Mage the Ascension: Rule of Shade

[B4UTRUST]

James skimmed over the file, picking up various points.
"Well I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's not a Technocracy job. Too messy, too many inconsistancies and too much lack of control in the manner of death. As much as I hate the 'Crats they're at least fairly ordered and careful with their hits.

"Secondly, I'm not trusting a damned thing in this report by one Mr. Travis Jones, M.D. There is nothing normal about the development of a 17-21 year old who's only four eight. I'd push the age back to 12-14 year mark possibly, if not earlier depending on the development of the female. Average height for a female in the U.S. is around 5'3" to 5'4", definately not 4'10". With puberty kicking in at about that age 11-13 she could be young. Or if this is a case where the woman is indeed older, almost half a foot below average height and only about half a foot taller then your average female with dwarfism. Not entirely noteworthy, but not normaly development by any means. Nor did he take any pains to mention the fact that there are obvious signs of elaborate ritual-based cutting as indicated by the picture there. Lets just leave that out of the report entirely and just file it with a hope and a prayer that the photos successfully stay with the folder.

"My next guesses here are that the eyes, possibly with some religious or ceremonial intent, were taken with a melon baller to keep them intact. Trying to dig out the eye with a steak knife would have badly damaged it and the coroner makes no note of any optic fluids around the socket so the eye was probably removed intact. Stick the baller at the edge and scoop it out like a melon, use the edge to slice through the optic nerve. Of course at this point I feel it neccessary to mention the rest of the missing organs, that paired with the flesh carvings, indicate a purpose to their removal.

"The person or persons who did this were intent on certain parts. The eyes, going back to old folk lore and legend that they capture the image of whatever they see before they die. The brain because of possible memories of who killed them. The rest of the removed organs indicates that the body was possibly, and likely, moved from the original location prior to it being discovered. The killer was careful to remove possible evidence of the location and any struggle. No fingernails to show signs of dirt, blood or skin if there was a struggle. The lungs, stomach lining and intestines removed to prevent an analysis of the contents to try to figure out where the victim's body had been previously, suggesting that the contents might have possibly contained some sort of clue, be it in drug, smoke, fluid or solid form that might have been specific or possibly unique to the place the murder happened. If she was murded outside of the only Vietnamese restraunt in town and the body moved across town, the contents of the stomach would have revealed she had been there shortly before, a very solid clue.

"The lack of any mention of blood, skin, or hair folicles that were not the female's means that the killer was probably careful and exacting. The careful nature of the cuts along the side give that credit.

"Conclusion? Ritualistic in nature, it was made to look ritualistic in nature, or possibly an Awakened individual who took a lot of effort in case something like this happened, a bunch of us trying to pour over the files..."

[Comrade Tortoise]

"You are right, I did not think of the melon baller. Thing is, the stomach was not removed, but the stomach lining. And removing the intestines wont help much, because most things are broken down before then and the stuff that isnt wont help you identify much forensically I dont think. Removing the fingernails on the other handwould be very useful and it is obvious the body was dumped. Though other forensic evidence would not be in the hands of the medical examiner. Any pollen or other trace evidence left on the body would be with CSU, not the ME. it would not be mentioned in the file. As for the girl's size, it is within normal limits for a human female. I have seen normally developed women who are shorter, it is just uncommon"

[LadyTevar]

The picture of the symbols, blown up, had entranced Stark. "I've seen this before. Invert your dimensional alignment fifty degrees and it was all over the inside of Mir before she finally fell." Stark gestured to the spiral. "Spiral with three lines.. Seen it when raiding Syndicate.. Ah.. Well, let's just say that shit wasn't human. Anymore."

"A what?" Supiyaw asked, forgetting Arkady and the other pictures in her hand for a moment. A spiral with three lines ... Mir.. "Show me," she demanded, leaning over the table to see what he was talking about.

What she saw: the single dark spiral, the spiral inside a unfinished box, the four lines crossing, and the single arc, made her eyes narrow. A low snarl came from her throat. "Garou," the word was dripping with distaste and distain. "That explains why the arms are ripped off."

[Comrade Tortoise]

"Garou? Ok. Who are you, where did you come from, and what is this thing you mention. Is it some abnormally huge thing that can rip someones arms off? I am a bit new here..."

[SirNitram]

"The things in the Syndicate's employ were high-power Reality Deviants of the worst kind. Synth-hybrids of human and extra-dimensional nasties; you know, spirits. Enough entropic resonance you could blow your damn gyros if you wandered too close to the Mir station, and instruments were iffy in their hives. Tentacles," A shudder. "Claws, spikes, vomitting their stomach onto you and digesting you before sucking the goo in.. You know, basic hostile first contact stuff."

