"If you see him again, tell him that he's caught Hadrian's attention, and that I will be coming to see him as soon as I can."

"Also," he added, "tell him that he has nothing to fear from me at the moment. I have more important things to do than to help the police catch him."

Hadrian picked his wallet out of a pocket. He hadn't touched it since his first verse out of Oslo and there was roughly fifty dollars worth of Norwegian crowns still in it. He emptied it out and gave all of it to the bum.

"Here," he said, "I don't need Norwegian cash anyway."

He put the empty wallet back in its pocket as he considered the question.

"What would I do? I guess I'll have to go for the elusive option number four - which is none of the above. I wouldn't turn off my brain for anything in the world, but neither would I use anger as a means to augment my intelligence either.

Strong emotion might be a good shortcut to becoming clever, but I refuse to believe that it is the only option to being a vegetable.

Try to be a bit more stubborn. Chin up, gut in - and don't look so gloomy, you aren't dead yet. I'll give your problem a little thought, and I'll let you know if I figure something out. Likewise, if you have any other theories, I'd love to hear them over a burger some other time - my treat of course."

He accepts your crowns and shrugs.

"I hope you're right. I do see you've not been beaten down by the world which is a bonus for you."

He steps back, and you walk onward as he studies you from behind. You can feel his gaze heavy upon you, but you pay no mind to it, and then turn the corner, and shortly thereafter you walk into the police station.

A bored looking sergeant with a 'mustache' of powdered sugar looks up at you.

"Reporting a murder? Or something else I can help you with?"

PT

Before going through the door Hadrian buttoned down his outer coat and stuffed his hands into his pant pockets, so that the long coat trailed behind him when he walked. He was trying to look more impressive. At the same time he wanted to seem strangely relaxed. Hadrian had an image in his mind of what an ace detective should look like and behave, and he was trying to fit that image as well as he could.

Hadrian came to a stop in front of the bored looking cop. He stood straight with a stern face and tried to look like someone who commanded authority.

"My name is Special Agent Hadrian. I'm with S.I.A, the Special Investigation and Apprehension unit. I am here to deal with the man you have dubbed 'the locker room murderer'."

He looked the cop up and down - appraising him. He took another step toward the counter, putting his weight and authority into the step, and looked the policeman straight in the eye. It was a glare of absolute seriousness.

"This might be the most important arrest in the criminal history of this country. When the newspapers find out about what is going on here, a flood of reporters are going to come rushing through those doors and bombard you with questions you can't hope to answer. Now do you really want your picture, the picture that is going to be what everyone sees when they look at their morning paper, to be one where you have a line of sugar on your upper lip?"

Hadrian let the question hang in the air for a few moments before continuing.

"I'm going to need the name of the chief of this precinct, a copy of today's paper - if you have one - and when you've finished with whichever pastry you are enjoying, I'd like to have a word with the chief."

Hadrian tried his best to sound like someone important who was used to getting his way whenever he barged into police affairs like he was just now.

The desk sergeant nods as you state your identity.

"I've never heard of SIA." He growls. He looks worried as you bring up the press, and hurriedly cleans off his mouth.

"Um, yeah." He hustles off his waddling self to the break room, and comes back with a broken apart newspaper. "We don't have a precinct. This IS the police station."

He then places a call to the Night Captain.

"Um, yeah, SIA, no sir, never heard of them. Yes, sir, real important like seems. I'll send him back."

He gives you directions to Roger Stuart's office up on the second floor.

You're aware that you've aroused the desk sergeant's suspicions, and provoked his territorial defensiveness.

PT
OOC: Yup '98' on convincing him.

OOC: I'm assuming '98' isn't a very good roll. Are we talking borderline botch, or just plain bad?

Hadrian took the paper and nodded his thanks. He then left in a sort of slow haste - like his business was of the utmost importance - in the indicated direction.

As soon as he found himself to be alone Hadrian whipped up the paper and took note of its name and the current date. He then flipped his way to a decent looking page, ripped off a sizable portion of it, making sure that today's date was located on the bit he took out of the paper. The rest of it he casually ripped into four pieces and dumped in four separate garbage bins. Best make sure not to leave any breadcrumbs for Average Joe Police Officer to accidentally find.

