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

[aleifr]

All you can do. [Aleifr replies, stroking his beard and leaning forward to rest his weight on his elbows.] Remember them. Talk of them. So they don't get lonely down there.

[He's distant for a second, but Hank's next statement snapped him back to reality. It takes him a moment to respond - as though he has to process what he just heard.]

Come again?

[His eyes narrow. Suspicious. Not entirely trusting of what he's just heard, or maybe not comfortable with it. Hard to tell.]

[sociallychallenged]

Someone told me that they were detained by the iterations- robot cops -at the event because they came in covered in blood. The head brought them after he was stabbed in the fuckin' throat, but he came in intact.

The head, however, remembered to leave him conveniently covered in blood. Because, as well fuckin' know, that's not gonna attract attention.

So yeah. Can't decide whether that's a favor or not.

[Because some people would want to see lost loved ones again, some people would want to see their enemies stay dead, and particular angsty assholes would prefer too stay dead if it came down to that.]

[aleifr]

[Aleifr snarls, shaking his head.]

Not fucking right.

[Said with distaste that probably goes beyond annoyance at the stupidity of resurrecting someone to get them arrested.]

[sociallychallenged]

Maybe, but at least I got a feeling that this wasn't a Pet Sematary scenario. [Because Jason seemed like a regular dick and not a possessed dick. Which he can handle. Regular dicks are just fine.]

Uh, Pet Sematary is this... [book?] ...old story where this guy buried his kid in a place where the dead were meant to rise and they came back possessed by something. They weren't even technically alive. They were just moving like they were. It's not a true story, just one of those cautionary tales about how your greed shouldn't outweigh your common sense. Even if it's for someone you love.

This just seems like "hey, have a brand new body, on the house! No clean clothes though, because fuck you."

Fuckin' makes no sense either way but in this case I'm not gonna doubt it. Just... [He wonders if they're really them. Or if they're just copies of themselves. A big question, right there.] This bomber is the easier thing to deal with.

[aleifr]

[Aleifr arches an eyebrow. Doesn't matter what it seems like, magic is dangerous. If you don't watch it and soothe it, keep it sweet, it has a way of turning on you. Turning all the good that it's done to you.

[Basically, Pet Sematary makes a very literal kind of sense to him, and he's very skeptical that whatever the Head had done is actually harmless.

[But Hank is right that the bomber is easier to deal with. Aleifr's no gothi. Magic, demons, and spirits are beyond his ken. Doesn't know what to do about it other than stay clear, so he nods.]

Agreed. Once we find them, that is.

[sociallychallenged]

Did they tell you how many people were hurt before, by the way?

This bomb was meant to hurt the people on the stage, at the very least. [The mayor specifically, he guesses?] Did anyone mention people being hurt by the train bombings?

[He needs to at least know if that came up.]

[aleifr]

No. [Aleifr shakes his head.] At the very least no one that I spoke to had heard of anyone being wounded in the earlier attacks.

[sociallychallenged]

Huh....

So they wanted to get attention, but they didn't go out of their way to injure people. That, or they did a damn good job of covering up any injuries or deaths.

[His face twists up in a hard, contemplating grimace. All steeped brows and hard frown and palpable, unhappy thought.]

There's another story in my world. About a cop who found out that a rich man had done awful things with his daughter, and that poor woman had a kid of her own because of it. So the cop tries to get her out of this bad situation. It doesn't work, the woman gets killed, the woman's little girl gets given back to the terrible rich man, and they just tell the cop that he can't do anything to people that powerful.

That story always pissed me the fuck off.

[Meaning that, very likely, he's not going to accept any 'It's Chinatown, Jake' sorts of ideas if they get thrown at him.]

[aleifr]

[That story ... that one seems to make less sense to Aleifr. His head cocks to one side like that of a curious dog, and his eyes narrow.]

Cops.

[It's still a concept he's becoming familiar with. Organized law enforcement didn't exist on Fenris. The Jarl's men kept his peace, and the rest was sorted out between individuals.]

Supposed to uphold the law, yes?

[sociallychallenged]

Yeah. This guy was a different sort. [He almost goes through the explanation of paying someone to dig up dirt on a person so you can take legal action yourself. But it doesn't matter at the moment.]

But that's what they're supposed to do.

[Grimly. And there are a lot of thoughts tied into it. Obviously these bombers hate that kind of story, too, and it seems like they're kind of treating everyone as complicit if they're in the wrong place at the wrong time. The other though? He's not planning to let it go. And he'll hang on to whatever he finds out.]

[aleifr]

Then why's the rich man still breathing?

[Where he comes from, if you cross those lines, if you do that evil, you die. That simply.]

[sociallychallenged]

Because he was a very rich man, and men with that much power know how to take advantage of it. I guess I was thinking of all the reasons there's so little fucking information out there.

[He wonders, legitimately, how many Jakes backed off their investigations before. Or how many went down with the effort. It's not only the Head that he's thinking of, either. He's also thinking of how the bombers might have successfully hidden themselves for so long.]

You'd be surprised how many worlds out there have people unable to resist or they just refuse to see the flaws in some full-of-themselves asshole.

[aleifr]

If they can fight back and they don't, they're fools and cowards.

[Aleifr folds his massive arms across his broad chest, scowling a little deeper.]

Doesn't how much money someone has, or how well liked they are. You do wrong, you pay for it.

[That's how it works. It isn't always immediate, it isn't always easy, but wrongs are avenged. By people, by wraiths, by the gods themselves, but they are avenged.]

If my father did something like that with one of my sisters, my mother would have gelded him and his family would have held him down for her.

[sociallychallenged]

Yeah, I agree. My world is, unfortunately, full of fools and cowards and people that don't have any hope left. They don't think they can stop people like that because they've been brow-beaten into submission.

[He says that part grimly.]

Makes it hard to fight when you don't have any hope for winning. Or you're worried about what you'll have to lose.

Probably why, if there's something going on here, people aren't gonna wanna be anxious to help out.

[aleifr]

If you're meant to die, you will. If you're not, you won't.

[Aleifr shrugs. If you do your part, the rest is in the hands of the gods. Doesn't make much sense to worry about it, in his eyes.]

[sociallychallenged]

It's not their lives they're usually worried about losing. Poverty can be a hell of a thing where I'm from. A fate worst than death.

But still. Good to know someone around here will probably decide to do the noble thing.

[He says noble. He's not sure that noble will always be 'right' but there's no guarantee that deciding between bombers and dictators could ever be 'right'.]