[He's been out and about for most of the day today, and the door was perfectly normal enough when he stepped out that morning. Returning this evening, though.....
Well then.
Let's just disregard the entirely unwarranted bit of a chill up the spine here, just now. --Blood directly on the door. Whose? To not even--start on the actual contents of the message here, which are already setting several pretty unhappy thoughts in motion in quick succession...
For a long moment Jade simply stands and stares at the door, expression darkened. ...Scans the vicinity for any other signs. Blood spilled anywhere else, possible tracks or traces of a perpetrator?]
[Ever since his belated revival, Natsuno spends at least a couple hours a day at 109, sometimes a bit more. He doesn't say so, but he's definitely trying to show Jade that he's still here, still alive, not being an idiot.
This evening the scent of blood - lots of it - assaults him the moment he sets foot in deck 2. It's coming from the cabins, and he can smell Jade there -
He doesn't stop to inspect the doors to Ebalon and Tear's rooms, making a beeline for 109.]
[Hm, no traces indeed...it probably would be prudent to scan the entire hall a bit more, for similar instances, except Jade finds himself sinking into staring at the message rather longer than he ought to again. A thoroughly discomfited sort of feeling now most definitely settling upon the back of thought, cogs in his head already trying to turn--
But Natsuno's steps and voice break through the reverie, and it's--a welcome sort of distraction. Maybe for the better. Jade tears his eyes away from the words to look over the boy's way as he closes the distance.]
...Rather gauche, isn't it? I must say, this is probably one of the most tactless death threats I've ever received. [The words are very dry, but there's something in the stiff set of his posture, and the way Jade can't seem to quite muster up his usual sort of sardonic smiling to accompany it. Instead he's turning his attention back on the door with an expression that's more unreadable than anything.] This blood--is still wet. Did you see anyone pass you by the hall on your way here, Yuuki?
Hm...that's possible, isn't it? [Not exactly as if there's anyone else but fellow passengers here, who would do this. Hardly narrows down any prospects at all now, though...the hall is empty save for the two of them presently, but Jade follows Natsuno's look down the way at cabins further down the hall. Hard to tell what the additional messages are at this angle without outright walking down there, but--hold on, isn't Tear's cabin around that area...?]
So this wasn't the only door targeted. [And, more specifically, it's not just Jade being targeted. Hmm...] Another spate of vandalism, it seems. But...who would...
[.....Who else would know about Luke? His name, and that he died? (That he is missed, terribly, always--)
The words trail off. Jade's expression only seems to empty further--but he's also reaching for an inner pocket of his uniform, now, to pull out his phone.]
...Well, besides that, we ought to figure out exactly where this blood has come from. Time may be of the essence. [Like? The blood's still pretty damp, which means it may have just freshly come from...someone?? Unfortunate implications here.] I'm going to contact Palamedes...would you want to take a look further down the hall there, to see what else has been done?
[Jade's almost not sure the message might not vanish or something the moment someone stops looking at it--stranger things have happened, on this ship. Already he's tapping out a message to Pal...Cabin 109. There's something here I'd like for you to examine, if you can.]
[He nods grimly, jogging down the hall without another word. Pal is the best person to call, but Natsuno will do what he can.
He comes back soon enough, still grim. Jaw clenched, mouth pressed to a thin line.]
Three more messages. For cabin 127, "can't wait for you to join us." Not sure who lives there. Then there's some... [He can't help but make a face.] creepy love letter for the Moon Freak. And -
[He hesitates, just for a moment, having saved the worst for last.]
[...Love letter? The 'Moon Freak', as Natsuno has perpetually called him ever since the Battle Royale--the utterly unhinged man in the broadcasted footage that had pushed him to the breaking point in the end, on that island. Well...there is a sort of morbid sense, in the fact that someone taking amusement from smearing threatening bloody messages on doors would also admire that particular kind of person--
That aside, though, Jade doesn't know who it is living in 127 either...and pretty much all else falls a bit to the wayside of thought, when the worst bit of news is brought to light too. Jade's expression darkens further immediately, upon hearing this; Tear, for whom Luke's loss is even more recent and raw...and who also, surely, hasn't been here nearly so long enough to be garnering death threats herself--
Who is it, doing this?]
