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Katsuhito Naruhodo was born November 3rd, 1901, at the Mikotoba residence in Shikoku prefecture, Japan, at approximately three-thirty in the morning. His mother was a man known in some circles as Prosecutor Barok van Zieks, in others as the Reaper, and to a select few as the Chainbreaker.
Until Murasame Haori delivered him, screaming and kicking into the world, it had been anyone’s guess who his father actually was. The freckles proved that it was very likely one Naruhodo Ryunosuke, freed from yet another false murder charge; but it really hadn’t stopped Naruhodo Kazuma, who had since stopped using his original surname entirely, from loudly and proudly proclaiming that their son had inherited his spirit.
Katsuhito’s two older sisters, Iris Walden and Hyacinthe van Zieks, almost immediately started an argument with half the household on how Kazuma could tell a newborn child had inherited his spirit. That argument lasted until seven that morning, when finally Mikotoba Susato threw her elder brother across the living room and told him without mincing words that if he didn’t calm down and go to bed he was going to end up in the koi pool. That had quieted the two young girls, who knew better than to argue with Susie, even if Kazuma didn’t know that.
Whenever Katsuhito thought to look back on the circumstances of his birth - and the fond story always told immediately after of trying to smuggle him back to Great Britain - he often found he had no choice but to conclude that it was quite the omen for the rest of his life. And then he would finish his cigarette, dust off his jacket, and attempt to keep the paparazzi from noticing the trainwreck that was generally the state of his personal life. No pressure, really. It wouldn’t be anything that a ninety-eight-year-old Hollywood star couldn’t handle.
June twentieth, nineteen ninety-nine, dawned cool and overcast and sweet under the Los Angeles sky. Katsuhito Naruhodo found himself packing a briefcase approximately half the size of his great-granddaughter’s smallest trunk, as she tried to figure out how to get every single bit of her stage-magic equipment into checked baggage for a transatlantic flight. He’d reassured her six times that she wouldn’t need all of it, they were just going for two months, but she was eight years old and disinclined to listen to anyone, so they’d probably be having the argument another six times.
He’d already phoned his parents to let them know he’d be on his way, as well as the small nonprofit that currently ran the van Zieks manor’s guest wing as a fancy hotel. They’d have the place to themselves, and as it always was when he got to fly home for a while, he could guarantee the paparazzi wouldn’t make it anywhere near the actual grounds. (Having a haunted forest that had already claimed lives of the van Zieks family helped, that was for sure. As was being quite closely related to an infamous serial killer.)
His grandson, Ryuichi, stuck his head into the door of Katsuhito’s room, interrupting his woolgathering. "Grandpa, is Great-Aunt Yumiko going to be there? I’ve got some art for her, but it’ll be tricky to fit into my luggage…?"
Katsuhito paused his sock-sorting. Socks were more important than just about anything, costuming never remembered them. And if they did, he was reasonably sure they weren’t going to be historically accurate. He, and he couldn’t quite believe he was thinking it, missed his sock garters.
"I… don’t know?" His younger sister took ’flighty’ to the highest extreme. "I suspect she’ll check in, though, I can call her. If not, we’ll likely be having dinner with my parents anyway, and you can leave the art at the manor for her. She does check into London at least once a year."
Memorizing Yumiko’s schedule - or lack thereof - was a problem back in the thirties, and really hadn’t let up even if she did generally carry a cell phone nowadays. Sometimes getting ahold of her still proved tricky, since she generally hated to travel in places that had cell service. Or any service of any kind. At this point, Katsuhito was reasonably sure she’d be easier to find on any given day if he convinced Iris to pull out her aviator’s keys and take her plane for a spin over the Amazon rainforest.
"If she’s not there, I won’t get to see her reaction," Ryuichi protested. He didn’t quite pout, but he did pull on at least a facsimile of the wet, pleading eyes that he’d inherited from his mother. It sent a pang through Katsuhito’s chest. He ignored it in favour of smiling instead, shaking his head a little.
