IC : STARDUST, In-Character thread for Stardust Options

[Mister Juan]

Ludmila's face is sudently washed over with a big smile.

"Why of course Mister D. You can ride along with Hank, and I'll make sure he" points at Ernie "follows in one piece".

[Mister Juan]

Ludmila gets up, and starts walking toward the door.

"Alright; let's be on our way."

Glancing back at Hank.

"I'll be right behind you... and you" she points at Ernie, are coming with me.

[Qillin]

"Alright, sounds like a plan." looking at Ludi. "Now you be nice to him on the ride to my place. K " and waits to follow Hank to his ride.

[Mister Juan]

"Oh yes. I will be very very gentle with the rodent."

[Qillin]

Jack opens the door to his condo and says "Make your self at home. the couch is rather confortable. " then Jack will go into the kitchet and pull over 1 more chair then grab a beer and ask " Anyone want anything to drink? I got beer, milk and some vodka."

[ Spoiler ]

Grabbing everyones drinks he comes out and kicks who ever has sat down in his Lazzy Troll@ recliner.

[HobbeGoblin]

Ernie glances at Ludi and smiles." Sure, we could use some alone time." Rat whispers...are you crazy? No just cornered Walking outside Ernies forehead begins to bead with sweat.

[Mister Juan]

Ludmila goes over and sits on the floor itself, unzipping her large shoulder bag and pulling some wires out of it. She takes her pocket computer out, plugging it straight in her datajack. She then starts to work on Jack's trideo, connection her computer to the display unit.

"Alright... everyone will be able to see what we have..."

She lifts her head toward Jack.

"Vodka; straight; no ice, please."

She then gets a white noise generator, sits it on the floor and powers it on. With a gentle hum, it comes to life.

"Let us start with the information I gathered last night, before all this happened."

She punches a few keys and a picture of Rick Stone appears.

"Rick Stone used to work for West Coast Modeling, before her turned freelancer. His main girl is... was, Kote. She has... had been doing pinups and scream sheets for the past year, and was a hot thing in the field. Apparently, Miss Kote had been seeing movie execs recently: she wanted to exchange modelling for acting. She has been doing so for over a month, and had recently met with some movie producer, downtown. Stone also had one of his girls, Anne Keller, murdered some time ago. She was found dead, in Puget Sound. Keep that in mind: she was found dead in water. There never was any investigation in her death since she was SINless."

She takes a little break, looking over her notes.


"Concerning Cain, I couldn't find anything at all... Nothing useful in the Lone Star files... At least, not with the information we had at that point. I was able to find out that Mister Stone has no prior convictions or criminal record, but he did post bail for a Charles Whittington, a little while back. Charles, which I believe is the same Charles we have met, has a very long sheet of drug offenses. He apparently likes to hook his girls so he can get them working cheap in seedy movies. I also went and checked out the weapon's market for anything unusual: large by of explosives, sniper rifle, anti vehicular weaponry."

She takes a bit of a shamed look.

"You know... making sure our adversary didn't have any heavy weaponry at his disposal. Everything came clear... but it seems whoever killed Kote used a pistol. Silenced would be my bet. Anyways.... I did find something very interesting on one of my matrix searches: one of the movie execs Kote met with was named Whittington. Charles Whittington."

"So, now, here is what happened at Kote's residence. Sometime between when she closed the curtain, which Hank can tell us precisely when, and about one hour before we broke into her house, some one got in using the back door, picked the look, broke the security chain, and shot her once in each eyes. After that, he proceeded in clogging all the drains and turning the water on. I believe Cain, or whoever did this, either has a thing with water and also killed Anne Keller... or is a copy cat trying to throw us off track... makes us think there is a link between the Keller murder and Kote's."

"I drove by Stone's house this morning, and spotted him leaving the place with another man."

She puts his picture up on the trid display.

"I have yet to identify who he is, but I will surely do so soon. I also copied Kote's hardrive and portfolios in here" she taps her computer "and I will review them for anything useful as soon as I can."

"Mister Hank also has one of the bullet that killed Miss Kote, and I found this stuck to the chain".

She pulls out a plastic bag out of her pocket. It contains a small piece of fabric with blood on it. Ludmila throws it in Ernie's lap.

"Can you be useful and do something with that? Use it as a link?"