--Thank you, for looking. That's...Tear is usually quite capable of holding her own, but--I certainly don't care for the sound of that. [Already he's checking his phone again--ought to try contacting her as well, make sure she's alright--]
Thanks to Bash, Palamedes is already on the trail of these suddenly active ghostly presences, though he hasn’t yet made much progress. He had searched the ship for Jeff, the one person he knows to be possessed, but hadn’t succeeded in finding him. Pal had even tried yet another seance, though he’d had no real hope that it would lead him anywhere, and it had not. He needs to find out more about this creature and what it wants, and he’s running out of ideas.
And then he receives Jade’s text.
Pal has no reason to believe that Jade’s relatively innocuous question has anything to do with the ship’s strange happenings, but some instinct tells him that it does. In a flash, he’s out the door and heading towards Cabin 109.
Regardless of what he knows about the ghosts, he really isn’t expecting to find a message scrawled in blood on Jade’s door.]
…What the hell?
[Why yes, he and Natsuno did have the same response. To be fair, it’s a very reasonable response.]
Edited (adding a link to the Bash thread for reference!) 2022-10-13 01:20 (UTC)
[Pal arrives right before Jade gets around to opening up a message for Tear just yet, and it's a pressing enough sidetrack for him to set the notion to a close backburner at least for the immediate moment. (She'll end up contacting him herself first, a bit later, and at least by then he may have some additional information to convey--)]
That about sums it up, yes. [Dryly, as Pal goes on to channel Natsuno's exact thought process; it is a very reasonable response, to be fair. There might have even been a little amusement at the incidental echo...if the message were saying literally anything else, anyway. But, as things stand right now...Jade's current demeanor is set to something rather more grimly businesslike as he shifts aside, from his spot immediately in front of the door, to open up space for Pal to have a closer look for himself.] My apologies for the short notice. Yuuki and I both just arrived here, a few minutes ago--and there is this. ...As you can imagine, I don't particularly care for how damp this blood currently is. Could you determine who it might belong to? If not also whoever wrote this.
Our door has not been the only one attended to, either.
[Now that Palamedes has gotten over the initial shock, he frowns at the message himself. The name means nothing to him, but there’s nothing very mysterious about a threat like you’ll join him soon.]
Not very subtle, are they? [he’s speaking half to himself, walking down the narrow hallway a few feet and seeing the messages written on the neighboring cabin doors. Then he returns to 109.]
I should be able to. [He lifts a brow.] You know what’s odd? You’re the second person today to ask me to go poking around in a pool of blood. I had no idea when I woke up this morning that I was going to be doing quite so much finger painting with bodily fluids.
[Definitely not subtle. All that's missing is a horse's head on the doorstep. No time to voice the sarcastic commentary out loud, though, because Pal already moves on to more alarming news.]
The second? [Things are really going out of control. Natsuno tries not to think about how it's the second time today, but at least the third this month.] What happened?
[About as subtle as a brick to the face, for a fact. But roasting this mystery blood culprit over their penchant for heavy-handed dramatics can come later; Pal's next few words certainly make for alarming news, and now it's Jade's turn to match Natsuno in terms of moderately visible concern.]
More messages like these, in other places besides this cabin hall? ...Or something else entirely? [Jade's thoughts are, naturally, also leaping unbidden to a certain incident in the first week of the month. Another bloody death, then? Possibly related to the blood here, in some way...?]
[For a pointed moment, Palamedes' gaze settles on Natsuno. Yes, interesting you should notice, this is actually the third time in less than two weeks when Pal has been forced to go poking around in pools of blood. Lucky for Natsuno, this isn't the time to retread past wrongs.]
No, not a message. [He exhales.] Caesar Salazar was killed in his cabin last night. The killer left quite a mess, though he or she has so far managed to evade detection.
[The whole business makes Pal shudder. He has only just gotten over the fear that Natsuno's killer would come after more people, only to be faced with a new threat. Given what happened last time he was trapped in a confined space with a mysterious murderer on the loose, he is decidedly worried.
But perhaps this clue will lead them somewhere closer to the truth. Pal steps forward towards the door and lightly traces his fingers across the message, staining them red with blood. Then he frowns, digs a small jar of ointment out of his pocket, rubs a bit of it on his fingers, and tries again.
[The name is...very, vaguely familiar, after extensive time spent on this ship. One of the more senior passengers at this point, perhaps--though Jade has never met this person himself, he thinks. Still, merely the night before...with the killer unknown. And now this?
