TEXT: Day after the Festivities

[sociallychallenged]

Username: dpdhank@dualislink

My name is Hank Anderson, I'm a patrol officer with Dualis's police. I think I met a few people at the Dualis Days festival, many of them during the unfortunate opening ceremonies.

The police are conducting an official investigation but I want to conduct my own independent investigation. In my experience that usually solves cases a little more quickly. [That's how he and Connor made it as far as they did, superseding what was technically required of them. The end result was also the better result for the world, not the preferred result for the powers that be, too.]

I know some of you were close to the bombing. If you're interested and able to give me some information I'll be in the kitchen on floor six for the rest of the evening.

[Anyone that comes to find him will be lucky. For the moment he'll be listening to some jazz he loaded onto a music player and speaker he found in a thrift shop rather than metal. But you better believe when it's necessary he'll switch to metal if he has to. In the meantime he's also reading an actual paper book, a softcover novel that he was lucky enough to find.]

Comments

ac...tion?

[cadiastands]

[Mira's not really a technophobe. She just believes technology has animist spirits inside that will become offended and stop working if not properly propitiated. Because she's the only person in the city who thinks that, no one's left her any instructions on the appropriate rituals for her smartphone or her desktop...meaning she refuses to touch them and hasn't checked a single message since she got here.

The upshot being she's in the kitchen not to chat with Hank about the bombing, but to get herself a snack. She digs a fruit cocktail cup out of a cabinet and a fork out of a drawer and sits down at the table opposite him.]

Hello.

[Yes, he's reading, but it would be quite rude not to acknowledge him.]

[sociallychallenged]

[He's guessing by the fact that she goes after a snack in the fridge rather than stopping to chat that she's just hungry and not here to drop info, or pick up info or anything.]

Yeah, hey.

[He turns his book over, laying face down on the table and folds his hands on it.]

You uh, hear anything about the bombing?

[He tries anyway, even if it turns out futile.]

[cadiastands]

I was there, if that counts.

[Initially, more of her attention is on peeling back the fruit cup's lid without getting high fructose corn syrup everywhere than is on Hank, but once she's accomplished that, Mira looks back at him politely.]

[sociallychallenged]

[He huffs a grunting sigh, one of those noises someone makes when they're tired in more than just the way of being overworked or underpaid.]

Whoever did it had to be in the crowd. I know that for a fact. I've been trying to find out if anyone saw anything else. Sometimes people don't want their names or faces attached to a clue, so...

[There's still something about that 'Wake Up' that bothers him. Something that reminds him of Markus's words, just with a darker twist.]

There's more to it than I'm being allowed. [Being allowed being the operative word.]

[cadiastands]

["Tired on a metaphysical level" is something Mira understands so thoroughly she doesn't realize there's another state of affairs, and she chews her...whatever these fruits are with a sympathetic expression while she listens to Hank.]

The security arrangements were appalling. The perpetrators could have been anywhere, including on the other side of the city by the time the bomb went off.

text; un: acab

[scathefires]

nah

been here less than a week and ive already had enough facetime with dpd

nice try but hard pass

[sociallychallenged]

DPD in the username stands for Detroit Police Department, I was there before coming here. What did they do? Questioning? Detainment? Arrest? How violent were they?

[God his life is going to be so fucking hard, he can already tell. The problem being that, in its truest form, he likes being a cop. But there's a lot to dislike about it, too. Mostly that other cops don't leave a lot of confidence in talking to other people carrying a badge.]

[scathefires]

yeah well acab stands for all cops are bad so it doesnt really matter to me which d your pd is from

[yyyep jason has met a lot of those other cops, both here and back home, and he is not a fan.]

those creep robots tased me stuck me full of sedatives and hauled me down to the station for questioning when literally all i did was walk into the park

[wearing a winter coat and a shirt with a huge bloodstain. details, right?]

didnt think id ever have the displeasure of meeting cops that can give gcpd a run for their money but robocops are a whole different level of bullshit

[sociallychallenged]

Great, good start to a lifelong fucking friendship. But I still want to know something.

[GCPD. Is this Gotham City, like that other kid mentioned? Is he for real going to have to deal with mentions of Gotham City. Jesus fucking Christ.]

