Homework

Dawn was starting to get a bit irritated with Ko and his damn requests. Now he wanted her to send him an essay of all things. And on local politics. What the fuck. Stalking into the library, she settled herself down in the periodicals section and grabbed the local paper - the Nachton Times, apparently. Scanning through, she only found one local story. Apparently some park had been rededicated to some dead mayor. Well, looks like that was it. Hopping out of her chair, she tossed her jacket onto it and headed to the reference librarian, who was looking at her a bit oddly. "Yeah, I dun wanna be'ere anymor'n ya want me here."

"Yo, y'gots anymo'stuff on May'Apollo?"

The librarian stared at her blankly. After a moment, she was greeted with,

"Excuse me?"

Frowning, Dawn repeated herself, translating into a bare monotone.

"Greetings, my good library worker. I have a burning desire to understand the life and times of one C. John Apollo and how said worthy was selected for the honor of a memorial park. Can you direct me to a convenient body of periodicals or literature to assist me in my endeavor?"

Getting a frown and a curt nod from the librarian, Dawn was directed to the archives computers, where she found several sources and brought the numbers back to the librarian. Bringing her hefty stack back to her seat, she started perusing.

"Fuckin'ell! He died inna 'splosion?!"

Maybe politics was more interesting than she thought...

Dawn Ratana 17 years ago
Returning to the hole, Dawn looked down into the mess. Val was already down there, and in nicer clothes. Sighing, she grabbed a twisted support that felt solid an dangled down. Shining the flashlight down, she didn't see anything too suspect in the muck directly below her, so she dropped gracefully down, landing perfectly on the uneven and slick surface.

"Eugh. Love th'standin' water funk..."

It smelled pretty gross. Shining the light around, Dawn shrugged.

"Well, yer drivin'. Where ya wanna look?"
Valentine 17 years ago
“There probably isn’t much to find, my guess is its been given a very through going over. Here shine your light up.”

Val wasn’t much sure what she was looking for. She set the damned things she didn’t suss them out after the fact. Still, she reasoned maybe something had hit the ceiling of the stage and become imbedded or there might be evidence of it bouncing off and away. The point was this was ground zero and if there was going to be anything, it would probably be in this vicinity.

“What I wouldn’t give for something to jump out and bite us.”
Dawn Ratana 17 years ago
Giving the back of Val's head an unreadable look in the darkness, Dawn spouted

"Why, 'sup? Ownin' dealers ain't'nuff action fer'ya anymo? Nee'a'lil 'drenaline t'gitcha up inna mornin? Sure beats caffeine, what?"

She wasn't a pushover, this one, that was for sure. The dealerships were prolly a cover for SOMEthing...but that was none'a her business for now. Fer now...findin' somethin spiffy was the top of the list.

Shining the light up to the ceiling, she wondered what Valentine was lookin for. She obviously knew somethin about explosives, but...what would be up there?


"We lookin' fer somethin' particular? Wish I'd brought th'maglite. Woulda been helpful."

Scanning the ceiling, Dawn didn't see anything that seemed unusual for a blasted and burned building. Hopefully Val's training in...whatever...would be more useful.
Valentine 17 years ago
Val, her back to Dawn, smiled broadly exposing her overly large teeth. How long had it been since she’d blown something up, and no helping to plant those bombs didn’t count. Too long was the answer, but she wasn’t going to tell Dawn that.

“Have to know a little bit about how things work if you’re gonna sell them.”

A trace of her brogue slipped into that sentence but was quickly smothered out of habit.

A bigger light would be nice but she could see most of what she wanted with this one. Funny that Dawn hadn’t said anything about coming back during the day. She probably didn’t want to get caught red handed snooping about a crime scene though.


“Rhatz! Not a damned thing here. They are getting much better about finding things. I swear they take wires and shit that doesn’t mean anything just to be sure they get it all. Let’s blow this hole, there is the rest of the joint to check out.”
Dawn Ratana 17 years ago
Dawn's well-trained ears caught the slip in accent. The only question became whether Valentine was an aspiring mimic like herself, or the real McCoy...

Heh. She thought "McCoy". Heh.

So...they were looking for wires and bomb sundries. Well...aside from sifting through the sludge on the floor, there didn't seem to be any hope of anything in this little bit of remaining room. Val seemed to agree.


"Wanna check out th'resta th'basement, or head back up top? I wonder how many'a th'rooms were 'in use' when th'bomb dropped. Dirty politicians an'all, ri?"