Hadrian took out his marker pen and scribbled down a list of the names of all the teens he had driven with earlier in a random order, trying his best to make the writing seem as different from his natural handwriting as possible, without it looking deliberately faked. On the bottom of the list he put Roger Stuart's name. Once he was finished he crumpled the piece of paper and put it in his pocket for later use.

Done with that little task Hadrian continued on his way to the office of the night captain.

"Greetings," Hadrian said once he had knocked and been let into the office of Roger Stuart, "my name is Hadrian. I'm an agent from the Special Investigation and Apprehension unit and I'm here to offer you some sorely needed help."

OOC: A '98' can be a success, but generally its a botch.  Your advantage is that your opponenent is not all that competent. Its like you had a botch with gunpowder, but you were only using a quarter teaspoon full.

The man behind the desk gets up and gives you a warm handshake.

"My name is Roger Stuart. I'm the Night Captain. And we could sure use the help."

PT

Hadrian appraised the night captain just as he had done with the earlier cop.

"I'm going to go ahead and assume you haven't heard of SIA before. The officer at the reception desk gave me a look like I had two heads when I told him who I was from."

He waited for Roger to confirm it, then went on.

"The Special Investigation and Apprehension unit is a detached group of highly trained agents whose task is to assist local and federal police when they come across cases too difficult to solve. We only answer to the highest authority and our actions are kept away from the public eye to ensure that we can do our job undisturbed - which is why you haven't heard of us. Most cops don't even know who we are until we come knocking on their doors."

There was a slight pause for breath before Hadrian continued.

"I specialize in High School and College serial killers, which is why I thought you might need my help. I stumbled across the Mindy Sanderson crime scene, and was shocked at the ruthlessness and intelligence of the killer. However, please understand that I am not here in any official capacity. I am off duty, and can only offer my unofficial services. Aside from that though, I am willing to go as far as it takes to take this madman down.

You have every right to decline, but I am very rarely wrong, and if this killer is allowed to go on SIA will be notified eventually, and when another agent comes down here to 'offer his services,' you WILL be sidelined for the duration of the investigation.

If you accept I expect the complete cooperation of the police, and I hope you can trust me enough to provide certain tools I need."

Hadrian hoped that his little speech would be enough to convince the Night Captain to play along, or better yet, even trust him. Should Roger Stuart become as suspicious as the desk attendant though Hadrian had the slip of paper in his pocket as backup.

He nods and moves a pencil around on his desk.

"You freaked out the desk sergeant.  But I can see why. He's a good cop, just a little paranoid."

He stands up and holds out his hand for you to shake.

"I'd like your help, in a consultative fashion. And I'm pretty sure this is the farthest thing from your mind, but the city can pick up your tab for meals and hotel, if you're not staying in someone's home."

He then opens up a folder which had been sitting on his desk and beckons you to come around the desk to look at it.

Its full of data on the eight, now nine people murdered.

"I don't get it. He killed the first eight in locker rooms. Then Mindy in a bathroom. Death by being hung in a shower, by having a water moccassin bite you, by slipping on a wet floor and getting impaled....and now drowned in a sink. Sick, sick."

PT

Hadrian shook Roger's hand and agreed to be his consultant on this investigation. He wanted to instill a sense of urgency, even fear, in the police. If they were scared they would be easier to manipulate. For now though Hadrian was satisfied to play his game from the sidelines.

"Water," Hadrian blurted out as he listened to the Captain speak. "He's killing them with and around areas that concern the wet element."

Hadrian was speaking more to himself than to the Captain, and although he WAS thinking what he was saying, he wasn't saying everything he was thinking.

"Why does he want the police to fool around with water, locker rooms and toilets? I'm thinking its just an elaborate decoy to keep the police running around, making up creative names that rhymes with 'locker room' and thinking they know anything about what is really going on. I know for a fact that Mindy was only supposed to look like she drowned, so perhaps the previous murders were similar illusions?"

Hadrian took a step back and paced back and forth, taking three steps in one direction, then spinning about and taking three steps back in a contemplative fashion. It wasn't nearly time for him to make the police any smarter, so Hadrian figured it was best to play along with the foundations the murderer had so conveniently laid for him.

"It's some sort of symbol," he said after a while "- most serial killers that do this have something to prove, or some sort of vendetta, that revolves symbolically around the locations they pick and the tools they use to kill with - in this case: water."

