[From the desk of Candy Kane]
There weren’t many down in the gutters that were like Eddie. Thin, rail thin, with a nervous tick that would make you think he was built like a clock. One of those fellas that would often gain poor attention from those that’d want to beat him into next Tuesday for the kicks.
He was the fella that no one even looked at, another forgotten face down here in the shadows.
Then he found that little Rubick’s cube, and everything changed.
It was a child’s game, rearranging the colors until you got yourself a full set of colors. Something so simple and yet held a fascination. The clicks and whirs as he moved it piece by piece into place replaced his own ticks, making him smoother, more confident.
That little rubick’s cube made a boob into a bombshell of a guy.
But despite the bravado, Eddie didn’t really have what it took to cut it loose in the Slums. No amount of showmanship could beat out a Bruno lookin’ to score in a few licks. Talked smack to the wrong fella, and that little puzzle box of his went missing. Figured it had floated away into the trash like most things down there.
Then this new fella rolls in. Fella by the name of Lutheran Locke. Gets high and mighty on the need of balance, seeking the wisdom of gods that as far as I could find don’t exist outside his head. Normally, it’d be a set and deal case of another failed rehabilitation of Arcadian Asylum running around the streets.
A puzzle box however, caught my eye.
From what I could hear of a snippet of his ramblings, he thinks there’s power inside it. Something sealed away in the heart of it that if he could only solve it would bring about the change he wants to Arcadia in a vast, drastic way. Trailed him a bit as he wandered around, desperately trying to solve it in between his ramblings to people that would give him the time of day.
[A photo is paper clipped on the document, showing the puzzle box in his hands from a long range shot]
Didn’t have much luck finding out more beyond that, and a discharge notice from the Arcadian Asylum. Took it around to a few places, and the best intel I was able to find on what the puzzle box was from one of the toy shops. Clyde had always been a doll since I helped him on the case with the missing kids, but he gave me the best advice I had.
“You can’t solve what’s built to be unsolvable.”
For all the glitz and glam that this Lutheran fella brings, at the end of the day he’s just like Eddie was. A lotta bravado built upon the slippy slopes of a broken mind, left to mumble and obsess over a lot of nothing.
Just a clock ticking away until it reaches a violent, violent end.