Did you see how many people the iterations brought in? Are they targetting just new people or were there a lot being brought in specifically from the park? I want to figure out if they were only grabbing suspects that were a certain radius from the stage. Pretty sure they must have been.

[scathefires]

i didnt come here to make friends hankie

[yup, another kid from gotham. go ahead and ask him about it, jason already knows his life is a comic book.]

were you not paying attention when i said they sedated me

i was too busy being unconscious to see who else was being taken where and why

didnt come to until i was locked up in an interrogation room

[helpdesk_hero]

There is a small bit of David that wonders, for a half a minute, of the strangely worded invitation, is in fact some sort of trap. Even has reasons for it. First, what cop immediately works to undermine or potentially impede an official police investigation? Second, what genius actually openly posts about it given the people responsible are clearly capable of hacking and this network is by no means secure.m? And third, well, who was to say that new arrivals had any information at all?

Still, David isn’t the sort to let this stuff slide, and with the invitation there he tromps up the stairs toward the sixth floor kitchen. And he’s lucky for the jazz, unable to keep a pleased smile from his lips. If nothing else, the man has taste in music.

“You’re Officer Anderson?”

[sociallychallenged]

He really, truly, deeply wishes there had been a quicker way than a network post to talk to people. But he is a cop, and as a cop he can say, 'Hey, meet me in relative private', and as a cop if he gets yelled at for it, it's him being yelled at for it and not some civilian taking flack for their initiative.

So he'll accept that it's stupid, he knows that it's stupid, but it's what he's got.

The music is just loud enough to sort of garble speech if you're far enough way, though at a fine volume if you're close up. But even if it's not a trap, David is the first one to take the proverbial bait. Hank looks up from the book he's reading and shoves it away.

"Yeah, that'd be me. Think you might be able to help me out?"

[helpdesk_hero]

“Well that depends, doesn’t it?” David asks as he settles down in a chair of his own. This next part sure is the tricky one. “How likely are you to attempt someone who has been here for only half a day longer than this party has been going on just because his life experience means he knows a lot about bombs, hacking, and public attacks against minority populations?”

Because back home David is more or less on the books, some books, as a terrorist. Mostly through choosing not to live in a country that was happy to not defense mutant kind.

[sociallychallenged]

"Not likely." Hank says bluntly. "No confirmations, but this must have taken weeks to months of prep work from a group of well-organized people. So I'm pretty sure you're in the clear."

But someone with those kind of skills would come in handy.

"Which side of those experiences have you been on?"

There are some post-its crammed into his novel. It's not just a book he's reading, but one that he's keeping notes in.

[helpdesk_hero]

“You want to know if I’m a terrorist,” David asks with a smirk. At least the man is logical enough to come to that conclusion. Some hope for the police here then. The question is how much he can really say.

“Part of the targeted minority group. Though as part of my skill set I can say that I know a lot about bomb construction. And that group? They wanted minimal civilian damage. They wanted to make a statement and used the mayor to do it. So far as I can tell they didn’t seem to do any of the things one does to maximize civilian damage. If they had it would have been a lot harder for me to stop the few instances of bleeding caused directly by the shrapnel. They would have laced it with something like rat poison, a chemical of which discourages clotting. And if it was a full infrastructure attack for a larger message, there would have been a follow up bomb, along either likely major civilian egress points, or along first responder entry points.”

Maybe David had been thinking about this a lot. Too much. But he has fought against invasions, anti-mutant movements, and all of the mess that happened in San Francisco before Utopia was established. These were things he had learned to survive. And tactical things Scott Summers would have pointed out.

Action

[aleifr]

[Much like his roommate, Aleifr isn't really a technophobe. However, up until his arrival in Dualis, the most advanced piece of technology he'd ever encountered were the riggings on a wyrmship. Smartphones, desktops ... they were beyond his ken, and Nero cautioning him about the perils of angering machine spirits had only made him more leery of fiddling about with them.

[He did, however, see Hank's message in his smartphone's notifications. He didn't reply, but he made a note of it. So, as Hank settles in with his paperback, Aleifr makes his way down to the kitchen.

