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.]

[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.]

[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?

[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.]

[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.

[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.

[capital_asset]

...but that means there's something or someone else out there.

[willyousee]

The sulfur and the punctures in particular. I know little of torture, but he is soaking wet, caked in mud from the lake shore, and the lake is said to have a sulfurous essence. Do you think it likely that he was bled and drowned in the lake?

[gitanes]

I think it's highly likely. It'd definitely be easier to do that than put a bunch of sulfur in a bathtub, and harder to trace.

What I don't understand is why he ended up outside of Thistle House.

[willyousee]

No. He is certainly not random. I am not mistaken, either. This is-- Was. Blue. How and why it is he who has been murdered and sent to us is more difficult to fathom.

Please explain - they did not want him recognizable? He is coated with lake mud, but that could be easily cleaned. Or do you mean his eyes?

[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.

[stophamatime]

...yeah.

[willyousee]

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

[stophamatime]

Wouldn't it be a really bad place to put someone unless you want everyone to find them?

[capital_asset]

His clothing is gone and he's wrapped in a simple shroud. It doesn't make him completely unrecognizable, but it makes it more difficult to determine who he was, or was supposed to be, especially when there are already so many visitors here at the moment. There was mention in the newspaper of a missing transient, but I'm not sure whether it's supposed to be him or not.

[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.]

[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?

[willyousee]

It would make it a message. Or a warning, more like. Someone or something is out there and wishes the whole town - townsfolk and visitors alike - to know it. The party was well known, and many people were not quiet about their intentions to attend. It was the best opportunity to affect the largest number of people in a very public manner, unless the culprit was to wait until the play.

[Which means that if they're still out there, they will have other opportunities to terrorize the town en masse.]

I cannot help but wonder if it is particularly directed at Travelers. Anyone in this state would provoke such a reaction, but we pay special attention to those we know. It is more personal.