She then punches a few keys again, and various pictures of the inside of Kote's house start slide on the screen.

"I took numerous pictures of the house and the scene... if any of you would like to review them."

It is obvious, from the point of view the pictures were taken, that they come from a cyber eye.

"So, that is pretty much all we have now. We need to inform Mister Stone of the situation. I believe we should also further investigate the man who was with him, as well as the few items we collected from Kote's house."

Ludmila, slowly getting up, unplugs herself and stretches all her limbs.

"We also could not locate the famous letter that Mister Stone mentioned. I assume that either Cain took it... or that it never existed and that all this is a setup to kill Kote before she jumped ship, and pin it on us." she yawns a bit "Alright... if you guys have anything else to add, do so now. If not, lets all get to work."

[Qillin]

Jack handing Ludi her Vodka. "Wow thats a lot of info, you are good. I think we need to look into this Charles guy some more too. It sounds like he and Stone were competing for the girl, and not working to gather like we were to previously to believe.

[HobbeGoblin]

Ernie looks at Jackie D "Vodka? You had vodka and you were hilding out on me." Ernie takes a glance at Ludi waiting for the obvious dirty look to happen.

[Mister Juan]

Jack handing Ludi her Vodka. "Wow thats a lot of info, you are good. "

To which she replied; "Yes, I know."

She grabbed the vodka from him, thanking him with a smile. Turning to Ernie, she said "this is not for little street rodents like your kind. This is what differentiates the adults from the children."

On that, she puts her head back, downing the whole glass in a single shot. Slightly shivering, she comes back to her senses.

"Well... that hit the spot quite well indeed."

She gets up, leaving her different gadgets scattered on the ground.

"If you would like you can hit your contacts... I will go and call our employer from a public telecom, and let him know what has happened. Maybe I can extract some more information out of him. If everything goes well, we should immediately move to the second phase of our mission: finding Cain."

Keeping her weapons, she picks up her jacket and heads for the door. Before reaching it, she says over her shoulder "If anyone would like to accompany me, now is the time to get moving".

[Qillin]

Jack seeing Ludi leaving says " Yes" then looking over at Hank" Hank should go with you to the phone. We only have Charles's # correct? Though we were lead to believe Stone is our emplorer, we can't see sure that he is. We only meet this Charles and did a net thingly which coud have been anyone. I think we have to assume that he is realy our emplorer and maybe we should try and track down Stones direct # and contact him sepretly. But go ahead and go call Charles and see what he has to say." Looking over at Slick. "Think you can do you thing and check out Stones place? I'll make sure there are no distractions this time."

[HankWS]

Hank starts to move twords the door. "I'll accomany you there, it would probly be safer if we stayed in teams of two just incase we run into any trouble. I'm sure Jack and Ernie are ok with this. Seeing how chummy theve been thus far." Hank will open the dorr for Ludi and follow her out. He'll grab his weapons from his car and head out.

[HobbeGoblin]

Ernie watches them leave, this time Ernie decides to actually do as he's told.Ludi took it easy on him at the first incident...no telling what she'd do if he screwed around again....at least so soon. Ernie settles in to the large chair and looks at Jackie D smiling he says."Check out time, watch the meat ok chum." Ernies eyes are already rolling to the back of his head before he finishes the sentence.

[Qillin]

Jack nods to Ludi and Hank as they leave, then to Slick as he slides away into his catatonic state. Jack walks over and locks the deadbolt.(Jack had feels safer with a none computer backup lock) then Jack proceeds to make himself a sandwich and watches the new for any reports on what had happened this morning.

[FrostyNSO]

Ludi and Hank

[ Spoiler ]

You find a payphone some ways away and give a call to Charles. After ringing four times, he picks up. "Hello." He answers gingerly.

Ernie

[ Spoiler ]

You slip into the astral plane, losing sight of the cold edge of reality and drifting into the soft glow of the astral and it's emotive landscape. Taking a look at Jack through the astral, you sense a feeling of alarm from him as he sits in his lazy-troll recliner.
Not wanting to come back "empty-handed", you depart to scope out Stone's residence. Fumbling through the expansive city, you move fast, but have trouble finding the place without being able to read street signs to guide you. Following landmarks that Ludi gave you, you eventually find the place, a large house with many rooms.
You slip easily inside and encounter no astral security to speak of. You spot a 3 people awake in the place, probably bodyguards. Sitting around. Two talk in the kitchen about nothing in particular, the other uses the cyberterminal in one of the upstairs bedrooms. In what you guess to be the master bedroom, Stone sleeps in his king-size bed alone.

