Smelly Salvation [2430-2-1-Sun-10pm]

[Leif Chelio]

It was late, but Leif didn't really notice. Part of that was because he'd been living in the Below for almost ten years now and when daytime as as dark as the night, you got used to being wide away even when it was dark out. The other part of him not really noticing was because he was running away.

His hooves found purchase as he ran, clanking on grating and clopping on cement as he ran like the wind. And behind him, two rather nefarious looking men ran after him, though at a much slower pace. They were too large to turn the sharp corners that Leif could, but they had a sort of momentum that only came from large things moving very fast. When Leif came to a halt, it was immediate. Those large men would keep moving for a while afterwards, unless they hit a wall. Or Leif.

Sometimes Leif was sure that he'd accidentally angered Pan. Why else would so many large angry men feel the need to beat on Leif? And why else would he have such troubles with women, if not for Pan interfering, maybe to keep them all to himself. But, even if Pan was angry, Leif was sending a bit of a prayer to the big furry god in the hopes that he would once again let Leif live to see another day.

An alley on the right side. Leif ducked into it, hoping he could find something to hide in, climb up, or run around. Dumpsters. Of course. Even Pan couldn't resist some mischief, even when he was helping out.

Leif opened the lid and hopped inside, not bothering to be squeamish. He could either be dirty, or be dead, and he wasn't ready to go to the great meadow in the sky. His hooves sunk into a mix of plastic containers, garbage and what might have been glass bottles. Leif brought the lid down on top of him and stayed very, very quiet, careful not to bump around. Then he waited, hoping like hell the nasty looking fellows with a hate on for private eye fauns would continue on for at least a dozen blocks before realizing they'd lost their prey.

[Alexander Riggs]

Alex grunted, lugging the heavy garbage bag behind him as he opened the back door. Why Rusty refused to get one of those refuse incinerators for the bar, he'd never know. He'd fought with the man countless times over the issue, but in the end it only wasted even more time than simply taking the garbage out did, so Alex was stuck doing more menial labour than he really needed to, simply because the boss was cheap.

He paused for a moment in the doorway as he realized two large guys were running past yelling obscenities at an unknown person who must have run by moments earlier. He shook his head, knowing not to get involved. Working in a bar brought enough crazies and troublemakers into his bubble. He didn't need two brutes in his face either.

Once they were gone, Alex tugged the bag out the door and towards the dumpster, which he flipped open and immediately jumped about five feet in the air upon seeing the body inside. "AH! FIK!!" he grabbed his chest, stepping backwards a few feet in order to compose himself. Weird stuff happened around here sometimes, but never dead bodies in his dumpster.

Slowly he peered back into the huge box, and it quickly dawned on him on a second viewing that it wasn't a dead body, but a very much alive body. "Oh what the fik, man?? Are you trying to give me a heart attack??"

[Leif Chelio]

The sound of feet running by Leif's location was music to his brown floppy ears. Leif let out the breath he'd been holding and send a brief 'thank you' in Pan's direction. The faun would live to solve crimes for yet another day.

Then the lid popped open and Leif nearly had a heart-attack. So did the poor human looking in at Leif. Leif stumbled against the dumpster wall, catching his breath and waiting for the face to reappear. It did, and it was not impressed.

"Sorry mate." Leif got his hands on the ledge and scrabbled out, hitting the pavement hooves-first. "Didn't mean to scare you half to death. I just had to get out of the way before two large angry maniacs decided to turn me into ground meat. Their boss has no sense of humour at all, and I think they have even less. What sort of fellows can't even laugh at themselves?"

He realized then that he'd left his hat behind. Leif quickly lent back into the dumpster, fishing around until he found it top hat and planting it squarely on top of his head and tilting it back. There, that was better. He felt naked without his hat. Made his ears stick out even more than usual. "Thanks for letting me borrow your dumpster!"

[Alexander Riggs]

Alex backed up, allowing the guy to climb out, and he realized it was a faun. Fauns were the most common alien to find themselves in the bar, but they were still rare enough that Alex couldn't help but stare every time he saw one. Hooves... hooves on people were just unnatural and creepy.

He must have been mouthy with the brutes who had just run by. Or he hadn't known any better and asked a question he shouldn't have. His personal experience with the creatures had always led them to being far too curious for their own good. People didn't want to be asked questions from strangers in bars. At least not anything that wasn't "your place or mine?". At least not his bar. Alex had learned not to be mouthy with the patrons long ago. It was tough, given his nature, but he managed. Usually.

