Forever Changing

"Go home Nate," Sophie Smith went to turn her back on the private detective. "If you didn't want my help why did you ask me to come here?" Nate demanded, stamping his foot, which made Lionel the cat jump. "I didn't, you followed me here," she replied with an exasperated sigh.

Nate's eyes scanned over the crime scene, or rather his eye. He only had one good eye now, the other was covered by an eyepatch. It may have made him stand out, but not nearly as much as what was underneath. A cybernetic optic, a reminder of his near-miss of being 'upgraded' by those friendly aliens, the Cybermen.

It was a film studio and there were two bodies. One was male, slumped on the ground with a knife in his back, in the corner of the room. The other was a woman, in the centre of the room. The most prominent feature of the case, the thing that attracted agents of government task forces that weren't supposed to exist, like Sophie Smith, was the fact that the body, despite being distinctively dead, was stood bolt upright, with no support.

"This doesn't seem too bad," Sophie was saying to one of her co-workers. "I can't see any reason for Leviathan to become involved, I suggest we just lie the body down and call in the real police. It's just a freak of nature." The man she was addressing nodded and signalled to some of the other black-clad agents in the room. Lionel the cat tugged on the bottom of Nate's trousers.

"We need money, say something that proves this case is worth their time and gets them to hire us," Lionel the Cat said. To be more accurate, "Meow," was what Lionel the Cat said but Nate heard the translation. "I have a question!" he declared, his hand going straight up into the air. Lionel looked hopeful. "Has anyone been to Bill's Jaffa Cake bar? the food there is delicious."

Sophie Smith shook her head and turned her attention away from Nate. Lionel seem to growl so Nate sighed and put his hand up into the air again. "Follow up statement. If it was just the body standing then I would perhaps approve of you ignoring this case, but you are overlooking one crucial detail." Sophie turned back intrigued. "Yes?" she asked. "While we were debating Bill's Jaffa Cake bar, and you were busy trying to make the woman take her nap time. Where is the other body?"

Sophie looked around and her eyes widened. The man with the knife in his back was gone. "Bodies don't just stand up and walk away..." she muttered. "That..." Nate grinned, "... is why I, Nathan Shawn Stevens, am offering you the services of the Anonymous Chicken Alien Investigators Detective Agency." Lionel the cat purred triumphantly.

((dear gallifrey, lionel the cat. KITTY. RP. With KITTIES. *squee*))

Charlotte could barely believe it when she heard the news. Merrick, the boss, stabbed to death on a film set he had no reason to be on. Stabbed. All her co-workers knew she carried a knife on her at all times, and she did not need an investigation at her workplace, policiers asking all the wrong questions and finding out she had no records up until this year... Merde. Such a mess.

She was curious about the studio, though. As far as she knew, Merrick didn't have the slightest interest in this film industry. It wasn't that far a walk. Perhaps she would go see what track the police were on and - perhaps - steer them towards a different one. And maybe there was something preternatural going on, a clue as to why she was here...

The scene was surrounded by yellow plastic ribbons, which Charlotte had to duck under to get inside. "Excuse me, sir," she asked a man investigating the scene. "I just wanted to see..." She noticed a cat near the man's feet. Excellent diversion. She knelt down to look at the cat. "Hello, there. What's your name?"

((Cyber-Nate. Can't pass this one up~))

Robin, having snuck out of the orphanage while everyone else was sleeping, was searching desperately for the studio. The one she overheard the ladies talking about before they were sent to bed. For a moment, she pondered if she should even try to make it back in the morning - hopefully Tyler would cover for her if she didn't. But lately she'd been feeling more in the mood to check things out around town, so she wasn't passing up the standing corpse.

With her hood pulled over her head, she peered in, finally finding the right building. Shame it took her this long - people were fussing about like she missed something good. Creeping in as quietly as she could, she gravitated towards the nearest shadow and hid in it, watching the police work from afar. All she could think was that they'd probably find themselves dead before they finished, but then she caught sight of a familiar face. Well, nearly. Now there was an eyepatch. It only took a moment of conversation before she'd come to a conclusion. 'Still not as sane as the cat...' She mumbled with amusement.

