Fetzen

The Sunday Group

Fynn LaPlace

Hey Eleanor,

Mrs. Primrose and I are on our way to 'Madame Lafitte's' just in case you want to know. Would appreciate if you'd call back because we're worried.

P.S.: You could finally grant me the budget to develop my gun blast recognition software. Like voice recognition, you remember ? Just triggering on shots fired and certain people moaning in agony instead to send automated notifications...

This was so completely unnecessary! People actually having to call others manually in order to inform them of trouble just felt like such an antiquated thing at times. Much less antiquated however was the small drone Fynn started to assemble on his lap while they were driving to the club.

"Nothing like good reconnaissance..." he mumbled as he inserted the battery pack and gave the camera lens a decent cleanup. He could have thrown the thing out the window and used the remote control to guide it all around the traffic jams and red lights to the club directly, but experience dictated that other drivers on the adjacent lane could respond in a rather confused and irritated manner upon flying objects appearing in front fo their wind shield. Also he had somewhat promised Primrose to do some online research as well and couldn't do both at the same time.

With his rather large laptop on his hands, Fynn browsed for the club's own homepage at first. "Seems pretty standard to me, though I can already tell I won't like the music played there. However there's a member login. Maybe they're hiding something behind that ? Could try to find a way in." There also was the darknet, a rather abstract but also vast space Fynn was not unfamiliar with, even though more on the investigative side than anything else. Aside from a bunch of drug dealers stupid enough to openly announce they'd sell their stuff at some dark hours near the club's array of garbage dumps however there was nothing conspicuous to find it seemed.

The Five Senses

Týfurkh

"Says the right one..."

Týfurkh's voice was a tad more cold than had been the norm for the giant man so far. It was not entirely intentional however for the fight, the lingering feeling to suffocate that had started with the deep dent in his chestplate and ended in a real struggle for life and death entangled in too many tendrils to count, and last but not least the sight of way too much disgusting rot to stick with easily had not only pretty much drained his reserves, but also whatver kind of good mood had been left.

It seemed however that Chres was alright, despite some nasty crack he thought his ears had picked up over all the chaos and the obvious pain. The other seemed to be fine as well, at least as far as one could determine that externally. Týfurkh did not expect any of them to actually feel particularly well at this point though. This had been... a bit of a rough chain of events to be honest.

"If I might ask a few questions ? First of all: Who, or what, are you ? A semi omnipotent being because you're so amused despite the severity of events and also manage to pop up and disappear seemingly at random ? Then I'd be happy to know whether this 'shadow metal' -- did you just call it that way, Chres ? -- is actually as dangerous as it looks and why it is here. It doesn't look like something O'Kal has eaten for lunch before he decided to turn into an abomination, though who am I to even try and judge a madman. And then..."

Týfurkh was slightly hesitant for how to formulate the next question. He didn't want to come off as rude, but also not as someone who'd accept weak-ish answers for softened up questions easily at this point.

"How does it come that you decided to contact me ? I don't know about the others, but neither have I seen them nor this whole town before and I probably would not know any of them without you. Is there something special about me I don't know of, or was it just a 'lucky', random circumstance ?"

The Sunday Group

Fynn LaPlace

"Madame Lafitte's ? Sounds French..." Fynn would not have been Fynn had he not brought some kind of electronic device with him that was suited to do some more research on the spot, but he found it difficult to fully concentrate on the screen right now. Primrose, she... she had actually liked the pizza ? He had honestly not expected that to happen, but the way she had not hesitated to take the first bite only to then put it onto her desk almost as if she needed to build up some distance between it and her mouth so not to be fully occupied with eating... Interesting!

This was not the right time for doing some data mining on each other's eating habits however and it only took Fynn's hands a few swiping moves to bring up a map of the city with a lot of routes put into the car's navigation system drawn on top of it. Fynn turned the screen around to show it to Primrose, then zoomed in with his fingers onto a particular spot on the map until the name 'Madame Lafitte's' popped up. The line clearly did stop and go from there and more than once.

"Looks like our victim has been there several times indeed. It might be worth investigating even though I'd not be looking forward to it. I'm... not exactly the club kind of guy." Fynn tried to force a smile upon his face, but the utter failure to pull through with that entirely told a story about the truth in his mind. Buildings filled to the brim with cigarette smoke, loud music and probably tons of alcohol where not what he believed to be his forte.

