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Audience Hall, Sison Auditorium, Municipality of Lingayen - 10/11/2022, 6:12 UTC+8

Did she imagine an edge in Private Lidmann's tone? How amusing. As the woman almost defensively spoke up to reassure onlookers of a personal value Qingshe honestly wasn't trying to besmirch so much as temper, the Snake simply listened without interruption. While it was good that Lidmann's demonstration proved she at least had the mind to best utilize what she had, Qingshe's real concern was not so much how far she could reach but whether she could maintain that reach for extended periods of conflict, like a battle at sea had every likelihood of being.

Instead of saying that however, she simply smiled mildly, as Callie's flow of words came to an end. "Well, I suppose confidence is an attractive trait... just as long as you know where your limits lay. As long as you avoid overreaching your expectations, I shall gladly look forward to seeing you live up to that advertisement of yours~." As for the other matter... "I can provide schematics for weaponry easily enough." Though, it was less that she'd gotten to study them in person and more that she had torn into her former allegiance's firewalls on the way out and taken any data she could find that wasn't nailed down. And then... "My shadow is more adept at controlling what I personally create. And unless they've degraded in common sense even more than I thought possible, the weaponry systems will be ones that require direct access to manipulate. Without the ability to wirelessly maintain control, that would leave me only able puppet one ship at a time." Unless Callie was holding in reserve the ability to form a vast, lasting network of portals. Shaking her head, Qingshe chuckled. "No, I do believe my efforts will be best spent elsewhere than a mobile insurgency team." Where exactly was still in question, but she already had some ideas... It would just be a matter of seeing what the final battle plan turned out to be.

Qingshe raised an inquisitive brow at one of the new faces among them, Sweden's "Valkyrie", a fellow big name and -at least in her books- A-Rank. The national symbol was standing there stiffly, looking quite uncomfortable in her relatively undecorated professional uniform. If Qingshe recalled rightly, her usual attire was something a lot... louder. The Snake smiled genuinely at realizing she was in the presence of someone that also took advantage of their status to oppose the degradation of individuality the military promoted, waggling a couple fingers in silent greeting. Her slitted green eyes crinkled in mirth, a hand rising to nonchalantly conceal the growing curl of her lips, when she processed the 2nd Lieutenant's words towards the 1st Lieutenant.

Did the poor girl realize the layer of innuendo she had just infused into the wording of that introduction? A part of Qingshe hoped not, because her sense of humor was irrevocably twisted by the need to dig out entertainment from everything... in a showmanship sense. It was like those virtual entertainers. What did they call them? V-Tubers? Yes, being able to make every other thing you say have a double meaning was a valuable talent in building a following. As a former member of The Zodiac, at least the capacity of a veritable "showpony", she knew this art well... Or maybe her mind was just a bit dirtier than she'd like to admit.

Ah, but if only the rest of the meeting could be taken with such humor. Her good mood was tempered, as she listened to Lotus Squadron's members pitching in and the response from Myron... Nothing he said was making her feel any better about the situation. It was more than clear to her now, that even with support from other ASEAN nation's navies and air forces, the coming battle was going to be a madhouse of a shitshow. Their airpower was still radically lacking compared to what the enemy could deploy... Hmmm... It seemed she might have just found where her focus was best aimed at rectifying.

Then the young man named Nico Makri spoke up, and a new twist was introduced. Qingshe blinked rapidly, unsure if she had just heard him correctly, consulting her most recent memory logs and then blinking again, before her pupils narrowed to even thinner slits in fascination at the man the Seven Virtues seemed to have elected for membership amongst their highest echelons... whether he wanted it or not. "Diligence, you say~?" She grinned in anticipation. "What else did he tell you? The Seven Virtues seem oh so loathe to step down from their clandestine little high tower to walk amongst us mere mortals, and the more we know about their inner workings, the better to pick their pesky interferences apart~." She sniffed. "Mou~, again with that 'Alan Turing' nonsense cropping up? Honestly, why can't that pest mind his own business? We're fighting a war here; his plots can wait."

Noel began to answer, and Qingshe found herself jolting internally in disbelief yet again. Even as their nominal leader berated Nico for just out and saying such potentially sensitive things, he, himself, proceeded to do much worse, as he elaborated even further on Alan Turing (someone most in the room had probably never even heard of, much less been aware of his significance) and even had the gall to propose that he could somehow order Nico to accept the Seven Virtues's offer. Her expression struggled to remain cheerful, as the First Lieutenant doubled down further still and seemed to almost panic order that, Myron, the man who'd he'd just finished radically disservicing in his introduction, the one who was getting more wary looks than not, should suddenly start transferring people to the Spratlys Islands now without any consultation. The absolute brass on this brat.