Jade's thoughts are half-affixed upon this new matter, as he watches Pal approach the door and set his fingertips upon the bloodstains with that familiar sort of focus. ...Though him reaching for that ointment is rather new, he realizes. Followed by Pal actually cursing under his breath, there--
Blinking, Jade draws forward a step, and then at least manages to stop himself short. It's prudent not to intrude too close upon a given area until Pal's finished inspecting it, probably, but...]
[Pal doesn’t immediately offer much of an explanation, continuing to mutter to himself.] The blood is fresh, for Emperor’s sake. I should be getting more than this…
[He sighs and scrubs his hair back from his face. The gesture leaves a smudge of blood on his forehead.] The blood doesn’t belong to the person who left the message. The messenger is [he squints, screwing up his face] male and anywhere between fifteen and a century old. Which is absolutely bullshit.
There is one interesting thing. The blood is human. But only sort of. [a beat] The same can be said of the blood left behind in poor Salazar’s cabin.
[That's... really vague. Not to mention that apparently their messenger can be just about anyone, unless they narrow it down by figuring out which male passengers are into horror cliches.]
You mean the blood in that cabin isn't Salazar? [Did the killer just... leave different blood for ambience or something?] Or that the killer also wrote these messages?
Don’t look at me like that. Yes, sort of. [His irritation isn’t really meant for Natsuno, though. Pal is just tired of clues that don’t make sense.
He’s also tired of having people show up dead.
He gestures at the message on the door] Technically, it’s human blood. It has the molecular structure of human blood. It has the DNA of human blood. But something isn’t quite right about it. I just can’t put my finger on it.
…Not Salazar’s? Oh! No, sorry. [He takes a notebook out of his pocket at flips to the last used page, forcing his swirling thoughts into a coherent order.] Salazar’s blood was Salazar’s blood. But I was able to examine the sample barely an hour after his death, and it still showed signs of his attacker. Who was about twelve years old and also not quite human.
...So this blood is not Salazar's, but sourced from elsewhere. The culprit behind this message wasn't the one that murdered him, either...but has still left a similar not-quite-human trace of strangeness, upon the blood here?
[Jade watches as Pal pulls the notebook out, restructuring the given explanation slowly in order to check for mutual clarity; for his part, he certainly doesn't begrudge the young man his currently rather scattered state. Quite the day he's been having indeed...and these readings truly are strange.
Almost inexorably, Jade finds his glance drawn back to the blood on the door anew.]
That's certainly an unusually vague reading, where the culprit in particular's concerned. [He's seen Pal exercise his psychometry enough times to know that under normal circumstances, he can derive a great seal of fairly precise information. More recently, he'd readily been able to pin down Jinx's age range back in that closet--but here...] That indistinct range, in the age...seems somewhat similar to the conflicting readings you get from items native to this ship. Would you agree? I wonder if there isn't something actively interfering with your psychometry in a similar way here...
[Would the other doors hit bear the same readings as well, for that matter...?]
[Jade is kind enough to settle Palamdes’ thought process into an order that makes sense, and he nods.] And that’s only the beginning. Complicating matters further, it appears that Salazar was killed by a revenant possessing the body of Rich Goranski. While I’ve no proof that these messages have also been left by a possessed passenger, it may explain the disparities in my reading. [A grim smile] Or, as you note, Colonel, it may be that the ship is just fucking with me. Again.
[He reads over the message once again] Who is Luke?
Possessing--you mean to say...a body was overtaken by a revenant on this ship? ...The ghosts that generally render maintenance here?
[Rationally speaking, Jade's fairly certain those are the only ghosts that do exist on the ship--this place being, otherwise, a pocket dimension of the captain's own making, and seemingly only ever inhabited by ship passengers past and present. But that would be...
Well, that opens many questions all at once, now doesn't it?]
That...might bear relation, to the overall absence of that maintenance lately. --We cannot discount the similarities you've found in that unique strangeness, either, between Salazar's murderer and whoever left this message here. I do wonder...
[Jade trails off about there, well on the way to sinking into some thoughts of his own now--except that Pal's going on to ask that. Which--brings him quite abruptly back to the present, in turn. Jade's posture stiffens just slightly, as his glance snaps from staring at the door to staring at Pal instead. Unbidden, an odd expression flickers across his features for a moment, overtaking his earlier frown of thought; it's not a happy one. ...Though it's at least not actually directed at Pal himself, necessarily. Just...]
