goneawayworld | Babadon't Room Crawl

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Babadon't Room Crawl

[OOC: Please tag in to the assigned room. There will be at least one NPC tag to the thread per day. Remember that your characters can still use the network to communicate findings or questions to those still in the living quarters.]

Once word is out that the victim was dragged to the Rewards Lounge, the hires who’ve been cleared head are given permission to enter that rare knock-off paradise. Somewhere along the line, someone suggests splitting into groups, an idea that gets all the more appealing when they see that the Rewards Lounge has at least five suites to investigate, perhaps in case Corporate ever decided to enlist a stable of bootlickers and snitches to feed them intel on the other hires in exchange for feather beds and middle-shelf scotch.

It becomes clear that the intelligence they got was likely correct: there are streaks of black goo along to doorframe to the lobby room between all the suites.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ South’s already casting her eye around the room as she comes in and so she doesn’t immediately look at Setsuna, not until Kerrigan passes comment. At which point she finally looks and does a visible double-take. ]

Uh. Seconded. The fuck?

[Setsuna nods, then does a quick heart ♥ gesture with both hands in front of her chest, over the four-colored four-leaf clover on her chest, before getting back to business.]

Cure Passion. I'm here to help. [She stabs a sharp look in the direction of her comm.] Don't laugh, Kokichi, I can hear you.

Most people aren't ... quite that surprised, but I'm used to having to introduce myself, regardless. Nice to meet you both! I hope we work well together.

[The introduction makes it worse. Kerrigan could have accepted something like filming a movie or test-running a product mascot, but taking it seriously is too much. She gives South a look halfway between "are you seeing this shit?" and "save me."]

Uh. All right. Why don't you just. Stay out of the way.

[Grownups are here. Kerrigan promptly switches to ignoring Setsuna as she looks around the room.]

Should be quick to sweep for a body. I've got the bathroom.

[She's talking to South as she makes for her target.]

Riiight.

[ South squints at Setsuna for a long moment, as if she's trying to decide if she's prepared to deal with... whatever this girl's deal is, before nodding at Kerrigan as she heads towards the bathroom. ]

I'll take the closet. [ she glances back at Setsuna ] If you're talking to someone on the network then I guess... keep doing that and keep us updated?

Hey, Delta, get your glowy ass out here and like, let me know if anything's off.

[ The green holographic form of Delta projects from the puck around her neck as she turns to head for the walk-in closet. ]

[Setsuna's face reddens, mouth pressing into a firm and extremely irritated line. She barely clenches her teeth around a huff of frustration. She knows Kokichi can see and hear everything happening, and that only makes the sense of undeserved humiliation worse.]

... fine. I'll check by the bed, if you don't mind.

[Her heels tick-tack-tick across the floor in an angry staccato as she marches over to the side of the bed, eyeing it like nothing so much as if it's the vomited-up wreckage of a particularly misbehaving cat who got into the trash, before punching her hands together, fist to palm. She sweeps the area with a glance, eyes lighting on the locked trunk as a starting point.]

[In a single smooth motion, she draws back her fist and falls into a low stance, then snaps her arm forward, punching effortlessly through the entire lock and into the trunk itself, with enough force the trunk cracks, shattering apart along spiderwebbing fractures from the point of impact and outwards so violently it simply falls apart in front of her like a cracked egg.]

[She steps back, shoulders still tense with her own wounded pride, and forces herself to take a quick breath as she takes in the contents of the chest she's now oh so helpfully exposed.]

[At the sound of splintering wood, Kerrigan pauses to look over her shoulder, missing the punch but seeing the results. Unfazed by a slightly-built woman shattering a solidly-built chest—she could do the same in her field gear—she chuckles. Making so much noise goes against all her training, but on the other hand, she can't fault anyone destroying Jorgmund property.]

Heh.

[See? She's only medium terrible.

Kerrigan returns to her own search, years of practice instinctively making her footfalls silent on the bathroom tile even as she calls back to Setsuna with no attempt at stealth, voice bouncing on the hard surfaces of the room.]

Anything in there?

[Only part of her attention is on whatever answer may come. Shower first, and then if there's no body, she can look for any smaller clues.]

