RP (non-canon) [IPG] Special Paranormal Investigations Team, Chapter 1

[Sigma]

Nepleslia, Classified IPG safehouse, HQ for the Special Paranormal Investigation Team (S.P.I.T.)

Operator Gavin Newman surveyed the crew he had been given. A beat-up ex-cop who looked like a well-dressed poof. A creepy Jiyuu girl. A guy who seemed as though he SHOULD have been purged. This was what he was supposed to lead? It made sense, in a kind of way. Let the crazies hunt for spookies. Just... why him?

"Don't really give a damn about what you did before today. Starting today, you're my team and I make my own opinion of you based on what you can and cannot do. So, first order of business. We've got a condemned building in the Major Lee Doshy June neighborhood. Work crews have tried to tear it down three times and each time, their equipment starts malfunctioning. Hasn't been inhabited in a long time, even before the attack."

He surveyed the crew. "Morgan, find out what you can about the building's history and its occupants. I want to know if there's any gang-related involvement here. Black, help him. When you're done, join us at the site. Rice Cake," he spoke the last to Mochizuki, "Come with me. We're gonna check out this building."

------------------------------------

The building itself was a short, squalid apartment block made of brick and mortar. Obviously it was going to be torn down for something more modern. The whole neighborhood showed signs of modernization. Construction and demolition equipment was scattered around. "See any spookables, Rice Cake?" Newman asked Sayoko.

 

[Luca]

"Fascinating." James cooed as he turned around and looked at the computer he'd be working at. He'd bought some lunch with him, and wrapped in plastic was one of his sandwiches. "Let's see now... Major Lee Doshy June, buildings, records..." He tapped into the keyboard. It was all much more advanced than the laptop he had sitting in his office. "Would you look at that?"

The building was known colloquially as the Creep House. Even the most hardened of criminals stayed away from it, they said it gave them the creeps. Kids would occasionally make up stories and legends about ghosts and ghouls before they had that sort of thinking hammered out of them by the realities of the Nepleslian gangscape. Apparently, the plot of land itself was an old one that'd passed many hands, and it'd been many things. The first of which was apparently a brothel, then changing hands multiple times and assuming different things. Apartments, Love Hotels, Offices. The people wanted the building to be anything, and failed at everything.

"How interesting, this place existed a few years before Ketsurui Yui was created. It's older than Yui, giving it a lot of weight and heft compared to the other things I see, all built in a week, tops." He looked over to Black. "Nepleslia was not built in a day after all."

 

[paladinrpg]

(keeping this a little biefer than I'd like as I am due for a long turkey-nap )

Sayoko paused a long minute as she arched an eyebrow at their newly appointed leader, her arms folded across her chest. "Rice Cake, eh?" Oh great, she had only been here a short time and already she was being labelled. Well, at least it was a somewhat endearing-sounding nick name, considering the tough guy who was uttering it. She sighed a moment in silent acquiescence and then eventually followed Newman calmly with a well-practiced "Very well, commander." No need to nitpick on a first mission, but she would definitely have to find the right one for him in time...

Once they had gotten closer to the building itself, she could feel something about it was out of place right away (and not just the stark contrast between it and the surrounding neighborhood). This was not an altogether unfamiliar feeling, and one that sent her hand reaching down into a utility pocket in a quiet, practiced manner. Agent Newman could notice her producing a 'Peeper' Sensor Monocle and donning it over her left eye, before carefully surveying the area they were walking into to try to get a better understanding of what was going on.

"Sir, if you mean my abilities," began Agent Mochizuki with a slight frown, "It is not exactly something I can turn on and off when I feel like it... they tend to come to me rather suddenly." Some colors started to form in the eyepiece though, as she then added a little more energetically: "However, this location is radiating a strong electromagnetic and gravity field on sensors. This must be what is causing breakdowns in the unshielded heavy construction equipment used to tear it down." The green-haired agent reached out to put a hand against the old brickwork gingerly. "I can't help but feeling this building has... some kind of will of its own, and does not want to be demolished or altered."

 

[SageShooter]

Alexander nodded as he heard the commander give out the orders, settling in at his terminal to do some research. He had been assigned after his "administrative leave" had finished up and was routed over to what many in his unit had taken to calling the nut hut. But that was his lot in life now, shaking his head a little as he tapped away at the keyboard. The info from James peaked his interest a little, getting a raised eyebrow as he scanned through what little info on the previous residents there was.

"Old Yui huh? Goddess that's old, but I suppose one or two slip between the cracks right?" he piped up as he began to search the databases on stuff that had happened before. The building had passed through the hands of pimps, mobsters putting up fronts and housing for their indentured, then back to pimps before finally having been condemned for a while. During the condemned period there had been multiple police reports on the house for kicking vagrants out and keeping kids from trespassing in the old building. Notices here and there of graffiti and kids trying to be edgy with rituals, all part of phases they were going through because apparently conflict on a daily basis wasn't enough littered the reports. But there were a few photos that had caught his eye, including a grisly scene of a double homicide of two squatters.

