[Azura Rayume]

Oh, boy, oh, boy, oh, boy~ Miami pranced in circles, paws digging tracks into the sands. Man, that portal had been a trip! All buzzy and tingly and then she was here, right where the sign had said. She's never been to the beach before, even though her home was right near the water. They lived up on a cliff, not near a beach at all.

The egg hunt might have been her reason for coming here, but she thought it best to take advantage of the situation before she started. She couldn't start without her partner anyway, and she hadn't seen hide nor hair of such a person. Oh, well. Let them show up when they wanted. She was busy having fun.

She couldn't exactly start without this mystery person anyway.

[Atoli01]

The beach definitely wasn't high on my priority list. After my last trip, I could go the rest of my life without going to the beach! (That stupid crab!) Never mind that, however. I was sent here in order to look for... Easter eggs, and as silly as it sounded to me, I was told to treat it as work. How could hunting for Easter eggs with some stupid person be more important than getting a murderer off the streets?! Honestly... Did all their common sense just wash out the door on this one?

With a final sigh, my feet touched the warm sand. Now... the real obstacle here would be to not get sand in my shoes. It occurred to me just then, looking down at my black basketball shoes, that I should have worn sandals. At least the rest of my outfit was fit for a stroll on the beach; a stroll as in not swimming. A simple black tank top and a pair of jean shorts, with my dark brown hair tied into a ponytail. Exposed enough skin to cool off, yet covered enough for a normal guy's standards.

"Where are you, where are you...?" I muttered to myself, anxiously scanning the place. I spotted several eggs before I even spotted who I assumed would have to be my partner. After all, why else would there be some lonely dog prancing around in circles? I sighed before approaching the creature. "Are you my partner?" Out of habit I extended my hand to her, though I quickly drew back once I realized that she couldn't quite shake my hand like a human would.

[Azura Rayume]

Huh? A voice caught her attention. Miami's head turned to stare at the newcomer, but her hindquarters didn't halt quite so quickly. They swung out behind her, body pivoting on her forelimbs, and she collapsed in a heap of legs and tails. Smiling sheepishly up at him, she untangled herself and sat up, tails wagging.

"Weeeell, if you came from the park and were looking for someone named Miami, I'm your girl!" She beamed at him again, a toothy grin that could have him thinking she did nothing but smile. She cocked her head and looked him over. "If you came to play in the sand, I supposed I could help with that, too. Either way, you should probably follow me. I've got some eggs to find!"

She hopped to her feet again, bouncing in another circle before prancing off without any real direction. They said she would just find these things while walking around, right? Well, however it worked, she was ready to get going.

[Atoli01]

"Well, that answers my question then. The name's Fakir Okizawa. Just call me Fakir, of course." This girl seemed like a total ditz, no matter how nice she was towards me. I couldn't have gotten stuck with some more mature girl, could I? Or... even another detective. That would've been great. But other detective agencies had a hell of a lot more common sense than our own.

"Oh yeah, I saw an egg over there," I said to her, pointing to a colorful spot pointing out the sand a little ways down. I'm sure that it was the top of an egg. "And another one by the rocks over there." I sighed and stuck my hands in my pockets and headed to the nearby palm tree, where I had spotted another egg. I small, plain green one. "Where are we putting the eggs we collect, anyways?" I yelled over towards her. I suppose there was a slight lapse of judgement there on my part, not bringing my messenger bag.

[Azura Rayume]

Ooh, he was good at this! Either that, or the eggs had just magically appeared when he came through the portal. Either way, Miami couldn't let him get too far ahead of her in this finding thing. She bounded over to the bright dot he pointed at, pawing at the thing until the dark sands released it. It was so pretty, all shiny and bright colors. She snatched it up in her jaws and trotted back to him, tails wagging gleefully.