"I’ll try to get ahold of her, then," Katsuhito replied. "I can’t make any promises, though, you know how she is." He rose from his kneeling position, setting down his socks, and held his arms out for a hug. Ryuichi stepped closer and embraced him, leaning fully on him as he always did.
He’d stepped into his life for the first time when Ryuichi was eight, just like Trucy was now, reeling from his parents finally getting a divorce and demanding to stay with his terminally ill mother over his abusive father. With Navrael Wright out of the picture, the hospital had finally called Katsuhito in as his daughter’s emergency contact, and he hadn’t left after that, no matter how angry she was with him. It felt, sometimes, like he’d carry his mother’s regrets as his own forever. A near-century had proved it, if nothing else. But he’d gotten Ryuichi out of the deal, and maybe it was far too late for his own daughter, but it wasn’t too late for his grandson, or the great-granddaughter they’d sort of acquired through a wholly unrelated court proceeding.
It wasn’t even the first time in the family that an unrelated court case had ended in gaining new family members. He wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t the last, either, especially if they managed to prove Ryuichi’s innocence and reinstate his badge.
"Hey, Dad- can you hear me?" Katsuhito rested on his back on the bed, twisting the landline coil between his fingers. With his schedule, it was hard to manage more than a monthly phone call home, but thanks to this project, he’d been calling his father a lot.
"Katsuhito!" came the reply, pure Tokyo Japanese that still sounded a little dated. Ryunosuke always sounded a little dated, holding onto his accent out of pure stubbornness. He could sound like a proper British aristocrat, after all the decades of practice (and dodging being knighted by Queen Victoria for services to the crown), but somehow, when calling his son, they always slipped into Japanese. Really, he needed the practice anyway. "There you are. What’s this I hear about a new project that requires my help? You have a law degree yourself, I admit I’m a bit unsure…"
He grinned. It was hard not to, talking to his father. Something about Ryunosuke always put everyone in the room at ease, and that feeling could cross oceans. Some part of him was always going to be the little boy who slept on Ryunosuke’s thigh on a long cab ride, or running into the judicial archives looking for old case reports. "See, that’s the thing… I can get the case files from Mama’s library and your notes, sure, but it’s really the sort of thing that requires the whole interview from the top, you know?"
Ryunosuke’s voice shifted to intrigued. "You’ve heard every story I’ve got to tell enough that you could recite them in your sleep. I must know, what is this project of you?"
"It’s a docudrama trilogy, set in eighteen-ninety-nine Victorian London, about a feisty young lawyer and his quest to bring his late best friend’s dream to life…" He trailed off, knowing exactly how this would go.
He was, as always, on the money. Ryunosuke guffawed, loud and bright. His father’s laughter hadn’t changed in a century. How he’d lived so long - how the whole family had, really - was a closely-guarded secret, but one thing didn’t change, and it was Ryunosuke’s laughter. "Are they going to acknowledge the romance sparking, or is it being played straight? If you’re funding it, and I know you, Katsu, don’t deny it - if you’re funding it, you should make them acknowledge that."
Katsuhito’s smile broadened. "Well, costuming’s come a long way, Dad- I told the director that as your son, I have final say on historical accuracy, and I have every intention on acting your acts of high treason like it’s a romcom. Last I checked, it’s what was going through your head."
"Romcoms didn’t exist when I was committing high treason and accidentally charming a pair of prosecutors," Ryunosuke retorted, laughter still holding onto his tone.
"Sure, sure, you invented the concept."
"Absolutely not, the great detective himself did, and your Aunt Susato plead with your mother to let her and Iris stay at the manor until she could mail her father back to Japan."
Now that was a mental image. His Uncle Yujin had been quite the capable doctor and detective himself, even as he’d been one of the major reasons Katsuhito had taken to the acting stage. "Is it a comedy when all their romance happened over corpses?" he inquired.
Ryunosuke sighed, theatrically so. Only one of the major reasons. "All my romance does, and I like to think it’s a comedy show in here."
