[Case One] The Curious Case of the Whip and Sword

"Of course sama!" Sierra replied as she began digging through the bag slung around her shoulder. "Uh...oh! There it is." She pulled out a very bulky camera with a very large light attached to it. It was clear that this camera was intended for a much higher resolution that a standard civilian-grade camera.

Walking over she began taking pictures of everything, starting with the rope since it seemed Araiah wanted to remove the binding soon. As she took pictures, she spoke. "And as I'm sure you're aware, there are dozens of ways to kill someone without leaving visible marks. Poision, OD, radiation, a well-placed needle, inducing heart attacks, inducing stokes, dehydration, freezing to death. Although most of those seem unlikely in this case. The elements are either incorrect or that method of execution is too expensive to waste on a slave."

Trudy was busy flying through her datajockey, looking for anything that might lead to the manufacture of the slave collar to further the investigation, and nearly forgot to answer Araiah's question.

"Oh sorry 'mam, aside from what you pointed out nothing concrete yet, though I'm trying to see if these collars are particular to any individual or group in the area. Trying to see if we can get any leads or motives, also will narrow down our suspect pool a bit hopefully."

Putting her datajockey down for a moment she handed Araiah the slave collar she had collected earlier so she could get a better look at it herself.

"Smart design anyway, hits most of the important stuff on your neck, so the individual wearing it would be dead in a matter of minutes, that's whats happened to the rest of the slaves, collars activated by an event or someone and well now we have this mess on our hands."

Composing herself again after her little information rant, Trudy decided to let Araiah continue with her own investigation and introduce herself to the other two.

"As the LT said I'm Agent Yoketsumaru Gertrude, Agent Trudy for expediency," she said with a quick bow "Sorry I don't really have any new information for you just got here a few minutes ago myself."

Sashi bowed quickly to Trudy as she introduced herself. The young agent kept his mind on the job at hand for the moment, though.

"It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Trudy-san." He said, already kneeling to inspect the wound on the organ donor. Gloved fingers probed the opening and carefully spread the torn flesh to reveal the point of removal.

"We may at least be able to tell the race of the 'surgeon' by looking at the wound. Let's hope it wasn't caused by power armor." He suggested, peering down into the cavity. Then, after pausing to examine the wound for a moment, he added, "The slave collars seem to strongly suggest slavers. I wonder if they were added as an afterthought, though? Do we have any database of commonly used collars? This just looks too clean to be the work of anything but professionals."

"The only ones that were actively listed were the Lorath variants of the same device -- these are different," Araiah said.

Her hands went deftly over the knot, undoing it quickly. She pulled the closer corpse's shoulder as she stepped away to allow the pile of flesh to unfold slowly.

"Sierra, could you run a face recognition search on each of them? A few of them are Nepleslian, but even so... Maybe we can identify them... Nothing useful of them otherwise." Araiah pulled her glasses off with a sigh. "Trudy-san, could you make a call in to the next CSI team to hurry up? They need to cover the entire building for clues and --"

There was a loud bump from one of the boxes. Followed by a second, and something rubbing against wood. It came from a lonely box wedged between the Warehouse's corner and a tall stack of more boxes to its right.

Sierra nodded and snapped a picture of the victim, uploading it to her comm. She had just begun running the picture through the recognition software when she heard the bump. She quickly placed her comm in it's holder on her side and drew her sidearm, pointing it at the box.

Trudy gave a nod as she started to call the other CSI team, until she heard the noise coming from the box. With a well practiced movement she put away her data jockey and drew her NSP pointing it at the box as she walked towards it.

"Will open on your order Lieutenant" she said with her hand on the box ready to open it or fill it full of holes.

"We have to open it, anyway." Sashi said, his own NSP leveled at the box, "Part of the course of investigation. It could be a witness, or a clue."

As if taking the initiative were written in the book, Sashi stepped slowly toward the box and lifted one hand to it. His NSP didn't waver from it. Instead he pulled with his free hand and stepped back, taking the lid with him, his pistol held high towards the opening of the box.

Araiah raised her own pistol as well, glasses now clipped onto her shirt collar, and her orange eyes now flashing dangerously.

The lid clattered to the floor, revealing what appeared to be a young Geshrin boy bound and gagged at the bottom of the box. He appeared to be at least eight, but he was so small and obviously suffering from malnutrition that it was difficult to tell. He wore not a stitch of clothing, and he had been beaten recently, and often: he was covered in bruises, cuts, blood, and sported a swollen cheek on his right side. Upon seeing Sashi, he began crying -- something his eyes said he had done often as of late, along with being beaten. A slave collar rested on his neck.