At the mention of a place to put the eggs, she furrowed her brow for a second. Hm... She hadn't been given a basket or anything- baskets was what you put eggs in, right?- but she could come up with something. She glanced from one side of the beach to the other until she saw a small beach shack. Those places usually sold bags and beach towels and other stuff. They might not have a basket for them, but they could have something for them to put the eggs in.

She set her prize down by Farik's feet before trotting off again. "I'll be back in a minute, Mister Farik!" she chimed back at him. "You keep finding eggs, and I'll have something to put them in!"

[Atoli01]

The less walking I had to do, the better, so I was pleased when she did bring the eggs that I had pointed out to her. I simply nodded in her direction when she took off. The moment her back was turned, I took a minute to text Mr. Head Detective, Zein. He got on my nerves -- more than anyone could ever truly understand -- though being away from work was absolutely killing me. "Go hunt for eggs," they said. "It'll be fun," they said. Yeah right.

'What about the arsonist? Are you on a different case already?' I quickly typed into my cell phone. The odds of him giving me an honest answer were slim since I was supposed to 'having fun,' but it was better to at least try. I sighed once again and slipped my phone back into my pocket, scanning the horizon for any more eggs. I picked up the eggs we had already gathered and headed over to a not-too-far patch of grass and picked up a glitter covered egg. Which, of course, resulted in a glitter-covered hand for me.

[Azura Rayume]

Her paws carried her swiftly over the black sands toward the shack. She glanced from side to side as she walked, but failed to spy any more eggs. Maybe that guy was just better than she was..? No, that couldn't be it. There just weren't any on this side of the beach is all.

The man behind the counter looked nice, if a bit bored. She smiled brightly at him, but he gave no real indication as to whether he approved or not. Mia balanced herself on her hind legs and set her forepaws on the counter. "Excuse me, mister," she said, trying to sound as pitiful as possible, "would you happen to have a bag I could borrow? You see, I'm doing this egg hunt thing, but we don't have a basket to put the eggs in." Her tails swayed slightly behind her. "I'll bring it back, thought! I promise."

He cocked an eyebrow at her and smiled. "You really promise?"

"Yeah!"

He passed her a large orange tote bag. "As long as you bring it back, I don't have any problems lending you this, alright?" She nodded and snatched the bag off the counter and called back a quick thank you before sprinting out over the sands again, calling "Mister Farik! Mister Farik!"

[Atoli01]

Just several seconds later, I heard my phone beep. No doubt it was Zein. With a small sigh, I slid my phone out of my pocket and scrolled to my messages. 'Not telling you, newbie! Treat the egg hunt as your job. So going with that frame of mind, how is your job going?' I just barely managed to resist the very real urge to toss my phone into the ocean. I would have to go through hell to get another one from the company though, and it wouldn't do anything to shut Zein up when I came back tomorrow.

So instead of taking my anger out on the innocent object, I dropped it back into my pocket. Collecting stupid Easter eggs was not my job and never would be! ...At least I was getting paid for it, though. I was snapped out of my thoughts when I heard a person calling my name. That girl, I was sure. Surely enough, I turned around and there she was, running towards me with a bag in her hands. Thank god she wasn't as useless as I thought she would be. "Got one? I found another egg while you were gone."

[Azura Rayume]

"Another one?" She set the bag at his feet. "Wow, you're really good at this, Mister Farik. You must be, like, super good at puzzles and stuff." She wasn't usually very good at puzzles and things... Maybe that was why she couldn't find eggs very easily. She didn't like that idea and shrugged it off. Something else then.

She nosed open the bag to start putting the eggs inside when a small glint of green caught her eye. Curious, she shoved her head in the bag, tails wagging. "Hey! There's one in here! I found one!" Either that, or the man behind the counter had put it there when she had said what she was doing. She was going the believe she did it.