...Luke was a friend of mine, back home. He's not a passenger here. [Clipped, and still--a bit hollow, despite his best efforts, though with another beat Jade's pulling his composure back about himself with a slight breath. He doesn't look at either Pal or Natsuno, now, as he focuses on the door once more.] ...Which has implications in its own right, actually, considering the contents of this message. I haven't--there are very few people here, who would know who he is. Yet I cannot imagine any of them pulling a stunt like this...
[--At least, not when they aren't possessed by ghosts. But...]
[They're talking about possessions and angry ghosts, but it's not until Pal asks about Luke that the air grows colder. Natsuno still remembers how it was when he asked the same, too embarrassed by these awful mugs to truly understand the effect the Luke one had on Jade.
So once his roommate is done explaining, Natsuno moves on like nothing happened.]
All the messages seem kinda personal. Do you know "Arthur" from 127?
That is precisely what I mean. [He frowns in thought, his fingers flexing at his sides with the pent up energy of his many, many questions. The idea that the possession (possessions?) might have something to do with the lack of ship maintenance had crossed his mind, and yet…] If there is a relation, that implies that there are significantly more possessions than we currently know about.
[And isn’t that an unsettling thought.
The temperature in the hallway drops about five degrees when Pal mentions Luke. He watches Jade without blinking, unable to discern what exactly has caused the darkness to fall over the man’s expression. Clearly, Luke was a particularly important friend. And very probably, something terrible happened to him.
Which makes the note even more cruel.
Pal doesn’t say I’m sorry because he doesn’t think Jade would take it well. Better, in this case, to stick to business.] At least that narrows down our list of suspects. Who knows about him?
[Then he turns to Natsuno.] They do, don’t they? Though I’m afraid I don’t know Arthur. Do you know anything about him?
[More possessions beyond the one that had killed Salazar. Just how many souls have been utilized to act as drones for this ship? Far more than there are passengers, no doubt--though Jade's fairly certain that he himself isn't currently possessed by anything, at the very least. Looking back over to Pal at length, he can't imagine the other man might be either--surely a necromancer of his sort would notice such a thing, if not already have innate measures against it. For that matter...
Yes, business. It's strictly business, here, and it's a tone that's appreciated. Jade's tone mimics Pal's neutrality in turn, in the end, strengthened by the quiet solidarity of dodging neatly around the more, emotional aspects, of all this.]
Currently--Rita, Yuuki, Ava Starr...Tear as well. She and I were both friends back home. But that's where the list ends, which leaves things very limited...perhaps too much so. [After all, Pal claims to have picked up a reading of a male, nebulous age notwithstanding. And the only male on that list is Natsuno....who still stands at the corner of his eye, as he speaks. But Jade hadn't even looked directly Natsuno's way, as he'd listed his name evenly alongside the rest. Seems entirely unlikely that Natsuno's currently possessed either, after all...as startled as he'd looked at the blood himself, and hardly exhibiting anything in the way of murderous intent at the moment either. ...Surely, then, there must be some other factor they're missing here?] ...The captain does have access to detailed personal information pertaining to each of us--there's a possibility that information could have spread in other ways...
[Jade's falling silent to mull over such thoughts, from there, while Natsuno answers the other question about this 'Arthur'. Not a person he's met himself, he's pretty sure...possibly a newer passenger here. (And already acquiring an oddly personal grudge?)]
[They almost clock him there, but then Jade is being so helpful by suggesting the information spreads in other ways. That's the things about four-eyed nerds, sometimes they're too smart for their own good.
He's not entirely off the hook, of course, but at least "Tear" won't be suspected. Worst case scenario, he will use his host's other power to throw them off the trail. His own powers were stripped away when he was pulled to the ship so long ago, while this kid was just playing defense while holding back on everything else he can do! Not one bite, not one visit to the gym or fight club to hone his physical prowess.
Well, he's going to give this body the respect it deserves. It's gonna be GREAT.
In the meantime though, he should answer Pal's question:]
Same as you. Never met him or his roommate, if he has one. I only know his name because it's written in the message.
[The first part isn't even a lie! Natsuno never met the man, but word spreads... especially when you ask your allies how to fuck with someone.]
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come_sailaway
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Well then.
Let's just disregard the entirely unwarranted bit of a chill up the spine here, just now. --Blood directly on the door. Whose? To not even--start on the actual contents of the message here, which are already setting several pretty unhappy thoughts in motion in quick succession...
For a long moment Jade simply stands and stares at the door, expression darkened. ...Scans the vicinity for any other signs. Blood spilled anywhere else, possible tracks or traces of a perpetrator?]
