pslplz | Futureverse

Half past two in the morning is almost the witching hour. In a city that doesn't sleep, it is also the hour for untimely death. This is hardly the first time they've been called to a scene in this time of night. It is however, the sort of thing that is only done when the deed is especially foul.

It is therefore to Yagyuu's great surprise that he discovers on the ride over that the case might involve an accidental implant overload. There is no indication of foul play at first blush. However, the victim in this case -- one Saito Takashi -- is an important figure in the investment banking circles. One with such high connections apparently deserves the best in the Homicide Task Force after having met a sudden death.

"I have heard of this man," Yagyuu remarks as he and his partner take the lift up to the 18th floor of the condominium. "Some sort of rainmaker, so they say. Perhaps there are some who might benefit from his unexpected retirement."

He appears deceptively amused.

In contrast to his partner, Ran shows no signs of even deceptive amusement over their latest assignment. The fact they've been called at all doesn't sit well with him. With no suggestion of foul play, there are only two reasons for a pair of homicide detectives to visit the crime scene. Either someone in the department thinks there's more buried here, which means they're dealing with a smart one, or their attention is a consequence of the victim's status, in which case Ran dislikes it on principle.

"I don't know whether to hope you're right or not." It would at least mean they weren't wasting their time, but what a stupid reason to kill someone.

The lift chimes pleasantly and opens a path for them down the walk to the man's home. He hopes that CSI is still there to talk with. It would certainly be helpful to get some updates on what's already been found.

"Not, I should hope," Yagyuu says. This time, his amusement is real. He has a feeling Fujimiya would agree. After all, the only thing lost in that case would be a few hours of sleep. It's not that Yagyuu wishes to avoid actual work...but one sleepless night is an easy price to pay in exchange for the knowledge that perhaps humanity is not so malicious after all. At least this once.

The unit is easy enough to find; the door is wide open and the CSI crew is already there processing the scene. Yagyuu pauses at the prep area to slip on covers over his shoes and gloves on his hands.

"Shall we?" he says with a nod toward the beams of police tape sealing off the scene from civilians.

It is perhaps too late to salvage Ran's faith in humanity. If the answer were Not, it would mean that they'd been sent out over politics. Either way, their involvement was a product of corruption.

Either way, the man was dead and not coming back.

He nods to his partner and steps through the beams, already scanning the area both for a look at what's there and to seek out someone for a fill-in on details.

[ooc: ending this tag here for now... next time we talk I have some ideas for possible CSI agents to work with Naru and maybe talk with Yagyuu once Ran gravitates over to a sibling for deets! Open to adding more to this later once we've plotted.]

The scene inside looks like a flurry of activity, with people tagging any possible evidence for collection. Yagyuu assumes (correctly) that the room has already been captured by VR holocam, for an accurate recreation to be played back in the future. But nothing will really substitute for the actual thing, which is why he and his partner are here.

He begins, of course, with the body. It lies prone in the VR simpod, still attached to the various neural transmitters, as he was likely found. The machine purrs on standby mode. Yagyuu steps up to the body and takes a cursory look.

"No apparent struggle."

He takes the dead man's hand and turns it over. There are slight crescent shape marks on his palm, where he gripped his fingers too tightly.

"Marks indicate pain stimulation, not inconsistent with symptoms of neural overload."

Ran's gaze moves to the group of people gathered near the kitchen discussing findings, including his sister and youngest brother, who he waves to on his way to the VR station. He foregoes the body inspection-- Yagyuu has an impeccable eye for details on his own. Instead, he'll check over the equipment.

"No indication of tampering or missettings on the device."

The room is a bit messy, but no more than one would expect for a room in active use. Really, the only thing out of place by the looks of things is the presence of a corpse. It doesn't mean no foul play happened, but if that is what happened, this was carefully planned and tightly executed.

He heads to his sister, sliding one hand into his coat pocket as he does.

"What do you think, from what you've seen?"

"Aaaah. Ran! They told me they were calling you in. Ha."

Hange grins widely, looking maybe a little too enthusiastic for someone standing just a couple meters away from a dead body. Outside of the morgue, the crime scene is exactly her comfort zone. This is where it's at. Clues to find! Bodies to pick over! Maggots to play with! Though unfortunately, the last of these is not present in this case -- not enough time for the critters to make their entrance. It's also a shame there's no blood spatter to analyze either. She loves that sort of thing.

She leans in and says in a confidential tone: "I told them to."

