ʜᴀʟ ❖ ᴄʏᴏn

Acaelus had spent a couple minutes getting suited up, neatly folding his SA uniform into a pile in the private quarters and after he pulled his hair into a tie before gathering the packet they had been given.

Inside were the missions objectives, the restrictions, a list of employed and various other materials, including a map to the grounds. This he pulled out and examined for a while.

He wasn't too surprised when after an extended period of time, there was a knock on his door and Takashi let himself into the space without a word.

Acaelus was told first that the others in his team had been taken care of and they had commenced the investigation without him. And then Takashi urged him to regroup with his team. Acaelus was aware that his absence would be noticed, so he agreed and politely excused himself from Takashi's presence and continued into the compound.

Giving his map a studious glare he travelled to the far side and was met with a vast span of sleek wooden slates of door surrounding the garden and shrouded with a canopy of the exact grain.

Walking up the short steps, Acaelus pushed aside one of the entrances and stepped through to find long hallway in either direction. There was a flurry of voices and then silence at the ending note of a voice he would most likely recognize anywhere.

Moment's later he found Wen and Locke turn the corner at the end of the hall. Each were decked out in the finest dresses, striding towards him in shoes that made them almost level with his own height, and their makeup and hair was done up so well that it was near impossible to pick out who they really were, except Acaelus knew.

And he frowned when he found Masami was missing.

“Where's Masami?” He asked as he met them halfway through the hall.

As he rounded the corner, Wen was surprised to find Acaelus standing there.

"Where's Masami?"

And, naturally, the agent skipped any form of pleasantries. He, much to Wen's chagrin, didn't even mention how good the blond looked. Sighing dramatically, Wen gave a helpless shrug. "She's somewhere around. Probably."

"Neither of us know." Locke said, the harshness and irritation nearly immediately erased from his entire being. He was still in the process of readjusting the fabric to be a bit more comfortable, as it still felt all too twisted around his torso. When he finally decided that it was a lost cause, he put his hands back into the sleeves and stared back at the man in front of them.

"Song and Masami had went out to begin the investigation, while I went over the packets." Locke then gestured to the man at his side. "He came back, and Masami has not been seen since." With the situation explained, and the fact that he was now in the presence of one of the best agents in SA, he would most likely clam up considerably. He honestly didn't want to seem like much of an idiot, or proclaimed useless by Mr.I'm-an-S1-But-I'm-A-Normal-Agent-Too.

“Yes there was mention of this crate,” Alarick mused somewhat under his breath. The oddity of this murder in the case made him wonder if something hadn’t gone wrong in their usual string of- well- murders. It was near about painfully confusing, but he figured whatever Agent Aeres and Agent Quilliam discovered might draw some lines. There were the rose tattoos, the odd tattoo on the boy, this crate, the way that they were discovered- pulled apart, and the fact that there was no rhyme or reason to the choosing said victims. So- where did that leave them? In Bat-Shit-Crazy Land.
His eyes skimmed over the list of suspects, and sighed as he knew nothing about them or how they were even connected to do this crime. “There any way to learn more about these suspects? For instance why they are implicated on these crimes.” He sighed, “seems like a lot of footwork for one person. Weird footwork.” He eyed the sheer amount of paperwork the detective’s desk and frowned. There was a lot to do obviously. “I can use the desktop in our planning room for that- unless you have anything particular to add. I might be back to bother you- but I don’t want to be in your hair too much- you obviously have a lot to do.”

"We have the interrogations archived. You can access those tapes through Janus"—he paused before quickly explaining—"Janus is our system AI."

Scratching underneath his chin, Ping allowed himself a loud sigh. "Agent, we're not as funded or well-manned as SA. We have a lot of crime and we don't have nearly enough officers." There was bitterness in his words. "The suspect files are also stored on Janus. It's—"

"Actually, the entire case is now linked onto Janus," a freckle-faced man spoke up from the next desk. He had thick black hair and doe-like eyes that seemed even bigger behind his circular lenses. "Langley uploaded everything yesterday."

---

Janus is a lot like Jarvis from Ironman. You can access Janus when you turn on the interface inside the work room.

REQUEST: Please don't ask Janus to do a shit-ton of things at once. It's hard for me to write posts where I have to answer to ten-different conversation prompts. It's also very boring.

“Well thank you Detective Ping,” Alarick stated warmly and put the file neatly underneath his arm. Honestly he wanted as much information he could have and having a paper and electronic copy could come in handy. This presented multiple sources to draw information from at the same time, and if he got tired of technology he had good ole fashioned typed words to make him happy. Either way- this case wasn’t going to be fun on his psyche.

