RE: THIS PROGRAM HAS BEEN CANCELED [S!1][ROUND TWO: ETA CARINA]
07-06-2015, 06:08 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-06-2015, 06:14 PM by seedy.)
Bennie opened her eyes. She was lying on her back, hair and dress splayed artistically around her.
Soft sky and whitewashed plaster, hues all from the baby's-nursery palette—dust motes a bit more excitable than usual—ah. Port Ceridwen. Not her color scheme, but a nice change of pace. And hopefully a lot of opportunities.
Bennie rose. She was on a small upper-story metal porch overlooking a quiet backstreet—not that Port Ceridwen had any other kind. Sleepy, picturesque, and useless except for the laundry-line hints to the future cut of her “blending-in” outfit. Behind her, the porch's unlocked door tap-tapped its frame in time with the breeze. She appreciated the suggestion.
The room was shadowy, warm, and cozy, which she liked, and contained a dead body, which annoyed her.
Bennie settled into the couch. She imagined, felt the millions out there watching her. It washed over her, soothing her with the familiarity. At least some things were the same.
Breathe in. I'm here. Breathe out. Me, and everyone else.
Properly centered, Bennie shifted from self-pity to calculation. The worry and confusion peeking in at the corners of her careful cover-photo face gave way to something more cold. She deigned to acknowledge the corpse.
You might think the closest thing to forensic expertise Bennie had was asking someone to “enhance the image” in her repeated guest-star roles on crime shows. And it's true that she doesn't know the first damn thing about methodology or proper procedure. But there's a lot of use in death battles for knowing who killed whom and why.
So when Bennie clipped soundlessly (hard-plasticky heels impacting high-quality rug) over to the body and bent to touch it, she wasn't just messing around.
The deceased was an average-looking man, which for Port Ceridwen meant he had at least one fairy “tell.” In his case it was a long tasseled tail. He had been stabbed multiple times in the abdomen from the front with some kind of knife, irrevocably damaging the nice rug with his ensuing blood loss. All this was clear on sight, and not something Bennie wanted to waste time commenting upon. She thumbed her earpiece in a habit-worn gesture.
The button clicked to static. Ugh! No thought-voiceover linkup, huh. Guess I'll have to go old-fashioned.
She cleared her throat. “So. Balmy vacation's cut short early by a body I didn't make. He's not yet room temp, so it's recent enough that likely no-one's noticed him gone and called cops ready to arrest me for a truly tragic level of wrong-place-wrong-time. On the real plus side--” she stalked to the wall “there's this.”
Dominating the cream-colored wallpaper and surrounding landscape watercolors was a very recent artistic addition in the hue universally known as “dead chump's blood.” An art critic might comment on the garish energy of the piece, the way the wild brushstrokes suggested an intense level of emotion, the simplicity of the symbolism contrasted with the obvious complex meaning for the artist and their intended recipient. If the art critic being questioned was Tschichold, he might take one look at the marking—a snaking line coursing across a roughly-drawn egg—and hiss something about “more goddamn death and birth symbolism.” Bennie was a little more focused.
“People don't play with finger-paints for run-of-the-mill murders. There's something up here...and hey!” She beamed too many teeth, eyes flashing. “It might be fun to find out what.”
!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!
Bennie brushed around the odd-angle corners of Port Ceridwen's sidestreets, always turning in the direction of the harbor in absence of other markers for important avenues or districts. Her attire had dressed itself way down from the multiversal stage, and was now fluttering breezily in the fashion of modish resortwear. She had a scarf tied at her neck and her pistol-belt was blue beadwork that could almost be mistaken for handmade.
In between steps, Bennie quietly thanked whatever kept Port Ceridwen low-tech enough that even the well-off carried physical cash. Almost forgot I'd need the stuff to get all my props. She had remembered the existence of “wallets” pretty quickly, at least. She was adjusting.
And now she had a name for the face and a pocket full of spending money.
While she wove through the flagstones paths, the soft noise of chatter and people gradually became louder, until sidestreet spilled into marketplace in a rush of color and sound.
As fairy towns go, Port Ceridwen was the genuine article. While the trims on houses had been sedate in the residential area, here it burst forth from the white plaster in confections of woodwork and paint. Fragrant flowers bloomed from windowboxes picture-postcard-picturesque, stalls lined up under their tents just like they do in every child's imagination of a bazaar. And from the awnings hung banners, and from the rooftops flew mobiles.
