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

DARYL

[earlybird]

hi daryl i hope u like ACCUSATIONS from SMALL CHILDREN (lmk if this works!)

[earlybird]

[ It's taken days, patience, persistence and cunning. First, he had to pore over stolen reports and grainy footage, talk to witnesses, narrow down possible regions of the city. Then he had to hold stake-outs, screen the streets, keep sharp watch. Without Batman at his side or his usual resources, the sheer amount of work that he's had to do has been hefty, bordering on exhausting, and it's only the lessons he learned from being Grayson's Robin that keeps him focused through the frustration.

(He hates talking to civilians. There's the same pointed questions about his age, every time, but it doesn't occur to him to throw on a different identity, to ask around in less obvious ways. Disguises and personas were Red Robin's specialty, not his.)

But it pays off. Which leads the here and now: an ambush. ]

You knew exactly where they were, every time. How? Who's giving you your intel?

[ He'd dropped from above, a swift and heavy shadow, and now cuts right into the thick of conversation: no nonsense, no nicetities, no humoring any attempts at playing coy. Just four feet, seven inches of aggressive vigilante ready to throw down with a stranger in a side alley. ]

[dirtyredneck]

[Daryl is in the middle of following a trail of flowers - dandelions specifically - when he's cut off ten feet from the plant he'd been looking for by a kid that barely came up to his chest. The weed itself looked pretty dead and had been hard to spot, so he knew he wasn't anywhere close to the kid he was looking for. But it was still frustrating to be interrupted while he was quietly going about his business.

He looked the boy up and down before moving to walk past him.]

Don't know what you're talking about, kid.

[earlybird]

[ He steps to block him, again, determined not to let him pass, eyes narrowing behind the mask. The set of his jaw, how quickly he is to put himself in Daryl's way, says he means business. ]

Don't play me for a fool. You know exactly what I'm talking about.

[ He has ten cuts from surveillance footage that place this same man in the area of each rescue. Two second-hand accounts, one nervous witness. And Damian's spent half his damn week tracking him down. ]

[dirtyredneck]

[Daryl pulled back as the kid moved to block him, keeping a good two feet between them.]

No. I don't.

[He growled, biting the words out and trying to hold in the anger that was forming from his frustration.]

Now either say what the hell you're getting on about or move. I got shit to do.

[earlybird]

The missing children. It was you who recovered them, and I want to know who told you where they were.

[ The snap back is enunciated, laid out clearly, with zero patience. He's reached one dead-end, and he won't put up with another, even if he has to kick the wall down. ]

Deny it a third time, and I'll find a way to rip those wings of yours out of hiding, 'angel.'

[ Large threats, small boy. He sounds certain that he can back them up, however. ]

[dirtyredneck]

[Daryl went still for a split second the moment the word 'children' left the kid's mouth, but forced himself to loosen up in the next. He snorted at the threat, clearly not impressed by it. Not that he doubted the kid could handle his own. He was obviously an imPort and plenty of them had powers that could wreck Daryl. He just wasn't intimidated by the kid.

He let out an annoyed huff.]

Ain't nothin' ta deny. Didn't know what you were talkin' about. Now I do.

[This time when Daryl went to move past him, he did so by putting the back of his hand against the kid's shoulder to lightly push him so he had room to walk.]

But I ain't no 'Angel', kid. And I ain't got no sources. I just find 'em.

[earlybird]

[ Quick as a pit viper, he delivers a sharp pap to the offending hand, rolling his shoulder away and stepping back with a disgruntled wrinkle to his nose. However, even if he gives the ground, it doesn't stop the boy from hounding at Daryl's heels.

Harder to shake than the his own shadow, and demanding besides. ]

Find them? How?

[ Frustration edges at his voice. He'd been hoping to shake locations out of the assumed snitch, strike upon some kind of lead. He's had a slew of names, but names don't mean anything without places to match. And yet here the man's telling him there's no leak... if he's to be believed. ]

[dirtyredneck]

[Daryl did his best to ignore how close the kid was as he bent down to pick the dandelion. The nearly-dead flower... well, not nearly as nearly dead as he'd though actually, now that he got a good look at it. He was getting closer.

