Another Day in the City (Detective Stone & Recluse) [Double XP]

by **Detective Stone** October 23rd 2017, 4:14 pm

[An Apartment in the Bad part of Town]

Movement caused him to wake.

He forced his eyelids to open, even as he squinted at the uncomfortably bright light that streamed in relentlessly through his bedroom window. The blackout curtains were slightly askew, letting in the offending sunshine. Someone had been peeking out at the street below, and hadn't been careful about completely restoring the position of the thick blue cloth. That someone was now bending over to pick up her purse from the beige, carpeted floor.

She was a tall, lithe girl with mocha skin and hazel eyes. A short-cropped afro glistened slightly in the light that came in through the window. She'd already gotten dressed- a pink blouse and purple skirt, an odd combination that had caught Ronald's eye the evening before when she'd waved at him from the bar.

It was her face that had hooked him, though. Round and bright with a mischievious crinkle around the eyes when she smiled. She was younger than he was. Perhaps thirty, thirty-five tops. Her name was...

Lottie. Lottie Grier.

She'd bought him a beer and sent it over to his table at the pub. That was something new he still hadn't gotten used to, though it was happening more and more often these days. When the waiter had nodded to the bar to indicate his benefactor, there had been several women seated there. None of them were as bright as Lottie, both in the color of her clothes and the intensity of her smile. He'd invited her to join him, and they'd hit it off despite not really having much in common. It'd taken Ronald a long time to be sure she wasn't a prostitute.

She'd suggested coming back to his place. In fact, she'd suggested almost everything that had happened last night. The sex had come quick and easy, and it was the best time he'd had in a week... but he could tell that none of it had been about him. She'd pursued him like an agent on a mission. The sex had been her objective. Now that the mission was accomplished, she was making her escape. Probably hoping not to be noticed. Probably hoping never to see him again.

At east she'd stayed the night. But that was calculated, too, he wagered. She didn't have a ring on, and the absence of one wasn't obvious... but it could be hard to tell with someone of her complexion. Married or not, she intended someone to see her come in, happily disheveled, when she got home. This was revenge, maybe. Or perhaps a way to break up a relationship that she didn't have the heart to end openly. That happened, sometimes. If you knew someone would beg you to stay, and you knew you'd succumb to such begging, then the easiest way to preempt that was to make them feel deeply betrayed. Then they'd kick you out angrily and the whole relationship would truly be over.

"Married?" he asked, his voice croaking a bit from disuse during the night's sleep.

She turned, startled. "Sorry... no. Engaged." Her lips were a bit pouty, and he thought there was some genuine shame and regret in her features. She wasn't a sociopath. Just working things out in the broken ways that broken people did in this broken world.

There seemed to be no anger in her, so he didn't think this was about revenge.

"Needed an out?"

She nodded slowly, "He's always been good. But I never loved him. I should. But... it's just not there. Not here." She touched a hand to her breast. "I never should have said Yes. But I did. And this..." Her eyes teared up a bit. Then she sighed, "This seemed easier, somehow. No need to let him down if he thinks I'm an unfaithful bitch."

Well, it was something of a blow to Ron's ego to know she hadn't been drawn to him out of genuine interest. What, then? She'd chosen him from multiple candidates. An older man. Maybe safer. Maybe less complicated. Who knew the calculus of a woman's mind? At least he'd still been chosen, at the end of the day. And the night had been good. Good enough, anyway. Something he'd needed.

He nodded back at her, getting up out of bed. "Let me walk you downstairs." Her gaze dipped, and he realized belatedly that he was still naked.

"Thank you, but the taxi's already here and... you're not dressed for it. I'm sorry if I..."

She trailed off. What had she been about to say? Sorry that she'd used him? Led him on? Whatever it was, it was misplaced. "Nobody made any promises. Nobody told any lies. I never asked, you never said, and we both got something we needed. That's about as fair as anyone can expect. I hope you find the right one. And I hope he does, too."

She smiled a sad smile, "Thanks." Then she turned and walked out. Out into the cramped living room, past the kitchen, and through the front door.

