Serenity Hills

When Miki woke up for her morning run, she hadn’t really expected her day to south. She certainly hadn’t expected it to go so quickly.

It had started off simple enough. Wake up, clean up, get dressed, grab her iPod, and run. And really nothing was wrong with that. Nothing was wrong at all until her path took her toward the small park in their happy corner of perfection. Normally she would bypass the park and stick to the sidewalks of the neighborhoods, but this time she’d felt the desire to burn some more energy along with the extra calories she knew she had acquired since November.

She was jogging along the runners’ path at the park and humming along to Paramore’s ‘Decode’ when she found herself stumbling over something. She tumbled forward, narrowly catching herself with her hands before she could land face first on the pavement. As it was, her palms and her knees were now scrapped and bruised from the fall. She winced at the damage before checking the cause of her physical malfunction.

It was a pair of feet.

Miki’s eyes widened and her injuries were forgotten. She crawled closer and found the feet were attached to a very still body hidden behind the bushes. She got to her feet, carefully not to touch anything, and pulled out her phone even as she stared at the still form.

It was a woman, or what appeared to be a woman judging by her body shape. Miki couldn’t judge by the face because there was simply no head to look at. There was also no blood on the scene and that only caused the young investigator more confusion. That wasn’t possible. Was it? At least she thought that until she realized that it wasn’t a body but a broken mannequin.

Miki snapped a few photos with her phone anyway. It was a little odd even if it wasn’t world shattering. It would make for a semi interesting topic of conversation at any rate. She shrugged and prepared to go on her merry way when something hidden further in the bushes caught her eye. She crouched and pushed aside the greenery for a better look and realized she had found the head. This oddity still wouldn’t have been a bother except something nagged at her mind as she stared at the cold dead eyes of the mannequin head.

“Oh shit.” She muttered as realization dawned on her. The mannequin’s face looked exactly like one of her missing persons. It could have been a coincidence but Miki wasn’t so sure. She snapped some more pictures and pulled a few strands of the hair off of the head. After a moment of debate and checking to see if anyone was around, Miki pulled out a small pocket knife and proceeded to scrape a few bits of mannequin ‘flesh’ off the body to have tested. Thankfully she never went anywhere without at least one or two Ziploc bags... though she had to admit that it was usually so she could steal extra food from buffets in restaurants… Still, they were also handy for times like this.

Once she was finished, she headed back to her house as nonchalant as she could with the intent of having her new items analyzed while filling Egon in on her new lead. Maybe they’d find out what had happened to these missing persons yet. A part of her couldn’t help but be giddy at that thought. She may have just found a real and true lead! South or not, it was still a better way to start the day than the hum drum perfection that life in Serenity usually was.

But damn did her hands hurt from that fall. When she called Egon she was so going to whine and try to get some sympathy for it. And if she didn’t get any, she was going to make her revenge for Halloween’s costume fiasco even more painful to him.

Victor hadn't celebrated the holiday in a few years. Never really had a reason to. Not since leaving the ship.

He wanted to do it right this year.

His house was decorated inside and out and he was offering to cook for his new friends Miki and Susan. Even got presents for them under his tree.

However, cooking part wasn't coming out as well as he had hoped.

"Fuck," Victor screamed as he opened the oven. The turkey was on fire. Which needless to say was not a good thing.

He grabbed the fire extinguisher and put it out. Opening a window and side door to let out the smoke.

Miki adjusted her blonde wig for what had to be the thirtieth time in the past half hour. She was dressed as a fairy tale princess, Cinderella. She even had the extravagant blue ball gown and 'glass' slippers to go with it. She was regretting accepting to babysit Hilary Kingston tonight of all nights. The 10 year old girl, who was dressed as a fairy, had demanded that they go trick or treating to every house before they could attempt to go to the local haunted house for fake scares.

Miki was really wishing that she'd planned this better.. and she was going to kill Egon for sending her this costume instead of the one she really wanted.

"Come on! Let's do this one!" Hilary ordered as she dragged Miki by the arm to yet another door.

With a sigh, Miki rang the doorbell. If this kept up, she may have to rethink her opinion of Halloween.

I woke up with a splitting headache, but not just a headache, someone had sneaked in while I was asleep and coated my tongue with dog hair and dust, at least that is what it tasted like.

Stumbling of the top of my dinning room table, which by the way I had no idea how I got there or why I was sleeping there instead of my bed. I staggered, swayed into my living room and spied Miki and Victor sprawled on the couch with Victor's arm around Miki's shoulder.
Even through the pain I smiled at how cute they looked together. Walking to my front door I opened it wide... And nearly cursed at the blinding light that stabbed into my brain through my eyes. When did they replace the sun with a arc wielding light?

I bent over to pick up the paper and discovered two things. One, it is not a good idea to put your head lower than your butt when you are hungover and two, the newspaper dateline said that two days had gone by since we had gone to the cafe.

I blinked and suddenly it struck me. Victor and Miki were at my house, they were together on the couch and two days have gone by without me talking to Bardy so he was bound to check up on me soon, I was surprised he hadn't yet!

Oh and I suddenly realized for some reason I couldn't recall at the moment that I was wearing a skimpy yellow bathing suit and was leaning over in my yard staring at a paper I hadn't picked up yet.

Vic didn't know the how.

But somehow, the realtor broke him. He bought one of the houses in the Serenity Hills. He was looking ofr a new start somewhere. Here was just as good as any.

Finding himself would proove a challenge, especially considering he didnt fully trust this place, yet here he was.

He was moving in on a rather warm day so while lugging in all his boxes, he opted for a muscle shirt.

Miki wasn’t sure how it happened. No really, she wasn’t. One minute she was wandering the open house, the next moment that realtor had jumped her. Not only did she know her by name, she had her frigging profile (the fake one) memorized!

( Ooh. Cut! )

She was going to kill Egon. (Not that Egon was her friend’s real name, but it was what she had dubbed him since they were kids.) Miki had no idea how he’d discovered this place or even how he’d managed to get her an invitation to an open house event. All the young private investigator knew was that she was here to find out why a few of her and Egon’s contacts had vanished from existence. Running a normal investigation firm was hard enough, but Egon just had to have the bright idea of going multinexus. Or was it multiverse? Miki couldn’t remember. It was all the same to her. She was still getting used to the whole thing. (And one day she’d force Egon to explain how the hell he’d discovered this stuff in the first place.)

( Keep on reading... )