Dark*Matter: Discovery, The Chicago Ripper

[Falkus]

A month passes by, since your first mission and the encounter with the Sandmen, and you gradually settle into your new career. Nothing of great excitement occurs (excitement meaning danger, destruction and high risk of horrible, screaming death), but there are two investigations to take your time.

The first event is a series of UFO sightings about ten miles out of town. Your investigations into that quickly reveal that they’re simply being faked by the Air Force in order to draw attention away from the real UFO that they’re studying nearby. Stanfield orders you off the case after that, saying that it would be handled by diplomatic officers in DC.

The second involved a fairy sighting in a Chicago graveyard last week. This one turns out to be real. They look like tiny humans with wings that glow various different colors. You manage to take a few photos, and even interact with them a bit. They seem child-like and playful, and just simply ignore any attempts at meaningful communications, preferring to dance their dances and play their games in the cold air. The situation simply required you to have the site temporary declared off limits due to a chemical spill, and wait for the fairies to stop appearing from wherever they come from. It lasts for three days, and then they disappear back to wherever they came from. Oddly enough, most information on fairies in OSIRS is classified at security level five and above.

One day, late in November, you receive an urgent message from the Institute. At 5:45 PM, you all receive a text message on your Institute issue cell phones. 'Report to the briefing room immediately. Urgent. –Stanfield.'

Friadoc
[sblock]Over the last month, you’ve managed to construct your PDA/Motion Sensor. Progress is slow at one point, due to miniaturization difficulties, but Z eventually digs into the lab and comes up with a crystal for you and instructions on how to install it that does the trick. She doesn’t say so, but it’s very obviously alien technology. It does the job, and you currently have one working prototype, completed the previous day.
[/sblock]

 

[iwatt]

At least the headaches were gone. His teachers said that they would, once he got used to the mental patterns they'd been teaching him. Appaerntly whatever it was he'd ben doing had been wrong, and therefore painful. Stanfield's orders came in the middle of a session with a particularly sadistic instructor. "Sory Hong, duty calls." Literarly saved by the bell (he'd used AC-DC's Hell's Bells for a ringtone), Larry leaves his frustrated teacher behind.

If the young man had seen his personnell file, he would have understood his teachers frustration:

Name: Larry Higgins
Major Talents: Telekinetic, Empath, Mind Control
Minor Talents: Precognition.
Potential: Low. He has great raw natural ability, but he lacks the discipline required.

_________________________

Rushing towards the briefing room, Larry is the first to arrive. He takes a seat and tries to look proffesional. Finally soemthing new. Chasing Fairies seemed so pointless and boring, almost as boring as his instructions.

 

[Friadoc]

It was a brief respite; Cade had finally gotten the PDA working, in a sphere on the screen, trisected by XYZ axis that insinuate three dimensions and tracked movement. Not only had he been able to track Selina throughout the apartment, but he had inadvertently seen the various movements in the apartment below his own. Even the more embarrassing ones, which caused Cade to quickly turn off the sensors, and finally fall asleep with Selina resting upon his belly as they both laid on an recliner.

An insistent, yet gentle buzz awoke Cade, causing Selina to skitter from his stomach as he sat up and looked down at the PDA in his palm.

“Well, kitty girl, here I guess it’s field test time,” says Cade as he moves into action, quickly getting cleaned up and out the door, right after he makes sure the autofeeder is filled up. “Wish me luck!”

Fortunately, Cade’s apartment was only a short distance from the Hoffmann Institute field offices. He didn’t just pick the neighborhood because of his ability to mix in with the young professionals of the area, but also so he could just blast on into work.

After making his way through the various checkpoints, Cade walks into the briefing room just past 1800 hours, his roughly combed hair still damp from his quick blow off-shower.

Currently, Cade is dressed in a business casual fashion with a khaki-shirt tucked into a pair of canvas cargo boots that hang over a set of brown hiking boots. Over all of this is a brown, leather jacket that hangs about his thighs, it ending just above his knees.

“Boss,” says Cade with a nod as he takes his seat. He also gives a nod and a smile to his teammate, Larry, also to the others as they arrive.

 

[industrygothica]

Nick walks quietly into the room and takes a seat after greeting his partners. He'd spent most of his time off in Boston visiting with his daughter and hadn't quite been the same since he'd come back to Chicago, spending a great deal of time in the library at the institute.

He sits now with his hands in the pockets of his leather coat, a day old growth upon his face. It is obvious he has something on his mind, but he keeps to himself, putting on a half smile and speaking, for the most part, only when spoken to.