The slams against the Technocracy was ignored.

[LadyTevar]

"What you speak of, Stark, are called Fomori," Supiyaw explained patiently, pointing to the spiral inside the box glyph. "This pictograph, here, stands for them. It is the Garou symbol for a human ..," she traced the three claw-marks of the box, then pointed to the larger spiral by itself. "... joined with their pictograph for Corruption, which they call the Wyrm. You may know Garou by their more common nickname ... 'werewolves'." she added, looking at Russell.

"As for how I know you, Russell, you have seen me at meals every day since you arrived," she replied with a feline smile, the copper-colored eyes shining in amusement. "Up until now, I have been ordered to be discrete. But this is more important, as I am sure Lady Rowin would agree."

That explained (?), she looked back to the picture. "The other two pictographs are the Garou symbols for Stasis, which they see as a great Weaver or Spider which traps everything unmoving in her web. Thus, the crossing lines. The last one is Gaia -- the life spirit of Earth Herself." There was a touch of reverence in her tone as she spoke of Gaia.

"The word here, however, I do not know," Supiyaw concluded, pointing to the word in red. "It is not Garou, as you can tell by the elegance of the writing. I think some of Rowin's books are written in a similar language, but I cannot read it. Boxer?" she looked to the archeologist-mage. "Do you recognize it?"

[Comrade Tortoise]

Russell looked confused as a few cogs inside his head turned as the information was processed. Then a lightbulb seemed to go Bling in Russell's head, as he put two and two together. If there are werewolves, it stood to reason that there were were-otherthings, including panthers, because everyone else was accounted for. This must be Mandalay

"Ok. So we are dealing with werewolves... learn something new every day, though that explains the sheer brutality of the crime. It would take forces on the level of what a werewolf I imagine could produce to.... break...her like this. Is there syntax to this? Because depending on how the symbols relate to eachother, if they link us with corruption, and venerate Gaia and the this.. weaver... they might be seeking to ritualistically trap some sort of corruption that they view as coming from these humans. As for how this language fits in... they may have enlisted someone's aid... In either case, I need to read more of the books in my library"

[B4UTRUST]

"You are right, I did not think of the melon baller. Thing is, the stomach was not removed, but the stomach lining. And removing the intestines wont help much, because most things are broken down before then and the stuff that isnt wont help you identify much forensically I dont think. Removing the fingernails on the other handwould be very useful and it is obvious the body was dumped. Though other forensic evidence would not be in the hands of the medical examiner. Any pollen or other trace evidence left on the body would be with CSU, not the ME. it would not be mentioned in the file. As for the girl's size, it is within normal limits for a human female. I have seen normally developed women who are shorter, it is just uncommon"

"Hmmm," stated James softly to himself as he and everyone else passed around files and made guesses and speculations.
"Mellon baller may not be exactly what was used, but it's still my guess that it was that or something similar in design.

"As for the stomach lining/stomach contents, given the medical examiner's lack of mention of the symbols in the actual report, I'd want clarification for myself as to whether or not there were any stomach contents. He fails to make any mention as to the actual contents, if any, which leads me to suggest that there were possibly none and they too were removed along with the lineing. With your point about food digestion and nothing but waste in the intestines, I point out that certain foods are not completely broken down before joining in the intestines and forming fecal matter. Corn, for instance, as well as various seeds and things of that nature. While not entirely telling, it may have been possible depending on the last meal of the victim to find out something. Maybe not.

"And she may be within the normal tolerance for height, 4'10" is far shorter than the average and approaching dwarfism. It merely brings up the question of her age and full development. She very well could be a very short twenty-one year old. Or she could be an average height thirteen year old. Either is very possible though I myself want to side with the idea of a younger age then is speculated, based simply on the idea that the evolution of the size of humans over the last few centuries has increased drastically. If anything humans tend to lead towards giantism now rather than dwarfism. Given another decade or two I foresee the average height of a female in her late teens or early twenties raised at least an inch or so. Trends continuing, of course. But this is just speculation on my part at the moment and doesn't really affect our investigation at this point, other than to possibly apply a measure of doubt to the validity of the report and the M.E.'s compatence."