Laughing, Dawn looked around for a more likely exit than the hole in the ceiling. It looked like there might be a couple of options that would actually still work. She'd be able to make the jump back out without too much trouble, but it might be more fun to work their way out through the under-mansion.
Valentine 17 years ago
“Already fucked up a perfectly good pair of shoes might as well go all out.”

Val agreed cheerfully although she was really beginning to think they’d find anything here.

She tried to think about the ball and how things had been set up. But she hadn’t been expecting an explosion and so hadn’t paid a lot of attention.


“Well if this lot was city dignitaries and the like I’d say the whole place was hopping, probably had a meeting room or two set aside for one reason or another, legit or not.”

Looking about for a way out she found the remains of a ramp that look stable enough and started towards it. She deliberately shuffled her feet hoping to turn something up but was having no luck.

“Some Watson I am… but I’m kind of impressed they contained it so well.”
Dawn Ratana 17 years ago
Glancing down at the shoe situation, Dawn nodded. Yeah, it was all kinds of all over for these shoes. Black ashen stillwater funk all up in them. Ah well. She'd just hit a new shoestore tomorrow. Maybe she'd wear the blonde wig for a change of pace, get something nice. If she waited until Saturday she'd be able to pick them up for free...most shoe places in a mall were too busy to help every customer or ensure that they left with the shoes that they came in with. She'd leave these nasty little funkmuppets with Joe the Stock Boy and leave it at that. All those guys that worked at shoe stores were fetishists anyway, so the least they could do is throw out the old shoes for her.

"Yeah, think a trade-in'll be required fer these lil bastards. Ah well. They were free."

Thinking about the City Council Orgy made Dawn a little nauseous. All of those comb over aging men and plastic smiley women going at it like stoned test bunnies was a bit much. Snorting coke off of each other's sagging chests...ugh.

"Damn, woman. That just paints all KINDS'a bad pictures. Ugh!"

Shuddering, Dawn followed Val up to the service ramp. Looking around, it did look like the blast went more up than out.

"Huh...guess so. Knocked through th'floor, stage, an'th'outer wall an'balcony pretty good but all'n this'n't as fucked as you'd think it'd be. How'd they do THAT?"

Looking around out of habit, Dawn didn't see anything like a sign that said, "The bad guys rock at 'splodies, what" or anything similar, so she kept following Val.
Valentine 17 years ago
Val laughed probably a bit loudly. Apparently there was a difference in there ages or maybe she was just jaded. Either way how Dawn had expressed herself took Val out of her image of dirty politics, bribes and such and into something else entirely.

“A dirty mind is a terrible thing to waste.”

Frustrated by the dark and not being one of the first here and so missing out on all the good evidence Val kicked at some debris. Oh, her shoes were filthy and her cloths were none too clean, the Vanquish was not going to appreciate this, she’d have to have it detailed.

“You know I’m thinking we’re going about this wrong. We’ve missed all the goodies here. We might do better with hospital records or even newspaper clippings. Some one had to have a reason for blowing his honor sky high.”
Dawn Ratana 17 years ago
Nodding at Val's commentary, Dawn agreed. She was probably right. All of this would have been gone over with a fine toothed comb. where she disagreed was in the matter of public records. Chances are that both the records and the papers were well under control already.

"Well, was lookin'fer more'a souvenir'n actually findin' out whodunnit. That'd be easier'n rootin through the leavins of Nachton's Finest. We know there wasn't as much investigation as there coulda been...or it wasn't made public. So...that means the cops might know, but might not wanna share. So we've gotta play 'Follow the Rich White Man'. Who're the direct beneficiaries of his death? Wife, kids, rival politicians, corporate int'rests...y'know. That whole bag. But that'd prolly take mor'n just t'night."

But it did pose an interesting question. Mild politician gets off, who benefits? Someone with an extreme agenda.
Valentine 17 years ago
“So you want to clean up and hobnob with the big boys?”

That sure didn’t seem like Dawn’s style, but what the hell did she know they’d just met. It didn’t sound all that appealing either. The thing is it was a good old boys club and highly unlikely they’d want to get all chummy with a new kid on the block.

“Let’s get out of here and get a drink, more conducive to thinking.”
Dawn Ratana 17 years ago
"Was that an offer of alcohol? Well! That settles that, then. Let's blow this joint."

((ooc: Dawn out - feel free to start us in a bar thread of your choice - we can skip the shower scenes ))
Valentine 17 years ago
That was agreed too and Val tossed the name of a bar out at Dawn. Before retrieving her car and heading to the little apartment, she kept in the city. No way she was going out, even just to a neighborhood joint, in this mess.

((OOC… Val out too))