"...

I worked on a case a few years back where a particularly vicious killer murdered young unattractive girls and decorated them with beautiful makeup. The poor dead girls looked almost like models when we found them, much fairer than they looked in life. In the end it turned out the killer had been turned down by a model, and was getting back at her by 'turning down' prettier girls. In his head killing them and turning them down was one and the same. The makeup bit was because he couldn't kill beautiful girls, so he had to make them pretty afterwards.

It was pretty sick."

He stopped and looked once again on the spread out files. He was trying to impress Roger with stories from the life of the ace detective. He scolded himself for not making up something better, or more believable, but figured that the Night Captain wouldn't notice how ridiculous the story sounded in any case.

"Do you think I could have a copy of these to study somewhere in private here? If I work through the night I can have an accurate profile on the killer ready by the morning. I'll probably also need a pot of strong coffee!"

"Oh yes, I heard about that case." The Night Captain says. "You worked it. I heard they never caught the guy, the police were pretty roundly bashed in the press for it."

He looks a bit skeptical now. And you realize that you may have been underestimating the sheer stupiditiy of this world.

"Yeah, follow me." He takes you down the hall, and shows you the break room which is currently empty.  It has hot coffee in a tin holder, and good quality muffins, and cheap honey buns.  "Just camp out in here. Its fairly private."

He waves in the general direction of the booths on the far wall.

"That way, if one of the few guys comes in here, you'll have time to cover up. Especially if parents come in here. Don't want to freak them out. But really, its pretty quiet here at night. I myself am hoping to move to day shift. get some action."

Pt

Hadrian took the files and surveyed the room.

"Thank you, this will do admirably."

He spun around at the Night Captain's comment and eyed him gravely.

"Get some action? The police are not a step closer to catching this killer. We don't know anything about him, at the moment, and the dangerous part is that the killer is fully aware of our ignorance, and highly capable of using that knowledge to kill indiscriminately. Action, you say? I think we'll see plenty of action in the coming weeks."

Hadrian seemed to compose himself slightly, sighed and added, "My apologies, but this killer has me on edge. I have never seen anyone who murders with as much coldness and efficiency as this man. He is walking amongst us freely, mocking us with each kill. If he is capable of even half of what I suspect then... I am afraid to think of how many he might kill before we finally catch him - and trust me, I WILL catch him."

He thanked Roger again for allowing him to use the break room and then sat down to work. After pouring himself a cup of coffe, and clearing a space on the table, Hadrian spread the murder files out, in the order the kills were commited.

He sipped his hot coffe as he watched the files on the table with a lazy eye. This was going to be a long night. Hadrian put down the cup and read through each file with fanatical thoroughness.

He was looking for connections between the kills (apart from the fact that the victims were ranked from oldest to youngest), if they were all in the same school, same year etc. If they were all seemingly killed with something that had to do with water - and looking at the pictures, he wanted to see if any of the victims had wounds, or badly covered up wounds on the back of their necks or other parts of the body. If there was anything special or out of the ordinairy with the victims Hadrian would also take note of this.

The Night Captain is suitably abashed, and retreats with a handsome smile.

The kills are sorted by the time done, not by the age of the victims although the ages are very close indeed. The youngest is seventeen, and the oldest is twenty.

They all went to the local high school, or to the community college.

None of them are directly related to each other except one is Mindy's older brother.

All of them were incredibly handsome or beautiful.

All of the kills had something to do with water in some way or another. Other common elements, not in all of them, but repeating are Electricity, Rocks, Wounds. There are nine water elements, two electric, four rock, and two wounds.

Upon further looking at one picture, you decide that there were two open obvious wounds, but its distinctly possible that the local inept cops missed hidden wounds.

No one has any clue why they were targetted. They were the 'most popular kids in school'.

With a jolt, you see a yearbook picture of the first victim, Charles Dawson with his arm around Mindy Sanderson and a tag line "Runner-ups for King and queen of school."

PT

The obvious conclusion at this point seemed that these kids were killed because they were, in fact, "the most popular kids in school". Seeing as he was only on his second cup of coffee however, Hadrian didn't feel quite in the mood to start making up his mind about anything regarding this case.

