"So what do you make of it?"
Caitlyn leaned back in her chair and threw her feet up onto her desk, her leather boots knocking aside a stack of papers as they found a place to rest. In the corner of the room, Vi feverishly pantomimed punching the wall in silence, being overly sure never to make actual contact.
"Dunno," Vi finally proclaimed. "Sounds to me like this joker needs a good ol' punching."
Caitlyn smirked. "I figured you'd say something like that." She picked up the piece of paper that was laid across her chest and read aloud. "Join me! Join me! It's a date – Central Plaza, half past eight. P.S. Don't miss the cutoff!"
She lazily dropped the paper back onto her lap and sighed. That morning, they had found the note haphazardly pinned to the door of their office, and the rest of the day up until that point had been her trying to guess who might have written the note. Vi had been offering her input, but for the most part was massively unhelpful. "Any guesses as to who this joker could be?" Caitlyn finally inquired.
Vi paused her pantomiming and turned to look at Caitlyn with a shrug. "I still say it's Jinx and she's just screwin' with us."
Caitlyn's bemused smirk faded into a frown. "Any new guesses?"
"Eh, nah." Vi turned back to the wall and once again began punching the air in front of it.
Caitlyn sighed again and closed her eyes. It could be Jinx, she reasoned with herself. But I know it isn't. Jinx always lets us know it's her. If this was from her, it would say something about rockets. Or have her name on it. Or her face plastered across the back. Caitlyn smiled. Yeah, that sounds like Jinx. Her smile quickly faded into a confused frown. This, on the other hand, does not.
"Something funny, cupcake?" Vi taunted Caitlyn, obviously spotting the brief smile that had drifted onto her face. "Yeah, your hopeless flailing," Caitlyn retorted. Vi chuckled, then pointed at Caitlyn with a massive glove. "You better watch yourself, or I'll hopelessly flail all over your pretty little face."
"Yeah, yeah," Caitlyn giggled at the idle threat. For the first time since the conversation started, Vi turned fully away from the wall and strode over to the desk, plopping down on it. "Hey!" Caitlyn exclaimed, but Vi clearly wasn't going to care, so she decided not to continue. "Never mind. What's up?"
Vi sat for a second, then piped up. "The way I see it, we just gotta go to the Central Plaza, at 8:20."
"Don't you mean 8:30? You know, half past eight?" Caitlyn jeered, but Vi waved her off. "Yeah, whatever. 8:30. You know I don't do numbers. The important thing is we're at the Plaza so we can see what this nutjob wants."
"That's a fairly…tame plan for you," Caitlyn began, but Vi wasn't finished. "And then when we find Jinx there, I'm gonna punch her straight to the moon!" She hollered. Caitlyn laughed.
"That sounds more like it."
8:30 rolled around, and after a pedestrian day in the office, Caitlyn and Vi found themselves at the Central Plaza. The Plaza itself was a rotunda, featuring shops lining the outside of its circular form and an enormous, lavish fountain on display in the center. Without a word, Caitlyn glanced at Vi, who glanced right back at her. In unison they shrugged and sat down on the edge of the fountain.
"So we appear to have neglected to find out exactly where in the Plaza we were supposed to go," Caitlyn mused.
"Seems so," Vi replied, nodding matter-of-factly. For a long stretch of a few minutes, the pair sat in silence, lazily gazing around the Plaza at the hopes of spying something suspicious. After a while, Vi sighed and closed her eyes, leaning back such that the splashes from the water danced across her choppy, short pink hair.
"I'm booooored," she whined.
Caitlyn frowned. "I'll be honest, I'm not quite sure what we're doing here." She twisted her shoulders to face behind her, hopelessly attempting to find something that would alert her to what the author of this massively odd note wanted them to see. Unfortunately, to her dismay, there was nothing to see.
A while passed this way, with Vi and Caitlyn idly chatting and no mysterious author making his entrance. Eventually, a short figure pressed its way through the crowds of people clumped throughout the plaza, waddling towards the two detectives. He had a large round head and big blue eyes, and was adorned in a simple brown cloak lashed together with rope. His facial hair puffed off of both of his cheeks and seemingly melded with his face near his nose, which was cute and button-like. "Caitlyn! Vi!" He squeaked with a grin, as he clambered up to the ridge around the fountain where they were seated and plopped down in between them.
"Hi, Bartram," Caitlyn and Vi answered in unison, acknowledging each other with rolled eyes and sly grins.
