"C'mon, Lacier!" grunted Guyenne at her little sister as she desperately tried to make the stitching up of one leg of her jeans go a little faster. Hoping to give a good impression on Detective Bee when she finally met him, she'd decided that both aphids should look the best they could. This wasn't going down well with Lacier though, who was wanting to wear her grubby shorts and t-shirt.
"But Gu, I don't want to wear the silly long trousers!" she complained, giving a little 'humph' and stamping her foot. Groaning a little, the elder sister got up, leaving the needle and thread dangling from her jeans and stepping into their shared room. Lacier was standing in her grubby stuff, looking disdainfully at the larger, cleaner clothes her sister had found in her old pile of stuff for her. "This is comfy," she added, tugging at her attire as if to prove a point.
"Lacier, the detective will want to see us in nice clothes, or he might not want to find Ka for you," Guyenne tried, but Lacier just stuck her tongue out at her again.
"You said he was a nice man. Nice men don't care what clothes you wear," she said, and the elder girl was forced to concede that her sister had somewhat of a point. In any case, she wasn't prepared to continue arguing - there were still two hours until the meeting, but the address she'd got after re-ringing Detective Bee to ask for it and write it down was a fair bit away from their home, and they'd no idea how long it would take. Instead, she sighed, waving her hand at her sister.
"Wear those, then," she said, giving in. Lacier squealed gleefully even as Guyenne continued trying to stitch up her jean knee. Eventually, it looked held-together enough to be only just an accident, and the girl sighed, standing up and putting on her favourite cap. "C'mon, let's go," she said, holding out her hand for her sister to take it. However, Lacier bounded on to the door and zipped out of it before her older sister even got out of the door. She sighed and jogged out, making sure she had the key and some of her money in her pocket, closing the door firmly and racing her sister down the flight of stairs in the apartment. The smaller aphid was out the doors first though, but that was more of her ability to slip between people coming up the other way and her sister having to take a bit more time and care.
However, Lacier knew better than to run off outside, and waited to take Guyenne's hand and the pair of them proceeded towards the bus stop outside the complex of council estates that the insects lived on. This was the only stop for the many males who went out to work in the city, a bus would come and collect them all and take them all to their jobs. It wasn't the best bus in the world - in fact it was privately owned and the groundhog did the rounds more or less out of the goodness of his heart - his only request is that if they could, the insects would chip in a little towards petrol. More or less everyone did.
The rather diminutive rodent would sometimes come back in between the main drop-off times to ferry those who wanted into the main shopping district, but on a Tuesday, that rarely happened. He still turned up now and again on the day, but whenever asked why, he'd just tap his nose a few times and grin.
"Stuff happened," was the most anyone had reportedly got out of him, and Guyenne thought about those little words as she and her sister got into the nearly-empty bus shelter, the only other occupant a rather elderly and wrinkled ant lady.
"The little Aphid girls, aren't you?" she asked in her voice, which sounded about as aged and crinkled as she was, her smile seeming to appear as just another crease in her face. Guyenne nodded with a little wave, and it was Lacier who struck up the conversation.
"Yes Missus Ant," she said pleasantly, hopping up onto one of the intact seats on the stop wall. "We're going to meet a detective today!" she added excitedly, before Guyenne could remember what a chatterbox her sister could be, and the implications of this scrap of information could be if it got out.
"Oh, a detective?" asked the elderly ant. "Whatever for?" To the teenager's eternal relief, it seemed Mrs. Ant's eyesight wasn't brilliant, and she didn't flinch as she clamped a hand around her little sister's mouth.
"We're not hiring him - he's just a distant friend that we're going to see," she lied with a gleeful smile on her face. However, she grabbed one of her sister's antennae and wrapped hers around it. "Mum and Dad can't find out about it - don't tell any woman about it," she communicated, withdrawing her antennae as soon as the communiqué was finished. Lacier paused for a moment, her mouth open and ready to reply, but nothing came out, much to the elder one's relief, and she sat down with a sigh of relief. A clang of a bell announced the bus's arrival before Mrs Ant could press on further.
