February Investigation catch-all

[earlybird]

WHO: DAMIAN WAYNE, closed to Investigation plot CR
WHERE: Various locations
WHEN: Early February until Mid-February
WHAT: Robin is investigating a missing childrens' case, which brings him into contact with an array of characters.
WARNINGS: The kind of content you'd see usually see in a Detective Comics comic: violence, language, discussion of sensitive topics (murder, human trafficking, etc.)

NOTE TO PLAYERS: I've set the details of this plot up so you can feel free to tag at your own pace, or opt to handwave if you like!

START... MAURTIA FALLS.

Robin first picks up the trail of a few missing kids from the street; four children from the St. Nicholas Orphanage of Maurtia Falls Catholic Union. Assumed runaways, lost numbers in the system, they were originally a case file tossed aside by MFPD. But a key witness gives him a promising lead: Mortimer Stroud, a conman with a minor criminal history working at the orphanage as a part-time janitor under a different alias. Robin suspects he took advantage of his station, and sold some info upstream to interested parties about which children wouldn't be missed.

A catch-and-release interrogation gives him the location of a recently abandoned "workshop" in Maurtia Falls, and another name -- this time of a murdered criminal whose body was found by local police in de Chima: Warren Pierce.

LOCATION... DE CHIMA.

ASIDE: CRANE

Although in de Chima on business, there's some personal motive for Damian to make a visit out to the city. Ever since he discovered this world's Bruce Wayne, he's kept an eye on the older version of his father from afar. However, curiosity wins out, and draws him closer -- close enough to find out Dr. Jonathan Crane has, somehow, insidiously inserted himself into Wayne Enterprises. He has time for a little visit.

SABRIEL

Warren's effects are being held in the police evidence locker, and his body down in the department morgue. Sabriel, on RISE business, catches Robin in the middle of his investigation, and -- after some back and forth -- uses her skill to chat with Warren's ghost long enough for an interrogation, and another name: "CONSTANTINE."

LOCATION... MAURTIA FALLS.

JOHN

Constantine is suspicious, and an asshole, but Damian knows enough to know he (probably) wouldn't be involved on the wrong side of this kind of business. However, a lead is a lead, and the "supernatural advisor" is getting a visit from Robin: whether or not John's sober enough to deal with him. Turns out Constantine knows Warren -- enough to inspire a spiteful grudge that lasted beyond the grave, evidently. Constantine also knows a few other characters who ran in the same circles.

ASIDE: MOTOKO

Other children have gone missing, and these kinds of cases are bound to cross-over the deeper into the criminal underbelly an investigation gets: Robin runs into the Major, who's following up on her own threads. She's got some opinions on a boy getting involved in this kind of business, and Robin has some opinions about her opinions.

ALFIE

Those leads have born fruit: an informant has named Alfie Solomons as a lead player in what is looking, increasingly, like a child-trafficking scheme. Alfie isn't too happy to hear that he's been thrown under the bus, used as a scapegoat and a distraction, and conned by his own clients into unknowingly taking part in the kind of unsavory business even he wouldn't touch. He has the real identities of the perpetrators to give Robin -- one of them the very informant who pointed him Alfie's way.

DARYL

He's close. But his investigation has ground to a halt, as the ringleaders went underground at the tip-off of an investigation, and he's no closer to finding out where the children are being held. He's learned from the best that sometimes a change of track, a step back, is needed. A person -- an "angel" -- keeps coming up in several related cases, and that person might have some answers... if he can find and flush him out. (Daryl, turns out, has a special kind of insight.)

AURICAN, BRIANNA, and SHELKE

With Daryl's help, Robin is able to finally track down where the missing children are being held captive, only to discover a major operation in progress: nearly thirty youth have been taken and stored at a riverside warehouse to be handed off down the line, and among them are several imPorts. However, Robin isn't the only one to be making his move; neither Aurican nor the Breeze have been sitting quietly or waiting on rescue...and Shelke is in the same boat as them.