"Oh, shit," Araiah said, holstering her pistol. "I'll call him in. We need an ambulance..."

Araiah, obviously discomfited by the child, brought up a communicator and quickly hurried out of the warehouse, not even bothering to say anything else to her squad.

"Oh you poor thing," was Sierra's first response as she holstered her weapon. She moved forward, attempting to comfort the boy. When she reached him she began removing his bindings and gag. She put on a big smile for him the whole time.

"Hey there, what's your name? Mine's Sierra. Are you okay? Can you tell me what happened to you? Who did this?" She spoke in a very motherly tone.

Sashi was quick to holster his pistol upon sight of the child. His face softened immensely as his fingers tugged at the buttons on his shirt, then his tie. Eventually, he was standing in a white tank while presenting his shirt to the small boy.

"I'm sorry I pointed my gun at you." He said, kneeling to eye-level with the ailing child. "But we're here to help. So you can tell Sierra-chan here whatever you want. She'll help you out."

Sashi gestured to Sierra as he talked, his voice taking a childish tone. Soft, caring. Sashi looked incredibly engrossed in observing the child's wounds, but kept his hands to himself for the moment. An ambulance would arrive soon, they'd be better able to take care of it, and the child didn't seem to be in immediate danger of anything other than perhaps receiving a hug.

Trudy slowly lowered her pistol and holstered it, letting out a sigh as she did.

"Got all worked up for a kid in a box, Oh! watch out for the collar hes hurt enough as it is." she said looking over Sashi's shoulder and giving a little wave to the young boy they pulled out of the box.

Walking over to the box that the small child was in only moments before, Trudy started to look around the inside of the box for any clues. Hopefully they left something behind that will give us a lead She thought I'm also sure the child knows something, but I'm not sure hes in any mood to talk just yet. As she continued to poke around in the box she sent a message to the other CSI team almost forgetting to do so after the discovery of the kid in the box.

The child stopped crying after a moment, having latched onto Sierra and fallen asleep. He was obviously exhausted, and in no real condition to say much at all anyway.

Trudy would find no clues in the box, just some hairs that were obviously from the boy and a little bit of blood that was likely his as well.

After a few minutes, Araiah returned. "Ambulance is on the way. I don't think we'll find much else right now, but do any of you want to keep looking around?"

Sashi draped his shirt over the sleeping boy and went back to the corpse he'd been poking around with.

"Araiah-sempai," He began, thin fingers pulling at the flesh again to expose the point of severance for the kidney, "Will we be heading somewhere else, or back to the station to go over the evidence? If we're headed somewhere else, then I'd like to look around some more."

"I'll stay here with Agent Sashi-san, that is unless were going back to discuss evidence like he mentioned. I have my own ride if you need us anywhere." Trudy said moving over to one of the other bodies in the pile to get a closer look herself.

"I was thinking to go over the evidence, and maybe to talk to the boy if he's up for it when we get there... Then again, he'll need to go to the hospital, regardless. You all do what you want, but just keep in mind you'll have to ride back on her bike, Sashi-san. Sierra is coming with me in the police unit."

Araiah did her best to avoid looking at the Geshrin child. "I'll leave it to you, then, to talk to the paramedics when they arrive. Sierra?"

"Hai," Sierra said, extracting herself from the young Geshrin boy. Duty called.

With the footsteps of the Lieutenant and the junior officer fading, Sashi and Trudy found themselves alone in a warehouse with a frightened Geshrin boy who had wrapped his arms around his leg as he sat back against the box that had held him.

Sashi sighed from his corpse as Araiah made her way out. He spent a few more seconds prying at the wound before giving up on finding any sort of method to its mysteries. He scratched at his bare arms for a moment, highlighting how cold it had become upon giving his shirt to the boy. It made him all the more wary of how cold the boy must be.

"Trudy-san." Sashi was swabbing up some of the blood from each corpse, so he didn't look directly at her when he spoke. "Your bike, erm... Am I going to have to ride it in..."

He stopped swabbing for a moment and glanced Trudy's way, "What is it the Nepleslians call it? The bitchy seat?"

Trudy let out a small laugh at Sashi's comment about the 'bitchy seat' "I've never heard it called that before, but yes you will have to ride behind me, I usually have a side car attached but i had to do some work on it so it's back at my apartment."

"I'm ready whenever he is Ma'am" She said to Araiah, "If you need to go the station before us you don't need to wait, i have the Directions my old Captain gave me so we should be fine."

When Sierra arrived at the squad care, she hopped into the driver's seat, assuming that she was driving again. Starting the vehicle, she waited for the Lieutenant to climb in before she would back out of her parking space and speed off back towards the police station.