[ South instinctively turns towards the commotion, not out of alarm but out of basic tactical awareness, and... blinks. ]

Or... do that. That works. Wow, okay.

[ Looks sure can be deceiving.

She doesn't stay distracted for long, however. Once she's accepted that Setsuna can apparently more than handle herself and do her part, she turns back the direction she was heading.

She still has her broken hand in a splint, so she has to open the closet one-handed—which she does, though not before checking with Delta if he can hear anything amiss that she couldn't. ]

The trunk breaks open, and candy spills out - particularly, Christmas candy. Peppermints and chocolate oranges and candy canes and foil-wrapped santas. Probably forty pounds of just straight-up candy.

In the bathroom, the semi-opaque shower doors hide a large, burlap sack hanging from the "hot" knob. It's soaking wet, and the water dripping from it is black, as if someone tried and failed to wash the dark stains out of it and gave up.

In the closet, there are mostly neatly-arranged Jorgmund uniforms, organized by size, as there would be in a department store. One of the ones that would be a Medium is missing.

[What the fuck is not a thought Setsuna would say, or think, but there really is no more accurate summary of the emotion she feels at the sight of the trunk turning piñata and exploding into a spilling heap of candy, candy, and more candy.]

[She shoves her hands into the mass of candies in frantic confusion, digging rapidly through the mound and spreading it all around her as she goes, desperate to determine if it really is just - inexplicably but horrifically, under the circumstances - full of nothing but candy.]

[She pulls herself up into a crouch, surveying the aftermath of this sugary catastrophe she's produced, the mound now halved in size, at best, several untidy and much, much smaller tributary piles behind her, where her efforts have tossed the rest.]

[Not caring if she trails black goo all over Jorgmund's floors, Kerrigan retrieves the sack from the shower, letting it dangle from one finger. She doesn't want to get black gunk on herself.]

Looks like someone was trying—actually, wait.

[She starts to report to her teammates, but thinks better of it. They're just going to have to repeat all this back to the people waiting in the dorms. Might as well save some time. With the non-clue-holding hand, Kerrigan taps at her comm, opening a channel to the rest of the "New Hires" and setting the device to float along after her.]

Kerrigan here. You all getting this? [She's in a bathroom, judging by the furnishings visible behind her and the hollow quality to her voice as the tiles reflect it around the room. She doesn't wait for anybody to confirm they're watching before going on.] We're in the "Rewards Lounge" [if sarcasm could kill she'd be up on murder charges] and my team's searching the first suite. Found a decent-sized sack it looks like someone was trying to rinse black monster gunk out of. Might have been Santa's sack. Do we know if the Santa costume had one?

[She holds it up to the camera. It's burlap, wet, and stained with black goo.]

There was some of the same stuff near the entryway to the area. It looks like the bathroom lock's been messed with, but I can't tell how recent that is.

[Everyone gets treated to the back of Kerrigan's head as she crouches to look at the mechanism.]

[ South frowns as she looks around the closet, pushing the uniforms aside with her good hand to get a proper look and see if there's anything hiding.

It's not her who notices that one of the uniforms seems to be missing. It's Delta, who projects his hologram in front of the relevant section and informs her: ]

There is an irregular number of medium-sized uniforms compared to the other sizes. It appears that one such uniform has been taken.

...huh. Okay. That's—

[ She hears Kerrigan's voice from the bathroom and picks up her own comm. just in time to catch her report in an echo. That's... ew. Monster gunk. She's glad Kerrigan called the bathroom.

When she's done, she sighs and turns her video on too. ]

Yeah, so, there's also a uniform missing. Medium, specifically.

Close examination reveals that the lock was less broken on the door than partially removed. With another pin or two, it could go back into working order without any effort at all. It's difficult to tell when it happened, but there are human fingerprints around it.

If they examine, all the other exits except for the one from the lobby to the suite - to the kitchenette, to the hallway, to the window - either lack locks or have necessary pins to the lock removed.

The goo, upon smelling it, smells faintly like some sort of rot, perhaps even a corpse.

[Setsuna's comm is already in hovermode, but she turns back to it as Kerrigan's message interrupts Kokichi's feed on her end, and gives Kokichi an only partially apologetic moue and a shrug before setting her own video feed to broadcast to all New Hires as well.]