ALFIE, REVISITED

The main players behind the operation -- this hub, at least -- escaped in the chaos, going deep underground again in hopes of evading Robin's chase. But where they lose the vigilante, they find the man they double-crossed. Their bodies are found a week later, dumped among the trash and grime of Maurtia Falls' personal "crime alley" -- and it doesn't take a genius detective to guess who was behind it.

Comments

SABRIEL

[earlybird]

[bindsthedead]

[Strictly speaking, this isn't entirely RISE's business- there's no sign of any imPort involvement, but there are things that have raised questions. Besides, it never hurts to help out the police- you never know when you might need a favour, and De Chima doesn't have Maurtia Fall's corruption problem.

So even if half the police are a little afraid of her, the others are happy to see an imPort with a good reputation helping out.]

I'll speak to him soon. Are there any other questions I should ask?

[earlybird]

[ He is, not for the first time, considering how handy it would be to force the dead to talk. The caveat, of course, is that they might not shut up, and if Damian were a ghost whisperer, he would quickly lose patience with what would surely be non-stop whining an complaints.

(-Tt.- Look at him: he was dead, and he didn't cry about how unfair it was.) ]

Dates. Places. Deals. The last person he spoke with. And I want to know who he was working with higher up on the ladder of scum hierarchy.

[ Pierce was a small fish, an opportunist who pandered to the real movers and shakers, just like Stroud. But someone saw fit to shut him up, and Damian's sure it's tied to his case. ]

[bindsthedead]

[Which is why stripping the Dead of free will tends to be the most efficient route in Sabriel's opinion. Besides, it means you can send them on their way once you're done chatting.

She nods at Damian's instructions. Much of it's what she was planning to ask anyway, but it's good to see they're on the same page.]

Entirely reasonable. I'll give you the notes when I'm done.

[She intends to conduct this interrogation in private, mostly because people tend to be unnerved by someone demanding answers from (apparently) thin air, and Sabriel would rather avoid distractions.

So when she heads into the morgue, she shuts the door behind her.]

[earlybird]

[ Left to wait, Damian lasts all of two minutes before he manages to embroil himself in a fierce argument with one of the officers over skipping school to play vigilante. The officer apparently takes truancy very seriously, and the debate quickly evolves into a back-and-forth about imPort minors and assigned guardianship -- or the lack thereof.

She threatens to bring in a case worker for referral. He threatens to toss her badge out the window. ]

[bindsthedead]

[Half an hour, Sabriel heads out of the morgue with several sheets of notes in her own neat, somewhat old fashioned handwriting. On the last sheet there's a name- 'Constantine'.

She waves off the officer, flashing her RISE badge and offering some very authoritative sounding nonsense about how she's keeping Damian out of trouble.]

Well, I think we have enough information. I do have one question- does the name 'Constantine' mean anything to you? He offered it to me unprompted, just as I was setting him to rest, but didn't explain how it was connected to anything. He just claimed it was tied to what we're investigating.

[earlybird]

Constantine?

[ It takes a minute for him to drop his hard stare from the officer, who isn't content to leave without giving him a warning look back over her shoulder. The battle is only temporarily stayed -- this isn't the last he'll be seeing of her, nor her of him. ]

-Tt.- [ A click of the tongue, annoyed, but not even vaguely surprised to hear it. A man like John Constantine seems to make 'friends' wherever he goes. ] Yes, I know the name.

[bindsthedead]

Is it a person, or an organization? [Sabriel leans over, looking down on him just a little.]

And do you have any idea how they might be tied into this?

[earlybird]

A drunkard. But an almost-clever one.

[ Quipped correction: John Constantine is neither a person, nor an organization, but a trashfire in human form. One that his father knows, dislikes but has vetted, and that gives Damian some assurance that he's not the perpetrator. ]

He spends his time in unsavory places, gets around plenty. I doubt he's involved, but if Pierce knows him, then he might know of a few other names in Pierce's circle.

[ Hoop after hoop. This case is dragging out, always another layer deeper, but he knows he's getting somewhere. ]