Wha-?! What happened to the plan?! What happened to resting for half a day?! Wait. Wasn't the place where the QRS was currently holed up a part of those islands? Qingshe restrained a snarl, as she realized Noel was most likely in on the gamble of the QRS's message to her. This was not happening. This would throw off the plan for the ASEAN alliance fleet, with the Philippines suddenly deprived of their biggest collection of available Arms Masters. What was Task Force Obsidian supposed to even do once they reached the island? Sit on their asses and be trapped under constant siege too with the alliance fleet far away? Those fools are going to make everything worse with their shortsighted impulsivity!

"You cannot be serious," the Snake uttered in a flat whisper, her tone at odds with the deceptive smile on her face.

And then... Private Price jumped in, and things started getting... sticky. Matters appeared to be degrading rather seriously, and unfortunately, despite her complete disinterest in trying to make that fop, Myron, look better, this wasn't acceptable. So, she spoke up, said her piece and retreated once more, annoyed at having to salvage such incompetence or else be a hypocrite. It didn't matter that only she would know to what degree that hypocrisy sank; it was simply a matter of what precious few morality-derived principles she had.

Still, if Qingshe wasn't certain before, she was now.

The First Lieutenant couldn't sell water to a man dying of thirst in a desert.

That boy should never be allowed to make inspirational speeches.

Or speeches you wanted to go anywhere positive really.

She hated this, being forced to intervene in such a manner. For all that she’d say she was pretty good at it, she didn't want to take charge... The temptation to keep going once she started was... simply too great. But how could she possibly stand by and watch a disaster in motion? She was supposed to have just been here as an R&D consultant, a medic and foreign contact... Instead, she was visiting frontlines, getting dragged into a slap-dash, rag-tag task force straight out of some fiction or another, and interfering in a foreign military’s command structure to stop it from falling apart, which was... There was so much wrong with this picture. All she wanted to do was uplift humanity, but what the hell had she been dragged into this time?

Honestly, the only silver lining to come out of this mess was that she could now send her own message back to the QRS and be almost completely truthful regarding why, exactly, they were not going to be receiving fresh Arms Masters ahead of the ASEAN fleet. And bonus: she didn't even have to tip-toe around the fact that, at this stage, she'd never let Myron put her in that damn shield unless the only other option was oblivion.

[Unfortunately, regardless of whatever plan you may have made with First Lieutenant Alonso behind my back-] Why yes, she was displeased. How could they tell?! [-during the briefing, the Task Force Obsidian members were promised a 12 hour grace period to get their affairs in order, before commencing transport via Philippine vessel. Furthermore, the introduction of the asset, Agent Makaraig, was bungled so direly by the First Lieutenant that it was all I could do to stop things from devolving into outright hostility. There is no chance the Task Force agrees to take advantage of your window for transport... even were it not so dangerously narrow and unstable to begin with. I can't possibly sell this to them in good faith. You'll just have to manage until the original plan pulls through.]
Since some of the murders in our backstories were presumably made by the serial killer stand, is there anything our characters should already know anything about the killer or how they kill? So that we can be on the same page about describing the crimes so far


What I've discussed with Eviledd in PMs and the discord server (which exists now, yay) so far spawned these two segments from my post:

They had a couple titles that had been bandied about, among which the most popular seemed to be "The Cobbler", "The Foot Fetish Killer", and "The Night Prowler".


The last title does seem to imply that the killer prefers to strike at night, but this could be a red herring. As details are still sparse.

They were talking about the latest victims. As usual with the killer's MO, it seemed to be more women in their mid to early 20's, again with a variety of races and builds, and again... with each victim rather distinctly missing their feet. Other than that, no patterns seemed to stand out, or if there were any further patterns, the police weren't letting that information free to the public. The newscaster was talking about the latest victim now, about where they had been found, the estimated time of death, so-claimed witnesses that had seen her shortly before the attack and more importantly... who presumably had that corpse right now, the police.


Overall, the police have been on a hard crackdown on the details of exactly what state the corpses were in injury-wise (including in terms of any other reliable patterns), outside of the fact that all of them are missing their feet.

That's the public info though; so anything more is likely to be on an individual basis. I'd guess the one most likely to have had a first-hand look before the police could sweep in is Kane, and the only other with a hope of getting a first-hand look before the coverup is West, based on the available backstories. According to Eviledd, it's all down to if and how one can weasel further clues out of the police to know more, and even they don't know all that much (or, perhaps, don't know what to do with what they've found).
<Snipped quote by Lewascan2>

Pretty much yes.