James paused and looked over at Stark and Supiyaw.
"So you're suggesting werewolves did this? Are you going to also suggest that a vampire caused this pair of holes on her neck? Because the body is drained dry of blood and vamps love blood. Or are we going to go with she completely bled out nearly every ounce of blood in her entire body leaving very little inside of her from what must have obviously been massive internal hemmoraging and bleeding? Or did the Garou 'lick the mixing bowl' as it were? And if that were the case, why leave the heart but take other organs? I know that sounds like I'm questioning my own statement of doing it to remove evidence, but if some Were trashed the body, tore the head and arms off, crushed the area around the heart, mauled her breast off and had a light snack to finish the night off, why just leave the heart, especially if you're going to clean out the blood. The heart still had blood in it and any creature capable of heightened smell like most lupus-familied are would have been able to smell that more than likely. Plus, is something that ripped the girl to shreds likely to take the time to use a circular saw-type instrument to remove the back of the skull? Why not just crush it and rip it out? Same for the eyes.."

James passed along one of the pictures he was looking at, and picked up the next one.
"Whelp, this answers that question. Intestines, smal, laid out near the body in the formation of a pentacle. So I guess you were right, Rus, it wasn't for evidence removal. Just more hocus pocus ceremonial shit. Which still doesn't clear any of my first three ideas. A wack-job with ceremonial intent, something made to look like a wack-job ceremonial killing, or an Awakened who actually had something going on. Not discounting the Garou idea, yet, but it doesn't add up. I don't know, would a Garou come along after the kill and try to eat the body? Because this just doesn't add up unless an animal or something attacked the corpse afterwards, which then doesn't explain why it left the intestines in their position they way they were. Most animals would at least paw at them or try to bite them probably. This is an orgy of evidence that isn't adding up."

James pushed back from the table for a second and leaned his head back, eyes closed, thinking.
"Oh, Rus, to clear things up. When you look at this pretty woman here, think large black kitty."

He sighed then looked back at the pictures and reports.
"Fuck it. Here's my current thoughts. We've either got a the first ideas, mainly a wack-job or a murderer who wants people to think it was a wack-job to avoid arrest, and then an animal came and fucked with the body. That's my first ideas, semi-reasonably explained. My other idea is we've got a fairly strong, possibly magically enhanced sadistic, semi-insane Awakened running around. What we need is the other reports and a look at the body itself. Anyone happen to know if the coroner's office keeps copies of the reports and photos in a computer?

"Huh. Just thought of something. Has anyone heard reports of someone finding a large pool of blood randomly somewhere? That sort of thing tends to get peoples' attention. I mean there was some blood in the heart, some blood at the wound areas, a good deal of blood on the pentagram intestines, but nothing near enough to fill a body. There's a whole lot of missing liquid life there, if you see where I'm going with it."

[SirNitram]

"Blood is power. Don't they give you Traditionalists any crash courses in Nephandi?" Stark said bruskly. "I don't know about the giant hairballs, Supiyaw. Intel I read always suggested they were more frenzied, less careful. This is highly ritualistic, maximum extraction of whatever they wanted, for minimum effort. Pentagram inner organs? Might've actually invoked it with the blood still in the veins; let's hope that's post-mortum, it'd probably hurt like hell."

A scratching of his chin. "Corruption, Corrupted Human, Stasis, World." He murmured. "If the sentence structure resembles English, it'd be a statement about corrupting humans to lock the world in stasis. Can't say it'd hurt the Syndicate. They use these freakshows because their powers don't seem to care about 'dox. Lost alot of good men like that." A moment, for the dead, is given from Stark.

[LadyTevar]

"I did not say the Garou was alone," Supiyaw replied to James. "As you can see by the different damage left upon the body, there were two attackers. But a Garou would not normally befoul a human body this way -- it is against their laws. They are not mindless animals, although a Garou using his brain is a rare occurrence." The last was again spoken with distaste. There was perhaps something to the old tale about fighting like cats and dogs.

She gave Stark an odd look, as she had not yet given her name. Still... he may have overheard that idiot who'd been leading the Horizon tourists around. "The problem with Garou pictographs is you can never be sure if they are bragging what they have done, or warning someone away. They do not follow human grammar." She turned the picture around again. "The signs are not interconnected, which they sometimes are. Wyrm and Weaver are two of the Triad, the major Powers in their beliefs. Gaia is lesser than the Triad, but the Garou believe the Mother gave them alone the power to save her." The sarcasm was there, if one listened.