He waited till he heard the door close behind her, and then went about his morning hygiene before getting dressed in his unofficial uniform: Suit, pants, holster, coat, hat, badge. It was time to see what the city had prepared for him today.

Nothing good, probably.

As he walked out of his apartment- about forty-five minutes after she had- he passed an inspirational poster that he kept framed on the wall next to the kitchen. A little girl was pictured within, throwing starfish into the sea.

That's what it was like to be a detective in this city.

He paused briefly to look at it.

Well, enough introspection for the day.

He left his apartment, securing three locks behind him.

Time for coffee.

by **Detective Stone** October 23rd 2017, 7:34 pm

Another Day in the City (Detective Stone & Recluse) [Double XP] Vw-beetle-Toffee-brown-metallic

[The Corner of Washington and 10th]

Ronald shifted the car into 'park.'

His toffee brown Volkswagen Beetle- much the same color as his beverage- idled quietly on the side of the road. This was the address of an incident that represented a new investigation. He had just finished getting his coffee from Dunkin Doughnuts when the call came in. With morning traffic, the drive here had taken thirty minutes. No blue lights. By the time the call came in, the incident was already over, so no point in skirting the rules of the road.

The scene before him was centered on the location of Stein's Gem Importer, a wholesaler which sold no jewels to the public directly, but rather traded their wares to local jewelers. When he'd first heard the address, Ronald thought the culprit of today's crime might have been 'Ruby Red'... but then the information had come in about the bodies.

Some burned, the dispatcher had said. Others rent limb from limb. The encrypted Detective's radio channel allowed the dispatcher to be quite descriptive, but even so it hadn't done the scene justice.

On the sidewalk, the reports were made manifest. Bodies and Body Parts. Blood. Scorch marks. Bits of glass. Chunks of concrete. Strips of steel. And brass. Some casings there and there, both plastic and metal, all near the entrance of the building. The department would have a chalk and evidence-tag shortage after this one.

Half a dozen police cars were here, dutiful patrolmen cordoning off the area with yellow tape while CSI personnel began touring the scene. Ronald sighed, observing operations from his island of calm within the cabin of his car. Finishing his first cup of coffee, he started on his second. His gaze drifted from body to body, mark to mark, debris to detritus.

His mind began to reconstruct likely events.

A 'thing' had arrived.

What thing? He couldn't be sure.

Something big.

Something scary.

Stein's maintained a very professional and visible security force. They always kept two guards outside, who stood at each corner of the building.

Those two had been cut down before they could react, so whatever had done this, had done it quickly- moving from one guard to the next with incredible alacrity. Those two men were torn to bits.

Then the heavy security door of the building had been ripped free.

That's when the guards inside had probably reacted. Opening up with their guns... shotguns, first? Advancing towards the thing. Maybe even driving it back. Then switching to pistols. Unloading everything they had.

Good guards. Very brave.

Very dead, now.

The burn-marks at the scene were narrow. Thin lines of fire. Some kind of beam or laser?

The 'thing' had fired its energy ray wildly at first. A response to the gunfire that had driven it back.

Yet no blood from the attacker was anywhere that Ronald could see.

An armored foe? Mechanized?

But not just a robot or some unfeeling machine. Not with this kind of wild return fire. Burns on the sidewalk. Burns on the walls. Burns above the doorway. Panicked fire. Something that could think. Something that could feel fear. A person.

Brave souls, those guards. Brave in vain. Cut in half by fiery beams of energy. Then their bodies tossed out of the way.

Pieces of guards on the sidewalk.

Pieces of guards on the street.

Cauterized flesh. It probably smelled like barbecue out there. That was an unsettling thing about burned homicide victims. They often smelled like food. The smell usually made him hungry.

You shouldn't be hungry while looking at ruined murder victims. You shouldn't be thinking of the ribs at the local barbecue joint.

It was... unsettling.

Glass on the ground.

But not just glass.

Jewels, too. Diamonds. Scattered. Haphazardly dropped.

This 'thing', whatever it was, had hauled cases of jewels out of the store with brute force. Or maybe more oddly... didn't haul jewels out at all. Maybe just picked up cases of jewels and threw them out. Out onto the sidewalk. Out onto the street. Thousands and thousands of dollars of jewels. Maybe this 'thing' was not even looking for jewels.

