Halara Nightmare/Synopsis

The story of Halara Nightmare from Master Detective Archives: Rain Code.
==Before Prologue==
As a child, Halara first found signs of their ability to use psychometry through visions, which would incur upon touching people or objects. At the time, Halara was unaware this was psychometry at all, only learning through age. At the same time, Halara's parents were scammed by a fake friend out of their home money, using Halara's optimism against them. Due to this, Halara became misanthropic, being unfazed by betrayal between humans, looking to cats and dogs to cope with the burning hatred being developed, and deciding to gather money from people to potentially create a program where Halara could save 30% of cats, though only for personal satisfaction.
By working through the WDO, Halara received special treatment for simply possessing psychometry, but deciding it wasn't enough, they trained it to fully become a Forte known as Postcognition within a period of three days only. Halara found that Postcognition had certain limitations, however. It could only be enabled when at a crime scene, with prior knowledge of the murder victim's face and name, is unable to detect the living, and can only see from the view of a third party first discovering the scene, rather than the culprit or victim. Following the two-year training period for every agent in the WDO, Halara received their Detective Deed, becoming a Master Detective.
While at the WDO, Halara solved many cases risking their life, to the point where it became normal, and used Postcognition to solve murder cases; though no one believed Halara's word on what was seen. By the time of the story, Halara was assigned to investigate Kanai Ward, being the first to arrive, avoiding Amaterasu Corporation's attempts to eliminate them, and was taken to the Nocturnal Detective Agency by Yakou Furio, along with Desuhiko Thunderbolt, Fubuki Clockford, and Vivia Twilight. While in Kanai Ward, Halara and Desuhiko obtained the passenger list for the Amaterasu Express and searched through the history of every passenger, including Yuma Kokohead. The agency discovered that there wasn't a Master Detective registered under that name, and that "Yuma" is only a trainee, who happens to be skilled in cooking.
==Prologue: WDO vs. Amaterasu Corporation==
Once Yakou returned with Yuma from the Amaterasu Express, Halara and Desuhiko were found gambling together, with Fubuki failing to keep score, and Vivia watching from the background. Halara attempted to justify their win during the game, but Yakou decided to restrict gambling in the agency altogether. Once the other Master Detectives were introduced to Yuma, Halara and Yakou told the information about Yuma that they learned beforehand. The agency told him that him being a trainee was acceptable, and he could still be a member regardless. Halara and Yakou were confident in the idea that Yuma can be a great detective with or without a Forte, and Halara declared that they weren't going to compete for their position in the agency.
After waiting, the agency received a call. They received a transmission from the WDO with an old man claiming to be Number One, the top detective of the WDO, whom never showed his face to the public. Halara realized the significance of their assignment if someone of high priority was giving the agency their orders. The order was vague, but clear: uncover the mystery of Kanai Ward and the world. Due to Kanai Ward being controlled by Amaterasu Corporation's Peacekeepers, however, the agency declared war between themselves and Amaterasu, something Yakou was cautious about doing. Halara didn't mind a war, on the other hand, being used to risky situations.
==Chapter 1: The Nail Man Killings==
On the first day in Kanai Ward on the detectives' assignment, Yuma was ordered by the chief to round up the Master Detectives, but Halara disappeared from sight, and the other detectives hadn't seen them anywhere, nor did Yuma. After Yuma attempted to intervene the Peacekeepers trapping a child at the clocktower in Kanai Ward, however, Halara conveniently showed up to neutralize them all with their athletic abilities before the Peacekeepers could attack him, using a 1-shien coin that Halara obtained to distract them. Following the save, Halara scolded Yuma for being reckless with the Peacekeepers, to which he apologized. The father of the child in question was framed as the Nail Man by the Peacekeepers, and he requested Yuma and Halara reveal the truth. However, Halara wouldn't accept an assignment without a required estimate of five million shien, and wouldn't take the child's most prized possession as a substitute, simply discarding it. Halara delegated the assignment to Yuma, waiting at the cafe for him in case he would need Halara's help. Eventually, after investigating the clocktower murder, Yuma did show up and begged for Halara to help him, with Halara expecting him to have come to Halara 30 minutes prior, or in other words, immediately after Halara would arrive at the cafe.
