Hey. Lots of business in RL. Took me forever just to belt this out. I had absolutely no intention of ending this chap here, but I knew I needed to give you all something. So here you go.
Not much happened for the rest of the day after the meeting. The gang went about their day mostly as normal. Waverly and Doc both prepared their different methods of finding the revenant: Waverly getting her files in order. Doc getting drunk and finding local gamblers.
In the end though, no action was taken that day.
This time Waverly found herself inside Shorty's exactly as it was before Bobo bought it. Waverly just shook her head in a sort of exasperation.
"Really? Again? I don't think there is anything left for us to talk about."
Suddenly, Nicole strode into the building. She was in full uniform and hat, just like the day they first met.
"She will never truly be with you as long as I'm inside of you. Nicole is far stronger, and far more worthy a mate than you could hope to find. Let me take over, kill your sister, and you can have her back." The Sentinel spoke through the form of Nicole.
"Okay. First, you are messed up to think I would sell out my sister's life for a girlfriend. Even San amazingly hot and good-hearted one. Second, I think we can deal with you ourselves anyway." Waverly retorted.
"Oh, you have no idea what you are trying to 'handle'."
This time, she woke up on her own. For a moment, Waverly was almost disoriented by the lack of a vision of her murdering her own sister.
"Oh, great. That is not going to become my preferred alarm." She mumbled into her pillow as she hoisted herself out of bed.
With one day left still before her date with Nicole, and still no non-monster slaying job, Waverly was able to set right to work on researching their quarry. A problem that was not easy to solve, given that he was an immortal shapeshifter. Fortunately, she had some help.
"I don't know how you do this all day." Waverly groaned over an inordinately huge pile of folders.
"Uh, I don't." Nicole chuckled. "Thankfully, we have deputies for things like this normally. I mostly do either the footwork, or man the front desk."
"I'm the team's main researcher! I've poured over hundreds of police reports from Wyatt Earp's lifetime and beyond. How did they become so… boring?" She bemoaned.
"It's called professionalism Honey. It didn't really exist back in the 1800s. And it doesn't hurt that most of these are about delinquent boys like Champ peeing on things in public. That's a little bit less exciting than cattle rustlers." The redhead bemusedly observed.
"Finding a pattern is impossible." Waverly confessed. "This guy has been around for a hundred years. We don't even know if he's been active. How can we connect which crimes are his out of so many thousands?"
"You are a brilliant person Waverly, and you're a great researcher too, but even if you are gifted police investigation is something you need to be trained in." Nicole explained. "You remember that I asked you to separate files that mentioned a few topics?"
"Yeah." Waverly nodded. "Anything about some building off the downtown. You think it's his hideout or something?"
"No." Nicole smiled. "Better. It's one of his schemes."
Waverly looked at her girlfriend quizzically.
"According to these records, this building has been sold almost precisely every twenty-five years since 1911. That's four times so far if you don't count the first. Each time, after the sale was completed, the building was found to have a defective foundation and was condemned. As is pretty typical, the building was then sold for nearly nothing to someone willing to fix it or tear it down. I'm damn sure Ball was the seller and the final buyer every time. He probably used his powers to gain access to the records and change them. It's probably only thanks to Purgatory's ridiculously bad shoebox based record keeping system, which if I recall correctly Wynonna already took advantage of once, that these records of sale got stuck here. I bet if we checked the records at city hall, like the appraisal, there would be no mention of the building being condemned." Nicole explained it all at length.
Waverly looked quite impressed at her work.
"I guess there are advantages to having a cop as a girlfriend. That was some nice investigating. Now, how do we use it to find him?"
Nicole smiled confidently. "That should be easy, at least the first step. He still needs to own the building. Obviously the identity he owns it under is fake, but their may very well be clues to what else he owns and other cover identities."
Waverly stood up and slipped around the table to sitting on Nicole's lap. Gently, she pulled her face to towards her and kissed.
"I wonder." She fit the words in between kisses. "Why my girlfriend being good at her job is so sexy?"
"We don't seem to have found anything I do yet that you don't find sexy." Nicole looked thoughtful as she recalled their relationship. "I do admit you seem to have a thing for me at work. It's really cute. When we're at home you're all about tea, foreign language courses, and investigating revenants, the moment I put on a uniform though I can't keep your hands off me."
Waverly continued to savor her girlfriend's lips for a while before pulling back to speak again.
"Hey! Remember, I love you in a dress too. Which hopefully I will get to see again tomorrow." She cooed, referring to their upcoming date.
"I'm really glad I've never shown you me working out." The cop mused.
"Wait, you work out?"
Nicole cocked her head. "Waverly, I'm a cop. Of course I work out."
Waverly just sat there for a moment staring into space. Nicole was almost surprised she wasn't drooling her mind was so obviously fantasizing about her doing pull-ups in an undershirt. Or any other activity that involved her girlfriend sweating in exertion in minimal clothing.
