revivalproject | Murder on the Gold Saucer Express

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Murder on the Gold Saucer Express

WHO: It was you!
WHERE: On the airship!
WHAT: With the candlestick!
WHEN: Moments after...a horrible crime has taken place! Also during the Eorzea trip.
WARNINGS: This is a murder mystery, so both of those things are going to happen. Mark it if you get gory or weird about it.
NOTES: Go here for some OOC organizing.

The Dock

Those teleporting crystals were extraordinarily advanced for a society that didn't have computers, but none of them were going to give Tony an aerial view of the land like a proper flight could. A flight like in one of those ships he had seen trundling along; not proper jets or even blimps, but something that looked like an enthusiastic hot air balloon hauling the hull of an entire sailing ship. Ridiculous, and a far more straightforward path than getting himself in the sky and then having to answer some invasive questions for the display.

A regular, dedicated loop to the Gold Saucer advertised itself as travelling in style, a glitzy prelude to the indulgence of the games, a proper pre-party party bus. It looked much shabbier in person. Tony raised a lip as he stood on the dock and the boarding plank was dropped unceremoniously with a crack, disgorging a footman who's jacket was threadbare and had long lost the lustre of the gold piping around the collar. Tony lifted his chin to try to see past the man and into the ship, only to be suddenly jostled back.

"I have the right to be here, Hedda!" a woman shrieked as another, presumably Hedda, came careening into Tony. Tony stumbled, but was quickly catching himself and her, only for her to shove him off to go barrelling back at her attacker with her own fists raised. Tony's catch became a hold on her elbows to try to draw her back as the crowd around them spread out, with nervous gasps.

"You have the right to leave, too, Vedis, so get walking!" Hedda snarled, taking very little heed of Tony trying to stop her from clawing a woman's eyes out.

"Not until Rhitfedar has heard how much damage he's doing. Every cent he spends on you is blood money!"

No amount of Tony's attempt to soothe, "Hey, okay, hey, let's calm down," was going to be heard over Hedda screeching, "You're just jealous! Stop following us around!" Tony had to physically drag her back until enough people poured into the gap made between them and apparently her mortal enemy, streaming toward the ship. She finally wrenched herself away, fussily straightening her clothes and her hair, then cast Tony a startlingly coquettish smile. "Goodness, I don't know what came over me, she's terrible, really, has been since school, she drives everyone around her crazy, it's a miracle she hasn't gotten herself killed. Say, you look like you've got some extra cash on you, do you mind buying me a ticket? I seem to have dropped mine, and I'm supposed to meet someone..."

"All aboard!" the shabby footman's voice rang out startlingly clear, and Hedda was clinging pathetically to Tony's arm then, her gaze darting to every piece of metal on him. She was getting on that ship, one way or another.

-----

The Lower Deck

"What do you think?"

A man was practically pressed against Tony's shoulder, his hand raised to wiggle his fingers under Tony's nose, making them clatter with the array of rings there all adorned with polished, glimmering seashell shards. Tony raised his eyebrows, trying to come up with the kindest possible answer, and was relieved by the man himself who continued, "I know, they're awful. Some of my worst work. The only money I'll be making back is if I sell that atrocious piece of land." He was barely actually talking to Tony, but the other men who had been standing with him, letting Tony nod slowly and turn back toward the window where he was watching the city retreat below them. "Swarming with adventurers anymore, even if there was better materials to find there they've been long since cleaned out. That dungeon. Ugh. You'd think one of them would be good enough to buy it."

"You could give it to me," one of the other men offered, voice all grit. "Call your debt even. No more worrying about the money, I won't even have to kill you anymore." Tony tried his best to catch a glimpse of him out of the corner of his eye while sidling away, not particularly eager to be surprised by another fight so soon. Maybe if he could flag down that footman, he could get more of that cheap wine in them and defuse the situation.

"Oh, well, that..." the artist was demurring, waving his clattering hands. "That speculator, Rhitfedar, he said something about a new resort, maybe, it would be a great investment for him, worth quite a bit up front, I was hoping to catch him, make so much more for both of us, really, without having to do the development work..."

---

The Dining Room

The buffet was mostly grey. Tony inspected a cracker, wondering the likelihood of getting food poisoning from something dry and stale, and if alien food poisoning was less likely to effect him or more likely to kill him. "Rhitfedar," said a voice at his elbow, to which Tony dropped the cracker and turned his attention to a bowl of dusty, wrapped candies. The voice cleared its throat, and tried again, "Mr. Rhitfedar?"

It was the footman. Tony turned, glanced around, then gestured to his chest with the candy that he had plucked up, and eventually had to accept that it was him that the footman was trying to address. "Uh, no, sorry," he said.