"Uh... you're welcome..." he finally stated, dumping his garbage bag into the dumpster after the faun was done retrieving his hat, shoving it over his funny floppy ears. "...can I ask what the hell happened?"

[Leif Chelio]

"It's a bit of a long story. See, this girl hired me to find out who her father was, since her pops left her mom when she was wee and her mom died of some disease or another, and she got taken in by a baker but the girl needs money to keep the bakery in business so she wants me to find her dad, and I did find her father, only it turns out he's dead because he got his head stuck into someone else's business and of course now I've got my head stuck into that business." Leif flicked his ears, pausing to listen as footsteps came near. But they swerved off and he let them flop back down, returning to the explanation. "I think I'm getting close to hard proof about what he did to her father, since he's sending a better class of angry goons after me. Hopefully I can get this wrapped up, send the bad guy to jail, and get a little money for the lovely young lady so she can keep baking cakes for sweet old ladies and tiny toddlers."

Leif gave the man a moment to let it all sink it. As he'd said, it was a long story, but all too familiar to Lief at this point. While the human processed it, Leif dug around in his jacket, sorting through the inner pockets. He finally managed to turn up a plastic business card, one of his last ones. He needed a payday, and soon, if he planned on having more made. "Leif Chelio, private investigator, at your service."

[Alexander Riggs]

Alex listened to the faun closely. Or rather, he tried his best to listen to the faun closely. He was pretty sure he only heard about a quarter of the story before his mind wandered to other things, namely the way the faun's big floppy ears still hung out from under his hat in the most comical way. Alex couldn't help but wonder if their hearing was way better than humans, or if that was just a myth.

His brain had eventually landed on deep ponderings over whether fauns had to have pants specially tailored for them, when suddenly a business card was shoved into his hand. He quickly snapped out of his haze to look down at it and give it a read. Private Investigator... "Oh, so you like, find missing people or something?" he said, flipping the card over between his fingers, a thought entering into his mind at a rapid pace.

[Leif Chelio]

"I solve mysteries, whatever the mystery may be! From finding people, to taking photos of cheating spouses or running background checks on ne'er-do-wells! If you need something solved, I'm the faun for the job!" Leif was more than happy to give his sales pitch. Maybe the human needed someone found? Or had suspicions about a lady-friend? Leif needed the money, particularly since he already had the sinking feeling he wouldn't be getting paid for the current job.

Curse Pan and curse his own soft mushy heart. He had to stop taking jobs from pretty ladies with beautiful skin and wonderful faces, and odd tiny ears that were appealing even thought they shouldn't have been. Not to mention their wonderful pink legs...

Leif shook himself out of his thoughts. "If you're interested, I could offer you a discount! And if I can't solve it, I'll refund your money! It's a win-win situation for you!"

[Alexander Riggs]

"Interesting..." Alex nodded, inspecting the card some more. His mind had fallen to his sister, who he hadn't seen in almost a decade. He'd done some lazy research into trying to track her down, but Alex had never been big on studying and researching and reading in general, so he'd eventually gotten frustrated and bored and given up. There were just too many people on Terra, and he had no investigative skills.

"I'll have to think about it, but I might just have something for you," he eventually told the faun. "But I need to get back to work right away, so I'll send you a message. Unless you wanted to come in for a drink?" He motioned towards the door that led back into the bar. He'd have to lead the faun through the back room, but it sure beat making him go all around the block to the front entrance.

[Leif Chelio]

Leif quickly debated. On one hand, he was really low on coins, and he really couldn't afford to be spending them on drinks when he had to worry about getting food, espeically since actual plants could be so expensive sometimes. But on the other hand, the thugs could be waiting around the corner, hoping Leif would show up. Or waiting outside his office. And if he was going to get a beating, then he'd need something to dull the pain.

"Why not! A nip in the evening never hurt anyone." The faun quickly checked over himself to make sure he hadn't gotten anything stuck to his shoe or coat, and then followed Alex. "How'd you end up working in a joint like this?"

[Alexander Riggs]

"Alright!" Alex pulled out his key to unlock the back door once more, opening it for the faun. He wasn't really allowed to let people in through the back, but if anyone asked, he would make the situation sound even more dire than it was. Maybe they guys had guns, and they were chasing him, and I pulled him in to hide right away... yeah, that's it...

When they were in, he shut the door behind them. "Got lucky, I guess," he replied to the question about his job. "I guess Rusty doesn't mind employees with criminal records." He paused for a moment, realizing he probably made himself sound worse than it was. "Nothing major, I promise," he decided to add. "Just got into a little trouble when I was younger." Multiple times...