The people, oh, the people were of every type—but even then, they still had a type. And it wasn't hard for Bennie to pick out the person who just didn't blend in. Despite Bennie's riot of skin and hair, her clothes matched her backdrop. And so she saw Freefall—poor, lost Freefall, head turned by every new confusing sight or noise, fighting to understand this town so obviously not of her ken—far more easily than Freefall would ever see her.
In the louche land of casinos, under the otherworldly-harsh stagelights—Freefall's paintspatter wreck of a superhero's costume had looked good, even iconic. Very “the bruiser,” very you-should-see-the-other-guy. But not here. In the light that shimmered through the clouds in Port Ceridwen, Freefall just looked like the girl the fairy godmother forgot.
“Hmm,” Bennie addressed the invisible audience, “How about I find a wand to wave and turn our little tomboy into a perfect princess?”
!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!
Freefall scanned the crowd for Beunissima. She could pick out a perp just fine in Olive City—even in a noontime rush. She knew the lay of the land, and she could tell someone rushing from someone running. But this wasn't Olive City, and—Beunissima wasn't her usual mark. If she was picking out someone in a crowd, they'd be trying to look too normal—skulking but trying to look like they weren't. But Beunissima didn't seem like a skulker...Freefall shook her head. She had to focus! Everything was glinting and moving and smelled soft and perfumed—not like Olive City, not like pavement and grime and—and--everything kept reminding her of the past! Even though it was all so different and strange, memories and nostalgia stirred with every glance.
This city is infecting me. Freefall thought bitterly, not realizing how close she hit to the truth.
A flash of brilliant red-and-blue startled her out of her reverie. There Beunissima was, ducking into a shop just a few blocks away. Finally, some luck.
Freefall edged through the crowd, cursing the shoppers and the lingering masses they formed around interesting stalls. Beunissima might be gone by the time she got there! And she was pretty tired of the disgusted glances her suit kept earning her. Sure, she wasn't perfect and pampered like everything else in this fairy city was—you'd think things would be different across the multiverse, but it was the same on every world...everyone wanted Freefall to be something she wasn't, couldn't be, and […]
Freefall, lost as ever, was too distracted by her thoughts and by relief at settling her hand on the good solid wood of the door to notice the sign indicating “PENNYFARE'S SHOP OF FINE DRESSES.” Because of this:
The soft and sudden bloom of frothy fabric assaulted her senses in the worst way. It didn't startle her out of the oft-repeated track her mind was on again. No, it chimed in, echoing the sentiments into a cacophony of all those stories she knew she could never fit. Ruffles and lace mocked her from every corner. Freefall's mind, already with such a tendency to flashback, was spinning into deadlock in the balmy corruption of Port Ceridwen's air. She was motionless, and she remained so, even as people moved about her and things were seen to. If she were aware, she might have appreciated the skill being practiced, all directed by the confident silhouette she had been chasing after.
It was done in magic-short time, but a gloved hand stopped the finishing touches.
“No.” Bennie smiled a smile that you could read either malice or kindliness into, depending on your predilection. “Now...we should talk.”
From very far away, Freefall felt silk brush across her face...and something like an incantation. And then it all rushed back together, and she almost hit the very nice dress shop attendant/witch in panic. But the figure sitting before Freefall drew her focus, as that figure tended to do.
Beunissima cleared her throat, and Freefall realized she had been waiting to allow Beunissima to talk.
“Rough, huh? Aine here tells me that the air here does weird stuff to us silly tourists. 'Course she said it nicer than that. We'll get you a solid breathing mask, don't worry.”
Out of everything, what nagged at Freefall the most was the “we.”
She continued, “But sit down and let's talk!” Beunissima laughed like they were old friends chatting over lunch. When Freefall wasn't looking, the pointy-eared assistant—Aine—had produced cups of tea (complimentary to customers of the shop) and set them on the table. The chair Freefall would have picked anyways was already pulled out. She sat down uneasily.
Freefall picked up the cup, its warmth seeping into her hand, and suddenly whatever had been making her dance to Beunissima's tune snapped. It came fast, like back in the bathroom of the Feedback Loop, and she barely stopped her other hand from shattering the table.