Halara expected Yuma to have the estimated money ready for them, being disappointed upon not receiving it, and Yuma would insist that he would eventually be able to pay it at some point, with the additional for the coffee bought from the cafe, as well as the wait. Halara would tell Yuma that they work to the utmost according to the payment, and that Yuma should doubt all people, including Halara, with Halara finding it absurd that Yuma would believe everything Halara says. Halara revealed three other Nail Man cases that took place in Kanai Ward besides the clocktower case: a secret club, a mansion, and an art gallery. Halara proposed that the two of them investigate the church, where the Nail Man typically resided, but they required the chief to pinpoint the church's location. With the mention of the chief, Yuma was reminded that he had to round up the Master Detectives by Yakou's orders, and Halara was obligated to follow this order. The two of them returned to the agency together, only to find Seth Burroughs threatening to arrest Chief Yakou for Halara and Yuma interfering with the Peacekeepers within three hours. Once Seth departed, Halara and Yuma negotiated with Yakou that they could solve the Nail Man case together, and decided to help them navigate the church.
Once they found the church, Halara and Yuma posed as Amaterasu Corporation employees to the churchgoers. Yuma was ordered by Halara to interrogate the churchgoers, learning about the Nail Man's previous incidents and the order in which they occurred from the worshipper. They investigated the murder scenes in order, starting with the secret club, then the mansion, and finally the art gallery. Halara broke into each location with ease, pretending the physical effort needed was no issue. In the secret club, Halara learned of that Yuma had Coalescence, to their surprise, shocked that Yuma had honed in a Forte, though Halara wouldn't hear his word that it wasn't his ability. The two of them joined hands as Halara performed their Forte, that being Postcognition. The duo would find that each case was a locked-room mystery. After investigating, they would return to Chief Yakou together within the time period, him already being surrounded by Peacekeepers, rounding up the churchgoers from before in order to expose the true culprit of the Nail Man case. Using the Mystery Labyrinth, with Halara displaying further athletic ability while doing so, they would discover the true culprit was the priest. However, Halara didn't recall the events of the case while in the Mystery Labyrinth, and would forget the Mystery Labyrinth once having left it, so the priest, the true culprit, suddenly dying before themselves, the Peacekeepers, and the chief came as a shock, and an inconvenience to Yuma. Following the death of the culprit, Yomi Hellsmile and Martina Electro, the Peacekeepers' directors, would find Seth at the scene and indict him for receiving kickbacks from facilitating donations to the church, though it was only done by Yomi's orders. Yomi would then tell the agency to stay out of the Peacekeepers' business. Once the case was solved, Halara would commend Yuma for his efforts, and Yakou would scold Yuma for his recklessness.
==Chapter 2: A Silent Curtain Call==
The morning following the Nail Man case, the detectives gathered in the agency. However, Chief Yakou hadn't shown up yet. Halara deduced that he had left to get food for the group, what with the loose change missing and the refrigerator empty. Meanwhile, Desuhiko challenged the idea of Yuma being a "real detective"; Halara came to Yuma's defense, telling him that Yuma is an equal, trainee or not. The agency questioned why the chief was missing, wondering if he was getting meat buns for himself, noticing how they're some sort of delicacy in Kanai Ward. Halara paid no mind to the conversation thereafter, until Yakou returned from his errand. He told the agency that the Peacekeepers had been chasing after him, and he had to shake them off. Halara questioned why he didn't let them follow him anyway, to Yakou's disbelief, since they had increased in security around Kanai Ward since Yuma's interference. Yakou decided that the agency should continue to remain underground instead of worrying about the mystery of Kanai Ward, to Halara's frustration. Halara decided to take the initiative and challenge the Peacekeepers directly, leaving the agency, with Fubuki following behind as support. 
Later on, after Yuma visited Aetheria Academy, Halara returned from their venture, though with no information in particular, and received information about the city from Kurumi Wendy. The agency received information about research on "homunculus", which were allegedly immortal monsters, but with the Peacekeepers irritated, a torpedo was sent to the agency's sub, causing it to sink. Though it's unseen, the agency managed to survive altogether and quickly meet up again in the multipurpose building where the agency was previously located, besides Yuma, who had no idea of the meeting location, and Fubuki, who had forgotten. The rest of the group went to search for them both after meeting up again.
