Beneath Unknown Bones

[mysterium_npc]

Who: Characters who are going to investigate the ruins of the Sheckley manor.
Where: 633 Noyes Street
When: October 12, morning
What: Exploring the ruins and searching for clues.
Rating and warnings: PG-ish
Notes: Feel free to tag in in whatever order you like. You'll get NPC tags whenever there's some new information to reveal, but they won't

Comments

[nebensonne]

They were in a rather similar position, in that respect - dealing with unknowns they'd only recently acknowledged. Giovanni'd settled enough, but there'd been plenty of things to think about in the interim, between the new-found position and Heine's presence there; dealing with others was a part of it, but it was a part of it that it took him time to come around to considering. He was, at times, still rather ill-adapted.

Still, it wasn't such a waste of time. The experience with Watney, specifically, had made it obvious just how much it would affect his position, to simply play nice with people.

He looked at Kanda just in time to catch that observing glance. Whether dressed reasonably or not, this wasn't a man who would fail to catch attention, and not just for his peculiarly long hair or his ethnicity. There was something authoritative and sharp in his face, matched perfectly to the curt matter-of-factness in his voice; there was also way he stood, carried himself. The way he discreetly gripped the bag in his hand, downplaying its significance. A weapon, maybe?

Giovanni wasn't the only one who was ill-adapted to this sort of thing.

"Hahah... not especially." Looking across the sorry remains of the building, he moved to bend his arms a little, tucking his hands loosely into the pockets of his trousers. He was used to chasing things that were plainly easy to see, after all. "But you're learning to be flexible, as well, aren't you. I'll try to keep up."

And for now, for the time being, it was just he and Kanda to work it out.

He inclined his head slightly towards the collapsed basement and the man reading there, off to the side. He was the most obvious and noteworthy sight from where they were standing; it was just a question of whether they wanted him to see them, as well.

"He'll want to talk to us, eventually." He added, with an easy sort of humour, "if we look around without explaining ourselves, we'll be suspicious."

As though they weren't already a suitably odd couple. Maybe more suspicious was the term.

[kandescence]

For just a beat longer than could possibly pass as casual, Kanda stood with a light frown fixed on Giovanni, impassive and assessing, letting that casual good humor and those gestures of fraternity break against the wall of his stony silence.

They were in the same boat, working together--us, us, us--a single unit to which Giovanni was graciously allowing Kanda the helm. He'd "try to keep up" indeed. What a load of crap.

Again, the comparisons with Heine came unbidden: the way he and the albino had snapped and fought since their first meeting, vying tooth and nail for some kind of ascendancy, a position of dominance that Kanda had never known he held until someone had challenged him for it. From the moment their paths had crossed in those desert ruins, he and Heine had struggled against each other as much as they'd struggled together, like something elemental, a mercurial trace in their blood, a chemical reaction in the air between them. The chemicals had catalyzed now, distilled into some new compound, but the volatility of their meeting was still fresh and clear.

Held against that, this was all too smooth, too cordial, too ready to concede. Why he should hold the two at odds to begin with Kanda didn't know, except that he had trouble imagining how anyone who was genuinely deferential could manage to get under Heine's skin.

And yet he and Giovanni were there with a job to do. Which meant that Giovanni was right about one thing at least: they did have to be flexible, whether it was to Kanda's liking or not.

He looked towards the cop with his head bent over the broadsheets. A month of travel in this world had taught Kanda more than a few things about its people, not least of which was the fact that few men in authority responded well to him, no matter how carefully he spoke. It might be less pronounced here in the east than it had been in the desert states where they called him "Injun," or in the great plains where they called him "Chink," but he'd heard the latter in Arkham too.

A man with blond hair and a clean suit who could play at diffidence he didn't really mean? A man like that would do better with the local police here any day. And yes, the swordsman was learning to be "flexible." Giovanni could take on the Finder's role, as far as Kanda was concerned.

"Fine. You talk to him, then," he said with a nod towards the seated man.

[nebensonne]

Giovanni wasn't expecting that, and there was a visible moment of surprise at the suggestion, his gaze slowly moving from Kanda to the man down below somewhat dubiously. By the looks of things, he was still completely oblivious to their presence, for the time being. On his own, then?... Kanda wasn't going to be terribly easy to work with, if this was just his nature. Nor to convince of anything in general.

... Hahah, well. If it was a choice between he or Kanda, the reasoning behind it was fairly clear-cut; he couldn't argue with Kanda's sensibility on sending him ahead, even if the finer subtleties of his concerns were somewhat lost on him - world history having never been a high part of her curriculum. What would they need to know about a world they were never supposed to enter, only annihilate?

(Still, he understood their otherness. When the world left behind was all he had understood and observed, and even the notion of the historical past was something ambiguous, it made this world foreign beyond description. Just as well that, by some stroke of luck, his fashion sense seemed to fit in.)

At the very least, making a convincing effort to appeal would be an interesting exercise - both with the policeman, and with his partner-of-the-moment. His smile returned slowly, although it was fainter and somewhat less easy. Even if he'd had experience, speaking to thugs who could easily be turned against Heine was a very different matter to convincing someone that two men with no written authority should be permitted. There wasn't anything to twist there; it was purely about being convincing in speech, act, voice.

"I'll make the first move, then." If you want to see it.

With that, he approached the edge of the rectangular drop, his hands still in his pockets confidently. He leaned just over the edge, just a little bit. Though, as natural as it seemed, one could get the distinct impression from looking closely that it wasn't something he was especially comfortable with. At least from the back, where the rigidity of his shoulders stood out in contrast to his pleasant, smooth voice.