Lionel the Cat stared at Charlotte in silence for a moment as if pondering how he could possibly answer that question. "Meow," he announced. "Lionel!" Nate snapped, "Don't lie, your name is Lionel." Nate turned his attention to Charlotte, his eye narrowing. "You don't look like you work for Leviathan..." he heard Sophie cough behind him in frustration. Leviathan was supposed to be secret but Nate had a habit of just blurting it out. He shrugged. "So unless you're some woman that wandered in off the streets..." he laughed to show he wasn't actually considering that possibility, "You must be someone really important."

Sophie Smith was tired, and she was used to dealing with the strange, particularly a strange private detective who spoke to his cat and had taken to wearing an eyepatch, but she was not incompetent. She could generally tell if people were just wandering into her crime scene. She would berate the policemen outside later, when she berated Nate for revealing Leviathan's name. Again. "You two!" she shouted, one finger propelling towards Charlotte and another pointing into the shadows at where Robin stood. "Identify yourselves, what are you doing here?"

Nate's brow furrowed. "Wait, you really are some random woman that wandered in off the streets?" His eye drifted to the shadows and he made out the silhouette of Robin. He didn't comment, instead waiting for her to step into the light.

((Gotta go to school so before I forget~))

Robin's eyes widened as she was pointed out, immediately glancing over to where the voice was coming from. Well she looked grouchy. Don't like her, definitely do not like her. Standing up from her crouched position, she stepped out with a grin in a way meant to mock the woman before she looked back over to Nate. Okay seriously, what was with the eyepatch? 'Finally go and get yourself in trouble, then?' She addressed him directly, doing her best to ignore the rude lady completely. 'Not a bad look on you, actually, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to see the battle scar.' Or, you know, maybe he was just wearing it to be "cool". He seemed like that kind of person.

Finally taking a look to see who else had snuck in, she couldn't help but laugh at who she found. 'Charlotte! Must be the third time now, how've you been?' At this point she was just trying to keep a conversation going. She had no idea how far they'd go or if they'd arrest her or something, but just to be safe, might as well delay that. And maybe Nate would come to the rescue - that'd be nice, but it seemed his word was just as good as Lionel's in the lady's opinion.

Darren walked up to the door, he hadn't offered to be in the sunlight but it seemed that a certain Private Detective had caught his eye. He walked straight in, not bothering to knock first. It was important business, he held a file in his hands. Sure, Nate may see him as a bad guy but he was more of a hero.

"Okay, before anyone of you comment, read this file."

He threw the file onto the floor, ignoring everyone else but Nate. Darren had his features in a scowl, the file took him ages to get from an alien barter. It was up for auction and since it was bidder so high on, he decided that it needed to be checked out. He looked at the cat and frowned.

"Sorry to barge in like this…Nate."

He scanned the room and looked at everybody in turn, three other woman stood in the room. Nate seemed to have a different look and seemed to be partially upgraded by machines known as the cybermen.

"Finally there's some more testosterone in the room!" Nate grinned unphased by Darren's arrival, "My Y chromosome was starting to get lonely." He reached down and picked up the file, casually flicking through it then pocketing it. There would time to examine it shortly. First, he could practically feel Sophie steaming with rage behind him. "Sophie," he tried to calm her, "I can tell you exactly who all these people are." If Lionel had had eyebrows he would have raised one.

"The girl with the questionable haircut is Robin Terrell, she does timey wimey stuff, I've worked with her before. She's cool. The man is Darren Hughes. It's probably best I don't tell you his profession, let's just say on most cases I've encountered him we haven't been looking at it from the same angle. Then the other woman is Charlotte. That's about all I know about her." He grinned hopeful that he'd triumphed but the scowl on Sophie's face told him she wasn't impressed.

