as written by glmstr and Krysis
Louis Coupe was ready, more than ready, to actually get to work. The academy was boring as all get out after his education, but that was better than staying with his parents while getting his ducks in a row. The precinct was a grimy building in the middle of the Audrieu district, just a few stories like most of the neighboring buildings, with only a brick-and-metal sign out front to tell Louis he was in the right place.
The desk sergeant looked over the paperwork before looking up, way up, at the tall young, newly installed detective. Then jerked his thumb over his shoulder towards the bull pen and the labyrinth of hallways and offices beyond it. "You'll be with Jazz, heaven help ya."
The brass said I'd be getting a rookie, where the hell are they? A thin figure with brilliant orange hair sat cross-legged in a metal folding chair, with a cup of coffee and a few pastries from the local bakery. Detective Jasmin Lambert noticed the sergeant bringing someone into his office, but he didn't get a good look.
On the card table in front of him lay a brief file of what had already been found, a copy of the daily newspaper opened to the crossword, and a pen. He reached for the pen and gingerly picked it up between his index and middle finger, twirling it between his fingers whilst mulling over the crossword.
"Nine letter word, heliophobes that hate garlic... Nosferatu " He mumbled to himself and penned in his answer.
Louis noticed the person with the orange hair and gave a puzzled smile at the way (?)she(?) seemed at home. Must been an informant, waiting to talk to one of the other detectives. Probably been waiting quite some time to have started doing crosswords.
In the office, Louis blanched in dismay at the amount of paperwork heaped everywhere, then rubbed his forehead and looked at his guide. "Where did you say my partner was?"
"Detective Jasmin Lambert! Your rookie is looking for you!" The sergeant bellowed into the lounge, then gave Louis a nasty smile before abandoning him to the mercies of the other police.
Jasmin folded up the newspaper and stuffed it into one of his pockets, returning the pen to another one and standing up. He grabbed the case file in one hand and his coffee in the other, and sauntered over to his office.
The detective opened the door and stepped in, taking a sip of his coffee. His blue and green eyes both scanned Louis from head to toe.
A clean-cut, eh? Sergeant thinks he's throwing him to the wolves. I'm not that demanding, am I?
"You rang?"
Louis looked shocked when his partner had a name like 'Jasmin', and further shocked when it was the orange-haired chick from the lounge. The tips of his exposed ears turned red as Louis stammered, "Uh, hello, Detective Lambert. I'm Louis Coupe, your new, um, partner?"
He offered his big, bony hand to Jazz uncertainly, as if he was afraid he was going to hurt this sleek and fragile looking person if he moved too quickly.
"Nice to meet you, Louis," Jasmin smiled and set his coffee on the table, and dropped his case file next to it.
"Why so shy all of the sudden? Do you think I'll hurt ya, or are you scared you might break me? No matter how much Sergeant says so, neither is going to happen, yet ," he shook Louis' hand, flashing a playful smirk as he put an iron grip on his partner's hand.
"I might look mean and maybe delicate, but I'd like to think I'm neither," he chuckled and scratched his head after breaking the handshake.
The sergeant chuckled at Jasmin's antics and gave a wave as he headed back out to return to his job at the front desk. Louis stammered a bit, but was rolled under the tide of the more forceful personality before him.
"That is, unless you wanna be a crooked cop, then we'd have to talk," Jasmin's hand dove into his coat, and with one fluid motion he pulled out the metal baton and extended it with a flick of the wrist, the pins locking it in the opened position with a click.
"Stop having a heart attack, I'm just kidding!" He laughed again and pushed a button on the handle, collapsing it with two hands, and promptly stuffed it back into its holster.
"I do that trick to just about everyone I'm paired with. I'd never hit a recruit without a damn good reason," he smiled and took another sip of his coffee.
Through it all, Louis stared, wide-eyed, with the tips of his ears bright red as he gaped at Jasmin. The thought that was repeating in his mind was probably not what the flamboyant one intended in the slightest. My partner is a chick. A bad ass, strong, hawt chick. What the heck am I going to do?
