007 ~ [Text/ Filtered to Edgeworth]
{{OOC: Backdated to September 29, a day after the hallucinogenic gas was cleared out of Serenity's ventilation system.}}
I wrote to my father in Bydan and to a friend in Bydan's branch of the Shipwright's Guild, as well as to a Bellcius cousin. I now have some information about Dr. Muraki, not much, but it's a start. I assume you'll share it if anybody requests it (i.e. Admiral Bradley, Commander Mustang, Commander Ukitake, or Lieutenant Havoc).
My father flatly refused to inquire into the possiblity of Muraki having a criminal record. But my guild buddy had no problem with it. He visited some of our city officials and (unfortunately) came up with the following: Muraki has never been charged with a crime in the city of Bydan, and has never even been a suspect. The doctor was uncommonly law-abiding and truthful. He applied for permission to practice medicine in that locale, as he was required to do by city regulations, and what he says on the application about his medical training squares with what my cousin later dug up.
My cousin, who is currently assigned to shore duty as a Navy historical archivist, hopped a flight to Melior and visited several libraries, looking up old articles from newspapers (including the society columns), college publications, and professional journals. Here is her summary:
Kazutaka Muraki is the son of a doctor and the grandson of a doctor. The grandfather's practice was in Abantiare, the father's in Melior. The family is descended of the Ivonian noble class. Muraki's mother was said to have been beautiful and unstable. She gave birth to only one child, Kazutaka. But when he was a young teenager, his father brought home Saki, the son of his deceased Solarian mistress, to live with the family.
Some years later, Kazutaka's parents were found dead. The crime went unsolved. After the funeral, Saki tried very hard to get control of the family's money but didn't succeed. Some years later, he attacked Kazutaka with murderous intent and was shot and killed by the household guards. Investigators then presumed that Saki had also been the murderer of the parents, and closed the case.
After that, Muraki went to live with his grandfather in Abantiare. For the rest of his adolescence, he lived a quiet life of stellar academic achievement. He returned to Melior for his university studies. He graduated with highest honors from Melior's most prestigious medical training program. He went on to an internship and a residency at the same institution. He enjoyed a very sucessful career as a surgeon and a researcher. He was regarded as brilliant.
He eventually abandoned his hospital career for a lucrative private practice. Some years later, he left town and dropped completely out of sight.
Footnote: It was during the time he practiced privately that the newspapers began to report a spike in disappearances of children in Melior. After he left, the disappearances ceased. (I include this fact because my cousin found it interesting. I do, too. Although, of course, it may be completely unrelated.)
As to what Muraki may have been up to in Bydan, or afterwards, I have little in the way of fact (as yet). My father says that after Muraki had gone to the trouble of setting up a practice in Bydan, he left and went to Kropmork and Nahk for a few years, and apparently studied sorcery. When he came back, he had become a full-fledged member of Fairy Tail, one of the mage guilds. It was after this that my father became one of his patients and I came to the doctor's notice.
There is one other thing. My father wrote me two letters and at first I did not know how to understand the second one. When I wrote to him during Hanami, we had not spoken or written in nearly six years, and he was very reserved in his first letter. But in the second one, he seemed to become suddenly scattered and emotional, which is not like him at all. Parts of that letter weren't very coherent, but I believe he was attempting to get at some facts and to alert me to a danger he knows or fears.
He began by trying to tell me about the timing of events, that Muraki had not actually vanished from Bydan until seven and a half years ago, almost a year after the onset of my illness. He said that he remembers the date because he never saw Muraki again after "that big explosion in the woods west of Bydan." The event he is referring to caused a forest fire, and my father is one of the Bydan-Licere Volunteers, so he had to go and fight the blaze. They had a devil of a time containing it. I've been to that place. There are five square miles where you can still find the charred tree trunks amongst the new growth. And there is a big crater. In his letter, my father mentioned that hole in the ground three times. He recalled that when he first arrived on the scene, there was still a pillar of flame shooting up from it, fifty or sixty feet into the air.
This incident happened in a corner of the no-logging zone within the Bydan Forest. That zone was supposed to be a sanctuary for wildlife as well as for the trees. IMHO, some of the wildlife in there is so dangerous that nobody in their right mind would log it, not even if the law were changed. But there is one creature that does NOT belong there, and that is a Kocho. It is not native to the region (and maybe not to any region). And yet, during the year that I was ill after Muraki's assault, a creature that exactly fits the description of what Admiral Bradley, Commander Mustang, and I saw on the deck of the Amestris was reported by numerous hikers, birdwatchers, biologists, and poachers. The survivors all wrote descriptions or made sketches, and to my mind, they were representing Muraki's pet without a doubt.
To my father's, too, I think. He seemed to be linking Muraki to the explosion by way of the Kocho. He thinks that something terrible happened there. Otherwise, why would he reminesce about the fire, enclose the best of those newspaper clippings, tell me insistently that Muraki is a certified sorcerer, and then conclude his letter with "Be careful. Be very careful"?
[Private to self]
*comes back later and changes the security* ---> [Filtered to Edgeworth]
As I was saying, there were two letters. The first was less than helpful. It says:
Your uncle informs me that you were asking questions in Garrettstown as regards the Valknut Corporation and their latest product, the semi-automatic pistol. I presume you know that the gun dealer who provided you with the facts was one of the middlemen through whom we purchase arms from outside Vohemar. In the future, you will kindly ask my permission before you use the Kurosaki name to pry information from those I depend on to outfit my ships with essential hardware.
I received your letter requesting information about Dr. Muraki. I will be honest with you. I do not understand your antipathy for this man, whom I still regard as a friend.
The next day, the second letter arrived. He must have scribbled it out immediately after the first. He writes:
You became ill eight and a half years ago. Dr. Muraki did not leave Bydan until almost a year later. You don't remember that, I suppose, because he never came to the house again after I informed him of your sickness. He had retired from being a private physician to live quietly and focus on his research. He never told me what exactly he was studying. I met him regularly in town, however. I knew he was spending time in the forest because his shoes often had traces of that rich black loam one can find under the ferns, up in the northwestern corner of the woods where the soil is the wettest because it gets the most rain. He's a fastidious man, but that stuff clings and smears when a person tries to scrape it off. White suede shoes...
This is where my father melts down, as I said. His sentences become disjointed. He starts a sentence and then breaks off and writes something else. He doesn't seem to realize that he has done this. His hands must have been shaking when he folded the newspaper article roughly and shoved it into the envelope. I touched the script with my hands, with my empath's fingers, and a wave of anxiety and anguish swept up the bones of my arms and into my heart. It was not mine, it was his, it was what he felt when he was writing those words. I nearly threw up.
Sorry, this whole communication was not as succinct as I would have liked it to have been. I'll draw up a timeline and start plugging the facts in.