At least, not with an 's.'

Maybe looking for one particular jewel?

Ronald sipped the last of his second cup of coffee.

"All right," he said to himself as he shut off the car, "let's see how much of this I got right..."

He opened the car door, and the noises and smells of the city and its latest crime scene washed over him.

Special Investigation #2020-000112 had officially begun.

And damn...

...now he wanted ribs.

by **Recluse** October 24th 2017, 6:08 pm

Recluse sat perched above the shattered remains of the ruined Stein's Gem Importer, at the intersection of Washington and 10th.

The wholesale store was not the only thing destroyed; a small security force had been sent on an untimely journey into the infinite by what appeared to be high energy weaponry. Still, the worst of it all was what was stolen...

An extremely rare crystal was tracked to the store by ECLIPSE, but too late to prevent its theft. Now, someone or something with a formidable arsenal of energy weaponry had come to collect it, and had succeeded.

For Agent Wolfe, his mission was clear... To recover the artifact and neutralize its thief, using deadly force, if necessary...

And judging from the scene before him, such force seemed more than likely to be necessary.

He sighed, and his suit chittered as he shifted his view mode from analyzing the fingerprints and footprints at the scene to viewing the man down below him. Ultraviolet viewing revealed nothing remarkable about him, save, perhaps, that his skin appeared less weathered than it should for the man's apparent age as told by the lines in his face, and switching to hyperviolet (X-Ray) revealed a concealed revolver at his side, as well as a detective's badge.

So this man was here to investigate as well it seemed... He zoomed in on the man's face and snapped a digital image, running the man's face against ISO's powered index registry records. Nothing. If the man was 'gifted,' he was not registered as such. Next, he ran the image through facial recognition software.

This time, he did find a match: One Detective Ronald Daniel Stone.

Apparently, he was given a leave of absence from work due to exposure to a retroviral serum, then returned months later fit as a fiddle.

Recluse uploaded the file to ECLIPSE's metahuman investigations department for watchlisting, then sat for a moment in thought.

ECLIPSE was required to cooperate with local law enforcement, and he would... Eventually.

But for now, he simply observed the man; sizing him up. Wondering at the kind of man he would be working with on this case.

The strange case of Stein's place... He mused.

by **Detective Stone** October 25th 2017, 10:58 am

[Stein's Gem Importer]

"It was a monster. A machine monster!"

Ronald stepped through the crime-scene, carefully stepping over the debris as best he could. It had been an hour since his arrival, and now that CSI had thoroughly marked and photographed the scene, it was finally safe to move about and have a look with his own two eyes.

Thus far, everything appeared to be exactly as he'd surmised. Which was actually terrible news, because he'd sumised a fairly implausible and horrific event. Reuben Stein, the proprietor of the business, was now sitting outside his office, being questioned by an officer on-duty.

Officer Drummond looked up at Ronald as if to ask, "Want to take over?"

Ronald shook his head as if to reply, "Not on your life."

Drummond looked back at Stein, "Can you be a bit more descriptive, Mr. Stein? Did you get a look at it from your office?

"Only glimpses! Through the barred window on the steel door," Stein hooked a thumb at the office door, which was currently ajar. A two-inch thick steel security door, it had a barred window with a sliding metal plate that could allow someone to peek outside if they desired to do so. The door was not damaged, nor even apparently touched. The thing that had been here hadn't been interested in the office at all.

Ronald turned around slowly. The cases on the main floor had been rummaged and tossed. Diamonds literally everywhere. And the safe. The safe had been pried open by something of incredible strength. Most of its contents were spilled on the floor. The 'most' was only a hunch. So far, Stein hadn't claimed that anything was actually missing.

Of course, the entire building was a vault, and this was a safe within that vault. When perhaps millions of dollars of gemstones were inside the vault, what did one keep inside the safe? From here, Ronald could see titles and deeds. Perhaps to this very property. A stack of treasury bonds. The kind that couldn't be traced.

All left behind. In favor of what?

He stepped into the office as Stein continued answering the officer's question.