In the awkward silence that followed, Nate considered looking at the file Darren had arrived with so dramatically but he decided to wait for a little bit more explanation on what that was first. Instead he turned to Robin. His usual grin had faded, and he seemed to weighing up the pros and cons of a decision in his mind. Then he flicked up the eye patch revealing his cybernetic eye. "It's not too bad really, as battle scars go," he tried to sound upbeat, "I can see through it fine, in fact I can see with it better than my real eye, but it's still kind of weird so I decided it would be easier to become a pirate" he nudged the patch back into place hiding the eye.

"So we've got a double homicide to solve, a body to find, a file to justify, a Charlotte to identify a little more thoroughly and a whole bunch of people appearing out of nowhere. Today is going to be one hell of a day!" Nate grinned back to his usual self and practically hopping from foot to foot with excitement.

(and now for Tyra to take after her mother in a way many people can appreciate!)

In a flash of light and a multitude of curses, one after another, in three different languages. Tyra appeared right above Nate with a pained look on her face and a hand plastered against her eyes in an attempt to keep her pounding headache to a minimum. After a particularly long night of partying with Jack, traveling by Vortex manipulator brought on a horrible, splitting one that threatened to crack her skull open.

Finally attempting a peek between her fingers, she had a split second of confusion before crashing down onto the unsuspecting man below her, effectively flattening him onto the hard floor, followed by another bout of cursing from Tyra herself. "I swear, I'm going to kill him!" She griped quietly, rolling off of her soft padding onto the welcome cool of the floor with a soft groan. "Sorry 'bout that. Can't control what happens when I push the damn button."

The room was filling up with people, fast. The only one she really knew was Robin, and her name-identification only seemed to increase the others' interest. Oh, why couldn't she just stick to the shadows?

"Okay, so, euh, Nate, Lionel the Cat, Robin, Darren, and..." Another woman had suddenly appeared in the room, swearing at some contraption on her wrist. "...whomever you are. I'm Charlotte Corday." She took in a breath and tried to sound matter-of-fact. "The stabbed man was my boss; despite the fact that I have a knife, I did not kill him; there have been strange things with angel statues, Daleks, and men wearing céleri involved. Also, guillotines. Can we move on now?"

Inexplicably, she felt the need to pet Lionel some more before turning to Tyra. "Who are you and do you know who killed my boss?" Charlotte asked, back to bluntness. "Actually, where is the body?" She turned to Nate and the frowning woman behind him.

Robin scowled at his description of her, selfconsciously running her fingers through her hair. It wasn't that bad, could just do with a bit of a trim, maybe. But that wasn't important. There was a murder to be investigated right now - rarely has she ever come across a haircut worthy of such attention. And that particular time, the hair belonged to a pachyderm. Crossing her arms, she bothered to listen to the end of Nate's information, feeling like she might have met the Darren guy before. No, probably not. Sounded familiar, though, maybe he's got a twin.

It was when his smile faded she knew things got serious. What happened? Couldn't be that bad, could it? Once he'd lowered the patch, she had to restrain herself from touching it. How did he manage that, then? Looked a bit like a Cyberman. No way... She felt kind of bad that she found it more cool than she cared about his well being. In all honesty, she wasn't quite sure how one would respond to that. Luckily, a woman dropped out of the sky on him so she didn't have to. Wait hold on, didn't she know her? Tyra, yes? 

While Charlotte was giving herself a bit of a backstory - which she'd be lying if she said she listened to - she bothered to see how the Sophie lady felt about all this. Definitely not happy. Not at all. If she was hearing the background noise correctly, she heard a bit of a clue - or at least a possible lead - so maybe that'd cheer her up? Probably not. She didn't look like she could get any more annoyed than this, so might as well take a shot. 'You're not just gonna stand there and be Mrs. Grumpy Face, are you? That's dull. If you're hanging around with him-' She gestured to Nate '- It won't take you long to get used to it. Or at least to ignore it. Something?' This wasn't getting her anywhere, was it?