"Oh, good, the bus is here. I'll finally be able to go shopping," she murmured, shuffling at her tectonic speed towards the open door of the bus. Lacier bounded onboard with a cheery 'hello' to the groundhog, while Guyenne, with a lot of difficulty, helped the old woman onto the bus, with the driver's help after a while.
"How are you today, young Guyenne?" he asked, as the green-hued insect tossed a pair of Mobiums into the dish. She smiled, brushing her hair out of her eyes again and digging a scrap of paper out of her pocket.
"I'm fine thanks, Mr Davidson," she said pleasantly. "Could we go to this address?" she asked, handing him the scrap on which she'd written Detective Bee's address. The groundhog studied it for a moment, then nodded, handing it back with a smile.
"It's not too far from here, come to think of it. You two can get off first," he said, gesturing to the two seats just behind him, causing Guyenne to have to bring Lacier forward from the back of the bus (with much protestation) just before, with its' usual cough and splutter, the engine of Mr Davidson's bus came to life and lurched forward, beginning on its' journey towards the headquarters of - what was it called again?
"Damn it, I can't even remember what the association is called!" she thought angrily, kneading her forehead with her fist to try and force the name back. Eventually though, she just lay back and accepted that once again, her memory had failed once again.
"It should be around here somewhere…" Guyenne mumbled, frowning down at her sheet of paper as they made another loop of the block. Lacier whined and complained loudly, but it wasn't particularly heard by her sister. She knew she was on the right street, this was also the right area of town, but somehow the actual block didn't seem to be around. She held back a curse word, and looked around for anybody who would be able to help her get directions. Unfortunately, there was no-one around except for a group of various rodents who were smoking on a street corner not far away. She tried to ignore some of the nasty looks she was getting from them, and quintuple-checked the names of the streets, and the map of the area posted on the billboard despite the many burns and scratches on its' surface.
"Gu…?" antennae-whispered her sister in a frightened way, and Guyenne turned round to feel herself drop a few body temperature degrees in fright. A couple of the smokers were approaching her, their fags thrown to the ground and leers on their faces. Guyenne took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a second, begging something to come and stop them if they had malicious intent.
"Oi, you," shouted one of them, a meerkat with his cigarette still in the corner of his mouth. "What're you doing around here?" The rest of what appeared to be his posse then took up positions around him, and also blocking off the right escape - there was a wall to their left, and they were backed up against the sign, so truthfully they were barricaded. Lacier began to cry.
"Aw, look at the little bug, crying," put forward a rat with a sneer. "Shall we put her out of her misery and squish her like the bug she is?" This was met by grins and laughs of assent from the group, and the smaller aphid tucked into her older sister. The meerkat took a step forward, fumbling around in his coat for something.
"We don't like you bugs making our streets all filthy," he said, causing a momentary degree of rationality in Guyenne as she considered the streets could hardly be more dirty than they already were. However, the speaker was continuing. "So I think Raz here has a point. Let's squi…" both insects had flinched as he began the word, but he never finished it - a gunshot rang out and broke him off mid-word. All the rodents looked up to the wall, and Guyenne chanced a look herself, only to have her jaw drop open in surprise.
"If it's cleanliness you're concerned about, you could do a lot worse than actually getting a broom and mop. Of course, you'd need to work on yourselves for about a month before you were ready," said a chirpy and slightly cocky voice from up on the wall. The speaker was a black-and-yellow banded bee, wearing a pair of dark brown and tattered jeans, sneakers that looked like they were the long-lost twins of Guyenne's, an orange bomber jacket and a helmet of the same colour, where his antennae poked out from holes made in the casing.
"Detective," said one of the rodents politely, all of them stepping back from the two girls and the meerkat withdrawing his hand from his coat. Lacier looked up from her crying into her sister's jeans, and stared in awe as the bee leapt off the wall, using his wings to glide to a stop on the ground and keeping his gun at a level height.
"Is that him?" the younger one asked her sister through their antennae, but Guyenne didn't answer. She was pretty sure there weren't any other bee detectives in the area, maybe not even in the city, but there was still a little niggling of doubt in her head.