"It had robot snakes coming out of its body! It was like... a giant armored suit. With snakes. And there were laser beams flying around!"

Inside the office, there was a workdesk filled with paperwork. There was also a wall filled with monitors. Security monitors for what must be a dozen cameras. They were all bright with images of the store. Ronald could see Stein and Drummond from three different angles.

His gaze drifted to the DVR system attached to those monitors. A high-end specialty security model. He tried to eject the DVD, to no avail. Empty.

Stein glanced over at his office, then back at Drummond, "And that's when he saw me peeking! Demanded I hand over the Security tapes!"

Ronald's eyebrows raised, and he stepped back out onto the main floor.

Drummond pointed at the office door's security window, "And you passed the disc between the bars, and still didn't get a good look at him?"

"You have to understand," Stein said, "I was terrified!"

"And the monitors," Ronald interjected, gesturing back towards the office, "You didn't see anything on the monitors, either? They cover this scene from a half-dozen angles."

"I'm sorry, officer. I must confess to not being a brave man. The scenes on display... I averted my eyes."

Ronald frowned slightly. "So he ripped open the outside door. Ripped open the inside door. Tossed the whole place. Killed four men. Tore the safe door open. Took... nothing? Then stopped at your office, knocked politely, and asked for the security disc to be passed through the little window, there?"

Stein shrugged, shaking his head, "Who can account for the whimsy of a madman?"

Ronald held up his hand, "Me. I can." He gestured around, "Because our guy isn't stopping to ask questions. He's busting in, ripping the place to pieces, and taking something. Something you kept in that safe. Something that the security monitors would have seen him taking from that safe. Maybe even something they'd have seen you putting into the safe a bit earlier. So the disc had to go. And you had to have a reason why it was missing. How's that sound so far?"

Stein's eyes went wide, "Officer! I am the victim here! Now you are treating me like the perpetrator?! I see the stories of your department's anti-semitism are true! I will have your name, Sir!"

"Stone," Ronald said, "Detective Stone. The one stone you don't want in a store full of 'em. Boys! Tear this place apart. Air conditioner vents. Wood panels. Shred bins. If he hid the disc, we'll find it. If he shredded and binned it, then he destroyed evidence."

Stein stood up, the very picture of outrage. "I protest! I have rights!"

Ronald leveled his gaze upon the man. "Sure you do. You have the right to remain silent..."

********************

It took them fifteen minutes to find the disc, slid through the grill of the room's air-conditioner vent. Another twenty minutes to find the relevant footage on the sophisticated DVR player/recorder in the office. Stein had put something in the safe that very morning. Some kind of transparent, shimmering jewel. That's what the 'thing' had come for. A robot suit, near as Stone could tell. Armored, with robotic tentacles strong enough to tear a man in twain or rip a security door off of its frame. Laser lenses on the limbs that fired intense rays of light and heat. It was a suit of incredible technology that must be worth a hundred-million dollars to the right buyer. And it had been used to take one shimmering jewel from a building full of diamonds.

Returning to his car, Ronald sat down and filed his initial report on his department-issued datapad. Then he uploaded it, and issued the most unusual APB and BOLO of his career:

Be On the Look Out: Seven-Foot-Tall Robotic Exoskeleton with four Cephalopod-like additional limbs, last seen stealing an unusual, unidentified gemstone from Stein's Gem Importer. Do Not Approach. Observe and Report Only. Subject Armed and Extremely Dangerous, with multiple confirmed kills. Special Investigations, Threat Level C.

The APB would doubtless get the attention of the press. They loved giving metahuman and supernatural threats creative, sensationalistic names. He wondered what they'd end up calling this one...

by **Recluse** October 26th 2017, 12:35 am

Recluse continued to monitor the police files as well as the detective that was put on the case.

His appearance, such that it was, was not good for casually approaching people. Instead, he would wait for the oportunity to present itself to speak with this Detective Stone in person... And alone, if possible.

