Regarding ASA Monrose
| Regarding ASA Monrose | |
|---|---|
"Some potentially sketchy individuals meeting in a rundown strip joint." | |
| Players |
Alex, Misha, Nadia, and Ethan meet up to share information about ASA Monrose. |
Alex reaches out to Nadia and Ethan after the meeting between Misha, Nadia and Alex concluded. Wanting to get everyone together to chat, they set up a meet in a top-secret location that may or may not be a private dance room at a sleazy strip club. Once everyone arrives, there are the usual greetings, offers of drinks, smokes, and then Alex motions to Misha. "Ethan, I think you know Nadia already, and this is Misha. I've asked that she give me a hand on stuff I've been working on. To help watch my back and use her knowledge of ghosts, spirits, and monsters to our advantage." A look is given to the meeting room with the plush couches, stripper pole and the distant sounds of the club just outside. "I think we can speak openly here." "Nice to see you again, Detective Tofano. Nice to meet you, Misha," Ethan says gravely. "Thanks for setting this up, Alex. I have a little more information to bring and it's…not good." But he doesn't just start launching into it right away, either, letting the pleasantries get handled and giving everyone a chance to get settled in. He wraps his hands around a beer bottle without really partaking for the moment, his face set into grim lines. Nadia scans the room, taking in the lingering evidence of the building's former life. Then she flashes a smile at the others, slightly awkward perhaps but still a smile. "Ethan and I have met." There's a slight raise of her eyebrows in his direction, perhaps thinking of the conversation that ultimately brought her here. "Tofana, and please call me Nadia. Detective just makes me feel like I might still be at work and thus looking very carefully at some potentially sketchy individuals meeting in a rundown strip joint..." She rolls her eyes. "And I get enough of that at family gatherings." She takes a beer when it's offered as well, settling onto one of the couches. Nothing like dim lighting and the layered scents of a lot of perfumes to romanticize the clandestine. Misha favors relatively plain clothing - black steeltoes, faded jeans, a dark tee, and a leather jacket with a goat's head pentagram and extra layers of sigils worked into. Mostly for protection. "Your family is full of strippers?" Misha asks of Nadia, trying to suppress a cheeky grin and completely failing. "A pleasure to meet you, Ethan. Blooded of Fenris-Ur's line and blessed by the Cahalunim." Alex gives Ethan a grin as beers are handed off to him and then Nadia. Making sure Misha is given one he takes a bottle for himself and then settles down on one of the plush, overstuffed pleather couches. "Stripper family would be pretty cool. All those stripper friends." Grinning at the group he takes a swig off his beer and then motions to Ethan once the pleasantries are concluded. "Yeah let's talk shop. What do you got Ethan and how can we help?" Ethan winces at his faux pax. "Sorry, Nadia," he says. "It's been a few weeks since our last meeting, but that's no excuse." Following Misha's lead, he introduces himself properly with a quick half smile. "Ae-Cha's Incense, Charms, and Oils tells a different story at night," he says, giving Alex a grave look and looking to the other two. "That's an occult shop that we know the ASA is frequenting. There's one of those retailer's rolling security doors that comes down, for one thing, and that's covered in some interesting graffiti. A ward. In First Tongue–our language–" he adds, for Nadia's benefit. "I peeked into the Shadow too. I don't have your expertise but I knew it might look different at night. There's First Tongue *everywhere* Shadow side. I couldn't make out much of it. Blood. Family. Protect. Kill. A lot of it just seemed random and raged filled. And there's this big spirit. Sleeping but huge. There was something else that I'll get to in a minute, and Nadia I did it on four feet *and* was only in the parking lot, not *in* any place locked, so don't worry about the legal side of it, but…I no longer think ASA Monrose is Ridden *or* Claimed. I think she's either Anshega, or heavily associated with Anshega." "Nah, they mostly run the strip joints and make me wonder when the next one will land on my desk so I have to mess up Mama's Thanksgiving dinner again." She takes a long look at Misha, aware once more that there is a whole language here that she has no idea of how to translate. 