Zenigata Heiji was no detective.
He could not match wits with Dupin. He could not deduce things as easily as Popeau. He could not piece together things as quickly as Roscoe. From the very beginning, Zenigata knew he was brought on as the muscle for the team; with his trusty jutte and kan'eitsūhō coins, he could make short work of the criminals they were tasked with catching.
If only actually catching them could be that easy.
Unlike the other men he was working with, Zenigata boarded the jet with haste. Although he was no detective, he would try to help as best he could anyway. He sat down and opened up the Foundation-issue tablet that he had been given upon joining Interpol. He had found little use for it though, that was at least, until now. The policeman didn't know much about using these newfangled fancy gadgets that the world was so obsessed with nowadays, but Roscoe had done him the kindness of teaching him how to use it when he had first gotten it.
The first thing on Zenigata's mind was: "What evidence do we have about the Thieves' Domain?" They were thieves, that much was obvious. Thieves that stole concepts and dedicated them to the public domain. They were anomalies themselves; having only previously existed in stories and folklore. The fact that Zenigata himself was fictitious was an existential problem he could put off for another time; he did not want to even consider the fact that his existence was entirely reliant on the fact that someone else had thought about him.
Shrugging the thought off, he resumed his pondering. When he had initially been brought into Foundation custody, he had heard someone say that the rate of 'pataphysical' anomalies beign discovered with relation to intellectual properties in the public domain had been skyrocketing recently.
Perhaps that would make for a good lead. Zenigata got to keyword searching for "public domain" within the database. His search yielded a few results, with names he had never seen before. Names like Lieutenant Columbo, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Beowulf, Paul Bunyan, Orlando, and Gilgamesh.
Zenigata did not recognize a single one of these.
However, it wasn't like they had television, most books, the internet, or even ancient Sumerian epics where he was from. All of this new technology was both exciting and terrifying to him. But now was no time to dwell on that. He sighed and swiped through the pages on the tablet, reading them as fast as he could. There had to be something the others weren't seeing there.
He thought for a moment. Perhaps if he searched the term 'copyrighted'. The Japanese beat cop did so and waited for the massive database search to do its thing, playing with his coin in his hand as he did so. After about a minute, his search came back with sparse few results.
He grumbled, but decided to look through them anyway. Most of the reports were Mobile Task Force logs of several teams tracking down anomalies that were copyrighted characters. He didn't find after-action reports to be too engaging, truth be told. But he read them all the same. And the more he did, the more he noticed a recurring trend.
The manifestations of these anomalies were very weak and usually dissipated on their own, not even meriting a file on the Foundation's extensive catalog. Most of them didn't even make it beyond 48 hours. He continued to read, taking note of all the characters he did recognize from consuming media since his manifestation into this strange new world. Iron Man, Mario, Pikachu, Arya Stark, Ignatius J. Reily, all of them licensed characters, all of them disappeared as anomalies.
This line of thought was getting him nowhere. He needed to realign his mind space. Zenigata fiddled with his coin again, trying to focus back on the Thieves' Domain. The only things he had in common with them were the fact that they were both public domain characters and on opposite sides of law and crime.
He scratched his chin.
Law and crime. Two concepts that could not exist without the other. Perhaps that was the reason he, Dupin, and Popeau had been brought into this world. To act as a check and balance on Lupin, Goemon, Adler, and Hood. But what was the Foundation's role in all of this? And why were they so different?
In his time since coming to the world, Zenigata had read the stories of origin of he, his fellow lawmen, and the criminals they hunted. Not once was Irene Adler depicted as a punk chick. Not once was Lupin ever part of a team. And to make things weirder, Zenigata himself often was depicted as sporting a chonmage hairstyle in most versions he had seen. But now? He wore a simple ponytail, glasses, and an earing.
Were they at the mercy of being remixed ans reinterpreted by anyone as they saw fit just because they were in the public domain? Was this part of their anomalous properties? Part of the so called pataphysics he had heard so much about?
Then, it hit him.
"Yatta!"
ZENIGATA
Zenigata is a policeman as opposed to a detective. He'll be going over the evidence to try and see what was missed, making calls and checking stuff in databases, while they're unable to have their boots on the ground. Maybe he's posting notes on a bulletin board in the main cabin and making connections as he finds stuff out, plotting out everything they know. What facts are in evidence, and what do they mean?
- Interpol is targeting the Thieves' Domain, but plenty of other pataphysical anomalies have been happening too. We're only focused on the TD because these are detectives solving that particular problem. The Foundation has its hands full with other PD material elsewhere.
- When Interpol was first formed they investigated the origins of the Thieves' Domain. They noticed they were all public domain characters, but did not conclude that ONLY public domain characters were popping into existence, because plenty of copyrighted things were also popping into existence. (When the Disney anomaly was first attempted, it was so badly calibrated that it created characters *derived* from public domain material as well, which covers a whole fuckton of famous stuff; they got it dialled in better after a bit. Zenigata won't figure this part out, this is just for author's context).
- Re-examining the evidence now with access to MTF feeds and such, Zenigata will discover that most of the anomalies still active are now public domain only, and the copyrighted ones have gradually disappeared without being contained. New anomalies are still popping into existence, and Zenigata will see that they're exclusively public domain now. (Could make a few cute references to the other series in the contest here.)
- Zenigata compiles as many of the probably-related-to-this-pataphysics-crisis anomalies as he can find, and finds a strong correlation between the number of crime-related ones and justice-related ones, suggesting an unlikely balance; or is it just that most stories about criminals have detectives, and vice-versa? Still the two are surprisingly cancelling each other out, meaning only the Foundation is in chaos because of this, as they want to hush up all this weird fictional stuff. Zenigata wonders: was the point of this to make the Foundation intervene?
- He also notes that all of these characters have their own agency now that they exist, based on the data: Adler is behaving in a punk goth chick manner that Doyle never suggested, because he barely sketched in her character, Lupin and Goemon were never big team players before this but they've formed common cause, and all the detectives themselves are lone wolves now growing and learning together. The goals of the Domain may not be the same as the goals of whoever is causing this. What might their goal be, then, besides putting everything into the public domain?
- The Domain's goal might be the thing that has actually happened: are they attacking the Foundation so the detectives will figure out what's creating them? Because that's the effect it's producing.