"Oh." The footman didn't seem to know what to do with this information, and held the box he was carrying out toward Tony anyway, which locked them in another awkward stalemate until the footman insisted, "But I saw you come in with Hedda. This package has been on board for you since this morning, if you could sign here."

"Still no, and not expecting a package," Tony tried again, inching away, not really hungry anyway and leaving the candy on top of the box for the footman's grand effort. "Good luck, honestly, he can't have gone far, step out there is pretty steep."

When Tony glanced back from the doorway, the footman was chewing slowly and peeking inside the box, brow furrowed and looking harried. To the next person who approached the buffet table, he blurted, "Mithtuh Whyfe-er?"

---

The Bathroom

Absolutely everyone on board this ship was turning out to be too touchy and potentially insane, and they had barely gotten off the ground. Tony had to make a quick retreat from an elderly woman with a very wide smile and very sticky hands before she took a bite out of him, leaving her waving her handkerchief after him and promising to have a glass of wine for him when he was done as he slipped into the security of the bathroom. Hastily, he secured the lock and braced the door for good measure as he caught his breath. This had not been his best idea, and getting an aerial view of the area wasn't even telling him anything useful. Slowly, he turned to face what new damp, dusty horror the facilities had to offer him, only to freeze, expecting bad and somehow getting worse.

There was a man on the floor.

Tony tried the footman's tactic, clearing his throat, to no avail. Right, that probably wasn't going to rouse this man any more than Tony's entrance had. Tony dropped to his knees then, gently touching a shoulder first, then trying a shake, before leaning closer to listen for any sign of breathing. That was about what he expected. Desperately, he glanced around for anything that might help as he searched for a pulse, finding only clammy skin and an empty box knocked under the dripping sink, newsprint spilling out of it, but nothing that would rouse a man from the dead.

He had to pull himself together and hurry back to the door, where he flung it open, only to brace his arm against it then throw his body in the way of another gentleman that had been waiting patiently outside. "Um," Tony started, bringing his free hand up to search for the proper phrase that conveyed the urgency of the matter, without inducing a panic on an airship. "Would you mind finding the footman?"

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The Hunter dusted himself off like he hadn't just come in from outside of an airship and in questionable fashion. He looked down at Tony on the floor as though wondering why he was even down there before he glanced towards the woman with just the briefest pause.

"-right? This ship's in terrible shape! Railing just *crack!* Broke right under him and everything else that followed was all kinda reflex. Luckily your window happened to be in our way, clearly when you cash out once you hit the games you'll be rich."

He gave Tony a quick look over to make sure he wasn't too beat up, dusting off a few fragments of glass from his shirt. "Or maybe it's us that should go high stakes? I don't know, luck can go either way. So sorry in any case, for crashing your private party, ma'am."

"Nonsense, I'd much rather you were here with me than plummeting to your immediate and gruesome death," the lady tittered, fully abandoning Tony and snatching her kerchief away to pat at Cayde instead now that he was talking to her. Tony wasn't sure if he should be offended, features contorting until they landed on disappointed resignation, and he settled for searching his own palms for glass fragments. "Besides," the lady continued meanwhile, "my husband is terribly late, and I could use the company. How he could possibly have gotten so distracted on a ship, I couldn't imagine."

"Place is full of surprises," Tony muttered impatiently. "Do you know where we would go to meet the captain?" If they waited much longer, the cabin was going to get crowded.

"He's usually in the dining room, dear, the ship flies itself," the lady reported, incredibly patronizing.

"Uh-"

Cayde tried to patiently bat away at her hands. "I'm fine, I'm fine," he assured. "Husband? Oh, well if you're expecting him we really shouldn't stick around then. Don't want him getting jealous."

He made to slip past her towards Tony. "-oh, this boat's automated? Huh. Well, not that it changes the fact it still looks like it could do for more than a new coat of paint here and there but thank you ma'am, you've been super helpful."

The batting wasn't very effective, and the lady only said, "Don't you worry about him, I'm sure he's found his own company by now," taking Cayde's gesturing as an invitation to take him by the arm. "He's always had a knack for it, and they don't even fall through his window. Come on now, the captain is a very nice man, he'll love to meet you."

Over her head, Tony was wrinkling his nose at Cayde, not sure he had the emotional capacity to absorb someone else's marital problems on top of the tampering with a murder scene situation that they were in the middle of, or that they should be going somewhere as populated as the dining room. A second costume change to avoid being spotted probably was unlikely.

