“But we didn’t find any clues except for this bottle” Sugarcoat reminded her, throwing it in the air and catching it again. “And it’s not gonna help us find the thieves.”
Annoyed Sour moaned, but then thoughtfully looked up at the sky. Slowly she turned her head around, her gaze shifting to the backside of Crystal Prep Academy. Like on the front side the walls were overgrown by vines, framing some of the windows of the upper floors. One of the windows on the second floor Sour recognized belonged to a corridor. Looking at it the corners of her mouth rose to a smirk. “Maybe we just have to look at the situation from a different perspective?” she suggested.
“You mean look at the scene of crime from above?” Sugarcoat asked flatly.
Sour cast a side-glance at her assistant. “You know, Sugar, I just realized something.”
“What?”
“Taking along the girl who only points out what’s in plain sight doesn’t help when looking for HIDDEN clues.”
“So I’m fired?”
“YES!!!”
“Good. Cause I wanted to quit anyway.” Turning around Sugarcoat walked away, around the tall school building and out of sight.
And so, I was alone once more, left behind in the dark shadow of Crystal Prep Academy. The life of a detective was one full of hard decisions and sacrifices, but that came with the job. After all, no matter how clean your hands are, when you are reading a book the pages are bound to get dirty. This story was far from over, and I was prepared to read it to the end at any cost. The next page was just waiting to be turned – and I was ready to smudge it with my fingers, no matter how dirty they were.
Better. Still not perfect, but I’m improving.
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Oh let her have her fun.
Ya think?
This is great.
She's right.
Great Chapter! I love Sour Sweet's attitude in this fic!
lol Things just get worse, eh? XD
Something tells me that Sugarcoat isn't taking the investigation seriously... or, more precisely, isn't taking the investigator seriously. In that area at least, who can blame her?
Sour Sweet and Rarity should form a club.
I love the dynamic between Sour and her friends. They vary with different pair-ups, and you can see a lot of different reactions. In the last chapter, Sunny put up with Sour's shenanigans while Sugarcoat here doesn't, even so both of them did as Sour asked, and that led to two clues being found. Time to see what Sour can find from up above! To that second floor window!
7042154 Except Rarity doesn't just randomly jump to conclusions.
That's a fair point