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‘Hi, Mumei!’ Fauna exclaimed, waving at her dear friend as she was leaving her house. ‘Going somewhere?’
‘Oh, hi!’ Mumei replied after a short while, visibly surprised to see the Keeper of Nature right outside her place. ‘Yeah, I have some errands I need to do right now. See Mumeiter!’
‘Have fun!’ Fauna said cheerfully and proceeded to discreetly watch the Guardian of Civilization walk away. Once Mumei was out of hearing range, she reached inside her purse and pulled out a small walkie-talkie. ‘Alright, girls, we're in.’
Bae, Kronii, and Sana immediately came out of their hiding place behind some berry bushes, visibly excited. The four idols opened Mumei's door – which she forgot to lock, startled by her unexpected meeting with Fauna – and went inside.
‘Alright, everyone!’ Kronii said with authority. ‘We don't know how much time we have, so the preparations need to go as smoothly as possible. Maybe even as smoothly as my beautiful smooth voice.’ She added the last sentence a little quieter, as if only to herself.
‘We'll need a stepladder to put the “Happy birthday” banner up, right?’ Fauna said. ‘I'll go down to the basement and see if Mumei has one.’
‘You do that, Fauna.’ Kronii agreed. ‘Bae, could you start preparing the candy and berries?’
Bae nodded, while Sana said cheerfully, ‘I'll help you with confetti and balloons, Kronini.’
It was the perfect covert operation, the likes of which even the best special agents – cute catgirls or not – would be proud of. The four Council members worked in perfect unison to provide the best surprise birthday party for their loveable genmate.
That is, until Fauna's blood-curdling scream pierced the air. Bae, Kronii, and Sana froze for a brief second, then rushed to Mumei's basement. They immediately noticed the cause of the Keeper's terrified shriek.
Chained to the grey basement wall with heavy, rough-surfaced iron chains was a naked body of a young man. His arms and right leg were lacerated and cut up to the point of glimpses of bone appearing throughout the damaged flesh. His left leg was cut off at the thigh, with the mutilated stump touching a dark pool of dried up blood. Sana would later think to herself that the blood – spilled all over the dimly lit basement floor – resembled some kind of portal to a different, darker universe, just waiting to be reopened. The man's crotch and torso were covered in yellowish, blistered burns with several black patches of utterly charred skin. His right eye was cut open, and its jelly-like contents were spread all over his face, mixed with blood from multiple sharp instrument wounds covering the victim's head.
‘Bruh,’ Bae almost whispered in a raspy, dejected voice, at the same time trying to catch her breath, ‘I think I'm gonna puke.’ The small rat then dashed up the stairs, escaping the disgusting stench of death just before it could make her vomit.
After a moment of silence, Fauna spoke up in a relatively calm voice with lingering traces of frightened shakiness. ‘I know I literally turn people into trees, sometimes even against their will. But this? What the heck, man. What the heck. This is really, really, really messed up. It's messed up.’
‘There's no way MeiMei really did this, right?’ Sana said quietly. ‘There has to be some explanation, right? Someone did this without her knowing, right?’
Fauna and Kronii looked at each other. They desperately wanted to share Sana's optimism, but they knew it was impossible. There's no way the Guardian of Civilization, known for always keeping her house perfectly clean, could have overlooked something like this right in her own basement. They realized with full, overwhelming confidence, that Mumei wasn't just a neat freak. She was a murderous freak.
***
Bae, Fauna, Kronii, and Sana were sitting in nervous silence in Mumei's beautifully decorated living room. A brightly-coloured banner saying ‘Happy birthday’, firmly attached to the furniture, spread above their heads among several balloons with happy faces drawn on them. The plan they had agreed on was clear: don't let Mumei know what we've discovered in the basement. Act as if nothing has happened. Try to gather as much information as possible without giving the cute twisted murderer any reason to suspect anything is wrong. Now, all they had to do was wait.
