The old man walked down the nearly empty streets of Middleburg, clutching his coat tightly against his chest. On normal nights like this, he'd either be inside his humble home writing poetry by fireside while the rain gave sweet, butterfly kisses to his roof, or he'd be at the station, mulling and lost in the memories of his homeland of Germany. Though he hadn't set foot on his island country in over a decade, the nights that threatened rain would always take him to his youth, when he would watch the thunderclouds gather in the distant hills and plains with his father, the world-renowned detective, Arthur Conan Ritter.

He had fond memories of these days—it explained the mark on his chest quite well—a dark cloud with a line of silver surrounding it. Not that it was seen often, as wont as he was to wearing heavy coats and sweatshirts. His age had made the cold pierce his flesh and chill the bone. Though, granted, he was always adverse to the cold, unlike his brother Desmond.

The brief flicker of thought regarding Desmond brought him back to the present—back to why he was outside when the heavens threatened a storm. His brother's child, Isabelle, had called him just as he was about to leave the police station and travel homeward bound. She said it was urgent, and to meet her nearby one of the side-streets.

He, of course, had humored her. Though the trivial things young women thought of as problems didn't always amount to much. At least, that's how it seemed in the old land—Cabello was keen on throwing his ideas out the window on a routine basis. Had been ever since he had followed his younger brother to the 'New World,' all those years ago.

The old man continued walking the streets, glancing at the warehouses and mentally noting who they belonged to. While the town was rife with crime and extortion, a lot of it never reached his desk. Some because it was never reported. The rest was because of his area of expertise—most traditional cases fell out of his range of skills. While he followed the generations-long chain of detectives in the Ritter line, he was far more focused on investigating occult cases and bizarre murders. In fact, one of his brightest moments was defending the small, sleepy hamlet of Rheinsburg against a marauding pack of unholy beasts called Aufhockers. The devils had the entire town drowning in fear by the time Wolfgang had arrived to assist them, due to their elusive nature and violent tendencies.

It had taken him no time to identify the shape-shifters as the culprits; after all, they followed similar guidelines to traditional feral vampires in their thirst for blood and need for nighttime in order to function. What confirmed the murders involving Aufhockers, rather than their more traditional cousin, was that every victim had bruises and scrapes as if they were grabbed behind and pounced on, before having their throats torn out.

Wolfgang shook his head with a sly grin. He never thought vampires could be civilized in comparison to another beast.

He was able to banish them that very night, with the help of the local priest, a woman willing to be bait, and a lot of iodized salt. While they couldn't do anything to kill the spirits, a ring of salt on the ground around the nightmarish shadow-creatures paralyzed them almost as potently as words from a Bible or holy water. They had simply kept the process going until the first rays of sunlight banished the spirits from the German lands. It was a shame Wolfgang couldn't finish the job and destroy their actual bodies, but that would have been a challenge even the great Ritter line wouldn't take. The Aufhocker's physical bodies, after all, were in the blasted, cratered, and ungodly lands of the Sealed Rim, and there was no fool great enough to travel there.

The old man saw in the distance a lithe figure leaning against a building. Her legs were crossed and she occasionally glanced down the alleyway she stood at the entrance of. One look at her rainbow-hued hair told Wolfgang who it was. He approached her with a nod.

“Guten Abend, kleiner Regenbogen,” he said. Isabelle paused, letting the words sink in. She thought briefly and let a small smirk cross her worried face.

“Guten abend, Onkel.” She squeezed her eyes tight in thought. “Uh... wie geht es dir?”

“Es geht.” Wolfgang shrugged. His shoulder's ached and the weather was turning poor. So-so was as good as it would get today. “Du?”

“Nicht so gut,” she quickly said. “Es... es...” The woman scrunched her face and finally sighed. “Sorry. Guess I lose.”

“Nobody keeps you taught in our father's tongue it seems,” the old man stated, partly in jest.

“Nobody speaks German anymore, Wolfy--” she saw his raised brow. “Er, Uncle Wolfgang.”

“Nobody speaks anything much, save for this land's tongue now.”

“Kinda happens when everyone wants to come here, I guess.”