'Fenris' she recognises but thats about it. The grin she shoots at Ethan says there's no rancor at the slip up in her name. "I appreciate your forbearance, and if there are any random reports of a giant dog stalking the nice areas of town I'll know where to file them." She nods at the explanation of their language, it was useful having a reference that it *was* a language and not just jargon. "Rage? And the spirit, is that rage based too?" A hand wave to dismiss the question, "Never mind, one problem at a time. ASA Monrose is a....?" Inviting an explanation as to what exactly an Anshega is. "Anshega are bad wolves. Gone crazy over a long time of hating the good'uns." Misha supplies, loosely. VERY loosely. "Here's hoping she's more like me, and maybe just a real bad Blooded." Lifting the beer, she takes a drink, sucking her teeth slightly. "Alex was saying that there was problems with the three of you looking into it, because you're known faces? Or can't afford the risk of being caught." She half asks, looking between them. Alex slowly drinks his beer as the conversation continues on, looking from Nadia to Ethan and then to Misha as they speak. Frowning at Ethan's news he finishes off the bottle of beer and then puts it aside. "That fits. I mean it makes sense in terms of all those offerings there. The glyphs and the like might be strengthening or summoning or working on setting the tone of the resonance." Huffing out a thoughtful breath he then adds for Nadia, "Spirit feng shui for lack of a better way of saying it." An embarrassed look at Nadia. A clearing of his throat. "Colt and me got arrested. We were running an experiment, seeing if we could make the belly bomb plan viable for the ooze thing, and there was a whole lot of smoke." He rubs the back of his neck, then quickly continues. "Anyway, that's where I met her and where she was acting weird. I got let off without much fanfare, no charges, Colt had to take a plea bargain on a trespassing charge for which he paid a fine, no time. But Colt's also got a record and really can't afford to get any more of the ASA's attention, which is why he can't help. When Alex and I looked into her activities he wandered into Ae-Cha's Incense, Charms, and Oils and shared a conversation with the ASA while I stayed out of sight. We were careful about the law there, too," he adds. "We haven't broken any yet, not looking into her, I checked. If we follow her a second time we will be, if it can be proven. But I'm sure Alex is on their radar now too. John was our attorney but…I'm going to tell him about this. Not only is he also on her radar, but it's kinda his kind of thing." Nadia nods, "Like not hanging two mirrors opposite each other because it makes the space in between a gateway for spirits, or hanging red thread across your doorway to keep out witches...Only with it actually working." Having some frame of reference let her translate the wolf speak into something she understood from old tales and folklore. "Belly bomb? I probably don't want to know." Nadia shakes her head at Ethan. "So, yes in theory if you are caught following her she can have you hauled in for stalking or harassment but it would require proving you were deliberately doing so. If there is anything on file about her acting weird I can still claim you as a CI but it won't make either of us any friends. But by the sounds of it this is voluntary and not some kind of posession?" She looks to the other three for confirmation, "Which means we have a step up from the usual corrupt official fun and games and I do not like those games, never mind this new level." "Voluntary is relative. Depends on what she winds up being." Misha points out, glancing to Alex and thinking. "I'm down. I'm not the sneakiest, but if she's messing with the other side, I can spend some time poking around and looking into it. I shouldn't be on any of her radars, legally or otherwise." "Course, if you want to help me, I'll need some, uh..." she glances to Nadia, "metal, you know what kind. Fenris-Ur's get are known for fighting wolves." Alex leans forward on his couch to start rolling up a thick blunt on the small table before him. Nodding his head, he smiles at Nadia and replies, "Yeah, like that. It's all built on the real stuff." Looking back at Ethan as he works he doesn't interrupt but even while he's working on rolling it's impossible to miss how much he pays attention to the man's words. "I think she picked up on my lack of game. If we didn't have to talk it would have gone a little better but something I said keyed her into me being maybe not what I was and if I show up again, she'll be on alert for sure." Nodding at Misha, he grins just before sealing the joint with a slow slide of his tongue along the edge of the paper. He works on finishing the roll using both hands while saying, "Misha would be a good agent to be our face from here. Armed with some good weapons I think she'd be safe. Or safe as can be. We can put a wire on her like Ethan and I did." Nodding to the man, he continues, "Left