It might have seemed like ages to the girls, but it actually wasn't long since they've finished the preparations that Mumei came home. The instant they saw the Guardian's seemingly innocent face, another realization dawned on them: what's next, after they fake their way through today's party? What do you do when you find out your dear friend and co-worker has tortured and murdered a human being? Do you try to pretend that everything is fine? Do you talk to her and naively try to convince her to mend her wicked ways? Do you notify authorities? And since civilization is a necessary condition for the existence of law, can its Guardian even be convicted of a crime? All these thoughts raced through the four Council members' heads for a second or two, but they were immediately erased by the simple need to act.
‘Happy birthday!’ Bae, Fauna, Kronii, and Sana shouted, coming out of the living room to meet Mumei.
‘Oh my gosh!’ Mumei exclaimed, startled by the surprise. ‘Did you guys really commit breaking and entering just to wish me a happy birthday? Thank you so much!’ She hugged her friends one by one, finding their presence and affection very comforting. With the smell of her genmates' delicate perfumes still lingering in her nostrils, she suddenly noticed the banner in her living room and quickly realized what it might mean. ‘Hey, how did you put up that banner? Oh, by the way, it's super cute!’
‘Which banner? Oh, the “Happy birthday” one? Well, we, uhm–’ Kronii fumbled for a bit before Sana interrupted her with the perfect excuse.
‘I gave Bae a piggyback ride to help her reach high enough,’ the Speaker of Space said confidently with a warm smile on her face, ‘it was really fun.’
‘Thank goodness! I mean, it's cool that you had fun while preparing all this.’ Mumei answered. ‘So you didn't use the ladder in the basement at all?’
The other girls shook their heads in unison. For a while the crisis seemed to have been averted for both sides, but then Mumei's nervousness made her start talking again.
‘Good, good, 'cause there's something in the basement I wouldn't want you to see, you see. It would be a bit unfortunate if you went there.’
‘Something you wouldn't want us to see?’ Bae decided to play dice and indirectly confront Mumei. ‘You don't have anything to hide from us, do you?’
‘N-no, not really, there's just something that would be… a little embarrassing, you know?’
‘Embarrassing?!’ Kronii thought to herself in the safety of her own head. ‘Kidnapping, torture, and murder are “a little embarrassing”?’
Several seconds have passed until Kronii noticed the others were looking at her with shocked expressions on their faces. She realized she had not, in fact, only thought the rhetorical question. She'd said it out loud, inadvertently yet irreversibly triggering a direct confrontation, and therefore dragging all the Council members across the point of no return. The following moment of heavy, oppressive silence felt like a small eternity before Mumei finally responded.
‘You didn't need to put it like that, you know. It's just embarrassing when someone sees their present before it's properly finished, you see.’
‘A present?’ Sana voiced her and the other girls' confusion.
‘It's just… I'm really proud to have you girls as my genmates, and I decided I need to find something nice I could do for you all. Something I could share with you.’
‘But what–’ Bae's stopped, not quite sure how to formulate her question.
‘After my last meet-and-greet event I took a hooman with me – or kidnapped him, as Kronii would say – and decided to turn him into a work of art I could appreciate together with you guys. But he's not quite finished yet.’ Mumei explained.
Silence struck again, but only for a short while, interrupted by a gentle and loving voice.
‘That's… that's really, really sweet of you, Mumei,’ Fauna said, ‘I'm proud to have you as my genmate too, you cute blood-thirsty owl.’
‘I'm not usually too fond of gifts that almost make me vomit, but I'll make an exception if it's you, Mumei.’ Bae followed with a cheeky smile.
‘I'm still not sure what to think of all this, but… thank you, Mumei.’ Kronii said, still a bit shaken after her friend's morbid confession.
Sana didn't say a word, but smiled at the Guardian and hugged her gently.
Everything was forgiven. The Council members realized they were all silly billies for having worried so much about the whole situation. Human laws and the common courtesy of not cutting off a stranger's limbs may be important, but not anywhere as important as their friendship.
The end