The picture of Mindy and Charles interested Hadrian, and made him want to ask Patricia to see her copy of the yearbook when he next saw her. It would be painfully typical to find a picture in it with all of the victims gathered together. Hadrian didn't think he'd be that lucky, but figured the yearbook was an obvious angle to cover in any case. Also, he couldn't think of a better way to waste time between the future murders than hanging out with Patricia.

If he was to take a wild guess then and there as to who was a likely future victim, the one who had commented on there not being any locker rooms in his  - and therefore no need to lock the doors - would be an obvious choice. Hadrian pictured him strangled with the cord of the showerhead, the water still running when the police arrived, of course.

That teased out a slight smile, but he quickly dismissed it. Even though he was only half-heartedly investigating the 'locker room murderer', he didn't feel was prudent to wish for other people's deaths - annoying though they might be.

In the end Hadrian's list of clues was fairly thin. The victims had all been beautiful and popular, most likely dumb and all of them went either to the local high school or college. They had been killed in some way related to water, although there was a large possibility that this was nothing but a dead end to confuse the police.

A bit distraught Hadrian took a break from brooding over the files, drank his coffe, went to the bathroom, grabbed himself another cup of coffe and a donut and sat back down again to work more. Deciding he needed to check facts that the police couldn't possibly have gotten wrong Hadrian started looking at the estimated times of death of each victim, and if there were any similarities or deviations. In addition he also browsed through each file to see if the police had written down any statements from the people who first arrived at the crime scenes, and the people who saw the victims last. If the police had done this elementary thing, Hadrian read through them to see if he could find anything interesting.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:53, Wed 12 Nov 2008.

You read page after page of mostly emoting. Shock, horror and rage leap off the pages, but expressed in the most stupid and banal way possible. There is very little actual information.

One person, River Cooss, jumps off the page because his response is so different.

"I walked into the locker room to change my clothes in preparation for the horrendous ritual of P.E., which should be banned, btw, and I saw that the ground was slick with water even though I knew no one should have been in the locker room during the previous lunch hour. Instantly, I was paranoid as I'd heard about the Locker Room murderer killing three people, and so I grabbed a baseball bat from the rack by the door and advanced.

Q. Were you angry?

A. More fascinated, but frightened. I saw Albert Ravens, class president of the eleventh grade, laying on the floor in his letterman jacket, black jeans, white shoes, and no socks. He was not moving, so I checked the rest of the bathroom for his assailant.

Q. Why not check the body?

A. I was hoping to get a chance to whack the guy who did it. Besides, he was not breathing. I checked him then, and I think I know what happened. He was wet on the front, but not on the sides. He had a knife in his back. I think the killer snuck up behind him, and put a knife in his back and forced him to get in the shower. Probably intended to strangle him, but Albert was an arrogant jerk and he tried to fight, and so he fell, and the killer let him land on the knife, and figured it was done.

Q. Interesting theory. Who's the policeman here anyways? You may go and keep your mouth shut about your theory.

This compares to a more typical response like...

"There I was, it was so horrible. I was in the locker room for, well, anyways, and the poor Drew Smithers was face down in the toilet. So undignified. I hope we catch that evil killer. No, I'm not sure it was the middle stall...did I hear noises, um no.  I was screaming too loudly in my head. Please say you're going tos top this madman."

Mindy saw her boyfriend last, and George saw his girlfriend, Carla Blake last. Both are tales of woe and self-pity.

Hadrian catalogued River Cooss name in his head under "interesting people to talk to", right above the serial killer he was investigating. At this time anyone who displayed anything that could be mistaken for intelligence, even slightly, qualified as interesting in Hadrian's book.

The night was dragging on, and Hadrian started to get a nasty feeling that he wouldn't be getting much more out of these files. Had they been ordinairy police files they would have been packed with information, and he would be a much more enlightened man by now, but that not being the case he was left with very little useable info.

Hadrian had a very weak case, with only a few leads he could still follow, such as the yearbook picture and River Cooss. When the morning came and he was asked to show what he had gathered to the day captain, the amount of success would be more determined by his creativity and ability to fabricate the truth than anything he had actually found.

