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Gawain EVERRIA - LATE AFTERNOON

In the metropolis of Everria, a modern-day mundane city, the government has been having a 'problem'. A masked man known as the Foodbringer has taken to the streets several times, handing out vast amounts of free food to the public. The government, with the assistance of the Paladins, has been investigating this man in an attempt to stop him. The fact that he is likely a Multiversal with extraordinary abilities has made this difficult...as well as the fact that the Concord has interfered with the investigation, stealing a list of witnesses and tampering with the crime scene.

The list of witnesses that Priscilla stole has been rather easily whittled down to two of note. The first one is one Hank Fischer, a street musician who was in the alley that the Foodbringer escaped into during his last trip. As the Foodbringer's method of escape is entirely unknown beyond producing a flash of light, Fischer is a valuable witness.

His address on the note leads to a single-story home in one of the poorer neighborhoods of the city. The house is rather run-down, needing several repairs to the roof, walls, and pavement. Additionally, the grass is yellow and nearly dead, obviously dehydrated. An old junker of a car is parked in the driveway, and those with good ears can hear the sound of a loud television inside the house. He's home.

How do you want to approach this, Concord?
Priscilla     Priscilla is certainly glad she had stolen this one. With the red herring she had left in the alleyway to indicate some totally fake and lame magic had been used, tracking down a guy who had been right there would probably have been the police, or else the Paladins' first priority. They only have the luxury of getting to him at all, never mind first, because she had been a dirty rotten cheater (but then, is it cheating if you didn't even join the game?).

    It's pretty obvious when the First of the Concord shows up and knocks on your door though, and there's no need to knock it down just yet, thus she has two people along who could say they came out of normal, factional interest, and be reasonably convincing about it. Priscilla is content to lurk outside for the moment, reviewing the dilapidated housing with a manner of faint distaste, though perhaps more for the fact that the man was only able to pay for it, for lack of desire to be a salaryman. The people who speak modern languages can handle getting their feet in the doorstop, right?
Tesla Armadia A man producing food for the masses is certainly a man of interest. It's a shame the Commonwealth would notch such a man as a criminal, over some silly notion that such mixing would ruin local economies or whatever political reasoning they've come up with. While the sentiment of concern over frontloading too much into a location and causing disruption isn't out there... Why would you wish to lock such a resource up? When it could be put to use in so many places still suffering the awkward shifts and losts of the Multiverse itself shifting?

That is reason enough for Tesla Armadia to pay the investigation a visit. Both for the concord and for her own curiosity.

And by the look of the location they are given, this fellow definately was down on his luck enough to need the free handouts. The sight of the junker sitting in the driveway briefly brings a sympathetic grimace for the state of the vehicle, and then the technopath stuffs the feeling back down. Not important right now. Business first, sympathy for ailing machines later.

Looks like Priscilla is keeping a watchful distance. Prehaps for the best, don't need one of the big wigs showing up on the stoop and freaking the poor guy right out. That's okay, Tesla is perfectly capable of handling this. As she walks up to the door she glances back to check on who else has come, before going to knock lightly on said door. No reason to muddlefoot around out here.
Tubalcain Alhambra      From a nearby alley there is a flurry of what what might sound like paper--the fluttering sound of playing cards as the silhouette of Tubalcain Alhambra is built from the ground up by glowing magical playing cards--and he steps out of the alley as if nothing amiss had happened. He's wearing one of his white suits and fedoras right now, hands at his sides and not in his pockets as he wanted to look 'busy' or 'official' as he strode up to join the others. If there are police, he'll be moving among them and speaking with them as if he's supposed to be there.

     "Agent Alhambra of the federal bureau of investigation, I understand we may have a hostage investigation here," from within his inner suit pocket he withdraws what is first a playing card--which then subtly shifts into a leather and plastic cased identification card bearing his image and the department he's working with.
Gawain The house is pretty old. It's entirely possible it's a family home rather than something the witness bought himself. There are also no police around; it would seem that either they've already finished with him, or they forgot all about this witness because they decided to store info on sticky notes instead of hard drives.

