[I don't know what it is, but you gotta do it. I don't know where to go, but you gotta be there.]
Alone and hunched over a laptop computer in the break room at the headquarters of the Domino Daily, Chloe Sullivan left the cursor to hover over the document she was reading, marking her spot while she paused to consider whether or not she was tempting fate.
The pen she’d been chewing on for the past forty minutes was looking a bit worse for wear, and while she could try her damnedest to pass it off an ink stained mouth as the latest fashion statement, she wasn’t very optimistic about the chances of success. She could work with something like an accidental staple through the earlobe (“They’re the new ‘diamond earrings‘, didn‘t you know?”) but how could you pretty up an unfortunate pen leak?
It sure beat paying for lipstick? Maybe. She had a steamy affair with the copy boy who just so happened to have an ink fetish? Slightly more plausible.
Still, the staff here was already leery of her; she didn’t want to fan the fire and wind up accused of being nuts.
Save that for week two.
Abruptly, she twisted around in the chair and rooted diligently through the messenger bag dangling off the back. Since she had a habit of unconsciously thieving office supplies, she paused to make sure the new pen she pulled out was one she had purchased herself the day before, and not something found lying around the break room - which could’ve been fished from the Lost and Found box at a proctologist’s office for all anyone knew; eww much? - before tossing its mangled brother in the wastebasket and resuming her compulsive chewing.
On the other side of the room, the coffee machines grumbled as though they had some idea of what was in store for them, but Chloe paid them no mind. She was engrossed in the police reports she’d copied after hacking into the DCPD database. Yes, it was illegal. And yeah, she could probably get deported, on top of losing her job and putting a stain on her career for pulling such a stunt, but that was how she worked.
She was willing to take any risk when it came to uncovering the truth.
And the truth right now, it seemed, was that the DCPD was doing a poor job of solving anything involving disappearances or murder. There was a pattern - a disturbing one - of numerous people vanishing without a trace around the same time, and another of numerous people turning up dead or catatonic around the same time. The DCPD had simply filed all of these reports away, either intentionally or unintentionally overlooking the common denominator.
Duel Monsters.
The game itself, the tournaments, and the people who called themselves ‘duelists’. They were among the victims, the witnesses, and - Chloe was almost certain - the perpetrators. But why? What was the motive? It couldn’t really just be about winning, could it?
Then again, if there were more people like Lex Luthor in the world, winning was all that mattered to some people and they would go to extraordinary lengths to achieve a victory.
Naturally, she hadn’t had enough time to determine with any confidence whether these were the acts of an individual or a group, like an organized crime syndicate, and she wouldn’t with just the reports alone if they were all as skimpy on the details as the multitude she’d already read.
But that was where the investigative part of investigative reporting came into play.
Leaning back in the chair, Chloe stretched her arms above her head, pen wedged between cheek and gums as she treated herself to a private grin.
She couldn‘t wait to get started.
[Tag, Jounouchi]
The pen she’d been chewing on for the past forty minutes was looking a bit worse for wear, and while she could try her damnedest to pass it off an ink stained mouth as the latest fashion statement, she wasn’t very optimistic about the chances of success. She could work with something like an accidental staple through the earlobe (“They’re the new ‘diamond earrings‘, didn‘t you know?”) but how could you pretty up an unfortunate pen leak?
It sure beat paying for lipstick? Maybe. She had a steamy affair with the copy boy who just so happened to have an ink fetish? Slightly more plausible.
Still, the staff here was already leery of her; she didn’t want to fan the fire and wind up accused of being nuts.
Save that for week two.
Abruptly, she twisted around in the chair and rooted diligently through the messenger bag dangling off the back. Since she had a habit of unconsciously thieving office supplies, she paused to make sure the new pen she pulled out was one she had purchased herself the day before, and not something found lying around the break room - which could’ve been fished from the Lost and Found box at a proctologist’s office for all anyone knew; eww much? - before tossing its mangled brother in the wastebasket and resuming her compulsive chewing.
On the other side of the room, the coffee machines grumbled as though they had some idea of what was in store for them, but Chloe paid them no mind. She was engrossed in the police reports she’d copied after hacking into the DCPD database. Yes, it was illegal. And yeah, she could probably get deported, on top of losing her job and putting a stain on her career for pulling such a stunt, but that was how she worked.
She was willing to take any risk when it came to uncovering the truth.
And the truth right now, it seemed, was that the DCPD was doing a poor job of solving anything involving disappearances or murder. There was a pattern - a disturbing one - of numerous people vanishing without a trace around the same time, and another of numerous people turning up dead or catatonic around the same time. The DCPD had simply filed all of these reports away, either intentionally or unintentionally overlooking the common denominator.
Duel Monsters.
The game itself, the tournaments, and the people who called themselves ‘duelists’. They were among the victims, the witnesses, and - Chloe was almost certain - the perpetrators. But why? What was the motive? It couldn’t really just be about winning, could it?
Then again, if there were more people like Lex Luthor in the world, winning was all that mattered to some people and they would go to extraordinary lengths to achieve a victory.
Naturally, she hadn’t had enough time to determine with any confidence whether these were the acts of an individual or a group, like an organized crime syndicate, and she wouldn’t with just the reports alone if they were all as skimpy on the details as the multitude she’d already read.
But that was where the investigative part of investigative reporting came into play.
Leaning back in the chair, Chloe stretched her arms above her head, pen wedged between cheek and gums as she treated herself to a private grin.
She couldn‘t wait to get started.
[Tag, Jounouchi]