ioduanlogs | [MISSION] IN THE SHADOW OF THE DRAGON

Entry tags:

[MISSION] IN THE SHADOW OF THE DRAGON

Characters: All! Those signed up to teams will have comment headers; there will be opportunities for non-teamed characters.
Date: Feb 15-28, running into the first week of March
Location: Around Aifaran
Situation: The Sentry has called on outside help from the Dreamfolk to deal with a challenging situation
Warnings/Rating: None yet, will be added as needed.

In the early morning hours of February 15th, a fire starts at city hall. The blaze burns hot and quick, but fire teams are able to put it out by the time the sun comes up. The Sentry holds a press conference that afternoon, sharing that the fire is determined to be arson. Witnesses describe someone wearing an ill-fitting Sentry uniform hurrying away from the scene.

The Sentry will announce that, due to the strain on their resources dealing with storm recovery, they are commissioning outside assistance to deal with a number of incidents similar to this one. Dreamfolk in particular are being called upon to once again use their unique abilities to aid the archipelago.

Those who report to the Verdant Sentry Headquarters are briefed on the situation: a contingent of the Sentry is departing Aifaran for the Zoech Lowlands to search for the people missing from Cape Averi. The outpost was found empty after the storm; at first this was presumed to be the fault of the Dreaming, but now they aren't so sure.

Those who choose to assist the Verdant Sentry will be given a small stipend and extended a certain degree of authority to act on the Sentry's behalf. The 'deputized' Dreamfolk will be responsible for investigating discrete incidents to help make up for the reduction in Sentry forces in Aifaran. They are being entrusted not only with these cases, but with the reputation of the Sentry itself.

Although they are requesting this assistance, the Sentry remain tight-lipped about Cape Averi beyond the bare-bones logistics. Their suspicions are not made public, and nor will they be shared with the assembled volunteers unless these investigations intersect. Abuse of this power will not be tolerated.

---

OOC Notes: Characters will be provided with tools needed to conduct the investigation, such as gloves and basic forensics gear (fingerprint dust, evidence collection bags, etc). They will also be handed paperwork

If you did not sign your character(s) up for a team, you can submit a summary of what the character will look into and we will provide a reply as to the findings and effects. This will be a one-time thing for these characters in order to maximize the time for the main mission logistics.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Miniplot leader: Seal
Members: Pepper Potts, X, Nita Callahan, Kai

A Sentry station was broken into, and a number of evidence lockers ransacked. It will take at least a day to sort out exactly what was damaged and what is simply… gone. There is some suspicion that this was an inside job, thus bringing in outside help (with oversight, of course).

The ruling theory is that someone's trying to cover their tracks and ensure they can't be prosecuted, but the missing evidence is peculiarly spotty -- rhinn from this case, a broken lock from another, et cetera.

This is Pepper's first real case since the storm - almost everything was put on hold to deal with the disaster. Her superiors are also aware of her recent losses, so it's possible that this is their way of easing her back into things.

The station is of moderate size, covering one of the districts outside of the city's center. It's quieter overall, with a small but dedicated group of officers. Some of them are quite new to the force, but none of them are completely green. There's coffee and tea and water available in the break room, and while these "contractors" are approved and there on official business, there will be at least some grumbling from the Sentry about having outsiders investigate them. The person Pepper greets at the front desk will probably be colder to her companions, but won't say anything truly nasty or get in their way.

After donning her uniform, Pepper heads to the Sentry station early to wait for the group to arrive. Someone points out a small conference room she and the team can take over, and Pepper promptly does so to begin reading over the extended dossier for this case. X and Kai she knows, but the fourth member of this impromptu team is new to her. Before they dive into the deep end of the investigation, a round of introductions is probably called for once they're all here.

Even with the exploring Nita's been doing around the city (and the Turtles in general, though she's made less progress on that front), she still has to make haste to get to the station.

/Excuse me,/ she says to the person at the front desk; explaining herself and her assignment, she heads on back with an additional /Thank you/ once she's been given appropriate directions.

Once she arrives at the conference room, breathing heavily, Nita takes note of everything in the room, the length of the dossier... and the unfamiliar person in front of her.

/Dai Stiho, she greets, making her way over to a chair that isn't quite the nearest to the door.

"I'm Nita. What's your name?"

X arrives only a minute after Nita does, just in time to hear the tail end of her explanation and the directions given to her by the officer at the front desk. Nita heads on back, and the officer's indifferent stare falls on X.

"Hi," X says with a smile. He's still getting used to initiating friendly conversations with members of law enforcement, but he's starting to get the hang of it. He gestures after Nita. "I'm with her."

Pepper's a familiar face too, and X is glad to see her. When he heard Sentry oversight, he'd been expecting to fight someone for everything they uncover -- but Pepper has always struck him as a truth-seeker. He relaxes noticeably, nods at her, and lets the introductions continue without interruption.

Pepper lets the page she's holding fall flat as Nita enters, and then X, getting to her feet with a small smile. She offers her hand to Nita, faint curiosity on her face at the greeting. Unusual, but that was Dreamfolk for you. "Nice to meet you Nita, I'm Pepper Potts. Hi, X. Thanks for volunteering to help with this case."

