Though they searched for the rest of the night, they found no trace or eyewitness to where Maria & the man had gone. Despite her shame, Jeanne could recall some details of him, albeit not enough to positively identify him to the police. Whoever he was, when he ambushed them, he had not taken the briefcase from the other fleeing men, and where they were now Jeanne did not know.
She was eventually forced by Mia to rest for the night, and continue searching the following morning. On said morning, the three received a call at a local police station.
"Say your names, so I can verify that you all received this." he said.
"Jeanne."
"Mia."
"Serena."
"As you have likely guessed, I have your compatriot here with me."
"I-It's me, Jeanne." said Maria's voice. "Can you hear me?"
"I-I can, yeah."
"My price is $30,000." he said. "Next Monday."
"I- $30,000?" said Jeanne.
"$30,000."
"Why are you doing this?" said Mia.
"What do you need that much money for?" said Jeanne.
"You seem to think I'm not aware you're attempting to trace my call: it isn't like television. It only takes a few seconds on the line. And yes, I'm certain that you will know where I am calling from, but I can assure you, Jeanne, that I do not care if you find me, and this is something you seem incapable of understanding. Nor do I care for your questions. You seem to think that by being a student, something of a superhero in this twisted culture that is entertained by overly-gratituous violence, that I am somehow forced to now come clean and reveal my motivation for you. In a word, no, as I have already spoken long enough. I am not some specimen who lives below the level you three occupy, and I will only call once again, next Monday night, for my $30,000."
The line went dead and left only air for an ear. Jeanne deeply sighed, then sank against the desk, and did not speak for a while.
Mia rubbed her shoulder. "Jeanne?"
Jeanne pulled her head up. "…sorry, just reminded me of someone. Um. Maria's okay, though. That's what's important."
There was something in Jeanne's tone of voice that reminded Mia of how she had been last year: Mia knew she needed to lead for now. She nodded, then muttered: "The... $30,000, er. We should start on that."
Jeanne wiped her eyes. "Y-Yeah. Lot of money, but - we'll figure something out. Even if we have to find him."
"I have a few thousand saved up, but..." Mia frowned. "Serena?"
"Um, I have... a-a thousand saved up, I guess."
(As you may guess, this was a far lower figure than actual: Serena's salary was only $500/month, but her mother gave her an allowance specifically towards her $50,000.)
"Good." Mia nodded and looked to Jeanne. "I'm sorry, Jeanne, I- I'm not sure if it would be a good idea to track him."
"Yeah, I know." mumbled Jeanne. "Um. Serena can't make counterfeits with Blackburn, right?"
"No." said Serena. (Mia gave her an odd look.) She quickly took her cup out and filled it: with obvious fakes. "Um, n-no, I can't."
"Can you make coins?" said Mia. "Er, for the lottery tickets you buy?"
Serena nodded, beginning to feel guilty.
"Probably, u-uh, best place to start, I guess. Dunno how much we can actually win, but..." said Jeanne and Mia nodded.
"Serena's done it for money before. I'm sure we'll find other ways to make enough money for it, but..." Mia frowned. "…Jeanne, you said some of the men you were chasing escaped?"
"Yeah."
"We may be able to track them. Er, I can handle that while you and Serena go out. I'll let the police know what happened."
"Thanks, Mia."
Mia left the room. As Serena got up and checked her phone, Jeanne sat for a good fifteen seconds longer, then stood up. Had Mia been in the room, these delayed movements would have reminded her of how Jeanne had acted last year: but she was not, so she did not. Serena did not notice this either, as she was beginning to be distracted by her guilt.
By continuing to stay silent on this matter, even as she walked with Jeanne to the nearest gas station and bought several lottery tickets, she felt that she was proving the typical stereotype of transgender women as perverted narcissists. Yes, she felt that she could give up a few thousand more, if needed, but to give all of it away to pay the ransom meant that she would be unable to make enough money before graduation to pay for it. That Maria had misgendered her earlier made no difference in her opinion: she knew this was wrong, and instinctually despised herself.
"Can you give me a coin?" muttered Jeanne, sitting next to her on an empty bench.
