Merry Christmas. Here's a short bonus story. (Patreon)

Technically, it's more of a vignette than a short story, but there you go. This is completely unrelated to He Who Fights With Monsters, but I thought I'd share some of my other writing while I'm away on break. I hope you enjoy.

...and together they fight crimes

by Shirtaloon.

Even without the nametags it wouldn’t have been hard to tell the FBI agents from the police detectives. The FBI had better suits and, for the most part, posture. The police were more lax in their attire and had largely monopolised the refreshments table. The attendees were clustered around the seminar room in small groups, talking amongst themselves. One man, standing alone, was sporting a white casual suit and designer stubble. Adrian walked over to talk to him and saw his nametag was just a rudely scrawled ‘Nick’.

“Are you here for the seminar?” Adrian asked the man.

“Yeah, is this the right room for…”

Nick paused to fish a napkin from his pocket with something scribbled across it.

“…partner dynamics in criminal investigation?” he finished, reading from the napkin.

“This is the right room,” Adrian told him. “Are you a police detective?”

“Private detective.”

Adrian frowned and starting scanning through the list of names on his clipboard.

“This is really for people involved in homicide investigation.”

“Oh, I solve around twenty-two murders a year.”

Adrian found the name on his list.

“Mr Wilde, is it?” he asked.

“That’s right.”

“If they sent you here I take it you work with a partner?”

“That’s right. An ex-Navy SEAL who was discharged when they found out she was secretly a woman and now runs a helicopter rental agency. I used to partner up with a professional lifeguard but she left to be with her husband when it turned out he wasn’t dead but had amnesia and was working as an amphora craftsman in Sicily.”

Adrian gave a weary sigh.

“You’re definitely in the right place.”

Adrian moved into the centre of the room where cheap folding chairs had been set out in a large semi-circle facing a lectern, with a large projection screen on the wall behind it.

“If everyone can take a seat,” Adrian announced, “we’ll begin.”

While he waited for the attendees to sit, Adrian tapped his fingers on the clipboard, a habitual tic. He didn’t care if a computer tablet was more convenient, he liked the comfortable weight of the wooden board, the feel of paper in his hands. He liked holding it as he paced, which he was prone to do in his seminars. For this reason, he preferred to stand in front of the lectern rather than behind it, where his trainee, Randy, was ready with the projector controls. There was a table next to Randy with a stack of folders containing the handouts and forms he would need during the session.

“Thank you,” Adrian said to the group once everyone was sitting down.

“Just before we start, I would like to make sure everyone is in the right place. This seminar is for partner dynamics in criminal investigation. You should be here because you have an unconventional partner, so if anyone here has a partner who is an actual member of law enforcement, please raise your hand.”

Around a third of the hands went up.

“Please put your hand down,” Adrian went on, “if your partner is a robot, cyborg, psychic, alien, dog, or former law enforcement officer now working as a consultant due to a trauma-induced personality disorder that makes them a genius at observation, profiling and/or deductive reasoning.”

Most of the hands went down.

“My partner is a former surfing champion turned cop with experimental prosthetic legs,” said one of the people with her hand still raised. “Does he count as a cyborg?”

“Can he do anything with his legs he couldn’t do with normal legs?”

“He can jump really high. Also, one leg has a laser in it.”

“Cyborg. Hand down, please.”

“Does a hyper-intelligent dog count as a dog?” another person asked.

“I think the answer to that one is right there in the question. Hand down.”

“Is hyper-intelligence a problem?” someone else asked. “My cockatiel partner is hyper-intelligent, but not a dog.”

“Anyone whose partner is an animal or has been spliced with animal DNA, put your hand down. Also, cockatiels are not police animals.”

That led to most of the remaining hands going down, although the woman with the cockatiel kept her hand up.

“Is there a problem, Detective?”

“Terry was made an honorary member of the force.”

“Terry being your cockatiel?”

“He’s not my cockatiel, he’s my partner.”

“Doesn’t matter. Hand down, please.”

“He’s a proper police bird. He has a certificate and everything.”

“Still doesn’t matter.”

“It was signed by the Mayor.”

“Does. Not. Matter.”

“So if my cockatiel partner didn’t count as a cop would I then would I keep my hand up?”

“No. Anyone with a partially or completely non-human partner, regardless of their status within your respective law enforcement agencies, hands down.”

As the detective reluctantly lowered her hand, another person with their hand up asked a question.

“My partner is a clone of my old partner, does that count as non-human?”

“Hand down.”

“He’s a proper officer. They made him go through the academy again.”

“Hand. Down.”

Adrian looked at the last three people with their hands up. He waited, but there were no more questions. Adrian gestured to a man with unruly hair and a leather jacket.