==Chapter 3: No Longer a Detective==
Following Guillaume Hall's public announcement that Yuma was being framed as a terrorist, Vivia saw through the deception done by the culprit, telling the agency that someone was flooding Marunomon District via the hydroelectric power plant. The detectives visited the area of flooding and found Resistance members Icardi and Servan in front of the bank of Kanai Ward, with safes floating nearby, deducing that they had participated in a bank robbery and had intended to leave via the waterway, promptly arresting them for the Peacekeepers to handle later. The detectives were told that the leader, Shachi, was killed by Icardi to frame Yuma, and that Servan was set up by Icardi. They continued across the flood to find Yuma, Fubuki, and Kurumi being confronted by Guillaume herself. Halara and Desuhiko intervened in the attack from Guillaume and directed her to the true culprits of the case, proving Yuma's innocence, and then leaving the case for the Peacekeepers to deal with.
Thinking the case was solved, Yomi confronted the detectives in an attempt to capture Yuma, incriminating him for still planting bombs around Kanai Ward, threatening to kill the detectives before him. Yomi was infuriated by a supposed "lack of order" in Kanai Ward, threatening to torture the agency; Halara would propose to neutralize the Peacekeepers by themselves, which Yakou would advise Halara not to do, though Halara would still insist on defending everyone. As Yomi approached the detectives, Makoto Kagutuschi, Amaterasu Corporation's CEO, would intervene and order Yomi to withdraw from the punishment, to which he would comply. Makoto would then lead the detectives back to the original district, telling them of his power imbalance with Yomi along the way. Halara would be irritated by Makoto's suspicious attitude and unwillingness to listen. However, Makoto would then guide them to the original location of their agency, the submarine, reconstructing the submarine as a "gift" for solving the case. Halara would suspect it to be bugged by Makoto in order to eavesdrop on the detectives, and would also predict that the power imbalance between Yomi and Makoto would lead to devastating results. Vivia would also have additional information about the discussed topic of homunculus, informing the group of a secret lab where the research would take place, to everyone's shock. Halara would decide that the lab is the appropriate setting for the solution to the mystery of Kanai Ward, and the group would then leave to search for where the lab could be.
==Chapter 4: The Imperfect Insider==
Halara, Kurumi and Yuma would begin their search for the secret lab, but would earn no results. Halara would see proof of its existence in that Amaterasu Corporation employees had disappeared after the Resistance incident. Without them, however, the detectives would be unable to search for information on the secret lab's location. Following Halara's advice to avoid restricting oneself through assumption, Kurumi would offer a possible location for it, that being a restricted area where an abandoned village is located. Halara, unsure of why it would exist, and in disbelief that it would be a facility to dispose of corpses, would decide to search for it themselves, deciding that the WDO would pay for the task of searching for it instead, since the organization already paid for Halara's current assignment.
As Halara was preparing to leave Kanai Ward to find the restricted area, Chief Yakou told the agency about a death threat he received from a hitman named Fink the Slaughter Artist regarding Dr. Huesca, the head of Amaterasu's research. Using Desuhiko's disguises, the agency snuck into the Amaterasu Corporation building and entered the research lab, the Peacekeepers following, having received the death threat as well. Halara and Vivia were separated by orders of Chief Yakou, as he told them to investigate. Eventually, the two of them reunited with the group after Chief Yakou wound up dead, defending Yuma, Fubuki and Desuhiko from the Peacekeepers. Halara decided that Vivia should work on defending their allies from the group in unison, as Halara would charge Vivia 100 shien per every Peacekeeper to do the work themselves. In the scuffle, Yomi escaped from the group, potentially to retrieve more Peacekeeper Officers. With Chief Yakou's dying body, the group found a room in the facility to hide in from the Peacekeepers, but due to the secret lab's gate being locked from the outside, the detectives were trapped, even though they had to leave to avoid Yomi attacking them again. To solve the case of Dr. Huesca and Chief Yakou's deaths, the group was at an impasse regarding their next course of action. After debating, Halara explained Vivia's Forte to the group, that being Spectral Projection, which allows him to use his "ethereal self", unaffected by the laws of physics. Vivia's refusal to search for the truth himself with his Forte infuriated Halara, and Halara wondered if he was either hiding something from or mocking the rest of the detectives. With Yuma's Coalescence, something Vivia was aware of from the start, Vivia decided that Yuma could investigate with Vivia's Spectral Projection instead. Halara and the others put their faith in Yuma, hoping he'd investigate the case in time.