"S-Sure." Streams of fog gave her one and they started scratching.
"…if this doesn't work out, I can ask Nuiko to ask for donations o-or something." muttered Jeanne. "Just need to focus on getting the money, not on Maria."
"Nuiko's the one with the eyepatch, right?"
"Yeah, she's acting president now. Guess Aimee finally thought she should apologize for how she fucked her over."
"For how she fucked her over?"
"Yeah, because... ugh. Sorry, you're a first-year, you don't know. So, Aimee wasn't president two years ago, but she and Nuiko were the top contenders for it, since me and her were out on contracts every week. The rankings to be president close on April 30th at midnight, and they were probably... I dunno, maybe a dozen kills away from each other a week before. So Nuiko talks to her, Aimee, a week before the rankings close, and Nuiko tells her that if she wins, she'll put Aimee in her squadron, and Aimee says if she wins, she'll put Nuiko in her squadron."
"Is it that big a deal?"
"I mean, not like, in the grand scheme of things, but to Nuiko, yeah, relatively. I think it started when she found out there's that one hall in the fourth-year building where they put pictures up of all of Urasaria's student presidents, and so, if she was president, that meant some piece of her would survive."
Serena winced. "Yeah, that's why I never want to be president. I feel like people stare at me enough."
"Yeah, me either, that's just creepy. But she feels it's some way she could be remembered in, I dunno, 100 or 200 years or something. If she wasn't a host, I'd bet she'd try to become a celebrity or buy something Johnny Depp touched or whatever. I mean, I'm not saying she wouldn't have been a good president, it's just not the whole reason. Sorry, I'm talking too much."
"No, it's fine. Um, I just don't talk much."
"That's cool. Still, I dunno - how many people are actually gonna go and look at a bunch of photos of dead presidents? It's not like they created anything, either, they were just really good at killing criminals. I mean, whose name do you know, the most famous painter in the Renaissance or the best soldier back then?"
"…uh. I don't know either of them."
Jeanne nervously laughed. "Uh, I guess it'd probably be Leonardo da Vinci. Or Michaelangelo or one of the turtles. Sorry, I just got reminded of that because someone screamed it at me one time."
Serena laughed. "Wait, somebody screamed that at you? Like, out of a window?"
"No, it was at an art show. I used to go to some local stuff when I was younger with, um, a friend. Sometimes they had poetry readings, and I- I got in to it with this one redhead. She was this local poet who was a year older than me, but still in highschool. I think she's a student now, actually. So she was telling me about how art is the closest thing humans have for telepathy and immortality, and I guess the main reason I remember it, was because she didn't win this contest anyway but was still talking so much shit. And I told her that I thought her poem was good, but first-place's was better, and..."
"Oh no."
Jeanne started cracking up. "A-And, and this fucking switch *flips* in her - so, so bad, and she starts telling me that the other poem was shit and full of cliches, how her poem had better phrasing, images, and I'm just... b-but hey, I got it, too. Even when she was just bitching me out, I could tell she knew way more about poetry than I did, so I probably looked like some asshole who only eats McDonalds telling a Michelin-star chef they suck."
"She still sounds like a dick."
"Yeah, but if she really felt she wasn't being recognized, I mean... Anyway, so, um. I never got back to Nuiko. So, obviously, Aimee didn't put her in her squadron."
"Did she ever say why?"
"Nope, and so she just fucking put in... you wouldn't know them, but one of the people she put in was Makoto, who was rank #10, and she's just shitty. One, she's a total douchebag, and two, she's a total creep. Just some pink-haired creep nobody liked. And I dunno about the two guys she put in, either. But I guess one good thing is that they were all in her year, so they're gonna graduate the same time she does."
"Wait, why does that matter?"
"Because president gets to assign contracts. The whole year, you can assign people who might take your spot shitty contracts with like, one random guy who it takes three weeks to find, and you can give all your friends the gang ones or whatever. So they basically just win by default since they get to fight more often, they do it as four, all that stuff. That's especially why - ugh. Aimee just reminds me of one of those presidents who say they're for you to your face and fuck you in the back. At least Matoi's going to be president next year, since she isn't like that. She's the only one besides Nuiko who even says anything bad about Aimee, last I checked. Then again, that was last October or whatever, so who knows what she thinks of her now."