“Detective Gibson,” Adrian said, reading from the nametag. “Please describe your partner to me.”

“He’s an ordinary cop. Experienced, more by the book than I’d like.”

Adrian narrowed his eyes.

“Out of curiosity, Detective, how to you feel about police procedure?”

Gibson erupted from his chair, flinging a pointed finger at the doorway.

“Rules and procedures don’t help you out there!”

“In the foyer?” Adrian asked wearily.

“In the streets, man, in the streets! It’s the wild west out there and the pimps and drug dealers sure as hell ain’t using no rulebook.”

Adrian walked over to the lectern.

“Referral form,” he said to his trainee, Randy, who fished a piece of paper out from a folder on the nearby table. Adrian put the form on his clipboard and started filling it out.

“I think your partner is the one meant to be here,” Adrian said to Gibson as he filled out the form.

“He’s at the lecture about not getting killed in the last month before retiring,” Gibson said.

“Of course he is.”

Adrian walked over and held out the form for Gibson to take.

“Detective, I want you to take this to the maverick rehabilitation workshop in room 212.”

Gibson snorted derision at the form in Adrian’s hand.

“I ain’t going to no seminar.”

“You’re in a seminar right… fine. Gibson, hand over your badge and your gun and under no circumstances are you to take this form to room 212.”

“Watch me,” he retorted, slapping his gun and badge onto Adrian’s clipboard before snatching the form and striding purposefully toward the door. Adrian walked over to place the gun and the badge on the table.

“Does that happen every time?” Randy asked.

“Pretty much.”

Adrian moved back to stand in front of the next person with their hand still up.

“Detective Norris,” Adrian read from a nametag. “Please describe your partner.”

“Best cop I’ve ever known. And the most experienced.”

“What kind of experience?”

“He started out during prohibition. He was killed by John Dillinger himself.”

Adrian closed his eyes and took a slow, calming breath.

“John Dillinger,” Adrian said.

“That’s right.”

“Killed your partner.”

“Yes,” Norris said proudly.

“Which would make your partner deceased.”

“Yes, but he is a police officer.”

Adrian ran his hand over his face.

“Zombie?” he asked.

“Ghost.”

“Hand down, Detective Norris.”

One person still had their hand up.

“Lucky last, Detective Isaacs,” Adrian said.

“My partner is just an ordinary cop.”

“Really?”

“Yes. He’s not a wizard, he doesn’t have the power of psychometry. He just solves crimes with legwork and persistence.”

“So nothing odd about him at all?”

“Not really.”

“Not really meaning…”

“There is this one thing.”

“Go on”

“Every time he goes to sleep he moves between two alternate realities, and he uses clues from each reality to solve crimes in the other.”

“Hand down, Detective Isaacs.”

Finally there were no more hands up.

“Alright,” Adrian said with relief. “Are there any more questions before we begin?”

A hand went up.

“Yes, Detective Long?”

“Is this session going to cover unresolved sexual tension?”

“Why would you care about that?” another detective asked. “Your partner is a talking car.”

“Shut up, Levine. She has a sexy voice.”

Both men stood up and Adrian stepped between them.

“Both of you sit back down, it’s a valid question. This seminar will not be covering UST, that’s tomorrow after the workshop on incrementally gathering clues to the unsolved murder of the parent whose footsteps you followed into law enforcement. I know a lot of you will be looking for both of these sessions so I have some sign up sheets I’ll pass around at the end.

“What we will be covering today is the increased acquittal rate in cases where arrests were made due to the unorthodox methodologies of unconventional partners.”

The attendees all burst to their feet and started talking at once. Adrian held his hand up and waited for the group to down and returned to their seats.

“I know what you’re all going to say,” Adrian told them. “You don’t like your partner’s methods but they get results. Well, I’ve got news for you; they actually don’t. These cases are routinely being thrown out of court because they are, to be frank, absurd. We’ll start by going around the room, look at some general issues, then get into workshopping individual cases.”

Adrian looked down at his clipboard.

“Special Agent Tunney,” Adrian read out, glancing up to see the person holding their hand up.

“Your partner is a stage magician who gets people to confess under hypnosis, which has resulted in a record zero convictions. Why are you even working with a hypnotist?”

“His daughter was inducted into a cult and killed,” Tunney said. “He became an FBI consultant to bring the cult leader to justice.”

“And did he?”

“Not yet. We capture one of the cult leader’s disciples every twenty-two weeks or so and each one brings us a little closer to the man himself.”

“Well, stop hypnotising people. The confessions are all inadmissible.”

“Ha,” another FBI agent scoffed.

“Special Agent Webster, you are hardly one to criticise,” Adrian said. “Your partner’s testimony has been repeatedly dismissed as unreliable. Exactly what good is being from the future if you have amnesia?”

