Case 1-7 | III, Blanche

Lead: Male

Tags: Lorefuck

"Do you think he's still talking?" Yume giggles.

"Absolutely," I sigh. "So how long do you think we'll be driving for?"

"Ugh, you ask every 5 minutes. We're almost halfway."

"Ugh, only halfway?" I whimper. "Fine. Maybe I'll just watch Nightwatch," I taunt her.

"Hey," she shouts. "That's our show, watch something else… Unless…"

"Unless…?"

"You can't project that, can you?"

I almost laugh. "Even if I could, you're driving."

"Ugh," she moans. "Can't you leave that steel arm on the wheel and set an auto-drive… feature?"

My confusion is obvious when I look over to her. "I-"

"Forget it," she sighs. "Watch something else. Ass."

I lean my head on the open window to my side and utter under my breath. "I don't even know the road," in a hushed response to her question.

"Beep. Beep. Beep."

Yume taps her phone and speaks to the concealed silence of the vehicle. "Yo."

"mmmMMmmMmmmMmmMmmmMMmmMmmMMMmm."

"Uh, huh," she answers something.

"mMMMmmmMmMmMMmmM"

"..."

"mMmmMMmmMMMmmMMMmmMMMMmMMMmmMmmM."

"We're on our way. Blanche, could you tap that? My, uhh… phone…I dropped it around there somewhere."

I watch as she often looks down at her phone atop her lap.

"Yeah, just, somewhere there…"

"..." Whoever's on the other side keeps on the phone, and we can hear him breathing.

"Uh, oh, damn, I think it just dropped."

"Beep." The line disconnects and Yume loses her mind, laughing like crazy.

"He stayed-, he stayed on the phone~." She laughs so hard, tears are forming from her eyes. "He stayed on the phone!" she kicks her feet, jutting the car in various speeds. "GOD!" She rubs her face into her sleeve. "Oooh. That is too funny."

I just watch with a smile, glad she's having fun.

"We've gotta get back to the office," her face turns back to normal, strictly serious. "One of our officers is missing." She pulls a U-turn and we're off back to our station.

Minutes go by.

"Wait." My heart sinks.

"Yes?" Yume asks, eyes on the road.

"Go back to the scene of the crime. I think I know where they died."

…

"Victim was killed here. Maybe not enough blood for a bullet but they may have been stabbed with a knife. And then I think they both struggled until the victim was overpowered and put in the vehicle before much blood spilled. Then, I suppose the culprit moved the victim's car and dumped it somewhere - probably not too far. Because then the culprit would have to run back to escape in their car."

Yume looks at me, perplexed at my deduction. "They really ran all the way back?"

I shrug my shoulders.

"What a fucking clown," she giggles.

"Seems about right though. We should continue up the road like we said before. Again, eyes peeled for where our car might've gone.."

"Right," Yume agrees.

I shake my head, somewhat tired already, letting out a heavy sigh. We head back to the car and the happy officer stops us for a chat.

"She was a fine officer," he almost frowns. "Always working her hardest. Always doing her best. The first on the scene when something was even slightly out of the ordinary," he chuckles a little in solace, feeling bad for her passing.

The crew was almost done with returning everything to normal. Binning anything with blood, weeding the grass to find anything hidden and clear the area, scrubbing the blood off the tar, making sure it looks like nothing ever happened.

"That was Denny? Officer Denny, then?" I question, sure of who it was by his brief description.

He holds his coffee in his hand and hangs his head.

"Well, that's unfortunate," Yume hides her expression. "That's very unfortunate." Yume heads back to the car once more.

I follow.

She starts the engine and we're off in the right direction now.

I look at her and draw my attention to the ground, not wanting to speak and disturb her moment.

"She was just my friend," she smiles over to me. "She was at the party and that's how I'll remember her. It's all right."

I try to smile back but it's not much of a smile.