Serena scratched her neck. "Um, I gotta be honest, she kinda scares the shit out of me."
"Matoi?"
"Yep."
"Oh, yeah, she does that to people. Did she torture somebody in front of you?"
"No, that part was fine, she just... uh, you know what, it would take too long. She just looks like somebody I know."
"Oh, that type of thing, yeah."
"Um, I gotta ask - why did you still go on that contract with Aimee? I mean, you said you didn't like her, but you and Nuiko still went, so..."
Jeanne scratched her neck. "Hey, everybody has standards until $3,000 hits them in the face. Nuiko said she was going, and... it's not like I *hate* hate Aimee. I used to like her, and I'll still work with her, but it just made me angry how she snubbed Nuiko like that. Then she comes and lets her be president for a year anyway, like she's doing her a favor, which made her feel even shittier. Ugh. Sorry. Bet it's awkward hearing me bitch about your mentor's girlfriend."
"I guess a little, but I don't know anything about Aimee." shrugged Serena. "I know Mia wouldn't do anything like that, though."
"Yeah, she's good, it's not her fault. She's not her girlfriend. We escorted this kid back last April, I think, and Nuiko forced Mia to ask me to come along, since... well, it's a long story. Anyway, we got back safe, but my depression was still really bad back then. And I remember waking up like a month after to someone knocking at my front door. I was worried it was Kirihara, but I checked first, opened it up, and Mia & Marisa were there. I guess they had gone out to eat some place and Mia picked up a meal for me. She just asked how I was, gave it to me, and then they went back out hunting, but... iunno. But that was so weird that I stuck with her for some reason. And now this stuck to me."
Jeanne looked down at her lottery tickets, scratched her final one, and sighed. "…l-let's try somewhere else."
+++
Until Thursday, the three used what methods they could to make quick money: lottery tickets, pawning the possessions off from hosts they killed, but were still short of the $30,000. Serena's guilt was worsening, and Jeanne had begun to not show much emotion: a trait Mia recognized and was concerned by.
At midnight, Mia was awoken by a call from the local police station, and went down to meet with the man she had spoken to three days ago in his office.
"Well, your little idea worked, just not in the way you expected it to."
For a second, Mia focused primarily on the "little" that came from the mouth of a man whose profession she despised (civilian law enforcement), and she thought how Worldwide could correct his notion of her. "Excuse me?"
"The article you asked us to put out in the papers." he said, showing it to her, along with a few photos of a corpse with an eel tattoo. "We found this a few hours ago - it looks like his accomplice thought he had snitched, alright."
Mia frowned: she had been hoping to interrupt them. "And? Do you know where he lives?"
"Aa a matter of fact, we do. A few eyewitnesses said they saw a man... well, it's not important. But we thought you would want that left to you."
"I did."
She called Jeanne & Serena and met with them outside of the man's apartment building, explaining that she had had an article placed in the newspaper of a potential cooperative suspect in a recent drug-related offense. (As Serena could not name a newspaper even if given 4 minutes to answer, neither had seen it.) It had been written vaguely enough so that one of the men's compatriots might see it and believe they were soon-to-be-snitched on; if he was still anywhere nearby, their only lead was his apartment.
Cautiously, Mia burnt the door to his apartment unit down and the three swept inside to the living room; no light or Revenants on inside. For a few dozen seconds, they waited, creeping further inside to no further sound.
"…is he out?" whispered Serena.
Mia stifled her frown for Jeanne. "I... be cautious. We should start looking."
Most of his possessions had been left behind and could potentially be pawned for a few hundred dollars, at best: but there was no sign of the briefcase or further money. They continued to search for an hour, burning down sections of wall, tearing at it with Blackburn and such to find any hidden spots. Eventually, Serena looked back from her work, and felt her guilt crest as Jeanne sank in to the couch, seeming to become one with it.