New Partnerships

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note: Trying out two new characters. Please, if you read this, put your thoughts down below.

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Detective Steve Murphy sits or more accurately slouches in a seat at the bar. His glass half empty with some amber colored liquid. As he takes a sip, his face is unresponsive to any taste, so haggard and shallow, with red rimmed eyes. Putting the glass down, Murphy purposefully knocks against a high heeled shoe, it’s owner gently swaying on the bar above him. Murphy doesn’t even look at her, his gaze on the glass and the black strip of cloth next to it.

When Murphy doesn’t immediately pick the glass up again, it is replaced by a beautiful face. The faces blue eyes looking for his, the feathers where hair should have been swaying on the bar in time to the music.

“Hey, Murph what can a girl do to wipe that sorry face of yours?” The voice, the accent of lilting tones and small chirps is normally enough to make Murphy smile.

Today though, Murphy’s face doesn’t change, he doesn’t even look at the dancer. After a few beats, the feathers, the face, and the dancer above all leave Murphy to his solitude and grief. The girls normally don’t mind that Murphy doesn’t tip them well, but he is a warm talkative man, normally.

A large, deep, gravelly voice came from behind Murphy, “He was a good man.”

Liquid swirled in Murphy’s glass, “the best.”

Greenish-gray skinned, weighing more than the largest linebackers, the voice sat down on a stool next to Murphy. The stool groaned and complained as it settled, “Captain said I could find you hear.”

A lithe, blue haired girl behind the bar started to glide over, her yes for the large newcomer, who waved the girl off with a large hairy hand. The sounds of ice clinking glass, Murphy’s last sip swirling called blue back.

The girl’s pert nose looked at Murphy and his guest. “Well?”

“Club with lime, one of us is still on duty.” The newcomer said. Dismissal echoing his order.

“Another” Murphy said to the bartender.

“Why” The gravel said, with many questions in that one word.

Murphy chose the simplest, and perhaps the one most likely to win him his solitude.”At least that one could be human.”

“And that matters?” Again with the many questions in one.

“Joe was” Murphy sighed,Joe was human in all he did, especially how he died. “And the girls, help me think.”

Blue seems to have impeccable timing as the conversation lapses into each rethinking things.She slides in, serves the drinks. First the newcomer in his bad, off the rack suit, stretched at the seams, black cloth tied around his bicep. He seemed to be ignoring the bartender in favor of watching a gyrating sylvian at a table. Yet, to Blue, his eyes and face said he was lost, searching for something to say.

Murphy, Blue would have said she knew. Yet this man today, she did not know. His gaze was locked behind red rimmed eyes. His focus could have been anywhere or nowhere for all the attention he paid to her and the girls. his gray suit wrinkled and worn as he slouched in the seat.

Blue turned to another as she heard Murphy’s, leave me along tone:”

What do ya want anyways.” It wasn’t a question.

“Captain said.”

“You said that,” even more annoyance creeping in. “But I doubt your here to buy me drinks.”

The big orc sighed, there was no way he could soften it. “I’m your new partner.”

Murphy’s glass slammed down, “Don’t need a new partner.”

“told you need one.”

“By who?”

The orc blinked, “Dr. Glade.”

“Son-of-a meddling shrink” Murphy slammed the last of his drink and called for another.

The orc just blinked, suppressing the instinct to join in the display of emotion. He wasn’t sure what Murphy had against the doctor. She was one of the few police, or elves even that he liked.

Murphy saw what his effect his temper was having, on the orc, on a few of the dancers, on his beet red face in the mirror. “Damn blood pressure.” Blowing out a loud long breath, he calmed the anger and frustration.

“What’s your name? Where you from?” Murphy didn’t care about where the orc was born, no cop does when confronted with a new, and hereto unknown partner.

“Detective Brock Stone, South Precinct”

“Freak ward huh?” Murphy mused aloud, “suppose you need to be big down there.”

A bit warily, “it helps.” Brock wasn’t sure if that was a compliment.

“So besides Glade saying I need a new partner, which I don’t. Why are you here.” Murphy looked at the black cloth on the bar, “Why come up to Metro.” Why me, he almost added.

Brock smiled a sharp fanged smile that promised menace and pain. “Jimmy the Red,” even here, uptown many of the girls who heard the Black Guard’s name froze for a moment looking around.

Murphy ignored them. “He is going down for what he’s done.”

Murphy said it with so much pain and hate and determination in his voice that a few of the more sensitive girls swooned.

Brock couldn’t help himself, he responded to the menace and dark promises.

”Clean up, tomorrow we hunt dwarf.” The orc’s fangs were fully protruding, here was another that truly knew the pain of losing someone to the nearly untouchable criminal.

“Tomorrow?” Murphy looked side ways at his new partner. “I’m done here. Now” In one smooth motion, Detective Murphy was standing, cash was on the bar, and Murphy’s gun was checked as the suit jacket settled back into place, free of wrinkles.

Detective Brock Stone had learned many humans could drink with the best of them, but even then a full day of it left them unsteady and jerky. Steven Murphy moved like a monk, a stone sober monk. Reaching out, Brock sniffed the man’s glass, a broad grin spreading around the orc’s fangs “Apple juice.”

Murphy’s reply was lost in the complaints and groans of suit material and wooden seat as the mountain of muscled flesh stood. As they both turned to the door, Stone thought he would like this human.

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