Then he darted a glance onto her workstation's screen and read the words 'Aua, das tat weh.' she had mentioned. "I have no idea what that means, but if I might take a photo of that and dump it into my favorite AI transl... Oh, that was quick! Erm... it's German, and the one who has written this line complains about having endured pain. So... maybe this club is actually dangerous ?"

Of course it was if it had something to do with their case! The guy was dead after all.

"Mal ? Jaelle ? Hm! That's a good question!" Now, of course, he could try and hack into what was pretty much his own software he had installed at least on Eleanor's phone in order to secretly access what her phone knew about her location, but there were options less prone to getting himself into trouble. Just calling her, for example.

Fynn put his phone onto Primrose's desk and activated the speakerphone function. Hopefully their boss would report in quickly, but so far only the usual beeping sound of a connection waiting to be established was to be heard. Slightly nervously, Fynn looked at Primrose and arched one of his eyebrows a little.

O R I F L A M M E

_{Location: Loriind'ton
Event: Tiims'archa race}

---

Whenever Otios entered some place he believed he might have seen before, he tried to remember the occasion and in particular the time when that had occurred. Knowing where and when oneself had been was an important thing for anybody who had to live in the steady, subtle fear of being remembered by somebody whom one might have pissed off a little too much -- even if said fear was very much one voluntarily accepted by oneself. Also only the greatest fools thought that people's pockets and houses would just refill themselves with valuables as if by magic, no matter how often one returned to loot them.

Already on first glance however, Loriindton gave the impression of being an exception to this rule: The whole place looked as if conjured out of nothing and with said nothing then having been sealed away behind an unnatural, evergreen curtain that required gods knew how much magical practitioning to maintain. Could a city bristling with such an overabundance of carts, wagons, crago, traders and artisans ever be depleted of oblivious people one could still steal a lot from ? Maybe not. And the fact that there was no lack of huusoi only added bonus points to this for it would absolutely save him from the questionable morale of stealing from his own people, just in case...

In fact, the density of this settlement almost felt a bit too intense. The light would drown out what little starlight had a chance to come through the oversized canopy at night and for something like true, fresh and untouched air one probably had to wait for the next violent storm to force its way through the maze of streets and hanging walkways. There certainly was a bit of irony to the fact that a city that was literally built in and out of a forest smelled as if burning through a whole forest in its many furnaces each day.

---

If there was something that had serious potential to outline the vast difference between human and yasoi approaches to life, then it was what the latter tended to do with the fancy snails of their homeland. Only a species with a life expectancy greatly increased and, at the same time, a lot less of that inherent creed for combat, violence and drama could honestly arrange for something that involved no speeds greater than the abysmally small and still call it a 'race'. And only such a species could then even go so far and sort of professionalize the whole thing.

Just how much time did it take to breed tiims'archa ? And then to sort out which of the snails was good for racing and which not if every test run did take several hours to complete ? Okay, one could attend to other stuff in the meantime, but what about actual training if anything like this was actually possible with these creatures ?

Despite being a Yasoi himself, it just felt unimaginable for Otios to ever join this kind of business -- even assuming that he would cease living among humans and thereby stop being influenced by their much more fast-paced style of living immediately and for all time to come. Frankly speaking, he had had not the slightest clue about which of the snails in the competition to put his money on, but he had just done so anyway even if just for honouring the fact that there was at least some activity that didn't involve eating those innocent beings.

Okay, and he had needed at least some thrill, too! And he did remember than the reason they had come here was not to endulge themselves, but to avert a potential disaster. The actual race track was a bit less crowded than the humongously large banquet and it also was a bit out of the Master of Mockery's range so people's ears just had to be less saturated and more open for his own words. The more widespread the probably false belief that loud talking would make the tiims'archa nervous and less performant was, the better! Noticing something out of the ordinary here, from an elevated position on the stands, was just more feasible.

About half an hour after the probably least flamboyant of all racing starts he had ever witnessed, Otios could see the bright red snail of his chosing tugging along nicely. It was not the first one, but clearly in the leading part of the overall field which was now approaching the first water section. He felt ready to cheer just like the rest of the crowd, but as the huge Yasoi readied his arms to do so he noticed something thought to have been left behind in the small room he had rented: one of the wires was still in his pocket.