"Do you want me to make you go away, or can you leave these girls alone?" he asked the gang, giving his thumb a little flick on the side of his firearm. There was a small pause among the adolescents, but eventually they all shuffled off, some with nods at the bee. Soon, they were all around the corner, and away from sight. Then, the bee turned with a smile to both aphids. "Hope they didn't scare ya too much," he said with a cheerful smile on his face as if they had been no trouble at all. Lacier didn't reply, so Guyenne stepped in, blushing a little and pushing her hair out of her face.
"No, it's perfectly all right. Thank you," she replied sheepishly. "You're not Detective Bee, are you?" she asked hopefully. Her heart sank for a moment when he shook his head, then rose again with the answer.
"I'm Charmy," he replied with a grin. "You must be Miss Aphid and Miss Aphid?" He looked from one to another, still with a pleasant smile on his face that put the two much more at rest. The elder of the two nodded, but her little sister shook her head indignantly.
"No, I'm Lacier and she's Guyenne," she said, in a confused tone. Charmy laughed at that, and Guyenne couldn't hold back a smile either.
"Sorry 'bout that, Lacier," the detective said. "Can you two fly? It'd be easier to get to my office then…" he broke off as both girls shook their heads. He shrugged, still smiling, and pulled a key out of his pocket. "No problem, I'll let you two in. Follow me," and sure enough, he began to move off, gesturing for the two aphids to follow him. Guyenne instinctively crouched down to prise her sister off her leg, but Lacier had already left her sister's jean and was running after the helmeted bee. However, she looked down to notice that her knee that she'd sewn up that morning had opened again, and for a minute or so, she bit her lip and swore at herself inside her head. Here she was, meeting a detective she needed to make a good impression on, and she was coming in with horrible slashes on her jeans.
"Hi there, Mrs L," Charmy said brightly, bringing Guyenne back to her senses as she stepped out of the way of a rather fat female squirrel who was beaming back towards the teenage bee as he nipped in the slowly-closing door.
"Oh, hello Charmy. I see you've got some clients… or friends round?" she asked, and the elder aphid giggled as she slipped past Charmy as he held the door open for the two girls, and she saw him wink at the squirrel and give a grin.
"Both, I think, Mrs L," he said with a smile at Guyenne, slipping in after her and walking alongside her as they mounted the steps. "Floor three, room number three-seven Lacier," he called up to her little sister, who seemed eager to leap up the stairs, but unsure as to where exactly where to go. She nodded, and began scrambling up the brown-carpeted steps as the elder sister went up and a more leisurely pace - she suspected he could easily have flown up the landing, but was using the stairs purely out of politeness, something she quite appreciated.
"Thanks for agreeing to talk this over with me," she said tentatively. She looked across to Charmy, who was fumbling with a keychain at his side, though oddly the tagline with the initials on it read V.C. rather than C.B. He seemed a little too occupied with the many keys hanging around the ring rather than looking up at her, but she didn't assume it was anything to do with impoliteness - he didn't have much of that, to be honest.
"No problem," he said, dragging out the 'o' sound in the 'no' which lasted as long as it took to take the keys out. "Here we go… I really have to start labelling or colouring some of these," he muttered, shaking a ring that would easily have left room had it been draped around Guyenne's neck. He tapped each individual key, muttering under his breath as the aphid looked in extreme interest at the sheer number of keys he held. Though he claimed not to have labelled any, she did notice one tag on the edge, and reached forward to read it.
"Is this the one you're looking for?" she asked, holding the one that read 'home' on the orange tag behind it. Charmy looked down for a second, then nodded, grinning.
"Thanks, Miss Aphid. I keep all the duplicate keys I take from previous cases, and I have some… previous ones," he then added slowly, staring at the line of keys hanging straight down at the bottom of the ring with a hint of sadness lining his eyes. It was wiped away quickly though, and he took the key Guyenne had picked out from it and slotted it into the apartment door they'd got to, where Lacier was hopping excitedly up and down outside.
"Are we going in Mr Detective?" she asked impatiently as Charmy fumbled with the lock. The bee nodded, not paying his full attention to the little green insect as he twisted his key this way and that. Her older sister felt the touch of her antennae on her own, and was subject to the whispers from Lacier.