“'The land of milk and honey.' There are a few people that actually call Cabello that.” He gave his hand a quick rub—the joints were aching from the cold. “Between this land and Macon, I fear my Germany offers very little the other two cannot provide.”

“Things change,” Isabelle casually replied. Wolfgang couldn't help but snort at her blunt answer. She truly was her father's daughter.

“Maybe some day you'll understand my nostalgic view, yes? Perhaps when Cabella changes itself, or when the island nations unify.” He dismissed the conversation with a wave of his hand. “Enough of thinking about what cannot be changed. I was wondering what your urgency was.”

Any trace of her earlier good mood at seeing the man vanished when he decided to start on business. “To make a long story short. I, uh, found a Stairway operation out in the open.”

Wolfgang offered a surprised glance toward his niece. “Are you sure of this?”

“There are bags filled with the shi—er, stuff—still inside the warehouse.”

“Take me there, kleiner Regenbogen.”

Wolfgang cautiously stepped into the warehouse, his weary body crouched low. The old man automaticly fumbled for his side holster, pulling out a wicked stiletto. He worked the blade's grip, clutching it tightly in his hand as he steadied his resolve. He glanced over to his niece, only to see her in an indifferent pose.

“I cleared out the place,” she explained, putting her hands in her jacket pockets. Wolfgang visibly relaxed, rising and holstering his weapon.

“You could tell me as such next time.”

“You were already like that before I could say anything br—Uncle.”

They pressed forward, past a receptionist's room. “By cleared out, do you mean...?”

“All tied up with some rope I found. Couple have crossbow bolt wounds—nothing life threatening.”

“As much as I expected from your father's child.”

“There was one little... uh... problem,” she said, looking up to the ceiling and scratching her nose. Wolfgang said nothing, letting her talk. “I had some problems with their leader.”

“Problems?” he repeated as they entered the double doors leading to the main room, where several men sat in various stages of agony. Each was tied up and gagged with a strip of white cloth. One seemed to be nursing a broken nose. He leaned against a shaft of an air duct. Wolfgang glanced up and noted a segment was gone from the system that worked its way on the ceiling.

Dash exhaled as they came to a door marked 'Freezer Storage.'

“Yeah. He got violent, so I had to...” she moved to the door and opened it up, kicking a piece of wood she was prying it open with to the side. “You know.”

“You killed this man?” Wolfgang asked, stepping inside the cold room. He exhaled, watching his breath turn to vapor and swore inwardly as the chill caused him to tighten his coat.

“Yeah. I was wondering what we should do about it.”

The old man observed his dear niece. “You seem less distraught that I would expect. Was this not your first?”

“N-no, it was,” she quickly said. “Just must be shock.”

“Hmm. Well. I presume he's in here?”

“Yes, Uncle.”

“And you did not touch anything?”

“Of course not, br—Wolfgang.” Dash rubbed her arms.

“Wait here. I would want to look over the body.” He pushed on through the cold room. It wasn't long before he came to the cadaver. Man had his skull caved in from multiple blows. The detective bunched up a fist and slowly came down towards the corpse's face.

Blows were consistent with a clenched fist—accounting for a difference in angle from the murder, he guessed the attacker had sat or knelt on the guy's chest.

Wolfgang rolled up the corpse's sleeves and found exactly what he was looking for.

Black veins. From experience in this town, Wolfgang knew the unsightly things would run all the way to the guy's heart. Stairway was a hell of a drug.

The detective noticed the man's shoulder was broken. What drew his attention more, however, was the fact his wrist was snapped, seemingly mangled and twisted by a great force. Did he have a weapon to start off with?

He rose and did his best to ignore his joints popping. Wolfgang didn't have all the answers as to what happened, but he had enough to figure something out.

Isabelle was lying to him.

He marched back to the woman and did his best to appear like he bought it. “Just a few questions for you, kleiner regenbogen.”

“Ask away.” Dash nodded.

“Who was with you?”

The athlete froze. “No one,” she stammered out.

“Do not lie to me.” He pointed deeper into the freezer room. “You couldn't have done that.”