Ah, his favourite thing, an opening. "Please, Dad- it’s only a comedy when Otou-san’s decided he’s going to grow a beard again."
The noise his father made at the reminder of Kazuma’s multiple attempts was halfway distorted by long-distance static, but it was brilliant nonetheless.
Katsuhito had been one of the first people in the world in the sky, airborne not a week after the Wright brothers had figured out how to fly a plane. Iris had packed him, then two years old, into her backpack, and informed his mother that they’d be back later. His guard lowered by the simple fact of being seven months expecting the youngest of the children, Barok had agreed to let them go. He was none too pleased when Iris returned declaring Katsuhito a perfect passenger on a true aeroplane, but as he was alone in that opinion, Katsuhito had been volunteered to supervise Iris and their Uncle Albert improve upon the Wright brothers’ success and start building their own planes.
Flying nowadays, almost a century later, was an easy form of transport over long distances that didn’t require significant amounts of questionably-legal, dubiously-ethical magic. Besides, Katsuhito was a natural illusionist, not a necromage, driving home to London from Los Angeles via the ghostroads would knock him out for a week, and he’d miss the start of filming. It still didn’t help the peaceful haziness of jetlag that settled over the three as they made their way through some nameless airport on the East Coast, on a layover towards London that promised the ability to stretch and purchase slightly-less-overpriced snacks.
’It was really something else when they brought your luggage in here earlier, though. The way that Russian crewman just tossed your travelling case onto the floor... ...I thought I was going to die!’
Katsuhito mouthed along to the words as he stretched, the script to The Great Ace Attorney propped up against his grandson’s hip as Ryuichi dozed across four seats. Trucy was doing cartwheels and the occasional backflip behind him, flexible in the way he vaguely remembered being at her age, or at least distinctly remembered Yumiko being. He didn’t have the script fully memorized, even as he’d been part of the editing process: he’d all but strongarmed the director, a new face to the scene, into letting him redline it. His parents had all helped, once he’d promised them that he’d be holding the production to historical accuracy. (He strongly suspected Kazuma just hated the way academics nowadays still argued on whether or not Kazuma Asogi, son of Genshin Asogi, and Kazuma van Zieks, apprentice to Lord Barok van Zieks, were the same man.)
He was looking forward to meeting the other actors. He’d asked the direction to keep his presence under wraps until filming began, just to see what would happen. Sure, he managed a good mix of big, long-running projects with famous, skilled directors and little artsy projects where he got to kickstart someone’s career, but he’d done a lot of bigger films recently, and he was itching for something close to home.
An unexpected force from his left side sent him careening into Ryuichi. Katsuhito managed to catch himself by the top of the seat, narrowly avoiding elbowing his grandson in the ribs. Looking down almost balefully, he caught sight of Trucy, thankfully dressed in comfortable flight clothes, having accidentally cartwheeled into him.
"Is that Katsuhito Naruhodo?" a voice to his right rang out, incredulous. He looked up, already regretting not letting Trucy give him a temporary dye job in bright pink, to see a pair of other travellers seated a couple rows away. One of them was wearing a Harvard varsity jacket and holding one of his mother’s books, written some forty years ago. Both of them were staring at him in surprise.
"He didn’t want me as a stunt double, and I don’t blame him," Katsuhito croaked out, without missing a beat, one hand held to his ribs where Trucy had slammed into him. It was the line he usually gave, although admittedly, every stunt double he’d ever worked with used the exact same one. Actors were generally creative when it came to dodging the press, but if it worked, he wasn’t going to fix it.
The two grinned. Katsuhito did his best to return it, although he did kneel and then sit down instead of finishing his stretches. "Trucy, you know I’m an old man," he managed. She looked deeply apologetic, and threw her arms around his shoulders - fortunately lighter.
"I’m sorry!"
"It’s all right, it’s all right." He patted her on the shoulder with his free hand, noting that Ryuichi hadn’t noticed the commotion at any point. Poor lad - he hadn’t flown much, and the jetlag was probably getting to him. It would only be worse when they got to London. He took a couple more breaths, deep as he could, and lowered his voice as he answered, "You’re not trying to break me before filming even starts, are you?"