"Uh, okay. So, um, what are we working on? And where do I get coffee? 'Cause this looks like a mountain of stuff to tackle, and coffee will be necessary." He finally replied in his slow, uncertain way.
"So, we've got a god damn bloodbath at the 'Rollin Bones' Casino. Tons of people dead, blood and body parts and bullets everywhere, most of them humans but also a couple of werewolves and supposedly a vampire. It's going to be a long day," Jasmin opened his newest case file and showed a few pictures of the front courtyard, all of them matching his description.
"First things first, we rounded up a survivor, so we're going to try to have a chat with him. Remember, do NOT play bad-cop with a werewolf. They can easily rip you to shreds if you aren't careful, so you want to be nice. Besides, a little kindness can go a long way," the detective smiled and gathered up the files. He gently laid those, along with a few other files, in a leather suitcase and snapped it shut.
"The coffee is in the break room down the hall, if they try to keep you away from it just say that Jazz wants a cup."
"Then I should read the reports and get up to speed. Right?" Louis asked as he pulled a pocket-sized notepad and matching pen from the inside of his jacket. He was an obsessive note-taker, but being as it was his first day on the job, he had gotten a brand new set for the occasion.
"Or do you intend to jump right into the thick of it?" He asked warily, fidgeting as his protective instincts started screaming at him to keep Jasmin from the nasty stuff, even though he knew it was a: Inappropriate and b: Impossible.
"These reports are mostly just details of the damage. The casino was nearly leveled from this. What you mainly need to know is there's two big 'packs' of werewolves around here, the Bloodstones and the Scions. The latter do quite a bit of organized crime, but nobody is willing to talk about it so it's really hard to get it on record. The former tries to take care of the community and they detest organized crime, so they're a BIT more friendly to the cops."
Detective Coupe picked up the file that Lambert seemed to indicate as the reports mentioned and started flipping through it. He was still listening, but he could mostly get the gist of what his partner was saying without having to hang on every word.
"They have been at each other's throats for centuries, and obviously they just had a little skirmish. If we don't either arrest some of them or at least convince them to stop killing each other for now, we'll be seeing this a lot more often," Jasmin reached into his desk and pulled a small box of ammo from a drawer. It was decorative on the outside, clearly not the standard issue.
"Silver bullets, for this bad boy," he also reached into another drawer and pulled out a monstrous revolver, placing it on his desk with a loud THUD. "It's a .50 cal, kinda turns whatever it hits into ground beef. I don't plan on using it, but just in case somebody gets the wrong idea, I can defend myself."
"We can just go talk to our new friend for now, feel free to read up on the background files if you're so inclined," Jasmin loaded the revolver and slipped it into a holster under his coat. He did not want that to be visible, it sent the wrong message if it was openly carried.
"Let's go get your coffee, and then we can have a chat with this suspect. If these reports are right, his name is Simon. A Scion, works for Rowan."
Louis nodded right along with what Jazz was saying, but was more interested in what he was reading though, and quickly filling little pages with notes in his shorthand way of writing. He had a little boy smile for Jazz when the coffee was mentioned again, and then thought he would try to impress 'her' with his pitifully obvious leap of logic. "And when we are done talking to him, because you know he won't give up any information we don't already have, we'll have to go talk to Mr. Rowan. Sounds like a busy day."
"The only problem with that, Louis, is that you're assuming Simon won't give us anything. We aren't going to bust him on anything, and he knows that. While there's no damn way he'd ever tell us anything about the Scions, he might give some details to the Bloodstone involvement, or maybe some other tidbits. Besides, it'll make our job easier if the Scions aren't trying to take us out," Jasmin appreciated his thoughts, but hasty conclusions can get one fired in this line of work.
"If we could actually talk to Rowan, again whilst giving him protection from prosecution whilst doing so, he'd be more likely to tip us off. Remember, Innocent until proven Guilty."