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However, there's a similar message on Tear's door and a bloody unhinged correspondence on Ebalon's.]
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This evening the scent of blood - lots of it - assaults him the moment he sets foot in deck 2. It's coming from the cabins, and he can smell Jade there -
He doesn't stop to inspect the doors to Ebalon and Tear's rooms, making a beeline for 109.]
Jade -
[His roommate seems unharmed, but the door...]
What the hell.
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But Natsuno's steps and voice break through the reverie, and it's--a welcome sort of distraction. Maybe for the better. Jade tears his eyes away from the words to look over the boy's way as he closes the distance.]
...Rather gauche, isn't it? I must say, this is probably one of the most tactless death threats I've ever received. [The words are very dry, but there's something in the stiff set of his posture, and the way Jade can't seem to quite muster up his usual sort of sardonic smiling to accompany it. Instead he's turning his attention back on the door with an expression that's more unreadable than anything.] This blood--is still wet. Did you see anyone pass you by the hall on your way here, Yuuki?
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No. Maybe - someone hid in a cabin?
[His head turns toward the hallway entrance, to cabins 101 and 106.]
...there's more there.
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So this wasn't the only door targeted. [And, more specifically, it's not just Jade being targeted. Hmm...] Another spate of vandalism, it seems. But...who would...
[.....Who else would know about Luke? His name, and that he died? (That he is missed, terribly, always--)
The words trail off. Jade's expression only seems to empty further--but he's also reaching for an inner pocket of his uniform, now, to pull out his phone.]
...Well, besides that, we ought to figure out exactly where this blood has come from. Time may be of the essence. [Like? The blood's still pretty damp, which means it may have just freshly come from...someone?? Unfortunate implications here.] I'm going to contact Palamedes...would you want to take a look further down the hall there, to see what else has been done?
[Jade's almost not sure the message might not vanish or something the moment someone stops looking at it--stranger things have happened, on this ship. Already he's tapping out a message to Pal...Cabin 109. There's something here I'd like for you to examine, if you can.]
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He comes back soon enough, still grim. Jaw clenched, mouth pressed to a thin line.]
Three more messages. For cabin 127, "can't wait for you to join us." Not sure who lives there. Then there's some... [He can't help but make a face.] creepy love letter for the Moon Freak. And -
[He hesitates, just for a moment, having saved the worst for last.]
Tear got the same message as this.
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That aside, though, Jade doesn't know who it is living in 127 either...and pretty much all else falls a bit to the wayside of thought, when the worst bit of news is brought to light too. Jade's expression darkens further immediately, upon hearing this; Tear, for whom Luke's loss is even more recent and raw...and who also, surely, hasn't been here nearly so long enough to be garnering death threats herself--
Who is it, doing this?]
--Thank you, for looking. That's...Tear is usually quite capable of holding her own, but--I certainly don't care for the sound of that. [Already he's checking his phone again--ought to try contacting her as well, make sure she's alright--]
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Thanks to Bash, Palamedes is already on the trail of these suddenly active ghostly presences, though he hasn’t yet made much progress. He had searched the ship for Jeff, the one person he knows to be possessed, but hadn’t succeeded in finding him. Pal had even tried yet another seance, though he’d had no real hope that it would lead him anywhere, and it had not. He needs to find out more about this creature and what it wants, and he’s running out of ideas.
And then he receives Jade’s text.
Pal has no reason to believe that Jade’s relatively innocuous question has anything to do with the ship’s strange happenings, but some instinct tells him that it does. In a flash, he’s out the door and heading towards Cabin 109.
Regardless of what he knows about the ghosts, he really isn’t expecting to find a message scrawled in blood on Jade’s door.]
…What the hell?
[Why yes, he and Natsuno did have the same response. To be fair, it’s a very reasonable response.]
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That about sums it up, yes. [Dryly, as Pal goes on to channel Natsuno's exact thought process; it is a very reasonable response, to be fair. There might have even been a little amusement at the incidental echo...if the message were saying literally anything else, anyway. But, as things stand right now...Jade's current demeanor is set to something rather more grimly businesslike as he shifts aside, from his spot immediately in front of the door, to open up space for Pal to have a closer look for himself.] My apologies for the short notice. Yuuki and I both just arrived here, a few minutes ago--and there is this. ...As you can imagine, I don't particularly care for how damp this blood currently is. Could you determine who it might belong to? If not also whoever wrote this.
