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Posted: Wed May 24, 2006 6:46 pm
As the shadowy figure strode through the grey-and-white light streaming through the grey-and-white window from the grey-black-and white city and sun, he hefted a bottle of grey-and-white amber liquid.
Some may call this an alternate universe....unless of course they lived in it. As did this mysterious man. He was tall, so that his too short, too wide trenchcoat rose to reveal his socks and the coat's shoulders overshot his own. He was quiet, yet keen, as his piercing grey-and-black blue eyes scanned the city streets. All was quiet in this city, this...Ciabola...the Lost City. And it was certainly lost....to crime. Something had to be done. Someone had to take action.
And this someone was standing alone in his dusty grey-and-white office... until he heard a knock on his grey-and-white door.
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Posted: Wed May 24, 2006 7:10 pm
Instead of the classic red-lipped, red-dressed woman that usually glides in at this point, a large, greasy man waddled in, in all his greasy squalor. "Hey. P.I. Gotta job for ya." "How'd yeh find me?" "...Yellow pages." (I thought I cancelled that ad....dangit.) The P.I. felt uncomfortable even sharing a room with a man that looked suited to starting the trouble that he was used to digging people out of. Why was he here? "Why are you here?"
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Posted: Wed May 24, 2006 7:25 pm
"Gotta job for you. Lost cat." The P.I. grumbled and fingered the PPK in his pocket angrily. "I don't do cat jobs." I don't get enough respect as is, he added silently. "I pay well" "I don't care" "Twenty five hundred bucks." "Get out." The whale hauled himself out unhappily. The P.I. went to the window darkly before he realized what was said and scrambled to the hallway before the whale got away. Luckily he couldn't move faster than 1 SPM, (Step per minute), so he hadn't moved far from the door. "$2500? For a cat? What kind of case is this?" "You really wanna know?"
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Posted: Wed May 24, 2006 7:44 pm
Ret shut the door just as a shadow fell past the window. "What's the job?" "I...gotta cat, like I said." "That it? Details, I need 'em." The living tub looked uncomfortable. He'd looked guilty since he came in, but now he looked like a man on the firing wall. "Uh..well....this cat.." "When'd you last see it?" "About 2 minutes ago." ...2 minutes? What was this? "What are you talking about?" "Well...he's here." And he drew out an animal carrier. Inside, one could see a perfectly ordinary cat. Half a cat, to be precise. It was pacing back and forth as though it had a back half, functioning as though it didn't notice the cloudy line separating the real from where the back should've been. Retloc goggled. Retloc stared. Retloc was awed. Retloc...was hoarse. "And....and I'm supposed to find the back half?" "That's what I'm here for."
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Posted: Wed May 24, 2006 7:53 pm
A woman emerged from a seedy looking shop frowning. Her client hadn't payed her what he had promised. After all the trouble she went through to steal the stupid statue. She sighed, under normal circumstances she would have never accepted the deal and she only agreed to the new offer because she needed the cash.
The heels of her boots clicked loudly on the pavement. She tossed her dark brown hair and headed in the direction of her home. Dressed in a dark business suit the skirt cut just at the knee. Her umbrella in hand. It was the only thing she carried with at all times, mostly due to the weather, but she found that it also made quite a formidable weapon. She turned down an alleyway that was a shortcut to her apartment a figure hidden in the shadows followed in silent pursuit.
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Posted: Wed May 24, 2006 8:07 pm
With negotiations settled, Retloc set out from his office. The whale had said that his cat...Fluffles(Disgusting name, Ret spat,) was some victim of some strange anomaly in the Earth's space-time curve. Which, incidentally, was no longer a curve, but an actual corkscrew. It seems that this man had discovered this cat halfway through a closed grate in the bottom of a building when he yanked the front half through the grate, leaving the back half to wander back in. This man was merely a buisinessman down on his luck,(He said), who wanted the other half for the company he worked for to "get back into good graces." Way too scripted. Well, it was enough for a few months more rent, so he was off. To The Speakeasy.
