Mission Details:

”Phew… Finally done with this mess.” Kenzo said as he sighed, wiping away a trace of sweat from his forehead. He never knew it was this exhausting to clean up stuff. His respect for stay at home parents and people that did this for a living grew exponentially as they finally finished tidying up Inspector Weirdlock Jone’s office. It would be at that moment that the quirky inspector seemed to find something of value within the stash of papers that had been neatly organized in his desk.

"AHA!! This is what I've been looking for all this time!"

The male held up triumphantly a piece of paper as tiny as a wrap of gum. Kenzo wondered what kind of important clue could be hidden within. Maybe it had the remnants of a fingerprint from one of the yakuza oyabun? Or maybe a strand of DNA he’d recovered from a hitman from a family? "I know I had placed around here this gum wrapping where I wrote the invaluable clue for the case… I just couldn’t find it after dropping it inside all the mess." The blue haired inspector came closer to Rania and Kenzo to show it to them. "I present to you! The favorite number of grunt no. 502 of the mafia." Kenzo was left speechless. A blank expression covered his face as he started boiling in anger. ”You little shit… You made us clean up all your damn disaster for a puny piece of-“ The Bellan warrior heated up mid-sentence, grabbing the inspector by the collar of his shirt. However, he was promptly interrupted by one of Weirdlock’s assistants.

”INSPEECTOOOR!!! INSPECTOOOR!!” A man suddenly entered the newly cleaned office, gasping and panting as he tried to catch his breath. ”There.. has been.. Ahhh- A new body was found!”


"Hmmm… Seems like we were too late." The inspector spoke calmly as he scratched his chin with his right hand, crossing his left one over his chest. Laying before him, a lifeless corpse of a person with a slit mouth and numerous wounds all around. Blood still gushed out of a large knife stab from the back of his neck…

”Damn.”

[364/1000]

Cleaning up Weirdlock Jones’ office had been quite the task, and the reward both Rania and Kenzo received felt well deserved. The Paladin was a neat young woman, known to be orderly and well-mannered. How someone like that with an office looking like this failed to catch any sort of bad guy was absolutely no surprise to her. He could consider himself lucky to even manage to keep track of his own files, even though Rania was almost certain that he had failed at that too, hence why he needed their help. Kenzo appeared to be equally exhausted and annoyed by this and when Jones looked away for a moment, Rania looked at Kenzo and visibly rolled her eyes at the inspector.

“Sir, with all due respect, you need to learn how to keep your shit in place,” the Paladin bluntly blurted out and put on an annoyed expression. Rania had her arms crossed in front of her chest and it almost seemed as though she intended to *clonk* the inspector with her staff, just like she’d done with the mercenary and even a vampire before. “There’s people who have lost their lives, and they deserve to get justice. You should treat them with a little bit more respect.” Her words were harsh, but the good-hearted girl had no patience for people like that. Shortly after Kenzo exploded into anger and honestly – she couldn’t fault him for it and decided not to step in.

The Blue Pegasus members were called to a new crime scene just moments later and after taking a look at the body, and how gruesome it had been mutilated, Rania uttered a sigh. She was used to the sight of corpses, but the nature of this crime had been more violent than anything she had ever seen. Kneeling down next to the body, careful to keep a safe distance in order not to mingle with the crime scene, the Paladin quietly spoke a prayer for the deceased. “Let's look around for clues, if we can find it before he does it will be useful to the investigation,” she said to Kenzo and immediately began looking around. It didn’t take long for her keen eyes to spot a little note, and picking it up with a tissue, Rania handed it over to Weirdlock Jones. It had some sort of emblem imprinted onto it, but nothing else.

“Is this emblem familiar to you, Mr. Jones?” She asked and much to her surprise he actually had an answer for her. “Yes, this is indeed the gang symbol of the Black Dragons, a local gang. Gang violence is very...violent, and the way this person was murdered matches their style.” Rania stepped aside and moved next to Kenzo. “Gangs are much smaller than guilds, and usually they don’t have all that much to do with magic right?” She didn’t know much about this, so she decided to ask someone who had more experience than her.

As soon as they saw the corpses, both Kenzo and Rania had quite a similar reaction. Albeit for different reasons. It had been a long time since the Bellan warrior had last seen a scene as brutal as this one, reminiscent of the one time at Crocus where he infiltrated the mansion of a twisted noble, keeping humans and torturing them in his pleasure dungeon. Even if the motivation behind the massacre this time was fundamentally different, it was still a way of torture. The sigh the blue haired male let out came from the realization that this was yet another reminder of human nature. After spending some weeks with Rania, he’d come to slightly try to be more empathic towards others like her. The paladin’s golden heart moved him to an extent, making him wonder if there was perhaps some hope in humanity. As he saw the lifeless corpse in front of him, he was reminded of all the horrible things he’d witnessed. The human race was twisted. That was the reality of things.