[One wonders if this causes any sort of annoying feedback screech or if it's just the regular level of annoying that comes with all three of them being able to hear each other thrice over simultaneously within the same room.]

[She straightens, still irritable, nudging a few pieces of candy aside with her foot.]

There was a locked trunk here. ["Was", being the operative word; the feed shows nothing so much as splintered-open painted wood to either side of where candy still spills.] It's full of ... candy. Nothing but Christmas candies. I'm hoping they were put here by Jorgmund staff in advance of 'rewarding' someone and then simply forgotten about, but under the circumstances, given this creature's preferred victims ... I doubt it.

I'm going to disassemble the bed next, just in case. I don't see anything visibly concerning, but judging by what else we've found here, looks could be deceiving.

[Also, that way, she doesn't have to be looking directly at it when either South or Kerrigan opens the sack and confirms what she already fears might be inside.]

[She moves to the side of the bed, shuffling or kicking candy out of her path, and simply hauls the mattress, sheets, duvet and all, off the bedframe, flipping it as she does so it falls upside down upon the soft duvet, now-untucked sheets falling to either side of it. She leaves the feed to notice anything immediately revealed in the process to the rest of the New Hires, turning her own attention back to the frame instead in case the removal of the mattress has exposed any secrets that might lie hidden beneath.]

[Unfortunately for Kokichi, what he said is loud enough to be picked up and rebroadcast to the New Hires channel in a strange, echo-y reverb.

Kerrigan ignores Kokichi's general Kokichi-ness as she looks through the bathroom cabinets (solely on principle—she doesn't think there are likely to be any clues there), reasoning through the problem aloud.]

Right. "Santa" dumps the candy from the sack, tries to clean it out to reuse for something, gives up, and takes a uniform to change into, maybe not in that order. It didn't do the lock, at least not at the same time. It's not a rush job, and there are fingerprints. Is it that good a mimic?

[Kerrigan huffs. Not enough information.]

Hey, uh, Cure Passion [oh god why is this happening] how much would you say that candy weighs?

[ South rolls her eyes at Kokichi, but she bites her tongue rather than snap at him as she's tempted to. ]

Yeah, and the uniform's size is fuckin' important, too. If the thing's taken it to wear then whoever it's mimicking can't be someone who needs large and up. Might rule out some people.

[ South does a final sweep of the closet before figuring she's found all there is to find, then heads back out into the rest of the room. After a brief pause to blink at the mess Setsuna's made now that she's seeing it in person, she heads to check the perimeter of the room and the other doors. ]

Uh, yeah, so, looks like the other locks in here are all fucked up too.

[Setsuna's answer is immediate, and certain.] Heavy enough they'd have to be very strong to carry all of it for long without strain. It looks to be almost twenty kilograms' worth of candy, if not more.

... a little over a third of the weight of the average adult human body weight, at best.

[Don't everyone thank Cure Passion for that extremely helpful but extremely morbidly concerning fact all at once, now.]

[She frowns, invisible to the feed, as she's facing the candy, not her comm.] Does that even help us at all?

[Kerrigan knows what a kilogram is, Setsuna. And what hauling a dead body is like.]

It means the thing knew the sack would at least hold a child. It's a lot easier to explain a bag over your shoulder than an unconscious kid. It scrapped that plan when it couldn't get out the suspicious stains.

[She holds said suspicious stains up to the camera. Everybody look at the gross goo!]

The black stuff smells rotten. [Wait.] I mean literally rotten, not just bad.

[It reminds her somewhat of the zerg Creep...but she'd prefer not to think about that, and instead she addresses the people waiting in the dorms.]

We still have to search the kitchette, but is there anything you guys want us to take a second look at?

Edited 2021-01-20 00:03 (UTC)

[ South's coming to the end of a second sweep of the perimeter and doors when Kokichi pipes up again and she groans, stopping and leaning against a wall to think. ]

Right. It was other shit in-between. Almost forgot about that. Fuck, that's a good point then...

Whatever. Keep it in mind, I guess. We don't know exactly what this thing's been doing, it could have been back here multiple times. There's something fuckin' weird going on in here.

[ She shakes her head and stops addressing Kokichi, calling to the others: ]

I'll take point with the kitchenette if you're waiting on other or looking at other shit.