"Keep your eyes peeled!" she calls out, letting her eyes drift from side to side and search for anything out of the ordinary.

I lean my arm out the window and look off to my side - mostly very tall greens until it breaks into an open space, and then into a closed space where something may be. But no ways of entry.

…

"Dont- drop that durka-durk, hey~, don't drop that… Hey," I notice a little gap between bushes that looks like some car may have gone through. "Pull over, pull over," I tell Yume, pointing to where I think the culprit may have gone.

Yume pulls over and turns off the engine, but I speed out and investigate without her.

I look down through the gap and there's not much space for a vehicle to drive, or even fit. Nothing seems unnatural. Damn. I run back to the car where Yume's only just climbing out. "Back in, false alarm."

"Tsk." She sighs. "Okay, I'll keep the engine running and you go out to check," she tells me.

I slip my seatbelt on. "Right, that's a good plan."

She starts the engine and we go on.

Blanche and Zealot are from an ancestry that followed the midnight society, that often sacrificed everything to appease a dragon.

(Policeman from the beginning was killed and he dumped her police car somewhere.)

Home which is very much hidden, sort of in a trailer park in the middle of a forest where he lives with other druggies. There is a massive drug spot there that leads to a trafficking/drug trade.)

5 minutes. 10 minutes. We make a few stops with the same result. Nothing. Though, soon enough we find something.

I look down a path of snapped sticks and stripped branches to see a police vehicle at the end of it, crashed and malformed against a very wide tree. "Bingpot." I look back to Yume, bumping her head to tunes in the live car.

She turns to me as she does so.

I wave my arms in an X for her to kill the engine.

She does so and opens her door.

I hold my hands up, hoping she'll keep away.

She pauses movement.

"There's nothing here! I'm just gonna pee!" I call out.

"I'll watch!" she jokes.

"Wh-... NO, YOU CAN'T DO THAT!"

Yume giggles and climbs back into her car, then turns her tunes back on, and bumps her head to her music. She watches as I disappear down the path I've found.

Snip. Snap. Crunch. The wood snaps beneath my shoes as I draw closer to the vehicle. Very dark now because of the lack of lighting, I look around the corner of the car to see inside. Very dark. The windows are broken and even getting near it brings the aura of death. The smell. I cover my nose and lean toward the opening in the door. She's dead. Who I assume to be Denny, very messily beheaded, chest exposed, legs bare.

I pull away and hold myself together while my knees buckle and I clutch them in my hands while bending forward. Well. We know he likes heads.

This confirms my initial wonder, and then the confirmation of the victim. She's mangled. I pull a small device from my pocket, click it until it beeps and whizzes, and drop it into the vehicle. This acts as a beacon to the station.

I dip my hand in her blood, reluctantly, and leave a warning on the door: HEADLESS. I just hope no innocent officers come across this - or even approach from the other side of the vehicle. Whatever. That's good enough.

I search the vehicle for any hints of whodunnit. After minutes of searching… nothing. I leave the scene knowing only that this is the direction he may have gone.

I come out from between some bushy branches in which I went missing, and pot Yume in the vehicle discussing something.

She waves a hand at me and gestures me over.

I head back to the car.

"There's a few little spots," she tells me as she puts her phone away. "There's 2 up this road, one up the other way, 2 from whence we came." Yume looks over to me. "So, which way should we search?"

"Which way do you think?" I let her decide.

"Well," she begins. "If I were this rapist, I'd want to throw us off, and maybe I'd be living far, far away from where this road goes."

"I don't think rapists have enough brain cells to actually plan something," I debate.

Yume looks at me with her lips pushed up, clicking through them while thinking.

"But maybe you're right," I side with her. "If he has any thought at all, he'd be heading up that other split, opposite of where both scenes of the crime are."

She raises an eyebrow. "Both scenes?"

"Uh, just that the… bloodstains were more this direction than the other one, meaning the other victim could be up this way."