a facetime open to send back everything I saw and heard." "Or she was able to species-smell you while holding oil at your nose to keep you from doing the same thing," Ethan says quietly. "Your game was probably fine, man. It seemed fine to the outside observer, anyway." He looks over at Misha for the metal, and while it's not a *comfortable* topic…"If you need cash for some I can spot you, you should have whatever you need to be safe if you're going to help. You might want some too, Nadia." He shrugs. Nadia's helping. There's no sense leaving her unarmed. He also frowns and says, slowly, like he knows it's about to sound insane: "There was also a uh. A duck. A wooden duck. On a pole. Staring at my truck." "I..." Nadia shrugs, "I might have chatted with a few people about supernatural weaknesses. It's why this is in my pocket rather than around my neck." She pulls out a chain with a ring on it, the latter clearly old silver while the chain looks more like modern stainless or surgical steel. She looks at the table and Alex's work but doesn't comment - he's over the legal age (probably) and in a (technically) private space - no problems here. "A duck?" Ok maybe there is a problem but not the one she thought. "Staring as in actively observing or just...doing that thing that mannequins do where they always seem to be staring at you? Someone's idea of a funny drone camera?" For all that she knows about the weird, mortal brains are very much still wired to look for the 'reasonable' explanation. "Could have been a camera or a spirit watcher." Misha muses, taking another drink of her beer. "Be glad to help. I've a knack with spirits and the like. And knowing what to look for to tell what kind is which. Sort of became my obsession after I came into my lineage?" The word tentative. The whim's of the moon are fickle and weird. Of blood and under moon, surely that would be a lineage of some sort. "I can fight spirits, if things go sideways, but I'd rather not face a potential Anshega without proper arms if I can avoid it." Placing the joint between his lips, Alex quickly sparks it with a zippo he pulls from the pocket of his jeans. Taking a heavy hit, it's held for just a moment before he softly exhales and takes another. Holding that second hit in his lungs he holds the joint out in an offering to the group and hands it off to whoever wishes to take it. Leaning back on his couch cushion, he tilts his head back and softly exhales overhead. "Mmmmm, maybe it was a spirit sent to watch you. Or something of the like." Agreeing with Misha, he lifts his head to smile at Nadia and her silver ring. "Could be we want to get something more for you. Like a knife or bullets. So you can swap the clip if some wolf comes at you." Looking at Misha he studies her for a bit then asks, "No guns right? Swords? But they have to be concealable to be worth it." Thought as he looks to Ethan he adds, "So from here, what's next?" Ethan will take a hit before passing it on. "I don't know. I parked the truck well away from that shop, but when I got back the duck was there. I didn't see shit when I looked at it on the other side but that doesn't mean anything. If it was a camera, they know Baby was in the neighborhood if not at the store. And anyone who saw a big dog in the neighborhood truly would have seen a big *dog*; I made sure of that." But suddenly asked what's next, he hesitates. "I don't know," he admits. "It's not like we're really supposed to off them. It's not like we can afford not to watch them, or to know everything we can about them. If that dadgum cholo Ghost Wolf gets himself arrested we know that's going too give her a straight shot to recruit him. What do y'all think?" Nadia declines the joint, waving it on to Misha. "Honestly, I get the feeling that if I end up needing to stick a knife into one of the frequently fuzzy I am probably already fucked and the best I can hope for is to minorly inconvenience it before it rips my head off. Silver bullets... Might be useful? Just because I want to know HOW to kill weird shit doesn't mean I particularly want to have to, I do have some sniper training though. Could come in useful at some point?" She does take a long swig from her beer bottle. "This store, you think it could be related to her? Or the things she's doing? Maybe a base of some sort? I can probably swing the papers so I can sit on stakeout there for a couple of nights? Honestly there are folks at the station who will be more than happy to have me chasing something that isn't dead gangbangers for a little while - too many of them still think whoever is dumping those bodies is doing us a favour. And Korean? I'm not saying my colleagues are racist, but..." She snorts, letting the wolves fill in the rest of that. "The duck sounds like someone