An idea flashed through his mind: water! He had to get closer to it... to the outer edge of the other stand that had been placed a mere couple of feet away from the pond! Many other spectators had the same idea at the same time, but simply because they wanted to stay as close to the 'racing' snails as possible. Otios had to dig his way through the crowd employing his size advantage shamelessly enough to trigger some serious complaints, but he could hardly care less about those few anonymous bystanders right now for he felt thrilled about his own mental concoction.

There, at the very corner of the stand and almost in danger of accidentally being pushed off it and falling onto the track, he was delighted to see that around the water was just plenty of grass, stones and even mushrooms. A lot of stuff to conceal the nasty little connection he'd now establish between his hand and the pond the tiims'archa were headed for. It merely took one sudden move of his hand which he had retracted back into his sleeve to give the small loop of wire enough momentum to start unfolding and rolling along until its end submerged into the water.

He knew the ground connection here, on the stand an in his boots, was anything but good, but for what little stimulus he intended to apply hardly anything better was really needed. Now he only had to wait until the red snail was out of the water and the rest still in. The big question was however: Would his gentle 'stimulus' work as intended and slow down the competitors or at least disorient them so they'd no longer go the straight route, but try to get out of the discomfort zone sideways first ? Or would it make them actually creep along faster ? And, depending on what would happen, would then anybody notice that something was just a bit too odd and become suspicious ?

There always was a way of making things more interesting!

The Five Senses

Týfurkh

Týfurkh, whose armor had been damaged and breathing impaired by the seed, had sought shelter behind what looked like bookshelf long abandoned. An eerily familiar situation behind a barrier that looked even less sturdy then the one he had used in his first encounter with a sightless, but this time with rotten tomes added to the mix! However, the roar of the seed after two more of its ugly hearts had been forced to stop beating caught his attention and so he dared to stop hiding. The giant rose like a phoenix from the ashes -- or in his case rather trash -- and pulled a not so slight cloud of stench behind him. Unfortunatenly though he perfectly knew that things such as 'suffocation' did probably not exist in the seed's wicked existence.

Pain however seemed to do, and it was fairly obvious that right now that was pretty intense factor for the seed to consider. He had not seen how Chres' had thrown some salt, but the way the tentacles now lumbered around rather aim- and helplessly was such a stark contrast to the highly aggressive, vicious demeanor they had shown off previously, that the opportunity was fairly obvious. And then there was Chres' call for help.

Quite a lot more sluggishly than the other pactmakers might have become used to with regard to someone whose sheer size deprived him of a lot of agility even in peak condition, Týfurkh approached the mess of flesh, debris and tendrils in the cellar's center. His breathing was painful, but his arms still worked fine. Týfurkh dug his hands into the skull's mouth and leaned backwards to amplify his pull by means of his weight. "Rip that abomination into pieces once you get at it!" he groaned.

The Sunday Group

Fynn LaPlace

Only now it was that Fynn could feel the small beads of sweat that had formed on his forehead and in his neck in full spite of the aircon running. Behind her charming appearance, Primrose certainly was a force to be reckoned with and the IT specialist had not been looking forward to taking the full brunt of a nicely executed verbal offensive. It seemed however that, for now, both he and Choppy had been spared from his coworker's wrath.

"That was what I had planned to do next." Fynn replied appreciatively. He was looking forward to... getting himself out of the way, or rather his alter ego whose appearance had been quite short-lived and no less superficial fortunately. Hiding in the fortress that was his office, feasting upon the vast supply of electronics and data and feeling safe behind the fact that others could not so easily understand his algorithms was just the thing he had hoped for.

"I will tell you once I've found out something interesting." Having said this, Fynn began his retreat with his phone firmly in his hand to place an order for pizza. There was a small restaurant that had become his favorite not just for the taste of the food, but also for some additional options such as 'drone delivery'. No need to take an elevator down or to expose his eating habits to anyone else by letting a foreign guy walk around the offices with a stack of pizza in his hands. An open window was all that was needed and really, his office could use some fresh air anyway!