She giggled. "It’s a docudrama, not an action movie, right?"
He grinned in exchange. "No, that’s the next Princess Cetus when we start filming next winter."
Trucy, rather predictably, squealed - it was one of her favourites, and the next instalment wouldn’t be announced until after filming began. Katsuhito pressed a finger to her lips, and then winked. She silenced herself, but grinned right back at him.
They wouldn’t start filming until the end of the week, and until then, everyone was only flying in and setting up. Trucy had taken to the van Zieks manor like a bat, causing her father to break out the twenty-foot broom to fish her out of the rafters at least twice. Ryuichi didn’t have any issues settling right back into his own bedroom, used infrequently but just often enough that he still had up all of his teenage rock posters and somewhat amusingly, a framed picture of his fiance from college that Trucy immediately sent to her aunt and the rest of the family via her father’s phone.
He sat now at a chair on a ship that they would be filming the SS Burya scenes from - apparently they were also going to film on location in the Old Bailey on the weekends, although he hadn’t a clue how the director had arranged that one - dressed in costuming but without makeup, twirling a fake chalice prop in one hand. Today would mostly just be getting everyone on the same page, while they waited for a few late flights to land. Trucy had already disappeared early on, and he could see her red cape across the room, deep in a discussion with one of the prop designers. Ryuichi wasn’t too far away either, drawing some of the setpieces into his sketchpad.
Really, the only thing that had seemed amiss was that his siblings’ bedroom doors at the manor were open. Habitually the staff kept them locked when not being cleaned, but oddly, both of the rooms belonging to his three sisters were standing open with no signs of use. He had meant to ask the head maid before they left for the day, and it had completely slipped his mind.
Of course, that meant that when some of the other actors began arriving, in costume but not makeup or styled hair yet, he found himself deeply surprised at how many of them he knew.
Katsuhito Naruhodo had been around Hollywood, in the acting scene, almost as long as Hollywood had existed. He’d stumbled into it by accident in his mid-twenties, not long after university, splitting up with Yumiko in Oregon to go different ways across the coast: Katsuhito south, Yumiko north. Over the next sixty or seventy years, he’d gotten to know more or less everyone, even if he never actually helped all that much with casting. Even for this film, the most he’d done was phone his father to go over the script.
He knew some of the actors from around Hollywood: Myrtle Sheep, October Tsukorene, John Hill- and a few new faces, up-and-comers whose first big job would be this series. He certainly hadn’t expected a smug-looking blond man with a curly mullet, spinning his pipe between his fingers, but he still held up the fake chalice (filled with coloured water) in a gesture of hello. "I hope you’re not staying in the manor, my mother would end you," he remarked, loud enough to be heard.
The man commonly known as Herlock Sholmes grinned. "My dear fellow, I couldn’t possibly stay in that ghastly place. I’d become target practice, and that isn’t at all befitting a detective of my calibre. Nor is acting, but as you didn’t drop by, I should have to drop by for you. I know I taught you better manners than that."
Katsuhito rolled his eyes, taking a sip of his water instead of responding. "Chalk it up to my American debauchery. If you’re not part of the crew, might be good to go meet up with whoever’s playing you. Bet they’d be psyched."
"Au contraire, Katsuhito, I am most certainly part of the crew!" Herlock flicked his hat in emphasis, snapping his fingers. "Not all of us act upon the stage, but you most certainly need a working ship to have a stage at all."
Ryuichi glanced at Katsuhito, looking slightly uneasy. "They’re letting him work on the ship?" he asked, voice low. He’d met Herlock a few times… and almost always had his wallet stolen immediately after. Ryunosuke always blamed it on Auntie Gina… Barok usually had other theories.
Katsuhito only smiled. "You’ve never met his side of the family, but I promise, they’ve been sailing for at least four hundred years. He’s not gonna trip over a cat and play Otou-san or anything."