sending a message. They know you're watching. Probably meant to spook you off the hunt. And no way of knowing if the person that put it there was a hostile or not." Taking the joint, Misha takes a tiny puff to get a taste of it, then commits with a bigger hit, passing the weed back to Alex while she holds the smoke. Coughing it out, she turns her head to the side, then clears her throat. "Swords, yeah. Archaic, but they do the job, and most people assume I'm some weird cosplayer or LARPer and leave me alone. I carry two. One that needs a layer of silver. The other can hurt ephemera." Alex takes the offered joint back and then smiles, pointing with the two tattooed fingers that hold it pinned at Misha. "See. She's smart. She's got that mind for these kinds of problems." Speaking about the duck and what it could mean he gives the blooded a nod of approval while taking another huge hit. Holding the potent smoke in his lungs, he passes it on and then softly exhales, the fan and air filter in the room quickly sucking the smoke away. "I passed on some of the intel on the Korean spirits or the Korean angle in discussions with Misha and Nadia when we met last time. What we found out about." Nodding at Ethan he grunts, "Cleon is a good ally. If he's game to be bait, it could work. Could be a good distraction to keep direction attention off Misha." Looking back to Nadia he chuckles before adding, "I'm not great at planning mundane actions. But we could snatch up the target and figure out what's happening." "Oh whoa I wasn't suggesting him as bait," Ethan says, wide-eyed. "I was worried about him, not suggesting him as bait. They could really recruit him, man. That wouldn't be good at all. The theories on the duck make him nod slowly, any or all of them could be true, he just doesn't know. To Nadia he says: "Ae-Cha means something like a sensei. ASA Monrose definitely goes to the shop. She speaks Korean and did some work in Seoul. She's definitely tied to this shop, and the shop is probably tied to the Pure. That's all we really *know* right now. I think we just need more information to really come up with any kind of a course of action at all. They haven't even actively messed with any of us. I don't really think a wooden duck counts." "Well I don't promise glamour, more endless bad coffee, junk food, and debating whether to pee in a bottle so you don't have to leave the car, but if I sit myself outside the place on watch, one of you is welcome to join me for an unobtrusive, longer term view of who and what goes in and out? Grabbing the ASA...that's just gonna cause a whole lot of drama and, weird spirit stuff or not, I *cannot* know anything about it." She pauses, picking at the corner of the label absently. "What I can do is pull up a whole lot of city reports on the shop, who owns it, when they were last audited, what names are on deeds and leases and things. Is she likely to be...I don't know, messing with things using human systems? Because those things I can potentially track through old reports, what cases she's been involved in and stuff. And if any of it does turn out to be related to my current case I have a vested interest in dealing with it no matter whether she has directly messed with 'us' or not. Is this shop anywhere in the Southside?" Misha quiets as she listens, nodding to Nadia, feeing the fuzziness at the edges of the weed. "Not a bad way to go. Sounds like the more information that can be pulled together, the better picture we might have of what's really going on. Spirits can be tricky bastards, but they always fall to their nature. Can I have the address of the shop and the other sites by chance?" Alex laughs softly at Ethan's response as the joint makes it back. Knocking ash into an ashtray that rests on the table he takes another heavy hit and then passes it back out for what has to be the last round of hits. Softly exhaling away from the group he nods at Ethan, "Might not be a bad idea. I mean, the guy is pretty tough. Very sure of himself. It could be a good way to prove himself and build renown." Shrugging a bit he agrees again with Misha while saying to Nadia and the blooded, "That is a good idea. The more, the better. The last time while Ethan drove, I took over all the spirits in the area and used them to eavesdrop and spy on the shop when our mark was there. But spirits aren't like us and none of them could translate for me. But they could be used to learn more in future stakeouts." Shaking his head, he looks to Ethan, "So the key here is learning first what is up with the lawyer. Right? I mean, if it's just that she's a lusty hot blonde with a great work ethic, do we drop this?" "It's here," Ethan says, pulling out a small notebook. He writes out the address twice, tears the paper in half, and passes