A few minutes later however, he had already descended into a state of focus onto the three screens in front of him so deep that the sound of the incoming drone nearly failed to grab his attention. Or perhaps it was just that a drone approaching said window no longer was much on an uncommon event for him ? The fast food cast a smile on his face, but so did another discovery... He took the whole pizza package with him towards Primrose's part of the building, but at least took the time to knock at her door politely before entering.

"Hey! Did you know that the car had a built-in navigation system ?" and his teeth snatched away another small bit of pizza before he continued: "I got the record of destinations and routes the vicitm requested recently. If we..." -- a small bit of chewing interrupted Fynn -- "if we correlate the places in the city where he was over the last couple of days or weeks with your findings, we could narrow down the list to a set of places with an increased likelihood of being actually related to the case."

Fynn stood there halfway in the door for a few more moments, then stepped further into the room. "Want some, too ? It's delicious! Oh, erm... we might also have a chance to find out where the poor guy lived. Don't they say that the murderers often come from within the victim's own family ?"

O R I F L A M M E

---

Normally, a journey from Relouse to Loriindton, or from an arbitrary place within Parrench to any other arbitrary place within Parrench for that matter, would hardly have been worth remembering for long since there was just the lack of anything special to it. These were not normal times however, and the way things stood gave Otios the steady feeling of an eerie stalker being after him even though it did not have even the mildest form of stealth to it. He knew the Eskand had not truly been stopped and by now were most likely fanning out from their bridgeheads. He also had no reason to expect their leaders to care about anything like 'coherence' very much, so the raiding, looting and random destruction certainly was going on. But just by how many miles behind their little traveling party ? How far had they already eaten into Parrench territory ? The idea of falling asleep only to wake up in the hands of these barbarians, or not to wake up at all anymore, caused Otios to stay awake for much longer periods than he'd usually do.

Maybe this was kind of a paranoia ? Yet at the same time Otios could justify himself by thinking that paranoia also was at the core of every intruder's business. Not to fear the unforeseen presence of others could, sooner or later, only end in ultimate disaster for his kind.

The further they moved away from Relouse, the more another thought came into Otios' mind as well: He had been among those Yanii for a long time, much longer than was usual for the typical Yasoi. When not thinking about the Eskand or looking at the increasingly nice landscape around them, Otios secretly prepared an entire barrage of arguments to be launched just in case anyone would dare to claim these cavemen had influenced him and ultimately dragged his intellect and social behavior down into their dirty den. Hopefully he'd never, ever, have to use them. A lack of authority and credibility among his own people was pretty much the last thing he deemed useful for the task they were relocating to.

Still it really didn't take long for Otios to deviate from his fellow Yasoi' behavior once the first tiims'archa shed some fancy light onto the otherwise dark forest ground and told a story about just how close they had already come to their destination. With more digust than awe, he watched how the others pretty mercilessly 'hunted' them down at a literal snail's pace, only to extinguish their little lights by cooking and eating them. It wasn't like Otios didn't like their taste for he had eaten them on earlier occasions as well, but just during those he had actually found them to be way too cute -- and useful -- to just consume them.

"Niico fayil luun'ithan, wiip nar tiims'archa!" Otios started a rhyme of his own, one that probably had a bit of a higher range than usual due to his size. It definitely reached someone else whose voice he couldn't identify: "Wiip nar tiims'archa ? Yax joi sem’proisha!"

Otios knew that there were other Yasoi in his own family who indeed had not liked the taste of the shiny snails in their early days, but later had become rather passionate eaters. He did not know it, but if that phenomenon was more widespread among the local population, then the statement made indeed sense.

"Niico fayil luun'ithan, nar tar, tarsii, tallo." the unknown voice added in return. "Nar tar, tarsii, tallo ? Chel nan najo!" and Otios laughed. He perfectly knew that, in terms of colors, he had gone far beyond beatable for his previous collection efforts had turned the bit of tree around him into a small, but all the more paradox solar system: He was sort of a giant, non-illuminated planet at the center and at least a dozen of differently colored tiims'archa emulated small stars circling around him. They only needed the occasional nudge to send them back into a proper orbit so no slime was in danger of touching his gear, but the many leaves Otios had gathered made sure they'd not run away, but stay within a short crawl's reach of their preferred food.