As Tesla and Tubalcain go up to the door, it takes a few minutes for a reaction. Eventually, there's the sounds of someone getting up, shambling over to the door, and fiddling with it. When it's opened, it's only cracked, a chain used to keep it mostly closed. "Whaddya want?" Behind the door is a portly man, not very tall, as he glances out at those bothering him. And then he looks at Tesla. And then he stares for a moment.

And then he slams the door.

However, after a few moments and after Tubalcain's spoken, Hank Fischer speaks through the other side of the door. His voice is full of irritation, and maybe a bit of fear. It's obvious he doesn't have familiarity with the weirder stuff of the Multiverse. "The feds? You hire outsider weirdos these days? Look, I don't care if you're the freaking President, I'll tell you what I told the cops when they first approached me: screw off or talk to my lawyer! I'm in the middle of my soaps!" It doesn't seem like Fischer's going to be very cooperative, though perhaps there's one way or another to persuade.
Tesla Armadia Tesla Armadia opens her mouth to speak as the door opens and the man answers... but gets it slammed literally in her face before she can do so. She yelps softly as she staggers a half-step back, cupping her hands over her lower face where she got smacked and sucking in a deep slow breath. The shouting from behind the door makes it fairly clear what mistake she made.

"That was my bad," she murmurs as she steps back down from the porch. "I... forget my appearance can be unsettling to those not more accustomed to 'weirdness'. Chalk it up to oversight due to how long I have been multiversal active." And meddling in worlds that had similar oddities. "Perhaps someone else should approach the door this time."
Tubalcain Alhambra      "This is Special Agent Armadia, she's accompanying me on this as a troubleshooter--as I was saying, we have reports there is an individual that might be involved with a hostage situation--would you please answer a few questions for us, sir?" Tubalcain doesn't lay on the charm, he's trying to be more formal, and to the point--as one might expect an actual special agent to behave. "Would you just speak with us for a moment, sir, I'm sure you're very busy," Tubalcain is able to hide annoyance very well as his voice doesn't seem to betray very much of it.

     He reaches forward and brays on the door a few times, trying to be just a bit more assertive--white gloves padding the noise. "Sir, if you don't speak with us we'll have to return with a warrant to search the premises," he warns.
Priscilla     Priscilla, distantly, frowns. This is something she is known to do, though it is a surprisingly uncommon occasion, given how rare it is for something to fall just so between her apathetic zone and "obstacle removal" zone. As incredibly rude of a dude Hank is though, police work is not exactly Priscilla's specialty (perhaps evidenced by founding an organization that sort of does the opposite), and so it doesn't feel particularly right to bust down the door /just/ yet, nor does she plan on leaving and returning with a warrant.

    "No, it is not." she assures Tesla. "If such a man is entirely uncooperative with the men of law of his own world, there is little further harm thine appearance can cause." At this point she's pretty much standing across the street, watching invisibly for the whole one person that matters if he sees her. "Perhaps it wouldst indeed be best if thou were to affect the disposition of one hired by the legitimate authorities to handle 'uncooperativeness', as Sir Alhambra is wise in suggesting."
Gawain While he's not being cooperative and has shut his door on them, at the least, Hank Fischer hasn't left entirely. He responds through the door, frustrated. "I don't know what this is about a hostage situation, there's no one in here but me!" The very accusation is seeming to make him angry. "Where's your proof? Huh? Got any evidence?"

For a moment, it seems like he's not going to cooperate...until Tubalcain mentions a warrant and searching the premises. There's a pause for about a minute, until the door is opened back up, chain still keeping it mostly closed. "Fine! Whaddya want to know?"
Tesla Armadia Okay, Tubalcain has getting this back in track well in hand. Telsa keeps a bit to the side and behind him so he can talk directly to the man when Hank opens the door partway again. Lowers her hands from her face after making sure he didn't break anything.

