revivalproject | Backdated to Right After the Fire/Right Before New Tick

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Backdated to Right After the Fire/Right Before New Tick

WHO: Sephiroth and anyone he talks to
WHERE: Around Temba
WHAT: Interviewing people and tracking footprints
WHEN: Right before New Tick
WARNINGS: Murder investigation

Sephiroth is furious. Another murder attempt, with four people in various states of injury. This is intolerable. He’d been over the building once the flames were out, but opted not to broadcast his findings, if any. Instead, he decides to continue his investigation by talking to everyone involved.

When he finds each person, he'll be asking them questions such as what they saw and if they noticed anything unusual (besides the obvious). He found many tracks in the snow, understandably, and he wonders if any might still be from the killers. Not that he really thinks following them will lead to said killers, but he will try anything. Maybe there will be a clue along the way.

For each victim he approaches, he starts off with, "Hello. How are you feeling?"

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Keith looked up on being approached, recognizing Sephiroth from the zombie attack. He nodded.

"Hey..." It was part greeting, part sigh, as he managed a weak smile. How was a feeling? Ha. Ha ha. Yeah. "I'm alive," he quipped. "Tired, but yeah. Still here." Which, really, was kind of a lot of his life in the past several years. But anyway...

"What's up?"

"I'm investigating the fire. I wondered if I could ask you some questions about what you saw," Sephiroth replied.

"Uh, yeah... okay." He did kind of glance over his shoulder for a second, like he was maybe a little nervous about talking... though, it was more that he didn't want to draw attention about it than he was scared for his safety. "What do you want to know?"

Sephiroth noticed that glance. "No one should hear us." He folded his arms. "What happened when you first started towards the building?"

"Um..." He took a breath, trying to settle himself. "I was just out on patrol," he said. He'd been doing that a lot after they'd gotten back from the Warrens and the mines, especially after he found out that Lance was no longer around. It had been a distraction, a way to keep himself busy instead of dealing with the loss. He frowned a little as he remembered back.

"I heard this scream, so I ran to check it out. It was inside one of the old buildings up in the Green section. I saw two others go in, and I followed them. We didn't see anyone right away. Just each other.

"The scream was coming from a communicator that had been left on the floor in there. A trap. When we turned to get out, someone was already at the door, and they lit the place on fire before slamming the door shut on us."

Edited 2025-01-12 05:56 (UTC)

"Did you see anything about the person responsible?" Sephiroth asked next.

Keith hesitated, not from worry about sharing, but more from trying to think about it more... He had a good visual memory, and worked on picturing what he could remember in his head before nodding a little.

"Yeah... not sure how much it is to go on, but he was wearing this like... loose black robe with the mask," he said. "The same mask everyone's seen this person with so far." He remembered that Donnie recognized the mask. "It was long, but it didn't hit the ground, but the bagginess kind of made it hard to distinguish any real physical shape to whoever was wearing it. And all I could see was that it looked like a pair of black boots underneath." He frowned at how generic this all sounded. "Whoever it was turned west to leave... just before the door slammed shut. I couldn't see anything after that." The door... He huffed a small sigh. "I think they're around my height. I don't know how much the boots might add to that, but, relative to the door, yeah. I'd say we're close in height. I'm like six feet tall." He thought about the boots again. "Probably not a lot of added height. The boots looked fairly normal, from what I could see. Not like giant thick soles or anything."

He thought a bit more.

"I don't know if it was the person on the comm making the screams and laughing or not, but the masked person definitely set the flames going and locked us in. So... they could have been acting alone with a pre-recorded message, maybe? Or... I don't exactly know. But they could have had help from someone else."

Sephiroth nodded. He was recording all of this with his comm to make sure it got down exactly as Keith was telling it.

"That's good information. Thank you."

He'd follow the prints that went West. Hopefully there wouldn't be multiples doing that.

"It's generally assumed by now that there are two people working together," he noted. "For the laughing to be timed exactly right, I would gather it was a live person on the comm and not a pre-recorded message."

Keith considered that for a moment and then nodded.

"That makes sense," he said about the timing, agreeing with that theory.