Well well well, in that case, I have some ideas.
@Lewascan2

Well i was thinking of having you guys do your own thing before converging to somewhere that will move the story along. And i was also thinking of we take turns posting so no one feels rushed.


I can vibe with that. In that case, I'm guessing you have a specific "convergence event" in mind that will draw the group together (though, I quite imagine several PCs will be converging on their own)? And before that time comes, we can basically go with whatever direction we want?
@Eviledd1984
Figured I should ask, but what kind of posting structure would you prefer we adhere to?
At least for this opening segment, it seems everyone is going to be off doing their own things in solo investigation, so how much "free range" do we have with what we can do in a post before we need to wait on a GM post response? Should we wait for you to make response posts? Or is simply consulting you in PMs for the result of an action the preferred way or something? In the meantime, before any of the PCs have crossed paths, should we wait for other people to post, or can we just pick up where we left off at any given point until we enter a more general turn-based scenario between multiple PCs?

TLDR: I have more in the tank to expand Kasumi's bit with, and I'd like to know at what point I stop and/or should wait for GM consultation/response. Do you want to make a response post to each one we make to set scenery or throw random encounters, or are we free to do that ourselves in some capacity? Mind, I'm not planning to post more until at least one other person has.

Kasumi Nakano


The computer screen's glare was the first thing to beam into her eyes, as daybreak encroached. Or... No, rather...

Blearily, Kasumi dragged her face up from the keyboard, grimacing at the indents of the keys she could feel against her skin even without looking. Blinking several times, she fumbled a bit before scrubbing the morning gunk out of her eyes and frowning at the window. The blinds, as usual for any window in her home, were closed and tilted up to maximize the amount of light they could prevent entering the domicile.

What... time was it?

12:34 pm glared out from the corner of her monitor.

Ah. She'd overworked last night. With the blinds closed and her head facing away from the window the way she'd nodded off, she'd been plenty exhausted enough to sleep through the siren's call of the sun. Honestly, she wasn't sure when the last time she'd crashed like this was, never mind the last time she'd woken up at her desk. Maybe she was growing lazy about her internal sense of time? Jen should have let herself in with the hidden spare house key and woken her up by now, as was her-

Her brows furrowed, lip curling in distaste at the mess of random keystrokes filling up the open document on her screen. Clearly, the result of a night of basically rolling her face across the keys. Snorting, she highlighted the mass of nonsense, scrolling up until she felt she had it all and deleted it. Shaking her head, she looked at what she'd been working on last night, and-

Oh.

Right, she was... gathering public police reports, scrutinizing masses of witness statements. All of it. All these efforts...

Useless.

Expression darkening, Kasumi saved the document's progress as it was and closed it, making a quick run through of her computer's processes to double check she hadn't managed to do anything stupid with unconscious button mashing. Seeing none, she shoved her chair back and stood, panning her gaze across a room -a house honestly- that felt emptier somehow. Jaw clenching, her nostrils flared, as she shook her head and marched to the closet to grab a change of clothes.



Bathed and spruced up, Kasumi sat at the dining room table, shoving a large "brunch" down her throat. Admittedly, she was barely tasting the food, her gaze focused on the television screen and the news channel. As usual, the host blathering on about the only thing they seemed to want to natter about these days in their prime time hours: "The Killer". They had a couple titles that had been bandied about, among which the most popular seemed to be "The Cobbler", "The Foot Fetish Killer", and "The Night Prowler". Any other time before, Kasumi would have scoffed, brushed off Jen's needling and tuned the nonsense out, perhaps even switched to another channel... assuming all she would find elsewhere wasn't more of the same. It wasn't her problem. Someone else would handle it. Probably. Eventually. Only...

For a moment, she almost imagined her soup tasted like blood and then realized she'd bit her lip hard enough to break skin. Her hand was shaking, as she slowly and deliberately forced herself to put down her spoon before she accidentally bent or crushed it. Closing her eyes, she sucked in a slow, shaky inhale through her nose, held her breath and exhaled long and low. She let the news wash over her, just meaningless noise, as she steadied her pounding pulse in her ears, quieting the bubbling fury that made her want to clench her jaw so hard her teeth would break. She wanted to break something. She wanted to scream, but she didn't.

That would be so very useless.

Opening her eyes, she brushed a finger, briefly encased in spectral gold, across her lip and impassively weathered the itching sting of her lip closing up, as the broken flesh was sealed. Licking her lips did away with the remainder of the bloody residue, as she continued her meal shortly thereafter without further incident. The television had been muted but left running, her eyes occasionally flickering to the subtitles.

In some ways, the return of silence felt even more damning, as she finished her food, washed the dishes and filled the dishwasher a little more. It wasn't quite full yet, so she'd wait to run it till perhaps later tonight.