There aren't any objects in the bed, but there is a streak of black goo.

In the kitchenette, which connects to the mini bar, is a small fridge, a coffee machine, a sink, a trash can, and cupboards and cabinets - and the same smell of rot as the black goo. The sponge by the sink is soaked in water and black goo, even though the sink itself is clean.

Shout out if anything in the refrigerator's turned into a fungusmonster from residual evil corruption at this "Babadon't"'s hands, I wouldn't mind facing a comfortably familiar threat, for once.

[Setsuna nods, respectfully but business-like, to the two soldiers, then turns her head, comm feed following her gaze, towards the door leading out to the gardens.]

I'll see whether there's a lady, or a tiger, beyond this door.

[Some logic puzzles are the same across all worlds, it seems. Setsuna opens the door - by punching the doorknob off, if it isn't easily or already unlocked - and strides through, making her way towards the gardens, braced to pull herself up short in case she faces any obstructions.]

[On her way to the kitchenette, Kerrigan swings by the remains of the chest and helps herself to a handful, popping a peppermint into her mouth. As she turns away she steps on a chocolate Santa, and oops, wouldn't you know it, pivoting on that foot to turn around crushes chocolate into the carpet. Gosh, how careless of her.

She idly offers her candy-filled hand to South as she heads in to rummage through cupboards for clues, and maybe for a really big container to fill with candy. She's not even particularly enthused about sugar, but she is all in on any sort of petty revenge on Jorgmund.]

Dirty sponge, clean sink.

[Her voice is a little indistinct around the mint.]

Who wants to do the trash can?

Edited 2021-01-22 03:45 (UTC)

[ South snickers and gladly takes a few pieces of the candy, popping some into her pocket and one into her mouth, just because, before joining in searching through the kitchenette. ]

Maybe it used the sponge in the bathroom? Or... I don’t know.

[ She makes a ‘whatever’ gesture. Something like that. This kind of stuff never was her job. ]

Sure I’ll regret if but ugh, I’ll check the trash. But then I’m ‘checking’ the mini bar.

[ If she can pilfer more than some candy, she’s not going to miss the opportunity. But anyway, she opens the trash can to take a look for anything this thing might have tossed in there. Do monsters use trash cans? She kinda hopes not. ]

[From the hallway, Setsuna will be able to see a row of windows to the Gardens, with a door in about twenty yards down. Even from the windows, something is strange about the Gardens: all of the lilac and roses, and only the lilac and roses in this section, are dead.

The trash can also yields results: a color printout of all of the faces of the current Hires. All the teenagers and younger, human or otherwise, have circles around them in marker. The following have Xs through their faces:

Guts
Kevin Armstrong
Breq Mianaai
Ronald McDonald
Alia
Dan Sagittarius
Agent Washington
Agent New York
Agent South Dakota
Sarah Kerrigan
Aiden Price
Lavernius Tucker
Carolina
Agent North Dakota
Nora Valkyree
Sam Winchester
Brandon Saint John
Rune Saint John
Garviel Loken
Mackenzie Haynes
Rogue]

[That ... is alarming. Setsuna's eyes narrow: lilacs and roses were symbols of innocence and love, respectively, in flower language. There was no guarantee that was the intended meaning, of course, but it seemed too on the nose - especially to a Cure with a sharp enough memory to remember her juniors' stories of the Desert Apostles and their deliberate goals of making just such flowers within a victim's heart "wilt" - for it to be mere coincidence.]

[Walking the rest of the way is a time risk she might not be able to afford to take; every minute they wasted here was another minute they left the Babadon't to potentially rampage back in the dorms among their clueless friends.]

[She grabs the comm with one hand, and there's a bright, almost blinding flash of red light that fills the feed from her camera, before her hand pulls away and reveals she's now standing in the ruined section of the Gardens, directly, instead of still in the hall. She moves instantly to kneel amongst the dead patches, fingers splaying on the soil as she spreads her hands around, eyes searching for any further warnings ... or clues.]

[See, South, good thing you searched the trash. Kerrigan glances at the list, her own X-ed out face jumping out at her first, before the likely significance hits her.]

Oh, damn. Hold that up to the camera. I think our suspect list just got shorter.

Babadon't Room Crawl

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