"Have you talked to the others yet?" he asked. "I'm interested in what they might have picked up on that I missed."

"I've spoken with Radley," Sephiroth said. "He gave me the communicator that was used. Apparently it belongs to Billy Loomis." He frowned. "That is surprising given that he is currently one of the top suspects. Perhaps if he is guilty, he thinks using his own communicator will allow him to play the victim card again and insist it was stolen like the others."

"I wonder if they can track the last call on it..." Keith muttered, though his tone made it sound like he figured someone probably tried that already.

"We have to see if there's a way to trace where other people were... I don't know if the Agrii surveillance covers that area."

"I'm going to give it to someone with Communications and see what they find out," Sephiroth said. "And after that, I'll return it to Billy Loomis myself and see what he has to say about it."

"And you think he'll just confess if he's the one that did it?" Keith looked doubtful. "I don't know. If this guy wants to keep doing what he's doing, and if it is Billy that did it, then I don't think he's going to be all that forthcoming about it." He frowned. "If anything, he'll play victim."

"He won't confess," Sephiroth grunted. "After everything we've already been through with him and his friend, everyone should recognize that by now. I'm not even going to try to get him to confess. It's pointless."

And he was very irritated about how difficult it was to actually, unequivocally prove anything about the murderers. Somehow they had to put a stop to this, but how?

"... I wonder how receptive the Agrii would be if we told everything to them and requested they send those two home."

It wouldn't be a perfect solution (what would they cause back in their home world?), but if the Agrii would listen, at least they could see if it would solve their problems here.

"I don't even know if the Agrii even know how to send us home," Keith said quietly. "We got close to it a long time ago, and something blocked it from happening. It looked like they had access to some sort of portal or something, and then... it disappeared, and something else intervened."

Sephiroth flicked a wing in annoyance. Why was this not a surprise.

"'Something else'? Such as the enemy race that was likely responsible for the Storms?"

"It's possible," Keith said. "I'm not sure how much that particular race of beings is even really around anymore." He frowned a little. "From what we found in the tunnels, it's the same race that created Drift Fleet. It almost sounded like they were trying to set the Agrii up as a race that needed the Fleet's help for something. But the stuff down there... it's old. Like it hasn't been accessed or touched for a long time." He shook his head.

"It might have been something different. Something that stepped in here to take advantage and take over after the Atroma were gone." He took a breath. "The same thing happened with Drift Fleet. The Atroma were no longer in control. It was something else... something darker and more sinister.

"I have a feeling the Atroma haven't been around for a long time, and other people are stepping in to take advantage of what they messed around with and left behind. I just have no way of proving it."

Sephiroth frowned as he listened. This was disturbing information. He had thought at least they had some idea who was behind this. If it wasn't these Atroma, then they had absolutely no idea who it could be.

"I see. What happened with this Drift Fleet in the end? Were these other beings stopped?"

"I think they were. We at least defeated the one that residing on the control ship for our group." But... yeah... disturbing to say the least. "I don't know if there are any more of them. Or if this group here is even related to them. It could be a third group."

"Mysteries upon mysteries," Sephiroth grunted. "Do we ever actually grow close to the truth, or is it an illusion?"

He wondered if they would ever know. In any case, he was certainly disturbed by the information they had unearthed when stopping the zombie Storm. It made him not want to eat any peanut butter food from the Agrii.

Keith shook his head with a sigh.

"I don't know," he said quietly. "It's been like... eight years... I think?" For him, anyway. "I'm not even entirely sure." He'd been bounced around time between Drift Fleet, this reality, back home... Even back home, he'd been through the abyss and had time slippage, and it was a lot. And that wasn't even counting the differences in measuring time between universal space time, and Earth specific time.

It really was just all a construct.

"I don't suppose there are records of these things?" he wondered.

"Records of the Fleet?" Keith took a breath, thinking about it. "I mean, I don't know if there are any here," he said. "But, we did find some when we were still in the Fleet... weird corrupted files and stuff from previous 'seasons' of the show." That probably made no sense. "Drift Fleet was a reality show," he explained. "Our activities and everything were being broadcast out to other realities and beings to watch for entertainment. So, there were some records from groups that had been on the show before ours. But, once the Atroma were out of the picture, the being that took over... I don't know. It didn't seem to do a great job of making sure the computer and the recordings and all that were in good working order."