He turned his focus to the buildings round about, looking for signs of this other cyborg's passing... At least, he assumed that this was some kind of cyborg they were dealing with...

by **Detective Stone** October 26th 2017, 11:31 am

Serenity Valley Apartments

There might have been a time, in the long history of this city, when Serenity Valley had been ensconced in a beautiful neighborhood. A time when its name had been fitting. But that time had long-since passed. Now, Serenity Valley was one of the most run-down and crime-ridden places in the city. Half of the denizens of the apartment complex had criminal records, and a hefty percentage of those without such records were simply undiscovered lawbreakers. Perhaps an odd place for a police detective to call home, but Ronald lived a life without many of the usual concerns.

He wasn't afraid of being robbed while walking down the street. He didn't fear stumbling across a drug deal gone bad, or a crazy junky taking out his pain on the first person to stumble by. Because he didn't fear such things, it made sense to him to live here. Sometimes, in the course of his comings and goings, he got the chance to make a dent in the endless wave of misery that washed over the lives of the people who were forced to call this neighborhood their home.

At the moment, he was sitting on a La-Z-Boy recliner in his cramped living room, studying his police-issued datapad. Eight hours of sweating Stein in the interrogation room had been fruitless. Whatever the man had kept in that safe, he wouldn't say a peep about it. That meant it was stolen, and probably incredibly valuable. But Ronald couldn't find any reference to a similar-looking jewel in any of the national crime reports. He'd put in an inquiry with Interpol, but it would be a day or two before he got any answer on that.

The real question that was troubling him was... why leave cases of diamonds scattered about? No matter how valuable this one gem was, there was no need to leave all of the rest behind. A hundred-thousand dollars worth of diamonds could easily be clutched in one fist. And this mechanical monstrosity had enjoyed the use of many metal 'fists.' So why only take one jewel?

And the savagery... even sadistic mobsters didn't usually display this kind of gruesome violence. It was on par with the worst of Columbian or Mexican drug lord activity. They might skin or behead an enemy, but it was the kind of stuff they did to make examples of men. A calculated display designed to send a message.

But this was no calculated display. This was casual murder and meyhem, treating humans like rag dolls who happened to be between a dog and its treasured toy.

What did it all mean?

He wasn't sure what else he could do to find the answer to that question. The frustrating part of a Detective's job was the waiting. Waiting for the next clue, the next lead, or the next crime. The perverse nature of detectivework was that sometimes you only found the answers you were looking for because more bodies landed in the morgue.

But sometimes you got lucky.

Sometimes the answers you were looking for landed right outside your living-room window...

by **Recluse** October 26th 2017, 3:59 pm

... Recluse creeped quietly along the outer wall of Serenity Valley's most successful apartment complex. That would be saying something... If the place had any other apartment buildings to offer any competition, but the crime in this place had made the free market system here more or less fall to pieces. Solitary businesses ran by owners that were either very brave, very stupid, or very much tied up in the crime of the area were about the only kinds of businesses there were around here.

Still, the apartment complex was not nearly as terrible as it could be. Rooms were kept in relatively good condition and the linens were cleaned regularly, but this, Viktor supposed, was probably the only way one could keep a business going in a place such as this. If the service was as terrible as the area, it seemed very likely that the place would have been vacant in about a week's time, if not less.

That said, why this Detective Stone would want to live here, in a proverbial snake's nest, was currently unclear to him.

He crept down to the living room window, placing his right hand on the upper left corner, where it would be concealed by the curtain, and stuck it there. Then, millions of unseen arachnanites rushed down his arm and through the tiny cracks between the wood to the locking mechanisms within, repurposing them into an unlocked position.

The process, though relatively quick, for their size, still took them a couple of minutes before they returned to his hand and he opened the window silently to creep in.

If he was able to do so unnoticed, he would close the window behind him and relock it before speaking to the man and revealing his presence.

If he was noticed, as he very well might be if this man was as observant as he thought he was, he would let the man know that he was not his enemy immediately.

Time would tell which path he would have to take...

by **Detective Stone** October 26th 2017, 6:31 pm

Another Day in the City (Detective Stone & Recluse) [Double XP] Recluse

Serenity Valley Apartments

After a couple of hundred 'stolen jewels' reports that failed to match the description of the shimmering crystal he'd seen on security footage, Ronald's eyelids had begun to grow heavy. Crime dramas on television and in the movies could afford to skip the mind-numbing process of scouring endless records barren of fruitful discovery. They could fade out on one scene, and fade back into the next, when a detective's eye might light upon the critical piece of data. Depending on the show, the detective might utter a catch-phrase, might stand in excited triumph, or might remove his glasses and turn at the camera.