Before Herlock could protest either of these things, a cold voice cut through the general buzz like a well-sharpened katana. "No, I do believe that’s my job in this little affair."
He saw the flicker of the black cloak before he saw the rest of her, in a deeply familiar white suit framed by a billowing black cloak, with a sword at each hip, her hood down but mask firmly in place. It was a little aged around the edges, white ivory fading slightly yellow, but the black markings were plain to the eye, even with her brown sidecut dyed no less than six colours at once. True to form, she had a tanuki on her shoulder, well-trained to stay there. Katsuhito’s eyes settled on the sword at her left hip, aged but well-treated, curved and sheathed.
"Otou-san did not let you borrow Karuma-sensei for this," Katsuhito breathed, staring in disbelief at his younger sister.
Yumiko Naruhodo, dressed as the Masked Disciple, with the blue lanyard indicating an actor’s pass, grinned right back at him. "I am the best negotiator north of the Med."
Their Uncle Herlock, as it turned out, was helping with prop engineering, largely assisting the first few scenes by making sure the ship’s ’emergency stop’ worked as needed. (He also made a nuisance of himself trying to help the actors block properly, at least until the director banned him from talking to them for anything not directly related to his job. Nothing ever really changed with him, it seemed.)
Yumiko was, however, actually acting, playing the part of their father Kazuma. How she’d convinced the director to allow her to do this was a mystery, given that she’d never actually acted in a movie before. She spent most of the morning teaching the young actor playing Barok how to pitch a chalice properly, and when he finally started consistently getting it, she granted him a single actual hallowed chalice for him to pitch during the final scene. The director, of course, wouldn’t be informed until afterward, which was the best concession Katsuhito had managed to get out of her in the interests of safety regulations.
Trucy had managed to earn the affection of both the prop and costuming departments, surprising them with tricks and able to hide all sorts of things in her magic panties, inherited from her blood family. Yumiko had shown her Karuma-sensei, when no one else was looking, but it seemed her temporary ownership of the blade had come with requirements: she didn’t breathe a word of its authenticity to anyone who didn’t already know it for a fact.
(Legally speaking, Karuma was still marked as resting at somewhere at the bottom of the South China Sea, alongside the body of the last of the main Asogi line, Asogi Kazuma himself. They couldn’t confirm its continued existence, because the moment they did, their cousins would stake a claim over it as its ’proper’ owners. As Katsuhito had no interest in brawling several people he didn’t actually know and then going through litigations over it, it was safer to just allow Karuma-sensei the anonymity it deserved.)
Things seemed to be going well: the only issue was an argument between the producer and the director, apparently over whether or not they would allow Yumiko’s pet tanuki on set when the cameras weren’t rolling. The actor playing Mael Stronghart, a man named Rick Brambles, brought donuts for everyone, and complimented Yumiko’s swords. All seemed peaceful for a first day on set, as Katsuhito watched the others, munching on his donut and studying the script. Better to not get rusty.
A loud cursing split the air.
"Good heavens- what was that?" Herlock called, looking startled.
Katsuhito froze. Yumiko didn’t often scream like that - she didn’t scream at all, usually, she’d been brought to several murder scenes before she’d turned thirteen. He couldn’t audibly hear his own brain switching tracks, but Trucy almost certainly would. "We’re filming Dad’s adventures on-location," he said, slowly, "with Karuma-sensei, and no one’s done anything to make sure the set isn’t haunted. You know exactly what she just found, and how complicated that’s going to make filming."
Ryuichi looked at him, mostly in disbelief, with a good dash of horrified understanding. "No."
Trucy was silent, looking at him with wide eyes, already having learned that Katsuhito was much more trustworthy than Herlock or Yumiko.
Katsuhito set down the script, and rose from his stretching. "This almost never happens, certainly not on set, but things were going a little too well, and putting this many members of my family in one place is going to cause us to trip over at least one conspiracy. That is, unfortunately, just how London works. Let’s go find out whose body my baby sister just found, shall we?"