(FIN) Light Your Tinsel Moon [Bee]

[Dark]

[6 months after Bro Rape]

Rin inserted the key into the second lock and jimmied the handle when the door didn't immediately swing open; the door groaned as it rotated on its hinges. He groped for the light switch, squinting his eyes as the florescent lights hummed and flickered into existence, illuminating the room. He headed for the desk.

The dingy little office looked little better than when Rin had signed the lease, but after three weeks he found the dark paneled walls and sloped linoleum floor comforting. The desk--he'd shoved a folded newspaper under one leg to keep it from rocking unsteadily--and the row of empty filing cabinets had come included.

He'd been sleeping in the second, smaller room until he could find an apartment. Or, more truthfully, until he could afford an apartment. The lack of business wasn't helping matters.

And while he hadn't parted with Roxanne on good terms, he thought he could live with that. He wasn't sweating over the lack of residence, either. He had finally found something he could do to make a difference--he might not be able to stop bad things from happening, but he could make sure they never happened again.

He glanced at the plain, block letters painted on the glass window--Rin Baudin, Private Dick--and flipped open his newspaper. Maybe he would actually get a case today.

[Bee]

His stay in the Capital had been unexpectedly extended. In the last week of Abner's classes, he had come back to their room to find a note--written on unwrinkled, attractive lavender stationary in Abner's flowery, perfect handwriting--that had clearly been penned during some self-absorbed fit of fake misery on the desk. There were a lot of capital letters and exclamation marks. I REALIZE that neither YOU NOR MOTHER CARE and thus I will TAKE MY HIDEOUS MONSTROUS SELF away from ALL OF YOU. It is FOR THE BEST. Do not try to FIND ME. TRULY. WE WILL ALL BE HAPPIER THIS WAY.

To which Jin had initially shrugged and said, "Fine." He had penned a letter to his mother--in his own horrible, animal-form handwriting that looked like a particularly retarded right-handed three-year-old was trying to write with the left--informing her that only one of her children would be coming home.

Unfortunately, Mother, unlike Jin, seemed to care. And thus he was tasked with tracking the miserable little fucker down. Which was doubtless what Abner wanted. To prove that they loved him.

Jin was still unwilling, however, to put all that much effort into finding his brother, and decided to spend some of his mother's money to hire someone else to do it.

That was when he saw the sign. Rin Baudin, Private Dick. He thought of booze and blood-stains. He had never learned his serial killer friend's name, but if this was him...

He stepped curiously into the office.

[Dark]

Having so much time on his hands did things to a man; luckily in the case of Rin it was nothing more outrageous than having become rather obsessive about the daily crossword. (On occasion, he'd also take part in the sadoku). He was considering 27 Down, This magic creature's spine has many uses, when the tiny bell on the door shrilled in greeting; he almost didn't notice. As it were, he scribbled in 'jabberwocky' before he even bothered to look up.

His mind had been known to play tricks on him, especially locked away in this room for hours on end, but they had never appeared nearly as convincing as the canine that had just strolled into his office; he didn't think his subconscious would be that vicious besides.

The man in front of him represented a lot of things--most of them unpleasant--and Rin was hard pressed to shrug down the fur threatening to stand straight up. He didn't want to be reminded, he had finally found his balance, and what fucked up piece of the cosmos thought it would be funny to send Jin through his door, of all the P.I.s in the city?

Awkward silence stretched between them, but Rin couldn't think of a single thing to say.

[Bee]

It was Rin, after all, with a crossword puzzle, peering at him in a very strange manner. The office in which he sat looked a little sketchy, but then, he didn't expect a serial killer to be working in opulence. The general sleaziness of the place seemed appropriate.

He let the silence sit for a minute, just to see if Rin was going to do something normal, like say hello. Or perhaps throw him out. Or start yelling questions about maybe Jin having finally told the authorities. While he waited, Jin looked to the assortment of desk supplies, to a mostly empty coat-rack, to the dingy blinds over the windows, and then finally back to the bat.

"You know," Jin said, when a greeting was not forthcoming,"it's really not good policy to just sit there and stare at a potential customers. People might get the idea you're some kind of weirdo."

[Dark]

The world slowly filed itself back into order, though Rin imagined it was a little more off-kilter than it had been a moment ago. There was something entirely surreal about the situation he'd found himself in, and he couldn't quite decide what to make out of it. He shook himself free from his thoughts; it didn't really matter either way.

Weirdo? "Maybe, though I find in most cases that people like a little bit of mystery to go along with their detective." He allowed himself a self-deprecating smile, "And then there are people who know exactly what sort of person I am."