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Posted: Wed May 24, 2006 8:10 pm
Ret pushed past another man in the hallway, turning back to point and say, "I'm out, leave a message after the tone." Halfway out the front door to the rainy city, he yelled out, "TOOONE!!!" Ret smirked to himself as he hailed a cab.
"The Speak. 10 bucks says 10 minutes. Am I right?" "Right, sir."
The cab screeched away, slowing only to hit a fire hydrant on the way out.
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Posted: Wed May 24, 2006 8:18 pm
Retloc steadied himself in the musty interior of the cab as he bounced around the back. What was he doing? He was just recovering from that bruising the other day, he didn't need to go back into gang territory right now. Brass knuckles would only protect him so long. He need his old gun back. "Stop here." The cab screeched to a stop, but Ret jumped out before it quit moving. The Pawn shop. Mike would hand the Pearl Handle back nice and quiet...or it wouldn't be either nice or quiet for Mike.
He was always one to go for the shotgun.
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Posted: Thu May 25, 2006 6:26 pm
A young man sat at a cutting table, working an electric saw with great zeal. Whatever he was cutting, it wasn't too hard and it cut easily, he was done dividing the mass into pieces in no time. He laid down his work so far and chuckled, the blood on his hands only added to his mirth. What was her name? Ah, Mellissa, a girl who had been foolish enough to leave with a stranger after a night of booze and drugs. It gave him satisfaction to see such a worthless life ended, and it pleased him to have new decorations for his home.
He looked around his flat, grinning like a madman. Assorted body parts were strewn across the ground, skins were nailed to the wall, and bones were arranged into strange, modern art statues. He loved them all, his life's work so far. It was simply stunning. The human body had so many uses...
"And now my dear, I believe you would make a lovely paper weight."
Ksrugi left the body in a small kiddie pool set up on the ground. But it wasn't filled with water. Inside, a liquid that was simply acid green bubbled and frothed. Ksrugi set the pieces inside, letting them settle in the preservatives.
"Lovely..."
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Posted: Thu May 25, 2006 7:41 pm
The P.I. wandered out of the shop with his familiar revolver in hand and fresh blood on his shoe. Mike's cast wouldn't be coming off for a while. Ret boarded the cab and glanced back at the bloody footprints he'd left from his right foot.
Then he noticed another step.
A left foot step.
It was quickly being washed away by the rain, but he saw where it led. He told the cabbie to buzz off and got out of the cab, leaving some nice bloody evidence for the cops to try and figure out in the form of a footprint in the cab.
Ret followed the print's direction for a few blocks, not noticing anything suspicious, often wondering if he'd missed a turn or had passed the place. He was on the point of turning back when his occasional inspections of doorways led him to discover a bloody smear on the side of a doorframe.
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Posted: Thu May 25, 2006 7:51 pm
It was a hotel of the cheapest kind, rundown so much that roaches told their friends to stay away. Ret went in to check it out, flash his license, and check the hotel guest roster for anyone on the known suspects list. He'd had the list memorized. Unfortunately, some hungry rats had made a salad of the alcohol-stained roster, making it even more illegible then before. Luckily, though, the clerk's memory was longer than the roster. "Yeah, I had one guy in here. Really weird. Kept bringin' all these different people in here. Never saw any leave, though. I thought he was some kinda celebrity in hiding at the time..." "What room?" "302...but..I never got the key back from 'im."He laughed. "Still, never needed the room." "Will you need it later?" "Naw, you could bomb that room an' I wouldn't care." Thanks for the idea, thought the P.I. darkly.
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Posted: Thu May 25, 2006 7:56 pm
As he neared the door, Ret fingered the custom made, pearl-handled Colt action Army revolver in his pocket. His PPK he'd left back in the cab. Big, bad mistake. If anyone cared to ask the cabbie, he could tell them all about the P.I. who got a free ride for showing his license. And his unlicensed gun. Which was now on the cab floor with the footprint.
A slight red smear swept under the door. Ret didn't even try the doorknob, but pistol-whipped it out of it's rotten place in the wood. It came out smoothly. Ret pushed the door open slowly.
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