"Mrs Grumpy Face..." Sophie muttered in disbelief. "I am well aware of Mr Stevens' antics and his bad habit of dragging craziness behind him, that doesn't mean I appreciate it." Nate smirked in the background. "You don't usually scowl this much," Nate commented, getting to his feet, "are you practicing for a competition?" Sophie just sighed.

Her eyes immediately flickered over to Charlotte. She had basically ignored Tyra's arrival, there were too many people now for her to bother complaining about contaminating the crime scene. "You seem pretty eager to dissociate yourself with this crime, and you appear to have knowledge, rudimentary anyway, of the sort of things we deal with. Plus, you have a knife." Nate tapped Sophie on the shoulder. "She didn't do it," Nate whispered. Sophie spun around to glare at him. "How can you possibly know that?" she demanded.

"Well, that stuff about criminals returning to the scene of the crime, they don't tend to do it when there are still police there. Plus, she offered up the knowledge of her relationship to the victim. Her knowledge of aliens appears to be a little too rudimentary. Finally, and I cannot emphasize this point enough, her knife cannot be the murder weapon as the knife was in the body before it did its miraculous disappearing act." Nate grinned. Then he turned around to face Tyra, the new arrival. "Nathan Shaun Stevens. Anonymous Chicken Alien Investigator. At your service." he introduced himself with a mock bow.

"Quite," Sophie muttered in frustration. She pointed at one of her agents, "Get me surveillance tapes," she barked, marching off. "Nate! This is your rabble here, you deal with it!" And with that bombshell, she was gone. Nate clicked his tongue against his cheek. "Who wants to solve a murder then?" he declared with a grin.

"I was just trying to get home and to sleep." Tyra grumbled, rubbing her head lightly while she glanced around the area curiously, taking in vaguely familiar faces and completely new ones alike. "I wasn't expecting to drop in on a crime scene... Literally or figuratively for that matter." She added dryly, turning her attention back to the man she landed on, looking him up or down before feeling her own charming smile flash across her face. "Well, aren't you a crunchy taco shell. I'm Tyra, and the pleasure is mine."

Offering him a quick wink, she turned to Robin and grinned. "There you are. Been a while, I still owe you that meal if I remember right. Maybe after the murder is solved, yeah? No problem, moving on." Her eyes drifted over to the others idly, taking in the nearly bored expression on Charlotte's face and raised an eyebrow. "Perk up, nothing bad comes of murders. Not to you at least." She said smoothly then finally turned to look at the perfectly upright woman behind everyone. "Oh, now you don't see that every day, now do you."

Pushing past everyone, she strode over to stare at the dead woman with intense curiosity, hands reaching up to pull her hair back into a ponytail to keep it out of her eyes while she examined it. "Anyone have any ideas? I have about three of them and I don't see any zebras around so that would kill two of those... Okay, one idea."

Another person appeared in the area, swearing at a device on her wrist. "Well…this is awkward." He ran a hand through his hair and glanced at the woman called Charlotte. He studied her carefully, and trailed down to her hand which held the knife.

It glistened in the light, he blinked rapidly, looking away. It was causing him to go off-track, they were talking about a body, a body which had somehow disappeared and the woman was holding a knife. Not suspicious, at all…A scowl was still set upon his face when he noticed the red-haired girl looking at him.

When Nate offered wanting help on the murder, he couldn't refuse, it was as close as he was going to get to a body nowadays.

"I'll help…" he shrugged.

Thank God that woman was gone. She had seemed to be the only one openly suspicious of Charlotte, and now that Nate had put her out of the running for Murderer of the Year - never mind that she had already won that once - likely no one would contest her being here anymore. Besides, she was here with Robin. Robin, who could actually make fun of Daleks' own plans, as a young teenager, no less. And Robin knew that she wasn't a dangerous woman.

Tyra was now examining the upright corpse, a woman Charlotte had never seen in her life, and muttering about les zèbres.  Remembering something Nate had said, she turned to him and Lionel. "Disappearing act? You mean, the corpse of Merrick has disappeared?" Who would take a body of some Starbucks middle manager out of the crime scene while the police were still there? Her eyes drifted back to Tyra. "Maybe someone used whatever device Tyra used to get here, in order to erase the evidence of the corpse. Or..."

