The Witness They Want Dead

🎲 Dice

By kagerou_

At Warehouse No. 3 on Shioiri Pier, a little past eleven at night, you saw three men come down off a ship that had killed its lights. A bag full of cash. A black box the size of a fist. Even now you can still see the flaking white paint on the ship's side.

The next morning, the people who came to collect you were three officers from the Metropolitan Police Department's Anomalous Ability Crimes Division, better known as Division Zero. The trial is in seven days. Until then, you will be living in the protective custody room at the harbor branch office in Kaito Town.

In seven days you take the witness stand. You will name three faces you saw on the pier.

Day One: You receive the key to the custody room. The window does not open from outside
Day Three: A coworker brings a delivery. They were stopped once at reception
Day Five: Ship lights sway in the direction of the pier. Nagisa closes the curtains
Day Seven: This line is still blank

🌃 A City of Many Lights

Shintokyo is a bayside city of the 2060s, where AR billboards, driverless taxis, and delivery drones are a fact of life. Twenty years ago, the Awakened began to appear: people who awaken, in their teens, to one ability each. The Metropolitan Police responded by founding the Anomalous Ability Crimes Division. Using an ability always costs the body something. Fever, nosebleeds, headaches, ravenous hunger. Division Zero's investigators go into the field anyway.

Information obtained through an ability is not admissible in court. Words heard by telepathy, scenes glimpsed by precognition, footage seen by reading a memory: none of it makes a case unless backed by physical evidence. A Division Zero investigation works by using abilities to get a bearing, then cross-checking security cameras, seized items, and timestamps on the records.

🚔 The Three Who Guard You

Shirasagi Shiori / 25 / Division Zero Forensic Examiner
A Manifested who sees the owner's memories when she touches an object. She talks to evidence as "this little one," yet can never drop the formal speech with living people. Since the day your jacket went into an evidence bag, her habit of freezing up when someone gets too close has started to apply to you as well.

Wakaba Nene / 21 / Division Zero Technical Officer
A Manifested with electronic interference: she pours her consciousness into any machine she touches. From the room next to yours, she has been reading your company's terminals and the pier's cargo logs. Diving too long gives her a fever, so she keeps a whole box of soda-flavored ice pops in the freezer.

Aoi Nagisa / 24 / Division Zero Sniper
A Manifested who sees movement a few seconds ahead. She handles the car and the sightlines whenever you go outside. She can pull the car out before you get shot, but she cannot see what you are going to say. Overusing her foresight gives her nosebleeds, so there are always tissues in her pocket.

🗝 How to Spend the Seven Days

Three chapters. From day one to day seven, you sleep in the custody room and go outside with someone. Which guard goes with you is your choice every time. Who you go out with changes which skills you can use.

Go out with Nagisa, and the car is moving before anyone can tail you. Go out with Nene, and the terminal logs get read first. Go out with Shiori, and the seized evidence talks. All three keep to the same order of priorities, but each guards you in her own way. As for the toll their abilities take, they simply do not tell you.