Leaving the pit of detectives he headed back to the small room that as their ‘home base’. He sat the case down on the desk and loaded the desktop. By this time he didn’t know what Agent Gear was up too, but just that he wasn’t following Agent Reindhart like a lost puppy. That suited the man as did the lack of Agent Aeres.
“Janus,” he stated firmly- not really knowing what to expect. “Are the labs back on that crate?” He figured he would start in the glaring oddity in this case, and then work to suspects. This was going to be a tedious process.

"Good morning, Agent Reindhart."

A voice with an American accent filled the room as the tabletop glowed blue in activation. There was no face to Janus, but there was a voice.

"I'm assuming that you are referring to the chest from File 44A-X1." There was a pause, presumably to allow the intelligence to locate the necessary files. After a moment, Janus spoke again, "Yes, the reports have been filed. What would you like to know?"

“Morning,” he stated somewhat sterilely to the computer. The said chunk of electronics then corrected him and defined his search for him. Thank goodness for artificial intelligence. “Yes I am- thank you.” Alarick knew he didn’t have to be polite to the computer, but it didn’t hurt anything. “Yes I would.” That was welcome news to learn that the information on the crate would be back- maybe that would help some loose ends on this out-of-place murder. Or maybe it might make things more confusing.
Who knew really.
"Let's see. Give me what the lab discovered. Material, make, any manufacturer information, and if the lab found any peculiarities in it." So he pretty much asked for the entire report, but he didn't want to be vague in this- all his bases needed to be covered. Of course all the poor computer would have to do was flash him the lab report. Or talk about the lab report. Whatever talking computers did.

"The chest appears to be antique-craft—oak, handmade. Late twentieth century." There was a pause before Janus spoke up again. "I wasn't able to source the item, but I did come across this listing."

Without waiting for a green-light from the agent, the intelligence brought up its discovery. The table's surface grew dim and, at the location closest to Alarick, revealed an identification card. Pictured in the corner of the card was a woman with plain brown hair, dark eyes, and a small mouth.

"Her name is Zhang Chun-Hua, twenty-four, and currently living in District-Base 5. Six years ago, she put up an ad for a chest similar to ours. The ad was claimed by an anonymous user by the handle of SweetAutumn020277.cn. There is no further information concerning the buyer. I do believe the data has been erased."

As Janus spoke, the identification card magnified for Alarick's reading ease. "I have also drafted directions to her most current housing. Would you like me to send them to your devices?"

Gear walked into the room a little after Alarick, who was rushing around so much that the Tenebrae user thought the scarred man was gonna keel over soon. He obviously wasn't paying attention to Gear, who at one point left and got them both cofee from the break room. He walked over to Alarick and handed him a To-Go cup with the dark liquid inside. "Figured you'd need this" he said as Janus mentioned the box.

"A three thousand year old box used in a murder. Well we can check off anyone who isn't rich from our suspect list. Janus, what was the asking price for the box?"

Alarick was a bit surprised that this was a viable lead. Not that he doubted his own intelligence for a moment, but the fates had aligned as of late to make things a bit more complicated for him. Of course the lead wasn’t all encompassing of every single question they had in this murder considering that the buyer had stripped their information for moments just like these. The name they used was even generic. “Yes,” he stated firmly to Janus upon the question of needing the information. “Though six years is quite some time, but maybe we can gather something from questioning her.” Alarick rambled to himself. It was in that pensive moment that he barely realized that Agent Gear had returned bearing coffee. “Thanks.” Yet this gratification was short lived as his keen eye went to discerning exactly what went into this coffee. It wasn’t as if he was a coffee snob, but he was unsure what sort of coffee grounds an ill funded police department used. Alarick sipped it with reluctance and felt as it burned his throat all the way down. Of course it was strong- one glance at Detective Ping’s caseload should have told him that.

"There was no asking price," Janus answered evenly. His voice was calm, knowledgable, and indifferent to the coloration of emotions and opinions. "And if there was a monetary agreement made between the seller and the buyer, it was not done through any public server."

Without another question, the computer stayed silent.

Alarick sighed. They had one lead and that was well enough, but he didn’t know how much they would get off of it. The woman sold the box over six years ago, and if there was anything remarkable about the suspect it might have been skewed from years of disuse. A finger came to the side of his face and he slowly scratched it in pensive quietness. For a moment the room wreaked of heavy thought before he spoke again. “Janus,” he was very well aware that he didn’t have to properly address the computer- but he did anyway. “What about the tattoo on the latest victim? And not the rose one, but the other. Do we have any intel on where he could have gotten it? Or if it had any significance beyond the obvious aesthetic?” He took another slow sip of the coffee. The bitterness could be overlooked for the welcoming warmth it provided and the rush of caffeine that was sure to come.