Beunissima waited with a patience that made it all the harder for Freefall to get a grip.
“Look.” One syllable down. Ok. “You killed Nizzo. And you laughed. Don't think I'll let that go just because you're acting nice.” She watched Beunissima's face.
Her bright red mouth tightened into a line, and her eyes went distant, head turning to some memory. “Yeah. Yeah...” A bitter smile. Was that regret? “Not a whole lot of ways to smoothly breach the subject of recent murder. I thought this'd be...better. A better start, at least.”
“Why'd you do it?” Freefall had wanted that to sound meaner, more interrogative.
The smile turned to a grin, incisors bared ruefully. “If you were presented with that list of contestants...who would you have killed?”
Freefall didn't want to think about that--
Beunissima's head shook. “No, no. You wouldn't get it, would you? You've never had to make a decision like that...”
no, of course not
“Look, I know it seemed callous...but in my world, you need showmanship to survive, and this battle is no different. D'you think the bosses of this gig will never do anything more than shunt us from round to round just because they haven't done it yet? I mean look—they added me! I'm sure if the ratings drop, they're fine with thinking up ways to encourage us—or to cut corners wherever they can.”
“...What are you getting at.”
“Freefall, all I'm saying is—my hand was forced. But who cares about that.” An unfakeable urgency radiated from Beunissima. "What's important is that we make sure it's the last time that happens."
This time, Freefall barely even noticed the “we.”
“Alright, I'm listening...doesn't mean I trust you. But I'll let you talk.” Freefall said in a tone that might have sounded convincingly hardboiled to someone, somewhere, maybe.
Beunissima smiled. “Thanks. I knew I could count on you to hear me out.” She waved back the shop assistant who had kindly made herself unobtrusive during their rather open conversation about murder. “Ok, first...your suit is very nice. I get the importance of practicality and an iconic look. But you stick out like a sore thumb in this place.”
Freefall tried to interrupt.
“-No, no, I know!” Beunissima preempted, “It's blunt to say so, and you hate pastels. But suck it up—it's what these people are used to. 'Sides, the dressmaker is a real pro—you'll look cuter in this than you think.”
Freefall, having taken another deep breath for a spirited interjection (after recovering from Beunissima's unsettlingly correct points), began “That's great and all, but unless this dress is magically lighter than—”
Another wave of the hand for silence. “'Magically?' Freefall, please! Take a look around you! Here—” the dress, close at hand, was proffered. “Just try it on.” Smiling like she knew Freefall hated this stuff, would never willingly touch it, so wasn't it just a teasing little dare between friends? It wouldn't mean anything if Freefall put it on, really...
Freefall, hypnotized by the swirls of ruffles before her, mutely took the dress—lighter than a feather—to the changing room.
She carefully slid it on over her suit—it was tailored to hide it, it seemed—and wondered who the person in the mirror was. She gave a little spin, and the dress floated after her movements as if it was spun of fairy silk. Which, well, maybe it was? Freefall didn't know. All she knew was that it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
She came out of the changing room in a daze, only barely noticing Beunissima lighting up and clasping her hands together, “-look wonderful! And here's a little facemask—you need it to counteract the effects of Port Ceridwen's air, although of course it can't really stop it fully-” Freefall just nodded, slowly coming back to herself. When she caught the word “murder,” her brain finally cycled up to speed.
“Wait, what. Did you kill someone?”
“Me?” Beunissima pouted offendedly, “Freefall, please.” She tried to communicate something by staring intensely into Freefall's, gave up, and continued. “Right after 'waking up' here I found a crime scene that didn't fit the usual love-or-money template. Someone was trying to send a message with that murder, and my gut tells me something is rotten underneath the gingerbread-style scrollwork of this city.” Freefall narrowed her eyes, nodding. It always is.
“I didn't get you this outfit just so you'd look cute.” She grinned. “I got it because you need to blend in a little if we're going to crack this case. So what do you say?”
Freefall had been so worried about Port Ceridwen, what it represented, what it meant, and the new competitor and all the dangers she represented. But Beunissima might turn out to be alright...and she had faced down her fears and conquered them. With a regular ol' crime added to that, Port Ceridwen could end up being the most straightforward and familiar round for her so far. Forget Eta Carina...a solid investigation would be a real break.