Very much unused to dealing with overbearing old women, Cayde made his very delicate attempt to extract himself from the arm-link he found himself in. "That right? Uh, I think we'd have to object to this sort of power play- really I think you and your husband should have a nice sit-down and work things out because this sort of game really never gets anywhere-"

He caught Tony's look and wholeheartedly agreed, not that he knew what they should do when they were likely being sought out. It wouldn't be surprising to him in the least if word had spread by now.

It was hard to read Cayde from here in his strange costume, but if Cayde could make a big swing like throwing them out a window, Tony could make a call like interjecting, "Why don't we go find him?" Which he did regret immediately, not sure if this redirection would produce much better results for them than waltzing into the dining room, but it might buy them time to get away from the old lady. "Your husband. Instead. Sounds like you should talk."

"Nonsense, nonsense, you'd all forget about me as soon as you got in a room with him, talking business and real estate and whatever else it is you boys do," she insisted. "I'm sure you'll meet him by the time this ship lands, he's always making friends like that, always making a deal or a girlfriend. Let's worry about you lovely young men, have you eaten?"

"Pff, who me? Real estate? Nah, I'm not really a business kinda guy," Cayde said, at this point unsure who he was helping although the thought of being stuck in any kind of a business-related meeting kicked in his defenses. "Actually, speaking of dinner- I think we actually have an appointment with someone. And we'll have to make a fuss to the captain regarding the shoddy condition of his ship, which I would prefer to save your precious ears of, so we really need to excuse ourselves..."

"Right!" Tony jumped in with too much enthusiasm, pointing at Cayde for this very important reminder. "You know, I almost forgot, falling off of a boat can really scramble your mainframe--we've got that thing, with..." He twisted a hand in the air, trying to produce a name that wasn't going to sound profoundly alien to someone from this planet, wide eyes on Cayde for help. Meanwhile, he was patting at the lady's shoulders to try to gently extract Cayde from the other side and guide her back into the confines of her room, where the rest of the ship would be safe from her and her marital issues. If nothing else, the energy this exchange had produced was baffling enough to her system that she didn't know how to properly resist it, murmuring without so much protest this time.

"You must come back, and tell me how your talk goes..." she tried, less sure.

"Oh don't ask me to pronounce it, you know I botched it up the last time," Cayde snorted, turning his head, tilted just so at the woman as though to suggest 'see what I have to work with here?' before giving her a quick pat on the hand as he headed for the door.

"Yes ma'am, absolutely. I'll have a box of chocolates sent your way- if it doesn't come then it's likely the footman got the order mixed up, I hear they've been having problems with deliveries," he babbled as he let Tony steer them out to freedom.

It became sharply obvious as they made their escape back out into the hall and did their best to put considerable distance between themselves and the woman without drawing too much more attention from the passengers milling around, that they were doing a lot of running away for what was supposed to be a search for a murderer. As they rounded a corner, Tony abruptly slowed, giving a blind pat at Cayde's arm to draw him back as well with a wary eye turned down the hall, where he could see another footman lingering just past the bulkhead.

"No one else is freaking out," he hissed, glancing shiftily around for anyone that looked like they might be listening. "So either someone else is throwing people over the side, or no one else is being targeted. I don't think we're looking for more victims."

To be fair, they'd tried but those plans had quite firmly gone out the window.

Cayde stepped back, frowning under his helmet as he cast a look down the hall, Sundance getting an update on her radar. "Well, maybe more victims have been put on hold until our whereabouts have been nailed down," he suggested. "Did you see the look on that lady's face earlier? She looked way too into the whole situation of us getting arrested than seemed normal, right?"

"Maybe that's her, you know, thing," Tony mused, not looking entirely comfortable making that kind of call when he wasn't exactly focused on some gal while he was still recovering from hanging a body and negotiating his freedom. He did have to admit, though, "She was tearing into the gal from the box, the disgraced socialite, on the dock, there's definitely a connection between her and this--unless all of these people know each other, and this is just their weekly trip to the slots, and we're in the middle of their dorm drama. I mean, what does this bad blood they've got have to do with the dead guy?"

That would put them at square one again, making Cayde toss up his hands. "I wouldn't be surprised if they did, maybe this is a weekly meeting or a monthly trip over to the casino." He shrugged.

"Should we go look for this Hedda lady again? Was that her name? Although if she's actually with the captain and they're all in the dining room then that could be a problem."

Tony was already grimacing before Cayde vocalized for them what the problem was going to be. They had thrown a body overboard to avoid getting everybody worked up. If they went and did that anyway, their already thin rationalization was going to be downright transparent. "Maybe she's...not?" he suggested, in an incredibly unconvincing display of strained optimism.

"What if..." he tried again, winding a finger in the air to reset the equation, "we get her to come to us?"

"Okay, but how?" Cayde asked, deciding that wasn't the worst suggestion.