No. She was not going to mention the possibility of anges qui pleurent, not yet. And not to these people, even though they all seemed to know something of the preternatural.

"Ça ne fait rien.. Never mind."

"Well that is the question of the hour," Nate grinned to Charlotte. "I have many many ideas," he told Tyra, "But most of them aren't relevant. The standing up body thing looks pretty ritualistic to me, the disappeared Starbucks manager may well have been in the wrong place at the wrong time." He clicked his tongue.

"You want to help Darren? Then get me some garlic, just in case." Nate ordered. It was hard to tell if he was being serious. "Really?" Lionel scolded him, "because everyone just carries garlic around with them? Plus, why do you need garlic?" Nate shook his head at Lionel's questions: "Shush Lionel."

"Now, a vortex manipulator is a possibility for a disappearing body, but I have a different theory on that. I think the body stood up and walked out, all by itself." There was a pause. "Why?" Lionel sucked up the courage to ask, in the form of a purr, "Because..." Nate explained, "While miss Smith was distracted and before the rest of you arrived, I watched it stand up and walk out!"

Robin looked on quietly, frowning to herself. Something was off here - not just the corpses - something was weird. All these people standing around, wouldn't she be feeling a bit uncomfortable at this point? She didn't, though. It felt like the most natural feeling in the world, gathered up with a bunch of strangers who just happened to be interested in a supernatural - or, more likely, extraterrestrial - pair of dead people. Why was that, then? She felt more comfortable than she'd been in a long time and it was when she was near a murder. That better be a coincidence, or else that was just plain creepy and wrong.

Shaking herself out of her thoughts, she let her hood down, as it was getting rather hot in there. Zebras. The conversation had directed itself to zebras. That... Okay how on New Earth did she manage to miss that much? She couldn't have been zoned out more than a minute or so. With a soft chuckle, she contemplated how she ever got used to this kind of company. Nate's answer was no surprise, honestly. A standing corpse? Another just vanished? How else was that going to be connected? Well... tons of ways - two involving zebras apparently - but none that would have worked with a police eye on things. 'So, animated dead people. Wonderful. Maybe we can invite 'em over for tea. But how? Someone have some input that doesn't include zebras?'

"I'll have you know zebras were important with the building of the pyramids. Before inbreeding killed their intelligence and rendered them horses." Tyra answered, miffed at her explanation being tossed aside so easily before tucking her hands into her pockets and turning back to the one person that seemed to have any answers at the moment.

"So, we're living in a Walking Dead episode, or maybe they weren't dead." She sniffed, a old habit she picked up from her mother while explaining things. "Or even better, a body taken over by something small enough to slip inside and take control of it's functions. Ooh, I can't wait to see their face when they have to... You know, go." Flashing a grin around the group of people, she waited for a chuckle only to come up without one and scowled. "You people have no sense of humor."

Shaking her head, Tyra turned back to the woman's body, staring up at it curiously while walking in a circle. "No wires that I can see, some chemical might be keeping the muscles rigid enough to stand like that on it's own. The balance had to be thought out carefully though... I'd guess they had her like this before injecting her then killed her." Turning her eyes over to the others, she shrugged her shoulders and stepped away from the body. "Then again, what do I know? I'm just some chick that dropped in from the sky."

Darren chuckled as the woman mentioned the walking dead and some sort of parasite that controlled people. He had only watched an episode, but it wasn't that good. "Zebra's are pretty good at camouflaging in." Darren inspected the body, it wouldn't be how he would have killed the victim, more blood would have been pooled at the feet of her. Question, what would have been the motive for doing so?

He took out his knife and simply went to poke the body. It was odd to see a murder like this. He was the ones usually committing them. He smirked as a small incision was made on the skin, Darren wanted to see what chemicals this woman was talking about. But it seemed as if it was integrated with the blood and would need forensics to confirm it.