"Excuse me. We're looking for the person in charge of watching the Sheckley Manor." His head tilted, a habitual gesture. "... Would that be you?"

[mysterium_npc]

Folding his newspaper back and looking at his visitors over the top of it, the constable's gaze took in Giovanni and Kanda behind him. He was a middle-aged man with a neatly trimmed mustache, a high forehead, and limp brown hair. The sleeves of his shirt were shoved up over his elbows and sweat marks darkened the blue of the material under his arms and near his open collar. The jacket of his uniform hung on the seat behind him, and he'd set his hat down on top of the lunch basket at his side.

He answered amicably, evidently eager to break up the day's monotony with some unexpected company. "Guess that depends on what you mean by 'in charge.' If you want the person in charge of me being here, then that's Detective Harrigan. You'll find him down at the station. If you want the person in charge of the construction site, then that'd be Little Bob over at Beckworth Development.

"Think mostly I'm the man who drew the short straw for sitting in the sun all day, but I might be able to help you out. What do you need?"

[nebensonne]

Giovanni listened patiently, studying the appearance of the man who lay behind the newspaper. His tone was fairly warm, devoid of hostility - even pleasant, despite that he was looking straight at them, and could see plainly what he was dealing with.

That was a promising start.

(Well. The station was no concern of his, since that boy had it covered. But he noted the name in charge of construction, just on the off-chance. If they didn't find anything at the site, it wouldn't be unreasonable to question there for what may have been cleared away.)

"... Then I'm looking for someone with a short straw, I suppose." There was a moment's pause while Giovanni straightened his back, pushing his glasses up his nose. He didn't have any great difficulty with speaking articulately, or with being convincing, as far as he knew. But explaining himself at length was generally reserved for people who warranted his time. People who were significant on a personal level.

This sort of thing... took more effort than he liked.

"My name is Giovanni. I'm here with my associate on behalf of the recently-discovered heir of the Sheckley estate. They hired us to investigate the manor grounds." His smile showed a hint of teeth. "... We won't need long, but we need to look around thoroughly and discuss. About an hour."

Though, it was a problem that he was specifically sitting in one place they'd need to search, and it wouldn't be worthwhile to try when he was still there, watching their every move.

... But there were ways around that, too. If it came to it.

[mysterium_npc]

"A lost heir, huh?" The constable shook his head at that with a little laugh. "Always the way it is, isn't it. Some rich old family loses their last and suddenly there's people coming out of the woodwork like worms wanting a cut of their cash."

The cop gave a more considered look past Giovanni at Kanda whose attention was focused more on the surroundings than the conversation, and he seemed to form some instant opinion of the pair's likely techniques. "Well, Mr. Giovanni, you and your man there are welcome to look around as much as you like. I can't let you inside the barricade here," he gestured at the rope line.

"You'll have read about what happened, I guess--what with the skeleton the demolition crew found here and everything. This area's being kept off limits until the investigation is over. But go ahead and help yourselves to whatever else. I don't expect you're gonna find much though. Everything that was here's been taken away down to the station."

[nebensonne]

"Hahah... Probably not." That was fairly sincere, just as it was; they were very unlikely to find anything easily, with those limitations. But he ducked his head easily, smiled, like the whole thing wasn't, in fact, inconvenient. "... We'll just do what we're paid for."

He took a step back from the edge, aware of Kanda still present somewhere behind him. His skin prickled just above the metal lodged around his neck, covered by his stiff collar; perhaps it was a dog's instinct, but it was probably natural for anyone to feel uncomfortable, feeling like their back's being watched. He turned to look at him finally, and that easy, leisurely smile he'd offered the officer was mostly gone. He was thinking.

They could wait for him to move, but with the state of the building as it was, the man was as likely to take a bathroom break down there as he was anywhere else. He'd take a drink back down there with him. Since there were two of them, it'd be more practical for one to lure the officer away on a pretence... but what kind of pretence. If it were for other evidence, they'd need to find it, first. And be willing to give it up, on the hope of finding something better down there.

Either way, it'd take some kind of commotion, wouldn't it?

(You could just kill him.)

- Maybe.

Meeting Kanda's gaze for a moment, he then looked across the miserable remains of the site. "Shall we get started with this for the moment, then?"

[kandescence]

Kanda had watched the whole exchange obliquely, his primary focus on surveying their surroundings, but that didn't mean he'd ignored Giovanni's methods--the swordsman wasn't in the habit of trusting anyone's competence or self-sufficiency until they'd proved themselves. But the results he'd gotten were as good as Kanda figured they could have hoped for, and if the officer saw them as men just getting on with a job they'd been hired to do then that was effective for their needs.

It didn't occur to him, of course, that there'd be any need or desire to dispense with the cop. Kanda had always been used to having the local authorities give pretty much unrestricted access and a high degree of discretion to members of the Order, and even having experienced the differences in this world, he still wouldn't have thought of local police as any kind of adversary.

So, the small matter of permission having been gained, he gave a nod in answer to Giovanni's question and stepped onto the dirt fill to descend the slope to the old basement's floor. It had been tramped by feet in one swath, evidently the path that a good few people had taken in and out in lieu of stairs.

With the slope of dirt behind, and the alcove guarded by the cop occupying the area's left corner, the broadest span of the old basement's walls was ahead and to the right. In places, those walls showed the old brickwork, grayed with age, but along the right hand wall, wood panels still disguised the surface.

What the hell they were going to find in a place like this Kanda didn't know, but he gave the cop a silent nod of acknowledgment as he looked at the surroundings. On first scan, it appeared totally emptied. Frowning, he headed towards the one paneled wall, looking for something that might seem out of place or worthy of note.