2348/Breaking News

Breaking News
Date of Scene:	21 February 2025
Location:	Club Building
Synopsis:	Directly after the events of 'From The Abyss,' Rashmi seeks out a meeting with Hinote Kagari, Detective Extranaturale. The purpose... to inform him of the events she just witnessed... and in the doing, to tell him that his faith was not misplaced.
Cast of Characters:	Rashmi Terios, Hinote Kagari

---

Rashmi Terios has posed:
After escaping the blackout zone, and Rashmi assured her friends she wouldn't do anything dangerous, stupid, or dangerous *and* stupid, Rashmi set her sights on the school, and flew shakily toward the club building. Although it was still somewhere around four o'clock in the morning, what she learned was news that needed to be passed *now,* not later, and she was too furious to even think about sleep anyway.

<< TXT to HINOTE -- Hinote-kun are you there >>
<< TXT to HINOTE -- please get up >>
<< TXT to HINOTE -- I'm sorry to wake you but please please please get up. >>
<< TXT to HINOTE -- I just solved the case meet me on the roof of the Club Building. >>

Hinote Kagari has posed:
Hinote Kagari is sleeping. A blackout didn't even wake him, because he was asleep. He dreamt he was an angel... what was that about? It's Tracy who wakes him by throwing the phone at his head , with an 'Ow!' and the phone lan ding right by his head as he reads the texts.

<< TEXT to RASHMI -- Otw. Wait up. >>

Pulp Noir hops up from the ground to the top of the building and he and Tracy unmerge to just be Hinote again, because this is either good news or bad news. He has a tense expression.

"I'm here. Sorry it took me a moment. had to leave a note to let mom I left for school early." he says. Not a lie!

Rashmi Terios has posed:
Rashmi is *pacing* when Hinote shows up, and by the look on her face... it's not good news. It's extremely not good news.

Rashmi is, in fact, looking for all the world like she wants to break *anything she can get her hands on,* her fists opening and closing in time with quickened breathing. And when Hinote does make it to the roof, she looks at the boy with agony and fury in her eyes. "...I found Starcrash," she begins, her throat tight.

Turning, she waves to the blacked-out chunk of city. "There... That's where I found him, in the middle of *that.* And... we also learned *why* nobody could find Molly-chan."

Oh, this is about to be *seriously* bad news.

Hinote Kagari has posed:
Hinote Kagari looks out at the blacked out city and blinks. Huh. He didn't notice that, it's always kinda dark in the ensuing twilight of the day, but he didn't equate that with a blackout. He looks at Rashmi with some concern because she's been agonized since Molly's apparent demise, but the anger? The fury that's new.

So something bad happened.

And then she has news. "Okay. Tell me. What happened." he says.

Tracy nods and starts writing all this down in a tiny notebook.

Rashmi Terios has posed:
Rashmi does better than tell; with a gesture, she brings up a holographic 'screen' right next to her, and her story is accompanied by *pictures,* taken from Nicomachea's sense-recording tactical logs.

"So I woke up when the blackout happened; the downside to being a Devicer is, if there are alarms they now can happen directly in your brain. *Great* for waking up suddenly. But Nicomachea alerted me because... he got a distress signal, with Starcrash's signature. And in the signal was... a message."

A playback bar *bwips!* into being, and plays a garbled and staticky audio file, with only two words intelligible. Molly's voice: "Please... 'Please.'"

And for a moment, Rashmi just looks at Hinote after the words are spoken, looking haunted and sick and furious.

Hinote Kagari has posed:
Hinote Kagari looks at the screen and crosses his arms and seems in thought. He has thoughts when he watches, bu when Rashmi describes a distress signal and then Molly's voice plays back he unfurls his arms in some form of shcok. Not complete shock, but shock.

"Ah.,..!" he goes, a bit. He wants to say this is a good thing.

But Rashmi looks haunted and sick and still so angry and that's still so unsettling to him because Rashmi never gets this angry. So he stifles comments.

He then shoots Tracy a look and Tracy goes 'gah!' and suddenly floats backwards. No speaking out for him right now.

Rashmi Terios has posed:
"...So of course I went out there," Rashmi continues... pausing to briefly smile at Tracy's reaction, because seriously who can't be charmed by Chara antics? "Yellow Pearl Voice, Hanzo, and Puella Red also tracked in on it, and..."

The picture switches to a tower, ringed by unconscious or dead Obsidian security goons... With a large, black metal sphere on top.

"...This was at the center of the blackout. When we eventually went in..."

The picture changes again, more screens popping up to provide extra images, all taken from the other side of the door within the sphere. A bed-chair clearly set up for medical experimentation, its restraints broken outward. X-ray images and regular stills, documenting the *grievous* harm done to a human body, and the steps taken to repair it; staples, enchanted thread, what could possibly be advanced necromancy, what could also possibly be *insane* chemistry... The pictures might not look out of place in Herbert West's surgical theater.