"Would there be aliens that sell chemicals that I could use?"

No matter how tough she was trying to appear, the declaration of an animated body walking around made her gasp. Especially Merrick's body. "But... that doesn't make sense, if we are saying that the woman was the real victim and Merrick just got in the way. Why re-animate him and not her?"

The conversation had already gone on a tangent about zebras without her.

Everyone seemed to be going up to the body, poking it or examining it for alien chemicals or something of the sort. Charlotte just stared from where she was. "Wait. Perhaps she's going to start walking around any moment now, too. Which would mean he was killed first." Again, the question of why raced across her mind. She slowly put the knife in her jacket pocket and moved closer to the corpse.

"Possible," Nate nodded at Charlotte's input. He then stood still staring silently at the body as if waiting for it to move. It didn't. "I think it would have moved by now if it was going to," Nate decided. "Is it entirely too early for me to have a theory?" he asked. "You could wait to see some actual evidence..." Lionel grumped. "That seems fair enough," Nate replied to the cat's meowing. "You might want to see this!" Sophie Smith called out from another room. Nate shook his head from side to side, weighing up his options, then headed for the room she'd called from.

Nate considered gesturing for the others to follow him but decided the room would get too crowded and none of them liked Sophie anyway. Then he considered gesturing for them to wait here, but knowing how people worked, he realised they'd all assume the gesture was for someone else and follow him anyway. He made no gesture and allowed them to decide their actions for themselves.

The room which Sophie was in was fairly small and Nate could see that it was going to get cramped fairly quickly. It was the surveillance room. It was only now that an obvious question occurred to Nate. "How many people work here and how come I haven't seen any of them?" Nate asked Sophie. "Nobody works here, this film studio's been closed for years," she said as if it was obvious. Then she played the footage from the night before. It showed two masked men dragging in the body of the women, then stabbing something into her neck as they held her up. This made her stand there rigidly. Then the man, Merrick, came into the building, shouted something inaudible due to the lack of sound on the video and received a knife in the back from a hidden third man for his troubles. Merrick's body slumped into the position it had been in when Nate arrived.

Then Sophie pressed a button and the video fast forwarded to when she and Nate had arrived. It showed the brief discussion before any of the others had arrived, Nate was disappointed that there was no sound for anyone to see how amazingly he'd got himself onto this case. Then it showed Merrick's body standing up and walking out without anyone except Nate noticing. "You know it's really a show of how much attention you pay to a crime scene that you missed that," Nate whispered to Sophie. "I was distracted by an insane private detective that has been following me," she hissed back. "Don't know any insane private detectives but he sounds delightful," Nate grinned. "Now that I have seen some evidence I will present my theory!" he announced spinning to face anyone that had gathered as an audience.

"Clearly the woman, whoever she was, was not murdered here. But, for some unknown reason, her attackers felt it was necessary to bring her here and make her stand up like that. There must have been a purpose for those actions. There is clearly no practical reason for it, so it must be something else. Religious, Spiritual, Ritual, something along those lines. The male victim was an unintended consequence. He blundered onto the set by accident, no idea why, and was murdered for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I am speculating, that he was caught up in this ritual by accident and his stint of undeadness is a side-effect of that. Anything I've missed?" He grinned searching the room, daring someone to challenge him.

"You do realise that 90% of that has no proof and is literally just what cooked up in your mind," Lionel doubted. "That is what makes it so brilliant!" Nate grinned, "now stop purring and become a believer!" Nate looked down at his cat, ignoring the fact that no-one else was hearing anything except 'meow' "But not a Belieber, that would be unnecessary," he added quickly.

Robin scowled to herself as Nate was summoned into the other room. It was starting to get a tad uncomfortable now, the familiar feeling of crowds setting in, but with that Sophie woman in there? The party was definitely not in there, that was for sure. But they were still no further than they were a few minutes ago. Maybe that was impatience talking, but she was getting bored. What else could she do than do what everyone else was and poke the body? Maybe something would happen, who knew?

