What Remained in the Ashes

🎲 Dice

By kagerou_

Shintokyo Gazette, Extra Edition

Third Warehouse Fire at Shioiri Pier. A String of Nighttime Arsons?
Three warehouses on the bayfront have burned since the start of the month. All at dead of night, and the security cameras caught no sign of anyone.

Motion to Return Seized Goods. Night Crows' Lawyer Presses for a Seven-Day Deadline
Once the retention period expires, the seized cargo goes back to its owner. Division Zero's investigation is running out of time.

You read the two headlines on the extra, then drop your eyes to the report on your desk. It says the same thing. You are not an Awakened. You are a records clerk seconded to Division Zero, Third Squad, with no telekinesis and no mind-reading to your name.

The deadline is seven days.
Evidence found by power cannot stand in court. Find the physical proof.

🌃 A Rainy Bayfront City

Shintokyo is a bayfront city of the 2060s. AR billboards, driverless taxis, and delivery drones cross the sidewalks as a matter of course, but the streets are not lawless. Twenty years ago, people began awakening in their teens to one special ability each. These Awakened make up a few percent of the population and look no different from anyone else. Every use of a power comes with a backlash, without exception. The Metropolitan Police's Special Ability Crime Countermeasures Section, known as Division Zero, is the investigative body that pursues Awakened crime through physical evidence.

At the end of the ground-floor corridor of the harbor annex on the bayfront is the Third Squad's room. On the desk there is always one canned coffee per person, lined up at even intervals. The squad leader is counting how many came back from the field.

🕵️ The Three of the Third Squad

Himuro Rei / 28, leader of Division Zero's Third Squad, telekinesis
She can move anything within 20 meters of her line of sight. The backlash is a headache, and on nights when she catches something heavy, the nausea lasts until the next morning. She never mentions feeling unwell; the people around her notice from the fingers pressed to her temple.

Momose Hiyori / 19, Division Zero Third Squad, touch telepathy
For as long as bare skin is touching, she can hear what the other person is thinking right now. The backlash is drowsiness, and after patrolling a crowd she is hit by a heavy sleepiness. On duty, she never takes off her thin black gloves.

Tono Mayu / 23, information broker, memory viewing
Her office is the window seat at the cafe Polaris on Narumi Street. She sells information to Division Zero and to the Night Crows at the same price. The backlash is that the memories she peeks into blend with her own, so every day she takes one photograph and writes the date on the back.

📜 How to Play

Three chapters. Each day, you decide who to go with, where to go, and which piece of evidence to secure first. The checks are five: crime scene, canvassing, forensics, tailing, and persuasion. The three members of your squad can use their powers only when they are present at the scene, and every use comes with a backlash. Words heard by mind-reading and images seen in memories do not count as evidence.

Rei calls you by name on the night your report gets through on the first try. Hiyori takes off her gloves when she admits you have learned how to take records. With Mayu, it is when you keep a promise all the way through. There is no affection meter. The answer is what you manage to leave on the desk by the evening of the seventh day.