She can work with the notion the formal man is giving. Acting as if the door-to-face wasn't all that bothersome, she adjusts her glasses straight before folding her hands behind her back and resuming a similar manner of formality. She's just here if her imput is needed. We'll let Tubalcain handle the actual talking for the moment.
Tubalcain Alhambra      "Thank you, now... you were present when the man that can create infinite amounts of food supposedly escaped, correct? Perhaps you could explain the details in which he did so?" Tubalcain asked, letting Armadia stay silent for the moment. He didn't mind being the one doing the talking, or anything, it seemed. "If you have anything that could help us find this food man we would be very grateful, it's suspected that he might be involved in a hostage incident," if there ever was one, of course. Tubalcain is good at thinking as he goes and making shit up on the fly. If this was Fallout, it'd definitely be something like the fast talker perk.
Priscilla     Good work magical vampire man, featuring The Armadillo. Now Priscilla has less reason to frown. Seeing Hank being so cagey he only opens up under legal threat, and then only enough to tense the length of the chain, is something she doesn't like though. Maybe she's just bad about the whole modern paradigm of private property thing, maybe she doesn't like the lack of hospitality, maybe it just annoys her, but he is acting reasonably suspicious, and so she would rather see his crumpled beer cans and gross wifebeaters than let him get away with hiding something.

    "Do not move to thine left of the doorstep." Priscilla discreetly radios, before heading in that aforementioned direction. She says so because she has leaned in so close that someone would bump into her were they to shuffle over. It's totally rude, but she's trying to look past Hank and into his grungy living room.
Gawain Hank is distracted by Tubalcain, trying to not screw up and get investigated. This allows Priscilla to sneak a peek past him without being spotted. His living room is pretty much exactly what you'd expect: trash, cockroaches, booze, a cheap sofa with a CRT TV in front of it. However, with a bit of looking, something stands out to the far back of the living room: several clear plastic bags, full of assorted objects. There's some shiny stuff in there, and stuff like watches or cracked tablets. What could that be about?

Meanwhile, Hank Fischer answers Tubalcain's questions. "Oh, that's all? Yeah, I remember it like it was yesterday! I was t-tossing something in the garbage back there, yeah, and then this masked man ran past me. I looked towards him, and h-he shined a flashlight in my eyes. While I was blinded, he c-climbed the wall. He was wearing the mask, though, so I didn't get a good look at his face, I'm sorry." Hank's sweating bullets. He's also being shifty in general, as he anxiously smiles. "Is t-that all you wanted?"
Tesla Armadia Tesla Armadia gives a thoughtful "Hmm-hmm" in response to Hank's reaccounted. She even pulls a small PDA from a pocket of her jumpsuit and goes about noting those details on it. Though that last part is entirely just for appearances, considering she can just mentally tell it to do so via technopathics. Hanks dodgy nature is also noted, though that may be related more to being questioned than the 'Foodbringer' questions in itself. "Must of been a rather bright flashlight to blind someone."
Tubalcain Alhambra      "Oh really," Tubalcain seemed to be listening intently and taking the man's information down, though he didn't produce a pad of paper or anything. "Shined a light in your face, you say? AND he was wearing a mask?" his tone didn't seem like he was making light of what he was being told or making fun of the man, but his dispassionate face and expression seemed to imply that he might not be satisfied with that information exactly. Or perhaps it takes one to know one, and Tubalcain can guess the man is not telling the whole truth.

     "Are you sure it was a mask, sir? What did it look like?"
Priscilla     Priscilla wants to crack a smile at the vampire giving Hank the subtle grill. This guy isn't remotely subtle. Where the crossbreed might have assumed the man simply poor for a choice of creative profession, those rose-tinted thoughts die quickly when she spots the filthy, slovenly interior of his house, second after the objects of interest.