Strolling up like this was a natural everyday thing, she looked up at the corpse's face and felt a wave of disappointment roll over her. Even dead people were taller than her. Didn't exactly make a difference - not to mention the age gap between her and the people she preferred to hang out with - but it was still annoying. It was a miracle her neck didn't get cramped looking up like this all the time. Rolling her eyes at her own petty thoughts, she tried to find something useful. Or at least find a reason to get out of everyone else's way. Her eyes wandered to the back of her neck, where she was bleeding, and found something a bit interesting. Was that something peeking out of her shirt? It looked a bit like a scratch. 'Hang on, what are you...?" She murmured to herself, reaching up to tug the collar lower to get a better look. "I'm pretty sure people aren't born with shapes carved into their shoulder blades, so what's this?" And that's what they appeared to be, to her at least. Just shapes.

"I'm pretty sure people aren't born with shapes carved into their shoulder blades, so what's this?"

Charlotte moved over to where Robin was looking at. There were geometric shapes carved into the woman's shoulders. Circles, triangles, five-pointed stars. It was a dizzying sort of pattern, randomly sequenced but coming together as a sort of figure... The others seemed to know far more about these kinds of supernatural things than she, so she asked to the general audience, "Is that some kind of pattern?"

The knife weighed heavy in her pocket. God damn it. If these people knew their French History, they would immediately be turning her over to the police. But I didn't do it. Unless my memory got erased. Oh, mon Dieu. What if...

No. I haven't killed anyone here yet.

Nate danced back into the room with the others, Sophie following slowly, reluctanctly. "Great news everyone!" he cried out, "I was right!" There was a pause. "We have different definitions of 'great'," Lionel muttered.

"So let's walk this through yeah?" he called. "Woman is murdered. Woman's body is brought here." As he spoke, Nate mimed dragging a body through the room. "Then she is injected with something that makes her stand." He pointed to the body. "During this process, the man arrives. The killers aren't expecting this." Nate pulled his surprise face. "So they kill him too." Another mimed kill for Nate. "This is all ritualistic in some way," Nate put his hand around the shoulders of the body as one might a close friend. "Ooh, weird markings on the shoulders..." he noted, "they might be important. Somebody take some pictures of them or something for examination."

Nate grinned, reaching the end of his walk-through. "So as an unintended side-effect, the man gets up and walks away the next morning." He clapped at his own success in running through the murders. No-one else joined in. "More good news," he said stopping his applause, "I've found the missing body!" At this Sophie looked up, "What?" she demanded. "He is standing right behind you!" he pointed at Charlotte. "He looks kind of angry too," he added with a weak smile, "I'm sure he just wants to talk, although he is holding a sword. You might want to duck."

""He looks kind of angry too. I'm sure he just wants to talk, although he is holding a sword. You might want to duck."

Charlotte whirled around and swore violently in French, drawing the knife again to block the sword swinging at her. "Mon patron" - clang - "mort" - clash - "essaie de" - she ducked, nearly out of breath - "me tuer!"

She turned accusingly to the others. "Don't just stand there, my dead boss is trying to ki--watch it, salop, that was a new skirt!" The dead man had ripped her petticoat with his blade. Charlotte elbowed him in the stomach and dug the knife into what she thought was his shoulder.

But he had moved a little too far to the right. She'd stabbed his lung.

Merde.

Gunfire sounded. Quick, sharp, and fast. Sophie stood with the smoking pistol in her grip. The bullet soared through the air piercing into the dead man's forehead and exiting the other side. This was apparently enough to stop him for now because he fell down to the ground with a thud. For the first time since he had arrived Nate simply stood in silence. His eyes were not still though, darting around the room, observing its occupants and analyzing the body. The most obvious observation that Nate made was that Charlotte had a knife. The next logical thing to note was that a dead man had just tried to kill her. Finally, that said man's eyes were pupil less.

"I'm not sure exactly who he is anymore, but I'm pretty sure that he's not your boss anymore," Nate commented. "Charlotte... I think it's time you explained who you are a little more..."