Naru snorts.

"You just wanna dissect the guy's brain," he says.

Hange looks almost offended, but she's not, really. (After all, Naru speaks the truth: she would love to see what a brain that's been fried by neural-link looks like up close and personal). She waves her hand through the air dismissively.

"Nonsense. I think there's foul play."

Naru is probably right. Hange is quite suited to her job-- some might say too much so. She has a natural fascination and curiosity in matters of dead bodies. It seems like her to want to investigate this one considering the unique cause of death.

"It is strange that the equipment doesn't appear to have any malfunction in it. Naru, did you find anything amiss with it?" Naru was more of a gamer-- Ran suspects he's given it a more thorough look already, and would be better equipped to know when something was off with it.

"You don't have to be so dramatic about it," Naru says teasingly to his sister. But this is pretty typical of her. She always had a flair for excitement and drama, which would be cute if it weren't for the fact that blood and guts were mostly the things she found so fascinating.

He turns back to Ran.

"I'm still running some tests! But these things have lots of safeties in place, you know. I haven't heard of one frying a brain since they've come on the market for mass consumption."

"Which is why I have to open his head and see what's happened to it!" Hange interjects. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!"

Edited 2016-09-08 00:42 (UTC)

Ran nods to Naru's explanation. That sounds about right. Consumer markets are regulated fairly well when it comes to health and safety. It technically isn't impossible, but it would certainly be bizarre if the machine were somehow responsible.

"We should check for foreign substances, too." Another point in favor of an autopsy, though certainly a more mundane one than Hange's angle.

"Mmm, foreign substances," Hange muses, like it's something she dreams about. Things that don't belong, she loves that kind of thing. What is it? What's it doing there? What does it mean? Nice puzzles to figure out. Every little stray piece of hair or body fluid has a story to tell.

She steps in and throws her arm around Ran's shoulder and grips it.

"Find me something special, Ran. I'm dying to run tests."

Ran briefly spares his sister a soft sidelong glance. He's less concerned with her eagerness and more concerned with the case itself. That said, he's inclined to recommend an autopsy anyway. They were performed on bodies whose cause of death was far less mysterious than this one. To him, finding nothing would be the strongest argument for taking a deeper look.

"We'll see what we find."

"That's my brother!" Hange exclaims, smacking that shoulder with great enthusiasm. "You've got good instincts, I'm counting on you."

Naru pouts with exaggeration.

"What about me?"

"I count on all of my brothers! And partners of brothers!" she says, raising her voice in Yagyuu's direction.

Yagyuu cocks his head from across the room and grins.

It's a good thing he's used to those hearty claps on the back... Hange is stronger than she looks, and possibly stronger than she realizes. After a moment of considering his younger brother's bid for attention and Hange's response to it, Ran's eyes twinkle in Naru's direction, and he passes that shoulder smack on to him.

"So you better get to work."

"Yup, get to it, kiddo," she says teasingly to their younger brother. Naru pfffts and turns back to the machine and starts fiddling with it.

Meanwhile, Yagyuu has popped over like a very clever partner and is arching his brow at them.

"You want your partner back? Go, go. Do your detective things!"

"Don't mind if I do," Yagyuu answers smilingly. "I hope I'm not intruding on your family reunion."

Cooking has never been Taiyou's forte. In fact, her culinary repertoire is even tinier than Yuushi's (which is, let's face it, not very big). But it's not for lack of talent, she thinks. If she put her mind to it, she could probably do okay. But Mamoru seems happy enough to slave over a stove, and Taiyou is even happier to encourage it. Besides, she cleans up afterward and even packs the leftovers into tupperware. And she's the resident sommelier of sorts, matching up each of their meals with the perfect wine. She's excellent at that.

Today she's pulled a nice Chablis and is already in the process of uncorking it as she waits for Mamoru to put the finishing touches on their dinner.

"There must be a world out there where you're some sort of secret agent," she says thoughtfully.

Cooking dinner was a strange comfort for Mamoru. It was familiar, and still gave him the same sense of satisfaction that it had in his youth, when he made things for his mom. There had been internal gratification in being able to provide her a hearty meal, to contribute in a way that didn't just make her life more convenient but met a daily need. It wasn't his passion, and he would never be a master chef, but he couldn't deny it was handy to be competent in the kitchen.