"Oh, I'm watching." Waverly insisted with surprising ferocity.
"We'll see." Nicole smiled, unafraid of her girlfriend's insistence, before reclaiming her lips to resume their more important activities.
"You know we can't go any farther." She interrupted again quickly after a few minutes.
"I do." Waverly nodded somewhat sadly. "But this is good enough for now."
After Nicole and Waverly did the follow up enough to get a name and address, Doc and Wynonna volunteered to investigate.
"Why did you suggest we check this one out?" Wynonna inquired. "Waverly and Nicole seemed pretty up to handling this one."
"Well, because a gentleman always carries his own weight. Something which I most definitely have not been doing on this case. However, if any one of us is qualified to pick out Johnny Ball, then it is still someone from his own time. And I do believe I am the only one here who can make that claim."
"Okay, fair point. And I haven't been putting enough Rev-heads under lately, so let's find us a shape-shifter." Wynonna conceded.
When the two arrived at the address they were given, they found a nondescript and essentially unmarked office in a strip mall. One could, in fact, easily assume it was an unused space for rent.
Trying the door and finding it unlocked, the inside was no better. It was clean, but completely empty. The front room was just that, a room with carpeting and nothing else. There was a door on the back wall, however. Wynonna and Doc both just give each other a look before the former shrugged and gave it a knock.
"Yes? Coming, coming." A relatively young male voice ran out.
The door opened a few moments thereafter. Its opening revealed both a comparatively normal office-at least containing a desk with papers and a lamp-, and an average looking white man of probably around thirty years old.
"Welcome. I must say, customers are unexpected here. This office is not particularly set up for guests." He greeted them, shocked, but effectively covering any annoyance.
"Well we didn't know how to best get in contact with you. You are Jeffrey Baron of Baron Realty, right?" Wynonna quickly came up with a way to open up the conversation.
"Yes, but I don't usually see walk in customers."
"I'm afraid we did not know the best way to contact your services. You do own the building at 33 West Main, correct? We were very interested in acquiring that particular property." Doc explained, trying to fish for whether he was talking to the right man.
"I do own that property. It isn't listed for sale though. How did you decide you wanted it specifically?" The man seemed cautious, but intrigued.
"We'll because me and my partner here," she gestured to Wynonna "are looking to start a nightclub, and it happens to possess the perfect mix of location, and availability."
"Yeah." The Earp spoke up. "There's a real opportunity here. With the big city being so close, there is a real customer base of people looking to get away to a place where they can have their fun without anyone they care about catching them. You can't find a place on Earth that fits the bill better than Purgatory. Your building just happens to sit in a private-yet-easy-to-find spot."
The man seemed impressed.
"You certainly seem to know what you want. Here, take my card. I'll meet you Wednesday at 1:30, see if we can't hash out some details. And maybe, you'll get yourself a building." He smiled.
"Well that sounds wonderful Mr. Baron. We'll see you then." Doc nodded and accepted the card.
"Yeah, good business." Wynonna agreed.
The man shook hands with both of them before they left.
"He's a Revenant." Doc flatly declared. "I had the opportunity to shake hands with Johnny Ball on one occasion, and even one-hundred and twenty years later I can tell you that's his slimy handshake."
"Good job.." Wynonna concurred. "Now it's back to Waves and Nicole to keep an eye on him, we can't or he'll get suspicious and might do something stupid. Either way, once they find his hideout I can send him back to Hell and we can finally get Dolls."
Doc stopped in place for a moment. He pulled up his hat and looked to the sky, his face bearing an expression of simple determination. "We're going to find him Wynonna. We'll bring him back, I know it."
"Of course we will." The Earp agreed. "We have to."
After her work with Nicole, Waverly had returned to the homestead to do mundane chores. After all, demons or no, housework needed to be done and meals cooked. And basically, she was the only thing standing between Wynonna, and beer-bottle laden squalor.
"If you kill her, neither of you will have to worry."
Waverly was a little surprised to hear the voice again after it had been so quiet all day.
"Oh come on." She rolled her eyes. "You're really going to do this again?"
"Kill her."
Waverly just tried to ignore it and continue her cleaning.
"Kill her."
"Kill her."
"Shut up!" The younger Earp snarled, becoming inordinately angry and annoyed at the repetitive voice.
"Kill her."
"Kill her."
Waverly found herself becoming dizzy. The words in her head began to blur together as she collapsed against the counter.
"Okay… that's… new…" She mumbled out as her body continued to abandon her leaving her falling to the ground in a heap.
Several motionless minutes passed. Then, the sound of her phone cut through the silence; Nicole's ringtone.
"Hey. Yeah." She crawled up and answered it. "Yeah, that's great. Meet you there."
P.S.
Wayhaught scenes like the cheerleader bit were so hot that they may just have burned out my eyes. 8-0