Bartram was the owner of Yordle Yums and Other Delicacies, a small bakery amidst the marketplace surrounding the Plaza. He himself was a very outspoken Yordle, proudly showing off his "masterful baking sciences." Caitlyn and Vi knew nothing of whether what he boasted about was true, but he was a professor at the Yordle Academy of Science & Progress, so behind every exaggeration he exclaimed hid at least a morsel of scientific truth. Whether he was fibbing or not, he had quickly become a popular character on the Plaza and was frequently swarmed with young children asking to try his Yordle Yums. He responded to this with an open heart and a warm smile before politely telling them that they could try his Yordle Yums for five dollars and fifty cents apiece. He was a kind Yordle, but not typically a generous one.
"What brings you two here during work hours?" He squeaked again, pointing large inquiring eyes up at Caitlyn, then quickly turning back and forth between her and Vi, excitedly awaiting an answer. He was always one to start conversations. Caitlyn looked at Vi, who had closed her eyes again and leaned back into the splashes from the fountain. Noting that Vi would be of no help to her in this conversation, Caitlyn took a deep breath and responded.
"We're here on…special sheriff duties," she said, wincing at the vagueness of her previous statement. Bartram didn't seem to mind, and his eyes somehow gaped open even wider at the mention of it.
"Special sheriff duties!? Oh, oh, oh my! What happened? Who did it? What are you doooing here!?" He bounced up and down with excitement as he burst into a series of unanswerable questions. Caitlyn giggled at the yordle's enthusiasm. "Sorry, that's confidential," she answered. His expression drooped into a brief disappointed frown, but he almost immediately perked back up. "Of course, of course it is! I understand!"
They sat in silence for a moment, something Caitlyn was not used to hearing around Bartram. "Oh, yes, yes!" He piped up, cutting that moment tantalizingly short. "I have sweetbread cookies for the both of you!" He rummaged through the front pocket of his cloak, and pulled out two delicate, tiny cookies that barely filled his small yordle palms. "On the house, of course, for my two favorite ladies, but you better not tell anyone else!" He winked and presented a cookie each to Caitlyn and Vi.
Vi leaned forward, her hair now slightly dripping from the fountain and a fairly forced confused look on her face. "Hunh. I must have dozed off." Caitlyn smirked at the poor excuse for not participating in the conversation to this point. "But did I hear sweetbread cookies?" Vi continued, confirming that she had been perfectly awake and at attention for the duration of their little chat.
"Yes, yes! Your favorite!" Bartram blurted, barely handling his excitement. Caitlyn acknowledged to herself how impressive his excitement for his craft was before taking the cookie and popping it into her mouth. It was delightfully sugary, though fleeting – yordle desserts were often not enough to satisfy her sweet tooth, though she ceded that her sweet tooth was probably larger than the average person's. She peeked at Vi to see if she had finished her cookie, and Vi caught her gaze and stuck out her tongue, revealing the cookie half-chewed in her mouth. Caitlyn reached over the head of Bartram and jokingly shoved Vi. "That's disgusting," she added. Vi laughed and didn't seem to otherwise care.
"So will I see you in my shop soon for more goodies?" Bartram piped up, peering up hopefully at Caitlyn. Caitlyn responded by rolling her eyes. "Yes, of course." While they weren't individually satisfactory, a box of Yordle Yums was typically enough to satisfy her desire for sugar, and it was certainly always enough to put her in a good mood. "Speak for yourself, cupcake," Vi playfully taunted, before leaning over to Bartram and loudly whispering, "You betcha you'll see me soon, but don't tell Caitlyn or she'll make fun of me for it!"
The three laughed communally. "Good, good! Good!" Bartram bubbled as he pulled a large, unwieldy watch out of his back cloak pocket. "Oh my goodness!" He screeched, reading the time on the watch. "It's already 10 o'clock! I must close up my shop! Forgive me, ladies," He begun, but they couldn't hear him finish as he had already scurried off and become lost once again in the masses of people coating the Plaza.
Already 10? Caitlyn looked up, noting that the sky was now pitch-black, lit only by a thin layer of stars and the blossoming street lights surrounding the fountain. How had it become so late? "Guess there's not a whole lot to see here, huh?" Vi's words cut into Caitlyn's thoughts, revealing that they were thinking very much the same thing.
"Must have just been some joker who wanted to waste our time. Boy, does he deserve a good punching."
"Or she," corrected Caitlyn with a wink.
"Right, right. She. Because it was Jinx all along," Vi exclaimed, openly kidding at this point. Both detectives laughed empty laughs, but it was clear that they were both tired and frustrated from the dead lead. Though they were both very relaxed people (albeit in their own different ways), the pair positively hated wasting time.
"Guess we should head back then."
Vi nodded in silence, and the two slowly pushed themselves to their feet. With one last hopeless glance around the Plaza, Caitlyn shrugged in defeat, and the detectives headed back down the road towards their office.