She grinned back. “Ok, Beunissima. Tell me where the first lead takes us.”
A friendly arm fell across her shoulders.
“Freefall, please. Call me 'Bennie.'”
Soft sky and whitewashed plaster, hues all from the baby's-nursery palette—dust motes a bit more excitable than usual—ah. Port Ceridwen. Not her color scheme, but a nice change of pace. And hopefully a lot of opportunities.
Bennie rose. She was on a small upper-story metal porch overlooking a quiet backstreet—not that Port Ceridwen had any other kind. Sleepy, picturesque, and useless except for the laundry-line hints to the future cut of her “blending-in” outfit. Behind her, the porch's unlocked door tap-tapped its frame in time with the breeze. She appreciated the suggestion.
The room was shadowy, warm, and cozy, which she liked, and contained a dead body, which annoyed her.
Bennie settled into the couch. She imagined, felt the millions out there watching her. It washed over her, soothing her with the familiarity. At least some things were the same.
Breathe in. I'm here. Breathe out. Me, and everyone else.
Properly centered, Bennie shifted from self-pity to calculation. The worry and confusion peeking in at the corners of her careful cover-photo face gave way to something more cold. She deigned to acknowledge the corpse.
You might think the closest thing to forensic expertise Bennie had was asking someone to “enhance the image” in her repeated guest-star roles on crime shows. And it's true that she doesn't know the first damn thing about methodology or proper procedure. But there's a lot of use in death battles for knowing who killed whom and why.
So when Bennie clipped soundlessly (hard-plasticky heels impacting high-quality rug) over to the body and bent to touch it, she wasn't just messing around.
The deceased was an average-looking man, which for Port Ceridwen meant he had at least one fairy “tell.” In his case it was a long tasseled tail. He had been stabbed multiple times in the abdomen from the front with some kind of knife, irrevocably damaging the nice rug with his ensuing blood loss. All this was clear on sight, and not something Bennie wanted to waste time commenting upon. She thumbed her earpiece in a habit-worn gesture.
The button clicked to static. Ugh! No thought-voiceover linkup, huh. Guess I'll have to go old-fashioned.
She cleared her throat. “So. Balmy vacation's cut short early by a body I didn't make. He's not yet room temp, so it's recent enough that likely no-one's noticed him gone and called cops ready to arrest me for a truly tragic level of wrong-place-wrong-time. On the real plus side--” she stalked to the wall “there's this.”
Dominating the cream-colored wallpaper and surrounding landscape watercolors was a very recent artistic addition in the hue universally known as “dead chump's blood.” An art critic might comment on the garish energy of the piece, the way the wild brushstrokes suggested an intense level of emotion, the simplicity of the symbolism contrasted with the obvious complex meaning for the artist and their intended recipient. If the art critic being questioned was Tschichold, he might take one look at the marking—a snaking line coursing across a roughly-drawn egg—and hiss something about “more goddamn death and birth symbolism.” Bennie was a little more focused.
“People don't play with finger-paints for run-of-the-mill murders. There's something up here...and hey!” She beamed too many teeth, eyes flashing. “It might be fun to find out what.”
!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!
Bennie brushed around the odd-angle corners of Port Ceridwen's sidestreets, always turning in the direction of the harbor in absence of other markers for important avenues or districts. Her attire had dressed itself way down from the multiversal stage, and was now fluttering breezily in the fashion of modish resortwear. She had a scarf tied at her neck and her pistol-belt was blue beadwork that could almost be mistaken for handmade.
In between steps, Bennie quietly thanked whatever kept Port Ceridwen low-tech enough that even the well-off carried physical cash. Almost forgot I'd need the stuff to get all my props. She had remembered the existence of “wallets” pretty quickly, at least. She was adjusting.
And now she had a name for the face and a pocket full of spending money.
While she wove through the flagstones paths, the soft noise of chatter and people gradually became louder, until sidestreet spilled into marketplace in a rush of color and sound.
As fairy towns go, Port Ceridwen was the genuine article. While the trims on houses had been sedate in the residential area, here it burst forth from the white plaster in confections of woodwork and paint. Fragrant flowers bloomed from windowboxes picture-postcard-picturesque, stalls lined up under their tents just like they do in every child's imagination of a bazaar. And from the awnings hung banners, and from the rooftops flew mobiles.