He set the crossword puzzle to the side, stretching carefully as he considered his unexpected customer. He couldn't read Jin well, but Rin was fairly certain that the man hadn't come with the expressive purpose of finding him, which meant that Jin needed to find someone. Interesting.

"What can I do for you?"

[Bee]

Jin shrugged, trying not to let his extreme annoyance show. He wasn't irritated with Rin; he was irritated at Abner for once again making an unbearable nuisance of himself. He was pretty certain that families were supposed to work with the older siblings hunting for the younger ones and keeping them out of trouble; Jin didn't like the reversal, and he didn't want to be running after his idiot brother for the rest of his life.

"Well, you know. Missing people to find and all that bullshit." He tossed Abner's note on the desk. "As you can see, my brother has taken off to places unknown, and for some inexplicable reason, my mother wants him home." He paused. "He really shouldn't be hard to spot, if you can locate his general area somehow. Huge biped. Acts like a swishy little poof. You don't have any reservations about Lowlanders, do you? Not that I care, really, it's just that I want to know if I'm going to be bringing Abner home alive or dead so Mother can be prepared."

[Dark]

Rin listened to the description bemusedly, pulling out a small pad of paper from his desk to scribble down the relevant information:

Name: Abner; Lowlander/Biped(L). "Swishy poof."

"Is there anything else I should know? Habits? Friends? Relatives in town?" He skimmed over Abner's note while he spoke, not paying particular attention to the words; there was a whisper of emotion imprinted on the paper, but only an echo, useless. He set it carefully aside and turned his full attention to Jin.

"Obviously, he's distressed. He'll be wanting something familiar, safe. In some instances that isn't the case, but generally it's a good place to start. Is there anywhere you can think of that he'd go?"

Rin scratched as his ear absently, mind whirling as he processed what little information he had been given. He found it particularly interesting that Jin, who for all appearances looked to be a full-blooded Solandrian, would have a Lowlander for a brother. It was little wonder Adner suffered from insecurity, and Rin wondered at the whole story. It was little of his business, though. He just had to solve the case.

[Bee]

Jin listed the requested information as concisely as possible: "I'm his only relative in town. His only habit is being a thorn in everyone else's collective side. And arts and crafts. He loves that." Sweet snowballs, his brother was like a toddler. An overgrown toddler. "He's nowhere near our motel room. The only place I can think that he might go is to his pottery master or whoever the fuck was teaching him to make hideous breakfast bowls, but I can't imagine anyone would house him for long."

He hoped that this whole thing was a bluff and that Abner had just run home to cry to Mummy, but given the tone of the letter, Sana seemed to be implicated in Abner's angst as well, and Abner hated the Glacier to an extent that would put Jin's mere dislike of the cold to shame. Uncultured. Isolated. Dangerous.

He suppressed another small surge of annoyance. He sighed. "In conclusion, I have no idea. Amaze me, master sleuth."

[Dark]

"The pottery lead is a safe bet, but if that doesn't pan out I still have a few tricks up my sleeve," he smirked.

From what he'd gathered so far, he highly doubted Abner would have gotten much farther than that. If he had by some chance, and if his pottery master turned out to be unhelpful in supplying additional leads, then Rin always had his trump card. Really, it was safer to use it sooner rather than later--the likelihood of finding an object with a connection to Abner decreased exponentially the more time was allowed to pass--but he was loathe to use it before it was absolutely necessary. Still--better safe than sorry.

"I'll also need to examine any of Abner's remaining personal affects, in the event that something was overlooked. It's better if they're left undisturbed until I can take a look," he levered himself into an upright position, "At your soonest convenience, of course. If you'd give me the master's address?"

[Bee]

Jin attempted to scribble it down, grabbing at a pen off the desk and then handling it clumsily. He wanted hands desperately—how difficult was it to attain a bipedal form was it, anyway? He had seen people who looked far more pitiful than him walking around with it.

He examined his handiwork; it was mostly legible, if one went by the theory that 7 and 2 were basically the same number anyway and didn’t much care for how Rhododendron Street was spelled.

“I’m pretty sure I can just take you there,” he said.

The man lived in an otherwise sparsely populated area of the town; probably a good thing, too. He couldn’t have been awfully reputable, really, if he was teaching Lowlanders. He thought he might have heard Abner mention once or twice that his shop had been completely ransacked on a couple of occasions and the master himself attacked. He wasn’t exactly sure; he didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to his brother’s ramblings.