Closing the dishwasher, she spared the television another glance and then stepped over to the table to grab the remote and unmute it again. They were talking about the latest victims. As usual with the killer's MO, it seemed to be more women in their mid to early 20's, again with a variety of races and builds, and again... with each victim rather distinctly missing their feet. Other than that, no patterns seemed to stand out, or if there were any further patterns, the police weren't letting that information free to the public. The newscaster was talking about the latest victim now, about where they had been found, the estimated time of death, so-claimed witnesses that had seen her shortly before the attack and more importantly... who presumably had that corpse right now, the police.

With a ping, a quarter she had been fiddling with flew into the air and morphed, sprouting antenna, legs and paper-thin wings, and long before it had hit the ground, a butterfly was currently making itself well at home, flittering about the cozy house. Striding from the kitchen, Kasumi turned off the television and placed the remote next to it, as she began making her preparations for departure.

Buttons were double and triple checked on her button-up white shirt. Collar was straightened and black tie was secured, immaculately pressed as always. Smart grey slacks, secured by a belt, accompanied shiny black shoes, as she looked herself over in the full-length mirror of her room. The butterfly occasionally flittering around her head, as she fixed her pink hair into a tight braid. Again, there was that minor spurt of annoyance at what had become her natural hue since the day she awakened to her potential, but it was brushed off as usual. It wasn't like she ultimately hated the color, just the fact that she'd had no control over it, and she really didn't feel like wasting her time dyeing it, especially since her roots would still grow out rather noticeably pink.

Instead, she'd long since decided she would own it. Ridiculous as it was, somehow, she felt like she made it work...

Sitting down at her desk, she went through the task of manually loading several handgun magazines and double-checking the integrity of the weapon they were made for. 17 rounds apiece. Three magazines. One loaded, no rounds chambered, safety on. Securing her concealed-carry holster firmly beneath her left arm, she tucked the weapon into its home and the ammunition with it. Opening her primary closet, she retrieved her current favorite long-coat, a warm black affair with deep pockets. Slipping it over her shoulders, she stepped back in front of the mirror and fiddled with the lapels until she was satisfied with their professionalism, letting a small empty smile reach her face.

Ready as I'll ever be.

The butterfly followed her, as she made her final checks. Watch? Check. Phone? Check. Gloves? Check. Various keys? Check. Wallet? Check. Pepper spray? Check. Lighter... She fiddled with the object in her pocket with a fond caress. Check. With how limited her sources of reliable information were, unfortunately, she could only make so many preparations and assumptions at this stage. However...

She felt the feather-light touch of the butterfly alighting on her fingertip, smiling coldly, as she took back what she'd given it, reverting the creature into an inert quarter once more. Flipping the coin with a ping, she caught it and slipped it into her pocket, as she stepped outside and locked the door of her single-story home.

The beginnings of a plan were forming.

For conventional law enforcement, the killer had left no clues, no real leads or chinks in their armor. Such was more than evidenced by how long they had managed to operate freely in this city. Though, she would grant, perhaps, that such wasn't so unusual, even with how high profile the murderer had become. In all of millions of people, it would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. However... she was not conventional by any means, and they had made but one fatal mistake.

She forewent her car, as discretion would be of fair importance here. Only a fool underestimated the might of modern technology's ability to track people the law wanted found, and the fewer trails she left, the better. One hand in a coat pocket, Kasumi set off at a brisk stride towards the nearest bus station, consulting her phone's GPS map system. And upon the screen, her destination was made clear, the place that just about any murder victim's corpse was most liable to be stored, especially in a sensitive case such as this:

The New York State Police Forensic Investigation Center.

The killer may not have left any leads...

But they'd left all she needed to make one.
I made the first IC post, i will be also making the discord server but it might be done later on. Please DM me your discord name and number so I can add you into the server.


Nice! So, this means we're free to start posting?
<Snipped quote by Mintz>
I was thinking should i make a discord server for this rp. Or maybe we should keep it to OOC?


I'm down for a discord server. I use discord a lot, and I feel it's very much better than just using the forum for discussing things. I've found OOC conversations much easier to manage (and much faster moving) on discord.
"Slap that baby"

Hmmm.


KAKYOIN APPROVED CHILD REARING
@Grimnir

Ah i see, okay then just correct the parameters and then you should be good.


Woo! We got Moody Blues! Some real Part 5 supremacy going on in this team! XD
I suppose if we get Achtung Baby and/or that guy I mentioned before who was thinking of going with The Hand, we'd finally have something from Part 4 too, in which case we'd have Stands from every pre-MiH Part that has them. And if Mintz takes Diver Down, we'll have Part 6 too! XD
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