"If you'll be all right wandering around town by yourself."

"I will! Though it'd be okay if you wanna swap or do both things together instead."

"No, it sounds like an efficient distribution of labor."

"Alright! I'm tired a bit today, but I can start looking at directories and all tonight, wander around tomorrow if I think I've found something."

"Okay." She pats Bellona. "I'm going to go find those books."

Heeeeeeee.

"Alright!"

And off! To research! Best part of being a private eye.

El sets to learning the method of decompositive identification. She can practice with some cold cuts from the kitchen.

Telling the difference between meats is a lot harder than between plants and animals, and she's able to eventually get "turkey" versus "ham" but not "ham" versus "beef" quite yet.

Then she'll have to keep trying. Presumably that's the least amount of precision she'll need.

She can get it by the morning if she studies through the night, at least to the level of identifying the stuff they already have on hand to test, though not to identifying complete unknowns.

She does, technically, have human flesh on hand to compare.

Let's see how the day goes first, though.

Bellona goes out to explore a bit before lunch - when she figures he'll be out and about if he's doing deliveries - and says she'll probably be back closer to dark.

El wishes her good luck.

She'll catch a quick nap then back to work.

A bit before dinner Tucker gets a call for her, from Bellona.

"Hello?"

"Hey! So, uh, I'm pretty sure I have our guy. Tied up. In the corner."

"...Do you need me to come get you?"

"Could use some help with things. Not over the phone." She rattles off the address.

"Okay. Be there soon." She hangs up, and lets Tucker know she's going out for a bit.

He wishes her well, seeming distracted.

Fair enough.

Off to find Bellona.

Bellona: is standing in a butcher's warehouse, kind of awkwardly, with the same lanky guy they saw yesterday indeed tied up in the corner. Bellona's also trying to comfort a half catatonic, half hysterical woman, wearing clothes made with alchemy and with injuries obviously partially healed with alchemy.

"El!" Bellona says, sounding very, very relieved. "There's. A situation. It's very situation-y!"

"So I see. Perhaps you'd care to share some more enlightening details?"

"So I was exploring the warehouses, and got just outside of here, and this guy jumped out of an alleyway and I guess tried to use chloroform on me? I don't know, I can't smell anything. And then we were fighting and we got in here - I won, tied him up, gagged him 'cause he was shouting - and I was like 'this sure would be a convenient place to do murders,' so I went looking and found her, injured and all, so I healed her up and got her out of the back, and now I don't know what to do because she's freaking out and also the guy knows about my armor thing."

"Does she?"