[Atoli01]

"Yeah. I suppose you could say I'm good at puzzles. Not the Rubik's cube kind, but... well, I work as a detective. I suppose things like this come naturally to me," I explained, resting both of my hands on my head. Even though this was a decent change from the office -- or computer screen and murder weapons, to be more precise -- I would still much rather be solving life changing puzzles. Surely, little Easter eggs didn't count as something life changing. Not to me, anyways.

"And thanks for the bag, by the way." I paced over to the bag just before her recent outburst had taken place. "Another egg? What, inside the bag? However it got in there, good job. Let's get as many as we can find. Maybe we can go home sooner, in  that case." With one smooth motion, I dumped our share of eggs into the bag and slung it over my shoulder. "I can carry it."

[Azura Rayume]

"A detective?" That was curious. She had never met a detective before. "Do you catch criminals? Or are you one of those 'find lost things' detectives? I saw one of those on TV once. He found all kinds of stuff." She couldn't remember any specifics, but she remembered seeing it before. Sure, it might have been some kind of crime drama that Cora had found, but that didn't mean there weren't people in the real world that did the same kind of thing.

Her tails wagged as he complimented her. If he thought she had done a good job, then it was probably true. "More eggs. Right. Got it. Though I don't know why you would want to go home. Beaches are fun!"

[Atoli01]

Such... such TV stereotypes, huh? "I don't... really catch the criminals. That's the police's job. We just look at the evidence and try to find matches on things like, let's say... fingerprints. We narrow down the suspects so that the police can take them into custody." It sometimes scared me how much people believed TV shows. Sure, some of them were 100% accurate, but... well, let's just say that most were a complete waste of both televising time and peoples' lives.

"I suppose beaches can be fun, but not today. I'm supposed to be working today. I'd prefer getting another bad guy off the streets rather than getting another egg out of the sand," and as if on cue, I walked over to a nearby patch of sand and pulled out another buried egg. Couldn't they come up with more original hiding places? Then again, it was the beach; how many places could there honestly be to hide eggs on a beach. "Well, let's just keep going for now, okay?" I said to her, tossing my recently found sparkly egg into the bag.

[Azura Rayume]

"Okay~" Miami was only half listening by the time Farik stopped talking. Her loping gate had carried her to the base of a large palm tree, and she was staring up the trunk as if mesmerized. At first, she had been staring at the sunlight coming through the leaves, but there was something off about the coconuts that hung just beneath them. One of them looked... shiny?

She squinted at the. "Hm.... Coconut, coconut, coconut, egg!" A second look showed that one was a chocolate brown and the oblong shape of an Easter egg. Beaming, she hopped up, claws digging into the layered bark, and started climbing. She had to get it down somehow, and this seemed like the most straightforward method.

[Atoli01]

It wasn't long before I realized that the kid probably hadn't even heard a word I had said. I waited for her for several minutes, seeing if she planned on moving anytime soon. My mouth finally shifted into a frown, but just as I was about to question her sanity--or lack of it, it seemed--she had returned to normal again, suddenly blurting out something about eggs and coconuts.

By the time I had figured out what she was talking about, she was already half way up the palm tree. "That's probably... not too safe. Just for an egg? There's plenty more we can collect. A single egg isn't quite worth a broken egg, y'know?" I sighed and raised one of my hands to my forehead,  protecting my eyes from the sun as I looked up at her.

[Azura Rayume]

"Oh, don't be silly, Mister Farik," she giggled, inching her way up the bark. "I'm gonna be alright, and so's the egg. Besides, I like to climb." She really, really did. Climbing and jumping were some of her favorite activities. It was a rare time for her to come across a tree and not want to climb it or a rock and not feel like she had to turn a backflip on her way off the other side.

When she reached the top of the tree, she took the egg in her jaws gently. The thing even tasted kind of like chocolate! Once she was certain she hand a good grip on it, she loosened her grip on the trunk ever so slightly, just enough to send her sliding down to the bottom. Her landing, while a bit bumpy, was safe enough to keep the egg intact. She set it at Farik's feet, feeling quite proud of herself.