"This thing got a PA system? Or do we ...risk asking a footman to deliver a message? ...leave a trail of money? -you know, I will be terribly disappointed and sad if the sanest person aboard this ship is the grabby lady with husband issues."

Getting the footman to do anything might directly lead to another murder, if Tony had to guess by the way the package was passed around, so to this suggestion he grimaced and tilted his head, open to other ideas. A different messenger wasn't bad, even if it did mean letting the grabby lady paw at them more, but the ideal situation was always just doing it himself.

"It's got to have a PA system," he agreed. "For emergencies, or whatever." This did, unfortunately, put them back in the position that they were before finding out that they were on the lam; figuring out where anything was on this boat. Tony was looking up then, searching the corners for possible speakers to confirm this theory, because they could at least shortcut this search. "All we need is a radio."

While Cayde had no doubt of Tony's ability to work some magic with a radio, there still left the problem of acquiring one. "Because that's easy to get," he muttered, but he was trying to think of whether he'd seen any or- no, never mind. Frog-blind. Had that really only been, what an hour ago? Less?

"Who'd have one? At this rate we may as well just look for the control room. If this thing's all automated maybe it'll be relatively empty."

Exactly the position they had been in before, it turned out. Tony raised his eyebrows, willing to accept that the control room was now serving a dual purpose at least, since the lady had told them not only where plenty of people were bound to be, but also where no one was likely to be. They'd be hidden, and have more options at their disposal.

"We're travelling the internal way this time," was his only caveat, pointing--well, he wasn't sure which direction they were going yet exactly, but there was bound to be a map eventually.

The Exo raised his hands. "Fine by me," he said. He looked expectantly at Tony before realizing that they really didn't have much of a heading. At least they had Sundance to tell them if the coast was clear, which was better than nothing.

Surely this place had signs so they didn't have to resort to checking every door. "-come on," he said, jerking his head down the hall once he got his Ghost's go-ahead. "Let's see...if these are private suites and below was...public lounge? Where would make the most sense for ship controls to be..."

A system that ran itself didn't have the same requirements that a full, human crew would need, and as Tony tried his best to sneak after Cayde like slinking around would look any more innocent, he tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Somewhere central. Like...right in the middle," he suggested. With a glance up, then back over his shoulder, he quickly tried to map where exactly they would be based on his very helpful exterior perspective on their way down, and provided, "A little to the left, we'd be right above the middle point."

Sounded as good as any place to start. With a nod, Cayde started down a short perpendicular crossing at the first opportunity. He drew up short of the next passageway at a silent warning from Sundance, pulling Tony closer to the wall until the footsteps of a thankfully preoccupied passenger meandered past them without a glance.

Cayde wasn't watching him go too far, his attention caught up on the wall just across from them as they took cover, and he grinned at Tony, pointing to the sign listing locations and oh-so-helpful arrows.

As Tony realized what Cayde was looking at, he pointed with him enthusiastically, then slid forward to assess their situation. At the very least, they would know their exits now if someone showed up wanting to discuss their behaviour again. Starting with a tap where they were on the map, and dragging his finger around, Tony said, "There's the 'helm'," indicating their current target, closer to the front of the ship than he had guessed, "and there's a 'Captain's quarters'. Maybe she's actually there, sounds more...private." With another thoughtful tap, he added, "There's a 'nurse'. Maybe there have been other victims, and they don't even know it."

"...if she is, do we really wanna walk in there?" Cayde asked, brow arching. "Although if both she and the captain are there, maybe we can try to convince them that there's something of concern going on about the place. ...we just need to not mention that we threw the body off the ship."

Because that was going to go so well. The Exo started looking a bit dubious of the suggestion around that point.

It was possible that some interruption would be tolerated with consideration to the gravity of the situation, vis a vis her imminent murder, but it was difficult to say for certain and Tony spread his hands with a grimace, unable to claim confidently how he would even feel in that situation. It might have depended on how well the private audience was going. What he could say with more confidence was, "I feel like I'm not going to have trouble keeping that one to myself, you know, indefinitely. It's not something that's going to end up on my resume. I'm already blocking it out." It was going to be a delicate operation, he only realized then, convincing someone that a murder had happened, when they didn't have a body or even a name to suggest a person was at least missing. They'd pay for that bridge when they got to it.

Well, not like they hadn't already been operating by the seat of the pants. Cayde drummed his fingers against his arm but he nodded- mum's the word, they'd have no problem in agreeing not to bring up the body.

"Right, let's just get moving again. For all we know, we're getting ourselves worked up over an empty room..." he said as he peeked around the corridor and then started on in the direction the captain's quarters had been listed.

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