That was fine for crime dramas.

Here, in the real world, Ronald had to live through every second of every minute of every hour of incredibly boring wrong turns and useless report details. It was exhausting. Time to get some sleep, get back at it again in the morning.

But just as he'd made that decision, he heard a sound.

It was not the sound of a cybernetic ninja-spider slipping into his apartment.

Cybernetic ninja-spiders were, as a whole, much too quiet and skillfully practiced to give themselves away.

Rather, it was the city that betrayed Ronald's visitor. The city, with all its people laughing, crying, and shouting in exultation, anger, or fear. The myriad of vehicles prowling filthy streets. The rattle of countless window-shakers on this building and others, vibrating as they tried to cool the air and drip out excess condensation to the sidewalks and gutters below. As the window opened, it was the city that whispered its presence to Ronald, betraying Recluse in the process.

Detective Stone was no fast-draw expert. His revolver did not materialize in his hand as he stood, but was rather drawn forth from his shoulder holster in a competent but unremarkable fashion. He leveled the fat barrel of his snub-nosed .44 at the mechanical thing that had slipped into his living-room.

At first, he thought it might be the very quarry he was seeking: The same machine monster that had robbed Stein's and killed four of his men.

But... no. Though there were some slight similarities, this machine was sleeker and darker and more sophisticated in appearance. Not an armored Cephalopod. More a shady and menacing spider.

The city, it seemed, was brimming with robotic arachnids... and each new one was creepier than the last.

"Perhaps you've mistaken me for Miss Muffet," Ronald said to the thing, speaking through clenched teeth as he bit down a twinge of fear and steeled himself for a fight, "If so, guess again."

He extended his arm slightly, to make sure attention was drawn to his weapon, "I don't know if my little wheelgun will put a hole in you, but you make one wrong move, and I'm willing to give it a shot."

by **Recluse** October 26th 2017, 11:12 pm

"Detective Stone." He said as he dropped down, his arms at his side as one of the robotic arms on his back latched the window behind him. "I come here bearing information helpful to your case... I am not your enemy." He added without acknowledging the gun in the detective's hand.

He stood almost deathly still, awaiting a response...

by **Detective Stone** October 26th 2017, 11:43 pm

[Serenity Valley Apartments]

Ronald squinted at the thing which had come into his apartment. It looked like it had been built by Lockheed at Area 51. Knocked together right next to the latest Stealth Fighter, using captured Martian parts from the Roswell crash. Or it might have, if someone had tacked wings on the thing and bolted a jet engine onto its ass.

And yet, as sinister as the thing looked, it didn't look threatening.

Which wasn't to say it didn't look dangerous. This thing seemed to have pointy bits and razor-blades on most of its extra limbs, and it could probably make a chunky fruit salad out of him within two wags of a vegan's finger. But it didn't look like it intended him harm at the moment. It also didn't look like it much cared about the revolver he was pointing at it. The whole skin of the thing resembled some kind of high tech ballistic fabric. Something a notch or two up from kevlar. What were the wiz kids cooking up nowadays? Synthetic silk? Carbon fiber? Nanotubes? Something like that.

"Not my enemy, eh? Well, my friends don't usually come in through the window," he said. Then, in a leap of faith, he lowered his revolver.

"First you tell me who... and what... you are. Then you tell me how you can help me. Then I'll decide if I'm taking you in for Breaking and Entering and Trespassing. And possession of a heart-attack-inducing costume."

This had to be some flavor of high-tech vigilante, Ronald assumed. His first inclination was to believe that this thing was somehow technologically related to the Cephalopod guy, but the architecture of their suits- or cyberware- was so dissimilar, he was beginning to doubt it. They definitely didn't look to have come out of the same factory. If this robot spider guy looked like a Lockheed product, the other one at Stein's had seemed more like an Airbus.

by **Recluse** October 27th 2017, 1:23 am

Recluse relaxed his posture. "My apologies, Detective, but I can't walk without this suit." He said, pointing to his legs, partially obscured by the bed as they were, he wasn't sure that he had seen that he was missing his legs from the knees down. In their place, he had cybernetic prosthetics.