“Of course I did!” the woman argued. “I chased him into here, he got violent, and I knocked him down and started kicking his face in.”

Wolfgang stared hard at Isabelle. “I'm going to show you every single way you just lied to me. Then I'm going to expect the truth. Let's begin.” He put a finger up. “One. It was punches that killed the man, not kicks.”

“That's an expression, br—Uncle. I--”

“Punches from the left hand. Punches that, judging by the angle, come from someone at least six-foot one.” He held out a hand a few inches higher than the top of his head and brought the hand forward, where it stood far taller than Isabelle. “Unless you know how to grow nearly a foot, it wasn't you.”

“I--”

“--Furthermore,” he continued, starting to pace. “You lack the upper body strength to do something like that to a face. The perpetrator had enough power to break the skull. I would assume that it is either an unusually strong earth-folk or a soul-folk that enhanced their body through magic.”

“You--”

“--Lastly, the man was on Stairway. This relates to my earlier comment, but I'll spell it out for you, yes? Even with a large amount of leverage, that man's muscles would have been working at nearly full capacity. You wouldn't have had the strength to knock him prone.” He pointed furiously at Isabelle. “You didn't kill this man. Who did, and why are you covering them?”

“I'm not covering shit!” Dash exclaimed, running a hand through her multi-hued hair. Wolfgang moved to the door and opened it.

“Lie to me once more and I leave. The rest of Middleburg's police would be more than happy to just have a name to the crime—it seems to be your want, after all. If you wish for my help, speak the truth. My brother would be shamed to see his flesh lying to another of his blood!”

“Leave my Dad out of this,” Isabelle said crossly. “I know he'd do the same damn thing, if the situation called for it.”

Wolfgang relaxed his hold on the door, letting it swing slightly more closed. “I'll judge that. What was your situation?”

The woman stood, putting her hand up to her chin in indecision. The older of the Ritters looked on. Finally, Dash put two fingers under her eyes, steeling herself against a headache.

“This doesn't leave the room.”

“If I consider your excuse viable, of course,” he agreed, shutting the door. He crossed his arms and rubbed at his covered shoulders in an attempt to get warm.

“You were right. I didn't kill him,” Isabelle admitted. “It was a woman—my friend, Jack Apple.”

Wolfgang kept silent, eager to hear what Dash was going to say.

“She saved my life back in there. You saw the duct, right?”

“Hard to miss what is so obvious,” he agreed.

“Well, I was in it. She risked her life to take out those guys in order to save me. Dorado,” she gave a tilt of her head towards the body in the room. “Tried to escape into here. I'm not sure if there was an exit I didn't find when I looked the place over, or what, but--”

“He probably came into here to indulge on Stairway,” Wolfgang said. “They make the liquid, freeze it, then shatter the crystal it forms into powder in order to sniff it.” He gestured to the lines of pigs and cows. “I bet you'd find bags of crystallized Stairway in at least half of these poor creatures. He could have just smashed a crystal and inhaled.”

“That doesn't make sense, he had vial of the stuff in his pocket before he even came in here.”

“...Which is where, exactly?”

Dash gave a sly smile, producing an empty bottle from her jacket pocket with a sheepish grin.

“Any other objects you decide to dirty up in here?” Wolfgang asked, dreading the answer.

“Just two others. I left the body untouched. Dorado had a weapon when he charged Jack. A meat hook. I've got it on my person right now—cleaned it of prints.”

“And the second?”

“Well, it's not technically an object,” Dash said, looking up. “But after Jack... did what she had to, I guess she puked. I got it taken care of.”

The detective rubbed at his face and shut his eyes. He tilted his head back and offered a single grunt. It was an expression Isabelle had seen a few times before.

Her uncle's brain was on overdrive.

Finally, he opened his cloudy, rose colored eyes. “You trust this woman won't do anything like this again?”

“She's a farmer, Uncle. She was just at the wrong place and the wrong time.” Dash swallowed. “Believe me.”

“Mmm.” he muttered once more, nodding grimly at Isabelle's words. “Well then, mein kleiner regenbogen, I have an idea.”