[Leif Chelio]

Lief was already shaking his head a little, even before Alex had to assure him that his criminal record wasn't that bad. "It's alright mate, I've got a bit of one myself. Criminal records are tricky things. Sometimes breaking the law is the right thing to do." Especially if you were doing it to help other people, which Leif usually was. Breaking and entering wasn't really stealing if you didn't take anything but proof that somebody was being a cheat themselves, or a liar, or worse.

"And most of the real nasty characters I've met don't even have a record. All a record tells you is that somebody got caught." He took a moment to look around the back. There were liquor bottles on the shelves, and an empty garbage can. His ear twitched as the sound of conversation from the bar made it's way into the back. There was the other good thing about bars. People spoke and they spoke without thinking, and lucky for Leif, he had the perfect sort of ears to take advantage of that situation. "That's why I'm a gumshoe instead of a cop. You've got to do the right thing, not the legal thing."

[Alexander Riggs]

Alex wasn't completely sure if he should say his record wasn't because of doing the right thing. At all. Then again, if Leif was as good a private investigator as he said he was... if Alex were to hire him, he'd probably find out about it all. Ah, let him. I've told him I have a record, so it's not like I'm hiding it. Whoa, have I already decided to hire him?? Slooooow down, Alex...

"Sounds like you could get yourself into a pickle," Alex commented, waving him into the main bar area while the other employees weren't looking. So far so good. "You know, like tonight."

He decided he would test the guy a little, find out whether he was legit or just a scammer. Alex had met plenty of scammers before. In fact, he'd probably scammed some people himself before. He'd definitely notice some signs. At least one. Maybe. At any rate, he needed to know whether the faun was who he said he was, because he wasn't interested in investing his time and energy and heart into what might not really be an actual quest to find his sister.

[Leif Chelio]

Leif quickly headed out of the back room before anybody could notice him and Alex coming in. While Alex had invited Leif in that way, he knew full well that backrooms were off limits, espeically to scruffy looking fauns. People didn't quite trust them. Leif couldn't really hold it against humans. Fauns had a tendency to find trouble if there was any, and if there wasn't, then they created trouble.

"Well, that's part of the business. Helping damsels in distress usually means big fellows with three braincells hold you off the balcony of a building and threaten to let you drop because Mr. So-and-So doesn't like that you've been poking your nose into his business." He grabbed a seat at the bar, glancing around. Nobody he recognized. Good, really good. Friends were nice and all, but these days, it seemed like Leif had more enemies than mates.

"It's not all bad. Sure, my mug isn't the pretties thing, espeically when I've been eating cement walls for dinner, and the pay is usually crap, but it's fun and it's never boring, and I'm always meeting new people with interesting talents. Okay, most of those talents are just new and exciting ways to hurt me, but it's better than people with old and boring ways of killing me." Leif said this with a positive sort of tone that only a faun could manage. He'd never really gotten the gloomy part of being a PI down. Even when he bemoaned his bad luck, lack of money and complete failure with women, he still felt rather positive about things. After all, he had his own business, with cards. And he had the best hat in the world.

[Alexander Riggs]

"Well, as long as you're having fun," Alex agreed as he slid back behind the bar, heading to the sink to wash his hands of garbage bag grime. "I'm all for fun." Sometimes maybe too much fun... he thought to himself as he scrubbed his hands, working up a lather with the soap.

When he was done, he turned back towards the faun once more, eager to pry a bit. Maybe, just maybe, this fellow could solve one of his biggest mysteries. He wiped his wet hands off on a nearby towel. "Helping damsels in distress, eh? Like chicks who are getting their purses stolen or something?"

[Leif Chelio]

"Not quite that, though I have chased down a few purse-snatches." People didn't realize how fast fauns were until they suddenly found Leif easily overtaking them. It was the hooves. You could go so much faster on hoof than on squishy weird flat feet.

"It's more stuff like finding out if their boyfriends are cheating on them, or tracking down their sister who went missing three months ago. Usually it involves me and a camera with a telephoto lens, and some lockpicks waiting around an office until everybody goes home, or waiting at a hotel until somebody rents a room and forgets to close the curtains." Leif explained, doing his best to describe his job, which was half excitement and half boredom. "I know people who know things that the Network doesn't list, like locked adoption records, or birth certificates, or unlisted Network IDs. I help them find what they need to find, even if it's bad news, and then I give them some tissues and send them on their way to a better, more truthful life."