"A Fomori is a servant of the Wyrm, diseased in mind and body. They are powerful enough to stand against a Garou in a fight, and not only humans are taken. Some Garou have been lost that way." She sighed, hoping they'd not have to fight a pack of Wyrm-corrupted wolves. "Normal Garou do not have human sacrifice in their rituals, and their rituals are more ... natualistic ... than what we see in the photos. Garou also do not use a language like this..," she ended, pointing to the red-tinged lettering above the ragged glyphs.

"Thus... at least two attackers. While the blood draining may be a Vampire, it could have been used in the ritual. Draw with it, drink it, use it to bribe a summoned spirit... "

[Comrade Tortoise]

Sweet Freudf James was an idiot, Russell thought to himself

"Look. There is no reason for a medical investigator to conceal the age of a patient. If I take a look at the body itself, I can tell you whether she was older or younger with a quick exam. So dont speculate until you have some evidence that she is not just a statistical unlikelihood. As for stomach contents, the stuff that is not broken down is also not useful forensically. Corn is served just about everywhere in one form or another. Also, the heart was crushed, there was no blood. Speaking of the lack of blood, Jews have to bleed out their livestock prior to eating them. It is rather easy to drain a body of blood if you let it drain long enough via gravity. You could do it in less than seventeen hours. The marks could have been made by a vampire, or some sort of instrument, though correct me if I am wrong here, a vampire would realistically have to do a lot of ripping and tearing at the throat and reach the carotid artery. It would not be two small holes.

"Fuck it. Here's my current thoughts. We've either got a the first ideas, mainly a wack-job or a murderer who wants people to think it was a wack-job to avoid arrest, and then an animal came and fucked with the body. That's my first ideas, semi-reasonably explained. My other idea is we've got a fairly strong, possibly magically enhanced sadistic, semi-insane Awakened running around. What we need is the other reports and a look at the body itself. Anyone happen to know if the coroner's office keeps copies of the reports and photos in a computer?

"Flatly, animals would not do interesting things to the body like this, and would have disturbed the small intestine out of the pentacle, they would eat like you see on the discovery channel. The befouling was done post-mortem, prior to the dump. Whatever did this has a safe place from which to hang a corpse to drain it, and not be disturbed. The injuries seen are interesting. Some of them are savage. The oral sodomy was sop bad it severaly damaged the lining of her mouth. A human male would find that... unpleasant. So unpleasant he probably couldnt ejaculate. I want to make sure" a shudder " that the semen is human. The ME probably did a rape kit to collect genetic data. That is probably in the NCIS database.

The rest of the injuries make sense if you know what the killer or killers was trying to do. The rape was to make her impure. It removes her power, and her dignity, as well as causing her immense pain and making her unclean. The lungs were removed post mortem, same with the intestines but the incision was sewn back up. The blood was meticulously drained. This was done very deliberately for a purpose unconnected with the killing itself. It was done for a seperate purpose, or as a trophy of the kill. But her breast was removed, disfiguring her, and her arms were removed. Probably post mortem, because she would not survive this and the cause of death was supposedly decapitation. Though I would like to do an examination of the body to know for sure. You bring up something interesting about a possible whitewashing in the ME's office.

However, we are not looking at one person. We are looking at two actors. Possibly three. One of which has the strength to break her ribs, spine, arm leg,, and crush her esophagus. We have use of unconnected werewolf symbols with no real syntax and thus little meaning other than maybe a symbolic or ritualistic one. We also have the use of another language, but dont yet know what it is. Other than that we dont have enough information until we have the other reports, and all three bodies"

[B4UTRUST]

James glanced over at Stark, the look very much a glaring one.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I don't specialize in fucked up Umbral demon-worshippers or fruit-loops reality benders. I specialize in a bunch of pretentious old men trying to play at running the world through secret governments, money, drugs, technology and medicine. Perhaps you can be so kind as to give us your great and expansive knowledge on the Nephandi, and then we can all gain from your insights and solve this conundrum."

It was obvious that James was not a happy camper when it came to anything remotely involving the Technocracy, be it the organization(s), their agents, or their knowledge of the other groups in the Ascension War. Being forcefully reminded that the 'former' Technocrat had a lot more knowledge then he did when it came to some of the other groups was not something he relished and tended to put him in a foul mood towards the individual in question. Not that he really needed a real reason to be in a foul mood when it came to the Technocrats, after the shit that they had directly and indirectly caused him.