Yuma would return to his physical body, along with Vivia, who joined in with Yuma in the investigation. The results came back null, however, in Yuma's case, since he found nothing to pin the culprit's identity. Halara regrets not having access to the late Dr. Huesca's computer, since the security logs could be found and the culprit's opportunity to enter his lab in order to murder him could be identified, which couldn't be accessed due to Spectral Projection preventing touch. The computers in the room the group were currently in were out of the question since only Dr. Huesca's computer could access the file for the security log. While watching over Chief Yakou's dying body, Halara noticed his heartbeat slowing down and rapidly performed CPR on him to keep him alive as long as possible, his death being inevitable, ordering the others in a fit of desperation to help out. Yuma decided to take charge and visit Dr. Huesca's lab himself, with Vivia following behind. Once they returned, they told the group the murder case was solved, unable to tell them that Chief Yakou was the culprit as he had died. However, by Halara's judgment, Yakou was dead long ago. Yomi had also been arrested, ending the Peacekeepers' reign over Kanai Ward, and the group was finally able to return back to the agency.
The WDO called the agency once more, with the old man from the beginning, who claimed to be Number One, telling them that he knew about the death of Chief Yakou, and his role as the culprit of Dr. Huesca's murder. He requested the detectives to dismiss Yakou's death and continue the investigation regarding the mystery of Kanai Ward and the world. Halara would demand an explanation as to what exactly the mystery was, since keeping it vague had led to the deaths of various detectives, including Yakou himself. The old man would follow Halara's demands and explain what the mystery was: a global kidnapping case involving Kanai Ward. Halara informed the group of where bodies of people from around the world could be stored, that being the restricted area in Kanai Ward previously discussed, having learnt that the bodies from the dead of Kanai Ward were transported via trucks due the orders of Makoto Kagutsuchi. The following events after they were transported, on the other hand, was an unknown. Vivia also informed the others about something known as "The Blank Week Mystery", a taboo term in Kanai Ward, which he learned about via Spectral Projection. As the old man would sign off, an explosion would occur on the other end, and the agency would receive a transmission of a newsflash reporting the WDO building having been bombed in a terrorist attack, to the horror of the detectives watching. In the tension, a gift in Yuma's pocket would begin to emit white sleeping gas that would fill the room and knock the agency unconscious. 
==Chapter 5: And Then I Was Gone & Epilogue: RAIN CODE==
Regaining consciousness after being knocked out in the agency, the detectives, besides Yuma, would wake up on the top floor of Kanai Tower, imprisoned by Makoto Kagutsuchi. Meanwhile, Yuma and Kurumi were in the restricted area of Kanai Ward. The detectives would have their deaths faked by Makoto in the restricted area, pretending that they had been devoured by the defective homunculi while in the factory during reports regarding Kanai Ward and the homunculus. Makoto used his Coalescence as Number One's homunculus to copy the handwriting of the Master Detectives, presumably in their sleep, in order to convince Yuma, the real Number One, that they had died gruesomely and irrevocably. Makoto used skeletons and clothes that matched those of the Master Detectives in order to produce fake skeletons of the detectives identical to the originals. Yuma would end up separated in the restricted area with Kurumi until the final battle between him and Makoto, who was the real Number One's homunculus. Yuma encouraged Makoto to let the truth come out to Kanai Ward instead of shouldering the burden of concealing the truth of Kanai Ward from the world, that being that every resident was a defective homunculi retaining the memories of the original human residents who formerly lived in Kanai Ward, up until their clones killed and replaced them, and that he used Master Detectives as a means to take down Yomi.
After the final battle, Makoto told the residents of Kanai Ward the truth about them being homunculi and negotiated with the Unified Government to keep the homunculi residents alive. Makoto also told the detectives that Yuma was the real Number One, who had left the detective agency beforehand, as well as his role as Number One within the WDO itself prior to the story, and the old man who died was a body double, as well as that the video feed showing the bombing was a sham and the WDO building was still fully intact. The truth finally revealed and the mystery of Kanai Ward solved, Halara, Desuhiko, Fubuki and Vivia returned to the WDO after completing their assignment, preparing for another case, as well as the nomination of the next Number One, with Kanai Ward being able to call over the detectives at any time, though Halara would still retain their quota for every client that "they don't work for cheap". Upon departing Kanai Ward, Halara told Kurumi that Yuma still had to pay the debt for Halara's assistance in the Nail Man case, and left the 1-shien coin on the chief's desk, before waving Kurumi goodbye.
Category:Synopsis