Description: Psycho Power. Only a handful of people worldwide have this power, and thus only a precious few can really answer important questions about it. Two men both have a pressing need for answers... the same answers, in fact. Their search for people who can provide them leads them, inevitably, to each other but sadly, not to the answers.
The snow was still falling as Daniel Jack reached the Young Fighter's Community Center. Shurui mentioned the YFCC as he left his apartment. It was the home of two powerful psychics, both that were contacts given to him by Vega. Yes, there were questions. Many questions involving both ends. The broad answer is that the detective was tied up in a complicated world where very few expected him to be traveling through. But Daniel Jack, unlike many people in this crazy game, had answers. Psychics weren't the only one with leads. Mysticism was for the mystics.
Reason was left to a man of the law.
The detective held the trenchcoat close to his body. Trudging through the fresh snow, he reaches the entrance of the community center. Hopefully, there was someone there. Like a janitor. A thought occurs to Daniel. Hopefully, his little job on Zach wouldn't be remembered there. That would complicate his problems further. Swallowing his cold, he raps his knuckles against the glass doors of the building, hoping for someone, anyone to react or respond.
The mystics, on the other hand, are wishing for just a little bit of the detective right about now.
When Shurui called the Center to deliver her warning, practically nobody was around... in fact, it was sheer stupid luck that even Frei was there to get the message in the first place, merely visiting as he was during a lull in the ongoing Strolheim Master-Student Tournament. But there he was, when needed, and off he went to speak with the troubled young psychic about her concerns. What she told him was... well, it was of surprising import. The YFCC is no stranger to attacks, after all; by this point the front end has been demolished and rebuilt at least three times, possibly more. Frei himself has been present for a few of those himself. But what Shurui had to speak about was bigger than just the center... and it wasn't something in good conscience he could leave behind.
Of course, it deals with Psycho Power. That ability couldn't be farther from Frei's sphere; he deals with chi, an energy form that is in many ways Psycho Power's opposite number. But increasingly he finds events and people dealing with psychic powers to influence his life: his friendships with Alma and Zach, his brother's own mental powers, and now this. Shurui had suggested warning Alma and Rose, and while the redhead can't say he knows much of anything about Rose, he does know that finding the fighting model and fellow Glory Hound is probably a good first step. Naturally, he's already sent him a voice mail and all that jazz.
And an email. And then another voice mail, then three text messages...
As it is right now, Frei is in the Center after hours, poking at the computer at the reception desk and waiting, combining research with patience. He can't do much, but he CAN look at the local news for stories of symptoms like those Shurui described: the inability to sleep, for example, or other strange phenomena. Sadly, it doesn't seem to be well-covered now.
He glances over at gmail... nothing from Alma. At his cell phone... nothing.
Vexing.
He's about to get up and get a drink when motion at the doors catches his eye. Blinking, the redhead crosses the distance and looks outside, his eyebrows going up precipitously at Daniel's... unique appearance, especially in the snow. A hand comes up, unlocks a few of the bolts, and one of the two glass doors opens enough for Frei's head and torso to lean out. "Uh, hi there... we're actually closed right now, sorry."
Daniel's outfit was striking. It was a force of habit. Nothing stopped an enemy colder than a sharp dressed man. And with his zoot suit, he could cut to the bone. He even asked Chae Lim to make him a few outfits. She disagreed with the colors. Meh. Maybe if she could try some forest green. Or even purple.
GOLD.
The detective stood there, great clouds erupting with every breath. It was cold. At least the trenchcoat helped somewhat. Looking through the window, he spies some red haired man. Shoulders hunched slightly, but back erect, he just dug his hands in his pockets as Frei began to unlock the door. A man. Possibly a regular. Possibly not. Daniel Jack needed to drop a line to get dragged into the building. With a curt, icy tone, the detective spits out at the leaning man.
"I'm looking for Mr. Towazu, scuzzy. Miss Shurui Chiang dropped me towards here."
Daniel just stared from behind his red-tinted glasses, face frigid in a stern glare. There was a bait. Will the stranger bite.
The red-haired head tilts to the side a bit, a childish display of confusion at the sudden sharp words. Frei actually mouths the word 'scuzzy?', eyes looking off to the side, before he shrugs and steps *out* of the center. The door clicks shut behind him, and the chi sage isn't worried; he has the keys, and he's more than capable of defending himself should it come to that. But he'd rather not have the Center get trashed if something goes bad, either. But he did have Shurui's name to mention, which works in Daniel's favor... and unlike the past few visitors Frei remembers, the detective *knocked*.
Still.
"Well..." Frei begins, looking a little distracted, "I'd like to say you've come to the right place, but you haven't. Alma comes and goes as he pleases and he's usually a very busy individual. I've been trying to get in touch with him myself the past few days with not much luck, so if you happen to find him on your own, feel free to tell him to, uh... phone home, I guess," he finishes, smiling distractedly and rubbing the back of his neck.
