The offered pill and accompanying glass of water are accepted by the raven-haired girl, followed with a "Thank you, Nurse Ortensia." There's a hint of distrust in her voice, a hint that the nurse had noticed in the girl's voice for some time now. Her eyes trail downwards, to an opened folder splayed out on the desk, and asked "Is that McRemitz-san's report?"
"She dropped it off this morning before classes started." A hand quickly closes the envelope. "I have the distinct feeling that she's leaving out some important information, but I suppose it's none of my business, as long as she's doing her job."
"I see." The girl nods, turning back towards the pink-haired girl waiting for her in the hall. "Come on Madoka, let's get back to class." The pink-haired girl nods and hums approvingly, and the two depart hand-in-hand.
A gentle creak follows as the swivel chair turns around, facing towards the window. "And don't come back again unless you're actually sick, Akemi," Nurse Ortensia whispered under her breath.
With Akemi's departure, the office was once again devoid of children, and Caren could return to her job- Her real job, not this asinine farce she had to put up with every day. "Three years," she said with a sigh, as she reached for the cup of honey-lemon tea that had been set aside upon Akemi's arrival. "I can't believe I've been at this for three years already." Mitakihara was one of Japan's shining symbols of modernity; downtown and uptown were thick, sprawling canopies of steel and glass, and the city's leylines were shrinking and decaying commensurate with the expansive growth. Three years ago, Caren had thought nothing of her new assignment. Three years ago, Caren would have never imagined that she'd have a front-row seat to a Grail War in a city that, completely cut off from establishment concepts, had developed its own unique style of magecraft.
"And to think, all this because the last priest went nuts and killed his family." Golden eyes flit across the open pages of Bazett's most recent report, to the section briefly describing the redheaded master of Rider. "Well, tried to, anyway."
While information about Sakura Kyouko herself was scarce, Bazett had gone to great effort to dig up what information she could about the Sakura family as a whole, with some surprising results. Genealogical and historical records - scans of original documents made before the fire - showed that the family could trace its roots back to sixteenth-century converts from Portuguese Nagasaki. Several members of the family, apocryphally, were participants in the Shimabara Rebellion, after which the family married into and out of Christianity several times, and only permanently settled into Christianity after the Meiji Restoration brought back religious freedom. Official records from the Church showed that the father Sakura had been transferred several times between the mid-eighties and early nineties; Nagasaki; Kumamoto; Tokyo, where he met his wife; before being transferred to Kazamino shortly after the birth of his first daughter. Surprisingly, despite the lengthy history of the Sakura family, there didn't seem to be any evidence of mage blood in their family at all.
"The father must have been like Kirei's father, then," Caren touched a finger to her lips, as the fingers of her other hand drummed against the page. "I wonder if it's worth it to keep a closer eye on her? The Church might be interested in reclaiming one of their own..."
"And then, there's this one..." Bazett had written at length about the fifth member of Akemi's circle of mages, one Mikuni Oriko. Fifteen years old, no evidence of being a master, orphaned but lives with her girlfriend and mentee Kure Kirika. "A sizable mansion and familial wealth, along with a superb proficiency with magecraft, indicates her possible status as Mitakihara's Second Owner," the report read. Scribbled in the margins, in Bazett's own handwriting, were the words "I would ask her, but I doubt she'd understand what the term meant, and even if I told her there's no guarantee that Mitakihara's mages practice second ownership."
Most of what remained of Bazett's report on Mikuni, as was the case with Sakura Kyouko, was devoted to detailing what family history she had dug up at the library's archives. Her mother had died of pancreatic cancer when Oriko was six, and her father had committed suicide just the past December- That, at least, Caren hadn't needed to read about.
"Our top story this morning, Mikuni Hisaomi, Mitakihara's Public Works director, was found dead in his mansion yesterday afternoon. Many of you may remember that Mikuni, a favourite to win the bid for city mayor in the upcoming election, had recently come under fire by opponents critical of his platform who accused him of abusing his position and using it to embezzle funds into his personal bank account. With Mikuni's apparent suicide yesterday afternoon, it looks like his opponent's claims may have had some truth to them. His older brother, Kanagawa MP Mikuni Kimihide of the House of Representatives, had this to say-"
"As a man, while I may mourn the loss of my younger brother and wish only the best for his daughter's future, as a politician and representative of the Mikuni name to the Japanese people I must publicly and emphatically condemn his disgraceful actions. I hope that the people of Mitakihara, of all of Kanagawa prefecture, and indeed, of all of Japan will allow me to beg for their forgiveness where my shameful brother cannot, and I implore my niece to do the same, lest the consequences of his sins be visited upon her in his stead."
A mayoral aspirant and a member of the Diet. "With Mikuni's father and uncle both playing the part of high-profile politicians with well-detailed family histories, it seems doubtful for that side of the family to be the source of her mage lineage," the report read. "About her mother, Yurako, there is much less doubt. Records about her are spotty; all I was able to find was a birth certificate dating from 1969, a marriage certificate dating from 1991, and a death certificate dating from 2001..."
Caren turned the page, lightly chuckling to herself as she read Bazett's findings. "... As far as I could tell, no official records exist of Mikuni Yurako's parents. What little evidence I could find pointed to her mother having moved from Italy to Japan shortly after marrying her husband, himself native Japanese. I can only conclude that the reasoning behind such a spotty record is due to a desire to hide the mother's mage lineage from the public."
Similar to the earlier note regarding Mikuni's status as Second Owner of Mitakihara, Bazett had left another note scrawled in the margins of the page. "I'm curious to know more about Mikuni's lineage. I'll try to see if I can dig up records of any Italian mage families with a daughter that eloped to Japan, when I get the chance."
Caren smiled, reaching for the telephone at her desk. Carefully, she dialed a number she had known by heart since the age of five. Waiting a few seconds, she spoke. "Grandma Sophia, it's Caren... Yes, I'm doing well, thank you. ... Listen, I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about someone..."