Sephiroth grunts. "That is a demented reality show." At least all the other ones he knows of had the people willingly join. "I haven't heard of it in my world, but I wonder how far it reached."

"I hadn't heard of it, either," Keith said. "In fact, no one who was a passenger had. We were all from places that didn't know about it." Strange coincidence, no?

"Heh. Apparently for some reason they chose people whose worlds weren't going to receive the show." He doesn't think it's a coincidence. "Perhaps they didn't want their loved ones to see."

"It could be," Keith said. He reached up and rubbed a small lump behind his left ear with a thoughtful look. Anyone who'd been in Drift Fleet still had something... a lump, an actual device, something there. They were difficult and dangerous to remove. But any of the memories Keith had gained from home (as an actual return was still something they couldn't confirm as having happened) indicated that he didn't have it there. So, just what was going on?

"Any time we ended up with new memories from home, it was like we'd never left. We'd go back to the place and time we'd been pulled from," he said. "Though, it hasn't happened for me since we came here. It only happened to me in the Fleet."

"Hm. Yes, that's what I've heard is supposed to happen here as well," Sephiroth remarked. "Radley told me he'd heard it from someone who left and came back.

"Were you rubbing an injury from the fire?" he wondered.

"So it still holds, then," Keith said quietly.

He looked like he was pulled out of his thoughts for a moment when he gave Sephiroth a surprised look.

"Huh?" He blinked. "Oh, uh..." He shook his head. "No, no. I wasn't," he said quickly. Though, he supposed an explanation was warranted. "Drift Fleet passengers were all given something called an augment," he said. He shifted his hair, pointing it out. It wasn't large. "Mine's under my skin, but some people had visible ones... like different versions or just a sloppy install." He shrugged. "But, it was how they gave us the knowledge for our positions on the ships, and how they tracked us." And probably how they brought people back to life, something the Agrii didn't seem to be able to do.

Sephiroth looked at it. "... I suppose I have to be grateful the Agrii haven't done that," he said. "The mind invasion is bad enough."

"Mind invasion?" Keith looked confused for a second. "Oh... the Data Points. Yeah. Honestly, these are the same thing, just attached to us instead of floating orbs in town. But we didn't exactly have a place to store Data Points for a while. I came into it a few years after the season I was part of started," Keith said. "At that point, they'd only recently picked up a central ship for the Fleet that had the ability to host things like that. Before that, it had just been a group of smaller ships."

"Those, but also those occasional pulls that we have to go somewhere," Sephiroth said. "Those are very troubling. I was told it happens every now and then and not just when we first arrive."

He nodded to this information. "I see. I wonder where they picked it up."

"I honestly forgot," Keith said quietly. "I think I have some of my notes back on Temba, though. I might have it in there." Keith had tried to regain as much of what he'd gathered during his time in the Fleet as possible. But it was hard to explain what he was looking to get from the Agrii's request box.

"But, yeah... that compelling thing." Keith sighed. "I don't think the Agrii understand the point of an 'invitation' is that the invited party is allowed to decline."

He huffed.

Edited 2025-01-16 23:42 (UTC)

"It would be a good idea to revisit everything you have since it might have a bearing on our current circumstances," Sephiroth said.

A dry smirk. "I wonder how hard it would be to teach them."

Keith nodded.

"I'll see what I can dig out." He had a lot, but not all his notebooks came with him when he got pulled from the Fleet. Hopefully, what he had was at least somewhat coherent and he could fill in the gaps.

"Heh... I don't know. It can't hurt to try, I guess."

"Let me know what you find," Sephiroth said.

He nodded. "I believe I will, the first chance I get."

Keith nodded. "Yeah, sure."

He then snorted a tiny chuckle. "Good luck."

"Heh. I'll take whatever luck I can get, if it's not bad," Sephiroth smirked.

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Backdated to Right After the Fire/Right Before New Tick

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