The great thing about taking a hot shower was it gave me a chance to cool my head. Sure, in a few minutes I'd have to punch the bag with Little Red out there, but until then the best use of my time was to think of my angle. I wasn't keen on trying my luck at small talking my way around the fact that I'm not this Ryouji Hishigata fella, even if I did have a gift for the Blarney on account of my mam being half Irish. There was just too big of a gap between what I knew (absolutely nothing) compared to what I'd need in order to pull off a fake out. It just wasn't an option.

By the way, if I'm coming across a little relaxed, all things considered, it's because being reborn as a fat teenager ranks somewhere in the bottom half of my all time weirdness meter.  The lower bottom half even. That may require a bit of a clarification on my part.

I'm sure I mentioned already that I'm a private detective, a gumshoe if you will. I got my ticket all nice and legal-like and I carry a big iron on my jobs like any other respectable gentleman who occasionally finds need to defend violence upon his personage. In that sense I'm a totally ordinary average Joe. The thing is... my jobs. How do I put it? Well, I reckon I'm cursed. 

It all started in my second year on the beat. I was still pretty fresh faced at the time, eyes full of optimism and with a back that didn't creak when I woke up in the morning. I took a job from a distraught parent, a man by the name of Klaus Seiger who was looking for his little lost lamb of a daughter named Cindy. Turned out that little Cindy Seiger had shacked up with a jazz musician at a speakeasy and had high tailed it out of town and the flappers dapper wanted her back safe and sound in their uptown brownstone in time for Sunday supper. 

I shook old Pa's hand and took the job and his retainer. Truthfully I thought that Cindy would likely turn up on her own once her or her musician lover got sick of each other and went splitsville and heck, 9 times out of 10 I'd be right on the money. Anyway, almost by accident I caught a break early on in the case. Someone had seen Cindy and her fella scram in the backseat of a breezer just that night heading towards Greater Grand Crossing. That little detail got my eyebrow twitching. You see, it was early November in Chicago and we were having a particularly harsher than usual cold snap so driving around town in a topless car just wasn't something you'd see every day. I got a description of all parties involved and made my way to the south side post haste. 

I wanted to keep a low profile so I parked my own car and walked around the neighborhood on foot. The night was cold and there was a damp chill in the air so I brought my coat in closer and shoved my mitts in my pants. Thankfully it didn't take too long for me to locate the car, so the next part of the job was pretty much by the book - play at being a peeping Tom and hope that the cops didn't take me downtown for trespassing. After all, if Cindy was in the house I needed to confirm it before marching up there to take her back. It's not like I could just barge into a mans home if he said the woman wasn't there.

An hour passed, then another. Eventually I was able to confirm the presence of two men and a woman, all of them matching the descriptions I had gathered. From here I had two options - first, contact Cindy's dad and come back with him here to retrieve the girl, or just march right up there and drag her home myself. Being both cold and miserable as well as a bit of an arrogant cuss, I disregarded the sensible solution and went right for the front door.

It was the first huge mistake in my life.

The driver answered the door. He was an older man, a bohunk from the look of him. He had a long mustache and an even longer accent that made all his words come out like he was spitting them. I informed him I was there to pick up Miss Seiger and when he tried to rebuff me, I slipped open my coat to give him a glimpse of the heater I had holstered there. He quickly relented and led me into the parlor while he went to fetch Cindy and her musician boyfriend.

Now, here's where the story starts to get interesting. One thing I will say for myself is that I've always had a good sense of my own mortality, a second sight if you will that warned me of impending doom. So here I was sitting in this mans living room disinterestedly inspecting a doily, when all of a sudden I hear the distinctive ca-chink of a long arm bolt being slid into position. On instinct I dove to the ground just as my good friend from the door tried to ventilate my head with a rifle. At this point it was every man for himself, so I didn't give the mook a chance to pull the slide back before I gave him a lead infusion from my own sidearm. 

Fighting is one thing. People in this neighborhood might ignore the sounds of yelling or the occasional brawl, but gunfire? Ain't no chance in hell that'd get passed up. I knew I only had a few minutes until the bulls showed up to ruin my day, so I lept to my feet and started recklessly turning the joint over looking for the girl. I found her alright, she was in one of the bedrooms, still fully clothed and laying on a bed with her musician Pal necking her something fierce. I waved my gun around and told him to get off her. He just ignored me.

Pay attention kids, because here comes mistake number two.

So, being a trained and experienced detective, I have pretty good powers of observation. At least when I choose to use 'em. Like for instance I would have noticed that the windows in the room had been boarded up tighter than a nuns thighs, or that the great vanity on the far wall had lost its mirror, or even the faint outline of a recently removed object from above the doorway in the shape of a cross. Any one of these observations might have given me the hint at what I was about to face if I had just cooled my head a bit more. Maybe. After all, at the time this was my first experience with the weirder side of Chicago and it's likely that even if someone had rubbed my mug in it, my train wouldn't have made it to the right station.