"People tend to panic and shoot if I approach them directly. I figured this would cause the least panic, strange as that might sound. My codename is Recluse. I'm an agent of ECLIPSE." He says, holding out his badge.

"I've been watching you, Detective. Listening to the police channels. I understand that you haven't yet uncovered what was stolen and why, is that correct?" He inquired.

by **Detective Stone** October 27th 2017, 11:00 am

Serenity Valley Apartments

Ronald arched a brow at his visitor's statement. Can't sneak into people's houses without that suit neither, I'd wager, he thought to himself, Maybe I should prefer you on wheels, slick.

Making up his mind, he holstered his revolver and picked up his datapad. His fingers moved nimbly as he accessed the Authorized Affiliates Database.

He'd heard of E.C.L.I.P.S.E. before. It was one of the many alphabet agencies that the international community had invented to deal with metahuman or supernatural threats. By all accounts, the folks at E.C.L.I.P.S.E. were a bunch of heavy-hitters. Rather than avoid the recruitment of supers, they recruited the very best. 'Best' basically meaning 'most powerful,' as far as Ronald had heard. It was whispered that some of their membership might be considered akin to Gods on Earth. The only thing more frightening to the mind of mundanes was the fact that they supposedly battled threats of equal or greater capability. To Ronald, it was like hearing stories of Titans battling the Gods at the top of Mount Olympus.

So... what was one of the big boys doing here, in his apartment?

His datapad beeped as it found a match. Recluse's image and basic info scrolled onto the screen. He was legit. C-Class, according to the municipal Special Investigations ranking system. That made him an order of magnitude more powerful than Ron. His type was listed as 'Synthetic Enhancement.' So... he was the product of someone's high school science project. Possibly E.C.L.I.P.S.E.'s own. They'd surely won the first place ribbon at the science fair for this one.

It made sense, though. Don't have enough footsoldiers in your organization? Then build some. Find yourself a cripple, and you'll have a grateful, loyal soldier for life.

The portfolio said this guy was a veteran. That suggested what might have happened to his legs. No specifics, though. The Affiliates Database was to confirm identity, not deliver complete biographies. But geeze, the least they could've done was give him a normal pair of Tom and Jerries to supplement this Death-Spider, multi-limb chic.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. He stepped forward to read the badge number Recluse was showing him, matching it to the identity on file.

"Okay. So you're who you say you are... or you're a damn good shifter with some damn good intel. I'm willing to buy it's the former. And you're right. There's a lot of holes in my investigation. I know Stein was holding some kind of very valuable rock in his safe, probably stolen from somewhere. And I know that rock was taken from him by a robo-freak with a squid fetish. But I don't know what that rock is, or why anyone would want it. Particularly why they would want it so specifically that they'd leave a million bucks of ice scattered on the ground without thinking to scoop some up."

He gestured to a seat, "Take a load off, if you're able to sit down while wearing that getup. And enlighten me. What do the Olympians at E.C.L.I.P.S.E. know, that they'd like to share with we poor Athenians?"

Ronald sat back down into his La-Z-Boy, listening with interest to the tale this spider was about to spin.

by **Pinnacle** October 27th 2017, 1:38 pm

"Thank you, detective, though, I'm only a class C agent according to the ratings of the Anti-Disaster Measures Heroes Association. That's barely a passing grade, plus, there are not just the ranks of B and A above me, but also S ranked agents above that. Besides, let me say that I have found your own work to be quite impressive considering what you have at your disposal to work with." Viktor began, "You already know much of our own intel...

That said, the crucial piece that you were missing is the identity of the stolen object. Technically speaking, that was classified, but I have clearance to tell you what it was...

