NOVEL NEXT V2CH24 Nice To Meet You, Brother
I do so hate being woken up in the middle of the night. Let me tell you something, energy vampires have the wildest dreams. Emotions carry scraps of memories and having a soul chock-full of scraps of memories further emboldened by The Mentalism Ring’s psychometry makes for some trippy dreams.
I hate even more when I have to drag myself out of bed, spend ten minutes in front of a mirror making myself look something approaching presentable, and put on a full three piece suit. While the last one is not strictly necessary, I have a reputation to uphold.
Fortunately, my car drives itself, so I can just create an illusion of a driver then throw myself in the backseat and take a nap.
***
VROOM
After jolting awake, I put my head back on straight and then showed the appreciation that my car was clearly thought deserving, “Thanks Kirby”
With a pat on the backseat, I got out of the car while using an illusion hiding the fact that I was exiting the backseat.
I walked up to the detective running the scene and asked, “So why am I in an alley that smells like hot garbage and not in my bed dreaming of Kim Novac?”
“Who?” the detective asked after turning to face me.
“Never seen the film Rango, I take it.”
Giving me a weird look, “Aallrriigghhtt… can we just talk about why I brought you in.”
“You’re the one that wanted to ask questions instead of just inferring the meaning of my statement with the provided context clues.”
With a quick eye roll, the detective finally arrived at his point. “I was told to call you in if I got anything weird. This guy looks like he got hit by several cars inside an alleyway that couldn’t fit even one. That’s weird enough to make this not my problem and thus I’m going home to my busty wife.”
And with that the scene was now my problem.
I walked down the alley and took in the body. Detective Busteweif was not kidding about the multiple cars thing. Whatever or whoever did this was big, strong, and, due to the body being driven into the ground like a nail, likely flight capable.
“Well, nothing to it but to do it.”
I activated my artifact given psychometry and away I went.
***
Tonight’s performance involved a man conducting a crucial business meeting about an unexpected delay in his returns.
“WHERE’S” the word was punctuated with a kick that drove into the stomach of a man lying on the ground.
“MY”
Another kick to the same location.
“MONEY!”
The last kick landed a little further down the body than intended.
The man on the ground did not respond to initial inquiries. So, the entrepreneur, seeing that the presentation was not being given adequate attention, decided to change his engagement strategy by stomping on the man’s leg and breaking it.
That got the entrepreneur a scream and his customer’s attention.
“Tony, I’ll get you the money you know I’m good for it.” The beaten man whimpered out.
“What I know is that you’re a bad investment with a poor rate of return. If you keep such behavior up I will have no choice but to make up my money by investing your debt into the marketing division. It should prove adequate for my current advertising campaign. I call it the dangers of not paying.”
“I’ll get you the money.” The beaten man assured Tony.
“See that you do.” Tony told the man before taking his leave.
Good thing too, as about a minute later a shadow flying overhead saw the concentration of aggression and dived towards the scene.
When the figure landed it started to huff and its eyes turned an iridescent red.
The figure was hard to make out as the man laying on the ground had quite the concussion in addition to blood in his eyes. Not that the man was given time as the figure quickly rushed towards him.
The figure grabbed him by the throat, threw him up into the air, quickly flew above him, and then drove him into the ground.
***
And that’s how I got my victim. Too bad it was next to useless as I had no idea where to start looking nor what I was looking for. A physically strong creature that had opposable thumbs and could fly was a pretty short list, but none that I could think of matched the M.O. they either did not hunt like this, did not go after these kinds of targets, did not live in this environment, or would not just leave a perfectly intact body behind. So, either it’s something buried deep in some record, it’s an outlier, or I was missing something. I don’t know which of the options was worst. Tonight was really not going my way.
When I was wondering how it could get worse, my phone started ringing.
Picking up the call, “This is Agent Jessie Cole. What’s the situation?”
“Agent Cole, Department Head Bulk Brogan has decided to conduct an audit of the Slaughterville Branch. Please drop any and all non-critical tasks and return to the local office to facilitate.”
“I have to return anyways to research possible culprits in my most recent case. Please tell Department Head Brogan that I will be there in twenty minutes.” After saying that I promptly hung up the phone.
“F*CK!!!!” while not the most professional look to scream obscenities at an active crime scene in front of a bunch of witnesses, I had just been kicked in the balls by Murphy. I should have known better than to taunt him.
Now I have to meet one of the strongest human chi users in the world and the father of my dead best friend who at best actively dislikes me. Also said “local office” was my living room as was standard practice among smaller offices. This was due to many entities requiring being invited into someone’s domicile.
Yay me.
Being:
Body:
[Nascent Energy Vampire Progenitor]
Soul Tattoos:
[Celestial Weaving]
[Sand: Tier Three]
[Water: Tier Five]
[Faith: Tier One]
[Holy Water: Tier Three]
[Shadow: Tier Five]
[Necromancy: Tier Five]
[Rot: Tier ErRoR]
[Phoenix Fire: Tier Nine]
Special Abilities:
[Empowerment: Tier Nine]
[Emotional Empowerment: Tier One]
[Emotional Manipulation: Tier One]
Current Equipment:
Head:
[The Black Wasp Jackal’s Face]
[Vampire’s Hunger]
Earrings:
[]
Necklace:
[]
Clothes:
[Idle Hands]
Rings:
[The Mentalism Ring]
[Mena’s Book]
[Petrifying Ring]
[Olivia’s Friendship]
[Brash Ring]
Bracelets:
[]
Shoes:
[Comet Kicks]
Armaments:
[Beastly Heart]
[Murder Weapon]
Storage:
[Various Utility Artifacts]
[Various Articles Of Clothing]
[Death Dogtags]
[Leech Muscles]
[Leech Teeth]
[Chimeric Essence]
[Spark Of Emotive Flame]