    "I hath reason to suspect something inside. Dost thou think thou art able to hold his attention for long?" she asks over the radio, before sliding out of the way again, quickly circling around the house once to scope out any carelessly unlocked windows or the like, or failing that, a lock she can cut open without being instantly heard across the house. Even if he comes back and curses the sabotage, it'd be easier to deflect blame for than smashing down the door.
Gawain Hank nods to Tesla, nervously. "Y-yeah, it must have been r-really heavy duty." When Tubalcain brings focus to the mask, though, he starts acting a bit more confidently, less anxiously. "It was absoutely a mask. It looked like some sort of clay mask, and there wasn't really anything standing out about it. Not a designer piece, that's for sure! Didn't even have a mouth hole."

Priscilla's search of the exterior will find her a side-door into the garage. It's locked, with a hefty padlock on it, and it appears that this door isn't used much. Cutting off the padlock is trivial, and Priscilla can easily slip in. The garage itself is just fulled of miscellaneous clutter, and nothing seems too interesting. The house itself has the living room, a bathroom, and two bedrooms, master and guest. The guest bedroom and the bathroom aren't too important, but there's a shotgun in the master bedroom on a dresser, as well as another of those clear plastic bags. It's full of a bunch of miscellaneous trinkets, including a broken handheld video game console. Everything in the bag seems grimy, as if it's been stewing in filth, and also has some sort of value merit to it, though almost everything is either scratched, cracked, or dented. Where could have he gotten this stuff?
Tubalcain Alhambra      "Perhaps you'd like to ammend that statement, sir, since you were so close to this person are you sure you didn't smell or see anything else that would be out of the ordinary? Did it smell like he was drinking, for instance?" Tubalcain decides to stall the man a little bit and drill him more with his line of questioning, he doesn't seem to mind doing it either, though it's obvious the man is holding something back. He doesn't make it seem like he's done with him either, or that he's really believing this man's line of bullshit. At least Tubalcain doesn't seem outwardly amused, to say the least.
Priscilla     Shearing through padlocks is indeed not super difficult when you can whip out a combat dagger made of silver dragon nonsense. It's more than good enough for Priscilla. Whilst walking barefoot through snow, over ice, hot sand, jagged gravel, and all kinds of things has never seemed to bother her though, the filthiness of the house has an effect on her like the lower-key hesitance to step anywhere she had in the Gutter Disgorge. She may or may not leave a small trail of dead cockroaches, killed on the spot by her aura as she illegaly invades this grody man's privacy.

    The shotgun, she isn't worried about, in no small part due to the fact that Hank will have to run back through the house to get to it before he could hypothetically use it. The bags of crap are what had caught her eye. She briefly entertains the absurd thought that he is exchanging them to the Foodbringer, but quickly (if only partly) dismisses it as jumping to conclusions based on the fact that they're bagged similarly. Still.

    "The description of the mask is accurate." she muses into the radio, whilst stalking through Hank's house for further answers. "He hast met the man face to face, for more than a split instant. He was not present on the street where the food was distributed, but there is the possibility it was done in the alley before the event. In either case, I doubt this Hank was blindsided by the man known as 'Foodbringer'." Eventually, she starts to meander into the living room, behind Hank. "The question is of his usefulness if he shalt admit no association, though I believeth it to be obvious, as he is keen upon storing bags of worthless miscellania for transport and trade."
Tesla Armadia Tesla Armadia emits another "Mmhmm" which may be more to conceal her desire to snort at how dodgy Hank's answers are. Not that they're essentially wrong. More like the feeling that he's not telling everything he could. "A clay mask with no features... and by what means did he climb out of the alley?" She looks up from the PDA to Hank as she continues, before he can cut her off complaining about what wasn't enough about 'climbing'. "I mean, did he just climb up the wall, or did he use some kind of assistance? An unorthadox means of doing so would help narrow down where he may be from."