There's a pause, and Frei regards Daniel again, more curious than anything, taking the man's measure now that he has a second, waiting for a reply. He cuts a singular figure, to be sure, but Frei himself is distinguishable in a crowd most times as well. But what about the suit and the coat say anything about the man, if anything? "You can always leave a message if you want," he offers, holding one hand out to the side. "Depending on what it is you want, of course."
Well. That didn't work. Daniel fumed about the situation. Normally, he would have called ahead. Except he didn't know he was supposed to come here until he was outside his apartment. And he certainly didn't want to go back in there. Vega's taint made it like taking a shower in a mausoleum.
Daniel's facial expression doesn't change, though he does take a step back. As he does, he snaps out another line. "How about Rose. Or I dunno, Zach. Listen, scuzzy, let me lay this straight: It involves their 'special talents,' you dig me?" The detective rolls his shoulders. "Are their any, I dunno, Psychics active? Real professionals? Or maybe you can get me in with a Miss Asamiya, if you know one?" Daniel was probing the dark here. But he guessed that if YFCC had so many psychics, a janitor might know something. Unless...
What if he wasn't a janitor?
Daniel can probably sense it, readily enough: the mention of psychic powers, and that list of names, makes the young sage tense up immediately. Well, he feared for the worst and here it is in front of him: a stranger, dropping Shurui's name AND Alma's AND Rose's... names Shurui herself suggested... and then there's Zach, a name Frei himself dropped in the same conversation. And suddenly this guy shows up when the Center is closed and looking for Alma? Too many coincidences for poor Frei, who has every right to be suspicious... of course, even at his most alert, Frei is more trusting than the average person regardless.
But there is an obvious shifting of postures: a movement in front of the door, a tensing of the muscles, a something. Daniel hasn't done anything aggressive, so Frei cuts him some slack until he does... but protecting the Center is, in many ways, one of his actual JOBS, and he plans to do it... especially with unknowns in the equation.
"I haven't seen Zach in some time, and Rose is almost never here..." The redhead doesn't admit that he's never MET Rose in person, since it doesn't make his statement false, at least. "And like I said, Alma's out. If you don't mind my asking... what does any of this have to do with you?" It's a reasonable enough question, Frei believes, and so he throws it out without concern. Surprisingly, if he's suspicious it doesn't bleed into his tone. He sounds genuinely curious as to what this is all about. "The people you're speaking about are friends of mine, after all, not to mention co-workers." A beat. "Well, except this 'Asamiya' person, I have no idea who that is."
Daniel Jack growls. Damn. A dead lead. "Flat out raunchy." The detective mutters to himself. The primary contacts did bug around this place, but they were not here now. Damn, damn, damn. His face tightens into a pained grimace. The red haired man wondered what Daniel was up to. It was pretty straight for him.
"Let me lay it straight. You heard about that string of real rank murders going around? Totally mysterious and the like?" The detective drew a hand from his pant's pocket, and reveals a match in his hand. Removing his other hand, he reaches into his coat. Passing his hand over his concealed revolver, he sticks his hand into his inner pocket to draw out a single cigarette. He sticks the ciggie into his mouth, and bites down hard. Striking the match from below his ear, he lights it up.
Puffing it for a moment, he tosses the match in the snow. "The name is Daniel Jack. Private Investigation. I've been trailing these shank-jobs for a while, and to lay it flat, I've reached a real raunchy point. A psychic presence is killing these people, and from the smell, attacking psychics. I was given the names of those people because I am working to jack someone who knows what the grey-shaded helltone is this thing. An expert." Daniel takes another long draw, and mixes the cold smoke with the warm. "And that line. So you don't have any leads either?"
There's a pause while Frei seems to take that in. He makes a little face at the appearance of the cigarette, mostly of distaste, but listening to Daniel's words is more important.
After a beat, he says, in an honest and guileless tone: "I don't understand a word you've just said." Scuzzy? Shank-jobs? Raunchy point? It's like listening to an album backwards looking for Satanic messages: the language is ostensibly the same but in reality, nobody knows what the hell is going on in the slightest. But some of it made sense, and it jives with Shurui's take on the situation, and that at least speaks in Daniel's favor.
That and it's been a full-on three minutes or more and nobody's tried to punch Frei in the face or explode the door with a chi blast. As far as the YFCC instructor is concerned, this is a major upturn in his luck.
"Anyhow. No, I don't have any leads. Other than Shurui calling me in... a state... last week, I don't really know much of anything about what's going on beyond what she said. People losing sleep... something powerful in the air. I want to do something, but I'm... not psychic." He shrugs helplessly, and not for the first time worries for the safety of his brother Kataki, who *is*. Apparently the Psycho Power gene skipped a generation in the blood, or something. "I can only do so much. So I've been trying to get ahold of people and not having much luck."