Turning back to Supiyaw he sighed and went over the details in his head again, trying to rearrange, reevaluate, based on new insights the others suggested.
"Alright, so a Fomori or a Fomori-Garou and a Nephandi using blood for a ritualistic ceremony. Great. Freaking great. So yeah, files from the other murders, bodies, we might want to get some of those, or access to them. I'll start with public records and see if I can't find anything the CSU or ME's office has on their systems. They're probably networked and one of them's gotta have access to the internet for research and email purposes.

"Anyone else got any other ideas, or we going to go with demon-worshipper and fomori-fried something?"

James cleared a file off the top of his laptop and opened it back up, loading back into the OS and started doing research on the public records and news reports of the murders before he tried to hit a more hardened target.

[SirNitram]

"We keep our heads the fuck down, especially those of us who can't apparently stand still without spouting off their know about the New World Order and Syndicate." Stark said dryly to James.

"You want to know what a Nephandi is? Take your spheres.. Your fundamental concepts of magic.. Now twist 'em into nothing but destruction and the end of everything. No Ascension, by Technocratic or Traditional paradigm. /Descension/. Into darkness and damnation and eternal enslavement. They started World War Two, they run wild through the far reaches, so naturally, I have some job experience. While you're worrying about the latest Progenitor drug test as if they aren't out for truth and advancement, because you're a paranoid fool, I was out there, in the infinite fucking depths, fighting shit that would end this world. Not because they hate it. Not because they want to save it. Not because they care about it at all. Because they'd not notice it on their way past."

"Now. Shut the fuck up with the attitude and be useful. There's NWO agents down there involved in this. Heightens likelihood of an assault team being assembled. You see them, any of you, you get the fuck out of there. Nothing vulgar, nothing fancy. You walk away. You are not going to take an Oversight Assault Team. I do not care how awesome you are."

[Charon]

Jason saw and heard commotion in the living room. This would be interesting. The young man walked over and quietly poked his head in, listening in on the discussion.

"None of the removal of organs was after she died. The magic of the blood is lost if the body is lifeless. She was probably still alive when they used her body and blood to summon whatever they summoned."

Jason looked around at the group. "So Mandalay, want to come check out the scene of the murder?" Jason already had a good idea of what the others could do, and without any of them able to look into the spirit world at all they couldn't see what had happened there. Asking for assistance from the masters of the chantry did not even cross his mind. This was their investigation.

[B4UTRUST]

James looked up at Jason. Leave it to a death mage to know about shit like that.
"Now that, my friend, is useful fucking data. Also makes this a whole lot worse on the ohshit-o-meter. Blood and death magic used to summon something. I don't suppose you know enough about those type of rituals to try to figure out what they were trying to accomplish, do you?"

"How absolutely sure are we that it was MiBs and not just your run of the mill government-uniformed goons? I'm trying to be fucking useful, picking apart details of a coroner's report that may or may not be 100% accurate while trying to figure out if whatever the fuck devoured the girl did it while working with whatever removed her organs and blood, or afterwards. And for the record, it's only a baseless or excessive suspicion of others when they're not infiltrating spies into the Traditions, trying to run the economies of the world, manipulate the high echelons of government or creating life forms that have no business exisitng. Paranoia is a mental disorder catagorized by heightened levels of fear, anxiety and delusions about things that aren't actually happening.

"While you're out there fighting off Great Old Ones and space whales, we're back here dealing with the rest of your former compatriots and their attempts to kind of put a stop to this whole War by systematically removing our ability to act. Good game plan, don't get me wrong, but I think you might have been gone a little bit too long from this front. There are a lot of horrors back here on Terra Firma, they just don't come in the shape of Yog-Sothoth, Cthuga, or Shamu. Unless of course you want to tell me that Cthulhu really is asleep beneath the Pacific, then I'm just packing it in and calling it a day.

"Arkady, are you absolutely positive the agents you saw were 'Crats and not someone like the Feebs? It's kind of important here at this point because that pretty much doubles our problems if it is. Or is it triples? But yeah, either way it takes this whole thing up another level of trouble if they were. Not doubting you, by the way, just wanting to make sure and clarify."

James grabbed his coffee mug again and took a long drink. His look was noticibly more awake now and more alert, his eyes widened as he went back to his screen, fingers nearly flying across the keyboard and mousepad, eyes darting back and forth so fast it was a wonder he didn't have a headache. Page after page appeared on the screen as he scrolled through them, clicking links and digesting information as fast as his caffeine-infused brain could process.

An amusing thought passed through his mind as he was looking through the online papers; If the Technocracy really was here and looking into this problem, maybe they'll just take care of it all and he could go back to programming pandemics. Of course he highly doubted that it would work out that way. The 'Crats weren't that nice, helpful, or polite. Bastards...