"Hey, James, this look weird?" He asked, forwarding the pictures of the scene to James who would see the two dead men, and while there was blood everywhere, they seemed to be in designs and lines on the floor with no real outline of any discernible shape.

 

[Sigma]

"It's a building. It is a conglomeration of brick, mortar and a whole bunch of other crap. It isn't an animate object," Newman brushed aside the mystic mumbo-jumbo.

He was, however, alert to the fact that there was abnormal EM and gravitic phenomenon. "Are these natural occurrences or artificial? And before we pronounce them to be strange, we ought to make sure the rest of the neighborhood isn't like this. Go check out the buildings around. I'm going to do a walk around of the perimeter," the IPG man said.

His own eyes changed as they switched between infrared and ultraviolet whenever he spotted something worth examining. It was winter in Nepleslia but it wasn't terribly cold yet. The strange thing, however, was that parts of the house were warmer or colder than others. It was a most peculiar finding but one with a likely explanation. As an unused house, homeless squatters could have been living in there recently, making small fires in certain rooms. Or gangs might have used it temporarily as a storehouse.

"I agree with Rice Cake... there is something strange with this place. But I am not convinced it is caused by spookables," Newman spoke aloud, tapping the bricks.

 

[paladinrpg]

"I would not entirely dismiss the idea, sir," began Sayoko in a measured tone, "Ancient Yamataian folklore and religious belief has tales of spirits that would awaken within objects over a century old... and this place certainly is decrepit enough to make one wonder about the truth of that." She then smiled faintly to Newman, "But, I will keep looking for spookables," the odd emphasis on the word seeming to be an attempt to subtly play with his paranoia. It also belied a bit of her own fears as well, for as she quietly separated to scout the edges of the construction site a dull throbbing seemed to well up in her left shoulderblade, the site of her injury long ago. This was like a silent alarm bell that she was getting closer to some flash of insight.

However, nothing seemed remarkable about the neighborhood around the construction site. She carefully picked her way through the shadows of the modern apartments just erected beyond a large fence, finding what one would expect there... denizens of the city, huddled in their little glass cages away from the rough streets, and those that were braver than most, out looking for action. Some minor criminal activity could be seen going on at a nearby shopping strip, but that was par for the course in the dense urban landscape, and the local police would pick up on that soon enough. Even the strong, uniform EM signatures from before on her eyepiece unit transitioned to little more than a chaotic mess of interference from all the consumer electronics and communications traffic. This trail was cold, and it was time to return to Newman and see if he had found more to go on than she did.

Agent Mochizuki passed through a hole in a torn fence on one side of the site, eventually ending up next to some broken down earth-moving equipment that had been attempting to chip away at the foundations of the building before it malfunctioned. Suddenly, the tingle from before started to return much more strongly and then there was a rush of intense pain that shot through her spine. "Ugh..." It disoriented her enough that she took a couple of erratic steps in trying to regain her composure, the last one catching nothing but air... as she went careening into a relatively shallow pit. The soft earth cushioned her fall, but the pain was not from any physical injury and did not relent. As dirt landed on her grey uniform, she choked and flailed, a sense of otherwordly panic entirely unlike her overtaking her voice.

"You murderer... don't leave me here to die... cold and alone...!" Sayoko shouted in Newman's direction, who was likely within earshot of the ruckus. "The brick walls... closing in... h-help me..." she whimpered, her face finally filling with tears as the vision began to fade.

The spookable radar was on, now, and he could see why she had tried to avoid triggering it before as such things were not always pleasurable experiences.

 

[Sigma]

Newman drew his Zen 45 and advanced quickly towards Sayoko. "Morgan, get over here. I need back up," the IPG man called over his radio instantly. He rounded the corner and saw Sayoko on the ground

"Oi, Rice Cake, you alright?" Newman scanned around, looking for her attacker. "Stay down."

"Morgan, make sure you bring a med kit. Rice Cake's been hit by something."

 

[paladinrpg]

The Jiyuu agent was laying face up in the dirt, taking deep breaths in what seemed to be an effort to calm herself down. There were wet streaks on Sayoko's cheeks and she was quite pale from a sudden shock. There was no traces of violence on her person, outside of what could be caused by a simple fall.

"Newman..." she stuttered, as he stepped closer and felt her eyes upon him, "...I'm alright. Just... need to focus, here -- now. I was seeing... something from the past. Painful memories..." Sayoko fell quiet and remained still as ordered until Agent Morgan arrived, trying to make sense of the jumble of images and shake off the lingering aches that could be from reliving a long-dead resident's traumatic experience.

