Who: Jessica Jones When: August 20, late morning Where: Alias Investigations What: A grizzled private detective, a plucky toon in trouble, what could go right? Warnings: None.
A black cat crossing your path was always a bad sign. Not that hardened private detective Jessica Jones was particularly superstitious. But, realistically speaking, most people slinking through her door brought some sort of trouble with them.
This cat brought a sort that seemed to have nine lives.
It had started about three days ago. The stray cat she wouldn't admit to sometimes feeding had taken to caterwauling outside her window. Every night--that wasn't the problem. Jessica finished most nights dead to outside disturbances in a liquor-induced oblivion. But he'd taken to crying in the mornings and that was a problem.
Two days ago he'd come in asking for help. The mean old sheriff (who might also be a dog?) was rounding up the street cats and had hauled off his lady to the pound. Jess liked to think she was genre savvy. She knew how this worked: the grizzled detective with a heart of gold drowning in gin teamed up with the plucky and persistent toon to save the day and maybe start to heal.
Hell she'd been in the game a while. She'd killed her own cartoonish personal villain. Life wasn't a kid's movie. People were always wanting her to be a hero--always expecting that to fulfill her. But a good deed at the end of the day didn't do anything to fix the bullshit of the past. It didn't even generally help the bullshit in the present.
She wasn't interested in that storyline. She'd thrown him out.
Since then the cat had come back (it couldn't stay away). She had found it batting its eyes at the window. Waiting by her door. Hidden in a cabinet. She'd woken up with him facing her and purring in bed. She'd referred it to another detective agency--this seemed right up Bishop's alley. But it persisted.
Even now.
"Bu-bu-but Jessica...!" The cartoon cat pleaded, peering first with an overlarge eye through the anthropomorphic cat-shaped hole its last forced exit had left in the glass pane of the Alias Investigation door. The eye was followed by a head a scrappy black and white tufted face. Jessica put down her glass of whiskey and sighed. Guess they were going another round.
Oranguru, the longsuffering ape that had long been a silent observer in this pantomime, grunted. Jessica looked away from the door to the white ape that seemed almost as exasperated as she was--albeit likely for different reasons. Jessica rolled her eyes and slammed down the drink she had poured herself. There was an almost adolescent quality in her acquiescence. "Fine."
She took her feet off the desk and walked heavily around the room to the door as the cat seemed to be making itself partially liquid to crawl back through the distinctive it-shaped hole.
"I thought I told you to scram." She opened the door, holding out her hand on the other side for the yellow carpetbag that was in no way going to fit through her broken glass. The cat stared at her for a long moment before dropping the bag into her waiting hand. It was surprisingly heavy.
But not that surprising. It was probably carrying anvils or pianos or some dumb shit like that. She closed the door and handed the bag back to the cat who had now slunk fully into her business. It didn't seem bothered by the weight, though it was more interested in rubbing against her hand that was now empty.
They were going to have to talk boundaries. But not yet. First they had to talk price. She didn't ask if he could pay. She didn't ask why she was targetted for this special sort of hell. She took her hand away and came back poking him in the chest.