While it sounds like a strange question Tesla has seen everything from elaborate parkouring to grappling hook launchers in her time to not want to leave 'climbed out' as generic as possible. Though she's also just trying to keep the guy talking while Priscilla is snooping around inside while listening to her play by play over the radio.
Gawain "Ah, no, I don't think he was drunk. E-everything was as ordinary as it could be, I swear." While his confidence keeps up for the first half, it begins to falter on the second half. Hank seems to have an odd way of speaking, here. Tesla then questions Hank on how the Foodbringer climbed out of the alley, and he clams up for a moment. Sweating even worse, he takes a second. "Y-yeah, he just climbed up the wall, I think. Iunno, I was blinded, I d-didn't get a good look at it." Hank seems pretty uncomfortable with the questions about the escape, and attempts to change the subject. "Oh! He was wearing a jacket, too. And gloves, though I assume you guys figured that part out. Do you need anything else?"

If Priscilla's looking for associations with the Foodbringer while she glances at the stuff, she's not going to find any. Nothing seems to tie him to the Foodbringer.
Tubalcain Alhambra      "Hmm, alright, clay mask," Tubalcain nodded, apparently taking that as something that might be a good theoretical 'lead' to the investigation. "No, I don't think so, though if we need some more information we'll let you know," as Tubalcain leans back from the doorstep and the stoop he may signal with his hand or his eyes to Priscilla who is standing directly behind the man somewhere in the living room perhaps, still. He wants to at least not have any confrontation between the two, or at least if there is one it won't end well for the poor slob. Likely he's signalling to Priscilla so she can make herself scarce as Tubalcain lets the man go from the door.
Tesla Armadia Are they done? Seems like they are done for the time being, and as such Tesla puts the PDA away for now. She gives Hank a brief nod for his contribution (as true or false as it may be) then turns and takes a few steps back towards the street, leaving the man to any farther conversation from Tubalcain if he wishes.

Instead Tesla is focusing more on the remarks from Priscilla over the radio. A scavanger of some kind? Hmm. Even if he isn't a source of answers for the 'Foodbringer', there may be something else nefarious going on here. "If you can snatch something up I can look it over," she murmurs back over the radio. Now she's curious as to what else this man may be up to, regardless.
Priscilla     Pshh. Small timer. Priscilla had really been hoping this guy was in deep with the Foodbringer somehow, but as much as it bothers her that he keeps dithering on the subject of climbing the wall, the other option is just to try and scare him shitless into confessing something, and that would make it massively blatant it isn't the actual police questioning him. Tubalcain is better at this than se is, so she grabs the most interesting looking bag of crap she can find on the way out.


Thinking better of just leaving with that little, however, she pays one trip to the master bedroom, grabbing the shotgun as well, though it tests the limits of what she can turn invisible by holding onto. Using her pretty basic grasp of English, she leaves a note for him. One that, very honestly, states that she knows what he's up to, what he does, where he lives, and if he wants his stuff back, he has to show up to a chosen location and fess up.

    The Concord can't really play the bruiser while faking police membership at his doorstep, but if he's outright getting in with the bad crowd, things will be easier.
Gawain As the investigators decide to stop investigating Hank, he sighs in relief, nodding. "Alright. I understand. Have a good night, officers." He'll then retreat into his house, locking the door tight.

Meanwhile, Priscilla is able to steal his stuff. The note is left in place, and she gets a bag of weird junk to take home to the Concord. If Hank truly has something to hide, he'll probably follow that note. They just have to wait and see.
Tubalcain Alhambra      "Very good," Tubalcain sounds pleased as he turns and gives the man a little wave before stepping off the doorstep and stoop with Armadia at his side, he nods to her a little before gesturing at her to follow him a bit aways. "I think we're all set here, we can always come back if we really need to, as well..." he mutters, out of earshot likely for anyone still listening. Looks like it was a bit of a dead end for the lead, but Tubalcain isn't exactly annoyed or displeased. "Lets get back to base and figure out from what we gathered."
Tesla Armadia Tesla Armadia nods in agreement. "It still went better than not investigating the lead at all," she replies once Hank's shut the door and they are out of earshot. "He was certainly hiding something, regardless if it is directly connected or not." Something hopefully rifling through whatever Priscilla can bring back will at least sort out.