Unfortunately it seemed that there was way more than just one stranger present in the vicinity for more voices were to be heard soon, and upon learning that Lady Talit was present, things escalated pretty quickly. Had this entire thing been supposed to be a sort of a low profile affair ? Well if worst came to worst, that would be going out of the window first! At least the Lady could have decided to let others go in front of her instead of taking the lead herself. It was an unnecessary danger and, given her age and otherwise apparent wisdom, she clearly should have left the need to display what she still could do with disabled limbs behind. Or maybe it was just his own paranoia hitting him again: Those they were suddenly hurrying to, by all statistical means, were most likely a group of harmless fellows who simply enjoyed the night the same way he and those around him had done, too.

Otios did take a slightly different route though so they were not all bunched up and an easy target for whatever kind of shit could possibly happen. It could never hurt to have a back door of some sorts...

The Sunday Group

So just to be clear... rather than trying to talk to the witnesses we all decided to go back to headquarters?

@Penny

As I tried to describe in my previous most, Fynn really would have liked to pay a visit to the gas station and get his hands on the CCTV recordings and other stuff, but also was under the impression that the cops might have just the same idea so the confrontation Eleanor tried to avoid by buying time would just happen there instead of the accident site and ultimately be caused by him. So he decided against that and drove straight back to the offices in order to have a deeper look into the data from the car he did not yet have the opportunity to analyze in detail on site.

I hope that decision was within reasonable bounds :)

If I might try and propose a solution: Any potential clue that cannot be retrieved from the gas station right now because many of our characters are already back at HQ could still be tried and retrieved later from the police who might have done the job in the meantime. Either by just going there and talking to them in the charming enchanting manner our characters have to offer and/or by not so perfectly legal intrusion, be it physically or via the internet.

So far I imagined the HQ to be pretty much standard offices rented from some company that either doesn't know or doesn't care to ask questions about all the modifications potentially going on in there. I really do like the suggestion of them having been an abandoned floor though!

The Sunday Group

Fynn LaPlace

---

Fynn's white sneakers came to a sudden and no less skidding stop on the office kitchen's ceramic floor tiles as he heard the unmistakable outcry of his colleague. Had they not been pretty white themselves and outfitted with a smooth surface on top of that, he might very well have left some mild rubber marks there that moment.

The IT specialist had started his search here, in one of areas most commonly used by everyone, for just finding Choppy there would have been the easiest imaginable fix for his quite acute issue. If his Arthropleura wasn't idling around here, or in the elevators, or just some random piece of corridor, then he'd have to bite into the very sour apple and invent some fake reason in order to get every single of the other rooms. Also he still was in need of some coffee that could just as well be consumed while on this top-priority job. Now however it seemed that Primrose had been quicker than him. Fynn was happy about the prospect of hours of frantic searching no longer looming over his head, but he was definitely not looking forward to the few moments of lambasting Primrose would happily unleash against him.

Fynn's facial expression therefore perhaps looked more like some shitty computer game's inept attempt to execute a smiling animation than the real thing as he approached the vertically mobile disaster zone called 'elevators'. How the hell had Chobby gotten in there ? The whole team had been out of office so nobody could have called the elevator to stop at this floor, and Choppy certainly wasn't tall enough to push any of those buttons itself... Even if just for debugging his robot pet he certainly had to have a look into the elevator's logs -- assuming that bloody thing had any.

"I'm sorry! I'm really sorry!" Fynn exclaimed and was quick to try and reanimate Choppy by waving his hands in front of its bug eyes. Well, at least these were not as fake as some other things for these technical marvels indeed had quite a few cameras facing into different directions to give more of an allround view! However even some gentle prodding against the polymer carapace did not instigate any movement to occur.

"Erm... do you know that there's a strong correlation between the speed at which the internal batteries drain and the amount of dirt on the floor it's moving over and has to suck in ? So, let's see it this way: at least our part of the building has become a bit more tidy now!"

Fynn reached into his pocket, but found nothing but emptyness. Damn! That second battery pack was still lying around in his office. Normally that would have been a far cry from a problem, but what if Primrose would turn her threat into action and indeed push the elevator button to get herself and Choppy to the rooftop while he was absent for half a minute ?

