[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/oJbW92K.png[/img][/center]
[center][h3][color=#FA8072]It's Ele-Marty, My Dear Barbatos' Son[/color][/h3][/center]
[right][sup][b][color=#FA8072]Location:[/color][/b] [i][color=silver]Saniwa Family Estate[/color][/i][/sup][/right][hr]

[color=silver]Marty maintained a gruff expression as he and his team combed through the house. Well, it was [i]Armand’s[/i] team if you wanted to get technical, but, look- the guy was likely to keel over from a heart attack or suffer a manic break at any moment. [i]Look at him[/i]. Point being, someone else was gonna be chief eventually, right? And that someone was Marty. You know, maybe. Probably. Just needed to earn this poor fucker’s respect before he turned into worm chow or retired. That should be easy though. He’d stuck to this job like a fly to shit for the past three years and if he knew anything, it was that excellence beat experience every time. 

This whole Section was full of unrepentant criminals and lazy jackasses anyways. Marty actually wanted to be here. He was the son of [i]the[/i] Beelzebub. No freaking yahweh was he gonna pass up the opportunity in front of him. 

So to say Marty was on his A-game would be a disgusting understatement and you should feel bad for suggesting it. This was a AAA+ kind of game at the very least. A cursory glance suggested the markings outside the house were a product of sport or play. Not relevant to the yuck house of horrors inside. 

And [i]fuckity-fuck[/i] it was nasty. 

See, that’s where the gruff expression came in. Maintain a look of carefully calculated and manly indifference with just a dash of soulful longing and nobody would know how completely skeeved out he was feeling in this place. In reality, he just looked vaguely constipated or perhaps as though he was suffering from a migraine. Moving through the house with his maybe needing-to-shit or maybe needing-an-ibuprofen expression, it was interesting to note that while most of the victims were piles of organic waste scattered throughout the absolute warzone the interior of the estate had apparently become, several corpses were “intact.”

Intact insofar as their bodies were largely in one piece, minus the heads, which had kindly made way for tasteful assortments of a semi-popular garden flower called the lantana. That was… sort of nice. If you ignored the everything else, anyways.

As the group came to a stop, Marty reached into his pockets, pulling out a comb as another hand flicked open the lid on a small mirror. He combed his antennae carefully as he took mental stock of the nasty, nasty nonsense this case was becoming. 

Lotta dead scumbags turned into goop. 

[i]Some[/i] dead scumbags merely turned into plant pots.

All the plant-pot-people were found either hiding or fleeing. Most weren’t even armed, and the ones that were either never fired their weapons or never drew them to begin with.

And there was something else, something curious that Marty had picked up on from the drop. No animals, anywhere inside the estate. No hungry rats, no curious cats, no trails of ants or even a single stray mite. Nothing. [i]He[/i] was the only fly in the ointment, as it were. Which didn’t make much sense. This place was a shithole, and he couldn’t imagine cleanliness was very important to these losers before they bit it either.

He wasn’t very sure what to do with that last piece of information, but it definitely held relevance.[/color]

[color=#FA8072]“Well,”[/color] [color=silver]Marty began, his voice warbling from out his proboscis-like mouth with a buzzing undertone. He continued to comb himself in the mirror.[/color] [color=#FA8072]“It looks to me like if you were brave, you got turned into head cheese, and if you weren’t, you got turned into a head flower instead.”[/color] [color=silver]He snapped the mirror shut as he moved to the center of the room, his head completely still as his compound eyes looked at everyone around him simultaneously.[/color] [color=#FA8072]“All of our fragrant friends were either trying to hide or trying to run. None of their weapons were drawn, or if they were, they didn’t have the guts to use them before they each got the uh, big idea.”[/color]

[color=silver]He was starting to feel conscious of people’s attention on him as he let out a throaty buzzing noise that passed for a cough.[/color] [color=#FA8072]“Fear is the mind killer, or something like that. Maybe literally. What we don’t know is whether the flowering was a side effect of something the victims were feeling in the perp’s presence, or if it was something that was done to them intentionally, and something about their fragile states of mind made them vulnerable to it.”[/color]

[color=silver]Holy shit- was he on a roll right now? It kinda felt like that. Suck it Barbatos.[/color]

[color=silver]Marty continued, trying to quash the nervous tremor that was creeping into his hair bristles.[/color] [color=#FA8072]“What’s also incredibly weird is that we’re the only living things in this whole place- and let me finish.”[/color] [color=silver]Kittyan wouldn’t be able to tell, but he was paying him special attention as he said that.[/color] [color=#FA8072]“There aren’t any animals here. No scavengers, big or small. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I could tell pretty much right away that this place wasn’t winning any awards in the cleanliness department. So, uh, I don’t really know what that means,”[/color] [color=silver]His shoulders shrugged emphatically.[/color] [color=#FA8072]“But you’d expect some bugs at the least to be getting in on the all you can eat sausage buffet out there.”[/color]

[color=silver]He flashed four finger guns at Armand.[/color] [color=#FA8072]“Am I on fire or what? Anyone else got something?”[/color] [color=silver]He peered at Barbatos as his voice took on a reedy, suspicious tone.[/color] [color=#FA8072]"Any [i]contradictory[/i] theories to share? Hm?"[/color] [color=silver]Fucking guy. Thought he was so cool. Well. It was the Marty show now! Eat it.[/color]