In a friendly gesture, the redhead extends a hand. "I'm Frei, by the way... I'm an instructor here." There's a pause, and then he adds, in an almost conspiratorial tone, "When you say 'jack', you don't mean like..." He pauses, then makes a motion like someone hand-jacking up a car. It's adorable how little he gets the lingo.
"No, no, not like jacking up a car, like jacking a car, you dig?"
Daniel's accurate explanation does little to calm his own nerves. He just trudged through the snow on a bad lead, and ended up with nothing. Well, at least he knew that YFCC wasn't TOO sore about the whole Zach thing. Still, with Frei's hand out, the detective grasps it, and shakes it firmly. "It is real decent to meet you, Frei, real decent. Pity you don't have much."
Reaching his hand in his coat again, he snaps out a card. Or rather, a small piece of paper covered in a thin layer of candle wax. It has his name, number, and address on there, along with the title of 'Private Investigater' under his name. The detective was fairly cheap, it seems. "But let me tell you, scuzzy. They show up? Hold them in place, give me a call. I have some sharp leads, and I need an expert to round it out." The man sighs, looking around. He knew his next location now.
You can almost see the gears turning. Jacking up versus jacking. Alright... so stealing it? That doesn't make sense. The more confused he gets the more Frei's head starts to tilt to the right, until the green eyes are almost vertical and perpendicular to Daniel's own. Eventually he shrugs, taking his hand back from the shake and slipping it into a pocket. He's been upgraded from scuzzy to decent and then back to scuzzy? None of this makes sense. But, it's a name he can count on in the future, at least, as someone to go to if there's some sort of break. If nothing else, the detective just gives Frei a sense that he's... here to help.
The card follows from that pretty well, and the chi sage reaches out a hand and takes it, glancing at it a moment before it goes into a pocket. "Alright... I'll do that, if you do me a favor," he says, face suddenly a little more serious than his usual placid, smiling expression. "Let me know if there's something I can do to stop whatever this is. Alright?" He pauses, then his eyes go heavy lidded and his gaze heads toward the ground a bit. "To be honest I don't feel like I've been as much help to my friends as they have to me. I want to help out."
Daniel Jack turns his nose up at Frei. His face doesn't change it's expression. The detective's 'tude and language made him pass more as eccentric than badass. However, the intensity helped somewhat. That same force came forward in another biting remark, sizzling through the icy air. "You want to help? Watch Shurui closely. Whatever is screwing around with the people nailed her. She's third eye blind or something. I'm wary. She might have something seriously wrong with her. Hell. Watch all of your psychic friends, if you can. Something is rotten in Denmark. I don't know much, but if my intuition is telling me anything..."
The detective levels his head. He was very worried about anything that got into people's mind. What Vega did to Marz confused him, but at the same time, made sense. When he first saw the murders, he thought it was meningitis. And yet, no subtle symptoms, no signs of infections. However, as he dove deeper and deeper in the world of Psycho Power, he saw some sort of... bigger picture. Lack of sleep. Nullified abilities. Perhaps... this was like the infection. But something much more dangerous. "... The presence might be infecting people."
Daniel removes the ciggie and tosses it in the snow. He turns around briskly. "Thanks, scuzzy. Talk to you later." Frei was a new contact. Hopefully, he would be worth something. As he marched forward, he turned his head back. This might be dumb, but it gave stranger security, at least.
"Sorry for cutting it short, but I got a Clown College to dig into, you dig?"
Third Eye Blind is a band! That is all that flits through Frei's mind, other than being briefly amused at the Hamlet ref. Daniel may talk funny, but he says sensible things, even if they're not exactly groundbreaking things. Frei already had plans to keep watch on people he knows with psychic abilities... but it also suddenly makes him wonder if he should call home, check on Kataki and Threnody. Make sure things are alright. A sudden, pensive expression washes across the boyish face for just a moment, before he shakes his head and breathes out slowly. A hand goes to his hip, and he considers the idea of 'infection' for a moment. "Well... I wonder if we're safe ourselves? Something to think about."
And then Daniel turns to go. The redhead fumbles in his pocket, produces the keys to the center, and unlocks the front door. He can spend a little more time looking on the net and waiting for that phone call before he heads home. He's just pulling open one of the glass doors when Daniel turns and apologizes, and Frei is standing sideways in the doorway as he speaks. The chi sage's smile, when he gives one back, is genuine and amused. "I think clowns are scary, myself," he says, apropos of little. "My sympathies."
And then he's in the door and gone.
Log created on 21:30:00 01/30/2009 by Frei, and last modified on 12:08:08 01/31/2009.