 

[Luca]

James leaned into Alexander's monitor and took a look, grinning. "Fascinating. Looks like some sort of ritual killing," he put his finger on the monitor and traced where some of the lines went, "some people think that there are 'ley lines' scattered throughout each planet and that if you can draw a line that runs along it, or is parallel to it, it can give you power. Maybe they thought there was such a line passing through this location - giving it supernatural power."

Then his earpiece crackled in his ear and he pulled backwards and listened to his superior. "On my way!" He looked at his desk, grabbed his sandwich and stuffed it into his pocket. As he was leaving he grabbed a portable medical kit. Before he left the stakeout post he ensured that his weapons were secure. He looked inside his coat and saw his pistol by his side, his whippet-style shotgun inside the left breast, and a personal defence weapon on the right breast with ammunition on his sides. Confirming that he was ready to leave and properly dressed for the occasion, he made tracks. "C'mon James," he bellowed as he attempted to stuff the sandwich into his mouth as he ran, "c'mon Alex, we have a possible paranormal encounter - or some idiot with a gamma ray gun pointing it at Mochi's head."

Which could've been true. As he walked down the street and approached the building, medical pack in hand and looking at the building, he noticed that it was starting to darken. The overcast clouds had taken a darker shade over the condemned building. It didn't matter to him immediately, he had orders and those old cop instincts kicked in.

 

[Sigma]

"Painful memories? What the hell? Your profile said nothing about bloody flashbacks! If you're gonna keep reliving your flaming nightmares, I'll send you to the nursemaid division!" Newman shouted, not understanding what she was saying. For good measure, he slapped her across the face. "You're a goddam IPG Operator! Act like one!"

"Fuckin' hell. They said you Jiyuuians were tough shite fuckers, not bloody nancies!" he muttered darkly.

"Morgan, where the devil are you? Rice Cake's gone gaga."

 

[paladinrpg]

(oh boy, a method to my madness. )

Even though it hurt like hell, the pain of Newman's backhand shook her completely back to the here and now and caused Agent Mochizuki to jump to her feet defensively. "Ugh! What kind of First aid is that?!" she sputtered to her commander, as she glared daggers at him while rubbing a red mark on her milky skin.

"Hey tough guy, I'll have you know I was talking about someone else's memories! For Goddess sakes, there was a man murdered right here and I had to feel all of that! I got a sudden pain up my spine that made me trip because he was bludgeoned by someone in the back... then all I could see was the perpetrator laying bricks over him until he suffocated."

She seemed to have forgotten about the slap, as her eyes refocused and then looked past Newman at the building's foundations exposed by the digging equipment. "This structure has tried and failed to be many things, true... because it always has been a crime scene from the very start."

 

[Sigma]

"Bullshit, Rice Cake. You say a guy got slotted here? Where's the proof? Where's the case file? I need more than that! Guys get slotted all the time for gang shit. You see spookables, I need to see proof!" Newman retorted loudly. He took a deep breath and then another.

"Sorry. Adrenaline," he said more calmly, clearly making an effort to control himself.

"Morgan, still waiting to hear where you are."

He returned his attention to Sayoko. "So what'd you see?"

 

[Luca]

James was getting closer to the building, but he noticed that his partner Alexander was taking their time. He must've been gathering or printing out materials to show to Newman. James had a few of his own to give, shrugged and continued to the building site with the medical kit, the sandwich, his weapons and some documentation as well as a datapad to continue doing research.

He reached the building site, and found Newman standing over a hole with Mochizuki, and approached to see that Mochizuki had fallen into the hole judging by the dirt stains on her clothing. "What happened?" he asked first and foremost, putting the medikit down and looking at the hole. It looked like a grave to him. "Just a tumble into a ..."

His train of thought derailed as he squatted down and looked at the hole in closer detail. He saw fragments of bone at the bottom of it. "...grave?" his voice concerned. Alexander eventually showed up a minute after Morgan had arrived with a handful of printed material for Newman and out of breath from dashing from safehouse to site.

 

[Sigma]

"Say again?" Newman asked. He strode over to James' side and peered down.

Sure enough, there were pieces of dirt covered bone inside. "I take it all back, Rice Cake. Good job."

"Black, cordon off the area. Morgan, bag some of them for analysis. Rice Cake, you and I are going into that house. Sound fun?"

 

[SageShooter]

Alexander trudged along behind James after shipping a handgun at his side, making sure to pull all the info off his terminal and put it onto a easy to read data pad so he could give what little info they were able to collect to Newman at the site. Before he could even broach the subject of the pad, Newman gave the order to cordon off the area and with little else the man set about doing so. He slide the data pad into his back pocket for the time being and made sure to secure the site from any intrusion for the time being.