Wednesday May 19th, just after the body's appearance

[willyousee]

Travelers: if you were not at Thistle House tonight, you need to know. A face familiar to some as the Blue Illuminant has appeared at the door - unmistakably dead.

[The speaker's voice may be familiar, with its soft French lilt, but Alcuin is not precisely calm tonight. Indeed, he seems shaken and queasy.]

I can show you if you wish, but it is most unusual. And unpleasant.

Keep your wits about you and please stay in close contact with one another if you can. I would suggest not venturing out alone, and if you can manage to stay close with our infiltrator friends, so much the better.

Have any of you any expertise in unnatural deaths? We are going to need your help if we are to determine what has done this and how best to stop it happening again.

Comments

[icy_heavens]

Let me see it. [Calm, level. If a shinigami captain can't stand seeing an unpleasant corpse, there's something wrong.]

[willyousee]

A moment--

[Alcuin reaches out to touch Hitsugaya's mind, and there is the sensation of something opening. Alcuin is courteously looking over the crowd, rather than confronting him with the sight in the door, before turning to look over Ambrose's shoulder into the terribly distorted face of one whom veterans may be able to name as both the Blue Illuminant and the corpse in Brooklyn. The view pans slowly over the body, lingering on the hands, dug into the frame, the puncture marks up the arms, the dangling feet.]

Is there anything in particular you wish to look at more closely.

[His thoughts are muted, uneasy, but he does not waver in his examination.]

[icy_heavens]

[Hitsugaya wasn't around for Brooklyn, hadn't met the Blue Illuminant in Dolorosa. The face isn't a known one to him. He frowns mentally, but his "voice" is businesslike and disaffected.] That's rather dramatic. [He's seen at least as bad, if not worse in his time. He's not disturbed on a fundamental level.]

The holes. [He doesn't particularly think he can identify the means, but getting a closer look at the wounds can only be beneficial.]

[unabatedly]

[The Blue Illuminant-- Oh no.]

Alcuin, are you all right? Are you unharmed?

[His safety, and the safety of the others, is more important to her by far...even with this news.]

[willyousee]

I am unharmed, my lady. [All right is debatable.] None of us in the Thistle were injured at all. Merely shocked and sickened.

[unabatedly]

I can certainly imagine. Can you... [A pause.] If you're amenable, I'd like to see the body. But if it distresses you, Alcuin, it's all right. I can come there to see it myself.

[flatteries]

[ Thankfully Inigo is used to corpses at least, for.. better or worse.. so if there's any hurry in his (mental) tone, it's purely because he knows they can't let that happen again rather than actual horror. ]

Do you know if it has anything to do with the creature wandering around we were all talking about before?

[willyousee]

I don't believe so. He is missing no skin but to say that this was a simple death would be a vast untruth.

[flatteries]

So then there are multiple things out there killing people..

[ There's almost a small mental sigh to it. What a pain - and here people said they had to look out for the Trumps more than anything.. that won't do much good if people won't even survive this Jaunt. ]

I can't say that I am good with telling what happened to a corpse unless it is quite obvious, but if you require aid in ensuring it won't happen again, I can lend my strength. I am quite good in battle, if someone should need to be protected or whatever caused it slain.

[stophamatime]

[Ken has no idea who the Blue Whatever is, but dead bodies turning up are never good. Despite what he used to think about certain ones.]

...I can at least tell if it's whatever attacked me and Raidou-san.

[Though if it's an unnatural death beyond that, he might not have a clue.]

[capital_asset]

It doesn't appear to be. He still has his skin.

[stophamatime]

I want to say that's a good thing, but...

[But what else is out there, if not that?]

[capital_asset]

[Raidou's own voice is somewhat distant, as if he's trying to concentrate on more than one thing at once.]

So... a returning Traveller or a Trump, then.

[Or at least a facsimile thereof. He doesn't think a Trump would actually let him or herself be killed, unless the Trumps have a way to come back from it.]

[willyousee]

A Trump seems unlikely. Why would they let themselves be killed and used in this manner when they mean to appear all-powerful? But a Traveler may also be a difficult claim. While he has appeared before, he has not ever appeared in liminal space to my knowledge.

[capital_asset]

I'd suggest it was a random passerby, but his looking so much like the Blue Illuminant can't be a coincidence.

...Aside from that, it seems that whomever or whatever did this to him did not want anyone recognizing him.

[gitanes]

I got a good look at it; for what it's worth, it's not any kind of torture I'm familiar with. But maybe somebody with more exotic tastes would recognize it. The puncture wounds make it seem incredibly sadistic.

[willyousee]

[ ....He does not want to know, but he has to. ]

Exotic how?

[gitanes]

Exotic like unusual. Exotic like magical. Magical tortures, Alcuin, the kind that would leave behind those markings, that smell.

[protect_and_serve]

We're on our way back down.

I haven't seen any of them in months. Tobi, Perry, Mina, Trey, Kai, Lin, Ode...

I remember that there are more of them than that. But we haven't seen any others since Moebius.

[willyousee]

So many... Do we know who they are? Where they come from?

[itsananimalthing]

I've seen his face more than just as the Blue magician. He died in another of these trips, too. Anybody identified him in this world yet?

I've seen death of all kinds. If there's somethin' you think a guy like me could do, just say.

[And he says this because he likes you, Alcuin, and that's pretty much all.]

[willyousee]

[...what is it with his teachers looking at him as an equal recently? This is so strange, and flattering, and profoundly uncomfortable. Luckily he's good at hiding uncomfortable.]

No one has said anything to indicate that they know him, nor did I see any unusual reactions. If he lived here, he was sufficiently quiet and unobtrusive that no one remembers him. ...Would you be able to tell from wounds what their purpose was? Or how they were made?

[Private to Pre-Mobius Veterans]

[willyousee]

[Trumps. Phases. Travelers. ....Wait.]

Concerning these familiar faces... What theories have been put forward as of yet? Could these people be an earlier phase? Travelers before us who are kept separate from us in their own liminal spaces, or perhaps whose personalities have been overwritten so many times that they no longer have ones to call their own?

[Private to Pre-Mobius Veterans]

[unabatedly]

I've...wondered if they weren't Travelers, now trapped in an endless cycle because of some kind of failure. Or Trumps who have been beaten at their own game.

[It's sad, she thinks, to see some of them suffer. She thinks of poor Tobi.]

Pawns, perhaps.

[itsananimalthing]

Haven't been a lot of theories. They don't show up every time we go out, but they show up enough that we remember 'em. Everythin' you said is possible, though. And Neria. Could be anything, for what little we know about 'em. Have yet to actually get to talk to one, not that, that'd necessarily help any.