"Why isn't he listening to us much?"
"I don't think he is, Lace," replied Guyenne, using the short name for her sister to make things easier on speaking terms. "He probably has a lot on his mind at the moment. Just try to focus on why we're here," she added, nodding at her sister as she disconnected their antennae.
"Okay then, we're in!" Detective Bee then said triumphantly as the door creaked open after some time tweaking the key this way and that. He held the door open for the two aphids, rubbing the back of his helmet and drawing a small circle on the ground with the toe of his sneaker. "Yeah, it's a bit of a mess… sorry…"
"It's so cool!" yelled out Lacier in glee, sprinting into the middle of the apartment, easily bigger than the main room of their house. Guyenne followed, not so much picking up the presence of a radio, television and books in someone's apartment but the fact that there was no mould, no mysterious smell or green texture climbing the walls. She was looking around in such admiration she barely noticed Charmy's insistences that it wasn't a particularly expensive apartment - in fact it was a very cheap and pretty natty one. However, the girl wasn't listening, she was too wrapped up in how incredible this place looked in comparison to her family's own apartment.
"Please, take a seat," Charmy then added, tapping Guyenne on the shoulder to knock her out of her reverie. She blushed a little, but sat down on one of the extremely sagging cushions on the chair and folded her hands in her lap. Lacier bounded up and hopped next to her, looking forward eagerly as Detective Bee sat himself down opposite them, and flipped out a notebook that looked, surprisingly, in pristine form. "Right, ladies. You said you had a missing Chao?" he asked, after scribbling something at the top of his page. Lacier's usually bouncy face fell a little and she nodded sadly, brushing her sister's antennae.
"Can you tell him, Gu?" she whispered, and her sister nodded, taking her cap off and dropping it into her sister's lap for the younger insect to play with. Charmy watched all this with some interest, but said nothing if he did find it confusing in any way The aphid covered the rips in her jeans up with her hands and began to explain.
"Well, yesterday morning, I picked my sister up from an art club she goes to, and we found that her Chao, Ka, had gone missing. We went outside to look for him, and we saw to guys running off with it… him under their arms," she explained, adding the last bit after a ferocious glare from her sister. Charmy nodded, having sketched a little bit more in his notebook. He sucked on the inside of his mouth, and then wrote a few more things down.
"I take it Lacier can read?" he asked, stopping mid-word, it seemed. Guyenne bit her lip as Lacier shook her head, but Charmy didn't seem to mind. He simply carried on writing, and then tore out the page, folding over the top. "It's no problem - Guyenne, you wouldn't mind filling this out then?" he asked, handing over the slip and a pen towards her. The girl took them gingerly, and checked down the list of things concerning Ka that she was asked to fill in.
As she was doing it, she noticed that Charmy was fixing up the television, and was asking Lacier if she'd like to watch. Guyenne giggled a little at her sister's confused look - usually television was only reserved for the grown-ups when they wanted to watch something serious, like the news or the sport.
"No, there are things kids can watch too," laughed the bee, playing about with the coat hanger stuffed into the back of the TV to act as an aerial until a fuzzy picture that slowly made its' way into a more focussed image of some kids' afternoon TV programme. Lacier stared for a moment, and as soon as the volume came on, with the presenter appealing directly to the viewers with a description of what was to come, the little aphid seemed entranced. Guyenne smiled at Charmy, who came to sit beside her and he glanced over at the programme.
"I used to love this programme when I was young. That mark is where my stinger eventually just punctured the sofa from so much sitting in the same place," he added, pointing to a place on the arm of the couch where the fabric was ripped and the fluff inside was leaking out. Guyenne looked up from her list of questions to blink a little at Charmy.
"You've been here for a long time then?" she asked, slightly too curiously. The bee removed his helmet and ran his hand through his antennae, nodding eventually.
"It's a pretty long story," he admitted, but Guyenne's interest was piqued and she didn't want to back down.
"We've got time," she retorted, her interest in what foods Ka liked to eat now completely washed away. Charmy gave a little sigh, and began what was to be one of the most shocking tales the aphid would ever hear in her life.