And then another screen blips up, in the center of the pile; Starcrash, resting on a pedestal like a samurai's sword. Ready to be taken up.

Hinote Kagari has posed:
Hinote Kagari just doesn't want Tracy yelling out what he really almost said but stopped himself from saying, but he looks back to the holo screen as he takes this in. He says. "Wait so this was all at the center? What the hell. This must be the remains of the Black Aurora facility then." he says bluntly. Remember the paper. That was the name of the project.

He lays out the pictures in his head as he seems to think. Information creeping together. Coming together like puzzle pieces....

Molly went missing.

Molly left a distress signal.

Obsidian had Starcrash.

Ergo, They had Molly.

They had Molly.

They had Molly and...

He winces a little and looks away from the images a moment.

"So did you retrieve Starcrash?" he asks.

Rashmi Terios has posed:
"No," Rashmi has to whisper around a lump in her throat. "Because the moment I scanned him... he woke up. And was about to fire on us himself... When *she* stopped him."

All the screens clear away, leaving one showing a woman kneeling at a low table, on the other side of a cloth-curtained doorway. A woman in her early-mid twenties, and dressed in what could only be described as 'sexy kimono' on a package bought at Spirit Halloween...

And bearing a face and hair that is unmistakably Molly's. And for whatever reason, she's eating sushi.

"She says her name's Seriss Nyx. And she tried to needle us about leaving Molly-chan to die, and how she'll make better use of herpotential than Molly-chan ever did."

And *now* the heat is coming back in her voice, and perhaps it might make sense now, *where* her anger is coming from.

Hinote Kagari has posed:
Hinote Kagari is expecting the answer to be yes. He wants it to be yes, because then this can be over. But it isn't, because that's when Rashmi shows some depraved, AI upscaled version of Molly trained on some version of gelbooru or something, and he takes this in. So that's a lot to process there.

"We didn't leave her behind. For starters. But I think she knows that." he says bluntly.

"Yeah. Okay. So---"

Tracy suddenly floats between him and Rashmi and he can't contain it anymore. "WE'RE THE BEST DETECTIVES TO EVER LIVE!" he says, holding out a hand to Hinote to high five. Hinote. Does not high five him. Hinote, facepalms.

"I'm so sorry I've been thinking that for the past five minutes. Please ignore tiny me." he says. "So what do we do now?" he asks. "Because that's Molly. And if it isn't Molly. It's wearing her face. And both those upset me a lot."

"I mean that too." says Tracy sheepishly, floating away to the right.

Rashmi Terios has posed:
Far from being angry at Tracy, Rashmi just... sort of laughs a little bit. "I mean... he's not wrong though," she points out. "And I knew that when I told you I couldn't keep that hope up... but that I had faith in you."

Shaking her head, she looks back at the image, and the good feelings flash away. "I don't know yet," she says. "She *said* that Molly-chan's dead and gone, but every other word that came out of her mouth was a damn lie too, so... Make that your next case. We know what happened to Molly-chan after the beach now... but what happened to *Molly-chan?* And who did it? Because I really, really, *really* need to know whose face to punch, after what *that* did to Starcrash."

Only one new image pops up, and it's of Seriss in her new Barrier Jacket, all swept-back spikes and wings, with what looks like a Device made out of a broad-bladed spear split down the middle. "We were *watching,* and she just... just... *rearranged Starcrash into that!* Just to *suit her style!*"

Hinote Kagari has posed:
Hinote Kagari says. "Yeah it's lies. Don't listen to anything it says or ask questions of it. We need to go elsewhere." he says. "I can't count on my informant anymore because a giant rhino slash bullfrog chased her away. And then I beat it.... somehow." he says incredously. Like he can't believe it himself.

Hinote Kagari doesn't really understand devices, but he understands they're like tiny beings to some degree. So this makes him feel uneasy.

"I'll keep my ear to the ground. Or. I can start burning through the mundane evidence I have to make a giant headache for some Obsidian higher up until I can blackmail one into giving me information." he says bluntly like he has no problem doing this.

"I mean it's gonna put a target on Pulp Noir's back but." he says shrugging.

Rashmi Terios has posed:
"Ear to the ground for now, Hinote-kun," Rashmi says, shaking her head. "There'll be use in putting that evidence to work, but... we wanna do that *after* we have some ideas what direction to go with it. I just... I *needed* to tell you about this. *Because* you and Tracy were the best detectives ever."

Letting out a long, shaky breath, she shakes her hands, to get the aches out. "Also just in case... Don't lean on Joker, if you get the chance to. Trust me on that. I'm not sure he *can* be bullied, and he'd make you sorry you were ever born."