He did manage a conversation with Larry upon his return, and is genuinely proud of him for his progress, and willingness to learn.

 

[kinem]

Diego, too, spent a lot of time in the library as well as in the training rooms. He seems to be getting used to paranormal ideas and events; as he said "Mummies, aliens, demons - all that stuff is old hat once we've seen the damn faeries. Faeries!"

[sblock=Falkus]He's also begun writing a private journal about his experiences, in Spanish, at home.[/sblock]

He walks into the meeting late, as usual, wearing his black leather jacket and sporting a pair of black sunglasses.

"Hi. Field trip today?"

 

[Shayuri]

Meredith hurries in, wearing a T-shirt tucked into blue jeans that wouldn't look out of place on a trip to the mall or similar. Her hair is back in a tail. She quickly plunks in the closest empty seat and smiles guiltily.

"Sorry I'm late. What did I miss?"

 

[Falkus]

Both Director Stanfield and Z are waiting for you in the briefing room. Stanfield has a grim look on his face. "Good to see you," he said. "Let's begin."

"As I'm sure you're aware, there's a new serial killer operating here in Chicago," this you do know, it's been all over the newspapers, radios and television for the last day. Two days ago, July Harper, a nineteen year old student, was viciously murdered on her way home at six PM. The news described it as being done in a ritualistic fashion, though details were sparse. Yesterday, there was another murder. Jon Simpson, a fifty-seven year old retired accountant, was murdered at the same time, by the same method.

"Normally, we'd just simply let the police handle this, but Agent Angela Lear, our agent inside the police, managed to get a hold of a few photos they haven't released to the public yet. There's something very disturbing at the second murder, and I don't mean the body. Best you see for yourself,"

He opened up his folder, and removed five photographs, and handed them around. It was a crime scene photo, showing the body of an older man, with gray hair, who had been nailed to an alley wall about five feet up. His chest was a bloody mess. There was a semi-circle of burnt out candles against the wall under the body.

Also, burnt into the wall around the body, was a set of Egyptian Hieroglyphics.

industry
[sblock]You can read the hieroglypics. The words are nonesense phrases, they mean nothing. However, they do look like they might be part of a spell or a ritual, though it looks like the spell is incomplete.[/sblock]

However, the disturbing part is the English word written beneath the victim, in what appear to be his own blood.

That word is Akhentanen.

 

[iwatt]

"Didn't we burn up this jackass once?" Larry speaks out. Turning to Cade he adds, "Maybe he came back for his sword."

 

[industrygothica]

Nick thumbs through the photographs and pauses at the hieroglyphics, his face expressionless. After a few silent moments he tosses the pictures onto the table in front of them, causing them to slide out in a neatly fanned arc, the photo in question on top.

"By themselves the symbols are nonsense; they mean nothing," he says. He was becoming as familiar with deciphering hieroglyphics as Meridith was reading a newspaper.

"But together they look like they could be the beginnings of a spell of some sort, albeit an incomplete one." He said it casually--maybe too casually, like it was something families talked about at the dinner table. Never mind the fact that none of them had really ever encountered a spell before, let alone the arcane markings that bring it forth.

"Akhentanen," he adds with an unknowing dramatic pause. "Somehow it doesn't suprise me that we're seeing that name again."

"Didn't we burn up this jackass once? Maybe he came back for his sword."

He looks at Larry, any iota of humor gone from his demeanor. "You know, that is a possibility," he says more to the group than to Larry himself. He leans forward in the creaking chair and turns his attention to Cade. "Maybe it'd be a good idea to bring that sword back here for a while. You know, to keep it locked up for a bit until this thing is over. Just in case."

 

[Friadoc]

"Frak! We may have burned him up, once," says Cade with a frown as he looks at the photos. "But, I'm willing to bet we didn't get all his cultists and followers."

"That's the problem with cults," says Cade, his mind already rolling through case histories, as he clicks on his PDA a couple of times. "You never get 'em all, they're like roaches. If you don't find the nest, they'll just come back for more." As the information he wants starts to compile, the young man looks at Nick and nods. "Good idea, Doc, although my place is locked down pretty well, it's better safe than sorry."

"I can run back to my apartment and get it," says Cade as he clicks on the PDA a couple more times, before he adds. "Maybe we should pull up the data we have on the cultist from the last incident and see if we can work up a list of known associates?"

OOC

Ok, Cade is attempting to pull up some research that'll give him a good idea how to equip the group for this mission based on previous, similar cases.

Basically, I'm laying the ground work for using my "Plan" class ability later.