The people, oh, the people were of every type—but even then, they still had a type. And it wasn't hard for Bennie to pick out the person who just didn't blend in. Despite Bennie's riot of skin and hair, her clothes matched her backdrop. And so she saw Freefall—poor, lost Freefall, head turned by every new confusing sight or noise, fighting to understand this town so obviously not of her ken—far more easily than Freefall would ever see her.
In the louche land of casinos, under the otherworldly-harsh stagelights—Freefall's paintspatter wreck of a superhero's costume had looked good, even iconic. Very “the bruiser,” very you-should-see-the-other-guy. But not here. In the light that shimmered through the clouds in Port Ceridwen, Freefall just looked like the girl the fairy godmother forgot.
“Hmm,” Bennie addressed the invisible audience, “How about I find a wand to wave and turn our little tomboy into a perfect princess?”
!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!
Freefall scanned the crowd for Beunissima. She could pick out a perp just fine in Olive City—even in a noontime rush. She knew the lay of the land, and she could tell someone rushing from someone running. But this wasn't Olive City, and—Beunissima wasn't her usual mark. If she was picking out someone in a crowd, they'd be trying to look too normal—skulking but trying to look like they weren't. But Beunissima didn't seem like a skulker...Freefall shook her head. She had to focus! Everything was glinting and moving and smelled soft and perfumed—not like Olive City, not like pavement and grime and—and--everything kept reminding her of the past! Even though it was all so different and strange, memories and nostalgia stirred with every glance.
This city is infecting me. Freefall thought bitterly, not realizing how close she hit to the truth.
A flash of brilliant red-and-blue startled her out of her reverie. There Beunissima was, ducking into a shop just a few blocks away. Finally, some luck.
Freefall edged through the crowd, cursing the shoppers and the lingering masses they formed around interesting stalls. Beunissima might be gone by the time she got there! And she was pretty tired of the disgusted glances her suit kept earning her. Sure, she wasn't perfect and pampered like everything else in this fairy city was—you'd think things would be different across the multiverse, but it was the same on every world...everyone wanted Freefall to be something she wasn't, couldn't be, and […]
Freefall, lost as ever, was too distracted by her thoughts and by relief at settling her hand on the good solid wood of the door to notice the sign indicating “PENNYFARE'S SHOP OF FINE DRESSES.” Because of this:
The soft and sudden bloom of frothy fabric assaulted her senses in the worst way. It didn't startle her out of the oft-repeated track her mind was on again. No, it chimed in, echoing the sentiments into a cacophony of all those stories she knew she could never fit. Ruffles and lace mocked her from every corner. Freefall's mind, already with such a tendency to flashback, was spinning into deadlock in the balmy corruption of Port Ceridwen's air. She was motionless, and she remained so, even as people moved about her and things were seen to. If she were aware, she might have appreciated the skill being practiced, all directed by the confident silhouette she had been chasing after.
It was done in magic-short time, but a gloved hand stopped the finishing touches.
“No.” Bennie smiled a smile that you could read either malice or kindliness into, depending on your predilection. “Now...we should talk.”
From very far away, Freefall felt silk brush across her face...and something like an incantation. And then it all rushed back together, and she almost hit the very nice dress shop attendant/witch in panic. But the figure sitting before Freefall drew her focus, as that figure tended to do.
Beunissima cleared her throat, and Freefall realized she had been waiting to allow Beunissima to talk.
“Rough, huh? Aine here tells me that the air here does weird stuff to us silly tourists. 'Course she said it nicer than that. We'll get you a solid breathing mask, don't worry.”
Out of everything, what nagged at Freefall the most was the “we.”
She continued, “But sit down and let's talk!” Beunissima laughed like they were old friends chatting over lunch. When Freefall wasn't looking, the pointy-eared assistant—Aine—had produced cups of tea (complimentary to customers of the shop) and set them on the table. The chair Freefall would have picked anyways was already pulled out. She sat down uneasily.
Freefall picked up the cup, its warmth seeping into her hand, and suddenly whatever had been making her dance to Beunissima's tune snapped. It came fast, like back in the bathroom of the Feedback Loop, and she barely stopped her other hand from shattering the table.
Beunissima waited with a patience that made it all the harder for Freefall to get a grip.