“She gets memory flashes of murder cases from her past, which is our future, when she investigates them in the present.”

“Yet the inconsistent nature of these memories lead her to accuse a number of different suspects on every case before getting the correct one, do they not?”

“She gets there in the end.”

“After providing more than enough material for any decent defence lawyer to tear the case to shreds. Try and be a little circumspect. Your partner’s confidence in all these false accusations is really holding you back.”

Adrian looked at the next name on his clipboard.

“Detective Potter. I have your partner listed as Death Ninja Grahame. What precisely is a death ninja?”

“He used to be Sternly-Worded Letter Ninja Grahame, but he wrote a letter to the editor of his local newspaper that was so vociferously phrased that it killed nineteen people and six birds. After that they had to promote him.”

“Six birds?”

“The paper was used as cage lining.”

“I see. Well, not really, but you actually have a pretty good closure rate, so well done there. You should work on reducing the number of suspects your partner kills with his katana, however.”

“It’s a ninjato, not a katana,” Potter corrected.

One of the FBI agents spoke up.

“You realise there is no historical evidence that actual Shinobi used the ninjato, right? It’s just something made up by popular culture.”

“Better than your partner and his kitchen knives,” Potter shot back.

“Actually,” Adrian interjected, “I’m curious about your partner, Special Agent Sloan. How exactly does being an ambidextrous circus-knife-thrower-turned-chef help with solving crimes?”

“The knife-throwing chef part isn’t relevant,” Sloan said. “He’s just really good at solving crimes.”

“Then why does he always seem to be catching suspects using throwing knives?”

“Circumstances just keep turning out that way.”

“Of course they do. Next, Special Agent Anderson. The information I have here says your partner is a mermaid. That sounds problematic for the day-to-day logistics of criminal investigation.”

“She has legs now,” Anderson said. “She sold her voice to a witch in return for the ability to walk on land so she could marry a prince. When the prince was brutally murdered she became an FBI consultant in order to track down the killer.”

“Which she gets closer to every twenty-two weeks or so doing without ever actually catching him?”

“How did you know?”

“Lucky guess. Okay, Special Agent Anderson. You need to understand something and all of you should pay attention to this. Suspects need to be interrogated by law enforcement officers. Not by mystery writers or forensic technicians or chefs and especially not, and I cannot stress this enough, mermaids without the power of speech.”

Adrian sighed for what felt like the hundredth time.

“Another thing is to not let people who have no understanding of how modern society works run around solving crimes.”

“That’s directed at me, isn’t it?” a detective said defensively.

“Yes, Detective Shore, it is. A warrior from the Mesolithic age who was found in a glacier has no understanding of police procedure or even basic societal norms.”

“He’s a good cop.”

“He’s not a cop, he’s a member of the first society to cultivate cereal. He was born eleven thousand years before police even existed.”

“He’s learning.”

“Yes, he has somehow managed to master the entire English language without learning that it is not okay to pillage an upscale brasserie.”

“That was one time.”

Adrian gave the detective a flat look.

“Okay, twice, but there’s an understandable adjustment period.”

“There really isn’t; get your partner in line. I know you’ve all heard that before from your hard-nosed supervising agents and tough-but-fair captains, but it’s good advice and you should all take it to heart.”

Adrian looked over his clipboard.

“Okay, so when we start looking at individual cases we’ll start by reviewing some basic procedures that you should all know yet frequently fail to apply when…”

He trailed off as someone came through the doors into the seminar room.

“Excuse me,” the newcomer said. “Is this partner dynamics in criminal investigation?”

“That’s right,” Adrian said. “You aren’t on my list, though. What kind of partner do you have?”

“I actually have four partners. A race car driver, an immunologist, a reformed con man and a martial arts master.”

“Why do you have so many partners?”

“They’re all my alternate personalities.”

“I’m sorry?”

“My partners are my alternate personalities. I have Dissociative Identity Disorder.”

“So, if I understand you correctly… you are your own crazy partner?”

“I think crazy is bit insensitive.”

Adrian dropped his clipboard to the floor.

“Nope. That’s it, I’m out.”

He looked over to his trainee behind the lectern.

“Randy, you take over. I’m going to buy a pretzel, and then I’m going home.”

The attendees watched Adrian walk past the newcomer and out the door. Randy emerged from behind the lectern, took some papers from the table and started handing them out.

“This is a list of the basic procedures Adrian was just talking about,” Randy said.

“Excuse me,” someone said, putting their hand up.

“Yes, Agent Katic?”

“Didn’t you used to be an FBI agent?”

“That’s right. I became a consultant with an occupational training company to find out how my wife was put in a coma during a basic accounting workshop.”