each to Nadia and Misha, which does for answering the question about the south side as well. He also writes down another address and passes it to Misha and Alex. "Here's where I parked my truck and spotted the duck. And…she might very well work through those systems, Nadia. I mean. Plenty of us do." He looks over at Alex and says, "The lawyer, the shop, where the Pure are, who the Pure are, what they're up to that we might be concerned about," he says. "I really doubt we're going to hit a 'just drop this' kind of a point. Not with Anshega involved. Somehow." "So, I'll check this place out, dig into some more of the ASA's cases, usual behaviour and stuff, and look for more Korean connections. Give me a few days and I can take an evening for staking the place out because 'a CI has mentioned some weird stuff going down', you folks can rock/paper/scissors for who gets the fun of spending a night in the car with me so you can take your time looking over all the spirit stuff." Nadia yawns, the smoke in the air having a slight effect on her just from proximity. "Meanwhile, I need to touch base with Hazel and find out if she has anything new on our body parts and..." She looks at Alex and Misha, "If one of you two does want to try finding something left to talk to? Maybe someone can explain how being able to talk to ghosts makes my life more and not less complicated?" "I'm easy. I'll go or not, whatever you guys want. You don't know me, but they don't either. I mostly specialize in dealing with spirits and ghosts, but usually in removing them, neutralizing them, or destroying them. I can try to take a look at the hands and heads, too, if that won't land you in hot water." Misha says, draining her beer and taking a hit from the joint when it comes by again, sitting forward. "Maybe you guys can give me a hand getting better at sneaking about nd getting into places." Brazen, for certain. "Greater good gets fiddly. I can do things that you can't, and they maybe can't because of what they are." Alex takes the info from Ethan with a grin. "Sorry, I like to ask the dumb questions a lot to make sure we're on the right track." Crushing out the last little bit of joint in the ashtray he settles back and listens to Nadia and then Misha's answer. "I think we have a good team here and working with ghosts, Nadia, spirits, and the like can help close the loop on some things the evidence can't lead you to. Real facts and events that help make things make sense, so easier all around." Nodding and pointing to Misha at her words in agreement he then asks Ethan, "So. From here maybe Misha and I go and get a good look at what you saw. See if we can figure out what it means and pass that info on. Then mix it with what Nadia can find." "Aw man I don't think any question is dumb," Ethan says with a shake of his head. "Sounds good. Which means I'll come sit surveillance with you, Nadia, the least I can do is keep you company." Since the other two are going to be working the spirit angle. He smiles. "Thanks for helping out with this guys. And for taking my hunch seriously in the first place, Alex." He finally pushes his beer aside and says, "I should get back, one of my tenants expects me this afternoon." He scrawls out his number and hands that over to Misha too, since the other two have it. "Text me or call me if anything new comes up?" "Hunches are important." Nadia nods, "People shrug them off but I swear, if I hadn't learned to listen to my gut I'd not have half the closed cases I do on the record." Her nose wrinkles a little as she chooses not to discuss certain theories about her hunches and what they might be, not until she knows more at least. Misha toys with the paper the address is written on, then tucks it into an inside pocket on her leather jacket. "Sounds good." She says to Alex, nodding again. "Nothing wrong with trusting your gut. Even if you can't see what's there, it could be something tickling the back of your hindbrain." "It's not trouble, Ethan. Part of being what I am, rising to the call when it's needed." She snags a napkin and jots her number on it, sliding to Ethan before she rises. "I have some prep to do. If you can get hands on good silver, let me know." Alex gives a wave to Ethan and then to Misha. "Yeah let's make our moves and get this figured out!" Ethan gets a wink as the tattooed Bone Shadow stands to give him a friendly shake. "If anything changes or you need anything else, just reach out. We got your back and have the drive to work this to the end." Nodding at Nadia he smiles adding, "I can hang out on that stake out too if you think it works. Send out the senses to watch with the spirits." Misha gets a wave as he adds, "Thanks for coming out and offering to help. It's a huge load off and a great boost for us all." | |