Story: RCM Quirky Detective

Another little something I threw together yesterday.


There are times when people brace for the worst, and get something entirely different. Something that’s simultaneously, well, not exactly <i>bad</i>, but somehow exceeds their expectations. The only thing stopping Kumitada from standing there stock still in the cafe doorway with a slackened jaw was sheer unbridled professionalism, which led him to step to the side, hold back the two women and beckon for them to peer discreetly inside a faint slit in the window at the event occurring within.

You see, most of the window had been taken up by catlike decorations, advertisements for the karaoke contest and the like. But there was a small gap by which they could peer inside. The best opportunity they would have to stake out the enemy stronghold before mounting an attack. They had about ten minutes before the contest was due to start, so there was plenty of time for checking things out.

And what did lie within? A converted cafe, by the looks of things. One end of the room had been set up for a karaoke contest with half a dozen leotard-wearing women fixing up the equipment. The tables were all filled with men of various ages, each of them wearing rather stupid-looking expressions and fake cat ears while the women… Every single woman in the room was wearing a skintight leotard with various different catlike prints. Tigers, leopards and the like. Tiny cat ears rested upon their heads, tails attached to the leotards’ rear ends and every single step they took seemed as though it was designed to advertise for male attention.

It was the kind of advertising campaign that most executives would be jealous of. These women knew exactly what it took to attract and keep male attention, and even Kumitada felt his eyes lingering a little longer than he’d intended on their bare legs, enticing hips, the form of their breasts slightly bouncing with each step…

But he was a professional, and he had more things to check out than attractive, nearly naked women. His eyes missed nothing in the cafe. Nothing at all. Especially the only two people in it that didn’t conform with the rest, a young couple that seemed to be arguing. Fortunately, it was a trivial matter to read their lips.

“I can’t believe this!” the woman was saying. “This isn’t a karaoke contest! This is a - This is a stripclub!”

“Calm down, dear,” the man replied, adopting a rather blatant ‘calm down’ pose that was really only serving to aggravate the woman further. “It’s not quite that bad. They’re not taking off their clothes or anything -”

“No, of course not! They don’t need to! Look at them, walking around in their skintight leotards, flaunting themselves like - like…”

“Uh… Are you feeling alright?” the man asked, and he was right to be concerned. The woman had suddenly looked like she might fall over. A passing kitty waitress gently held her up by the arm and gave a polite smile to the woman, who smiled back.

“Yes, I… I don’t know what came over me,” the woman answered. She still looked a little groggy.

“If you’re feeling tired, please rest in the side room,” the waitress said with a charming smile. The woman nodded and allowed herself to be led off towards the side room, and wasn’t that interesting? Each step she took towards the room was measurably more akin to the sexaulised gait the waitresses were using.

As soon as he was alone, the man was swarmed by three waitresses, two of whom held him around the arm while the other walked in front to lead him towards a chair on a slightly circuitous route. She then bent down at the waist to pull the chair out, and by the time he was seated the man had the same glassy expression every other man had in the place. A waitress placed cat ears on his head, and he was just like all the others. Moments thereafter, his girlfriend/wife left the side room, similarly indistinguishable from the waitresses.

“A recruitment drive,” Kumitada said. “Clearly some form of recursive, sexualised mind control. In which case, we absolutely have to be careful when we go in there, lest one of us succumb to the influence. If that happens for even one of us, it’s game over.”

He heard a sound just then, over his shoulder. A cute little sound that was sort of like “mrowr”. A gloved hand fell upon his shoulder, and he slowly turned around, expecting to have been found by an outside guard. What he saw was a little more concerning: Yukiko in a snow leopard-print leotard, cutely winking at him.

“Nya, do you like my disguise?” she asked, making her typical gesture of running her finger along the brim of her hat, even though she wasn’t actually wearing her hat right now.

“A… disguise?”

“Well, yes. Obviously. You don’t think I’d wear the enemy’s leotard, do you?”

“Um… Hold on…” Zoe said. “Do you mean that you just happened to have that on you in case you needed to wear that kind of… disguise?”

Yukiko shot a look at her as if to say, “Yeah, obviously.” The sad part was that, on reflection, Kumitada realised he probably should not be so surprised at all. “Here, I brought a spare,” she said, somehow making her fake ears twitch. “So long as we’re wearing these disguises, we’re probably safe.”

“B-But what about Mister Kumitada?!” Zoe asked, blushing so hard she looked like she might erupt at any moment. There was only so much blood the face could handle! “He-He’ll be at their mercy!”

“Which is why we’re going to have to cling to him,” Yukiko said, draping herself over Kumitada in a most unprofessional and inappropriate manner. “So long as they think he’s under our spell, they’ll probably ignore him. Come on, Zoe! Work that body!”

Zoe gave a rather noisy nervous gulp, and who could blame her? After all, here she was being asked to strip down to next to nothing and publicly throw herself all over a man she didn’t even know. There wasn’t a chance in hell that she’d agree to something like that, and the way Yukiko was rather insisting on that distracting grinding motion of her hips was hardly going to entice her into -

“Alright! I’ll be back in a moment!”

Kumitada quirked an eyebrow at her retreating form, and used his spare hand to scratch his head. The other was thoroughly trapped by Yukiko’s cleavage.”Why do I feel like something happened and I missed it?”

“Never underestimate the powers of female jealousy.”

Nope. Still not getting it. Kumitada resigned himself to a weary sigh. “This is the stupidest plan I’ve ever heard,” he said. Then stopped to tilt his head a little to the side. “This week,” he corrected. Then took another deep sigh and corrected himself yet again. “This hour.”