"Denny," she clarifies.

"Yeah, I've already called about this while you were on your call," I smile.

"Hmm," she sounds.

I clear my throat. "Let's try the one up that other split and then those two on the way to the city."

"The one up the other split is about half hour out," she explains.

"Ah, all right. The two on the way to the city and then up the other road?" I ask.

"Sounds good to me," she begins turning the car.

I hurry on my seatbelt.

"Then we'll be back this way if I'm wrong," she smiles over to me. "You having fun with this?"

"Uh, yeah," I answer. "It's very different. I think it's cool to have found a chodus like this guy."

She giggles. "Woah. Don't assume genders," she jokes.

"It's two women," I roll my eyes and look out the window to where the trail I left is. "This is a guy for sure."

…

On the way to town, we stop by the first settlement off the grid. We spend an hour there. Some things out of the ordinary but nothing in common with the case.

The next set of homeless homes. Nothing.

We head up the other split road. Nothing.

"Tsk," Yume shows great frustration as she gently kicks the grass. "I guess you were right," she tells me as she heads to the car.

I stay back and notice something. This population seems a lot more happy than the others. The others were run down and always begging. These are druggies.

Yume joins my side.

"They seem happy to you, huh?" I ask her, hinting at a darker undertone. "There was a syringe at the scene, was there not?"

"I see," she bumps my shoulder. "Good catch."

I whisper to her and hand her a gun. I look around and step forward.

One of the men in front of a busted caravan to my left straightens himself up from his seat in front of his home. Different to all the others' responses of just sighing and noticing I'm not leaving just yet. I walk up to the caravan that seemed innocent enough for a few more questions.

"Yes?" the elderly man that runs the place asks me as he sharpens a stick in the shade.

"Just one more question," Yume tells him. She shoots me in the back of the head.

I go down quite instantly. I thought she would've at least had some resistance to the idea.

…

I'm back online after only a moment. After all, it was only a stun gun. My eye opens to see the elder shuffling back into his trailer.

"STOP!" Yume calls from afar.

I hurry to get up, my vision coming back into focus. I spot the others scurrying around to find a spot to hide, including the one very hesitant at our stay.

Yume fires her weapon, and I can hear shots going off every now and then. She's too nice. Warning shots, I guess. She'll run out of bullets like that, and I'm not sure what could happen to her.

I hurry past everyone and follow the voice of my Yume. Yume. Just Yume.

A few more shots.

Running through a trail, I'm swallowed by the woods, only rushing to a distant voice. She's right. I should get some new legs.

No more shots.

She must be out, but which way do I go?

The forest breaks into an open field and I spot her getting closer to the guy. I hurry toward her.

Our suspect looks back and notices she's almost bridged the gap, and her turns to punch her square in the face and knock her back to the ground.

Fucking cunt. I'm almost there. At least they're not moving anymore.

He takes her gun and aims it at her.

My heart sinks.

He looks down the barrel like an idiot and I guess it's empty. He steps forward and bashes the gun on her head.

Yume covers her skull and writhes on the ground.

I leap forward and tackle him to the ground. Without thinking, I pull up my left arm and let him have it.

It's about half a minute before Yume calls out to me, still clutching the damage to her face, blood trickling to the grass.

She calls and calls but it takes me another half minute to realise.

Hearing her voice, I realise the mangled and mortified face of our suspect. Still breathing. I drop his body and turn to Yume.

"It's okay, Blanche. I'm okay."

"Sorry," I tell her. I look to the body of her abuser. Still breathing. I sit near Yume. "Here, let me see." I reach for the gun and give that back. I inspect the injury of my partner and fix her up with a bandage. I give her a hug and stay embraced for a while. "Don't you run off on your own," I tell her. "I'm sorry to have left that up to you." I wasn't expecting her to chase someone down.

Through her little gasps and flinches, she pushes her lips forward and torques them to my cheek.

-Faceless