Member
TokyoPewPew
Stryder BC
teenangstlife
Lunamaria Hawke
OldTImer
X Fiendfyre X
Neziul
Scrawl Banditta
ThatDeercatJulie Underwood
Julie Underwood
Julie Underwood
The Professional
Harm: 0
Luck: 0
As the unmarked vehicle drove off, leaving her alone, Julie cast her blue eyes upon the square mile of dark, dead soil. To a lot of people, the Dark Mile would send chills up their spine. Maybe if you had asked her several years ago, Julie would have told you the same thing. Now, however, after all she had seen, very little scared her - at least, when it came to superficial horrors. The flickering lights, the dark alleyways, the strange noises outside your window... It meant little at this point. Just part of the job. When you went underneath old Chuck E. Cheese locations to hunt down beasts lurking in the basement, or you wandered lonely caverns near rural towns to look for minute monsters hunting local children, it all became routine.
Her mind ran through the mission in her head. Clara Matthews, missing woman. Last seen leaving a bar. They had found an IP address of a witness. No doubt the witness was the one who had shared what they saw as a creepypasta story. Of course, Julie wasn't one to jump to conclusions - it was common for missing persons to turn into creepypasta stories. Someone hears about a person disappearing, and they start to come up with stories about how aliens took them to go fight some evil empire. Yeah I know, people lie on the internet - weird, isn't it?
But sometimes... sometimes those stories were true. What's the old cliche? That's where I step in. I carry a badge.
She took another step towards it when a voice broke through the darkness. "Miss Underwood." Julie froze and turned her head towards the sound. It was like something out of those old noir films: a man in an overcoat, hanging out by a streetlamp that was clearly on its last electrical legs. The streaks of grey hair betrayed a sense of experience, and that cigarette in his lips betrayed a certain level of ego she had come to expect. Since she fully recognized the man: Agent Joseph Arbor of the BPA. Also known, by those who hated speaking in acronyms, as the Bureau of Paraphysical Anomalies. CASS was like a smaller, perhaps more contained version of it: the BPA went after anomalies of all sorts, whereas CASS largely focused on those that might have been shared secretly online. A lot of the other agencies looked down at CASS, and stereotyped them as failed federal agents who spent their days watching YouTube videos or scouring forum posts. BPA agents were the worst, and were well known to look down on CASS agents. Arbor was certainly no exception. And somehow... somehow... Arbor kept showing up at her investigations.
Oooooooh boy, came a thought in her mind. Bring back the Chuck E. Cheese monsters, please...
He approached her, describing his surprise at seeing her. His eyes took in her tailor and made a comment on how conspicuous she was. Julie was in her standard dress: a dark beige pants suit, with a blazer tailored to her feminine shape, and a thin black tie that went down along her buttoned-down dress shirt. It did wonders to hide the flak vest underneath. Frankly, with that borderline Van Dyke mustache of his, she wasn't sure if he was one to talk about conspicuousness.
"Well you know," Julie said, smiling to show no sign that Arbor was irritating her, "my father was a lieutenant inspector on the force. He dressed sharp too. He had a saying when people mocked him for it: 'If I die, I die well dress.'" She actually had a cover story for her dress: she was a reporter from a newspaper out of town, investigating the missing girl claims. Of course, she wasn't about to share that with Arbor - she trusted him like she trusted a greasy frat boy with a free drink.
It was then he offered a cigarette, and she waved her fingers in a dismissive manner. "I gave it up in college. I only smoked them to stay awake anyway." She crossed her arms then and leaned her head back. Given her short-cut blonde hair, almost like a pixie cut, it exposed her slender neck well. She'd certainly had to stick her neck out for people in the past before - and nearly lost her head a few times in the process. "The bigger question, Arbor, is what are you doing here? Why would BPA be interested in a small town like this? Surely you all prefer to let the small fry agencies handle the small town problems. You know, like CASS."