Our door has not been the only one attended to, either.
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[Now that Palamedes has gotten over the initial shock, he frowns at the message himself. The name means nothing to him, but there’s nothing very mysterious about a threat like you’ll join him soon.]
Not very subtle, are they? [he’s speaking half to himself, walking down the narrow hallway a few feet and seeing the messages written on the neighboring cabin doors. Then he returns to 109.]
I should be able to. [He lifts a brow.] You know what’s odd? You’re the second person today to ask me to go poking around in a pool of blood. I had no idea when I woke up this morning that I was going to be doing quite so much finger painting with bodily fluids.
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The second? [Things are really going out of control. Natsuno tries not to think about how it's the second time today, but at least the third this month.] What happened?
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More messages like these, in other places besides this cabin hall? ...Or something else entirely? [Jade's thoughts are, naturally, also leaping unbidden to a certain incident in the first week of the month. Another bloody death, then? Possibly related to the blood here, in some way...?]
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No, not a message. [He exhales.] Caesar Salazar was killed in his cabin last night. The killer left quite a mess, though he or she has so far managed to evade detection.
[The whole business makes Pal shudder. He has only just gotten over the fear that Natsuno's killer would come after more people, only to be faced with a new threat. Given what happened last time he was trapped in a confined space with a mysterious murderer on the loose, he is decidedly worried.
But perhaps this clue will lead them somewhere closer to the truth. Pal steps forward towards the door and lightly traces his fingers across the message, staining them red with blood. Then he frowns, digs a small jar of ointment out of his pocket, rubs a bit of it on his fingers, and tries again.
After a few more moments, he curses softly.]
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[The name is...very, vaguely familiar, after extensive time spent on this ship. One of the more senior passengers at this point, perhaps--though Jade has never met this person himself, he thinks. Still, merely the night before...with the killer unknown. And now this?
Jade's thoughts are half-affixed upon this new matter, as he watches Pal approach the door and set his fingertips upon the bloodstains with that familiar sort of focus. ...Though him reaching for that ointment is rather new, he realizes. Followed by Pal actually cursing under his breath, there--
Blinking, Jade draws forward a step, and then at least manages to stop himself short. It's prudent not to intrude too close upon a given area until Pal's finished inspecting it, probably, but...]
--What is it?
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[He sighs and scrubs his hair back from his face. The gesture leaves a smudge of blood on his forehead.] The blood doesn’t belong to the person who left the message. The messenger is [he squints, screwing up his face] male and anywhere between fifteen and a century old. Which is absolutely bullshit.
There is one interesting thing. The blood is human. But only sort of. [a beat] The same can be said of the blood left behind in poor Salazar’s cabin.
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[That's... really vague. Not to mention that apparently their messenger can be just about anyone, unless they narrow it down by figuring out which male passengers are into horror cliches.]
You mean the blood in that cabin isn't Salazar? [Did the killer just... leave different blood for ambience or something?] Or that the killer also wrote these messages?
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He’s also tired of having people show up dead.
He gestures at the message on the door] Technically, it’s human blood. It has the molecular structure of human blood. It has the DNA of human blood. But something isn’t quite right about it. I just can’t put my finger on it.
…Not Salazar’s? Oh! No, sorry. [He takes a notebook out of his pocket at flips to the last used page, forcing his swirling thoughts into a coherent order.] Salazar’s blood was Salazar’s blood. But I was able to examine the sample barely an hour after his death, and it still showed signs of his attacker. Who was about twelve years old and also not quite human.
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[Jade watches as Pal pulls the notebook out, restructuring the given explanation slowly in order to check for mutual clarity; for his part, he certainly doesn't begrudge the young man his currently rather scattered state. Quite the day he's been having indeed...and these readings truly are strange.
Almost inexorably, Jade finds his glance drawn back to the blood on the door anew.]
That's certainly an unusually vague reading, where the culprit in particular's concerned. [He's seen Pal exercise his psychometry enough times to know that under normal circumstances, he can derive a great seal of fairly precise information. More recently, he'd readily been able to pin down Jinx's age range back in that closet--but here...] That indistinct range, in the age...seems somewhat similar to the conflicting readings you get from items native to this ship. Would you agree? I wonder if there isn't something actively interfering with your psychometry in a similar way here...
[Would the other doors hit bear the same readings as well, for that matter...?]
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[He reads over the message once again] Who is Luke?