It was nearing 11 o'clock when the duo found themselves trudging up the hill to their office. "I wanna go home," Vi pouted. Caitlyn sleepily giggled. "You and me both, sugar."
Vi's eyebrows tilted into an incredulous stare as she cocked her head to the left. "Sugar? You must be more tired than I thought."
Vi was right. Caitlyn was exhausted, and her frustration and disappointment only compounded her current discomfort. All she wanted to do was return to the office, grab her things, and head home for as long of a night's rest as she could get.
That hope was shattered, however, as she walked up to the door of their office and found a neatly wrapped package sitting on the doorstep.
"Whazzat?" Vi lazily slurred, seemingly already half asleep. "Dunno," Caitlyn responded with a puzzled look on her face. Who would deliver us a gift at this hour? Mail would have been delivered before we left, so someone must have done this personally. She bent over, brushing a loose strand of hair out of her face, and picked up the package. Tucked into the bow of the cleanly wrapped box was an unsealed envelope, with nothing but a smiling face printed on the outside. Caitlyn shuddered. That's pretty creepy.
"Well that's creepy," Vi mimicked Caitlyn's thoughts. Caitlyn smirked, but her expression quickly faded into a concerned frown. "Yeah, it is. Come on, I guess we'd better figure out what's inside this box."
Caitlyn unlocked the door and the two made their way into the office. They both plopped down onto their waiting couch, leaning back simultaneously and closing their eyes. "Les just do this tomorrow," Vi muttered. Caitlyn forced her eyes open. "No, we need to take care of this now. I couldn't sleep well not knowing what was in this box."
She placed the package down on the table in front of her and took the envelope. Reaching inside, she pulled out an intricately decorated card, with an uncommonly fancy pattern printed around the border. In the center of the card was a poem. She read aloud, directed towards Vi:
"You've missed the cutoff! What a shame –
you only have yourselves to blame.
I hope you like my little gift!
You two could use a good face lift.
P.S. Try not to get too worked up just yet – The games are only beginning…"
Vi stared dumbly back at her. "What." Vi simply stated, once again voicing Caitlyn's exact thoughts.
"I have…no idea," Caitlyn responded. "But it definitely sounds like the weirdo who left us that first note." Vi nodded in agreement. Caitlyn continued, "Guess we had better open it up and see what's inside."
With a sudden jolt, Vi hurriedly pushed Caitlyn to the side and threw her ear down onto the box. "Hey, what the – " Caitlyn protested, but Vi smothered her mouth with an oversized glove. "Mmph." Caitlyn grunted her understanding.
After a few seconds, Vi recoiled from the package and nodded. "Okay, you can open it now. I'm pretty sure it's not a bomb." Caitlyn rolled her eyes, but Vi just shrugged. "Hey, can't be too careful, right? Don't want my cupcake getting blown to smithereens."
"That's sweet," Caitlyn mocked, but with a twinge of sincerity. "May I open it now?"
"Go for it," Vi approved.
Caitlyn took a deep breath, pulled the ribbons back, and opened the flaps of the box.
The reaction was immediate. "What the FUCK?" shouted Vi. Caitlyn just buckled over herself and gagged. After taking a few seconds to recover, Caitlyn lifted herself back up, catching a glimpse of Vi, who was staring frozen in horror at the contents of the package. She turned to take another look in the box, and immediately gagged again on sight, confirming her fear that what she had seen at first was indeed there.
Laying inside the package, staring back at the two detectives with a contorted smile, was the peeled skin from a human face.
"The inaugural turn is complete, maaaster."
A ghoulish, masked figure issued his statement in a mockingly formal tone towards a cloaked man, who was idly sharpening a knife in the shadows.
"Good. Well done, Shaco. You have already proven your worthiness as an…adversary."
"Oooh, THANK you!" Shaco cackled. "What a fun game this will be!"
"Yes," replied the shadowed figure, his attention unwavering from his knife. "What a fun game indeed."
The two lurked in silence for a moment. "You may go now, Shaco."
"Okay, okay! Just let me know when it's my turn again," Shaco grinned maniacally. "Ohh, how exciting! I just love it already!"
The demon jester turned away from the man and skipped gleefully towards the door of the poorly lit room, before disappearing in a puff of orange smoke.
The cloaked man paused and glanced up at the spot where the jester had just disappeared. After a brief moment, he turned his attention back to the blade of the knife, admiring his work in what light was present as the occasional glint of it bounced off of the cold, bare steel.
Placing the knife into a sheath on his waist, he chuckled ominously.
"What a fun game, indeed."