"Where were you and what were you doing last night at around...", the investigators repeated ad nauseum.
"Last night I was...".
"My roommate can...".
"We just studied last...".
"I'm not explaining why I had a...".
"Learn anything interesting?", Savina asked as the two of us sat waiting for our Bori and Albina to finish their interrogations. Savina and I had lucked out due to the two of us being right next to an interrogation booth when the announcement was made.
We also managed to leave quickly because we shared the same alibi with Bori and Albina: dinner. I initially thought it was weird we had to provide an alibi about our whereabouts last night, but then I was reminded that not all the students here shared the same schedule. In essence, this meant while a good chunk of the students could share the same alibis of being here at the campus but there were still quite a few outliers.
Keeping this in mind, I decided to listen in to see what was going on.
"Nothing much, although I now know way more about my peers than what's considered polite", I said in response to Savina's question.
"I don't think-".
"What are we doing here?", I heard a young yet cranky voice say.
"Never mind, I got something", I said before focusing entirely on listening.
"What do you mean 'what are we doing here'? This academy had just received a new batch of students, making it the most likely place for the suspect to just blend in here", an older voice said in response, "it's not impossible for someone to blend in and fake being a student".
"Yeah I get that, but this has been happening on and off for months now. How do we even know the suspect is a binder? It could just be some random civilian who got their hands on some crazy artifacts", the young sounding voice complained.
"You never read the full reports, did you"?
"What's there to read? Victims were found covered in cuts and the surroundings had deep claw marks in em. I can name at least a dozen artifacts that can do that".
Not sure why, but the younger sounding voice was starting to get on my nerves.
"If you had read the reports, you would've known that that the aether left at the scenes had a distinct fury and frost affinity mixture. Not exactly a common combination of aether for an artifact to hold, but not so if it's a majimonster", the older voice explained, "additionally, Scholars noted that there were distinctly inhuman footprints at all the scenes. Unless a wild majimonster suddenly snuck in, the perpetrator is most likely a binder".
"But what makes you think it's someone here and not say, a recently awoken Scoundrel who's just doing it for kicks?", the younger one questioned.
"All the victims were found at least a few blocks away from this academy. It's deductive reasoning".
"Bah! That's what you said last time when all the victims were women and then changed it when it went from that to all the victims wearing a similar looking color", the younger one shot back,"face it, this case is gonna remain cold unless something drastic happens".
"Shush up rookie, the next student's about to arrive", the older voice said. With that said, I stopped listening in and focused back on my present. I'm not sure when, but Bori and Albina showed up and were staring at me.
"How long were the two of you staring"?
"Long enough for Savina to explain you have crazy good hearing, what'd you find out?", Albina answered for the both of them.
I gave them the gist of what I listened in on, about the victims, that apparently this has been happening for a while and that they decided now would be a good time to interrogate people...in retrospect, they sounded rather incompetent...
"So what are you going to do about it?", Bori suddenly asked.
"Pardon"?
"Oh come on brewer girl, in the few months we've known you, you have proven to be a rather righteous, if not reckless individual. You expect us to believe you're not going to stick your nose into this?", Albina pointedly asked.
"What are you talking about? The authorities have this under control. I'm not going to stick my nose in where it doesn't belong", I told my friends.
_________________________________________
[Didn't you say you weren't going to stick your nose in?], Voxea asked as I walked down a market street.