On the other side, Rania’s sigh must have been different. Or at least that’s what the blue haired male thought as he saw her kneel next to the body. He’d heard from the girl that he worked in a hospital and was used to seeing people die all the time. But one thing was seeing people die from illnesses, other from being brutally slaughtered. Regardless, Kenzo decided to throw away all of this thought for the moment. They needed to concentrate if they were to catch the culprits behind this. Nodding in agreeance with her proposal, Kenzo decided to make use of his eye’s ability. Spotting something in the ground, he made his way to pick it up, only to be beaten by the perceptive healer. It was a small paper, with some sort of symbol. The male vaguely remembered having seen it before. It was the Ouroboros, a common motif in certain rites or legends from far away lands. He wasn’t sure where it hailed from, but he knew he had seen it at least in Desierto.

As the girl passed it to the investigator, he shed some light on its meaning. Apparently, it was the symbol of one of the local yakuza gangs. They were notorious for working in this modus operandi. As Rania asked to Kenzo about gangs, he pursed his lips as he scratched his head. ”Well… I guess it depends on the gang?” He wasn’t quite sure how to answer this question. Gangs came in very different shapes and sizes, and most of them worked with different structures depending on where they were quartered. ”In a sense you could say that they can range in size, but generally their purpose is profit. No matter the cost.” His words made special emphasis in the last part. ”You can think about them as the guilds of crime. However, underestimating them might be dangerous. From experience I can tell you that most of the time they are way bigger than a guild.” That last bit was true. Their members could number anywhere from the dozens to the thousands, depending on how strong they were. ”On the bright side, they usually are made up of magicless and talentless individuals who are only used to violence. So there’s nothing a top notch magician like you should worry about” His words were spoken with a grin. There were not many gang grunts that could single handedly disintegrate a werewolf after all.

After their conversation was over, the rest of the mission transpired quickly. Weirdlock gave the two of them a magical artifact, with which they found a second body quickly. It had the same slit mouth and stab in the nape as the first one, confirming this had been a work of the Black Dragons. Judging from their tattoos Weirdlock identified the two dead men as part of the White Star yakuza gang. This had definitely been a gang conflict. After Weirdlock delivered the news to the city guards and he was paid, he gave Rania and Kenzo their cuts.

"There’s something fishy going on here. I fear this is just the tip of the iceberg…"

-EXIT-

[1063/1000]

Rania lowered her gaze and until the crime scene investigators came to cover the body with a white blanket, she decided not to look at it any further. The Paladin knew that humans were cruel, but gang violence always felt as such a minor, insignificant issue that it baffled her mind to see how many people frequently died because of it – and the fact that those who were involved with said murders still felt the need to commit such heinous crimes. She ran her fingers through her long, black hair and turned around, quietly uttering a sigh before putting her attention back on solving this issue. Hosenka was beautiful, but it clearly had its issues just like any other places, although the problems this city was facing were still not on par with Dahlia.

It was hard to beat a werewolf and vampire plague after all.

Kenzo seemed uncertain about the issue as well and his explanation, albeit logical, made Rania wonder what possessed these people in first place – there were plenty of other ways to make money, none of which involved having to murder someone. “The things people do for money,” she whispered, and the tone of her voice showed disappointment in the human race. “Sometimes they feel no different than those werewolves hunting the villagers back in the Sieghart Mountains.” It was scary how similar humans could become to beasts. When Kenzo explained that most of the time, gangs were much bigger than guilds Rania silently nodded along. In a way it was more difficult to keep track of so many people at once, she supposed. But of course that wasn’t an excuse, and nothing excused this.

Weirdlock explained a little more about the gangs to them and after giving the emblem on the note Rania had found a closer look, she began to recognize it from books she had read back in Desierto. It wasn’t a familiar sign by any means, but it held some significance that much was certain. The inspector then handed them a magical device that served the function of finding bodies and when Rania questioned why they needed it, he explained that there was most likely going to be a second body somewhere nearby. The Paladin was mortified by that information and sure enough, after using said device it pointed them at a second body that had suffered the same mutilations.

“To think that this can happen in the middle of the city,” the woman whispered in disbelief and turned her head away. Hosenka was filled to the brim with people, and if things like this could just happen anywhere anytime then it wasn’t as safe here as she had initially assumed. The way the body had been mutilated showed that it had most likely been the work of the Black Dragons as well. When inspector Jones delivered the news to the guards, all three of them received payment. The observant Paladin noticed that the inspector failed to inform the guards about the note, most likely on purpose, and she leaned over to Kenzo to make sure the warrior knew about this as well.