He fingered his way into his pocket and felt the newspaper scrap he had in there. If things didn't go so well he still had an ace in the hole to scare the police with. Perhaps they would be more open to his aid if they felt the situation was more pressing. That question would be answered in the morning, he knew, and as far as Hadrian could see there was no more point in reading the files any more. He put them down and found a nice place to sleep, fully clothed.

OOC: What about the estimated times of death of the victims? Anything interesting to be gathered there. Had the police even bothered to determine when the victims had died?

The time for the deaths are ....

9:20 AM (for Mindy's boyfriend)
9:34 PM
9:22 PM
9:24 AM
9:29 PM
9:24 PM
9:32 AM
9:19 AM
Uncertain due to drowning in river.
9:22 PM (for Mindy).

Hadrian couldn't help but admire the precision of killer's work. Taking into consideration the ineptness of the police for logical thinking, and the obvious margin for mistake when "guessing" times of death, every victim seemed to have been killed at more or less precisely 09.30.

"He has an eye for detail, I will give him that."

Hadrian went off to sleep somewhere, fully clothed. The amount of coffe he had ingested denied him the total oblivion of sleep, but it did not matter. All Hadrian wanted was to close his eyes and digest all the information he had gathered - meditate, in other words - hoping everything would make more sense in the morning. He was also working furiously trying to come up with a string of believable nonsense he could feed the police with, instead of telling them anything true they might mistakingly make good use of.

You wake up to see bones sprouting from the linoleum, muscles filming over them, organs popping into place from more bones, a skull being added, and then eyeballs dropping into place, and then skin and clothes surging on.

"Hello, I'm Tom Day, a fellow verser, I wonder if I could borrow you for a bit."

PT

"Normally I'm assured in these set ups that I am going to be put back right where I started, which I can't say for sure if that's the case in this case, but I do know I could use the help.  I need to fight something...evil...and could use the backup.

Hadrian sat up, his eyes wide in something that was not quite shock, and not quite exultation. If Day had any means of seeing the look Hadrian gave him before his eyeballs materialized in the body, he would feel very much like a specimen being studied by a dusty old scientist, or a relic being appraised by a passionate antiquary.

"Greetings Tom Day, my name is Hadrian Superbia. Normally I would have respectfully declined, or at the very least bombarded you with questions - but with an entrance like that, how can I refuse?"

"Given, I am not much of a fighter, but if your quest requires a mathmatician, philosopher, historian or any other sort of thinker, I will be happy to oblige!"

"Only the fool refuses aid of the mind.  And I am generally not described as a fool.  I will answer any questions you have to ask..that I can answer..  Thank you for your assistance."

Hadrian abandoned what had been his bed for the night and stood facing Day. He sized his fellow verser up, still wearing that look of genuine interest. He was already a bit impressed due to Day's unusual materialization, and his appraisal of the man did not lower this impression.

Hadrian, on the other hand, looked perhaps a bit over-dressed to be combating evil. He was stiffly dressed in a black suit and tie. His coat was slung casually over a nearby chair, with a black wide-brimmed hat resting atop it.

"Well," Hadrian said and scratched his chin, "first and foremost I would like to know more about this 'evil' I am to assist you in defeating. In the world I visited prior to this one I foiled a summoning of Satan, and received some nasty threats from the lord of evil in return - best to make sure I am not putting myself into his path so soon, lest I risk being on the receiving end of his wrath."

"The world I left was Polytheistic.  I doubt there is direct demonic influence there.  I don't suppose you were recruited by a Jedi guy to a 20th century equivalent? We might have been in the same place.

As for the evil? I don't know.  Only that it is powerful enough that it sems it will take multiple versers to deal with it and that it destroyed an entire forest by corrupting it."

"I am not sure if he was an... um, Jedi," Hadrian said, finding it only slightly odd that Day would call anyone a Jedi so casually, "... although now that you mention it he might have been. He was a charming fellow, went by the name of Cristophe. Had a lovely lady with him, Annie.

The place was indeed 20th century-ish. The people there called the place Radix, Nevada."

"If you don't know anything about this evil we are to fight then my services will surely be of use to you - also, I love challenges, so I know I will not be leaving this encounter empty-handed.

When do we leave?"

"We can leave right now if you wish.  And yes, I was at Radix Nevada.  I didn't last very long though.  I tend not to in these 'gather' situations, only this time I CAN'T afford to die.  The stakes are too high."