He picked the dandelion and after a moment the bloom in his hand and the rest of the plant on the ground crumbled into dust that glowed gold before it disappeared entirely. His eyes were already on the ground farther ahead of them, but with as brown as the flower was, it wasn't easy to spot the new growth. Not many directions it could be, though.

So further down the alley he went, eyes peeled for the next nearly-dead dandelion.]

I'm a tracker, kid. I look for signs, I follow, and I find them.

[He would rather not go into his power giving him an advantage. That shit needed to be kept quiet.]

[earlybird]

A tracker?

[ His legs make longer strides to keep up with Daryl, and there's a perplexed furrow to his brow as Daryl inspects the weed; some of the hostility slides off his face in light of the revelation, though his jaw's still stubbornly set.

It's not the news he wanted. It might be another deadend. But-- ]

Four children. They were taken, back in December. I have the identities of the men involved, but they've gone underground -- I need a location.

Can you track them?

[ Asking for help sounds like pulling teeth with Damian, but there's an edge of desperation to his determination. Without a breakthrough, he'd have to wait until one of the men resurfaces, and by that time it might be too late. The clock's always ticking. ]

[dirtyredneck]

[That gets Daryl to stop. The kid he was after was pretty far. Alive, but far. And four specifically that this kid was tracking... He didn't like feeling like he was choosing between who to save and who not to.

He gave a frustrated sigh and held a hand out.]

Got a picture and a name? One of the kids, one of the men... don't matter which. Long as you got it.

[earlybird]

[ He pauses, taken aback in something close to surprise, as if he hadn't expected the man to be so agreeable; ready for a second round of argument, to needle and worry Daryl down into compliance for the sake of shaking him off.

He's not used to help coming so easily as that. He holds tight to his suspicion, but fishes a neatly folded set of papers from one of the many pouches on his belt, handing the little square over.

(They keep most of their information digital, everything he needs to know and all the data he's picked up easily accessible via his mask's HUD, but he'd knicked the original case file.) ]

The children. Names, photos, all the information that was reported on their disappearance. Will it be enough?

[dirtyredneck]

[Daryl took the papers and focused on the first kid in the group. Then he looked around the alley. His eyes caught on the daffodil now growing at the entrance behind the kid before he moved on to the next kid. Daisies grew for that one. Tulips for the third. And foxgloves for the last. All of them in the same spot the Daffodils had grown. He did his best not to draw attention to them before he made them all disappear. They were in the opposite direction from where his own quarry was. But they were all alive and all relatively close. Within the city or just outside it, probably.]

You think they're all together?

[He asked it as he shuffled through the files again, making note of their next of kin contacts more than anything else.]

[earlybird]

No way to know for sure. But with any luck, maybe. Together and alive.

[ He frowns, crossing his arms, shoulders hitching up a fraction. He knows he might be chasing ghosts, or the children may have been scattered to the wind by their abductors-- ]

If I can find one, I can find the rest. I only need to know where the scum have been keeping them.

[ One shopfront was already a bust, abandoned before he got there, but the evidence was enough to move him forward. There's nothing more valuable than knowing where snakes make their nest. ]

[dirtyredneck]

They're in the city or close to it.

[Daryl said after a couple more glances at the info. He settled on the kid that Daisies grew for. They were the least weird of the flowers. And he could check on the others as he followed them.

With that decided, he moved past the kid and back the way he'd come originally, to the entrance of the alley. Once there, he bent down and picked the vibrant daisy growing up through the cracks of the concrete. Just like the nearly dead dandelion before it, when he picked it, it crumbled into softly glowing dust that quickly got swept away by a light breeze. He glanced at the paper, around the street, and then out of the alley and to the left.

As he walked he called back over his shoulder.]

One'a them's this way. Should find 'em inside an hour or so long as they ain't being moved.