[He seems perplexed for a moment as he enters the kitchen, eyes scanning around for the source of the seemingly sourceless music until they settle on the speaker sitting on the table. He saw devices like it around the stage in the square and dotted throughout the carnival. Didn't know they got that small, though. Interesting, but not why he's here, and so his attention shifts to the man sitting beside it.]

Anderson?

Action

[sociallychallenged]

[An increasing amount of little post-it notes are erupting from his novel, little notes he's keeping in one source. He puts it down when Aleifr comes in, looking like some sort of fucking European warrior in build. That or a wrestler. One in the same, really.]

[He stands and holds out a hand to shake.]

That'd be me. Good to meet you.

[aleifr]

[Aside from the 'European' part, he's not all that wrong either way.

[Aleifr crosses the room, offering a curt nod in response to the greeting and giving the man's hand a firm shake.]

Aleifr.

[An introduction every bit as brusque as you might expect from his stony expression.]

[sociallychallenged]

[Hank sits again, a pretty stocky man himself, but now with a fair amount of padding. He sits and pulls up his chair a little further.] I would rather have kept it a little more private, but this was the only way I could get ahold of people in the building.

You notice anything at the scene?

[He's willing to share what he's figured out. He's just wanting to hear Aleifr's discover first. It might take some explanation, but he doesn't know that yet. Luckily Hank's gotten used to explaining, if in the opposite direction.]

[aleifr]

[Aleifr shakes his head, pulling out a chair for himself.]

Not personally. Too far back to see much of the attack itself.

[He settles into his seat, frowning slightly as the wooden chair groans under his weight. It was built with smaller men in mind, like everything else in this damned place.]

Talked to a few people afterwards though, and they said this wasn't the first.

[merged]

[ She can hear the rhythmic swing of the music from the hallway. She assumes someone has set up to cook and considers turning back to slink off to one of the other kitchens, preferably an empty one, but it's not as if she'll always be able to avoid interacting with her fellows. She swallows her nerves down as she enters, expecting to see someone bouncing to the music in front of the stove; it's a surprise to see someone sitting down, reading.

Her original intentions are cast aside for a moment in favor of satiating her curiosity. ]

Kind of a weird place to chill. [ She'd seen the post on the network earlier but the two don't connect immediately, if only because she skimmed and then disregarded it entirely (it's not like she knows anything that'd be useful). ]

[sociallychallenged]

Well, you know. Sometimes you're just too lazy to make a trip down the hall to the microwave. [he jokes with mild sarcasm, mouth quirking in resignation.]

Been waiting for someone to come by and hopefully give me leads on the bombing. I got a job as a cop here. Forgot how much shit being a beat cop was. All the way down at the bottom with no access to the good information but all the access to the moody cynics.

[He looks back to his book.]

Don't worry, I don't blame them. I just gets tired of being fuckin' egged at some point when I really do just wanna help catch an asshole.

[merged]

[ Her lips twitch with a hint of a grin, though it's gone as quickly as it appears. Maybe he's smart to join the force but it seems like a dangerous endeavor, less because of the city's clear terrorist issue and more because it's so foreign. Every time she's left the dorm, she's gotten lost.

As he speaks, she seems to pay more attention, her interest piqued. ]

Do you really think it was done by one person? [ It's clear that's not the direction she's leaning but, given he's wiggled into a position of authority, no matter how far down the rung, he might (probably does) know more than her. ]

[sociallychallenged]

I think the bombing part was done by one guy. I think it was a coordinated effort. Four to six people I'd bet. Someone to deactivate cameras. Someone to make the broadcast. At least one somewhere as back-up and cover.

But the one guy is the one that would have absolutely been at the scene, and the one I stand the best chance of finding.

[He's happy to work with people, usually, but without his partner on the force, it still feels like an "I" situation.]

Anyway, sorta workin' on it. I think I got a good start.

[merged]

It seems kind of like an impossible task. [ She admits with minor hesitation. His job is daunting, especially if he doesn't have the ear of anyone higher up. She's not sure how he can even care given how new they are to the city but, hell, it's kind of admirable. ]

Nobody really seems too bothered by it. [ And that kind of bothers her. ] If this had happened where I'm from, the whole fucking city would just stop for days. And then get really patriotic.

[ But, you know, details. ]