A time crystal. An alien artifact utilized by an extraterrestrial race of beings that attempted to conquer our present by fracturing our past... They were defeated, but only eight of the nine time crystals that they used were ever recovered. ECLIPSE was recently able to track its location to Stein's Gem Importer, but not before it was stolen from that location. In order to avoid a global incident like the one with the Timesplitters, we must locate and procure that crystal." He said, then stood for a moment in silence, revealing a holopad from a side pouch in his suit. "This is what we're looking for." He said, as a holographic image of the crystal appeared.

Another Day in the City (Detective Stone & Recluse) [Double XP] Latest?cb=20140712193200

After the brief pause, he added: "If you have found any leads on our timetheif, it is vital that we act on them as soon as possible."

by **Detective Stone** October 27th 2017, 7:32 pm

Serenity Valley Apartments

Recluse tried to downplay his own power, while complimenting Ronald. It was hard to know if he was being genuine or merely polite. Still, even if he wasn't being completely honest, at least the man had enough tact to make the attempt. It wasn't the short of gruff disregard Ronald expected from superior agents who sometimes elbowed in on his investigations.

Come to think of it, Ronald himself was probably that same kind of despised outsider, given how often he displaced Homicide detectives when a crime involved superhuman suspects. No doubt the officers who got preempted by his own Special Investigation authority felt the same way about him.

He'd have to try to be nicer about it in the future.

But he didn't have time to dwell on his personal failings, because next came the classified briefing.

Aliens.

Time Travelers.

Time Crystals.

Timesplitters?

Maybe Abney Park was right. Maybe all the myths are true.

"Well," Ronald said, taking the information in, "I haven't been looking in the right places, because I sure wasn't looking for alien time-travel technology."

"Initially, I'd hoped to get a lead from air-traffic radar records. You see, this thing didn't go rambling up main street. So he was probably flying, and I'd hoped he'd flown high enough for his flight path to be caught on radar. But... no."

"Nor did he go a-bouncing across rooftops. Something like that would have attracted a lot of attention, because this thing we're after isn't a lightfoot ninja like you are. And of course it would have been visible on a hundred rooftop security cameras if it had been a leaper. We could have used such videos to track it to its source. But again, no dice. So in lieu of that, I've been reading a sackload of really boring theft reports hoping for a..."

He trailed off. Outside the living-room window, droplets of rain had begun to fall from the sky, dampening the night air. Soon, a rainstorm would make a vain attempt to wash the streets clean.

"I'm an idiot," he muttered, "I forgot about the weather."

He shook his head, repeating, "I forgot about the goddamned weather."

Realizing that he wasn't making a lot of sense, Ronald opened a browser on his datapad, pulling up the local ABC affiliate weather cam. Then the NBC affiliate weather cam. Then CBS. They all showed the night skyline of the city, the dark clouds above, and the occasional water droplet colliding with the camera lens.

Turning his pad to face Recluse, he explained, "The big three networks all have weather cams on tall buildings in the city, overlooking the major neighborhoods. You can stream the feeds online, if you're the type of poor soul who gets his jollies by staring at such things. They look out over the smaller buildings, out to the horizon. They cover space under the clouds and over the streets. In a zone higher than rooftops but lower than radar."

A tentative smile touched Ronald's lips. "If we can access the feeds from earlier this morning, just before and after the robbery, we can probably catch sight of that freak on his way back home. Narrow down the location of his base of operations or hideout to a single city block, at least."

by **Pinnacle** October 27th 2017, 11:50 pm

Viktor smiled beneath the mask, though, such a thing wouldn't show through the suit.

True, the cybernetic enhancements that he had recieved increased the myelin production around his neuronal axons, but that didn't cause them to fire in the way he required at all times.

The Detective probably didn't realize how valuable his insights were, especially considering that he was local, and knew the ins and outs of the city much better than intel could provide.

Weather... Viktor had overlooked such a thing himself. He tended to rely so heavily on his bells and whistles that he also had the tendency to miss such simple, yet critical details if they were not picked up by his visors or sensors and the like.

Bells and whistles...

Still, they would come in handy here.

"Hold on..." He said...

Through his radio uplink, he accessed the local weather feeds. The process took about a minute and a half, but when it was finished, he linked those feeds to his holopad, bringing them up for Detective Stone to see.

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