[frigidmagi]

Jones slapped the table after being silent. He wished he hadn't eaten now.

"Okay everyone calm down. Everyone has pet theories but let's be blunt, we're in the not enough data stage. Let's count what we do have for sure here. We have a young lady of indeterminate age, but certainly in double digits brutally murdered. It was ritualistic or set up to appear to. Organs were removed, blood was removed. It is possible given the manner of the murder that the killer was non-human. I know enough about werewolves to get myself in trouble. Those are werewolf symbols, but that doesn't mean much in and of itself. Their enemies if I remember right also know those symbols. Hell I know those symbols. We need more data. We also need to stop sniping at each other. All arguments about Whatever are on hold as of now. If you can't deal with that, then you're not going to be of help." Jones said, he turned to James.

"I'm not trying to be offensive but are you sure if you go to the murder site that you won't be huh... detected? At this point I imagine there are many eyes on." He asked and then turned to Jason.

"You're the computer guru, anyways you can crack our suited friends comms so we can let them tell us what they are?" He asked.

Jones took up the folder and gave a look at the language to see if it was one of the ones he could read.

[Charon]

Jason shook his head at James' question to him. "No idea. But if I had a guess I'd say that blood was used up in a summoning, that or since this is the third murder and several of her important organs were stolen, it's a small part of a larger ritual. But that's all guesses right now. Boxer's right, we need to get more information before we start trying to figure out what the hell happened and what's going to happen."

Jason looked over to Boxer. "Yeah we probably will, but where we're gonna find the most information is the body and the site. Without those two we're just flailing in the dark. So it's worth the risk."

[Comrade Tortoise]

"I agree. Though I can view the crime scene remotely to reduce our risk. If that doesnt works for you folks, let me know"

He removed his PDA from its holder and prepared to start his scry

[LadyTevar]

Supiyaw was very tempted to point out to Russell that she could rip his arms off just as easily, but that might be taken the wrong way. The conversation moved around her as the magi discussed ideas, until Jason walked back into the room -- from outside, when he had gone upstairs. He must have ran into Rowin and Gren and ran back in. However, the boy did have good ideas, to a point.

"The problem, Jason, is that where she was found was not the murder site," Supiyaw pointed out. "She was merely left there to be found, perhaps to terrify, perhaps as part of the ritual, but certainly to hide where they are doing their killing."

Then she gave Jason a little half-smile. "Besides, have you a way to explain a large black panther sniffing around the middle of the college campus, playing the role of bloodhound?" The tone of voice was condescending and a little insulting.

[Comrade Tortoise]

"I can only use correspondance to see the location of the dump site now. I would need to use a time enchantment I dont have in order to see what happened prior, and preferably life to track the body... Or I can go to the site and use my skills in forensics..."

[Cynical Cat]

"No, not sure they are Mirrorshades. That is why I said maybe." Arkady shrugged. "Technocracy not problem in Russia. Was in past, probably be in future, but not at moment. I never see one that wasn't scared and on the run."

[SirNitram]

"The War is an insignifigant, petty squabble over whose idea of Ascension is better. The moment your head extracts from your ass and you realize that, perhaps you will have grounds to criticize me for getting repeatedly greivously injured fighting shit that would eat you and drive you crazy at the same time. And yes, there's shit at the bottom of the ocean that is just as fucking horrible. Border Defense Corps sees alot more combat action against the horrors than the Pan-Dims like me. So. Enough out of your word-hole unless it's about this murder." Stark was increasingly annoyed at the hacker. Constantly whining about the Technos. Like any of the NWO's little schemes mattered..

"Don't suppose you caught names or could describe their features to me? I have some old records still in the harddrive."

[Cynical Cat]

"Got faces," said Arkady. "Names Fury and Courage. Very Fake. As for their looks, can do. Creo Imageom," he intoned. Two slowly revolving, half scale images of the agents in question appeared above the table. "Is good?" asked Arkady with a smile.

[Dark Silver]

The image hovered in midair, unmoving and silent as Arkady had seen them.

Both men were rather plain, no descript types, their hairstyle was what could be called "government issue", both wore mirrored sunglasses, and dressed in plain black suits.

Nothing to tell really, what the men were aside from black suited agents of some sort.

[SirNitram]

"...Courage?" Stark raised a brow, and laughed. "My my. And here I thought this would be dull. The famous sixth degree renegade is in town. Now I shall have to cancel that visit to Europe."