"I... I strongly suggest not flinging it off the roof! There's absolutely no guarantee that Choppy won't remain functional after that fall and..." Suddenly, Fynn's so far anything but chesty voice turned into something much darker, and if one looked closely into his eyes just at the right moment, one could see how his pupils became narrow dots and his knuckles turned white due to inner tension in his hands. "...there's no guarantee for you to remain functional for long should I find Choppy's debris down there!"

Fynn shook is head. This was not an appropriate time for this! He had to suppress the urge for it was fairly obvious to his inner self that his alter ego would just stop apologizing and instead point out the woman's ignorance towards his work with pinpoint aggression.

"What I meant was... Choppy, if still in working condition, might subsequently continue on his quest and maybe end up in an open-topped car, for example ? Imagine somebody driving on the highway and suddenly this robot you complain about starts crawling from the back seats down along the center console and onto the driver's feet! The driver then might be eager to find the person responsible for putting Choppy into places he was never meant to go!"

Fynn reached for the robot's head and started dragging the thing out of the cabin and down the corridor towards his office. While having to bend down in order to stay in arm's reach of his creation, he apologized once more towards Primrose. That day was ruined for sure... and now he had all reason to look forward even less towards the meeting he still expected to come!

The Sunday Group

Fynn started sweating. According to his inner expectations, at least one member of the Sunday Group might have easily succumbed to the temptation of blaming his lack of exercise for this, but Fynn himself more felt like just working damn fast at the moment. In the heat! Under time pressure!

Hadn't his ears picked up Jaelle mentioning something about Primrose having heard Eleanor saying something about witnesses at a gas station or the like ? Even the most run-down gas station had CCTV these days, so somehow obtaining this data right away would have been beneficial for sure. Unfortunately though, given that the whole team by now was not only chasing a culprit, but also had to get away from the official police arriving, that was a retrieval operation to be deferred to a later date -- and probably from a very different source that would require way more of his hacking skills if neither verbal convincing nor another miracle coming from the Sunday Group's higher ups would work.

The IT specialist felt a fair degree of frustration coming up as he was forced to leave all the evidence behind. Getting that from the cops was just so tedious and introduced so many more variables into the mix that it absolutely felt like second choice. Maybe, if he didn't come with the van but a full-blown tow truck next time, Eleanor could be convinced to just let everything magically 'disappear' before the cops arrived ?

This time he drove himself for the density of police cars in the area would foreseeably increase and officers always had a nack for looking a bit more closely into other vehicles. Also getting into the Sunday Group's underground carpark was a bit more of a delicate task with such a large vehicle: He'd rather accept blame for lacking proper driving skills than accept blame for being unable to develop an autonomous car that could get in there without an incident!

Fynn's office was maybe a bit larger than would have been necessary for a pure desktop job, but to his excuse it also had to offer enough room for the occasional colleague who was in dire need of IT support. Also, while the primary services were of course outsourced to a professional hosting company that had it's own server farms, Fynn had a few blade servers himself on a small rack next to his desk. Some technological enhancements had been capable of making things just so less noisy and power hungry that he happily kept these going all the time for whatever round' the clock task neccessary.

He entered the room and put the reinforced bag with the laptop in it onto his desk. That would be dealt with later, right now he was fully expecting some kind of meeting to be called in order to discuss the next steps or the like and he needed some coffee for that, first! Meetings could be amusing, but more often they were just boring! Fynn was just about to leave the doorframe behind on his way out again to the small office kitchen when he noticed something was missing...

Oh noes!

This was definitely bad news. Choppy, the robotic recreation of an Arthropleura, a long-extinct species from the Paleozoic, had apparently successfuly vacuum-cleaned the floor, but its docking station was vacant! Had he accidentally left the door open before leaving ? Now the thing was probably crawling around somewhere else on this level of the building. Maybe it had even found its way through another open door into somebody else's office and moved in there. Or, even worse, it had stopped doing so and was hiding in a corner or beneath a drawer in a low-power state waiting for rescue. Or, even worse than worse, it had been stopped dead in its tracks by the elevator cabin in which it was now ready to welcome the next person to step in...

People really tended to dislike a roughly six feet long millipede-like creature with pincers looking as if capable of cutting away one's feet, did they ? Of course they did! Discreetly and indirectly lowering people's comfort level while in his office, in revenge of them annoying him, had been a purpose of building this prototype in the first place! It still was a bit too prototypic though, perhaps...