“Look.” One syllable down. Ok. “You killed Nizzo. And you laughed. Don't think I'll let that go just because you're acting nice.” She watched Beunissima's face.
Her bright red mouth tightened into a line, and her eyes went distant, head turning to some memory. “Yeah. Yeah...” A bitter smile. Was that regret? “Not a whole lot of ways to smoothly breach the subject of recent murder. I thought this'd be...better. A better start, at least.”
“Why'd you do it?” Freefall had wanted that to sound meaner, more interrogative.
The smile turned to a grin, incisors bared ruefully. “If you were presented with that list of contestants...who would you have killed?”
Freefall didn't want to think about that--
Beunissima's head shook. “No, no. You wouldn't get it, would you? You've never had to make a decision like that...”
no, of course not
“Look, I know it seemed callous...but in my world, you need showmanship to survive, and this battle is no different. D'you think the bosses of this gig will never do anything more than shunt us from round to round just because they haven't done it yet? I mean look—they added me! I'm sure if the ratings drop, they're fine with thinking up ways to encourage us—or to cut corners wherever they can.”
“...What are you getting at.”
“Freefall, all I'm saying is—my hand was forced. But who cares about that.” An unfakeable urgency radiated from Beunissima. "What's important is that we make sure it's the last time that happens."
This time, Freefall barely even noticed the “we.”
“Alright, I'm listening...doesn't mean I trust you. But I'll let you talk.” Freefall said in a tone that might have sounded convincingly hardboiled to someone, somewhere, maybe.
Beunissima smiled. “Thanks. I knew I could count on you to hear me out.” She waved back the shop assistant who had kindly made herself unobtrusive during their rather open conversation about murder. “Ok, first...your suit is very nice. I get the importance of practicality and an iconic look. But you stick out like a sore thumb in this place.”
Freefall tried to interrupt.
“-No, no, I know!” Beunissima preempted, “It's blunt to say so, and you hate pastels. But suck it up—it's what these people are used to. 'Sides, the dressmaker is a real pro—you'll look cuter in this than you think.”
Freefall, having taken another deep breath for a spirited interjection (after recovering from Beunissima's unsettlingly correct points), began “That's great and all, but unless this dress is magically lighter than—”
Another wave of the hand for silence. “'Magically?' Freefall, please! Take a look around you! Here—” the dress, close at hand, was proffered. “Just try it on.” Smiling like she knew Freefall hated this stuff, would never willingly touch it, so wasn't it just a teasing little dare between friends? It wouldn't mean anything if Freefall put it on, really...
Freefall, hypnotized by the swirls of ruffles before her, mutely took the dress—lighter than a feather—to the changing room.
She carefully slid it on over her suit—it was tailored to hide it, it seemed—and wondered who the person in the mirror was. She gave a little spin, and the dress floated after her movements as if it was spun of fairy silk. Which, well, maybe it was? Freefall didn't know. All she knew was that it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
She came out of the changing room in a daze, only barely noticing Beunissima lighting up and clasping her hands together, “-look wonderful! And here's a little facemask—you need it to counteract the effects of Port Ceridwen's air, although of course it can't really stop it fully-” Freefall just nodded, slowly coming back to herself. When she caught the word “murder,” her brain finally cycled up to speed.
“Wait, what. Did you kill someone?”
“Me?” Beunissima pouted offendedly, “Freefall, please.” She tried to communicate something by staring intensely into Freefall's, gave up, and continued. “Right after 'waking up' here I found a crime scene that didn't fit the usual love-or-money template. Someone was trying to send a message with that murder, and my gut tells me something is rotten underneath the gingerbread-style scrollwork of this city.” Freefall narrowed her eyes, nodding. It always is.
“I didn't get you this outfit just so you'd look cute.” She grinned. “I got it because you need to blend in a little if we're going to crack this case. So what do you say?”
Freefall had been so worried about Port Ceridwen, what it represented, what it meant, and the new competitor and all the dangers she represented. But Beunissima might turn out to be alright...and she had faced down her fears and conquered them. With a regular ol' crime added to that, Port Ceridwen could end up being the most straightforward and familiar round for her so far. Forget Eta Carina...a solid investigation would be a real break.
She grinned back. “Ok, Beunissima. Tell me where the first lead takes us.”
A friendly arm fell across her shoulders.
“Freefall, please. Call me 'Bennie.'”