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[Rationally speaking, Jade's fairly certain those are the only ghosts that do exist on the ship--this place being, otherwise, a pocket dimension of the captain's own making, and seemingly only ever inhabited by ship passengers past and present. But that would be...
Well, that opens many questions all at once, now doesn't it?]
That...might bear relation, to the overall absence of that maintenance lately. --We cannot discount the similarities you've found in that unique strangeness, either, between Salazar's murderer and whoever left this message here. I do wonder...
[Jade trails off about there, well on the way to sinking into some thoughts of his own now--except that Pal's going on to ask that. Which--brings him quite abruptly back to the present, in turn. Jade's posture stiffens just slightly, as his glance snaps from staring at the door to staring at Pal instead. Unbidden, an odd expression flickers across his features for a moment, overtaking his earlier frown of thought; it's not a happy one. ...Though it's at least not actually directed at Pal himself, necessarily. Just...]
...Luke was a friend of mine, back home. He's not a passenger here. [Clipped, and still--a bit hollow, despite his best efforts, though with another beat Jade's pulling his composure back about himself with a slight breath. He doesn't look at either Pal or Natsuno, now, as he focuses on the door once more.] ...Which has implications in its own right, actually, considering the contents of this message. I haven't--there are very few people here, who would know who he is. Yet I cannot imagine any of them pulling a stunt like this...
[--At least, not when they aren't possessed by ghosts. But...]
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So once his roommate is done explaining, Natsuno moves on like nothing happened.]
All the messages seem kinda personal. Do you know "Arthur" from 127?
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[And isn’t that an unsettling thought.
The temperature in the hallway drops about five degrees when Pal mentions Luke. He watches Jade without blinking, unable to discern what exactly has caused the darkness to fall over the man’s expression. Clearly, Luke was a particularly important friend. And very probably, something terrible happened to him.
Which makes the note even more cruel.
Pal doesn’t say I’m sorry because he doesn’t think Jade would take it well. Better, in this case, to stick to business.] At least that narrows down our list of suspects. Who knows about him?
[Then he turns to Natsuno.] They do, don’t they? Though I’m afraid I don’t know Arthur. Do you know anything about him?
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[More possessions beyond the one that had killed Salazar. Just how many souls have been utilized to act as drones for this ship? Far more than there are passengers, no doubt--though Jade's fairly certain that he himself isn't currently possessed by anything, at the very least. Looking back over to Pal at length, he can't imagine the other man might be either--surely a necromancer of his sort would notice such a thing, if not already have innate measures against it. For that matter...
Yes, business. It's strictly business, here, and it's a tone that's appreciated. Jade's tone mimics Pal's neutrality in turn, in the end, strengthened by the quiet solidarity of dodging neatly around the more, emotional aspects, of all this.]
Currently--Rita, Yuuki, Ava Starr...Tear as well. She and I were both friends back home. But that's where the list ends, which leaves things very limited...perhaps too much so. [After all, Pal claims to have picked up a reading of a male, nebulous age notwithstanding. And the only male on that list is Natsuno....who still stands at the corner of his eye, as he speaks. But Jade hadn't even looked directly Natsuno's way, as he'd listed his name evenly alongside the rest. Seems entirely unlikely that Natsuno's currently possessed either, after all...as startled as he'd looked at the blood himself, and hardly exhibiting anything in the way of murderous intent at the moment either. ...Surely, then, there must be some other factor they're missing here?] ...The captain does have access to detailed personal information pertaining to each of us--there's a possibility that information could have spread in other ways...
[Jade's falling silent to mull over such thoughts, from there, while Natsuno answers the other question about this 'Arthur'. Not a person he's met himself, he's pretty sure...possibly a newer passenger here. (And already acquiring an oddly personal grudge?)]
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He's not entirely off the hook, of course, but at least "Tear" won't be suspected. Worst case scenario, he will use his host's other power to throw them off the trail. His own powers were stripped away when he was pulled to the ship so long ago, while this kid was just playing defense while holding back on everything else he can do! Not one bite, not one visit to the gym or fight club to hone his physical prowess.
Well, he's going to give this body the respect it deserves. It's gonna be GREAT.
In the meantime though, he should answer Pal's question:]
Same as you. Never met him or his roommate, if he has one. I only know his name because it's written in the message.
[The first part isn't even a lie! Natsuno never met the man, but word spreads... especially when you ask your allies how to fuck with someone.]
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