His wife is the beneficiary of his skill now. With both of them employed full-time, division of labor at home was unavoidable. It worked out well; Mamoru would far rather make the mess in the kitchen than clean it up. Tonight's mess produced a dinner of poached fish with a cream-based sauce served on a bed of rice with crisp steamed vegetables on the side. He turns off the heat for the vegetables and lifts one of the fish fillets from its hot bath to place over the rice, then the other.

Taiyou's musing catches him a bit by surprise, and he can't help a light laugh. "And you would be my femme fatale?"

Really-- secret agent! Where did that come from? Mamoru doesn't see it. He wasn't nearly cool enough for something like that.

Now it's Taiyou's turn to be surprised. So much so that she pauses after popping the bottle open and waves the cork around for emphasis.

"Your femme fetale? You must be kidding! I'm not nearly as seductive as that," she says with energy. But she thinks on this a little more, tapping the cork against her chin.

"No, I think I'm much more suited as ... your Quartermaster." Yes, definitely the gadgets expert, brrainy and quirky ... and alive! The femme fetale usually ends up dead in these sorts of movies, don't they? She nods and steps up to the counter, waiting for the plates to finish so she can help bring them to the table.

"Besides, I think 'Q' makes a fine codename. Don't you agree?"

"I beg to differ!" Mamoru interjects through a smile at her assertion she isn't seductive enough to pull off the femme fatale role. Of course he's going to disagree with a self-deprecating comment like that. Part of it is learned survival strategy, but he has the pleasure and ease of sincerity on his side here as well. Taiyou may not present as blatantly seductive, but she was intelligent, witty and beautiful, and thus perfectly capable of it. And she had a proven track record with him.

He gives a final stir to the sauce in the pan on the back burner and pours it over the two fillets, then splits the vegetables between the plates. Taiyou isn't wrong with her counterproposal; she'd make a good Quartermaster too. It just sort of ruins the fantasy.

"Maybe. How about we compromise: you're a femme fatale with the codename Q. You get the nice codename, and I still get to see you in a cocktail dress."

With a twinkle in his eyes and a soft grin on his face, he offers her one of the plates.

"Cocktail dress! Now you really do sound like a spy," Taiyou says with an exaggerated arch of her brow that seems to suggest she doesn't exactly mean it in a complimentary manner. James Bond, after all, is known to get around. Can he ever keep it zipped up around a woman he finds attractive?

"Hmph."

She reaches behind him and pinches his behind for his cheekiness. Then she takes the plate he offers and turns back to set it on the dining table. She pulls up a chair and sits.

"I should have you know," she says as she pours out the Chablis into two waiting glasses, "that I was imagining a much more accomplished secret agent for you. Not some man-child with fancy cars who sleeps his way around his missions. I just think you've got hidden talents that could be put to use. Like your way around kitchen knives."

Mamoru laughs. What was the fun of that? Spy characters like James Bond were meant to appeal to fantasies about being cool, clever, surrounded by sexy women, rich, and loaded with special gadgets.

He takes a moment to verify everything is turned off and moves the mess of pans and utensils to the dishwasher counter for loading later. Then he follows Taiyou to the table with his own plate.

"There's nothing special about my knife-wielding," he says modestly. "It's just practice." That was the truth, after all. Perhaps it looked impressive from the outside; Mamoru wouldn't know. He had gotten fairly fast, but that was, as he'd said, a product of practice.

"What about you as the secret agent? Clever, daring and quick on your feet. I could see that, too."

Taiyou slides a filled wine glass across the table at him as she ponders his suggestion.

"I'm not sure. I can be quite temperamental, you know. If I have to infiltrate an evil organization, I might just end up going off on someone right as they're divulging to me all their nefarious plots! I'd blow my cover and then would have to shoot my way through enemy agents." She smirks.

Ran inclines his head towards Hange in a gesture of parting and turns back to his partner.

"What did you find?"

"Well that could be entertaining, too," Mamoru says through an amused smile and a sip of wine. "I might enjoy watching someone else be on the receiving end of such a diatribe."

Though Mamoru likes to think he's gotten better... mostly. He might still overstep a line once in a while, but maybe that was part of what kept things exciting between them. Taiyou was a firecracker for certain.

"Nothing particularly obvious," Yagyuu says, his expression sobering a little.

"But that doesn't mean there's no foul play. I think we'll have to wait on the forensics for this one. Your brother and sister seem to have things well in hand. Perhaps we should do some canvassing of the neighbors while we're here."

Futureverse

double double, toil and trouble

fire burn, and cauldron bubble

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domesticity + quantum universes

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