Jack

[ Spoiler ]

You sit down and watch the news, switching a KSAF Seattle. With alarm, you watch a breaking news story about the murder of Kote. The cops that showed up as Ludi and Hank were leaving found the body. Not long after, police interviewed a witness who saw two individuals breaking into the house.

The newest breaking news was the arrest of a Charles Whittington, who is believed to a few days earlier have met with individuals matching the description of those breaking into the house.

[Mister Juan]

Turning on her implanted recorder, Ludmila answered Charles.

"Hello Mister Charles. This is Jeannie, with Seattle Express Delivery. We were hire to deliver a package, which we went to pickup today. unfortunately, before it was transmitted in our hands, it was damaged beyond repair. We tried to fix the bumps on it, but nothing was salvageable. I am sorry to inform you that our stock it completely dry... we won't ever be able to deliver your item. If you'd like to advise new directives, please do so. If not, we will proceed in finding who is responsible for the mishandling your item. Since you package was damaged, our PR department would love to get comments from the signatory of the contract directly. Since it was his package that was damaged, we need his comments on a few forms. If you would please send me is contact information, that would be great."

Still holding the telecom unit, which was on audio only, Ludmila lifted her eyes toward Hank. She didn't like speaking on the phone to people she didn't know... and she simply hopped that Charles was clever enough to understand what had happened, and what she was asking.

[Qillin]

Jack seeing that Charles had been arrested for this meeting with a group that looked like Hank and Ludi he quickly calls Hank's cell. ring ring ring.

[FrostyNSO]

Ludi and Hank

[ Spoiler ]

"Oh, uh," Charles began clumsily. "If you could please look into who was responsible for the damaged package I would much appreciate it. If you need to contact my signatory you can reach him at (here he gives you a telecome number, speaking claerly and slowly so as not to repeat himself). Was there, uh, anything else I could help you with?"

As mr. Whittington finsishes his statement, Hank's cell phone begins ringing.

[Mister Juan]

"No thank you sir, that will be all. Wait.... are you Mathew Charles Cunningham? Oh! I'm so sorry sir, I thought I was calling at (she switches the last two digit of the number). I am most sincerely sorry about this misunderstanding sir. I apologize on behalf of Seattle Express Delivery. I am very sorry for this disturbance. Have a nice day sir."

She hangs up, not letting him time to answer. Getting outside the booth, she lights a cigarette.

"Something's not right... this Charles seemed a lot less cold and calculating than the first one. Voice seemed the first..... Isn't that your phone ringing?"

[HobbeGoblin]

Ernie stays as long as possible before having to return with a few moments of time left. Returning back to Jackie D's place he smiles in his astral form.Slinking back into his body Ernie lets out a loud yell startling Jack.Ernie begins laughing histerically. Panting through his laughter Ernie makes out." Should....have seen...your face......chum."

[Qillin]

Jack with his phone in one hand and his beer in the other gets spooked at Slick yelling and his phone and beer go flying up in the air both landing on Slick, good thing they had finished all the beer in bottles last night and Jack had to drink one from a can. "Damn you Slick, look what you made me do." reaching to pick up whats left of his beer and trying to get his phone before someone answered.

[HankWS]

Hank looks at his caller ID. Followed by looking around for suspicious people and/or cops.

Perception

[ Spoiler ]

05 03 02 01 01

Hank then proceeds to answer the phone. "Whats the situation." He pauses for a reply.

[FrostyNSO]

Hank and Ludi

[ Spoiler ]

It's Jacky D on the phone. He quickly tells you that he just saw a news report and that Charles Whittington has been arrested. However, you two have already called and spoken to him as far as you know...

[HankWS]

Hank looks at his caller ID. Followed by looking around for suspicious people and/or cops.

Perception

[ Spoiler ]

05 03 02 01 01

Hank then proceeds to answer the phone. "Whats the situation." He pauses for a reply.

[FrostyNSO]

Little double post action? See my previous post.