Anyway, being the eager young fella I was, I stomped up to the guy and gave him a bit of the old iron claw on the shoulder while repeating my demand to get away from the girl. This time I got his attention and he turned on me, whipping his head around in jerking fashion and baring his fangs at me.

Yeah, that's right, fangs. Long pointy canines, dripping with blood, most likely from Cindy Seiger who, by the way, was still laying completely motionless on the bed.

Now, I'd like to pretend that I was some sort of valiant hero at the time, a modern day Abraham Van Helsing if ya will, but in truth I just got plum lucky. What actually happened is that Nosferatu there punched me clear across the room and into the vanity, breaking the damn thing and half the bones in my arm. It was a miracle that I still held on to my revolver, but before I could draw a bead on him he was all over me like gravy on rice. I fired my gun, most of the bullets missed, but one of them caught him in the face and stunned him for a moment. That's right, he took a bullet to the face and all it seemed to do was irritate him. He whacked me again, this time sending me flying across the room in the opposite direction. My battered arm, the one with the broken bones, had been holding onto a piece of the wooden vanity and to this day I still don't know how the jagged pointy end of it ended up impaled in Vlad's ticker when he charged me. I reckon it must have been something like a Greek Hoplite receiving a charge, but my bell had been rung so hard I can't remember.

What I do remember is blinking through tears of pain as I watched the creep turn to dust in front of my eyes.

I passed out after that and the cops, as predicted, quickly scooped us all up. They held me under guard at the hospital until they could check my story with Mr. Seiger. Cindy herself, possibly at the behest of her father, made up a story about being abducted by the old man and in regards to the shooting my injuries were declared as signs of self defense. So just with that I was given a lolipop and a bill by the doc, a pat on the back by the staff sergeant and sent on my merry way. Everything was Jake, except for the urge to crawl into a bottle of moonshine until the world started making sense again or I stopped caring.

After that case it was like I had opened a floodgate on all the weird and wacky shit crawling around the underbelly of Chicago. I felt like I had been seriously cursed, or at the very least marked by some otherworldly power. I now knew what few people did - there was a veil of normalcy and logic draped over our daily lives and it was fragile. So damn fragile.

So yeah, that's why I'm not cracking up over my current situation. After you've faced down vampires, werewolves, ghosts and an odd witch or two here and there, traveling into the future as some fat slob seems pos-i-lute-ly quaint and exceedingly safe.

And no, I'm still not thinking about that. 

I turned off the water and stepped out of the shower and toweled off. The towels themselves smelled freshly laundered and I wondered if that was the work of Little Red since Ryouji didn't seem to particularly care for all things hygiene related. I could hear some fumbling around from the other room and the occasional curse. If my hunch was right, that girl was probably cleaning up after the slob... well, I guess I'm technically the slob now, but to be fair to myself I'm going to start keeping count from today.

I still had to do something about this shortstack. Who was she and what was her relation to me? Was she a girlfriend? A quick look in the mirror made me scoff at that idea. Family? Again, no resemblance in either features or possibly species. What then? And maybe more importantly, what sort of yarn should I feed her? 

I did my best to make myself presentable. The clothes felt like some kind of school uniform and I took note of the fact that the jacket couldn't button up over my pendulous gut. The rest of the affair was hit and miss. Toothbrush I could find, but no luck on the razor. Actually, for all I know people in the future press a button to shave. I'll have to look into it later.

Admitting that I probably looked about as good as I could given the material I was working with, I stepped out of the bathroom and walked back into the bedroom. As predicted, Little Red was busily stacking a pile of magazines that had been scattered on the floor. She looked up at me and huffed.

"Do you enjoy making me pick up this filth?" she glowered.

Well, no, not particularly. Hell lady, I don't even know why you're doing it in the first place. 

"You don't need to do that" I said.

Ryouji's voice was kind of nasally so instead of sounding firm or consoling I just sounded like a stuck up killjoy. Great.

Little Red huffed again. It was a good huff, one that carried with it a lot of gravitas and did interesting things to her bubs. 

"Idiot... I know you like sexually harassing me! Don't pretend to be a decent person now."

My face went pale. Ryouji ... what kind of guy were you? Not that I could blame him, Little Red here was one fine doll and even upstanding gentlemen like yours truly can be tempted by such... abundance, particularly after times of famine. But still, since when is cleaning house considered sexual harassment... My eyes drifted away from Red's huffing chest and down to the magazines themselves.

"Oh"

Ryouji you scoundrel! I've been reborn less than a day and you've already left me holding the bag! Hide your god damn pornography better than that!

The girl got up to her feet and angrily pushed her way past me, calling out over her shoulder that we had to leave for school. I stood there for a moment considering my next move. Well, more like committing myself to it since there was really only one sensible option at this point.

"What are you doing just standing there?"

Little Red had returned holding two bags and she shoved one of them into my hand. Oh well, no better time like the present as they say. I screwed up my face and laid it on her.

"Hey doll, I'm going to be on the level with ya here but I ain't got no idea who the heck you are."