The redhead gestures to the file she's splayed out across the table. "There's, uh, a fair bit of information already written down if you wanna review it before we go poke around the evidence lockers. We're still waiting for one more person, anyway. Have you guys worked investigations before?"

Nita nods, taking the offered hand and shaking it twice.

"Yeah, but, ah, not here obviously."

And hunting down evidence as part of an errantry probably wouldn't count as professional experience here. Useful, yes, but not official.

"Definitely want to review things first either way."

With that, Nita starts going through the papers within her reach.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry sorry sorry!" Kai says, squeezing into the room and easing the door shut behind her. "I got lost." Not on the way to the station, but once she'd gotten in. The chilly manner of the receptionist hadn't fazed her at all, but her sense of direction had always been lacking.

She scrambles into the nearest chair and perches on it. "Um...hi. Hi, Pepper. Hi, people I don't know. We're ready to get this mystery going, yeah?"

This is someone X hasn't met before. She has long green... hair?... and ears somewhere between an elf's and an aspen's, pointing straight out. X watches her with interest until she mentions getting the mystery going, at which point he collects himself and nods silently in agreement, stepping towards the files spread out on the table. Time to get started.

"Not officially," he answers Pepper's question quietly. "Not like this. Do you have any advice?"

"You know me, Kai," Nita gently points out, smile briefly resurfacing as she looks up from the files.

She returns to reading and silence, though she's very much paying attention to Pepper's next answer. Any advice would be good to have, here.

"Welcome to the party, Kai," Pepper says, and there's some genuine amusement in her tone. This is a good crew of people to be working with, even with a range of experience.

"Well, as far as advice: wear gloves when you touch evidence, take notes, trust your gut if you get a hunch. It might not pan out, but the only way to hone gut instinct is to start using it," she suggests after a moment. "Specifically for this case? You'll probably get a better feel for it when we go hands-on, so I think we can do a short overview intro type thing and then dig in. Sound good?"

"Right! Duh-doi." Kai smacks her forehead. "You were reading, so I didn't see your face so much."

She nods aggressively at Pepper's advice, trying to stamp it into her brain. She can be silly, but she's been on Important Missions before. Not like this, because this is definitely not her forte, but she'll try.

"Alright, so, here's basically what we know so far," Pepper begins, reaching for one of the pages she's set out on the table. "A bunch of evidence from totally separate cases was stolen and the lock-up area was sort of trashed. It took a while to hunt everything down, and it's worth checking to see if there's anything else missing from the records, just in case."

She reads out the list of known items that were stolen: a padlock broken by bolt cutters and a confiscated journal containing family trees with a history of native magic, taken from the safe the padlock belonged to; a set of weighted dice and a bag of several hundred rhinn; and a set of forged documents that faked an official watermark.

"Now, inside the secured area, locks and seals were broken to get through them, but the keypad and lock at the entrance are completely fine. Which means whoever this was probably had the access code and maybe stole some keys," she relates, tapping a set of printed photos of the scene and the undamaged door. "On top of that, the security cams were tampered with and one of the night shift guards looks like they were drugged." Pepper lowers her voice and glances to the hallway. "And two junior officers have been out sick since the break-in. This is why my boss's boss's boss thinks it might have been an inside job. I think it's possible, but I'm not 100% convinced yet. It fits almost too well."

The redhead glances around at each of them. "We've got a couple different leads to pursue, but we don't all have to go together to follow each of them. Do you guys feel up to splitting into two groups? I'd like to go talk to the officers - they might be responsive to someone at the same paygrade as them - and taking another pass at the evidence lockup might turn up something other people missed. We can swap yimo numbers to keep in touch."

Nita frowns, increasingly so as the explanation goes on, nodding at intervals as the details paint a progressively worse picture.

"So it might as likely be a frame-up..."

One more nod.

"I'm up for the splitting, as long as we don't look out of place anywhere we shouldn't draw too much of the wrong attention.""

She's finally gotten her yimo, not just a username setup on the Network, so at least that's sorted.

The whole thing is much more official than X is used to, but if he doesn't think about that part, then the rest makes sense. Everything Pepper says and suggests makes sense. Talk to the officers who might have had something to do with the break-in, look through the lockers one more time, gather more of the pieces and see if they make a picture.

X stirs and steps forward, reaching for his yimo. "I'll join you talking to the officers," he says, "if Nita and Kai are both alright with that."

"Yeah, probably a good idea," Kai says to X. "I probably shouldn't talk to officers. They'd probably think I'm just a dumb kid anyway." And you do nothing to dissuade the notion, Kai.

"I am good at finding stuff," she says, "so looking around's fine by me."

Nita nods - at X's statement, not Kai's; Kai's earns a cautious look.

"My sister would call that quitter talk," she says, "but I think I could help more with the lockers myself, anyhow."

So that was double the agreement.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[MISSION] IN THE SHADOW OF THE DRAGON

TEAM 2 | VERDANT SENTRY HEADQUARTERS: EVIDENCE THEFT

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Because What Is Tag Order. |D

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject